The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master. He supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was born to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were to make a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned—would never recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die.
The present representative of the Dedlocks is an excellent master. He supposes all his dependents to be utterly bereft of individual characters, intentions, or opinions, and is persuaded that he was born to supersede the necessity of their having any. If he were to make a discovery to the contrary, he would be simply stunned—would never recover himself, most likely, except to gasp and die.
The same absolute contempt for the individuality of the poor is ridiculed in The Chimes. Sir Joseph Bowley is a type of the English squire who used to act on the assumption that he had to care for the workmen on his estate, and the poor of his neighbourhood, as he did for his horses and other animals.
“I do my duty as the Poor Man’s Friend and Father; and I endeavour to educate his mind by inculcating on all occasions the one great moral lesson which that class requires—that is, entire Dependence on myself. They have no business whatever with—with themselves. If wicked and designing persons tell them otherwise, and they become impatient and discontented, and are guilty of insubordinate conduct and black-hearted ingratitude—which is undoubtedly the case—I am their Friend and Father still. It is so ordained. It is in the nature of things. They needn’t trouble themselves to think about anything. I will think for them; I know what is good for them; I am their perpetual parent. Such is the dispensation of an all-wise Providence.”
“I do my duty as the Poor Man’s Friend and Father; and I endeavour to educate his mind by inculcating on all occasions the one great moral lesson which that class requires—that is, entire Dependence on myself. They have no business whatever with—with themselves. If wicked and designing persons tell them otherwise, and they become impatient and discontented, and are guilty of insubordinate conduct and black-hearted ingratitude—which is undoubtedly the case—I am their Friend and Father still. It is so ordained. It is in the nature of things. They needn’t trouble themselves to think about anything. I will think for them; I know what is good for them; I am their perpetual parent. Such is the dispensation of an all-wise Providence.”
It is strange that men so commonly ascribe to Providence the dreadful conditions which have resulted from man’s ignorance and selfishness, and which Providence intended man to reform.
Esther, in Bleak House, speaking of the influence of the chancery suit on Richard Carstone, said:
“The character of much older and steadier people may be even changed by the circumstances surrounding them. It would be too much to expect that a boy’s, in its formation, should be the subject of such influences, and escape them.”I felt this to be true; though, if I may venture to mention what I thought besides, I thought it much to be regretted that Richard’s education had not counteracted those influences or directed his character. He had been eight years at a public school, and had learned, I understood, to make Latin verses of several sorts, in the most admirable manner. But I never heard that it had been anybody’s business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge tohim.Hehad been adapted to the verses, and hadlearned the art of making them to such perfection, that if he had remained at school until he was of age I suppose he could only have gone on making them over and over again, unless he had enlarged his education by forgetting how to do it. Still, although I had no doubt that they were very beautiful, and very improving, and very sufficient for a great many purposes of life, and always remembered all through life, I did doubt whether Richard would not have profited by some one studying him a little, instead of his studying them quite so much.
“The character of much older and steadier people may be even changed by the circumstances surrounding them. It would be too much to expect that a boy’s, in its formation, should be the subject of such influences, and escape them.”
I felt this to be true; though, if I may venture to mention what I thought besides, I thought it much to be regretted that Richard’s education had not counteracted those influences or directed his character. He had been eight years at a public school, and had learned, I understood, to make Latin verses of several sorts, in the most admirable manner. But I never heard that it had been anybody’s business to find out what his natural bent was, or where his failings lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge tohim.Hehad been adapted to the verses, and hadlearned the art of making them to such perfection, that if he had remained at school until he was of age I suppose he could only have gone on making them over and over again, unless he had enlarged his education by forgetting how to do it. Still, although I had no doubt that they were very beautiful, and very improving, and very sufficient for a great many purposes of life, and always remembered all through life, I did doubt whether Richard would not have profited by some one studying him a little, instead of his studying them quite so much.
Richard was one of those unstable men who have good abilities, but who do not use them persistently in the accomplishment of any one purpose, and who never seem to find the sphere for which they are best fitted. They are man-products, not God-products. When Richard, after several attempts to work at other things with high enthusiasm for a few weeks, decided to be a physician, Esther said:
Mistrusting that he only came to this conclusion because, having never had much chance of finding out for himself what he was fitted for, and having never been guided to the discovery, he was taken with the newest idea, and was glad to get rid of the trouble of consideration, I wondered whether the Latin verses often ended in this, or whether Richard’s was a solitary case.Richard very often came to see us while we remained in London (though he soon failed in his letter writing), and with his quick abilities, his good spirits, his good temper, his gaiety and freshness, was always delightful. But though I liked him more and more the better I knew him, I still felt more and more how much it was to be regretted that he had been educated in no habits of application and concentration. The system which had addressed him in exactly the same manner as it had addressed hundreds of other boys, all varying in character and capacity, had enabled him to dash through his tasks, always with fair credit, and often with distinction; but in a fitful, dazzling way that had confirmed his reliance on those very qualities in himself which it had been most desirable to direct and train. They were great qualities, without which no high place can be meritoriously won; but, like fire and water, though excellent servants, they were very bad masters. Ifthey had been under Richard’s direction, they would have been his friends; but Richard being under their direction, they became his enemies.
Mistrusting that he only came to this conclusion because, having never had much chance of finding out for himself what he was fitted for, and having never been guided to the discovery, he was taken with the newest idea, and was glad to get rid of the trouble of consideration, I wondered whether the Latin verses often ended in this, or whether Richard’s was a solitary case.
Richard very often came to see us while we remained in London (though he soon failed in his letter writing), and with his quick abilities, his good spirits, his good temper, his gaiety and freshness, was always delightful. But though I liked him more and more the better I knew him, I still felt more and more how much it was to be regretted that he had been educated in no habits of application and concentration. The system which had addressed him in exactly the same manner as it had addressed hundreds of other boys, all varying in character and capacity, had enabled him to dash through his tasks, always with fair credit, and often with distinction; but in a fitful, dazzling way that had confirmed his reliance on those very qualities in himself which it had been most desirable to direct and train. They were great qualities, without which no high place can be meritoriously won; but, like fire and water, though excellent servants, they were very bad masters. Ifthey had been under Richard’s direction, they would have been his friends; but Richard being under their direction, they became his enemies.
Any educational system that “addresses hundreds of boys exactly in the same manner” must destroy their individuality.
In Hard Times Tom Gradgrind became a low, degraded, sensual, dissipated criminal, and Dickens accounts for his failure by the unnatural restraint, constant oversight, and the strangling of his imagination in his cradle and afterward. In other words, the boy’s selfhood never had a chance to develop, and every power he had naturally to make him strong, true, and independent had helped to work his ruin.
In Little Dorrit Mrs. General is herself a model to be avoided, and her system of training is ridiculed because she paid no attention whatever to the selfhood of her pupils except to conceal it artfully and prevent the recognition of any of the evils by which it was surrounded and which it should help to overcome.
