DR. KEATE AND WELLINGTON mouth or in his shoes, would be incredible, were it not that there are so many English gentlemen now living who have experience of it. How well I remember the terrible, if irrational, state of funk which the whole of any class below the upper sixth was always in, when going up for their weekly lesson to that really most genial of men, Edward Thring, and it was the same elsewhere, and given the same sort of circumstances, the grown-up man could feel as frightened as the boy; witness this delightful story of the Iron Duke. No one could call him a coward, but on his return from Waterloo he went down on the fourth of June to Eton, and first told some one in his club that he meant to confess to Keate that he was the boy who had painted the Founder's Statue or some such iniquity, the perpetrator of which Keate had been unable to discover. His friend extracted a promise that after his interview he would come and report at the club. He came, and being questioned by a group of deeply interested old Etonians, he said, "Well, it was all different, not at all like what I expected. I seized the opportunity when Keate came to speak with me by the window and said, "You remember the Founder's Statue being defaced, sir?" "Certainly. Do you know anything about it?" he said sharply. "No, sir." "You don't mean to say you said that?" "Certainly I do, and what is more, every one of you would, in the circumstances, have said just the same," and then and there they all admitted it; so difficult is it to shake off the feelings of earlier days. And yet he was not naturally terrible, and I who write this, never having been under him, have, as a small boy, spoken to Keate without a shadow of fear.
This reminds me of a remark of Gladstone's, who was giving us some delightful reminiscences of his days at Eton, and, speaking enthusiastically of Alfred Tennyson's friend, Arthur Hallam, when on my saying that I had spoken with Keate, he turned half round in his chair and said, "Well, if you say you have seen Keate I must believe you, but I should not have thought it possible." He had forgotten for the moment that Keate, after retiring from Eton, lived thirteen years at Hartley Westpall (near Strathfieldsaye), where my father was curate.
To return to Somersby. We read in the memoir of the poet an amusing account, by Arthur Tennyson, of how the
