MARGARET MOREA Little Schoolgirl of Tudor England
A Little Schoolgirl of Tudor England
At the foot of the river-stairs nearest the Westminster Law Courts, you might have seen (in the days when the sixteenth century was yet in its teens, King Henry the Eighth, a slim young Prince—the very flower of knighthood—and the Thames, a silver highway of romance,) a private barge, with a couple of blue-coated serving men, waiting for their master. And presently down the steps would come a man with brown hair a little tumbled, and dress a little awry, after a long, hard day’s work in the Courts. Something in the gait—a little defect, one shoulder somewhat higher than the other—might strike your attention, and you would turn to a water-bailiff near you with a question: “Is this Master More?” Then—whether intentionally or not, your whisper having carried further than the ear for which it was ostensibly intended—you would see the uneven shoulders swing suddenlyround, and from half-way down the steps a clever face—wonderfully attractive in its irregularity—with a humorous mouth, and merry, grey eyes, would be lifted to you, and a laughing voice would proclaim its owner, “Thomas More, indeed, and very muchmoreat your service.”
If upon being further pressed to know in whatmorehe could serve you, you were well enough advised to make the request to be rowed down the river with him to Chelsea—there to make the acquaintance of his daughter, Mistress Margaret, and the others of his “Academia,” not to mention his second wife, Dame Alice (for whose solid, if somewhat Philistine, qualities you have the highest regard), and Master Gunnel, and John Harris, and Henry Pattieson—with all of whom you already seem to yourself familiar, from Erasmus, his letters—you would find yourself comfortably seated in the stern of the barge (before you had time to enlarge on the reasons, which had emboldened you to make your request), and being borne on your pleasant way down the pleasant, shining Thames.
Oh! a very pleasant way, in good sooth! The river covered with barges that carry bright colours, and music and laughter, andits banks covered with gardens that let the evening breeze rifle them for sweetness; the wooded hills that fill in the distance, brave in their new summer greenery, and the kindly sun, the giver of all these good gifts, so loth to leave the sight of them that he sinks but slowly, slowly to his bed in the West!
And yet methinks the most pleasant part of all would be yet to come. It would be waiting for you at a certain steps, towards which you might have seen your host, long since, strain his eyes. A group of young things are standing at the top, waving their scarves. Two of them, a little boy and a girl, so near a size that you take them for twins, are in such haste to get to the barge that they are in danger of tumbling right down the steps into the river. You can hear a girl’s voice call at them anxiously, “Cecy! Jack!” and when the barge is fastened to its moorings, and you are mounting the steps, leisurely enough to give your host a good start of you, you look up and see those two troublesome little monkeys held fast by the hands of a tall girl of fifteen or so, and you know by the way her father turns to her, first of all, that this is Margaret.
In the meantime your host is beingpulled, very affectionately, from one to the other. Margaret’s restraining hand is not strong enough to keep Jack and Cecily in check any longer, and with those two rifling his pockets for barley-sugar, and Bess and Daisy hanging out of his arms, one on each side, and Margaret Giggs a little in the background, and young Will Roper, and Jack Dancey, and Rupert Alington dancing around, one understands why he cares not to be over-careful of his clothes.
Going up the garden path to the great house you will meet a stately lady stepping sedately down from it. If her welcome has a touch of frigidity, lay it not to her charge, good lady. In truth, her lord might have given her a little warning that a stranger was coming to supper. Then had she time to get Gillian to add a dish of black-caps and a lèche to the bill of fare, and herself to change into her scarlet gown and coif. Whereas, now!
Indeed, the fare is plain enough, as you will presently discover when you are seated at Master More’s right hand at the long table in the great hall. But dainty though you be at your sizes, on ordinary occasions, it will be odds if you have ever set down to a meal more to your taste, or eaten anything with a greater appetite than the salt meat,and coarse fish, and thick slices from the cob-loaf, flavoured, as these are, with the “Attic Salt,” for which this house is famous.
After supper someone will suggest a stroll through the garden; and you will accept the more readily since you hear Dame Alice say that Gillian needs her superintendence in the kitchen. As you rise from table your eye, through the long, wide lattice, catches a glimpse of glowing flower-beds and blossoming hedges, and you compliment your host on the beautiful home he has made for himself. Is it fancy, or does a slight shadow really fall on his laughing face, as if he felt in how short a time he must bid it all good-bye?