Mrs. General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to prevent it from forming opinions. She had a little circular set of mental grooves or rails, on which she started little trains of other people’s opinions, which never overtook one another and never got anywhere. Even her propriety could not dispute that there was impropriety in the world; but Mrs. General’s way of getting rid of it was to put it out of sight, and make believe that there was no such thing. This was another of her ways of forming a mind—to cram all articles of difficulty into cupboards, lock them up, and say they had no existence. It was the easiest way and, beyond all comparison, the properest.Mrs. General was not to be told of anything shocking. Accidents, miseries, and offences were never to be mentioned before her. Passion was to go to sleep in the presence of Mrs. General, and blood was to change to milk and water. The little that was left in the world, when all these deductions were made, it was Mrs. General’s province to varnish. In that formation process of hers, she dipped the smallest of brushes into the largest of pots, and varnished the surface of every object that came underconsideration. The more cracked it was, the more Mrs. General varnished it.There was varnish in Mrs. General’s voice, varnish in Mrs. General’s touch, an atmosphere of varnish round Mrs. General’s figure.
Mrs. General had no opinions. Her way of forming a mind was to prevent it from forming opinions. She had a little circular set of mental grooves or rails, on which she started little trains of other people’s opinions, which never overtook one another and never got anywhere. Even her propriety could not dispute that there was impropriety in the world; but Mrs. General’s way of getting rid of it was to put it out of sight, and make believe that there was no such thing. This was another of her ways of forming a mind—to cram all articles of difficulty into cupboards, lock them up, and say they had no existence. It was the easiest way and, beyond all comparison, the properest.
Mrs. General was not to be told of anything shocking. Accidents, miseries, and offences were never to be mentioned before her. Passion was to go to sleep in the presence of Mrs. General, and blood was to change to milk and water. The little that was left in the world, when all these deductions were made, it was Mrs. General’s province to varnish. In that formation process of hers, she dipped the smallest of brushes into the largest of pots, and varnished the surface of every object that came underconsideration. The more cracked it was, the more Mrs. General varnished it.
There was varnish in Mrs. General’s voice, varnish in Mrs. General’s touch, an atmosphere of varnish round Mrs. General’s figure.
Dickens wished the training of the real inner selfhood, not the varnishing of the surface merely. Not what George Macdonald describes as “sandpapering a boy into a saint,” but genuine character development by the working out of the selfhood in the improvement of its environment, physically, intellectually, and spiritually.
Briggs’s education, in Dombey and Son, had been of such a character that “his intellectual fruit had nothing of its original flavour remaining.” The character of his real selfhood had been destroyed, not developed, by his “education.”
In Our Mutual Friend Mr. Podsnap is used as a type of the men who not only see no need for any person else forming opinions, but who take pains to prevent others forming opinions, so far as possible.
As Mr. Podsnap stood with his back to the drawing-room fire, pulling up his shirt collar, like a veritable cock of the walk literally pluming himself in the midst of his possessions, nothing would have astonished him more than an intimation that Miss Podsnap, or any young person properly born and bred, could not be exactly put away like the plate, brought out like the plate, polished like the plate, counted, weighed, and valued like the plate. That such a young person could possibly have a morbid vacancy in the heart for anything younger than the plate, or less monotonous than the plate, or that such a young person’s thoughts could try to scale the region bounded on the north, south, east, and west by the plate, was a monstrous imagination which he would on the spot have flourished into space.
As Mr. Podsnap stood with his back to the drawing-room fire, pulling up his shirt collar, like a veritable cock of the walk literally pluming himself in the midst of his possessions, nothing would have astonished him more than an intimation that Miss Podsnap, or any young person properly born and bred, could not be exactly put away like the plate, brought out like the plate, polished like the plate, counted, weighed, and valued like the plate. That such a young person could possibly have a morbid vacancy in the heart for anything younger than the plate, or less monotonous than the plate, or that such a young person’s thoughts could try to scale the region bounded on the north, south, east, and west by the plate, was a monstrous imagination which he would on the spot have flourished into space.
Eugene Wrayburn’s criticism of his father’s habit of choosing professions for his sons almost as soon as they were born, or even before, without the slightest possible consideration for their natural aptitudes for the work to which they were assigned, is a severe attack on a conditionwhich exists even yet through the failure of the schools or the homes to discover and reveal to boys and girls their highest powers, so that they may reach their best growth in school or college and choose the profession in which they can do most good and attain their most complete evolution. There is no better field for co-ordinate work by the home and the school than the joint study of the children to find their sphere of greatest power. Every child should be helped to find the sphere in which he can most successfully achieve the highest destiny for himself and for humanity.
Eugene Wrayburn’s father extended his paternal care and forethought for his children not only by choosing their professions without regard for their selfhood, but by considerately selecting partners for his sons without regard for their individual tastes.
Eugene, speaking to Mortimer Lightwood, said:
“My respected father has found, down in the parental neighbourhood, a wife for his not-generally-respected son.”“With some money, of course?”“With some money, of course, or he would not have found her. My respected father—let me shorten the dutiful tautology by substituting in future M. R. F., which sounds military, and rather like the Duke of Wellington.”“What an absurd fellow you are, Eugene!”“Not at all. I assure you. M. R. F. having always in the clearest manner provided (as he calls it) for his children by prearranging from the hour of the birth of each, and sometimes from an earlier period, what the devoted little victim’s calling and course in life should be, M. R. F. prearranged for myself that I was to be the barrister I am (with the slight addition of an enormous practice, which has not accrued), and also the married man I am not.”“The first you have often told me.”“The first I have often told you. Considering myself sufficiently incongruous on my legal eminence, I have until now suppressed my domestic destiny. You know M. R. F., but not as well as I do. If you knew him as well as I do, he would amuse you.”“Filially spoken, Eugene!”“Perfectly so, believe me; and with every sentiment of affectionate deference toward M. R. F. But if he amusesme, I can’t help it. When my eldest brother was born, of course the rest of us knew (I mean the rest of us would have known, if we had been in existence) that he was heir to the family embarrassments—we call it before company the family estate. But when my second brother was going to be born by and by, ‘This,’ says M. R. F., ‘is a little pillar of the church.’Wasborn, and became a pillar of the church—a very shaky one. My third brother appeared considerably in advance of his engagement to my mother; but M. R. F., not at all put out by surprise, instantly declared him a circumnavigator. Was pitchforked into the navy, but has not circumnavigated. I announced myself, and was disposed of with the highly satisfactory results embodied before you. When my younger brother was half an hour old, it was settled by M. R. F. that he should have a mechanical genius, and so on. Therefore I say M. R. F. amuses me.”
“My respected father has found, down in the parental neighbourhood, a wife for his not-generally-respected son.”
“With some money, of course?”
“With some money, of course, or he would not have found her. My respected father—let me shorten the dutiful tautology by substituting in future M. R. F., which sounds military, and rather like the Duke of Wellington.”
“What an absurd fellow you are, Eugene!”
