The large class of readers, startled by these facts, will exclaim with one voice, “How very preposterous!” On my deferentially inquiring why, they will answer, “These things are above their station.” In reply to that objection, I would beg to ask what their station is.It is their station to work. And theydowork. They labour in these mills, upon an average, twelve hours a day, which is unquestionably work. And pretty tight work too. Perhaps it is above their station to indulge in such amusements on any terms. Are we quite sure that we in England have not formed our ideas of the “station” of working people from accustoming ourselves to the contemplation of that class as they are, and not as they might be? I think that if we examine our own feelings, we shall find that the pianos, and the circulating libraries, and even the Lowell Offering, startle us with their novelty, and not by their bearing upon any abstract question of right or wrong.For myself, I know no station in which, the occupation of to-day cheerfully done and the occupation of to-morrow cheerfully looked to, any one of these pursuits is not most humanizing and laudable. I know no station which is rendered more endurable to the person in it, or more safe to the person out of it, by having ignorance for its associate. I know no station which has a right to monopolize the means of mutual instruction, improvement, and rational entertainment; or which has ever continued to be a station very long, after seeking to do so.
The large class of readers, startled by these facts, will exclaim with one voice, “How very preposterous!” On my deferentially inquiring why, they will answer, “These things are above their station.” In reply to that objection, I would beg to ask what their station is.
It is their station to work. And theydowork. They labour in these mills, upon an average, twelve hours a day, which is unquestionably work. And pretty tight work too. Perhaps it is above their station to indulge in such amusements on any terms. Are we quite sure that we in England have not formed our ideas of the “station” of working people from accustoming ourselves to the contemplation of that class as they are, and not as they might be? I think that if we examine our own feelings, we shall find that the pianos, and the circulating libraries, and even the Lowell Offering, startle us with their novelty, and not by their bearing upon any abstract question of right or wrong.
For myself, I know no station in which, the occupation of to-day cheerfully done and the occupation of to-morrow cheerfully looked to, any one of these pursuits is not most humanizing and laudable. I know no station which is rendered more endurable to the person in it, or more safe to the person out of it, by having ignorance for its associate. I know no station which has a right to monopolize the means of mutual instruction, improvement, and rational entertainment; or which has ever continued to be a station very long, after seeking to do so.
Walter Wilding planned an ideal relationship between employer and employed in No Thoroughfare. He advertised for a housekeeper so that he “might sit daily at the head of the table at which the people in my employment eat together, and may eat of the same roast and boiled, and drink of the same beer, and one and all form a kind of family.”
He planned, too, to train his employees to sing “Handel, Mozart, Haydn, Kent, Purcell, Doctor Arne, Greene, Mendelssohn, to make music a part of the bondbetween us. We will form a Choir in some quiet church near the Corner.”
He touched the true chord of community when Joey Ladle used the word “they.” Joey asked, when Mr. Wilding unfolded his plan:
“Is all to live in the house, Young Master Wilding? The two other cellarmen, the three porters, the two ’prentices, and the odd men?”“Yes. I hope we shall all be a united family, Joey.”“Ah!” said Joey. “I hope they may be.”“They? Rather saywe, Joey.”
“Is all to live in the house, Young Master Wilding? The two other cellarmen, the three porters, the two ’prentices, and the odd men?”
“Yes. I hope we shall all be a united family, Joey.”
“Ah!” said Joey. “I hope they may be.”
“They? Rather saywe, Joey.”
Not many employers have reached the ideals of Dickens yet.
NUTRITION AS A FACTOR IN EDUCATION.
The influence of diet in the development not only of physical power, but of intellectual and spiritual power also, has now begun to attract general attention. There is no longer any doubt that the character of the bones, of the muscles, of the nerves, and of the brain itself, is decided to a considerable extent by the food that is eaten. There is no longer any doubt that many children have been urged to do work which becomes destructive beyond the fatigue point of their little brains, when their brains have not been properly nourished, either from lack of proper food or of properly cooked food, or from eating too much or too little.
The deterioration of the physical system, and especially the deterioration of the neurological system, is one of the most startling subjects within the range of view of educators and psychologists. One of the most attractive departments of child study is that which investigates the means of deciding from external manifestations of form, proportion, action, voice, and attitude the nature and condition of the brain and neurological system of the child. When this discovery has been made, however, it but prepares the way for further investigation to discover in what way abnormal or weak systems may be helped to become normal and strong.
One of the fundamental things to be done by scientists and educators is to discover the kinds of food adapted to different stages of the child’s growth, and to the varied functions of study and work required of him. By proper nutrition and by proper exercise much may be done to increase the power and efficiency of the body and the brain and the rest of the neurological system.
Dickens saw the need of attention to the problems of nutrition very clearly. He began to write about it in Oliver Twist.
He first exposed the horrors of baby farming, with its terrible percentage of deaths, resulting almost entirely from the villainous indifference to the diet of the children. Children yet die in homes from similar causes, or, if they do not die, they go through life weakened and dwarfed.
For the next eight or ten months Oliver was the victim of a systematic course of treachery and deception. He was brought up by hand. The hungry and destitute situation of the infant orphan was duly reported by the workhouse authorities to the parish authorities. The parish authorities inquired with dignity of the workhouse authorities whether there was no female then domiciled “in the house” who was in a situation to impart to Oliver Twist the consolation and nourishment of which he stood in need. The workhouse authorities replied with humility that there was not. Upon this the parish authorities magnanimously and humanely resolved that Oliver should be “farmed,” or, in other words, that he should be despatched to a branch workhouse some three miles off, where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders against the poor laws rolled about the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing, under the parental superintendence of an elderly female, who received the culprits at and for the consideration of sevenpence halfpenny per small head per week. Sevenpence halfpenny’s worth per week is a good round diet for a child; a great deal may be got for sevenpence halfpenny, quite enough to overload its stomach, and make it uncomfortable. The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children; and she had a very accurate perception of what was good for herself. So she appropriated the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned the rising parochial generation to even a shorter allowance than was originally provided for them. Thereby finding in the lowest depth a deeper still; and proving herself a very great experimental philosopher.
For the next eight or ten months Oliver was the victim of a systematic course of treachery and deception. He was brought up by hand. The hungry and destitute situation of the infant orphan was duly reported by the workhouse authorities to the parish authorities. The parish authorities inquired with dignity of the workhouse authorities whether there was no female then domiciled “in the house” who was in a situation to impart to Oliver Twist the consolation and nourishment of which he stood in need. The workhouse authorities replied with humility that there was not. Upon this the parish authorities magnanimously and humanely resolved that Oliver should be “farmed,” or, in other words, that he should be despatched to a branch workhouse some three miles off, where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders against the poor laws rolled about the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing, under the parental superintendence of an elderly female, who received the culprits at and for the consideration of sevenpence halfpenny per small head per week. Sevenpence halfpenny’s worth per week is a good round diet for a child; a great deal may be got for sevenpence halfpenny, quite enough to overload its stomach, and make it uncomfortable. The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children; and she had a very accurate perception of what was good for herself. So she appropriated the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned the rising parochial generation to even a shorter allowance than was originally provided for them. Thereby finding in the lowest depth a deeper still; and proving herself a very great experimental philosopher.
The system did not work well for the children.
For at the very moment when a child had contrived to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened from want or cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got half-smothered by accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable little being was usually summoned into another world, and there gathered to the fathers it had never known in this.It can not be expected that this system of farming would produce any very extraordinary or luxuriant crop. Oliver Twist’s ninth birthday found him a pale, thin child, somewhat diminutive in stature, and decidedly small in circumference. Itwashis ninth birthday; and he was keeping it in the coal cellar with a select party of two other young gentlemen, who, after participating with him in a sound thrashing, had been locked up for atrociously presuming to be hungry.
For at the very moment when a child had contrived to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened from want or cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got half-smothered by accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable little being was usually summoned into another world, and there gathered to the fathers it had never known in this.
It can not be expected that this system of farming would produce any very extraordinary or luxuriant crop. Oliver Twist’s ninth birthday found him a pale, thin child, somewhat diminutive in stature, and decidedly small in circumference. Itwashis ninth birthday; and he was keeping it in the coal cellar with a select party of two other young gentlemen, who, after participating with him in a sound thrashing, had been locked up for atrociously presuming to be hungry.
The famous meal in the workhouse when Oliver asked for more was intended to direct attention to the way children were fed and treated in institutions. The boys were fed on gruel.
