Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt kept an evening school in the village; that is to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening, in the society of youth, who paid twopence per week each, for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented a small cottage, and Mr. Wopsle had the room upstairs, where we students used to overhear him reading aloud in a most dignified and terrific manner, and occasionally bumping on the ceiling. There was a fiction that Mr. Wopsle “examined” the scholars once a quarter. What he did on those occasions was to turn up his cuffs, stick up his hair, and give us Mark Antony’s oration over the body of Cæsar.Much of my unassisted self, and more by the help of Biddy than of Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, I struggled through the alphabet as if it had been a bramble bush; getting considerably worried and scratched by every letter. After that I fell among those thieves, the nine figures, who seemed every evening to do something new to disguise themselves and baffle recognition. But at last I began, in a purblind groping way, to read, write, and cipher on the very smallest scale.Biddy was Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s granddaughter; I confessed myself quite unequal to the working out of the problem, what relation she was to Mr. Wopsle.The educational scheme or course established by Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt may be resolved into the following synopsis: The pupils ate apples and put straws down one another’s backs, until Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt collected her energies, and made an indiscriminate totter at them with a birch rod. After receiving the charge with every mark of derision, the pupils formed in line and buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand to hand. The book had an alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a little spelling—that is to say, it had had once. As soon as this volume began to circulate, Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt fell into a state of coma, arising either from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils then entered among themselves upon a competitive examination on the subject of boots, with the view of ascertaining who could tread the hardest upon whose toes. This mental exercise lasteduntil Biddy made a rush at them and distributed three defaced Bibles (shaped as if they had been unskilfully cut off the chumped end of something), more illegibly printed at the best than any curiosities of literature I have since met with, speckled all over with iron mould, and having various specimens of the insect world smashed between their leaves. This part of the course was usually lightened by several single combats between Biddy and refractory students. When the fights were over, Biddy gave out the number of a page, and then we all read aloud what we could—or what we couldn’t—in a frightful chorus; Biddy leading with a high shrill monotonous voice, and none of us having the least notion of, or reverence for, what we were reading about. When this horrible din had lasted a certain time, it mechanically awoke Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, who staggered at a boy fortuitously, and pulled his ears. This was understood to terminate the course for the evening, and we emerged into the air with shrieks of intellectual victory.
Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt kept an evening school in the village; that is to say, she was a ridiculous old woman of limited means and unlimited infirmity, who used to go to sleep from six to seven every evening, in the society of youth, who paid twopence per week each, for the improving opportunity of seeing her do it. She rented a small cottage, and Mr. Wopsle had the room upstairs, where we students used to overhear him reading aloud in a most dignified and terrific manner, and occasionally bumping on the ceiling. There was a fiction that Mr. Wopsle “examined” the scholars once a quarter. What he did on those occasions was to turn up his cuffs, stick up his hair, and give us Mark Antony’s oration over the body of Cæsar.
Much of my unassisted self, and more by the help of Biddy than of Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, I struggled through the alphabet as if it had been a bramble bush; getting considerably worried and scratched by every letter. After that I fell among those thieves, the nine figures, who seemed every evening to do something new to disguise themselves and baffle recognition. But at last I began, in a purblind groping way, to read, write, and cipher on the very smallest scale.
Biddy was Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s granddaughter; I confessed myself quite unequal to the working out of the problem, what relation she was to Mr. Wopsle.
The educational scheme or course established by Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt may be resolved into the following synopsis: The pupils ate apples and put straws down one another’s backs, until Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt collected her energies, and made an indiscriminate totter at them with a birch rod. After receiving the charge with every mark of derision, the pupils formed in line and buzzingly passed a ragged book from hand to hand. The book had an alphabet in it, some figures and tables, and a little spelling—that is to say, it had had once. As soon as this volume began to circulate, Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt fell into a state of coma, arising either from sleep or a rheumatic paroxysm. The pupils then entered among themselves upon a competitive examination on the subject of boots, with the view of ascertaining who could tread the hardest upon whose toes. This mental exercise lasteduntil Biddy made a rush at them and distributed three defaced Bibles (shaped as if they had been unskilfully cut off the chumped end of something), more illegibly printed at the best than any curiosities of literature I have since met with, speckled all over with iron mould, and having various specimens of the insect world smashed between their leaves. This part of the course was usually lightened by several single combats between Biddy and refractory students. When the fights were over, Biddy gave out the number of a page, and then we all read aloud what we could—or what we couldn’t—in a frightful chorus; Biddy leading with a high shrill monotonous voice, and none of us having the least notion of, or reverence for, what we were reading about. When this horrible din had lasted a certain time, it mechanically awoke Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt, who staggered at a boy fortuitously, and pulled his ears. This was understood to terminate the course for the evening, and we emerged into the air with shrieks of intellectual victory.
The reasons for describing this school were to renew the attack on bad private schools, conducted without any state control and no supervision or inspection by competent officers, to show the need of better appliances and text-books, and to teach the utter folly of allowing pupils to try to read any book, especially the Bible, without understanding what they were reading. Incidentally Dickens taught that to use the Bible as it was used in Mr. Wopsle’s great-aunt’s school develops a lack of reverence for it. The evil of corporal punishment of the indiscriminate and irregular kind comes in for a share of condemnation in this wretched school.
Dickens returned to the attack on bad private schools in Our Mutual Friend. He had made a thorough study of the evening schools conducted in London—conducted many of them by organizations with good intentions.
There are a good many Sunday schools yet which in some respects are open to the criticisms made of Charley Hexam’s first school.