“Not at all. I assure you. M. R. F. having always in the clearest manner provided (as he calls it) for his children by prearranging from the hour of the birth of each, and sometimes from an earlier period, what the devoted little victim’s calling and course in life should be, M. R. F. prearranged for myself that I was to be the barrister I am (with the slight addition of an enormous practice, which has not accrued), and also the married man I am not.”
“The first you have often told me.”
“The first I have often told you. Considering myself sufficiently incongruous on my legal eminence, I have until now suppressed my domestic destiny. You know M. R. F., but not as well as I do. If you knew him as well as I do, he would amuse you.”
“Filially spoken, Eugene!”
“Perfectly so, believe me; and with every sentiment of affectionate deference toward M. R. F. But if he amusesme, I can’t help it. When my eldest brother was born, of course the rest of us knew (I mean the rest of us would have known, if we had been in existence) that he was heir to the family embarrassments—we call it before company the family estate. But when my second brother was going to be born by and by, ‘This,’ says M. R. F., ‘is a little pillar of the church.’Wasborn, and became a pillar of the church—a very shaky one. My third brother appeared considerably in advance of his engagement to my mother; but M. R. F., not at all put out by surprise, instantly declared him a circumnavigator. Was pitchforked into the navy, but has not circumnavigated. I announced myself, and was disposed of with the highly satisfactory results embodied before you. When my younger brother was half an hour old, it was settled by M. R. F. that he should have a mechanical genius, and so on. Therefore I say M. R. F. amuses me.”
In the same book Bradley Headstone’s school is described as one of a system of schools in which “school buildings, school-teachers, and school pupils are all according to pattern, and all engendered in the light of the latest Gospel according to Monotony.”
Bradley Headstone himself was a mechanical product of a mechanical system of uniformity that destroyed independence and individuality of character.
Bradley Headstone, in his decent black coat and waistcoat, and decent white shirt, and decent formal black tie, and decent pantaloons of pepper and salt, with his decent silver watch in his pocket and its decent hair guard round his neck, looked a thoroughly decent young man of six-and-twenty. He was never seen in any other dress, and yet there was a certain stiffness in his manner of wearing this, as if there were a want of adaptation between him and it, recalling some mechanics in their holiday clothes. He had acquired mechanically a great store of teacher’s knowledge. He could do mental arithmetic mechanically, sing at sight mechanically, blow various wind instruments mechanically, even play the great church organ mechanically. From his early childhood up, his mind had been a place of mechanical stowage. The arrangement of his wholesale warehouse, so that it might be always ready to meet the demands of retail dealers—history here, geography there,astronomy to the right, political economy to the left—natural history, the physical sciences, figures, music, the lower mathematics, and what not, all in their several places—this care had imparted to his countenance a look of care.Suppression of so much to make room for so much had given him a constrained manner over and above.
Bradley Headstone, in his decent black coat and waistcoat, and decent white shirt, and decent formal black tie, and decent pantaloons of pepper and salt, with his decent silver watch in his pocket and its decent hair guard round his neck, looked a thoroughly decent young man of six-and-twenty. He was never seen in any other dress, and yet there was a certain stiffness in his manner of wearing this, as if there were a want of adaptation between him and it, recalling some mechanics in their holiday clothes. He had acquired mechanically a great store of teacher’s knowledge. He could do mental arithmetic mechanically, sing at sight mechanically, blow various wind instruments mechanically, even play the great church organ mechanically. From his early childhood up, his mind had been a place of mechanical stowage. The arrangement of his wholesale warehouse, so that it might be always ready to meet the demands of retail dealers—history here, geography there,astronomy to the right, political economy to the left—natural history, the physical sciences, figures, music, the lower mathematics, and what not, all in their several places—this care had imparted to his countenance a look of care.
Suppression of so much to make room for so much had given him a constrained manner over and above.
The most remarkable description of a system of training that totally ignored individuality and chipped and battered and moulded and squeezed all students into the same pattern or mould is the description of the normal school in which Mr. Gradgrind’s teacher, Mr. M’Choakumchild, was trained. “Mr. M’Choakumchild and one hundred and forty other schoolmasters had been latelyturnedat the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many piano legs.”
Volumes could not make the sacrifice of individuality clearer than this sentence does.
At “the grinders’ school boys were taught as parrots are.”
Doctor Blimber was condemned because in his system “Nature was of no consequence at all; no matter what a boy was intended to bear, Doctor Blimber made him bear to pattern somehow or other.”
In Doctor Strong’s school “we had plenty of liberty.” The boys had also “noble games out of doors” in this model school of Dickens. Liberty and noble outdoor sports are the best agencies yet revealed to man for the development of full selfhood in harmony with the fundamental law of education, self-activity.
THE CULTURE OF THE IMAGINATION.
In the preface to the first number of Household Words Dickens said that one of the objects he had in view in publishing the magazine was to aid in the development of the imagination of children.
From the time of Barnaby Rudge his unconscious recognition of the right of the child to have his imagination made freer and stronger can be felt in his writings. His conscious recognition of the absolute necessity of child freedom included the ideal of the culture of the imagination.
He reached his educational meridian in Hard Times, and the pedagogy of this book was devoted almost entirely to child freedom and the imagination; to revealing the fatal error of Mr. Gradgrind’s philosophy, which taught that fact storing was the true way to form a child’s mind and character, entirely ignoring the fact that feeling and imagination are the strongest elements of intellectual power and clearness.
In Bleak House, which immediately preceded Hard Times, he gave a very able description of the effects of the neglect of the development of the imagination for several generations in the characteristics of the Smallweed family.
The Smallweeds had strengthened themselves in their practical character, discarded all amusements, discountenanced all storybooks, fairy tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities whatsoever. Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born to it, and that the complete little men and women it has produced have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something depressing on their minds.Mr. Smallweed’s grandfather is in a helpless condition as to his lower, and nearly so as to his upper limbs; but his mind is unimpaired. It holds, as well as it ever held, the first four rules of arithmetic, and a certain small collection of the hardest facts. In respect of ideality, reverence, wonder, and other such phrenological attributes, it is no worse off than it used to be. Everything that Mr. Smallweed’s grandfather ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life he has never bred a single butterfly.
The Smallweeds had strengthened themselves in their practical character, discarded all amusements, discountenanced all storybooks, fairy tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities whatsoever. Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born to it, and that the complete little men and women it has produced have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something depressing on their minds.
Mr. Smallweed’s grandfather is in a helpless condition as to his lower, and nearly so as to his upper limbs; but his mind is unimpaired. It holds, as well as it ever held, the first four rules of arithmetic, and a certain small collection of the hardest facts. In respect of ideality, reverence, wonder, and other such phrenological attributes, it is no worse off than it used to be. Everything that Mr. Smallweed’s grandfather ever put away in his mind was a grub at first, and is a grub at last. In all his life he has never bred a single butterfly.