It would seem as if Margaret noticed the little cloud also, and her homely, clever face, so like her father’s in colouring and feature and expression, reflects it lovingly. But she knows how to conjure away his sadness. “Shall we not go to the Academia first, and show you to what good use we have put the day?” she asks him, laying her hand on his arm and turning her dear face up to his.
“Well proposed, Meg,” he says, tucking her arm under his own, and so leading the way up the broad oak stairs—you following among the others.
“How charming!” is your first exclamation as you enter the schoolroom. And, indeed, you are right. No more delightful room can be imagined than this panelled-oak chamber, with deep, low, roomy window-seats, and classic tapestry, flapping in the cool breeze from the river. After you have spoken a word with Master Gunnel, the tutor (whom you have noticed slip away early from the supper table, and find again here with young John Clement, with a Greek text between them) you will be conducted to the various desks, and shown their contents by their several owners. On Bessy’s you will find a “Livy” most probably, on Daisy Middleton’s a “Sallust,” and on Margaret’s a “Saint Augustine,” with her father’s marks “where she is to read and where desist.” Then Master Gunnel will conduct you to his own high desk, and take therefrom some of their traductions, at the purity and elegance of which, if you have any skill in Latin style, you will be completely amazed.
Though you compliment Master Gunnel on the proficiency of his pupils you know, and he knows, that the credit is all due to their father. Even in his busiest years it has been his chief occupation. If you had time to go over the letters which Margarettreasures so dearly, and which you may see (tied up like a lover’s in blue ribbon) in a safe corner of her desk, you would find, not once, but many times repeated, words like these: “I beg you, Margaret, tell me about the progress you are all making in your studies. For I assure you that, rather than allow my children to be idle and slothful, I would make a sacrifice of wealth, and bid adieu to other cares and business, to attend to my children and my family, amongst whom none is more dear to me than yourself, my beloved daughter.”
“Jack! Jack! What has become of Jack?” Margaret looks around anxiously; but for once Jack is not in any particular mischief, and comes up to his father with a look of self-satisfaction at the fact, which is infinitely comical.
“Look,” says his father, “how the little monkey knows already that he is going to be praised for the Latin letter he sent me to Court by the hand of the Bristol merchant.”
He takes the little chap between his knees, and strokes his curls while he talks to them all. Indeed, each of them had done very well, and it was not only because he was their father and loved them dearly that their letters had given him such pleasure. Their letters were very good; the thoughtvery well put; the Latin pure and correct. But John’s pleased him best of all, because it was longer, and showed that he had taken more trouble with it than the others had done. It was funny too, and some of his own jokes had been turned very wittily against himself; the which pleased him not a little. But even in this matter John had remembered not to go too far, and while he thrust and parried very prettily, he never forgot that he was fencing with his father.
With that Cecy claps her hands in delight, for whatever of good or ill befalls Jack is her hap, too.
“There is a mount for thee, too, Cecy,” her father promises her, and takes her and Jack, one on each knee, and goes on with his discourse.
When he is away from home he will expect a letter from each of them every day. He will not take excuses such as Jack is wont to make, that he has not time, or the carrier went off before he knew, or, forsooth, he had nothing to write about. As for want of time, how could it fail, since everyone who has anything to say in the division of their day will let the letter to father take first place. And as for keeping the carrier waiting, why not have the letters ready and sealed, even before his coming? And asfor having nothing to say—did anyone ever hear of such an excuse from girls, who (he pulls Cecy’s ears at this point) have always a world to say about nothing at all. If there is nothing at all to write about, why! let them write about “nothing at all.” But they know he likes to hear about their studies and their games. But whatever they write, whether it be fun or earnest, let them write it as carefully and with as much finish as possible. It will be no harm to write out first the whole in English, for then they will have much less trouble in turning it into Latin; not having to look for the matter, their mind will be more free to attend to the language. That, however, he will leave to their own choice; but on another thing he will be strict. Whatever they have composed, they must carefully examine before writing out clear; and in this examination they must first scrutinise the whole sentence, and then every part of it. Thus, if any solecisms have escaped them, they will easily detect them. By this diligence they will soon be able to turn out elegant productions.