The school at which young Charley Hexam had first learned from a book—the streets being, for pupils of his degree, the great preparatory establishment, in whichvery much that is never unlearned is learned without and before book—was a miserable loft in an unsavoury yard. Its atmosphere was oppressive and disagreeable; it was crowded, noisy, and confusing; half the pupils dropped asleep, or fell into a state of stupefaction; the other half kept them in either condition by maintaining a monotonous droning noise, as if they were performing, out of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bagpipe. The teachers, animated solely by good intentions, had no idea of execution, and a lamentable jumble was the upshot of their kind endeavours.It was a school for all ages and for both sexes. The latter were kept apart, and the former were partitioned off into square assortments. But all the place was pervaded by a grimly ludicrous pretence that every pupil was childish and innocent. This pretence, much favoured by the lady visitors, led to the ghastliest absurdities. Young women, old in the vices of the commonest and worst life, were expected to profess themselves enthralled by the good child’s book, the Adventures of Little Margery, who resided in the village cottage by the mill; severely reproved and morally squashed the miller, when she was five and he was fifty; divided her porridge with singing birds; denied herself a new nankeen bonnet, on the ground that the turnips did not wear nankeen bonnets, neither did the sheep, who ate them; who plaited straw and delivered the dreariest orations to all comers, at all sorts of unseasonable times. So unwieldy young dredgers and hulking mudlarks were referred to the experiences of Thomas Twopence, who, having resolved not to rob (under circumstances of uncommon atrocity) his particular friend and benefactor, of eighteenpence, presently came into supernatural possession of three and sixpence, and lived a shining light ever afterward. (Note, that the benefactor came to no good.) Several swaggering sinners had written their own biographies in the same strain; it always appearing from the lessons of those very boastful persons that you were to do good, not because itwasgood, but because you were to make a good thing of it. Contrariwise, the adult pupils were taught to read (if they could learn) out of the New Testament; and by dint of stumbling over the syllables and keeping their bewildered eyes on the particular syllables coming round to their turn, were as absolutely ignorant of the sublimehistory as if they had never seen or heard of it. An exceedingly and confoundingly perplexing jumble of a school, in fact, where black spirits and gray, red spirits and white, jumbled, jumbled, jumbled, jumbled, jumbled every night. And particularly every Sunday night. For then an inclined plane of unfortunate infants would be handed over to the prosiest and worst of all the teachers with good intentions, whom nobody older would endure. Who, taking his stand on the floor before them, as chief executioner, would be attended by a conventional volunteer boy as executioner’s assistant. When and where it first became the conventional system that a weary or inattentive infant in a class must have its face smoothed downward with a hot hand, or when or where the conventional volunteer boy first beheld such system in operation, and became inflamed with a sacred zeal to administer it, matters not. It was the function of the chief executioner to hold forth, and it was the function of the acolyte to dart at sleeping infants, yawning infants, restless infants, whimpering infants, and smooth their wretched faces, sometimes with one hand, as if he were anointing them for a whisker; sometimes with both hands, applied after the fashion of blinkers. And so the jumble would be in action in this department for a mortal hour; the exponent drawling on to my dearerr childerrenerr, let us say for example, about the beautiful coming to the sepulchre; and repeating the word sepulchre (commonly used among infants) five hundred times and never once hinting what it meant; the conventional boy smoothing away right and left, as an infallible commentary; the whole hotbed of flushed and exhausted infants exchanging measles, rashes, whooping-cough, fever, and stomach disorders, as if they were assembled in High Market for the purpose.Even in this temple of good intentions, an exceptionally sharp boy exceptionally determined to learn, could learn something, and, having learned it, could impart it so much better than the teachers; as being more knowing than they, and not at the disadvantage in which they stood toward the shrewder pupils. In this way it had come about that Charley Hexam had risen in the jumble, taught in the jumble, and been received from the jumble into a better school.
The school at which young Charley Hexam had first learned from a book—the streets being, for pupils of his degree, the great preparatory establishment, in whichvery much that is never unlearned is learned without and before book—was a miserable loft in an unsavoury yard. Its atmosphere was oppressive and disagreeable; it was crowded, noisy, and confusing; half the pupils dropped asleep, or fell into a state of stupefaction; the other half kept them in either condition by maintaining a monotonous droning noise, as if they were performing, out of time and tune, on a ruder sort of bagpipe. The teachers, animated solely by good intentions, had no idea of execution, and a lamentable jumble was the upshot of their kind endeavours.
It was a school for all ages and for both sexes. The latter were kept apart, and the former were partitioned off into square assortments. But all the place was pervaded by a grimly ludicrous pretence that every pupil was childish and innocent. This pretence, much favoured by the lady visitors, led to the ghastliest absurdities. Young women, old in the vices of the commonest and worst life, were expected to profess themselves enthralled by the good child’s book, the Adventures of Little Margery, who resided in the village cottage by the mill; severely reproved and morally squashed the miller, when she was five and he was fifty; divided her porridge with singing birds; denied herself a new nankeen bonnet, on the ground that the turnips did not wear nankeen bonnets, neither did the sheep, who ate them; who plaited straw and delivered the dreariest orations to all comers, at all sorts of unseasonable times. So unwieldy young dredgers and hulking mudlarks were referred to the experiences of Thomas Twopence, who, having resolved not to rob (under circumstances of uncommon atrocity) his particular friend and benefactor, of eighteenpence, presently came into supernatural possession of three and sixpence, and lived a shining light ever afterward. (Note, that the benefactor came to no good.) Several swaggering sinners had written their own biographies in the same strain; it always appearing from the lessons of those very boastful persons that you were to do good, not because itwasgood, but because you were to make a good thing of it. Contrariwise, the adult pupils were taught to read (if they could learn) out of the New Testament; and by dint of stumbling over the syllables and keeping their bewildered eyes on the particular syllables coming round to their turn, were as absolutely ignorant of the sublimehistory as if they had never seen or heard of it. An exceedingly and confoundingly perplexing jumble of a school, in fact, where black spirits and gray, red spirits and white, jumbled, jumbled, jumbled, jumbled, jumbled every night. And particularly every Sunday night. For then an inclined plane of unfortunate infants would be handed over to the prosiest and worst of all the teachers with good intentions, whom nobody older would endure. Who, taking his stand on the floor before them, as chief executioner, would be attended by a conventional volunteer boy as executioner’s assistant. When and where it first became the conventional system that a weary or inattentive infant in a class must have its face smoothed downward with a hot hand, or when or where the conventional volunteer boy first beheld such system in operation, and became inflamed with a sacred zeal to administer it, matters not. It was the function of the chief executioner to hold forth, and it was the function of the acolyte to dart at sleeping infants, yawning infants, restless infants, whimpering infants, and smooth their wretched faces, sometimes with one hand, as if he were anointing them for a whisker; sometimes with both hands, applied after the fashion of blinkers. And so the jumble would be in action in this department for a mortal hour; the exponent drawling on to my dearerr childerrenerr, let us say for example, about the beautiful coming to the sepulchre; and repeating the word sepulchre (commonly used among infants) five hundred times and never once hinting what it meant; the conventional boy smoothing away right and left, as an infallible commentary; the whole hotbed of flushed and exhausted infants exchanging measles, rashes, whooping-cough, fever, and stomach disorders, as if they were assembled in High Market for the purpose.
Even in this temple of good intentions, an exceptionally sharp boy exceptionally determined to learn, could learn something, and, having learned it, could impart it so much better than the teachers; as being more knowing than they, and not at the disadvantage in which they stood toward the shrewder pupils. In this way it had come about that Charley Hexam had risen in the jumble, taught in the jumble, and been received from the jumble into a better school.
Dickens slaughtered evils by wholesale in this brief description. The influence of the great preparatoryestablishment, the street, was brought to the notice of thinking people.