This alone is a treatise of great suggestiveness on the need of the development of the imagination and the means by which it should be developed.
Hard Times was evidently intended to show the weakness of the Herbartian psychology. Dickens believed in the distinctive soul as the real selfhood of each child, and as the only true reality in his nature, the dominating influence in his life and character. He did not believe that knowledge formed the soul, but that the soul transformed knowledge. He did not believe that knowledge gave form, colour, and tone to the soul, but that the soul gave new form, colour, and tone to knowledge. He ridiculed the idea that the educator by using great care in the selection of his knowledge could produce a man of such a character as he desired; that ten pounds of yellow knowledge and ten pounds of blue knowledge judiciously mixed in a boy would certainly produce twenty pounds of green manhood.
He believed that in every child there is an element “defying all the calculations ever made by man, and no more known to his arithmetic than his Creator is.” He did not agree with the psychology of which Mr. Gradgrind was the impersonation. Mr. Gradgrind believed that he could reduce human nature in all its complexities to statistics, and that “with his rule, and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table, he could weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to.”
Mr. Gradgrind had established a school for the training of the children of Coketown, and had engaged Mr. M’Choakumchild to teach it. Dickens criticised the normal school training of his time in his description of Mr.M’Choakumchild’s preparation for the work of stimulating young life to larger, richer growth.
He and some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters had been lately turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs. He had been put through an immense variety of paces, and had answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography as general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land surveying and levelling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. He had worked his stony way through her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council’s Schedule B, and had taken the bloom off the higher branches of mathematics and physical science, French, German, Latin, and Greek. He knew all about all the watersheds of all the world (whatever they are), and all the histories of all the peoples, and all the names of all the rivers and mountains, and all the productions, manners, and customs of all the countries, and all their boundaries and bearings on the two-and-thirty points of the compass.Ah! Mr. M’Choakumchild, rather overdone. If he had only learned a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!
He and some one hundred and forty other schoolmasters had been lately turned at the same time, in the same factory, on the same principles, like so many pianoforte legs. He had been put through an immense variety of paces, and had answered volumes of head-breaking questions. Orthography, etymology, syntax, and prosody, biography, astronomy, geography as general cosmography, the sciences of compound proportion, algebra, land surveying and levelling, vocal music, and drawing from models, were all at the ends of his ten chilled fingers. He had worked his stony way through her Majesty’s Most Honourable Privy Council’s Schedule B, and had taken the bloom off the higher branches of mathematics and physical science, French, German, Latin, and Greek. He knew all about all the watersheds of all the world (whatever they are), and all the histories of all the peoples, and all the names of all the rivers and mountains, and all the productions, manners, and customs of all the countries, and all their boundaries and bearings on the two-and-thirty points of the compass.
Ah! Mr. M’Choakumchild, rather overdone. If he had only learned a little less, how infinitely better he might have taught much more!
Dickens criticised the lack of professional training, and the fact-storing process which subordinated feeling and imagination.
Mr. Gradgrind’s school was to be opened. The government officer was present to examine it. Mr. Gradgrind made a short opening address:
“Now, what I want is facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to facts, sir!”The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with aline on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial.“In this life we want nothing but facts, sir; nothing but facts.”The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.
“Now, what I want is facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else, and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of reasoning animals upon facts; nothing else will ever be of any service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these children. Stick to facts, sir!”
The scene was a plain, bare, monotonous vault of a schoolroom, and the speaker’s square forefinger emphasized his observations by underscoring every sentence with aline on the schoolmaster’s sleeve. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s square wall of a forehead, which had his eyebrows for its base, while his eyes found commodious cellarage in two dark caves, overshadowed by the wall. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s mouth, which was wide, thin, and hard set. The emphasis was helped by the speaker’s voice, which was inflexible, dry, and dictatorial.
“In this life we want nothing but facts, sir; nothing but facts.”
The speaker, and the schoolmaster, and the third grown person present, all backed a little, and swept with their eyes the inclined plane of little vessels then and there arranged in order, ready to have imperial gallons of facts poured into them until they were full to the brim.
Most of the schoolrooms of the world are yet “plain, bare, monotonous vaults,” although nearly fifty years after Dickens pointed out the need of artistic form and artistic decoration in schools we are beginning to awake to the idea that the architecture, the colouring, and the art on the walls and in the cabinets of schools may influence the characters of children more even than the teaching.
Mr. Gradgrind proceeded to ask a few questions of the pupils, who in this new school were to be known by numbers—so much more statistical and mathematical—and not by their names.
As he stood before the pupils, who were seated in rows on a gallery, “he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.”
In the last sentence Dickens reveals the true philosophy of sustaining and developing natural and therefore productive interest, and explains how, after destroying it, teachers try to galvanize it into spasmodic activity.
“Girl number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger. “I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?”“Sissy Jupe, sir,” explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and courtesying.“Sissy is not a name,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.”“It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,” returned the young girl in a trembling voice, and with another courtesy.“Then he has no business to do it,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “Tell him he mustn’t. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?”“He belongs to the horse riding, if you please, sir.”Mr. Gradgrind frowned and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand.“We don’t want to know anything about that here. You mustn’t tell us about that here. Your father breaks horses, don’t he?”“If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir.”“You mustn’t tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then, describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?”“Oh, yes, sir.”“Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.”(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)“Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!” said Mr. Gradgrind for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. “Girl number twenty possessed of no facts in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy’s definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.”Bitzer: “Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely, twenty-four grinders, four eyeteeth, and twelve incisors. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth——” Thus (and much more) Bitzer.“Now, girl number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “you know what a horse is.”
“Girl number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind, squarely pointing with his square forefinger. “I don’t know that girl. Who is that girl?”
“Sissy Jupe, sir,” explained number twenty, blushing, standing up, and courtesying.
“Sissy is not a name,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “Don’t call yourself Sissy. Call yourself Cecilia.”
“It’s father as calls me Sissy, sir,” returned the young girl in a trembling voice, and with another courtesy.
“Then he has no business to do it,” said Mr. Gradgrind. “Tell him he mustn’t. Cecilia Jupe. Let me see. What is your father?”
“He belongs to the horse riding, if you please, sir.”
Mr. Gradgrind frowned and waved off the objectionable calling with his hand.
“We don’t want to know anything about that here. You mustn’t tell us about that here. Your father breaks horses, don’t he?”
“If you please, sir, when they can get any to break, they do break horses in the ring, sir.”
“You mustn’t tell us about the ring, here. Very well, then, describe your father as a horsebreaker. He doctors sick horses, I dare say?”
“Oh, yes, sir.”
“Very well, then. He is a veterinary surgeon, a farrier, and horsebreaker. Give me your definition of a horse.”
(Sissy Jupe thrown into the greatest alarm by this demand.)
“Girl number twenty unable to define a horse!” said Mr. Gradgrind for the general behoof of all the little pitchers. “Girl number twenty possessed of no facts in reference to one of the commonest of animals! Some boy’s definition of a horse. Bitzer, yours.”