Of this festive composition each boy had one porringer, and no more—except on occasions of great public rejoicing, when he had two ounces and a quarter of bread besides. The bowls never wanted washing. The boys polished them with their spoons till they shone again; and when they had performed this operation (which never took very long, the spoons being nearly as large as the bowls), they would sit staring at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed; employing themselves, meanwhile, in sucking their fingers most assiduously, with the view of catching up any stray splashes of gruel that might have been cast thereon. Boys have generally excellent appetites. Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months; at last they got so voracious and wild with hunger that one boy who was tall for his age, and hadn’t been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small cookshop), hinted darkly to his companions that unless he had another basin of gruelper diem, he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next to him, who happened to be a weakly youth of tender age. He had awild, hungry eye; and they implicitly believed him. A council was held; lots were cast who should walk up to the master after supper that evening, and ask for more; and it fell to Oliver Twist.The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook’s uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over a short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered each other and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:“Please, sir, I want some more.”The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralyzed with wonder; the boys with fear.“What!” said the master at length, in a faint voice.“Please, sir,” replied Oliver, “I want some more.”The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle; pinioned his arms; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said:“Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more.”There was a general start. Horror was depicted in every countenance.“Formore!” said Mr. Limbkins. “Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?”“He did, sir,” replied Bumble.“That boy will be hung,” said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. “I know that boy will be hung.”
Of this festive composition each boy had one porringer, and no more—except on occasions of great public rejoicing, when he had two ounces and a quarter of bread besides. The bowls never wanted washing. The boys polished them with their spoons till they shone again; and when they had performed this operation (which never took very long, the spoons being nearly as large as the bowls), they would sit staring at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed; employing themselves, meanwhile, in sucking their fingers most assiduously, with the view of catching up any stray splashes of gruel that might have been cast thereon. Boys have generally excellent appetites. Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months; at last they got so voracious and wild with hunger that one boy who was tall for his age, and hadn’t been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small cookshop), hinted darkly to his companions that unless he had another basin of gruelper diem, he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next to him, who happened to be a weakly youth of tender age. He had awild, hungry eye; and they implicitly believed him. A council was held; lots were cast who should walk up to the master after supper that evening, and ask for more; and it fell to Oliver Twist.
The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook’s uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over a short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered each other and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:
“Please, sir, I want some more.”
The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralyzed with wonder; the boys with fear.
“What!” said the master at length, in a faint voice.
“Please, sir,” replied Oliver, “I want some more.”
The master aimed a blow at Oliver’s head with the ladle; pinioned his arms; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.
The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said:
“Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more.”
There was a general start. Horror was depicted in every countenance.
“Formore!” said Mr. Limbkins. “Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?”
“He did, sir,” replied Bumble.
“That boy will be hung,” said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. “I know that boy will be hung.”
Having shown how infants were starved in “farming,” and how boys were starved in the workhouses, he next directed attention to the way apprentices were treated.
Mr. Sowerberry was an undertaker, who decided to take Oliver from the workhouse. He took Oliver “upon liking,” which meant that “if he could get enough work out of him without putting too much food into him, he should keep him for a term of years to do what he liked with him.”
When Oliver had been driven to desperation by Noah Claypole, and had punished him as he deserved, Mrs. Sowerberry sent for Mr. Bumble. When Mr. Bumble asked Oliver if he was not afraid of him, Oliver bravely answered “No!” The Beadle was petrified with amazement, and he accounted for Oliver’s wickedness by saying:
“It’s meat.”“What?” exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry.“Meat, ma’am, meat,” replied Bumble, with stern emphasis. “You’ve overfed him, ma’am. You’ve raised a artificial soul and spirit in him, ma’am, unbecoming a person of his condition; as the board, Mrs. Sowerberry, who are practical philosophers, will tell you. What have paupers to do with soul or spirit? It’s quite enough that we let ’em have live bodies. If you had kept the boy on gruel, ma’am, this would never have happened.”“Dear, dear!” ejaculated Mrs. Sowerberry, piously raising her eyes to the kitchen ceiling; “this comes of being liberal!”The liberality of Mrs. Sowerberry to Oliver had consisted in a profuse bestowal upon him of all the dirty odds and ends which nobody else would eat.
“It’s meat.”
“What?” exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry.
“Meat, ma’am, meat,” replied Bumble, with stern emphasis. “You’ve overfed him, ma’am. You’ve raised a artificial soul and spirit in him, ma’am, unbecoming a person of his condition; as the board, Mrs. Sowerberry, who are practical philosophers, will tell you. What have paupers to do with soul or spirit? It’s quite enough that we let ’em have live bodies. If you had kept the boy on gruel, ma’am, this would never have happened.”
“Dear, dear!” ejaculated Mrs. Sowerberry, piously raising her eyes to the kitchen ceiling; “this comes of being liberal!”
The liberality of Mrs. Sowerberry to Oliver had consisted in a profuse bestowal upon him of all the dirty odds and ends which nobody else would eat.
By this conversation Dickens meant to teach that a well-fed child is a different type from one who is not properly nourished; that food has an influence on the spirit, as well as on the body. He did not disapprove of Oliver’s spirit, but he heartily commended him for resenting the way he was treated. This lesson was needed too, as children were expected to submit uncomplainingly to those who were their legal guardians, whether strangers or parents. Now, largely through Dickens, children are not only encouraged to defend themselves against cruel and tyrannical guardians or parents, and to run away from them, but the state itself will take them away, ifcruelty is proved against those who should be their protectors.
Dickens also revealed by this incident the meanness of adults not only in institutions but in homes, in giving to the children the “odds and ends,” the scraps, the parts of the fowl or the meat that older people do not care for. He brought the matter up again in Great Expectations. At the Christmas dinner Pip “was regaled with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of the fowls, and with those obscure corners of pork of which the pig, when living, had least reason to be vain.”
One of the reasons given by Snawley to Squeers to induce him to take his stepsons at a lower rate was that “they were not great eaters.”
The selfishness of adulthood toward childhood, and the stupidity of the general idea, that children do not require good food because they are young and do not have to work hard, were held up to deserved ridicule, in Squeers’s manner of breakfasting in London, and the food he provided for the five hungry little boys to strengthen them for their long ride to Yorkshire in cold weather.
He found that learned gentleman sitting at breakfast, with the three little boys before noticed, and two others who had turned up by some lucky chance since the interview of the previous day, ranged in a row on the opposite seat. Mr. Squeers had before him a small measure of coffee, a plate of hot toast, and a cold round of beef; but he was at that moment intent on preparing breakfast for the little boys.“This is two penn’orth of milk, is it, waiter?” said Mr. Squeers, looking down into a large blue mug, and slanting it gently, so as to get an accurate view of the quantity of liquid contained in it.“That’s two penn’orth, sir,” replied the waiter.“What a rare article milk is, to be sure, in London!” said Mr. Squeers with a sigh. “Just fill that mug up with lukewarm water, William, will you?”“To the wery top, sir?” inquired the waiter. “Why, the milk will be drownded.”“Never you mind that,” replied Mr. Squeers. “Serveit right for being so dear. You ordered that thick bread and butter for three, did you?”“Coming directly, sir.”“You needn’t hurry yourself,” said Squeers; “there’s plenty of time. Conquer your passions, boys, and don’t be eager after vittles.” As he uttered this moral precept, Mr. Squeers took a large bite out of the cold beef, and recognised Nicholas.“Sit down, Mr. Nickleby,” said Squeers. “Here we are, a-breakfasting you see!”Nicholas didnotsee that anybody was breakfasting, except Mr. Squeers; but he bowed with all becoming reverence, and looked as cheerful as he could.“Oh! that’s the milk and water, is it, William?” said Squeers. “Very good; don’t forget the bread and butter presently.”At this fresh mention of the bread and butter the five little boys looked very eager, and followed the waiter out, with their eyes; meanwhile Mr. Squeers tasted the milk and water.“Ah!” said that gentleman, smacking his lips, “here’s richness! Think of the many beggars and orphans in the streets that would be glad of this, little boys. A shocking thing hunger is, isn’t it, Mr. Nickleby?”“Very shocking, sir,” said Nicholas.“When I say number one,” pursued Mr. Squeers, putting the mug before the children, “the boy on the left hand nearest the window may take a drink; and when I say number two, the boy next him will go in, and so till we come to number five, which is the last boy. Are you ready?”“Yes, sir,” cried the little boys with great eagerness.“That’s right,” said Squeers, calmly getting on with his breakfast; “keep ready till I tell you to begin. Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human natur. This is the way we inculcate strength of mind, Mr. Nickleby,” said the schoolmaster, turning to Nicholas, and speaking with his mouth very full of beef and toast.Nicholas murmured something—he knew not what—in reply; and the little boys, dividing their gaze between the mug, the bread and butter (which had by this time arrived), and every morsel which Mr. Squeers took into his mouth, remained with strained eyes in torments of expectation.“Thank God for a good breakfast,” said Squeers, when he had finished. “Number one may take a drink.”Number one received the mug ravenously, and had just drunk enough to make him wish for more, when Mr. Squeers gave the signal for number two, who gave up at the same interesting moment to number three; and the process was repeated until the milk and water terminated with number five.“And now,” said the schoolmaster, dividing the bread and butter for three into as many portions as there were children, “you had better look sharp with your breakfast, the horn will blow in a minute or two, and then every boy leaves off.”Permission being thus given to fall to, the boys began to eat voraciously, and in desperate haste, while the schoolmaster (who was in high good humour after his meal) picked his teeth with a fork, and looked smilingly on. In a very short time the horn was heard.“I thought it wouldn’t be long,” said Squeers, jumping up and producing a little basket from under the seat; “put what you haven’t had time to eat in here, boys! You’ll want it on the road!”