The need of ventilation was pointed out, and the evil of crowding a large number of pupils into poorly ventilated rooms was made very clear. “Half the pupils dropped asleep, or fell into a state of waking stupefaction.”
The teachers were untrained. “They were animated solely by good intentions, and had no idea of execution.” The consequence was a lamentable jumble.
The separation of the sexes was not approved.
The stupid blunder of treating all pupils alike, without regard to heredity, environment, or past experience, is aptly caricatured in giving the Adventures of Little Margery and the Experiences of Thomas Twopence to young women old in vice and to young male criminals in order to reform them.
Incidentally he disapproves of such literature for any children, and also of the autobiographies of “swaggering sinners.”
The error pointed out in Pip’s education of using the New Testament as a book from which pupils should be taught how to read is emphasized. “By dint of stumbling over the syllables and keeping their bewildered eyes on the particular syllables coming round to their turn, they were as absolutely ignorant of the sublime history as if they had never seen or heard of it.”
He criticised severely the old custom of giving least attention to the choice of a teacher for the little ones. The old theory was: they can not learn much any way; anybody will do to teach them. “The inclined plane of unfortunate infants would be handed over to the prosiest and worst of all the teachers of good intentions, whom nobody older would endure.”
The dreadful practice, still kept up in some heathen-producing Sunday schools, of having an “executioner’s assistant to keep order,” is severely condemned. “It was the function of the acolyte to dart at sleeping infants, restless infants, whimpering infants, and smooth, their wretched faces.” The irritating influence of this operationon the suffering infants and the degrading effect on the executioner’s assistant himself are clearly indicated.
But the greatest cruelty was in having the infants talked at in a droning voice for an hour by the chief executioner in a voice that would sometimes deaden, sometimes irritate their nervous systems, and in language they could not comprehend, about subjects entirely foreign to their experiences.
The danger of spreading contagious diseases in such badly ventilated schools was shown. Dickens was a leader in the department of sanitation both in homes and in schools.
The schools taught by Bradley Headstone and Miss Peecher were
newly built, and there were so many like them all over the country, that one might have thought the whole were but one restless edifice with the locomotive gift of Aladdin’s palace.All things in these schools—buildings, teachers, and pupils—were according to pattern, and engendered in the light of the latest Gospel according to Monotony.
newly built, and there were so many like them all over the country, that one might have thought the whole were but one restless edifice with the locomotive gift of Aladdin’s palace.
All things in these schools—buildings, teachers, and pupils—were according to pattern, and engendered in the light of the latest Gospel according to Monotony.
These brief descriptions contained volumes of protest against the dead uniformity of school architecture, and against the sacrifice of individuality in schools. There are no other buildings in which there should be more care taken to have truly artistic architecture than in schools, because the children are influenced so much by their environment. Correct taste may be formed more easily and more definitely by making the places in which children spend so much of their lives truly artistic than by studying the best authorities. The child’s spirits should be toned by the colouring of the walls of the schoolroom, and by the pictures, statues, and other artistic articles around them.
The phrase “Gospel according to Monotony” is one of the most effective phrases ever used to describe the destruction of individuality.
The Peecher-Headstone schools were described as one of several protests against separating little girls from little boys in schools.
Phœbe, the happy young woman, who had never been able to sit up since she had been dropped by her mother when she was in a fit, is one of the sweetest of the characters of Dickens. She lay on a couch as high as the window and enjoyed the view as she made lace. She taught a little school part of the day, and when Barbox Brothers was at Mugby Junction he heard the children singing in the school, and watched them trooping home happily till he became so interested in what was going on in the little cottage that he went in to investigate. He found a small but very clean room, with no one there but Phœbe lying on her couch. He asked her if she was learned in the new system of teaching, meaning the kindergarten system, because he had heard her children singing as he passed.
“No,” she said, “I am very fond of children, but I know nothing of teaching, beyond the interest I have in it, and the pleasure it gives me, when they learn. I have only read and been told about the new system. It seemed so pretty and pleasant, and to treat them so like the merry robins they are, that I took up with it in my little way. My school is a pleasure to me. I began it, when I was but a child, because it brought me and other children into company, don’t you see? I carry it on still, because it keeps children about me. I do it as love, not as work.”
“No,” she said, “I am very fond of children, but I know nothing of teaching, beyond the interest I have in it, and the pleasure it gives me, when they learn. I have only read and been told about the new system. It seemed so pretty and pleasant, and to treat them so like the merry robins they are, that I took up with it in my little way. My school is a pleasure to me. I began it, when I was but a child, because it brought me and other children into company, don’t you see? I carry it on still, because it keeps children about me. I do it as love, not as work.”
What a beautiful school! What an ideal spirit for every true teacher! What a wise man Dickens was to reveal so much sweetness and trueness in the life of such a woman as Phœbe! When Phœbe had overcome her restrictions so triumphantly, surely every one who dares to teach should try to rise above personal infirmities, and treat children like the “merry robins that they are.”
The Holiday Romance, in which three young children write romances for the edification of their adult friends and relatives, to show how adult treatment impresses young children, is usually regarded as merely an exquisite piece of humour. In writing to Mr. Fields about the story Dickens said: “It made me laugh to that extent, that my people here thought I was out of my wits, until I gave it to them to read, when they did likewise.”
There is more philosophy than fun in these stories, however, and when carefully studied they should aid in the “education of the grown-up people”—not merely the “grown-ups” for whom they were intended, but all “grown-ups.” This is especially true of the last story, written by Miss Nettie Ashford, aged “half-past-six.”
The story is about Mrs. Lemon’s school and Mrs. Orange’s family.
“The grown-up people” were the children in Nettie’s story, and the children were the managers of all things at home and at school.
Mrs. Orange went to Mrs. Lemon’s and told her that “her children were getting positively too much for her.” She had two parents, two intimate friends of theirs, one godfather, two godmothers, and an aunt. She wished to send them to school, because they were “getting too much for her.” Many real mothers give the same reason.
“Have you as many as eight vacancies?”“I have just eight, ma’am,” said Mrs. Lemon.“Corporal punishment dispensed with?”“Why, we do occasionally shake,” said Mrs. Lemon, “and we have slapped. But only in extreme cases.”
“Have you as many as eight vacancies?”
“I have just eight, ma’am,” said Mrs. Lemon.
“Corporal punishment dispensed with?”
“Why, we do occasionally shake,” said Mrs. Lemon, “and we have slapped. But only in extreme cases.”