Bitzer: “Quadruped. Graminivorous. Forty teeth, namely, twenty-four grinders, four eyeteeth, and twelve incisors. Sheds coat in the spring; in marshy countries sheds hoofs too. Hoofs hard, but requiring to be shod with iron. Age known by marks in mouth——” Thus (and much more) Bitzer.
“Now, girl number twenty,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “you know what a horse is.”
The keen edge of Dickens’s sarcasm will be felt when it is remembered that Sissy Jupe was born among horses, had lived with them, played with them, and ridden them all her life, but was “ignorant of the commonest facts regarding a horse.” She could not define a horse.
The government examiner then stepped forward:
“Very well,” said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and folding his arms. “That’s a horse. Now let me ask you girls and boys, would you paper a room with representations of horses?”After a pause, one half the children cried in chorus, “Yes, sir!” Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman’s face that “Yes” was wrong, cried out in chorus, “No, sir!”—as the custom is in these examinations.“Of course, no. Why wouldn’t you?”A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing, ventured the answer, because he wouldn’t paper a room at all, but would paint it.“Youmustpaper it,” said the gentleman rather warmly.“You must paper it,” said Thomas Gradgrind, “whether you like it or not. Don’t tellusyou wouldn’t paper it. What do you mean, boy?”“I’ll explain to you, then,” said the gentleman, after another and a dismal pause, “why you wouldn’t paper a room with representations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality—in fact? Do you?”“Yes, sir!” from one half, “No, sir!” from the other.“Of course, no,” said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the wrong half. “Why, then, you are not to see anywhere what you don’t see in fact; you are not to have anywhere what you don’t have in fact. What is called taste is only another name for fact.”Thomas Gradgrind nodded his approbation.“This is a new principle, a discovery, a great discovery,” said the gentleman. “Now, I’ll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?”There being a general conviction by this time that “No, sir!” was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of “No” was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said “Yes,” among them Sissy Jupe.“Girl number twenty,” said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of knowledge.Sissy blushed, and stood up.“So you would carpet your room—or your husband’s room, if you were a grown woman and had a husband—with representations of flowers, would you? Why would you?”“If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,” said the girl.“And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?”“It wouldn’t hurt them, sir. They wouldn’t crush and wither, if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty, and pleasant, and I would fancy——”“Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn’t fancy,” cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to this point. “That’s it! You are never to fancy.”“Fact, fact, fact,” said the gentleman.“Fact, fact, fact,” repeated Mr. Gradgrind.“You are to be in all things regulated and governed,” said the gentleman, “by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don’t walk upon flowers in fact; you can not be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don’t find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you can not be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You must use for all these purposes combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures, which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.”
“Very well,” said this gentleman, briskly smiling, and folding his arms. “That’s a horse. Now let me ask you girls and boys, would you paper a room with representations of horses?”
After a pause, one half the children cried in chorus, “Yes, sir!” Upon which the other half, seeing in the gentleman’s face that “Yes” was wrong, cried out in chorus, “No, sir!”—as the custom is in these examinations.
“Of course, no. Why wouldn’t you?”
A pause. One corpulent slow boy, with a wheezy manner of breathing, ventured the answer, because he wouldn’t paper a room at all, but would paint it.
“Youmustpaper it,” said the gentleman rather warmly.
“You must paper it,” said Thomas Gradgrind, “whether you like it or not. Don’t tellusyou wouldn’t paper it. What do you mean, boy?”
“I’ll explain to you, then,” said the gentleman, after another and a dismal pause, “why you wouldn’t paper a room with representations of horses. Do you ever see horses walking up and down the sides of rooms in reality—in fact? Do you?”
“Yes, sir!” from one half, “No, sir!” from the other.
“Of course, no,” said the gentleman, with an indignant look at the wrong half. “Why, then, you are not to see anywhere what you don’t see in fact; you are not to have anywhere what you don’t have in fact. What is called taste is only another name for fact.”
Thomas Gradgrind nodded his approbation.
“This is a new principle, a discovery, a great discovery,” said the gentleman. “Now, I’ll try you again. Suppose you were going to carpet a room. Would you use a carpet having a representation of flowers upon it?”
There being a general conviction by this time that “No, sir!” was always the right answer to this gentleman, the chorus of “No” was very strong. Only a few feeble stragglers said “Yes,” among them Sissy Jupe.
“Girl number twenty,” said the gentleman, smiling in the calm strength of knowledge.
Sissy blushed, and stood up.
“So you would carpet your room—or your husband’s room, if you were a grown woman and had a husband—with representations of flowers, would you? Why would you?”
“If you please, sir, I am very fond of flowers,” said the girl.
“And is that why you would put tables and chairs upon them, and have people walking over them with heavy boots?”
“It wouldn’t hurt them, sir. They wouldn’t crush and wither, if you please, sir. They would be the pictures of what was very pretty, and pleasant, and I would fancy——”
“Ay, ay, ay! But you mustn’t fancy,” cried the gentleman, quite elated by coming so happily to this point. “That’s it! You are never to fancy.”
“Fact, fact, fact,” said the gentleman.
“Fact, fact, fact,” repeated Mr. Gradgrind.
“You are to be in all things regulated and governed,” said the gentleman, “by fact. We hope to have, before long, a board of fact, composed of commissioners of fact, who will force the people to be a people of fact, and of nothing but fact. You must discard the word Fancy altogether. You have nothing to do with it. You are not to have, in any object of use or ornament, what would be a contradiction in fact. You don’t walk upon flowers in fact; you can not be allowed to walk upon flowers in carpets. You don’t find that foreign birds and butterflies come and perch upon your crockery; you can not be permitted to paint foreign birds and butterflies upon your crockery. You must use for all these purposes combinations and modifications (in primary colours) of mathematical figures, which are susceptible of proof and demonstration. This is the new discovery. This is fact. This is taste.”
Then Mr. M’Choakumchild was asked to teach his first lesson.
He went to work in this preparatory lesson not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M’Choakumchild, when from thy boiling store thou shalt fill each jar brim full by and by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within—or sometimes only maim him and distort him?
He went to work in this preparatory lesson not unlike Morgiana in the Forty Thieves: looking into all the vessels ranged before him, one after another, to see what they contained. Say, good M’Choakumchild, when from thy boiling store thou shalt fill each jar brim full by and by, dost thou think that thou wilt always kill outright the robber Fancy lurking within—or sometimes only maim him and distort him?
The “maiming and distorting” of the imagination filled Dickens with alarm. He recognised with great clearness the law that all evil springs from misused good, and he knew that if the imagination is not cultivated properly the child not only loses the many intellectual and spiritualadvantages that would result from its true culture, but that it is exposed to the terrible danger of a distorted imagination. Tom Gradgrind is used as a type of the degradation that results from “the strangling of the imagination.” Its ghost lived on to drag him down “in the form of grovelling sensualities.” That which, truly used, has most power to ennoble, has also, when warped or dwarfed, most power to degrade.