He found that learned gentleman sitting at breakfast, with the three little boys before noticed, and two others who had turned up by some lucky chance since the interview of the previous day, ranged in a row on the opposite seat. Mr. Squeers had before him a small measure of coffee, a plate of hot toast, and a cold round of beef; but he was at that moment intent on preparing breakfast for the little boys.
“This is two penn’orth of milk, is it, waiter?” said Mr. Squeers, looking down into a large blue mug, and slanting it gently, so as to get an accurate view of the quantity of liquid contained in it.
“That’s two penn’orth, sir,” replied the waiter.
“What a rare article milk is, to be sure, in London!” said Mr. Squeers with a sigh. “Just fill that mug up with lukewarm water, William, will you?”
“To the wery top, sir?” inquired the waiter. “Why, the milk will be drownded.”
“Never you mind that,” replied Mr. Squeers. “Serveit right for being so dear. You ordered that thick bread and butter for three, did you?”
“Coming directly, sir.”
“You needn’t hurry yourself,” said Squeers; “there’s plenty of time. Conquer your passions, boys, and don’t be eager after vittles.” As he uttered this moral precept, Mr. Squeers took a large bite out of the cold beef, and recognised Nicholas.
“Sit down, Mr. Nickleby,” said Squeers. “Here we are, a-breakfasting you see!”
Nicholas didnotsee that anybody was breakfasting, except Mr. Squeers; but he bowed with all becoming reverence, and looked as cheerful as he could.
“Oh! that’s the milk and water, is it, William?” said Squeers. “Very good; don’t forget the bread and butter presently.”
At this fresh mention of the bread and butter the five little boys looked very eager, and followed the waiter out, with their eyes; meanwhile Mr. Squeers tasted the milk and water.
“Ah!” said that gentleman, smacking his lips, “here’s richness! Think of the many beggars and orphans in the streets that would be glad of this, little boys. A shocking thing hunger is, isn’t it, Mr. Nickleby?”
“Very shocking, sir,” said Nicholas.
“When I say number one,” pursued Mr. Squeers, putting the mug before the children, “the boy on the left hand nearest the window may take a drink; and when I say number two, the boy next him will go in, and so till we come to number five, which is the last boy. Are you ready?”
“Yes, sir,” cried the little boys with great eagerness.
“That’s right,” said Squeers, calmly getting on with his breakfast; “keep ready till I tell you to begin. Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human natur. This is the way we inculcate strength of mind, Mr. Nickleby,” said the schoolmaster, turning to Nicholas, and speaking with his mouth very full of beef and toast.
Nicholas murmured something—he knew not what—in reply; and the little boys, dividing their gaze between the mug, the bread and butter (which had by this time arrived), and every morsel which Mr. Squeers took into his mouth, remained with strained eyes in torments of expectation.
“Thank God for a good breakfast,” said Squeers, when he had finished. “Number one may take a drink.”
Number one received the mug ravenously, and had just drunk enough to make him wish for more, when Mr. Squeers gave the signal for number two, who gave up at the same interesting moment to number three; and the process was repeated until the milk and water terminated with number five.
“And now,” said the schoolmaster, dividing the bread and butter for three into as many portions as there were children, “you had better look sharp with your breakfast, the horn will blow in a minute or two, and then every boy leaves off.”
Permission being thus given to fall to, the boys began to eat voraciously, and in desperate haste, while the schoolmaster (who was in high good humour after his meal) picked his teeth with a fork, and looked smilingly on. In a very short time the horn was heard.
“I thought it wouldn’t be long,” said Squeers, jumping up and producing a little basket from under the seat; “put what you haven’t had time to eat in here, boys! You’ll want it on the road!”
Young Wackford Squeers was fed on the fattest meats, so that he might be kept plump and energetic, in order that he might be taken to London to show intending patrons how well the boys were fed in Dotheboys Hall.
Again, in The Old Curiosity Shop, the starving of child servants is condemned by the way Sally Brass fed the Marchioness. Dick Swiveller’s curiosity led him to peep through a crack in the kitchen door one day while Sally was giving the little servant her dinner.
Everything was locked up; the coal cellar, the candle box, the salt box, the meat safe were all padlocked. There was nothing that a beetle could have lunched upon. The pinched and meagre aspect of the place would have killed a chameleon; he would have known, at the first mouthful, that the air was not eatable, and must have given up the ghost in despair.The small servant stood with humility in presence of Miss Sally, and hung her head.“Are you there?” said Miss Sally.“Yes, ma’am,” was the answer, in a weak voice.“Go farther away from the leg of mutton, or you’ll be picking it, I know,” said Miss Sally.The girl withdrew into a corner, while Miss Brass took a key from her pocket, and opening the safe, brought from it a dreary waste of cold potatoes, looking as eatable as Stonehenge. This she placed before the small servant, ordering her to sit down before it, and then, taking up a great carving knife, made a mighty show of sharpening it upon the carving fork.“Do you see this?” said Miss Brass, slicing off about two square inches of cold mutton, after all this preparation, and holding it out on the point of the fork.The small servant looked hard enough at it with her hungry eyes to see every shred in it, small as it was, and answered, “Yes.”“Then don’t you ever go and say,” retorted Miss Sally, “that you hadn’t meat here. There, eat it up.”This was soon done. “Now, do you want any more?” said Miss Sally.The hungry creature answered with a faint “No.” They were evidently going through an established form.“You’ve been helped once to meat,” said Miss Brass, summing up the facts; “you have had as much as you can eat, you’re asked if you want any more, and you answer ‘No!’ Then don’t you ever go and say you were allowanced, mind that.”
Everything was locked up; the coal cellar, the candle box, the salt box, the meat safe were all padlocked. There was nothing that a beetle could have lunched upon. The pinched and meagre aspect of the place would have killed a chameleon; he would have known, at the first mouthful, that the air was not eatable, and must have given up the ghost in despair.
The small servant stood with humility in presence of Miss Sally, and hung her head.
“Are you there?” said Miss Sally.
“Yes, ma’am,” was the answer, in a weak voice.
“Go farther away from the leg of mutton, or you’ll be picking it, I know,” said Miss Sally.
The girl withdrew into a corner, while Miss Brass took a key from her pocket, and opening the safe, brought from it a dreary waste of cold potatoes, looking as eatable as Stonehenge. This she placed before the small servant, ordering her to sit down before it, and then, taking up a great carving knife, made a mighty show of sharpening it upon the carving fork.
“Do you see this?” said Miss Brass, slicing off about two square inches of cold mutton, after all this preparation, and holding it out on the point of the fork.
The small servant looked hard enough at it with her hungry eyes to see every shred in it, small as it was, and answered, “Yes.”
“Then don’t you ever go and say,” retorted Miss Sally, “that you hadn’t meat here. There, eat it up.”
This was soon done. “Now, do you want any more?” said Miss Sally.
The hungry creature answered with a faint “No.” They were evidently going through an established form.
“You’ve been helped once to meat,” said Miss Brass, summing up the facts; “you have had as much as you can eat, you’re asked if you want any more, and you answer ‘No!’ Then don’t you ever go and say you were allowanced, mind that.”
Dickens showed the evil effects of eating too rapidly in his description of the dinner in Mrs. Pawkins’s boarding house in New York, where Martin Chuzzlewit boarded for a short time after reaching America.