Mrs. Orange was shown through the school, and had the bad “grown-ups” pointed out to her and their evil propensities explained to her in their hearing, as naturally as in a real school. She decided to send her family, and went home with her baby—which was a doll—saying, “These troublesome troubles are got rid of, please the pigs.”
A small party for the grown-up children was given by Mrs. Alicumpaine, and the arrangements made for the adults, and the ways in which they were treated by their child masters, and the criticisms on the way the seniors behaved are all instructive to thoughtful parents. The real things that adult people say and do appear delightfully stupid or exquisitely silly when made to appear as said and done by children.
When Mr. and Mrs. Orange were going home they passed the establishment of Mrs. Lemon, and necessarily thought of their eight adult pupils who were there.“I wonder, James, dear,” said Mrs. Orange, looking up at the window, “whether the precious children are asleep!”“I don’t care much whether they are or not, myself,” said Mr. Orange.“James, dear!”“You dote upon them, you know,” said Mr. Orange. “That’s another thing.”“I do,” said Mrs. Orange rapturously. “Oh, I do!”“I don’t,” said Mr. Orange.“But, I was thinking, James, love,” said Mrs. Orange, pressing his arm, “whether our dear, good, kind Mrs. Lemon would like them to stay the holidays with her.”“If she was paid for it, I dare say she would,” said Mr. Orange.“I adore them, James,” said Mrs. Orange, “butsupposewe pay her, then.”This was what brought the country to such perfection, and made it such a delightful place to live in. The grown-up people (that would be in other countries) soon left off being allowed any holidays after Mr. and Mrs. Orange tried the experiment; and the children (that would be in other countries) kept them at school as long as ever they lived, and made them do whatever they were told.
When Mr. and Mrs. Orange were going home they passed the establishment of Mrs. Lemon, and necessarily thought of their eight adult pupils who were there.
“I wonder, James, dear,” said Mrs. Orange, looking up at the window, “whether the precious children are asleep!”
“I don’t care much whether they are or not, myself,” said Mr. Orange.
“James, dear!”
“You dote upon them, you know,” said Mr. Orange. “That’s another thing.”
“I do,” said Mrs. Orange rapturously. “Oh, I do!”
“I don’t,” said Mr. Orange.
“But, I was thinking, James, love,” said Mrs. Orange, pressing his arm, “whether our dear, good, kind Mrs. Lemon would like them to stay the holidays with her.”
“If she was paid for it, I dare say she would,” said Mr. Orange.
“I adore them, James,” said Mrs. Orange, “butsupposewe pay her, then.”
This was what brought the country to such perfection, and made it such a delightful place to live in. The grown-up people (that would be in other countries) soon left off being allowed any holidays after Mr. and Mrs. Orange tried the experiment; and the children (that would be in other countries) kept them at school as long as ever they lived, and made them do whatever they were told.
This story was written about two years before the death of Dickens, so it represents his maturest thought. Its great fundamental motive was Froebel’s motto, “Come, let us live with our children.” It was a trenchant, though humorous criticism of the methods of treating children practised by adults, at home and at school. Mrs. Orange’s adoration for children, while at the same time she was proposing to keep them at school during the holidays, is very suggestive to those mothers who in society talk so much about their “precious darlings,” but who keep them in the nursery so that they have no share in the family life. The practice of calling children bad and describing their supposed evil propensities in the presence of others is also condemned in this story.
One of the very best of the stories of Dickens to show his perfect sympathy with boyhood is the story told by Jemmy Jackman Lirriper about “the boy who went to school in Rutlandshire.”
It reveals the feelings of boys to the “Tartars” who teach school, as the boys, when they got control, put the Tartar into confinement and “forced him to eat the boys’ dinners and drink half a cask of their beer every day.”
It reveals, too, the psychological condition of a healthy boy just entering the adolescent period, if he has been fortunate enough to have had a life of love and freedom at home; with his heart filled with love for the schoolmaster’s daughter Seraphina, and his mind filled with hopeful dreams of success, and triumph, and fortune, and happiness ever afterward, not excluding those who had nurtured him, but sharing all with them, and finding his greatest joy in their affectionate pride at his success. Blessed is the boy who has such glorious experiences and such hopeful dreams in his later boyhood and onward, and thrice blessed is he who finds in parenthood hearts so reverently sympathetic that it is natural for the young heart to overflow into them.
“But such dreams can never come true.” They are true. Nothing is ever more true for the stage of evolution in which they naturally fill the life of the child. To stop them is a crime; to shut them up in the heart of the boy or girl makes them a source of great danger instead of an essential element in the ennoblement of character.
Let the boy dream on, and help him to dream by sympathetically sharing his visions with him. His own visions and the most wonderful visions of heroism and adventure dreamed by the best authors should fill his life during the most important stage of his growth, adolescence, when the elements of his manhood are rushing into his life and require an outlet in the ideal life as a preparation for the real life of later days.
Dickens recognises, too, in this story the great truth so little used by educators, that the child’s imagination is not restricted by any conditions of impossibility or byany laws of Nature or of man. The ideal transcends the real, the desired is accomplished. Development is rapid under such conditions.
“And was there no quarrelling,” asked Mrs. Lirriper, “after the boy and his boy friend had gained high renown, and unlimited stores of gold, and had married Seraphina and her sister, and had come to live with Gran and Godfather forever, and the story was ended?”“No! Nobody ever quarrelled.”“And did the money never melt away?”“No! Nobody could ever spend it all.”“And did none of them ever grow older?”“No! Nobody ever grew older after that.”“And did none of them ever die?”“O, no, no, no, Gran!” exclaimed our dear boy, laying his cheek upon her breast, and drawing her closer to him. “Nobody ever died.”“Ah, Major, Major!” says Mrs. Lirriper, smiling benignly upon me, “this beats our stories. Let us end with the Boy’s Story, Major, for the Boy’s Story is the best that is ever told.”
“And was there no quarrelling,” asked Mrs. Lirriper, “after the boy and his boy friend had gained high renown, and unlimited stores of gold, and had married Seraphina and her sister, and had come to live with Gran and Godfather forever, and the story was ended?”
“No! Nobody ever quarrelled.”
“And did the money never melt away?”
“No! Nobody could ever spend it all.”
“And did none of them ever grow older?”
“No! Nobody ever grew older after that.”
“And did none of them ever die?”
“O, no, no, no, Gran!” exclaimed our dear boy, laying his cheek upon her breast, and drawing her closer to him. “Nobody ever died.”
“Ah, Major, Major!” says Mrs. Lirriper, smiling benignly upon me, “this beats our stories. Let us end with the Boy’s Story, Major, for the Boy’s Story is the best that is ever told.”