As Mr. Varden told his wife, “All good things perverted to evil purposes are worse than those which are naturally bad.”
The five young Gradgrinds had little opportunity to develop their imaginations. They were watched too closely to have any imaginative plays; they were not allowed to read poetry or fiction; they heard no stories; they had no fairies or genii in their lives; they heard nothing of giants or such false things; no little Boy Blue ever blew his horn for them; no Jack Horner took a plum out of any pie in their experience; no such ridiculous person as Santa Claus ever put anything in their stockings; no cow ever performed the impossible feat of jumping over the moon, so far as they knew; they had never even heard of the cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt that lay in the house that Jack built. They knew, or they could say, that a cow was “a graminivorous ruminating quadruped,” and that was enough, in the philosophy of Mr. Gradgrind.
Sissy Jupe’s father got into difficulties in Coketown, and he became discouraged and ran away. Mr. Gradgrind was a good man, and meant to do right, so he adopted Sissy.
He told her his intentions rather bluntly:
“Jupe, I have made up my mind to take you into my house, and, when you are not in attendance at the school, to employ you about Mrs. Gradgrind, who is rather an invalid. I have explained to Miss Louisa—this is Miss Louisa—the miserable but natural end of your late career; and you are to expressly understand that the whole of that subject is past, and is not to be referred to any more.From this time you begin your history. You are, at present, ignorant, I know.”“Yes, sir, very,” she answered, courtesying.“I shall have the satisfaction of causing you to be strictly educated; and you will be a living proof to all who come into communication with you, of the advantages of the training you will receive. You will be reclaimed and formed. You have been in the habit of reading to your father and those people I found you among, I dare say?” said Mr. Gradgrind, beckoning her nearer to him before he said so, and dropping his voice.“Only to father and Merrylegs, sir. At least, I mean to father, when Merrylegs was always there.”“Never mind Merrylegs, Jupe,” said Mr. Gradgrind with a passing frown. “I don’t ask about him. I understand you to have been in the habit of reading to your father?”“Oh, yes, sir, thousands of times. They were the happiest—oh, of all the happy times we had together, sir!”It was only now, when her grief broke out, that Louisa looked at her.“And what,” asked Mr. Gradgrind in a still lower voice, “did you read to your father, Jupe?”“About the Fairies, sir, and the Dwarf, and the Hunchback, and the Genies,” she sobbed out.“There,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “that is enough. Never breathe a word of such destructive nonsense any more.”
“Jupe, I have made up my mind to take you into my house, and, when you are not in attendance at the school, to employ you about Mrs. Gradgrind, who is rather an invalid. I have explained to Miss Louisa—this is Miss Louisa—the miserable but natural end of your late career; and you are to expressly understand that the whole of that subject is past, and is not to be referred to any more.From this time you begin your history. You are, at present, ignorant, I know.”
“Yes, sir, very,” she answered, courtesying.
“I shall have the satisfaction of causing you to be strictly educated; and you will be a living proof to all who come into communication with you, of the advantages of the training you will receive. You will be reclaimed and formed. You have been in the habit of reading to your father and those people I found you among, I dare say?” said Mr. Gradgrind, beckoning her nearer to him before he said so, and dropping his voice.
“Only to father and Merrylegs, sir. At least, I mean to father, when Merrylegs was always there.”
“Never mind Merrylegs, Jupe,” said Mr. Gradgrind with a passing frown. “I don’t ask about him. I understand you to have been in the habit of reading to your father?”
“Oh, yes, sir, thousands of times. They were the happiest—oh, of all the happy times we had together, sir!”
It was only now, when her grief broke out, that Louisa looked at her.
“And what,” asked Mr. Gradgrind in a still lower voice, “did you read to your father, Jupe?”
“About the Fairies, sir, and the Dwarf, and the Hunchback, and the Genies,” she sobbed out.
“There,” said Mr. Gradgrind, “that is enough. Never breathe a word of such destructive nonsense any more.”
One night, in their study den,
Louisa had been overheard to begin a conversation with her brother by saying, “Tom, I wonder—” upon which Mr. Gradgrind, who was the person overhearing, stepped forth into the light, and said, “Louisa, never wonder!”Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division settle everything somehow, and never wonder. “Bring to me,” says Mr. M’Choakumchild, “yonder baby just able to walk, and I will engage that it will never wonder.”
Louisa had been overheard to begin a conversation with her brother by saying, “Tom, I wonder—” upon which Mr. Gradgrind, who was the person overhearing, stepped forth into the light, and said, “Louisa, never wonder!”
Herein lay the spring of the mechanical art and mystery of educating the reason without stooping to the cultivation of the sentiments and affections. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division settle everything somehow, and never wonder. “Bring to me,” says Mr. M’Choakumchild, “yonder baby just able to walk, and I will engage that it will never wonder.”
Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. M’Choakumchild deliberately planned, as a result of a false psychology, to destroy all foolish dreamings and imaginings and wonderings by thechildren. This same wonder power is the mightiest stimulus to mental and spiritual effort, the source of all true interest, man’s leader in his work of productive investigation.
Wonder power should increase throughout the life of the child. Unfortunately, the Gradgrind philosophy is practised by many educators. The child’s natural wonder power is dwarfed, and an unnatural interest is substituted for it. Teachers kill the natural interest, and then try to galvanize its dead body into temporary activity. The child who was made a wonderer and a problem finder by God is made a problem solver by teachers. His dreamings and fancies have been stopped, and he has been stored with facts and made “practical.”
Mr. Gradgrind was much exercised by the fact that the people of Coketown did not read the scientific and mathematical books in the library so much as poetry and fiction. It was a melancholy fact that after working for fifteen hours a day “they sat down to read mere fables about men and women more or less like themselves, and about children more or less like their own. They took De Foe to their bosoms instead of Euclid, and seemed to be, on the whole, more comforted by Goldsmith than by Cocker.” This was very discouraging to Mr. Gradgrind.