It was a numerous company, eighteen or twenty perhaps. Of these, some five or six were ladies, who sat wedged together in a little phalanx by themselves. All the knives and forks were working away at a rate that was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and everybody seemed to eat his utmost in self-defence, as if a famine were expected to set in before breakfast time to-morrow morning, and it had become high time to assert the first law of Nature. The poultry, which may perhaps be considered to have formed the staple of the entertainment—for there was a turkey at the top, a pair of ducks at the bottom, and two fowls in the middle—disappeared as rapidly as if every bird had had the use of its wings,and had flown in desperation down a human throat. The oysters, stewed and pickled, leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and slid by scores into the mouths of the assembly. The sharpest pickles vanished, whole cucumbers at once, like sugarplums, and no man winked his eye. Great heaps of indigestible matter melted away as ice before the sun. It was a solemn and an awful thing to see. Dyspeptic individuals bolted their food in wedges; feeding not themselves, but broods of nightmares, who were continually standing at livery within them. Spare men, with lank and rigid cheeks, came out unsatisfied from the destruction of heavy dishes, and glared with watchful eyes upon the pastry. What Mrs. Pawkins felt each day at dinner time is hidden from all human knowledge. But she had one comfort. It was very soon over.
It was a numerous company, eighteen or twenty perhaps. Of these, some five or six were ladies, who sat wedged together in a little phalanx by themselves. All the knives and forks were working away at a rate that was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and everybody seemed to eat his utmost in self-defence, as if a famine were expected to set in before breakfast time to-morrow morning, and it had become high time to assert the first law of Nature. The poultry, which may perhaps be considered to have formed the staple of the entertainment—for there was a turkey at the top, a pair of ducks at the bottom, and two fowls in the middle—disappeared as rapidly as if every bird had had the use of its wings,and had flown in desperation down a human throat. The oysters, stewed and pickled, leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and slid by scores into the mouths of the assembly. The sharpest pickles vanished, whole cucumbers at once, like sugarplums, and no man winked his eye. Great heaps of indigestible matter melted away as ice before the sun. It was a solemn and an awful thing to see. Dyspeptic individuals bolted their food in wedges; feeding not themselves, but broods of nightmares, who were continually standing at livery within them. Spare men, with lank and rigid cheeks, came out unsatisfied from the destruction of heavy dishes, and glared with watchful eyes upon the pastry. What Mrs. Pawkins felt each day at dinner time is hidden from all human knowledge. But she had one comfort. It was very soon over.
Dickens repeats this criticism of rapid eating in his American Notes, when specifying the causes of disease among American people. He says: “The custom of hastily swallowing large quantities of animal food three times a day and rushing back to sedentary pursuits after each meal must be changed.”
Poor Paul Dombey was sacrificed to his father’s pride. Mrs. Toodle was dismissed by Mr. Dombey because she dared to take his infant son with her when she went to see her own children. Paul was thus robbed of the natural food, which his sensitive nature needed so much. This was largely responsible for the fact that Paul was delicate. By first depriving him of proper food, and then sending him to Doctor Blimber’s school “to learn everything,” Mr. Dombey led directly to Paul’s death. His pride and vanity overreached themselves.
In Mrs. Pipchin’s meals Dickens tried to show two things: First, the selfishness of adulthood in regard to children’s diet as compared with its own; second, the absolute insufficiency of the kind of food commonly supplied to children for building up strong, energetic, and well-developed men and women.
She regaled the children with a repast of “farinaceous and vegetable foods—chiefly rice,” but she herself had a good hot dinner with mutton chops.
The children were required to repeat a form of gracethanking Mrs. Pipchin for a good dinner. Oliver was told he must be thankful to the kind gentlemen who provided food for him in the workhouse. The same mockery of religion by mixing it up with the starvation of childhood is made ridiculous in the letter which Squeers read to the unfortunate children in Dotheboys Hall, pretending that it had been written by the stepmother of Mobbs.
“Mobbs’s stepmother,” said Squeers, “took to her bed on hearing that he wouldn’t eat fat, and has been very ill ever since. She wishes to know, by an early post, where he expects to go to if he quarrels with his vittles; and with what feelings he could turn up his nose at the cow’s liver’s broth, after his good master had asked a blessing on it.” “Cow’s liver’s broth” would not be a very strengthening diet for children even with the blessing of so good a man as Squeers upon it.
Dickens makes a characteristic hit at the fashionable idea which was popular at one time, that it was rather indelicate, especially in a lady, to have a good robust constitution and a vigorous digestion in describing Mr. Vholes in Bleak House. “His digestion was impaired, which is always highly respectable.”
Mrs. Cruncher, in A Tale of Two Cities, objected to the questionable ways in which Mr. Cruncher earned his money sometimes. Her husband charged her with flying in the face of Providence by refusing the “wittles and drink” he provided for her, and especially for neglecting to give it to their son. “With you flying into the face of your own wittles and drink! I don’t know how scarce you mayn’t make the wittles and drink here by your flopping tricks and your unfeeling conduct. Look at your boy: he is yourn, ain’t he? He’s as thin as a lath. Do you call yourself a mother, and not know a mother’s first duty is to blow her son out.”
Abel Magwitch, when describing the terrible training he received at the hands of a Christian community in the most advanced Christian civilization of the world, said that when he was in jail some philanthropists “measured his head to find out the cause of hiswickedness,” and added with great wisdom, “they had better a-measured my stomach.”
The folly of hoping that healthy infants can be nourished by mothers who are compelled to labour continuously through long hours without rest is shown in the description of the child whose mother was a waitress, in Somebody’s Luggage. Incidentally, too, Dickens reveals in this case the facts that the power of assimilation of little children is usually impaired, and that, as a consequence, they become more peevish, and therefore get shaken and otherwise abused for the ignorance of the adults responsible for their care. Speaking of the treatment of the baby, he says:
You were conveyed—ere yet your dawning powers were otherwise developed than to harbour vacancy in your inside—you were conveyed by surreptitious means into a pantry adjoining the Admiral Nelson, Civic and General Dining-Rooms, there to receive by stealth that healthful sustenance which is the pride and boast of the British female constitution. Under the combined influence of the smells of roast and boiled, and soup, and gas, and malt liquors, you partook of your earliest nourishment; your unwilling grandmother sitting prepared to catch you when your mother was called and dropped you; your grandmother’s shawl ever ready to stifle your natural complainings; your innocent mind surrounded by uncongenial cruets, dirty plates, dish covers, and cold gravy; your mother calling down the pipe for veals and porks, instead of soothing you with nursery rhymes. Under these untoward circumstances you were early weaned. Your unwilling grandmother, ever growing more unwilling as your food assimilated less, then contracted habits of shaking you till your system curdled, and your food would not assimilate at all.
You were conveyed—ere yet your dawning powers were otherwise developed than to harbour vacancy in your inside—you were conveyed by surreptitious means into a pantry adjoining the Admiral Nelson, Civic and General Dining-Rooms, there to receive by stealth that healthful sustenance which is the pride and boast of the British female constitution. Under the combined influence of the smells of roast and boiled, and soup, and gas, and malt liquors, you partook of your earliest nourishment; your unwilling grandmother sitting prepared to catch you when your mother was called and dropped you; your grandmother’s shawl ever ready to stifle your natural complainings; your innocent mind surrounded by uncongenial cruets, dirty plates, dish covers, and cold gravy; your mother calling down the pipe for veals and porks, instead of soothing you with nursery rhymes. Under these untoward circumstances you were early weaned. Your unwilling grandmother, ever growing more unwilling as your food assimilated less, then contracted habits of shaking you till your system curdled, and your food would not assimilate at all.
The schoolmaster in Jemmy Lirriper’s original story was captured and put into confinement for his treatment of the boys, and he was to have nothing to eat but the boys’ dinners, and was to drink half a cask of their beer every day.
The schoolboy in The Schoolboy’s Story describes the food given to the boys as one of the grievances they had against the institution.
As to the beef, it’s shameful. It’snotbeef. Regular beef isn’t veins. You can chew regular beef. Besides which, there’s gravy to regular beef, and you never see a drop to ours. Another of our fellows went home ill, and heard the family doctor tell his father that he couldn’t account for his complaint unless it was the beer. Of course it was the beer, and well it might be!However, beef and Old Cheeseman are two different things. So is beer. It was Old Cheeseman I meant to tell about; not the manner in which our fellows get their constitutions destroyed for the sake of profit.Why, look at the pie crust alone. There’s no flakiness in it. It’s solid—like damp lead. Then our fellows get nightmares, and are bolstered for calling out and waking other fellows. Who can wonder!Old Cheeseman one night walked in his sleep, put his hat on over his nightcap, got hold of a fishing rod and a cricket bat, and went down into the parlour, where they naturally thought from his appearance he was a Ghost. Why, he never would have done that if his meals had been wholesome. When we all begin to walk in our sleeps, I suppose they’ll be sorry for it.
