Love's Cross-Currents

I blog so intermittently... I just can't seem to make a habit of it, the disciplined morning habit I once hoped to cultivate. What foxes me too is this desire to communicate; one has to perch on the edge of some dissatisfaction and rock about on it. As someone said, sometimes I just look at the stars... and can't be bothered. But having recently gained more than, say, ten puzzled readers from Czechia, I feel guilty about it. Oh, but here's something so perfectly written, so intensely enjoyable and I am simply going to transcribe it. Because Algernon Charles Swinburne's A Year's Letters is out of print and no one has read it. Buy a second hand copy tonight! I recommend it to the world!

Once out in the garden, Reginald became more wonderful than ever. Any one not two years younger and half a head shorter must have doubled up with laughter before he had gone three steps. Our friend's patronage of the sunlight, his tolerance of the roses, his gentle thoughtful condescension towards the face of things in general, were too sublime for words.
When they came to the parapet of an old broad terrace, Reginald, still in a dignified way, got astride it; not without a curious grimace and some seeming difficulty in adjusting his small person: tapped his teeth with his whip-handle, and gave Frank for a whole minute the full benefit of his eyes. Frank stood twisting a rose-branch and looked meek.
The result of Reginald's scrutiny was this question, delivered with much solemn effect.
I say. Were you ever swished?
Swished? said Frank, with rapid heat in his cheeks.
Swished, said Reginald in his decisive voice. Birched.
Do you mean, flogged? Frank asked this very diffidently, as if the query singed his lips.
Well, flogged, if you like that better, said Reginald, conscious of a neat point. Flogged. But I mean a real right-down swishing, you know. If a fellow says, flogged, it may be a whip, don't you see, or a strap. That's caddish. But you can call it flogging if you like. Only not at school, mind. It's all very well before me.
Reverting from these verbal subtleties to the main point, Reginald put the grand query again, in a modified shape, but in a tone of courteous resolution, not to be evaded by any boy.
Does your father often flog you?
I never was flogged in my life, said Frank, sensible of his deep degradation.
Reginald, as a boy of the world, could stand a great deal without surprise; experience of men and things had inured him to much that was curious and out of the usual way. But at the shock of this monstrous and incredible assertion, he was thrown right off his balance. He got off the parapet, and leant his shoulders against it, and gazed upon the boy to whom birch was a dim dubious myth, a jocose threat after dinner, with eyebrows wonderfully high up and distended eyelids. Then he said; Good - God! softly and dividing the syllables, with a hushed breath.
Goaded to insanity by the big boy's astonishment, agonized by his silence, Frank tenderly put a timid foot in it.
Were you? he asked, with much awe.
Then, with straightened shoulders and raised chin, Reginald Harewood took up his parable. Some of his expressions must be forgiven to youthful excitement, and for the sake of accuracy; boys when voluble on a tender point are awfully accurate in their choice of words. Reginald was very voluble by nature, and easy to excite on this painfully personal matter.
Ah! Yes. I should think so. My good fellow, you ought to have seen me yesterday. I was swished twice in the morning. Can't you see in a man's eyes? My father is - the - most - awful - Turk. He likes to swish me - he does really. What you'll do when you go to school - (here a pause) - God knows. (This in a pensive and devout manner, touched with pity.) You'll sing out - by Jove! won't you sing out the first time you catch it? I used to. I do sometimes now. For it hurts most awfully. But I can stand a good lot of it. There were bits cut right out of me yesterday on one side. Here. And one twig stuck in the cut and I couldn't get it out for half an hour. My father can always draw blood the third or forth cut. It's ever so much worse than a whole swarm of mad bees stinging you at once. Makes a fellow tingle to the bone. At school, if you kick, or if you wince even, or if you make the least bit of row, you get six cuts over. I always did. When I was your age. The big fellows used to call me all manner of chaffy names: Pepperbottom, that was out of a book; I know the book; I bet you don't; and the Wagtail; because I used to wriggle about on the block: between each cut; I know I did. They call me Wag now, and Pepper, for short. Not the young ones, of course. I should lick them. I say, I wish you were going to school. I'd look after you. You'd be letting fellows get you into the most awful rows. Ah! wouldn't you? When I was your age I used to get swished twice a day regular. The masters spite me. I know one of them does, because he told one of the big fellows he did. At least he said I was a curse to the whole school, and I was ruining all the young ones. He did really, on my word. I was the fellow's fag that he said it to, and he called me up that night and licked me with a whip. With a whip like this. He was a most awful bully. I don't think I'll tell you what he did once to a boy. You wouldn't sleep well to-night.

from A Year's Letters (written 1862, first published in Tatler, 1877) reprinted in a beautiful annotated dark blue edition from Peter Owen Ltd., London, 1974.