One night Louisa and Tom were sitting alone conversing about themselves and the way they were being trained by their father. In the course of their conversation Tom said:
“I am sick of my life, Loo; I hate it altogether, and I hate everybody except you. As to me, I am a donkey, that’s what I am. I am as obstinate as one, I am more stupid than one, I get as much pleasure as one, and I should like to kick like one.”“Not me, I hope, Tom.”“No, Loo, I wouldn’t hurtyou. I made an exception of you at first. I don’t know what this—jolly old—jaundiced jail”—Tom had paused to find a sufficiently complimentary and expressive name for the parental roof, and seemed to relieve his mind for a moment by the strong alliteration of this one—“would be without you.”“Tom,” said his sister, after silently watching thesparks a while, “as I get older, and nearly growing up, I often sit wondering here, and think how unfortunate it is for me that I can’t reconcile you to home better than I am able to do. I don’t know what other girls know. I can’t play to you, or sing to you. I can’t talk to you so as to lighten your mind, for I never see any amusing sights or read any amusing books that it would be a pleasure or a relief to you to talk about, when you are tired.”“Well, no more do I. I am as bad as you in that respect; and I am a mule too, which you’re not. If father was determined to make me either a prig or a mule, and I am not a prig, why, it stands to reason, I must be a mule. And so I am.”“I wish I could collect all the Facts we hear so much about,” said Tom, spitefully setting his teeth, “and all the Figures, and all the people who found them out; and I wish I could put a thousand barrels of gunpowder under them and blow them all up together.”Louisa sat looking at the fire so long that Tom asked, “Have you gone to sleep, Loo?”“No, Tom, I am looking at the fire.”“What do you see in it?”“I don’t see anything in it, Tom, particularly, but since I have been looking at it I have been wondering about you and me, grown up.”“Wondering again?” said Tom.“I have such unmanageable thoughts,” returned his sister, “that theywillwonder.”“Then I beg of you, Louisa,” said Mrs. Gradgrind, who had opened the door without being heard, “to do nothing of that description, for goodness’ sake, you inconsiderate girl, or I shall never hear the last of it from your father. And, Thomas, it is really shameful, with my poor head continually wearing me out, that a boy brought up as you have been, and whose education has cost what yours has, should be found encouraging his sister to wonder, when he knows his father has expressly said that she was not to do it.”Louisa denied Tom’s participation in the offence; but her mother stopped her with the conclusive answer, “Louisa, don’t tell me, in my state of health; for unless you had been encouraged, it is morally and physically impossible that you could have done it.”“I was encouraged by nothing, mother, but by lookingat the red sparks dropping out of the fire, and whitening and dying. It made me think, after all, how short my life would be, and how little I could hope to do in it.”“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Gradgrind, rendered almost energetic. “Nonsense! Don’t stand there and tell me such stuff, Louisa, to my face, when you know very well that if it was ever to reach your father’s ears I should never hear the last of it. After all the trouble that has been taken with you! After the lectures you have attended, and the experiments you have seen! After I have heard you myself, when the whole of my right side has been benumbed, going on with your master about combustion, and calcination, and calorification, and I may say every kind of ation that could drive a poor invalid distracted, to hear you talking in this absurd way about sparks and ashes!”
“I am sick of my life, Loo; I hate it altogether, and I hate everybody except you. As to me, I am a donkey, that’s what I am. I am as obstinate as one, I am more stupid than one, I get as much pleasure as one, and I should like to kick like one.”
“Not me, I hope, Tom.”
“No, Loo, I wouldn’t hurtyou. I made an exception of you at first. I don’t know what this—jolly old—jaundiced jail”—Tom had paused to find a sufficiently complimentary and expressive name for the parental roof, and seemed to relieve his mind for a moment by the strong alliteration of this one—“would be without you.”
“Tom,” said his sister, after silently watching thesparks a while, “as I get older, and nearly growing up, I often sit wondering here, and think how unfortunate it is for me that I can’t reconcile you to home better than I am able to do. I don’t know what other girls know. I can’t play to you, or sing to you. I can’t talk to you so as to lighten your mind, for I never see any amusing sights or read any amusing books that it would be a pleasure or a relief to you to talk about, when you are tired.”
“Well, no more do I. I am as bad as you in that respect; and I am a mule too, which you’re not. If father was determined to make me either a prig or a mule, and I am not a prig, why, it stands to reason, I must be a mule. And so I am.”
“I wish I could collect all the Facts we hear so much about,” said Tom, spitefully setting his teeth, “and all the Figures, and all the people who found them out; and I wish I could put a thousand barrels of gunpowder under them and blow them all up together.”
Louisa sat looking at the fire so long that Tom asked, “Have you gone to sleep, Loo?”
“No, Tom, I am looking at the fire.”
“What do you see in it?”
“I don’t see anything in it, Tom, particularly, but since I have been looking at it I have been wondering about you and me, grown up.”
“Wondering again?” said Tom.
“I have such unmanageable thoughts,” returned his sister, “that theywillwonder.”
“Then I beg of you, Louisa,” said Mrs. Gradgrind, who had opened the door without being heard, “to do nothing of that description, for goodness’ sake, you inconsiderate girl, or I shall never hear the last of it from your father. And, Thomas, it is really shameful, with my poor head continually wearing me out, that a boy brought up as you have been, and whose education has cost what yours has, should be found encouraging his sister to wonder, when he knows his father has expressly said that she was not to do it.”
Louisa denied Tom’s participation in the offence; but her mother stopped her with the conclusive answer, “Louisa, don’t tell me, in my state of health; for unless you had been encouraged, it is morally and physically impossible that you could have done it.”
“I was encouraged by nothing, mother, but by lookingat the red sparks dropping out of the fire, and whitening and dying. It made me think, after all, how short my life would be, and how little I could hope to do in it.”
“Nonsense!” said Mrs. Gradgrind, rendered almost energetic. “Nonsense! Don’t stand there and tell me such stuff, Louisa, to my face, when you know very well that if it was ever to reach your father’s ears I should never hear the last of it. After all the trouble that has been taken with you! After the lectures you have attended, and the experiments you have seen! After I have heard you myself, when the whole of my right side has been benumbed, going on with your master about combustion, and calcination, and calorification, and I may say every kind of ation that could drive a poor invalid distracted, to hear you talking in this absurd way about sparks and ashes!”
When a boy hates home, and a girl in her teens is rejoicing at the prospect of a short life, there has been some serious blunder in their training.
When her father was proposing to her that she should marry old Bounderby, Louisa said:
“What doIknow, father, of tastes and fancies; of aspirations and affections; of all that part of my nature in which such light things might have been nourished? What escape have I had from problems that could be demonstrated, and realities that could be grasped?” As she said it, she unconsciously closed her hand, as if upon a solid object, and slowly opened it as though she were releasing dust or ash.
“What doIknow, father, of tastes and fancies; of aspirations and affections; of all that part of my nature in which such light things might have been nourished? What escape have I had from problems that could be demonstrated, and realities that could be grasped?” As she said it, she unconsciously closed her hand, as if upon a solid object, and slowly opened it as though she were releasing dust or ash.
After her marriage to Bounderby Louisa rarely came home, and Dickens gives in detail a sequence of thought that passed through her mind on her approach to the old home after a long absence. None of the true feelings were stirred in her heart.
The dreams of childhood—its airy fables, its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond, so good to be believed in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown, for then the least among them rises to the stature of a great charity in the heart, suffering little children to come into the midst of it, and to keep with their pure hands a garden in the stony ways of this world, wherein it were better for all the children of Adamthat they should oftener sun themselves, simple and trustful, and not worldly-wise—what had she to do with these? Remembrances of how she had journeyed to the little that she knew by the enchanted roads of what she and millions of innocent creatures had hoped and imagined; of how, first coming upon reason through the tender light of fancy, she had seen it a beneficent god, deferring to gods as great as itself; not a grim idol, cruel and cold, with its victims bound hand to foot, and its big dumb shape set up with a sightless stare, never to be moved by anything but so many calculated tons of leverage—what had she to do with these?