“And have them shown to the Archbishop, or Dean Colet, or even the King, as Erasmus did with a letter of Margaret’s,” says Cecily.
A little shade comes over the kind face above her curls. If there is one thing he dreads for his girls, this wise father, it is vain-glory.
“Tilly-vally, Master More,” says Dame Alice, bustling in (just at the right moment, to show what a sensible choice he has made of a step-mother for his brilliant girls). “What comes over you to keep the girls all idling here, while Gillian needs them in the dairy, being all of a sweat, poor wench, a-trying to make the butter come? Off with you all, girls, now, and take your turns at the churn until the cream breaks, were it to keep you to morning.”
She leads the relief-party off to the dairy, and you find yourself alone with your host and Master Gunnel.
“Shall we to the garden until the young ones come back to us?” Master More inquires, and you need no second invitation.
What a beautiful garden it is! Even though so many of the flowers have gone to sleep, you know you have never been in so beautiful a garden in all your life. All sorts of sweet perfumes come to you as you seat yourself between your host and Master Gunnel in the pavilion that gives such a charming view of the river. You would like to know some of the names of these sosweet-smelling flowers and herbs that you might perfume your own garden with them.
Sayth Master Gunnel: “It is a pity that Mistress Margaret is not here, for she knows the name of each of them, and their nature, and their uses.”
Margaret’s father laughs. “If Margaret is not spoiled, methinks it is not to her tutor she owes it—for he is always ready to blazon forth her praises. I am glad to think, however, that she has good skill in herbs. It is that the children may learn the uses of common things that I keep in my garden and paddock many a plant which the fastidious would cast forth. A woman should have good knowledge of healing.”
“And of what else?” inquires Master Gunnel, innocently.
A merry laugh from your host. “Look what artifices he useth, this good Gunnel, to get me to mount my favourite hobby. You must e’en take the consequences, if it rides off with me.”
And with that he is off in good earnest, and you are minded to lose no word of what he says about the way a girl should be educated.
“In your country,” he says (turning to you), “which would have been mine, too,had not one of my ancestors left Ireland for England, I have heard it said that embroiderers ever kept before them, stamped in a piece of leather, the pattern of that design which they wished to imitate on church robes and vestments. Now, even such a pattern, stamped on the imperishable leather of Holy Writ, lies to our hands; and I know that good Master Gunnel here (of whose work one may speak in a manner, not all too fanciful, as resembling that of the embroiderer) puts in never a stitch without looking carefully at the model. Is it not so, Master Gunnel?”
For answer Master Gunnel begins to quote the glorious words: “Who shall find a valiant woman? far, and from the uttermost coast is the price of her. The heart of her husband trusteth in her, and he shall have no need of spoils.” And so on, till the picture is complete, and the “Valiant Woman” stands out before you, strong, and wise, and chaste, and kind, and sweet, in all her imperishable beauty.
The hour is exquisite. Sweeter and sweeter grows the garden, as the dew distils new perfumes. The paling river is pricked here and there by a rare star; but in the sky itself, from where you sit, you can only see one, and that is Venus. In the faint lightyour host’s face, raised to it, shows very soft and dreamy. Is he thinking of the wife of his youth, the dead mother of his girls?
Presently he begins to talk again. “If I were a preacher, or a moralist, or anything but a lawyer, trained only to look for the flaws in all things, I could show you how in that one passage of Holy Writ is contained a whole treatise on the Education of Women. But Master Gunnel shall do it for me.”
“Right willingly,” declares Master Gunnel, “if you will but show me how.”
“I would have you in the first place note that the ‘Mens Sana in Corpore Sano’ hath never been more clearly indicated than in that picture. For the healthy body, you shall see it mentioned not once but many times, and you shall guess at it, too, by the laughter and good humour which she carries down into her old age. ‘She hath girded her loins with strength, and hath strengthened her arm’—as if to show that this strength and suppleness of body, so admirable in a woman, were to be cultivated by suitable exercises; as to which, to speak sooth, none are so well adapted for the purpose as those she finds ready to hand in her household tasks, sweeping, kneading bread, churning, spinning.”
