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hypocrite gang at Champney's; now I accepted the war, and began to fight for my freedom. I went long
walks in the mountains, where my tutors could not follow me, and where delightful peasant girls could
and did follow me - God bless them!
One day I had a difference of opinion with a tutor, in the course of which he fell from a rock into a loch
(whose name I forget) near Forsinard. Memory fails to recall the actual cause of dispute; but I think I had
thrown his fishing-rod into the loch, and thought that it was expedient for him to try and retrieve it.
The same night he found me in the heather with Belle Mc.Kay the local beauty (God bless her!) and gave
me up as a bad job.
So I fought the swine! They sent me to Malvern, where my {150} weakness made me the prey of every
bully, and saved me from the attention of every budding Eulenburg. Sodomy was the rule at Malvern; my
study-companion used even to take money for it. I cunningly used my knowledge of the fact to get away
from the school.
It must not be supposed that we had no other amusements. There was 'pill-ragging'; a form of fight whose
object was to seize and hurt the opponent's testicles; and 'greasing'; i.e., spitting either in each other's faces
or secretly so the victim could not detect the act. In my time this had died out of the other houses; but still
flourished in my own house 'Huntingdon's, No.4. There was bullying, too; and now and then cricket and
football.
They sent me to Tonbridge; my health broke down; partly, one may say, through what would have been
my own fault or misfortune if I had been properly educated; but, as it was, was the direct result of the vile
system that, not content with torturing me itself, handed me over bound and blindfold to the outraged
majesty of Nature.
I escaped from Tonbridge. They sent me to Eastbourne to a P.B. family where I had more liberty, and
could have been happy; but the revolting cruelties which they inflicted on the only pretty and decent
member of the family, my dear 'sister' Isabelle, caused me one day to knock their heads together and walk
out of the house.
They sent me to Cambridge. I found myself my own master, and settled down to lead a righteous, sober
and Godly life; and to make up for lost time in the matter of education.
Outside purely scholastic subjects, they had taught me to fight, to love the truth, to hate oppression, - and
by God! I think they taught me well. {151}
On my soul, I should thank them.
The Vindictive Miracles and the Stoning of Stephen
Of Jesus alone of all the Christian miracle workers there is no record, except in certain gospels that all
men reject, of a malicious or destructive miracle. A barren fig-tree was the only victim of his anger. Every
one of his miracles on sentient subjects was an act of kindness.
That is perfectly true as far as it goes. But Jesus constantly approves vindictive miracles. The destruction
of the whole earth by the flood, and that of Sodom and Gomorrah, by fire do not make him bat an eyelid.
Furthermore, he gives in the parable of the wheat and the tares his reason for not destroying the wicked in
detail. He prefers to wait until the end of the world and make one tremendous holocaust.
It must appear to the ordinary reader a very poor kind of mercy to leave people alone on these terms, and
the Inquisition, in burning men alive in order to save their souls, is by comparison no more to be reckoned
cruel than a surgeon. At the same time, all this apart, there is admittedly a distinct difference in the flavour
of the miracles. It almost lends verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative. It does
suggest that the fountain of authority was gone, and that his successors had to take practical steps to assure
their succession. It would be a natural step to take in the circumstances.
Yet Mr. Shaw's phrase contains one caveat. He talks of 'certain gospels that all men reject.' But seeing
that 'all men' of {152} whom it is here spoken were not 'all men' at all - for surely the writers of these
gospels did not reject them - but only partisans determined to allow nothing to pass the censor, may not
this fact have been a reason for the rejection? The excellence of a biography is not to be determined by its
amiability or the reverse, according to our personal ideas of what we should like the truth to be. That is
carrying pragmatism a little too far!
We have, for example, in the past few years no less than five biographies or 'gospels' of Oscar Wilde in
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