As to the beef, it’s shameful. It’snotbeef. Regular beef isn’t veins. You can chew regular beef. Besides which, there’s gravy to regular beef, and you never see a drop to ours. Another of our fellows went home ill, and heard the family doctor tell his father that he couldn’t account for his complaint unless it was the beer. Of course it was the beer, and well it might be!
However, beef and Old Cheeseman are two different things. So is beer. It was Old Cheeseman I meant to tell about; not the manner in which our fellows get their constitutions destroyed for the sake of profit.
Why, look at the pie crust alone. There’s no flakiness in it. It’s solid—like damp lead. Then our fellows get nightmares, and are bolstered for calling out and waking other fellows. Who can wonder!
Old Cheeseman one night walked in his sleep, put his hat on over his nightcap, got hold of a fishing rod and a cricket bat, and went down into the parlour, where they naturally thought from his appearance he was a Ghost. Why, he never would have done that if his meals had been wholesome. When we all begin to walk in our sleeps, I suppose they’ll be sorry for it.
At Doctor Blimber’s school they used “to crib the boys’ dinners.” There is no more outrageous practice than that of depriving a child of food as a means of punishment.
Dickens ended his sketch entitled A Walk in a Workhouse with a plea on behalf of the inmates for “a little more liberty—and a little more bread,” and even in his last book, Edwin Drood, he was still directing attention to the poor food supplied in boarding schools.
Mrs. Billickin was very plain in her hints about the poor board supplied to Rosa at Miss Twinkleton’s when she received the schoolmistress in her own home. Referring to Rosa, who was now residing with Mrs. Billickin, she said:
“I did think it well to mention to my cook, which I ’ope you will agree with, Miss Twinkleton, was a right precaution, that the young lady being used to what we should consider here but poor diet, had better be brought forward by degrees. For a rush from scanty feeding to generous feeding, and from what you may call messing to what youmay call method, do require a power of constitution, which is not often found in youth, particularly when undermined by boarding school! I was put in youth to a very genteel boarding school, the mistress being no less a lady than yourself, of about your own age, or, it may be some years younger, and a poorness of blood flowed from the table which has run through my life.”
“I did think it well to mention to my cook, which I ’ope you will agree with, Miss Twinkleton, was a right precaution, that the young lady being used to what we should consider here but poor diet, had better be brought forward by degrees. For a rush from scanty feeding to generous feeding, and from what you may call messing to what youmay call method, do require a power of constitution, which is not often found in youth, particularly when undermined by boarding school! I was put in youth to a very genteel boarding school, the mistress being no less a lady than yourself, of about your own age, or, it may be some years younger, and a poorness of blood flowed from the table which has run through my life.”
MINOR SCHOOLS.
The schools of Squeers, Doctor Blimber, Mr. Creakle, Doctor Strong, and Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. M’Choakumchild are the most celebrated schools of Dickens, and they contain the greater part of his pedagogical teaching. His other schools are, however, worthy of very careful study.
One of the first of the Sketches by Boz described a man who had passed through many vicissitudes, and at length was reduced to such poverty that he applied to the parish board for charity. This led to his appointment as a schoolmaster. Dickens clearly intended to teach the lesson, afterward emphasized in Nicholas Nickleby and other books, that poverty should not establish a claim to the position of a school-teacher.
Minerva Hall, also in Sketches by Boz, reveals “one of those public nuisances, a spoiled child,” spoiled because his papa was too busy with public duties and his mamma with society duties to train him properly. It also shows the reason Mrs. Cornelius Brook Dingwall had for sending her daughter to school. She said: “One of my principal reasons for parting with my daughter is that she has lately acquired some sentimental ideas, which it is most desirable to eradicate from her young mind.” Here the public nuisance fell out of a chair, and mamma and papa showed their usual mode of training him. Mamma called him “a naughty boy,” and threatened “to send for James to take him away”—both name and threat being wrong. Papa merely excused the cherub on the ground of “his great flow of spirits.” The school also shows the silly training of so-called “finishing schools,”as chiefly intended to teach young ladies the small conventionalities of “society.”
In The Old Curiosity Shop there are four schools: Mr. Marton’s two schools, Mrs. Wackles’s school, and Miss Monflathers’s school. Mr. Marton’s first school was introduced to reveal all the good qualities that Mr. Squeers lacked, especially sympathy. Mr. Marton was the immediate successor of Mr. Squeers, and they possessed directly opposite traits of character in their relationship to childhood. Mr. Squeers was coarse, unsympathetic, and coercive. Mr. Marton was kind, considerate, and a perfect type of true sympathy with the child. It is reasonable to believe that Mr. Marton and Mr. Squeers were drawn as companion pictures to illustrate and enforce the same truth—that sympathy with the child is the fundamental element in the character of a true teacher.
The old bachelor emphasized this when he said to Mr. Marton, “You are none the worse teacher for having learned humanity.”
There is a great deal of food for psychological and pedagogical study in the introduction of the boys he was to teach in his second school, given by the bachelor to Mr. Marton. The bachelor was as full of genuine boyish spirit as it is possible for any adult to be, and was in some respects a more perfect type for an ideal teacher than Mr. Marton. Mr. Marton had the tender, spiritual sympathy of a true woman, the motherhood spirit that constitutes the atmosphere in which all right elements of childhood find their richest development; the bachelor had the perfect manly sympathy that enabled him to enter heartily into boy life. He had especially the power of recognising in the things for which boys are often rebuked the best evidences of their strength, and he could remember his own boyhood so well as to fully sympathizewiththe boys. Mr. Marton and the bachelor reveal the whole range of sympathetic possibilities.
When nothing more was left to be done he charged the boy to run off and bring his schoolmates to be marshalled before their new master and solemnly reviewed.“As good a set of fellows, Marton, as you’d wish tosee,” he said, turning to the schoolmaster when the boy was gone; “but I don’t let ’em know I think so. That wouldn’t do at all.”The messenger soon returned at the head of a long row of urchins, great and small, who, being confronted by the bachelor at the house door, fell into various convulsions of politeness; clutching their hats and caps, squeezing them into the smallest possible dimensions, and making all manner of bows and scrapes, which the little old gentleman contemplated with excessive satisfaction, and expressed his approval of by a great many nods and smiles. Indeed, his approbation of the boys was by no means so scrupulously disguised as he had led the schoolmaster to suppose, inasmuch as it broke out in sundry loud whispers and confidential remarks which were perfectly audible to them every one.“This first boy, schoolmaster,” said the bachelor, “is John Owen; a lad of good parts, sir, and frank, honest temper; but too thoughtless, too playful, too light-headed by far. That boy, my good sir, would break his neck with pleasure, and deprive his parents of their chief comfort—and between ourselves, when you come to see him at hare and hounds, taking the fence and ditch by the finger post, and sliding down the face of the little quarry, you’ll never forget it. It’s beautiful!”John Owen having been thus rebuked, and being in perfect possession of the speech aside, the bachelor singled out another boy.“Now look at that lad, sir,” said the bachelor. “You see that fellow? Richard Evans his name is, sir. An amazing boy to learn, blessed with a good memory and a ready understanding, and moreover with a good voice and ear for psalm singing, in which he is the best among us. Yet, sir, that boy will come to a bad end; he’ll never die in his bed; he’s always falling asleep in sermon time—and to tell you the truth, Mr. Marton, I always did the same at his age, and feel quite certain that it was natural to my constitution, and I couldn’t help it.”This hopeful pupil edified by the above terrible reproval, the bachelor turned to another.“But if we talk of examples to be shunned,” said he, “if we come to boys that should be a warning and a beacon to all their fellows, here’s the one, and I hope you won’t spare him. This is the lad, sir; this one with the blueeyes and light hair. This is a swimmer, sir, this fellow—a diver, Lord save us! This is a boy, sir, who had a fancy for plunging into eighteen feet of water, with his clothes on, and bringing up a blind man’s dog, who was being drowned by the weight of his chain and collar, while his master stood wringing his hands upon the bank, bewailing the loss of his guide and friend. I sent the boy two guineas anonymously, sir,” added the bachelor, in his peculiar whisper, “directly I heard of it; but never mention it on any account, for he hasn’t the least idea that it came from me.”Having disposed of this culprit, the bachelor turned to another, and from him to another, and so on through the whole array, laying, for their wholesome restriction within due bounds, the same cutting emphasis on such of their propensities as were dearest to his heart, and were unquestionably referable to his own precept and example. Thoroughly persuaded, in the end, that he had made them miserable by his severity, he dismissed them with a small present, and an admonition to walk quietly home, without any leapings, scufflings, or turnings out of the way; which injunction, he informed the schoolmaster in the same audible confidence, he did not think he could have obeyed when he was a boy had his life depended on it.