“At all of which she was proficient, this ‘Valiant Woman,’” puts in Master Gunnel. “‘She hath looked well to the paths of her house, and hath not eaten her bread idle’, and again: ‘She hath sought wool and flax, and hath wrought by the counsel of her hands.’ ‘Her fingers have taken hold of the spindle.’”
“As for her good humour,” continues your host, laughing a little, “I would ask your opinion whether it is better shown in anything than the excellent terms she always managed to maintain with her husband.”
“Of a truth,” sayth Master Gunnel demurely, “the fact proveth that she suffered not from megrims, to which effect I, for one (who believe in the healthfulness of the morning hours), consider her early rising much contributed.”
“Ah! Master Gunnel,” says More, standing up, “you will be able to write that treatise without any help from me.”
Here you put in a word, and entreat Master More to develop the matter further.
“And you will,” he promises you; “but let us climb to the roof of the new building, where I have promised to have the young ones, and question them on their knowledge of the stars.”
Under the great dome of the starry sky the conversation takes another tone—deeper and more serious. He holds, you gather from what you hear him say, that those who trained the mind and soul of that woman were not afraid to feed them with the food of strong thoughts. He discovers a strength and sureness about all her dealings, a big and generous way of regarding things that show a well-nourished, well-balanced mentality. That little touch about her concern for the well-being of her household: that they be generously fed, and warmly and comfortably clad, seems to him to indicate a wider outlook than the prejudice which confines woman’s studies to the petty things of life would tend to foster. “Be sure of this,” sayth he, “she is not one of those who are penny-wise and pound-foolish, saving a candle’s end and spoiling a velvet gown.”
“That she was well-read,” says Master Gunnel, “is not without warranty.”
“Now, how may that be?” you inquire; and Master Gunnel instances her clever and sensible conversation, which, he holds reasonably enough, was not acquired without reading, and study, and listening to the conversation of learned men. “I take it,” he says, turning to More, “that we can interpret this, what is further said of her:‘She had opened her mouth to wisdom, and the law of clemency is on her tongue.’”
But here there comes a sound of laughter thrilling through the garden, and a scamper of light feet up the steps that lead to the flat roof of the new building, and the whole Academia, with the exception of Jack and Cecy (who have been attacked by “Johnny Nods,” and carried off to their respective beds), are here to tell all the frolic they had in the dairy, and how long it has taken for the butter to come.
When you found yourself last night in the oak bed-chamber, which Dame Alice had assigned to you as the pleasantest in the house, you felt strangely disinclined for slumber. So you set the wax candle (which had been borne before you very ceremoniously, to light you to your quarters) in a place secure from the night breeze, and, unbolting the heavy wooden shutter as noiselessly as possible, you opened your lattice, and stepped out into the balcony—out into the night that was sweet with flowers and starlight.
Then, as you sought among the stars forthose with which you had made friendship when you formed one of the little group of star-gazers on the roof of the new building, you seemed to hear again the voice of your host. How droll he had been as he pulled Daisy’s pink ear, and praised her for that she was able, on occasion, to tell the sun from the moon! But, presently, the laughter and bantering had died away, and you found yourself listening in a delicious hushed expectancy for a whisper of the music of the spheres as your host’s words made you think of them as moving harmoniously, carrying each its appointed luminary like a blazing jewel set in a crystal circlet! Ah! truly the “Almagest”[13]would make a man a poet in spite of himself; and now you know how a certain look in Margaret’s eyes came there. For who could gaze, night after night, into the great spaces wherein the revolutions of the spheres make melody, and around which the fixed stars are built, in their firmament, into a mighty battlement, without carrying some of the wonder and the glory of it all away in one’s own soul?
In the lighted hall, afterwards, cozy with candlelight and a great log ablaze on the wide hearth, you came back very gently toearth. Such a good earth and a kind earth; not so very far from heaven either, since there was love, and light, and music to keep the roadway free!
Here Dame Alice, taking her capable part in the concert of instrumental music (which you learned is a nightly event in this household), relaxed a little from her attitude of housewifely overcarefulness, and showed you a pleasanter part of her nature. And when you looked round the circle and saw the happy looks of each little performer on harp, and lute, and monochord, and flute, it is odds but your pity was stirred for certain little girls you left behind you in the twentieth century, who spend such miserable, profitless, lonely hours in “practising.” If the “practice hour” were such a jolly re-union of the whole family as it is here, be sure our little maids would get more good out of their music-lessons!