Miss Pupford’s school in Tom Tiddler’s Ground reveals the foolish conventional formalism of some teachers before their pupils; exposes the pretences of some teachers in private schools—“Miss Pupford’s assistant with the Parisian accent, who never conversed with a Parisian and never was out of England”; and condemns the practice of sending mere children long distances from home to be trained and educated: “Kitty Kimmeens had to remain behind in Miss Pupford’s school during the holidays, because her friends and relations were all in India, far away.”
In Edwin Drood Dickens had begun a description of the school: “On the trim gate inclosing the courtyard of which is a resplendent brass plate flashing forth the legend: ‘Seminary for Young Ladies. Miss Twinkleton.’”
The chief thing revealed by the brief description given of it is the formal conventionality of most teachers in such institutions, the unreality of manner and tone and character shown by most teachers in the schoolroom.
How much greater Miss Twinkleton’s power wouldhave been to help in developing human hearts and heads, if she could have been more truly human during the day! She did not deceive the young ladies either by her formalism. They merely said, “What a pretending old thing Miss Twinkleton is!”
When the rumour of the quarrel between Neville Landless and Edwin Drood reached the seminary, and began to cause dangerous excitement among the young ladies, Miss Twinkleton deemed it her duty to quiet their minds.
It was reserved for Miss Twinkleton to tone down the public mind of the Nuns’ House. That lady, therefore, entering in a stately manner what plebeians might have called the schoolroom, but what, in the patrician language of the head of the Nuns’ House, was euphuistically, not to say roundaboutedly, denominated “the apartment allotted to study,” and saying with a forensic air, “Ladies!” all rose. Mrs. Tisher at the same time grouped herself behind her chief, as representing Queen Elizabeth’s first historical female friend at Tilbury Fort. Miss Twinkleton then proceeded to remark that Rumour, ladies, had been represented by the Bard of Avon—needless were it to mention the immortal Shakespeare, also called the Swan of his native river, not improbably with some reference to the ancient superstition that that bird of graceful plumage (Miss Jennings will please stand upright) sung sweetly on the approach of death, for which we have no ornithological authority—Rumour, ladies, had been represented by that bard—hem!—“Who drewThe celebrated Jew,”as painted full of tongues. Rumour in Cloisterham (Miss Ferdinand will honour me with her attention) was no exception to the great limner’s portrait of Rumour elsewhere. A slightfracasbetween two young gentlemen occurring last night within a hundred miles of these peaceful walls (Miss Ferdinand, being apparently incorrigible, will have the kindness to write out this evening, in the original language, the first four fables of our vivacious neighbour, Monsieur La Fontaine) had been very grossly exaggerated by Rumour’s voice. In the first alarm and anxiety arising from our sympathy with a sweet young friend, not wholly to be dissociated from one of the gladiatorsin the bloodless arena in question (the impropriety of Miss Reynolds’s appearing to stab herself in the hand with a pin is far too obvious, and too glaringly unladylike to be pointed out), we descended from our maiden elevation to discuss this uncongenial and this unfit theme. Responsible inquiries having assured us that it was but one of those “airy nothings” pointed at by the poet (whose name and date of birth Miss Giggles will supply within half an hour), we would now discard the subject, and concentrate our minds upon the grateful labours of the day.
It was reserved for Miss Twinkleton to tone down the public mind of the Nuns’ House. That lady, therefore, entering in a stately manner what plebeians might have called the schoolroom, but what, in the patrician language of the head of the Nuns’ House, was euphuistically, not to say roundaboutedly, denominated “the apartment allotted to study,” and saying with a forensic air, “Ladies!” all rose. Mrs. Tisher at the same time grouped herself behind her chief, as representing Queen Elizabeth’s first historical female friend at Tilbury Fort. Miss Twinkleton then proceeded to remark that Rumour, ladies, had been represented by the Bard of Avon—needless were it to mention the immortal Shakespeare, also called the Swan of his native river, not improbably with some reference to the ancient superstition that that bird of graceful plumage (Miss Jennings will please stand upright) sung sweetly on the approach of death, for which we have no ornithological authority—Rumour, ladies, had been represented by that bard—hem!—
“Who drewThe celebrated Jew,”
as painted full of tongues. Rumour in Cloisterham (Miss Ferdinand will honour me with her attention) was no exception to the great limner’s portrait of Rumour elsewhere. A slightfracasbetween two young gentlemen occurring last night within a hundred miles of these peaceful walls (Miss Ferdinand, being apparently incorrigible, will have the kindness to write out this evening, in the original language, the first four fables of our vivacious neighbour, Monsieur La Fontaine) had been very grossly exaggerated by Rumour’s voice. In the first alarm and anxiety arising from our sympathy with a sweet young friend, not wholly to be dissociated from one of the gladiatorsin the bloodless arena in question (the impropriety of Miss Reynolds’s appearing to stab herself in the hand with a pin is far too obvious, and too glaringly unladylike to be pointed out), we descended from our maiden elevation to discuss this uncongenial and this unfit theme. Responsible inquiries having assured us that it was but one of those “airy nothings” pointed at by the poet (whose name and date of birth Miss Giggles will supply within half an hour), we would now discard the subject, and concentrate our minds upon the grateful labours of the day.
The unnatural formalism of her manner and her language are properly held up to ridicule by Dickens.
He incidentally shows the great blunder of interrupting a lesson to censure a pupil, the weakness of having to demand attention, and the error of punishing by impositions to be memorized or written. What a terrible misuse it is of the literature that should always be attractive and inspiring to have it associated with punishment! He exposes the greater crime of making children commit to memory selections from the Bible as a punishment in Dombey and Son, and the association of the Bible with tasks in Our Mutual Friend.
The Schoolboy’s Story deals with the problems of nutrition, coercion, robbing a boy of his holidays, the declaration of perpetual warfare between pupils and teachers in the olden days, and the surprise of the boys when they found that one of their teachers had a true and tender heart (what a commentary on teachers that boys should be surprised at their being true and good!), and how to treat children as Old Cheeseman did, when he inherited his fortune and married Jane, and took the disconsolate boys home to his own house, when they were condemned to spend their holidays at school.
