Algernon had a hunting rifle, and the boys often shot wild birds and brought them home for the cook to prepare for dinner. An old sailor in the village had taught Wilfred how to stuff and mount some of the birds he caught. Soon Wilfred had an impressive collection of stuffed birds lined up along the sill of his bedroom window.
Many times over the summer Wilfred and Algernon did not make it home at all. They stayed out all night working alongside the fishermen of Parkgate, hauling in nets and scaling fish for the market.
This was the life Wilfred enjoyed most—pitting himself against nature and testing his endurance.
Summer came to an end, however, and the Reptile had to be exchanged for schoolbooks. Still, Wilfred had next summer to dream about, and the summer after that. In fact, he imagined he would spend his entire life in Parkgate and on the water that surrounded the village.
It came as a shock, then, in 1879, when Wilfred’s father called him into his office and announced that Wilfred was to be sent off to Marlborough College in Wiltshire. Marlborough was a famous school dedicated to training the sons of clergymen. Although Wilfred’s father, Algernon Grenfell, had been a schoolmaster all his working life, he was also an ordained minister.
A week later, looking back on the shocking announcement, Wilfred realized he should have expected to be sent off to school. His brother Algernon was already away at a different boarding school, but somehow it had never occurred to Wilfred that he would follow in his older brother’s footsteps.
After the summer vacation of 1879, Wilfred set out for the Wiltshire countryside, two hundred miles southeast of Parkgate.
After a long day of traveling by train, Wilfred found himself looking up at Marlborough Castle. This previous home of the dukes of Somerset now housed the high school he would be attending. The castle was surrounded by a moat, which had been widened in one spot to make a swimming hole. Wilfred smiled to himself; at least there was some water in the vicinity.
Life soon fell into a dull pattern for Wilfred. He disliked most of the other boys in his class and soon earned the nickname “the Beast” because he did not comb his hair unless he was forced to and often fought with the other boys. The truth was, Wilfred was bored. The things the other boys considered daring exploits seemed tame to him. The bravest of the boys would climb out the window in the dead of night and go swimming in the moat pool. But Wilfred recalled the numerous times he had thrown himself overboard from the Reptile and pitted his strength against the roaring tide at the mouth of the River Dee. Or the times he had stayed out all night hauling wet nets filled with fish over the stern of a thirty-foot fishing boat. He recalled watching grown men get tangled in the nets and be pulled overboard to their deaths.
Wilfred liked to be by himself most of the time, and Sunday was his favorite day of the week. The day started with chapel service. While the drone of the chaplain’s voice often nearly put Wilfred to sleep, after the sermon the boys always sang the entire work of Handel’s Messiah. Even though many people had told Wilfred he was tone deaf—“unitone,” they dubbed him—he loved to sing loudly, and he did so with gusto.
After chapel the boys were supposed to return to their rooms for silent reading or letter writing. This was when Wilfred would often sneak away to nearby Savernake Forest and catch moths and butterflies. It was a poor substitute for shooting curlews, plovers, and terns on the River Dee estuary, but at least he was alone out in nature.
Two years dragged by at Marlborough College, until Wilfred convinced his father that he was so unhappy there that he needed to be brought home. Now, in 1881, Wilfred was back enjoying the life he loved. His father made him keep studying Greek, Latin, and mathematics, but apart from that, Wilfred was free to roam as he pleased. He lost no time in climbing aboard a fishing boat and heading out into the Irish Sea in pursuit of a catch. Meanwhile Algernon had stuck with his studies and was now enrolled in university at Oxford.
Wilfred’s happy and carefree life lasted for almost a year, until his father called him into his office once again.
“Shut the door after you,” Mr. Grenfell said softly. He cleared his throat. “I have something to tell you that may come as a shock. Sit down.”
Wilfred perched on the edge of a leather chair and waited, wondering what his father could possibly have to say that would be earth-shattering.
“Your mother and I have been very happy here at Parkgate,” Wilfred’s father began. “The school is going well and gaining a fine reputation, and we have raised you boys here. But that life is about to come to an end. After much soul searching, I have accepted a post as chaplain at the London Hospital in Whitechapel Road.”
Wilfred gasped. He had read enough of Charles Dickens’s works to know that Whitechapel Road was the worst slum area in all of London!
“You mean you are leaving here for good and moving to London?” Wilfred asked, almost unable to comprehend such a thought.
“Yes, we are,” his father said. “I have already written to Algernon, and when he graduates he is going to come back here and run the school. In the meantime I have found a deputy who will keep it running. I’ll come back every three months or so to make sure everything is going well. Now we have to talk about you.”
“Me? What about me?” Wilfred asked.
“Well…what do you want to do with your life, son? You will have to earn a living.”
The question struck Wilfred with the force of a huge breaker. He had never considered that he would have to earn his own way in life. Boys of his social standing took up professions if and when they found them interesting. If need be, they could live indefinitely off family money.
“I…I…” Wilfred sputtered, but he could not think of a single way to continue the sentence.
After a long silence, his father finally spoke.
“I know this may all be somewhat of a shock to you. You don’t have to answer me now, but you do have to think seriously about it. I am taking up my new appointment in November, and I would like to have you positioned by then.”