Gradually the instruments were laid carefully aside, and the maid-servants, who had been busy with their spinning and sewing during the concert, prepared the place for the night prayers. One thing surprised you no little, and this was the accuracy with which everyone in the household recited the alternate verses of thepsalms chosen: “Miserere,” “Ad Te Domine levavi,” and “Deus misereatur nostri.”
Surely the blessing of God rested visibly on this home, where everything was done to show Him perpetual honour! And so with a sense of great spiritual peace in your heart you came away from your star-watch on the balcony, and presently were lost in blissful dreams in the huge four-poster bed, with its downy pillows and sheets that smelled of lavender.
And now it is morning again, and the sun is streaming through the chink in the wooden shutter, which you neglected to fasten properly last night. Someone below in the garden is singing, and you speed your toilet to the merry tune and time:—
“The Hunt is up, the Hunt is up,And it is well nigh Daye,Harry our King has gone huntingTo bring his Deere to baye.The East is bright with Morning Lighte,And Darkness it is fled,And the merrie Horn wakes up the MornTo leave his idle Bed.Behold the Skies with golder Dies.Tra la la la la la!”
“The Hunt is up, the Hunt is up,And it is well nigh Daye,Harry our King has gone huntingTo bring his Deere to baye.The East is bright with Morning Lighte,And Darkness it is fled,And the merrie Horn wakes up the MornTo leave his idle Bed.Behold the Skies with golder Dies.Tra la la la la la!”
“The Hunt is up, the Hunt is up,And it is well nigh Daye,Harry our King has gone huntingTo bring his Deere to baye.The East is bright with Morning Lighte,And Darkness it is fled,And the merrie Horn wakes up the MornTo leave his idle Bed.Behold the Skies with golder Dies.Tra la la la la la!”
“The Hunt is up, the Hunt is up,
And it is well nigh Daye,
Harry our King has gone hunting
To bring his Deere to baye.
The East is bright with Morning Lighte,
And Darkness it is fled,
And the merrie Horn wakes up the Morn
To leave his idle Bed.
Behold the Skies with golder Dies.
Tra la la la la la!”
“Up with it, young ones; up with the burden though it do come before it’s time,” says the merry voice of your host. And certainly they take him at his word, until the thrushes and blackbirds start singing, too—in self-defence.
“Shall we visit the menagerie now?” queries Master More, when there comes a moment’s silence in the wake of the “good-morrows” which greeted your appearance. “Nay,” as you look round the groups for an explanation, “these be not the only wild animals we keep in the enclosure.”
And then you look again, and see that everybody has some feeding stuff in his or her hand, and you find yourself presently engaged on a round of visits to the quaintest and most varied collection of pet-animals you ever dreamed of. There is one condition laid down in this household for all who would own a pet in it, and that is that the whole care of it devolves on the owner. Methinks in this there is a fine training in thoughtfulness and in the sense of responsibility as well as in Natural History.
There is a little time to spare yet, it seems, before the bell rings for Mass, and you willingly accept the invitation to pass it in the study in the new building. “AndMeg shall come with us, too,” your host promises, “but for the others, I would ask no four walls to try and hold them while they be in such spirits.”
So off they go scampering round the garden, the wild young things!
In the new building you find a long gallery lined with books, which leads to a charming little room built all for study and retirement. On the broad oak table lie leaves of the manuscript which has occupied Master More during long hours while all the world beside slept. “Oh! Father,” says Margaret reproachfully, “what a state your desk is in,” and, thereupon, she sets about tidying it with deft hands, and an understanding mind.
“Our Meg here,” says her father, laying a hand on her bonny brown head, “is the only one of her sex one can trust among one’s books and papers, with the hope of finding one’s way safely through them after her. She is the tidy part of my own soul.”
