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All we know is that some schools were taught entirely by one man, while others employed an undermaster or several. In some cases the school is entirely a private enterprise, the master charging a monthly fee amounting in the elementary schools to a penny or twopence a week together with small money presents on certain festivals. The more select establishments naturally charged more.
Among those who helped to carry on the services there, was a young undermaster of Stockwell Grammar School, the rev. Frank Besant, a Cambridge man, who had passed as 28th wrangler in his year, and who had just taken orders.
He was just in the middle of one, about a trick some of the boys had played an undermaster at their school, when I heard the front door open quietly and steps cross the hall. The steps were of more than one person, though no one was speaking. 'Stop, Lindsay, I said, and I sat bolt up in my chair and listened. Whoever it was had gone into the drawing-room.
According to what the Kierleys told me, old Ferguson used to use the tawse on her sometimes, and they led a sort of cat-and-dog life. Well, about the time I'm talking about, Ferguson got a new undermaster; he only kept one. This chap was an Englishman name of Bentham Francis Bentham, to give him his full patronymic, but I don't know where he came from I don't think anybody did."
He was sent to a very well-reputed school, that of the Rev. John Clarke, at Enfield: the son Charles Cowden Clarke, whom I have previously mentioned, was an undermaster, and paid particular attention to Keats. The latter did not show any remarkable talent at school, but learned easily, and was 'a very orderly scholar, acquiring a fair amount of Latin but no Greek.
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