In D. C. Boulger's Life of General Charles Gordon[37] he records how, like Nelson Clive, his hero was prone to boys' escapades and outbreaks that often made him the terror of his superiors. He was no bookworm, but famous as the possessor of high spirits, very often involved in affairs that necessitated discipline, and seemed greatly out of harmony with the popular idea of the ascetic of Mount Carmel. As a schoolboy he made wonderful squirts "that would wet you through in a minute." One Sunday twenty-seven panes of glass in a large storehouse were broken with screws shot through them by his cross-bow "for ventilation." Ringing bells and pushing young boys in, butting an unpopular officer severely in the stomach with his head and taking the punishment, hitting a bully with a clothes-brush and being put back six months in the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich; these are the early outcrops of one side of his dual character. Although more soldier than saint, he had a very cheery, genial side. He was always ready to take even the severest punishment for all his scrapes due to excessive high spirits. When one of his superiors declared that he would never make an officer, he felt his honor touched, and his vigorous and expressive reply was to tear the epaulets from his shoulders and throw them at his superior's feet. He had already developed some of the rather moody love of seclusion that was marked later, but religion did not strike him deeply enough to bring him into the church until he was twenty-one, when he took his first sacrament. On one occasion he declined promotion within his reach because he would have had to pass a friend to get it. He acted generally on his impulses, which were perhaps better than his judgments, took great pleasure in corresponding on religious topics with his elder sister, and early formed the habit of excessive smoking which gravely affected his health later. His was the rare combination of inner repose and confidence, interrupted by spells of gaiety.
Williamson, in his "Life of Holman Hunt,"[38] tells us that at thirteen he was removed from school as inapt in study. He began to spend his time in drawing in his copybooks. He was made clerk to an auctioneer, who fortunately encouraged his passion, and at sixteen was with a calico printer. Here he amused himself by drawing flies on the window, which his employer tried to brush off. There was the greatest home opposition to his studying art. After being rejected twice, he was admitted at seventeen to the Academy school as a probationer, and the next year, in 1845, as a student. Here he met Millais and Rossetti and was able to relieve the strain on his mind, which the worry of his father concerning his course caused him, and very soon his career began.