“A part of his own soul!” Nobody shall know until the end has come on earth how true are these words; what tender, holy secrets are confided to this dear daughter alone in all the world; how much apart he lives, even in the midst of that gay and happy family life, in some respects, from allbut her! But here as you note her flitting among his books, finding out those which she feels he will need for this work, looking up references and marking passages, you see how closely she is identified with his intellectual interests. Here in this little study she is as much at home as he. And in what lies beyond it, in the little bare room where only a carved crucifix breaks the white line of wall, and where her father seeks God and his own soul in solitude, what is her place? Oh! truly a privileged one there, too—as the world shall know at last when he shall have made the last distribution of his gifts from the Tower—and to her falls his hair-shirt, while Cecily has his “handkerchief,” and Elizabeth “a picture in parchment with her name on the back thereof.”
The bell for Mass sounds from the Parish Church a little bit down the river, and you follow your host and Margaret to the door to find Dame Alice (more stately than ever in her blue cloak and white head-dress), waiting to take Master More’s arm, and head the family procession, by the path they have made for themselves by the end of the meadows to the little church. What an appetite you carry home with you, and how the sweetness of that morning hour inthe quaint old English church lingers with the band that seats itself for breakfast in the long hall, afterwards, making the meal a veritable “agape,” a feast of love! What merry jests and quips are bandied round, and how heartily your host makes you feel yourself of the company when you prove yourself not inapt to catch and throw back the light and shining ball of words aimed at you by Henry Pattieson, the official jester to the household. And so the morning hours pass.
And now it is time for Master More to make himself ready for the day’s business in the Law Courts. It appears, however, that you need not terminate your pleasant visit so quickly. It is proposed by the master of the house himself, seconded most cordially by Dame Alice, and passed with acclamation by the whole band of youngsters, that you spend yet another day in this hospitable household, and strengthen your acquaintance with its inmates. It is not to be expected, as you perfectly agree when the fact is pointed out to you by Dame Alice, that that good lady should spend much time with you, having heavy household duties to attend to, but the girls will be free presently, and as for the boys, having nothing more important to dothan lessons, they and Master Gunnel are ready to devote themselves to you immediately.
But first Master More has to be seen off, and kerchiefs and sashes have to be waved at him from the water-stairs, until his barge grows smaller and smaller, and finally the speck it has become has been caught into the distance. Then off go the girls, under the bustling and energetic directions of Dame Alice, to help in the dairy or kitchen, or attend to the wants of the poor, whose meals are as regular a part of the household machinery as those of the family themselves. In the meantime you go to the schoolroom with Master Gunnel and the boys—young John Clement, and Jack Dancey, and Will Roper, wards or protégés of Master More, and the son of the house, young John More. A word or two puts you in possession of the present position and future prospects of the lads. Young Clement has a marked taste for medicine, and is already a distinguished botanist. He has been taken into the household at the recommendation of Dean Colet, at whose School of St. Paul’s he has already distinguished himself, and while pursuing his own Greek and Latin studies under Master Gunnel, preparatory to entering Oxford,he acts as assistant tutor and directs the botanical researches of the others. Will Roper is a ward of Master More, and Jack Dancey is the son of a legal client, whom the good man has taken into his house until his affairs can be settled. Otherwise it were ill for young Dancey, of whose estates the lawyers alone draw the profits. To balance matters, Dancey, very wisely, proposes to became a lawyer himself. As for Jack More, you know a little of his abilities already—but it needs no Master Gunnel to tell you presently when you shall be alone with him—the boys being given a task to do, and sent into the garden with it—that in the matter of brains, poor Jack can never hope to compete with his sisters.
You venture to remark that it is a pity, but you do not find Master Gunnel over ready to agree with you.
“For my part,” he says, “I hold with Master More that the harvest will not be much affected whether it is a man or a woman who sows the field. In truth, it is a matter on which he hath done me the honour to put his views in writing, at some length—if you care to see his letter, I have it at hand.”
Indeed, you care very much, and presently you are seated in a comfortablewindow seat, with the treasured letter spread out on your knees.
To your shame, be it spoken, you read the Latin with less ease than Cecy or Jack would show; noting which, Master Gunnel unostentatiously begins to read in English some of the more important passages.