In Our School the chief pedagogical lessons are: the man’s remembrance of the pug dog in the entry at the first school he attended, and his utter forgetfulness of the mistress of the establishment; the folly of external polishing or memory polishing on which “the rust has long since accumulated”; the gross wrong of allowing an ignorant and brutal man to be ateacher—“The only branches of education with which the master showed the least acquaintance were ruling and corporally punishing”; the deadening injustice of showing partiality, whether on account of a boy’s parentage or for any other reason; sympathy for “holiday stoppers”; the interest all children should take in keeping and training pet animals; the advantages to boys of having to construct “houses and instruments of performance” for these pets—“some of those who made houses and invented appliances for their performing mice in school have since made railroads, engines, and telegraphs, the chairman has erected mills and bridges in Australia”; the fact that “we all liked Maxby the tutor, for he had a good knowledge of boys”; and that teachers should be very particular about their personal neatness, because children note so accurately every detail of dress and manner. This is shown by the reminiscences about Maxby, the Latin master, and the dancing master. The ungenerous rivalry often existing between schools, and schools of thought, too, was pointed out: “There was another school not far off, and of course our school could have nothing to say to that school. It is mostly the way with schools, whether of boys or men.”
“The world had little reason to be proud of Our School, and has done much better since in that way, and will do far better yet.” This closing sentence of the sketch is very suggestive.
Dickens described one school that he visited in America in his American Notes, evidently in order to show the need of more care than was then taken in the choice of matter for the pupils to read.
I was only present in one of these establishments during the hours of instruction. In the boys’ department, which was full of little urchins (varying in their ages, I should say, from six years old to ten or twelve), the master offered to institute an extemporary examination of the pupils in algebra, a proposal which, as I was by no means confident of my ability to detect mistakes in that science, I declined with some alarm. In the girls’ school reading was proposed, and as I felt tolerably equal to thatart I expressed my willingness to hear a class. Books were distributed accordingly, and some half dozen girls relieved each other in reading paragraphs from English history. But it seemed to be a dry compilation, infinitely above their powers; and when they had blundered through three or four dreary passages concerning the treaty of Amiens, and other thrilling topics of the same nature (obviously without comprehending ten words), I expressed myself quite satisfied. It is very possible that they only mounted to this exalted stave in the ladder of learning for the astonishment of a visitor, and that at other times they keep upon its lower rounds; but I should have been much better pleased and satisfied if I had heard them exercised in simpler lessons, which they understood.
I was only present in one of these establishments during the hours of instruction. In the boys’ department, which was full of little urchins (varying in their ages, I should say, from six years old to ten or twelve), the master offered to institute an extemporary examination of the pupils in algebra, a proposal which, as I was by no means confident of my ability to detect mistakes in that science, I declined with some alarm. In the girls’ school reading was proposed, and as I felt tolerably equal to thatart I expressed my willingness to hear a class. Books were distributed accordingly, and some half dozen girls relieved each other in reading paragraphs from English history. But it seemed to be a dry compilation, infinitely above their powers; and when they had blundered through three or four dreary passages concerning the treaty of Amiens, and other thrilling topics of the same nature (obviously without comprehending ten words), I expressed myself quite satisfied. It is very possible that they only mounted to this exalted stave in the ladder of learning for the astonishment of a visitor, and that at other times they keep upon its lower rounds; but I should have been much better pleased and satisfied if I had heard them exercised in simpler lessons, which they understood.
“The world has done better since, and will do far better yet” in the choice of reading matter for children.
The school recalled by memory in connection with the other ghosts of his childhood in The Haunted House was described briefly, but the description is full of suggestiveness.
Then I was sent to a great cold, bare school of big boys; where everything to eat and wear was thick and clumpy, without being enough; where everybody, large and small, was cruel; where the boys knew all about the sale before I got there [his father’s furniture had been sold for debt], and asked me what I had fetched, and who had bought me, and hooted at me, “Going, going, gone.”
Then I was sent to a great cold, bare school of big boys; where everything to eat and wear was thick and clumpy, without being enough; where everybody, large and small, was cruel; where the boys knew all about the sale before I got there [his father’s furniture had been sold for debt], and asked me what I had fetched, and who had bought me, and hooted at me, “Going, going, gone.”
The inartistic bareness of the school, the tasteless clothing, the unattractive, unsatisfying food, the pervading atmosphere of cruelty, and the heartlessness of the boys in tearing open the wounds of the sensitive new boy—are all condemned.
MISCELLANEOUS EDUCATIONAL PRINCIPLES.
The need of apperception and correlation are shown in the result of Paul Dombey’s first lessons under Miss Cornelia Blimber, and in the same book in the description of the learning Briggs carried away with him. It was like an ill-arranged luggage, so tightly packed that he couldn’t get at anything he wanted. The absolute necessity for fixing apperceptive centres of emotion and thought in the lives of children by experience is shown in the case of Neville Landless in Edwin Drood. His early life had been so barren that, as he told his tutor, “It has caused me to be utterly wanting in I don’t know what emotions, or remembrances, or good instincts—I have not even a name for the thing, you see—that you have had to work upon in other young men to whom you have been accustomed.”
Dickens emphasized the fact that the lack of apperceptive centres of an improper kind is a great advantage.
That heart where self has found no place and raised no throne is slow to recognise its ugly presence when it looks upon it. As one possessed of an evil spirit was held in old time to be alone conscious of the lurking demon in the breasts of other men, so kindred vices know each other in their hiding places every day, when virtue is incredulous and blind.
That heart where self has found no place and raised no throne is slow to recognise its ugly presence when it looks upon it. As one possessed of an evil spirit was held in old time to be alone conscious of the lurking demon in the breasts of other men, so kindred vices know each other in their hiding places every day, when virtue is incredulous and blind.
There is no more suggestive work on the contents of children’s minds than Bleak House. When Poor Jo was summoned to give evidence at the inquest he was questioned in regard to himself and his theology. The results were startling.