Wilfred gulped. That was only three months away.
After he left his father’s office, Wilfred wandered along the water’s edge, wondering with each step how he was supposed to work out what he wanted to do for the rest of his life.
Chapter 3
New Direction
For the next twenty-four hours, Wilfred was in a daze. Earn a living! What could he do, not just for a while but year after year? As he wandered through the school late at night, his eyes turned, as they had a thousand times before, to the stuffed animal trophies mounted on the walls. In a flash, inspiration hit him. He would be a tiger hunter in India! That way he could meet all of his mother’s relatives and live an adventure-filled life. The more he thought about it, the more seventeen-year-old Wilfred liked the idea. Algernon could lead the life of a dull schoolteacher if he wanted, but Wilfred would stalk dangerous prey in the tall grasses of the subcontinent of India.
When Wilfred confided his idea to his mother, however, she arranged for him to talk to a friend, the wife of a missionary who had lived in India. The woman now lived in a nearby town, so Wilfred climbed on his bicycle and rode over to visit her. He was eager to talk over his idea with her, but the result of the conversation was disheartening. The woman, Mrs. Jamison, explained to Wilfred that tiger hunting was a hobby very rich Englishmen indulged in. A real tiger hunt cost thousands of pounds, and there was no way to recuperate the money spent. Neither Wilfred nor anyone else could make a good living in India hunting tigers.
Mrs. Jamison had another suggestion for Wilfred. Perhaps, she suggested, he could become a clergyman or a missionary. Wilfred did not like to say anything insulting, but these two options were the furthest thing from his mind. Nothing on earth sounded more boring!
As he rode home to Parkgate, Wilfred became increasingly frustrated. A young man of his class could not become a fisherman or learn a trade; it simply was not done. Yet the kinds of jobs his social rank suited him for seemed tedious. A gloomy silence settled over him.
When he got home, Wilfred’s father was waiting for him.
“How did it go?” he asked.
Wilfred shrugged his shoulders. “Apparently there isn’t any money in tiger hunting, not enough to live on, anyway. Mrs. Jamison suggested I might want to become a clergyman or a missionary, but I can’t see myself doing that for the rest of my life.”
“In that case, I have another suggestion for you. Why don’t you go and talk to Dr. Sharples? You might find doctoring interesting work.”
Wilfred nodded. “I’ll go in the morning. Perhaps I would like being a doctor.”
As Wilfred thought about it, he realized that he knew little of being a doctor. All he knew was that Dr. Sharples had a wide-ranging practice and spent many hours a week on horseback traveling from patient to patient. That alone made the job sound appealing, and Wilfred left in good spirits the following morning to find the doctor.
Dr. Sharples had not yet begun his morning rounds when Wilfred arrived, and he welcomed the young man into his office.
“Your father told me you might be by,” the doctor said. “Now tell me, what is this about your thinking of becoming a doctor?”
Wilfred felt himself turning red. He was interested in what a doctor did, but he wasn’t seriously thinking about becoming one.
Dr. Sharples chatted away to Wilfred about medical training, about what books to read, and about some of the things he liked most about his job. Wilfred sat listening with polite interest until Dr. Sharples got up and went to a shelf, from which he lifted down a large jar with a lid on it.
“See this?” he said, placing the jar beside Wilfred. “This is the key to the entire human body. Do you know what it is, lad?”
Wilfred gazed at the gray, jellylike blob floating inside the jar.
“No, sir,” he replied.
“It’s a brain, a human brain.”
Wilfred leaned forward and studied it intently.
“Take a good look at it,” Dr. Sharples continued. “Things go on in there that we can only guess at. What we do know is that the brain sends messages down the spinal cord that dictate every movement we make. The brain constantly assesses what the body is doing and makes adjustments.”
Wilfred continued to stare at the pickled brain. It had never before occurred to him to think of the human body as a finely tuned machine. He had studied anatomy at Marlborough College, but seeing a real brain in front of him, rather than one sketched in a stuffy textbook, opened a whole new world to him.
Wilfred spent another twenty minutes talking with Dr. Sharples before heading home. He decided to walk home the long way, via the sandy shoreline. He told himself that he needed time to think before seeing his parents. But in reality Wilfred had already made up his mind—he would become a doctor and explore the intricacies of the human body.
When Wilfred told his father of his decision, Mr. Grenfell was delighted. He gave Wilfred the choice of going to Oxford to get his medical degree or moving to London with the rest of the family and studying at London Hospital Medical School. It did not take Wilfred long to make up his mind; he wanted to go to London with his parents and Cecil.
Once his mind was made up, time flew by, and in early November 1882, the Grenfells packed up their belongings and set out for London.
The city was very different from living by the sea in Parkgate. The streets were full of noise and people and horses and buggies and hansom cabs. Crumbling brick buildings lined both sides of the streets, blocking the sun and providing corners for all manner of garbage and human waste to gather. Even walking down to the London docks to be near water again was a disappointing experience. The water of the River Thames was putrid. It was a dark gray-brown color and so thick that Wilfred marveled that it actually flowed. And then there was the stench that stung his nostrils. Wilfred longed for the water of the River Dee as it flowed through the estuary into the sea.