“Listen to this,” he counsels you, pointing to a marked passage, and thereupon begins:—
“Nor do I think that the harvest will be much affected whether it is a man or a woman who sows the field. They both have the same human nature, which reason differentiates from that of beasts; both, therefore, are equally suited for those studies by which reason is perfectioned, and becomes fruitful like a ploughed land, on which the seed of good lessons has been sown. If it be true that the soil of woman’s brain be bad, and apter to bear bracken than corn, by which saying many keep women from study, I think, on the contrary, that a woman’s wit is, on that account, all the more diligently to be cultivated, that nature’s defect may be redressed by industry. This was the opinion of the ancients, of those who were most prudent as well as most holy. Not to speak of the rest, St. Jerome and St. Augustine not onlyexhorted excellent matrons and most noble virgins to study, but also, in order to assist them, diligently explained the abstruse meanings of Holy Scripture, and wrote for tender girls letters replete with so much erudition, that now-a-days old men, who call themselves professors of sacred science, can scarcely read them correctly, much less understand them. Do you, my learned Gunnel, have the kindness to see that my daughters thoroughly learn these works of those holy men....”
“So that is the explanation of the Saint Augustine we found on Margaret’s desk yesterevening?”
Master Gunnel nods confirmation, but he is much occupied in finding the next suitable passage in the letter, and does not speak immediately.
Then with his thumb on the paragraph selected, he looks up for a moment out of kind, rather near-sighted eyes.
“Do you remember last night when he spoke of the ‘Valiant Woman,’ and showed how all those who have girls to educate can find in her an imperishable model? For his own daughters he hath borne in mind, that, of all the virtues of the ‘Valiant Woman,’ it is her fear of the Lord that alone giveth substance and value to theothers. ‘Many daughters have gathered together riches: thou hast surpassed them all. Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: the woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.’ Hark, how he drives home the point. He hath been praising Elizabeth for her good conduct in her mother’s absence.
“‘Let her understand that such conduct delights me more than all possible letters I could receive from anyone. Though I prefer learning joined with virtue, to all the treasures of kings, yet renown for learning, when it is not united with a good life, is nothing else than splendid and notorious infamy: this would be specially the case in a woman. Since erudition in women is a new thing, and a reproach to the sloth of men, many will gladly assail it, and impute to literature what is really the fault of nature, thinking from the vices of the learned to get their own ignorance esteemed as virtue. On the other hand, if a woman (and this I desire and hope with you as their teacher for all my daughters) to eminent virtue should add an outwork of even moderate skill in literature, I think she will have more real profit than if she had obtained the riches of Crœsus and the beauty of Helen. I do not say this becauseof the glory which will be hers, though glory follows virtue as a shadow follows a body, but because the reward of wisdom is too solid to be lost like riches or to decay like beauty, since it depends on the intimate conscience of what is right, not on the talk of men, than which nothing is more foolish or mischievous.
“‘It belongs to a good man, no doubt, to avoid infamy, but to lay himself out for renown is the conduct of a man who is not only proud, but ridiculous and miserable. A soul must be without peace which is ever fluctuating between elation and disappointment from the opinions of men. Among all the benefits that learning bestows on men, there is none more excellent than this, that by the study of books we are taught in that very study to seek not praise, but utility. Such has been the teaching of the most learned men, especially of philosophers, who are the guides of human life, although some may have abused learning, like other good things, simply to court glory and popular renown.’”
Master Gunnel interrupts himself a moment with a reminiscent smile: “It may well have been that I was in danger of turning Margaret’s attention to the wrong things, but, if this were so, I was soon madeto discover the mistake. Mark how gently I am brought to task:
“‘I have dwelt so much on this matter, my dear Gunnel, because of what you say in your letter, that Margaret’s lofty character should not be abased. In this judgment I quite agree with you; but to me, and, no doubt, to you also, that man would seem to abase a generous character who should accustom it to admire what is vain and low. He, on the contrary, raises the character who rises to virtue and true goods, and who looks down with contempt from the contemplation of what is sublime, on those shadows of good things which almost all mortals, through ignorance of truth, greedily snatch at as if they were true goods.’”
But here come the boys back with their finished tasks; and little Cecy is at the door, with her stepmother’s compliments, and are you fond of curds and cream? If so, you will come to the dairy and eat them, with a dish of strawberries, gathered by Dame Alice herself when the morning dew was yet on them, and carefully kept for you until this moment on the coolest shelf of the cool dark pantry.