When nothing more was left to be done he charged the boy to run off and bring his schoolmates to be marshalled before their new master and solemnly reviewed.
“As good a set of fellows, Marton, as you’d wish tosee,” he said, turning to the schoolmaster when the boy was gone; “but I don’t let ’em know I think so. That wouldn’t do at all.”
The messenger soon returned at the head of a long row of urchins, great and small, who, being confronted by the bachelor at the house door, fell into various convulsions of politeness; clutching their hats and caps, squeezing them into the smallest possible dimensions, and making all manner of bows and scrapes, which the little old gentleman contemplated with excessive satisfaction, and expressed his approval of by a great many nods and smiles. Indeed, his approbation of the boys was by no means so scrupulously disguised as he had led the schoolmaster to suppose, inasmuch as it broke out in sundry loud whispers and confidential remarks which were perfectly audible to them every one.
“This first boy, schoolmaster,” said the bachelor, “is John Owen; a lad of good parts, sir, and frank, honest temper; but too thoughtless, too playful, too light-headed by far. That boy, my good sir, would break his neck with pleasure, and deprive his parents of their chief comfort—and between ourselves, when you come to see him at hare and hounds, taking the fence and ditch by the finger post, and sliding down the face of the little quarry, you’ll never forget it. It’s beautiful!”
John Owen having been thus rebuked, and being in perfect possession of the speech aside, the bachelor singled out another boy.
“Now look at that lad, sir,” said the bachelor. “You see that fellow? Richard Evans his name is, sir. An amazing boy to learn, blessed with a good memory and a ready understanding, and moreover with a good voice and ear for psalm singing, in which he is the best among us. Yet, sir, that boy will come to a bad end; he’ll never die in his bed; he’s always falling asleep in sermon time—and to tell you the truth, Mr. Marton, I always did the same at his age, and feel quite certain that it was natural to my constitution, and I couldn’t help it.”
This hopeful pupil edified by the above terrible reproval, the bachelor turned to another.
“But if we talk of examples to be shunned,” said he, “if we come to boys that should be a warning and a beacon to all their fellows, here’s the one, and I hope you won’t spare him. This is the lad, sir; this one with the blueeyes and light hair. This is a swimmer, sir, this fellow—a diver, Lord save us! This is a boy, sir, who had a fancy for plunging into eighteen feet of water, with his clothes on, and bringing up a blind man’s dog, who was being drowned by the weight of his chain and collar, while his master stood wringing his hands upon the bank, bewailing the loss of his guide and friend. I sent the boy two guineas anonymously, sir,” added the bachelor, in his peculiar whisper, “directly I heard of it; but never mention it on any account, for he hasn’t the least idea that it came from me.”
Having disposed of this culprit, the bachelor turned to another, and from him to another, and so on through the whole array, laying, for their wholesome restriction within due bounds, the same cutting emphasis on such of their propensities as were dearest to his heart, and were unquestionably referable to his own precept and example. Thoroughly persuaded, in the end, that he had made them miserable by his severity, he dismissed them with a small present, and an admonition to walk quietly home, without any leapings, scufflings, or turnings out of the way; which injunction, he informed the schoolmaster in the same audible confidence, he did not think he could have obeyed when he was a boy had his life depended on it.
What a model he was for teachers, this glorious bachelor, in his sympathywiththe boys, and in his unconventionality! When teachers begin to feel the grip of formalism on their better natures and begin to lose faith in so-called bad boys, they should read this introduction of the pupils by the bachelor. Bless his memory! he will always rank among the greatest child trainers.
His pretence of not letting the boys know that he thought they were good fellows was a pleasant rebuke of the miserable old doctrine that a boy should always be told his faults, but never be spoken to about his virtues. This false doctrine having been so carefully applied in homes and schools for centuries as a religious duty, based on the unscriptural doctrine of child depravity, has made a large portion of humanity in Christian countries mere defect dodgers, instead of making them conscious of power to do independent work for God and their fellow-men. Dickens had no faith in this doctrine, and hetaught that one of the highest things a teacher can do for a child is to recognise and show honest appreciation of his best powers and qualities. When superintendents search as carefully for the good qualities and powers of their teachers as some yet do for their weaknesses, and when they are so unconventional as to be able to show genuine appreciation frankly to the teachers themselves, the schools will reach their proper rate of progressive development.
Through the whole series of criticisms of the boys, Dickens is showing the full rich sympathy of his own great heart for the whole race of boys in the unreasonable and unjust criticism to which they are subjected by forgetful and ignorant adulthood. Those who should be wisest in these matters—and especially many who think themselves wise—are still very forgetful of their own early life, and very ignorant of boyhood.
Mrs. Wackles’s school was called a “Ladies’ Seminary,” but it was in reality “a very small day school for young ladies of proportionate dimensions.”
The several duties of instruction in this establishment were thus discharged: English grammar, composition, geography, and the use of the dumb-bells, by Miss Melissa Wackles; writing, arithmetic, dancing, music, and general fascination, by Miss Sophy Wackles; the art of needlework, marking, and samplery, by Miss Jane Wackles; corporal punishment, fasting, and other tortures and terrors, by Mrs. Wackles. Miss Melissa Wackles was the eldest daughter, Miss Sophy the next, and Miss Jane the youngest. Miss Melissa might have seen five-and-thirty summers or thereabout, and verged on the autumnal, Miss Sophy was a fresh, good-humoured, buxom girl of twenty; and Miss Jane numbered scarcely sixteen years. Mrs. Wackles was an excellent, but rather venomous old lady of threescore.
The several duties of instruction in this establishment were thus discharged: English grammar, composition, geography, and the use of the dumb-bells, by Miss Melissa Wackles; writing, arithmetic, dancing, music, and general fascination, by Miss Sophy Wackles; the art of needlework, marking, and samplery, by Miss Jane Wackles; corporal punishment, fasting, and other tortures and terrors, by Mrs. Wackles. Miss Melissa Wackles was the eldest daughter, Miss Sophy the next, and Miss Jane the youngest. Miss Melissa might have seen five-and-thirty summers or thereabout, and verged on the autumnal, Miss Sophy was a fresh, good-humoured, buxom girl of twenty; and Miss Jane numbered scarcely sixteen years. Mrs. Wackles was an excellent, but rather venomous old lady of threescore.
Mrs. Wackles’s school is described to show the frivolous nature of such so-called private educational institutions, and to strike again the abominable practice of abusing children by “corporal punishment, fasting, and other tortures and terrors” by “a venomous old lady of threescore.”
Miss Monflathers’s school was a boarding establishment for young ladies, in which they were duly impressed with the dignity of their social position; with the terrible danger of yielding in any way to their natural impulses, all of which were assumed to be very wicked; with the sinfulness of sympathizing with or in any way recognising the lower classes; with the impropriety of knowing the fact that there was any wrong in the world to be righted or any suffering to be relieved; with the inestimable value of aristocratic birth; and with the most important truth that men are very dangerous animals, to be carefully shunned.
Little Nell was sent to the establishment of Miss Monflathers with notices of Mrs. Jarley’s waxworks, being temporarily in the employ of that lady.
