Daniel Rooke was quiet, moody, a man of few words. He had no memories other than of being an outsider.
At the dame school in Portsmouth they thought him stupid. His first day there was by coincidence his fifth birthday, the third of March 1767. He took his place behind the desk with his mother’s breakfast oatmeal cosy in his stomach and his new jacket on, happy to be joining the world beyond his home.
Mrs Bartholomew showed him a badly executed engraving with the word ‘cat’ underneath. His mother had taught him his letters and he had been reading for a year. He could not work out what Mrs Bartholomew wanted. He sat at his desk, mouth open.
That was the first time he was paddled with Mrs. Bartholomew’s old hairbrush for failing to respond to a question so simple he had not thought to answer it.
He could not become interested in the multiplication tables. While the others chanted through them, impatient for the morning …show more content…
Rooke folded the grid and hid it under his hand on the table.
But Dr Adair lifted his fingers from the grubby paper.
‘May I borrow this?’ he asked. ‘I would like, if I may, to show it to a gentleman of my acquaintance who will be interested that it was created by a boy of seven.’
After Dr Adair went, the neighbour woman brought his sisters back. She inspected Rooke and said loudly, as if he were deaf, or a dog, ‘Yes, he looks clever, don’t he?’
Rooke felt the hairs on his head standing up with the heat of his blush. Whether it was because he was stupid or clever, it added up to the same thing: the misery of being out of step with the world. When he turned eight Dr Adair offered the bursary. It was just words: a place at the Portsmouth Naval Academy. The boy thought it could not be too different from the life he knew, went along blithely and hardly waved goodbye to his father at the
At the dame school in Portsmouth they thought him stupid. His first day there was by coincidence his fifth birthday, the third of March 1767. He took his place behind the desk with his mother’s breakfast oatmeal cosy in his stomach and his new jacket on, happy to be joining the world beyond his home.
Mrs Bartholomew showed him a badly executed engraving with the word ‘cat’ underneath. His mother had taught him his letters and he had been reading for a year. He could not work out what Mrs Bartholomew wanted. He sat at his desk, mouth open.
That was the first time he was paddled with Mrs. Bartholomew’s old hairbrush for failing to respond to a question so simple he had not thought to answer it.
He could not become interested in the multiplication tables. While the others chanted through them, impatient for the morning …show more content…
Rooke folded the grid and hid it under his hand on the table.
But Dr Adair lifted his fingers from the grubby paper.
‘May I borrow this?’ he asked. ‘I would like, if I may, to show it to a gentleman of my acquaintance who will be interested that it was created by a boy of seven.’
After Dr Adair went, the neighbour woman brought his sisters back. She inspected Rooke and said loudly, as if he were deaf, or a dog, ‘Yes, he looks clever, don’t he?’
Rooke felt the hairs on his head standing up with the heat of his blush. Whether it was because he was stupid or clever, it added up to the same thing: the misery of being out of step with the world. When he turned eight Dr Adair offered the bursary. It was just words: a place at the Portsmouth Naval Academy. The boy thought it could not be too different from the life he knew, went along blithely and hardly waved goodbye to his father at the