An Incident in the Early Life of Ebenezer Jones, Poet, 1828

“WE were together at a well-known boarding-school of that day (1828), situated at the foot of Highgate Hill, and presided over by a dissenting minister, the Rev. John Bickerdike.…

We were together, though not on the same form; and on a hot summer afternoon, with about fifty other boys, were listlessly conning our tasks in a large schoolroom built out from the house, which made a cover for us to play under when it was wet. Up the ladder-like stairs from the playground a lurcher dog had strayed into the schoolroom, panting with the heat, his tongue lolling out with thirst. The choleric usher who presided, and was detested by us for his tyranny, seeing this, advanced down the room. Enraged at our attention being distracted from our tasks, he dragged the dog to the top of the stairs, and there lifted him bodily up with the evident intention—and we had known him do similar things—of hurling the poor creature to the bottom.

‘YOU SHALL NOT!’ rang through the room, as little Ebby, so exclaiming at the top of his voice, rushed with kindling face to the spot from among all the boys—some of them twice his age.

But even while the words passed his lips, the heavy fall was heard, and the sound seemed to travel through his listening form and face, as, with a strange look of anguish in one so young, he stood still, threw up his arms, and burst into an uncontrollable passion of tears.

With a coarse laugh at this, the usher led him back by his ear to the form; and there he sat, long after his sobbing had subsided, like one dazed and stunned.” (From an account of his brother by Sumner Jones in the 1879 re-issue of Ebenezer Jones’s “Studies of Sensation and Event”.)

 

The lumber of a London-going dray,

The still-new stucco on the London clay,

Hot summer silence over Holloway.

Dissenting chapels, tea-bowers, lovers’ lairs,

Neat new-built villas, ample Grecian squares,

Remaining orchards ripening Windsor pears.

Hot silence where the older mansions hide

On Highgate Hill’s thick elm-encrusted side,

And Pancras, Hornsey, Islington divide.

June’s hottest silence where the hard rays strike

Yon hill-foot house, window and wall alike,

School of the Reverend Mr. Bickerdike,

For sons of Saints, blest with this world’s possessions

(Seceders from the Protestant Secessions),

Good grounding in the more genteel professions.

A lurcher dog, which draymen kick and pass

Tongue lolling, thirsty over shadeless grass,

Leapt up the playground ladder to the class.

The godly usher left his godly seat,

His skin was prickly in the ungodly heat,

The dog lay panting at his godly feet.

The milkman on the road stood staring in,

The playground nettles nodded “Now begin”—

And Evil waited, quivering, for sin.

He lifted it and not a word he spoke,

His big hand tightened. Could he make it choke

He trembled, sweated, and his temper broke.

“YOU SHALL NOT!” clear across to Highgate Hill

A boy’s voice sounded. Creaking forms were still.

The cat jumped slowly from the window sill.

“YOU SHALL NOT!” flat against the summer sun,

Hard as the hard sky frowning over one,

Gloat, little boys! enjoy the coming fun!

“GOD DAMNS A CUR. I AM, I AM HIS WORD!”

He flung it, flung it and it never stirred,

“You shall not!—shall not!” ringing on unheard.

Blind desolation! bleeding, burning rod!

Big, bull-necked Minister of Calvin’s God!

Exulting milkman, redfaced, shameless clod,

Look on and jeer! Not Satan’s thunder-quake

Can cause the mighty walls of Heaven to shake

As now they do, to hear a boy’s heart break.