The dreams of childhood—its airy fables, its graceful, beautiful, humane, impossible adornments of the world beyond, so good to be believed in once, so good to be remembered when outgrown, for then the least among them rises to the stature of a great charity in the heart, suffering little children to come into the midst of it, and to keep with their pure hands a garden in the stony ways of this world, wherein it were better for all the children of Adamthat they should oftener sun themselves, simple and trustful, and not worldly-wise—what had she to do with these? Remembrances of how she had journeyed to the little that she knew by the enchanted roads of what she and millions of innocent creatures had hoped and imagined; of how, first coming upon reason through the tender light of fancy, she had seen it a beneficent god, deferring to gods as great as itself; not a grim idol, cruel and cold, with its victims bound hand to foot, and its big dumb shape set up with a sightless stare, never to be moved by anything but so many calculated tons of leverage—what had she to do with these?
This quotation shows how clearly Dickens saw the relationship between the imagination and the reason. Her imagination had been dwarfed and perverted; and her power to feel, and to think, and to appreciate beauty, and to love, and to see God and understand him, was dwarfed and perverted as a consequence.
Her poor mother, who had always felt that there was something wrong with her husband’s training, but dared not oppose him, and fully supported him for the sake of peace which never really came, was worn out, and had almost become a mental wreck. Her mind was struggling with the one great question. She tried and tried vainly to find what the great defect of her husband’s system was, but she was very sure it had a great weakness somewhere. She tried to explain the matter to Louisa when she came to see her.
“You learned a great deal, Louisa, and so did your brother. Ologies of all kinds, from morning to night. If there is any ology left, of any description, that has not been worn to rags in this house, all I can say is, I hope I shall never hear its name.”“I can hear you, mother, when you have strength to go on.” This, to keep her from floating away.“But there’s something—not an ology at all—that your father has missed, or forgotten, Louisa. I don’t know what it is. I have often sat with Sissy near me, and thought about it. I shall never get its name now. But your father may. It makes me restless. I want to write to him, to find out, for God’s sake, what it is. Give me a pen, give me a pen.”
“You learned a great deal, Louisa, and so did your brother. Ologies of all kinds, from morning to night. If there is any ology left, of any description, that has not been worn to rags in this house, all I can say is, I hope I shall never hear its name.”
“I can hear you, mother, when you have strength to go on.” This, to keep her from floating away.
“But there’s something—not an ology at all—that your father has missed, or forgotten, Louisa. I don’t know what it is. I have often sat with Sissy near me, and thought about it. I shall never get its name now. But your father may. It makes me restless. I want to write to him, to find out, for God’s sake, what it is. Give me a pen, give me a pen.”
When Louisa, unable to resist alone the temptation to go with Mr. Harthouse, fled to her father and told him in such earnest words that she cursed the hour she had been born to submit to his training, she said:
“I don’t reproach you, father. What you have never nurtured in me, you have never nurtured in yourself; but oh! if you had only done so long ago, or if you had only neglected me, what a much better and much happier creature I should have been this day!”On hearing this, after all his care, he bowed his head upon his hand and groaned aloud.“Father, if you had known, when we were last together here, what even I feared while I strove against it—as it has been my task from infancy to strive against every natural prompting that has arisen in my heart; if you had known that there lingered in my breast sensibilities, affections, weakness capable of being cherished into strength, defying all the calculations ever made by man, and no more known to his arithmetic than his Creator is—would you have given me to the husband whom I am now sure that I hate?”He said, “No, no, my poor child.”“Would you have doomed me, at any time, to the frost and blight that have hardened and spoiled me? Would you have robbed me—for no one’s enrichment—only for the greater desolation of this world—of the immaterial part of my life, the spring and summer of my belief, my refuge from what is sordid and bad in the real things around me, my school in which I should have learned to be more humble, and more trusting with them, and to hope in my little sphere to make them better?”“Oh, no, no! No, Louisa.”“Yet, father, if I had been stone blind; if I had groped my way by my sense of touch, and had been free, while I knew the shapes and surfaces of things, to exercise my fancy somewhat in regard to them, I should have been a million times wiser, happier, more loving, more contented, more innocent and human in all good respects, than I am with the eyes I have. Now, hear what I have come to say. With a hunger and thirst upon me, father, which have never been for a moment appeased; with an ardent impulse toward some region where rules, and figures, and definitions were not quite absolute, I have grown up, battling every inch of my way.“In this strife I have almost repulsed and crushed my better angel into a demon. What I have learned has left me doubting, misbelieving, despising, regretting what I have not learned; and my dismal resource has been to think that life would soon go by, and that nothing in it could be worth the pain and trouble of a contest.”
“I don’t reproach you, father. What you have never nurtured in me, you have never nurtured in yourself; but oh! if you had only done so long ago, or if you had only neglected me, what a much better and much happier creature I should have been this day!”
On hearing this, after all his care, he bowed his head upon his hand and groaned aloud.
“Father, if you had known, when we were last together here, what even I feared while I strove against it—as it has been my task from infancy to strive against every natural prompting that has arisen in my heart; if you had known that there lingered in my breast sensibilities, affections, weakness capable of being cherished into strength, defying all the calculations ever made by man, and no more known to his arithmetic than his Creator is—would you have given me to the husband whom I am now sure that I hate?”
He said, “No, no, my poor child.”
“Would you have doomed me, at any time, to the frost and blight that have hardened and spoiled me? Would you have robbed me—for no one’s enrichment—only for the greater desolation of this world—of the immaterial part of my life, the spring and summer of my belief, my refuge from what is sordid and bad in the real things around me, my school in which I should have learned to be more humble, and more trusting with them, and to hope in my little sphere to make them better?”
“Oh, no, no! No, Louisa.”
“Yet, father, if I had been stone blind; if I had groped my way by my sense of touch, and had been free, while I knew the shapes and surfaces of things, to exercise my fancy somewhat in regard to them, I should have been a million times wiser, happier, more loving, more contented, more innocent and human in all good respects, than I am with the eyes I have. Now, hear what I have come to say. With a hunger and thirst upon me, father, which have never been for a moment appeased; with an ardent impulse toward some region where rules, and figures, and definitions were not quite absolute, I have grown up, battling every inch of my way.
“In this strife I have almost repulsed and crushed my better angel into a demon. What I have learned has left me doubting, misbelieving, despising, regretting what I have not learned; and my dismal resource has been to think that life would soon go by, and that nothing in it could be worth the pain and trouble of a contest.”
When she had finished the story of her acquaintance with Mr. Harthouse and his influence over her, she said: “All that I know is, your philosophy and your teaching will not save me. Now, father, you have brought me to this. Save me by some other means.”
Dickens pictured Mr. Gradgrind as a good, earnest man, who desired to do only good for his family.