Name, Jo. Nothing else that he knows on. Don’t know that everybody has two names. Never heerd of sich a think. Don’t know that Jo is short for a longer name. Thinks it long enough forhim.Hedon’t find no fault with it. Spell it? No.Hecan’t spell it. No father, no mother, no friends. Never been to school. What’s home? Knows a broom’s a broom, and knows it’s wicked to tell a lie. Don’t recollect who told him about the broom, or about the lie, but knows both. Can’t exactly say what’ll be done to him after he’s dead if he tells a lie to the gentlemen here, but believes it’ll be something wery bad to punish him, and serve him right—and so he’ll tell the truth.Jo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscious of the link, if any link there be. He sums up his mental condition, when asked a question, by replying that he “don’t know nothink.” He knows that it’s hard to keep the mud off the crossing in dirty weather, and harder still to live by doing it. Nobody taught him, even that much; he found it out.Jo comes out of Tom-all-Alone’s, meeting the tardy morning, which is always late in getting down there, and munches his dirty bit of bread as he comes along. His way lying through many streets, and the houses not yet being open, he sits down to breakfast on the doorstep of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and gives it a brush when he has finished, as an acknowledgment of the accommodation. He admires the size of the edifice, and wonders what it’s all about. He has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual destitution of a coral reef in the Pacific, or what it costs to look up the precious souls among the cocoanuts and breadfruits.He goes to his crossing, and begins to lay it out for the day. The town awakes; the great teetotum is set up for its daily spin and whirl; all that unaccountable reading and writing, which has been suspended for a few hours, recommences. Jo and the other lower animals get on in the unintelligible mess as they can. It is market day. The blinded oxen, overgoaded, overdriven, never guided, run into wrong places and are beaten out; and plunge, red-eyed and foaming, at stone walls; and often sorely hurt the innocent, and often sorely hurt themselves. Very like Jo and his order; very, very like!A band of music comes and plays. Jo listens to it. Sodoes a dog—a drover’s dog, waiting for his master outside a butcher’s shop, and evidently thinking about those sheep he has had upon his mind for some hours, and is happily rid of. He seems perplexed respecting three or four; can’t remember where he left them; looks up and down the street, as half expecting to see them astray; suddenly pricks up his ears and remembers all about it. A thoroughly vagabond dog, accustomed to low company and public houses; a terrific dog to sheep; ready at a whistle to scamper over their backs, and tear out mouthfuls of their wool; but an educated, improved, developed dog, who has been taught his duties and knows how to discharge them. He and Jo listen to the music, probably with much the same amount of animal satisfaction; likewise, as to awakened association, aspiration, or regret, melancholy or joyful reference to things beyond the senses, they are probably upon a par. But, otherwise, how far above the human listener is the brute!Turn that dog’s descendants wild, like Jo, and in a very few years they will so degenerate that they will lose even their bark—but not their bite.
Name, Jo. Nothing else that he knows on. Don’t know that everybody has two names. Never heerd of sich a think. Don’t know that Jo is short for a longer name. Thinks it long enough forhim.Hedon’t find no fault with it. Spell it? No.Hecan’t spell it. No father, no mother, no friends. Never been to school. What’s home? Knows a broom’s a broom, and knows it’s wicked to tell a lie. Don’t recollect who told him about the broom, or about the lie, but knows both. Can’t exactly say what’ll be done to him after he’s dead if he tells a lie to the gentlemen here, but believes it’ll be something wery bad to punish him, and serve him right—and so he’ll tell the truth.
Jo sweeps his crossing all day long, unconscious of the link, if any link there be. He sums up his mental condition, when asked a question, by replying that he “don’t know nothink.” He knows that it’s hard to keep the mud off the crossing in dirty weather, and harder still to live by doing it. Nobody taught him, even that much; he found it out.
Jo comes out of Tom-all-Alone’s, meeting the tardy morning, which is always late in getting down there, and munches his dirty bit of bread as he comes along. His way lying through many streets, and the houses not yet being open, he sits down to breakfast on the doorstep of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and gives it a brush when he has finished, as an acknowledgment of the accommodation. He admires the size of the edifice, and wonders what it’s all about. He has no idea, poor wretch, of the spiritual destitution of a coral reef in the Pacific, or what it costs to look up the precious souls among the cocoanuts and breadfruits.
He goes to his crossing, and begins to lay it out for the day. The town awakes; the great teetotum is set up for its daily spin and whirl; all that unaccountable reading and writing, which has been suspended for a few hours, recommences. Jo and the other lower animals get on in the unintelligible mess as they can. It is market day. The blinded oxen, overgoaded, overdriven, never guided, run into wrong places and are beaten out; and plunge, red-eyed and foaming, at stone walls; and often sorely hurt the innocent, and often sorely hurt themselves. Very like Jo and his order; very, very like!
A band of music comes and plays. Jo listens to it. Sodoes a dog—a drover’s dog, waiting for his master outside a butcher’s shop, and evidently thinking about those sheep he has had upon his mind for some hours, and is happily rid of. He seems perplexed respecting three or four; can’t remember where he left them; looks up and down the street, as half expecting to see them astray; suddenly pricks up his ears and remembers all about it. A thoroughly vagabond dog, accustomed to low company and public houses; a terrific dog to sheep; ready at a whistle to scamper over their backs, and tear out mouthfuls of their wool; but an educated, improved, developed dog, who has been taught his duties and knows how to discharge them. He and Jo listen to the music, probably with much the same amount of animal satisfaction; likewise, as to awakened association, aspiration, or regret, melancholy or joyful reference to things beyond the senses, they are probably upon a par. But, otherwise, how far above the human listener is the brute!
Turn that dog’s descendants wild, like Jo, and in a very few years they will so degenerate that they will lose even their bark—but not their bite.
When Lady Dedlock met Jo, she asked him:
“Are you the boy I’ve read of in the papers?”“I don’t know,” says Jo, staring moodily at the veil, “nothink about no papers. I don’t know nothink about nothink at all.”
“Are you the boy I’ve read of in the papers?”
“I don’t know,” says Jo, staring moodily at the veil, “nothink about no papers. I don’t know nothink about nothink at all.”
When Guster, Mr. Snagsby’s servant, got him some food, she said:
“Are you hungry?”“Jist!” says Jo.“What’s gone of your father and your mother, eh?”Jo stops in the middle of a bite, and looks petrified. For this orphan charge of the Christian saint whose shrine was at Tooting, has patted him on the shoulder; and it is the first time in his life that any decent hand had been so laid upon him.“I never know’d nothink about ’em,” says Jo.“No more didn’t I of mine,” cries Guster.
“Are you hungry?”
“Jist!” says Jo.
“What’s gone of your father and your mother, eh?”
Jo stops in the middle of a bite, and looks petrified. For this orphan charge of the Christian saint whose shrine was at Tooting, has patted him on the shoulder; and it is the first time in his life that any decent hand had been so laid upon him.
“I never know’d nothink about ’em,” says Jo.
“No more didn’t I of mine,” cries Guster.
When Allan Woodcourt took him to Mr. George’s and had his wants attended to, he told Jo to be sure and tell him the truth always.
“Wishermaydie, if I don’t,” said Jo. “I never was in no other trouble at all, sir—’cept knowin’ nothink and starvation.”
When Allan saw that Jo was nearing the end, he said:
“Jo! Did you ever know a prayer?”“Never know’d nothink, sir.”“Not so much as one short prayer?”“No, sir. Nothink at all. Mr. Chadband he was a-prayin’ wunst at Mr. Snagsby’s and I heerd him, but he sounded as if he wos a-speakin’ to hisself, and not to me. He prayed a lot, butIcouldn’t make out nothink on it. Different times, there was other genlmen come down Tom-all-Alone’s a-prayin’, but they all mostly sed as the t’other wuns prayed wrong, and all mostly sounded to be a-talkin’ to theirselves, or a-passin’ blame on the t’others, and not a-talkin’ to us.Wenever know’d nothink.Inever know’d what it wos all about.”
