302
NOTES AND QUERIES. [io s. xii. OCT. IG, im
was never sent to a more respectable seminary '
than * a private grammar school ' in Derbyshire."*
Sir Leslie Stephen, in his account of Richardson in the ' D.N.B.,' seems a little sceptical of the tale, and mentions that the novelist's name does not appear in the school registers. On this point Mr. William Lempriere, of Christ's Hospital whose interest in all that concerns the history of the ancient foundation with which he is associated would ever impel him, were his courtesy alone not a sufficient incentive, to answer all inquiries gladly writes to me the following explanation :
" In 1896 I received an inquiry from Mr. Sidney Lee as to Samuel Richardson, and turned to our Register for the usual particulars. To my astonishment his name was not in the Index ; but so convinced was I that he was educated here that I searched the Register itself, but to no avail. It is therefore clear that he was not a ' Foundationer. ' But, from early in the Hospital's history and until about 40 years ago, every Master was allowed to take a certain number of private pupils, whom he taught in the school classes. And, from tradition, as well as from Leigh Hunt's writings, I can scarcely doubt that Richardson was educated here, but as a private pupil. Un- fortunately, no record was kept officially of their names."
Mr. Lempriere mentions Warren Hastings among other distinguished private pupils ; and, concerning Leigh Hunt's explanation, adds :
" The quotation from Leigh Hunt is quite correct as to the practice at that time ; although, as to fact, contradictory of Nichols's statement that Richardson was in the ' Grammar School ' of Christ's Hospital. The Hospital was then divided into the ' Grammar School,' the ' Mathe- matical School,' and the ' Writing School.' "
Now I find, on reference to ' The Town ' (ed. 1878, p. 90), that Leigh Hunt there includes the very sentences on Richardson's connexion with Christ's Hospital that are quoted by Mr. Austin Dobson from The London Journal. But there seems to be one distinction : he adds the following foot-note :
" Our authority (one of the highest in this way) is Mr. Nichols, in his ' Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century,' vol. iv. p. 579."
Thus any value that might be set upon
- Mr. Dobson tells me that in The Caxton
Magazine for December, 1901, he wrote as follows : " There is a tradition, which Leigh Hunt believed, that he [RichardsonJ received some education at Christ's Hospital ; but it can only have been in one of the subordinate establish- ments, and, in any case, it was very elementary, for he never pretended to more than * common school-learning ' " ; and that in an American cyclopaedia in 1906 he wrote : " There is no clear evidence that he had ever more than what he calls ' common school-learning.' "
Leigh Hunt's statement crumbles into dust,
It is clear that he made no original investiga-
tion into the matter himself, but merely relied
upon Nichols, with whom alone we are now
left to deal. Moreover, Leigh Hunt im-
peaches his own judgment by remarking
that it was probably whilst at Christ's
Hospital that Richardson
" intimated his future career, first by writing a letter, at eleven years of age, to a censorious woman of fifty, who pretended a zeal for religion ; and afterwards, at thirteen, by composing love- letters to their sweethearts for three young women in the neighbourhood, who made him their confidant."
Now Richardson's " early recollections, " as Sir Leslie Stephen observes, " imply that he lived till the age of thirteen in the country." It is impossible to read the novelist's account of his early years, and of his relations with " all the young women of taste and reading in the neighbourhood,' 7 and associate the kind of life depicted with any part of London.*
Again, Leigh Hunt, while accepting Nichols's main statement as correct, contra- dicts him without explanation on a most important detail, as Mr. Lempriere's letter to me points out. Nichols says that Richard- son was educated "in the grammar school, of Christ's Hospital," while Leigh Hunt, ignoring this, explains that his education " did not go beyond English," and must have been acquired in the " Writing School." If we are to accept "Nichols's statement whole, and not mutilate it to suit our convenience, we must believe that the novelist received from Christ's Hospital the best classical education that it could offer. This view no one acquainted with his colloquial style will be prepared to support. As Miss Clara Linklater Thomson says in her life of Richardson (1900), re- ferring to "Nichols's tale :
" This is not confirmed by the register of scholars, and it seems improbable that he received so good an education, unless in the years of drudgery that followed he forgot the knowledge of the classics that he had acquired at school, "t
- In Henry B. Wheatley's ' London Past and
Present,' the improved version of Peter Cunning- ham's work, published in 1891, it is stated (vol. i. p. 396), in reference to Christ's Hospital : " Samuel Richardson, author of ' Clarissa Har- lowe,' is said to have been educated here, but the claim is hardly to be reconciled with his own account of his boyhood."
f Mr. Austin Dobson points out to me that Mrs. Barbauld in her life of Richardson remarks : " His own assertions are frequent in his letters, that he possessed no language but his own, not even French " (' Correspondence,' 1804, vol. i. p. xxxii).