Nell had no difficulty in finding out Miss Monflathers’s Boarding and Day Establishment, which was a large house, with a high wall, and a large garden gate with a large brass plate, and a small grating through which Miss Monflathers’s parlour maid inspected all visitors before admitting them; for nothing in the shape of a man—no, not even a milkman—was suffered, without special license, to pass that gate. Even the taxgatherer, who was stout, and wore spectacles and a broadbrimmed hat, had the taxes handed through the grating. More obdurate than gate of adamant or brass, this gate of Miss Monflathers’s frowned on all mankind. The very butcher respected it as a gate of mystery, and left off whistling when he rang the bell.As Nell approached the awful door, it turned slowly upon its hinges with a creaking noise, and forth from the solemn grove beyond came a long file of young ladies, two and two, all with open books in their hands, and some with parasols likewise. And last of the goodly procession came Miss Monflathers, bearing herself a parasol of lilac silk, and supported by two smiling teachers, each mortally envious of the other, and devoted unto Miss Monflathers.Confused by the looks and whispers of the girls, Nell stood with downcast eyes and suffered the procession to pass on, until Miss Monflathers, bringing up the rear, approached her, when she courtesied and presented her little packet; on receipt whereof Miss Monflathers commanded that the line should halt.“You’re the waxwork child, are you not?” said Miss Monflathers.“Yes, ma’am,” replied Nell, colouring deeply, for the young ladies had collected about her, and she was the centre on which all eyes were fixed.“And don’t you think you must be a very wicked little child,” said Miss Monflathers, who was of rather uncertain temper, and lost no opportunity of impressing moral truths upon the tender minds of young ladies, “to be a waxwork child at all?”Poor Nell had never viewed her position in this light, and not knowing what to say, remained silent, blushing more deeply than before.“Don’t you know,” said Miss Monflathers, “that it’s very naughty and unfeminine, and a perversion of the properties wisely and benignantly transmitted to us, with expansive powers to be roused from their dormant state through the medium of cultivation?”“Don’t you feel how naughty it is of you,” resumed Miss Monflathers, “to be a waxwork child, when you might have the proud consciousness of assisting, to the extent of your infant powers, the manufactures of your country; of improving your mind by the constant contemplation of the steam engine; and of earning a comfortable and independent subsistence of from two and ninepence to three shillings per week? Don’t you know that the harder you are at work, the happier you are?”“‘How doth the little——’” murmured one of the teachers in quotation from Dr. Watts.“Eh?” said Miss Monflathers, turning smartly round. “Who said that?”“The little busy bee,” said Miss Monflathers, drawing herself up, “is applicable only to genteel children.‘In books, or work, or healthful play’is quite right as far as they are concerned; and the work means painting on velvet, fancy needlework, or embroidery. In such cases as these,” pointing to Nell with her parasol, “and in the case of all poor people’s children, we should read it thus:‘In work, work, work. In work alwayLet my first years be passed,That I may give for ev’ry daySome good account at last.’”Just then somebody happened to discover that Nell was crying, and all eyes were again turned toward her.There were indeed tears in her eyes, and drawing out her handkerchief to brush them away, she happened to let it fall. Before she could stoop to pick it up, one young lady of about fifteen or sixteen, who had been standing a little apart from the others, as though she had no recognised place among them, sprang forward and put it in her hand. She was gliding timidly away again, when she was arrested by the governess.“It was Miss Edwards who did that, Iknow,” said Miss Monflathers predictively. “Now I am sure that was Miss Edwards.”It was Miss Edwards, and everybody said it was Miss Edwards, and Miss Edwards herself admitted that it was.“Is it not,” said Miss Monflathers, putting down her parasol to take a severer view of the offender, “a most remarkable thing, Miss Edwards, that you have an attachment to the lower classes which always draws you to their sides; or, rather, is it not a most extraordinary thing that all I say and do will not wean you from propensities which your original station in life has unhappily rendered habitual to you, you extremely vulgar-minded girl?”“I really intended no harm, ma’am,” said a sweet voice. “It was a momentary impulse, indeed.”“An impulse!” repeated Miss Monflathers scornfully. “I wonder that you presume to speak of impulses to me”—both the teachers assented—“I am astonished”—both the teachers were astonished—“I suppose it is an impulse which induces you to take the part of every grovelling and debased person that comes in your way”—both the teachers supposed so too.“But I would have you know, Miss Edwards,” resumed the governess, in a tone of increased severity, “that you can not be permitted—if it be only for the sake of preserving a proper example and decorum in this establishment—that you can not be permitted, and that you shall not be permitted, to fly in the face of your superiors in this extremely gross manner. Ifyouhave no reason to feel a becoming pride before waxwork children, there are young ladies here who have, and you must either defer to those young ladies or leave the establishment, Miss Edwards.”This young lady, being motherless and poor, wasapprenticed at the school—taught for nothing—teaching others what she learned for nothing—boarded for nothing—lodged for nothing—and set down and rated as something immeasurably less than nothing, by all the dwellers in the house. The servant maids felt her inferiority, for they were better treated; free to come and go, and regarded in their stations with much more respect. The teachers were infinitely superior, for they had paid to go to school in their time, and were paid now. The pupils cared little for a companion who had no grand stories to tell about home; no friends to come with post horses, and be received in all humility, with cake and wine, by the governess; no deferential servant to attend and bear her home for the holidays; nothing genteel to talk about, and nothing to display. But why was Miss Monflathers always vexed and irritated with the poor apprentice—how did that come to pass?Why, the gayest feather in Miss Monflathers’s cap, and the brightest glory of Miss Monflathers’s school, was a baronet’s daughter—the real live daughter of a real live baronet—who, by some extraordinary reversal of the laws of Nature, was not only plain in features but dull in intellect, while the poor apprentice had both a ready wit and a handsome face and figure. It seems incredible. Here was Miss Edwards, who only paid a small premium which had been spent long ago, every day outshining and excelling the baronet’s daughter, who learned all the extras (or was taught them all), and whose half yearly bill came to double that of any other young lady’s in the school, making no account of the honour and reputation of her pupilage. Therefore, and because she was a dependent, Miss Monflathers had a great dislike to Miss Edwards, and was spiteful to her, and aggravated by her, and, when she had compassion on Little Nell, verbally fell upon and maltreated her, as we have already seen.“You will not take the air to-day, Miss Edwards,” said Miss Monflathers. “Have the goodness to retire to your own room, and not to leave it without permission.”The poor girl was moving hastily away, when she was suddenly, in a nautical phrase, “brought to” by a subdued shriek from Miss Monflathers.“She has passed me without any salute!” cried the governess, raising her eyes to the sky. “She has actually passed me without the slightest acknowledgment of my presence!”The young lady turned and courtesied. Nell could see that she raised her dark eyes to the face of her superior, and that their expression, and that of her whole attitude for the instant, was one of mute but most touching appeal against this ungenerous usage. Miss Monflathers only tossed her head in reply, and the great gate closed upon a bursting heart.
Nell had no difficulty in finding out Miss Monflathers’s Boarding and Day Establishment, which was a large house, with a high wall, and a large garden gate with a large brass plate, and a small grating through which Miss Monflathers’s parlour maid inspected all visitors before admitting them; for nothing in the shape of a man—no, not even a milkman—was suffered, without special license, to pass that gate. Even the taxgatherer, who was stout, and wore spectacles and a broadbrimmed hat, had the taxes handed through the grating. More obdurate than gate of adamant or brass, this gate of Miss Monflathers’s frowned on all mankind. The very butcher respected it as a gate of mystery, and left off whistling when he rang the bell.
As Nell approached the awful door, it turned slowly upon its hinges with a creaking noise, and forth from the solemn grove beyond came a long file of young ladies, two and two, all with open books in their hands, and some with parasols likewise. And last of the goodly procession came Miss Monflathers, bearing herself a parasol of lilac silk, and supported by two smiling teachers, each mortally envious of the other, and devoted unto Miss Monflathers.
Confused by the looks and whispers of the girls, Nell stood with downcast eyes and suffered the procession to pass on, until Miss Monflathers, bringing up the rear, approached her, when she courtesied and presented her little packet; on receipt whereof Miss Monflathers commanded that the line should halt.
“You’re the waxwork child, are you not?” said Miss Monflathers.
“Yes, ma’am,” replied Nell, colouring deeply, for the young ladies had collected about her, and she was the centre on which all eyes were fixed.
“And don’t you think you must be a very wicked little child,” said Miss Monflathers, who was of rather uncertain temper, and lost no opportunity of impressing moral truths upon the tender minds of young ladies, “to be a waxwork child at all?”
Poor Nell had never viewed her position in this light, and not knowing what to say, remained silent, blushing more deeply than before.
“Don’t you know,” said Miss Monflathers, “that it’s very naughty and unfeminine, and a perversion of the properties wisely and benignantly transmitted to us, with expansive powers to be roused from their dormant state through the medium of cultivation?”
“Don’t you feel how naughty it is of you,” resumed Miss Monflathers, “to be a waxwork child, when you might have the proud consciousness of assisting, to the extent of your infant powers, the manufactures of your country; of improving your mind by the constant contemplation of the steam engine; and of earning a comfortable and independent subsistence of from two and ninepence to three shillings per week? Don’t you know that the harder you are at work, the happier you are?”
“‘How doth the little——’” murmured one of the teachers in quotation from Dr. Watts.
“Eh?” said Miss Monflathers, turning smartly round. “Who said that?”
“The little busy bee,” said Miss Monflathers, drawing herself up, “is applicable only to genteel children.
‘In books, or work, or healthful play’
is quite right as far as they are concerned; and the work means painting on velvet, fancy needlework, or embroidery. In such cases as these,” pointing to Nell with her parasol, “and in the case of all poor people’s children, we should read it thus:
‘In work, work, work. In work alwayLet my first years be passed,That I may give for ev’ry daySome good account at last.’”
Just then somebody happened to discover that Nell was crying, and all eyes were again turned toward her.