“Jo! Did you ever know a prayer?”
“Never know’d nothink, sir.”
“Not so much as one short prayer?”
“No, sir. Nothink at all. Mr. Chadband he was a-prayin’ wunst at Mr. Snagsby’s and I heerd him, but he sounded as if he wos a-speakin’ to hisself, and not to me. He prayed a lot, butIcouldn’t make out nothink on it. Different times, there was other genlmen come down Tom-all-Alone’s a-prayin’, but they all mostly sed as the t’other wuns prayed wrong, and all mostly sounded to be a-talkin’ to theirselves, or a-passin’ blame on the t’others, and not a-talkin’ to us.Wenever know’d nothink.Inever know’d what it wos all about.”
No? Mr. Chadband, your long sermon about “the Terewth” found no place in Jo in which to rest; nothing to which it could attach itself. No wonder he went asleep. He had no apperceptive centres in his experience or his training to which your kind of religious teaching was related.
Poor Jo! He was the first great illustration, and he is still the best, of the great pedagogical truth, that we see, and hear, and understand in all that is around us only what corresponds to what we are within; that our power to see, and hear, and understand increases as our inner life is cultured and developed; and that a life as barren as that of the great class of whom Jo was made the type makes it impossible to comprehend any teaching of an abstract kind. This revelation is of course most valuable to primary teachers in cities.
Dickens showed his wonderful insight into the most profound problems of psychology in his great character sketch of poor Jo. He agreed with Herbart regarding the philosophy of apperception so far as it related to intellectual culture, but he painted Jo entirely out of harmony with Herbart’s psychology in relation to soul development. After describing Mr. Chadband’s sermon on “Terewth” Dickens says:
All this time Jo has been standing on the spot where he woke up, ever picking his cap, and putting bits of fur in his mouth. He spits them out with a remorseful air, for he feels that it is in his nature to be an unimprovable reprobate, and it’s no goodhistrying to keep awake, forhewon’t never know nothink. Though it may be, Jo, that there is a history so interesting and affecting even to minds as near the brutes as thine, recording deeds done on this earth for common men, that if the Chadbands, removing their own persons from the light, would but show it thee in simple reverence, would but leave it unimproved, would but regard it as being eloquent enough without their modest aid—it might hold thee awake, and thou might learn from it yet!Jo never heard of any such book. Its compilers, and the Reverend Chadband, are all one to him—except that he knows the Reverend Chadband, and would rather run away from him for an hour than hear him talk for five minutes.
All this time Jo has been standing on the spot where he woke up, ever picking his cap, and putting bits of fur in his mouth. He spits them out with a remorseful air, for he feels that it is in his nature to be an unimprovable reprobate, and it’s no goodhistrying to keep awake, forhewon’t never know nothink. Though it may be, Jo, that there is a history so interesting and affecting even to minds as near the brutes as thine, recording deeds done on this earth for common men, that if the Chadbands, removing their own persons from the light, would but show it thee in simple reverence, would but leave it unimproved, would but regard it as being eloquent enough without their modest aid—it might hold thee awake, and thou might learn from it yet!
Jo never heard of any such book. Its compilers, and the Reverend Chadband, are all one to him—except that he knows the Reverend Chadband, and would rather run away from him for an hour than hear him talk for five minutes.
When Jo was eating at Mr. Snagsby’s he stopped in the middle of his bite and looked petrified, because Guster patted him on the shoulder. “It was the first time in his life that any decent hand had been so laid upon him.”
In The Haunted Man the six-year-old child was described as “a baby savage, a young monster, a child who had never been a child, a creature who might live to take the outward form of man, but who, within, would live and perish a mere beast.”
Hugh, the splendid young animal who was John Willet’s stable boy in Barnaby Rudge, was as deficient of most intellectual and spiritual apperceptive centres as poor Jo. When Mr. Chester asked him his name he replied:
“I’d tell it if I could. I can’t. I have always been called Hugh; nothing more. I never knew nor saw, nor thought about a father; and I was a boy of six—that’s not very old—when they hung my mother up at Tyburn for a couple of thousand of men to stare at. They might have let her live. She was poor enough.”
“I’d tell it if I could. I can’t. I have always been called Hugh; nothing more. I never knew nor saw, nor thought about a father; and I was a boy of six—that’s not very old—when they hung my mother up at Tyburn for a couple of thousand of men to stare at. They might have let her live. She was poor enough.”
Little George Silverman’s mind was almost a blank when his mother and father died. He had been brought up in a cellar at Preston. He hardly knew what sunlight was. His mother’s laugh in her fever scared him,because it was the first laugh he had ever heard. When discovered alone with the bodies of his father and mother in the cellar, one of the horrified bystanders said to him:
“Do you know your father and mother are both dead of fever?” and he replied:
“I don’t know what it is to be dead. I am hungry and thirsty.”
After he had been supplied with food and drink he told Mr. Hawkyard that “he didn’t feel cold, or hungry, or thirsty,” and in relating the story in manhood he said:
That was the whole round of human feelings, as far as I knew, except the pain of being beaten. To that time I had never had the faintest impression of duty. I had no knowledge whatever that there was anything lovely in this life. When I had occasionally slunk up the cellar steps into the street, and glared in at shop windows, I had done so with no higher feelings than we may suppose to animate a mangy young dog or wolf cub. It is equally the fact that I had never been alone, in the sense of holding unselfish converse with myself. I had been solitary often enough, but nothing better.
That was the whole round of human feelings, as far as I knew, except the pain of being beaten. To that time I had never had the faintest impression of duty. I had no knowledge whatever that there was anything lovely in this life. When I had occasionally slunk up the cellar steps into the street, and glared in at shop windows, I had done so with no higher feelings than we may suppose to animate a mangy young dog or wolf cub. It is equally the fact that I had never been alone, in the sense of holding unselfish converse with myself. I had been solitary often enough, but nothing better.
Redlaw, in The Haunted Man, said to the poor boy who came to his room:
“What is your name?”“Got none.”“Where do you live?”“Live! What’s that?”
“What is your name?”
“Got none.”
“Where do you live?”
“Live! What’s that?”
Such pictures were not drawn to entertain, or to add artistic effect to his stories. They were written to teach the world of wealth and culture that all around it were thousands of human souls with as little opportunity for development as young animals have; with defined apperceptive centres of cold, hunger, thirst, and pain only.
Dickens makes a strong contrast between the condition of the mental and spiritual apperceptive centres in the city boy as compared with the country boy, in a conversation between Phil Squod and Mr. George.