The die had turned
up against him, and the disappointment, with its immediate consequences,
gave a complexion to his future fortunes, character, and comfort. He had
already mounted a full-bottomed wig when he stood for Harrow, anxious, as
it should seem, to give his face a still further chance of keeping its
start. He now began to ride on a black saddle, and bore in his hand a long
wand with an ivory head, like a crosier in high prelatical pomp. His
neighbours, who wondered what it could all mean, had scarcely time to
identify him with his pontificals, before they saw him stalking along the
street in a dirty, striped dressing-gown. A wife was all that was now
wanted to complete the establishment at Stanmore, and accordingly Miss
Jane Marsingale, a lady of an ancient Yorkshire family, was provided for
him, (Parr, like Hooker, appears to have courted by proxy, and with about
the same success,) and so Stanmore was set a going as the rival of Harrow.
These were fearful odds, and it came to pass, that in spite of "Attic
symposia," and groves of Academus, and the enacting of a Greek play, and
the perpetual recitation of the fragment in praise of Harmodius and
Aristogeiton, the establishment at Stanmore declined, and at the end of
five years, Parr was not sorry to accept the mastership of an endowed
school at Colchester. To Colchester, therefore, he removed with his wife
and a daughter in the spring of 1777.
Pages:
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54