There were indeed tears in her eyes, and drawing out her handkerchief to brush them away, she happened to let it fall. Before she could stoop to pick it up, one young lady of about fifteen or sixteen, who had been standing a little apart from the others, as though she had no recognised place among them, sprang forward and put it in her hand. She was gliding timidly away again, when she was arrested by the governess.
“It was Miss Edwards who did that, Iknow,” said Miss Monflathers predictively. “Now I am sure that was Miss Edwards.”
It was Miss Edwards, and everybody said it was Miss Edwards, and Miss Edwards herself admitted that it was.
“Is it not,” said Miss Monflathers, putting down her parasol to take a severer view of the offender, “a most remarkable thing, Miss Edwards, that you have an attachment to the lower classes which always draws you to their sides; or, rather, is it not a most extraordinary thing that all I say and do will not wean you from propensities which your original station in life has unhappily rendered habitual to you, you extremely vulgar-minded girl?”
“I really intended no harm, ma’am,” said a sweet voice. “It was a momentary impulse, indeed.”
“An impulse!” repeated Miss Monflathers scornfully. “I wonder that you presume to speak of impulses to me”—both the teachers assented—“I am astonished”—both the teachers were astonished—“I suppose it is an impulse which induces you to take the part of every grovelling and debased person that comes in your way”—both the teachers supposed so too.
“But I would have you know, Miss Edwards,” resumed the governess, in a tone of increased severity, “that you can not be permitted—if it be only for the sake of preserving a proper example and decorum in this establishment—that you can not be permitted, and that you shall not be permitted, to fly in the face of your superiors in this extremely gross manner. Ifyouhave no reason to feel a becoming pride before waxwork children, there are young ladies here who have, and you must either defer to those young ladies or leave the establishment, Miss Edwards.”
This young lady, being motherless and poor, wasapprenticed at the school—taught for nothing—teaching others what she learned for nothing—boarded for nothing—lodged for nothing—and set down and rated as something immeasurably less than nothing, by all the dwellers in the house. The servant maids felt her inferiority, for they were better treated; free to come and go, and regarded in their stations with much more respect. The teachers were infinitely superior, for they had paid to go to school in their time, and were paid now. The pupils cared little for a companion who had no grand stories to tell about home; no friends to come with post horses, and be received in all humility, with cake and wine, by the governess; no deferential servant to attend and bear her home for the holidays; nothing genteel to talk about, and nothing to display. But why was Miss Monflathers always vexed and irritated with the poor apprentice—how did that come to pass?
Why, the gayest feather in Miss Monflathers’s cap, and the brightest glory of Miss Monflathers’s school, was a baronet’s daughter—the real live daughter of a real live baronet—who, by some extraordinary reversal of the laws of Nature, was not only plain in features but dull in intellect, while the poor apprentice had both a ready wit and a handsome face and figure. It seems incredible. Here was Miss Edwards, who only paid a small premium which had been spent long ago, every day outshining and excelling the baronet’s daughter, who learned all the extras (or was taught them all), and whose half yearly bill came to double that of any other young lady’s in the school, making no account of the honour and reputation of her pupilage. Therefore, and because she was a dependent, Miss Monflathers had a great dislike to Miss Edwards, and was spiteful to her, and aggravated by her, and, when she had compassion on Little Nell, verbally fell upon and maltreated her, as we have already seen.
“You will not take the air to-day, Miss Edwards,” said Miss Monflathers. “Have the goodness to retire to your own room, and not to leave it without permission.”
The poor girl was moving hastily away, when she was suddenly, in a nautical phrase, “brought to” by a subdued shriek from Miss Monflathers.
“She has passed me without any salute!” cried the governess, raising her eyes to the sky. “She has actually passed me without the slightest acknowledgment of my presence!”
The young lady turned and courtesied. Nell could see that she raised her dark eyes to the face of her superior, and that their expression, and that of her whole attitude for the instant, was one of mute but most touching appeal against this ungenerous usage. Miss Monflathers only tossed her head in reply, and the great gate closed upon a bursting heart.
In addition to the gross evils of such institutions already suggested, Dickens exposed the cruelty of Miss Monflathers, as a type of Christian rectitude, toward Nell, whom she assumed to be very wicked, and the tendency of society to treat teachers with contempt, if they are not rich. The standard based on mere wealth is happily changing.
The tone of Miss Monflathers’s lofty criticism in language and thought, quite incomprehensible to the person admonished, is very true to the life in cases of conventional people, who take no pains to understand child nature or human nature in any phase, except its depravity.
The heartlessness of the distinction between the “genteel” children and poor children is clearly pointed out. There could scarcely be a more unchristlike thought than the one that would prohibit the children of the poor from the enjoyment of their natural tendency to play. No civilization in which either by deliberate purpose or by criminal negligence the children of the poorest are left without the privilege and the means for full free play should dare to call itself Christian. Yet Miss Monflathers’s parody aptly represented the practical outworking of civilization at the time of Dickens, and long since, too, in regard to poor children.
Miss Monflathers told Miss Edwards majestically that she “must not take the air to-day,” and contemptuously ordered her to remain in her room all day. This was written to condemn the common punishment of keeping children in at recess or confining them as a means of punishment. Dickens always thought it a crime against childhood to punish a child by robbing it of any of its natural rights to food, or fresh air, or free exercise.
The ecstasy of passion reached by Miss Monflathers because Miss Edwards passed her without saluting her showed Dickens’s attitude toward those who insisted and still insist on obeisance from those whom they are pleased to regard as “inferiors.” Public school education has been criticised because “it does not train poor children to courtesy to their superiors.” Any system deserves the support of all right-thinking people if it trains the children of the poorest to hold their heads up respectfully, and look the world squarely in the face without a debasing consciousness of inferiority. The greatest aim of education, so far as the individual is concerned, is freedom—spiritual freedom. Respect for properly constituted authority should become a part of every child’s consciousness, but this properly involves contempt for the arrogant assumption of certain people that certain other people should bow down in servile humility to them. Education must always be the enemy of tyranny, slavery, and all kinds of abasement.
The grinders’ school was introduced to ridicule the practice of forcing all children in charitable institutions to wear a uniform dress, and to attack corporal punishment, neglect of moral training, and the practice of placing ignorant men in the high position of a teacher. The teacher in the grinders’ school was “a superannuated old grinder of savage disposition, who had been appointed schoolmaster because he didn’t know anything, and wasn’t fit for anything, and for whose cruel cane all chubby little boys had a perfect fascination.” The practice of dressing all children alike, and of dressing them all without taste, is continued in most homes for orphan children still. Surely the poor orphans have suffered enough without subjecting them to the indignity of tasteless dressing. There might at least be a difference of taste in colour, for instance, for the blondes and the brunettes.
The school taught by Agnes in David Copperfield is mentioned to show that if a teacher works with a true spirit (Agnes was a splendid character for women to study with great care), teaching is a pleasant instead of an unhappy profession.
David said: “It is laborious, is it not?” “The labour is so pleasant,” she returned, “that it is scarcely grateful in me to call it by that name.”
The school attended by Uriah Heep and his father before him was described as an attack on the practice of instilling into the minds of poor children the consciousness of subserviency. David says: “I fully comprehended now for the first time (after hearing Uriah describe his training at school) what a base, unrelenting, and revengeful spirit must have been engendered by this early, and this long, suppression.”
The first school attended by Esther in Bleak House is apparently introduced to point out four evils in the social training of little children. The other children were all older than Esther; her godmother refused to allow her to accept invitations to go to the homes of the other girls; she was never allowed out to play; and while holidays were given on the birthdays of other girls, none were ever given on hers. The cruelty of two of these evils was made still more bitter by the revelation of the fact that she was not treated like other girls because of some wrong her mother was supposed to have done.
Miss Donny’s school at Greenleaf was a charming place, conducted in a “precise, exact, and orderly way.” Esther was taught well, and trained well. She was to be a governess, and so she taught as she learned. Her barren childhood made her sympathize with the girls whom she taught, especially the new girls, and she naturally won their love, and was therefore happy. Esther possessed every essential characteristic of a good teacher and a true woman. Miss Donny’s school is one of the schools in which Dickens was approving, not condemning.
Mr. Cripple’s academy is merely mentioned in Little Dorrit to complain about the habit of scribbling over buildings and on desks and walls in which boys used to indulge, and of which many evidences may yet be found on the fences and walls of the present day.
“The pupils of Mr. Cripple’s appeared to have been making a copy book of the street door, it was so extensively scribbled over in pencil.”
Pip’s early education, in Great Expectations, was received in Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s school.