“And so, Phil,” says George of the Shooting Gallery, after several turns in silence, “you were dreaming of the country last night?”Phil, by the bye, said as much, in a tone of surprise, as he scrambled out of bed.“Yes, guv’ner.”“What was it like?”“I hardly know what it was like, guv’ner,” said Phil, considering.“How did you know it was the country?”“On account of the grass, I think. And the swans upon it,” says Phil, after further consideration.“What were the swans doing on the grass?”“They was a-eating of it, I expect,” says Phil.“The country,” says Mr. George, plying his knife and fork; “why, I suppose you never clapped your eyes on the country, Phil?”“I see the marshes once,” said Phil, contentedly eating his breakfast.“What marshes?”“Themarshes, commander,” returns Phil.“Where are they?”“I don’t know where they are,” says Phil; “but I see ’em, guv’ner. They was flat. And miste.”Governor and commander are interchangeable terms with Phil, expressive of the same respect and deference, and applicable to nobody but Mr. George.“I was born in the country, Phil.”“Was you, indeed, commander?”“Yes. And bred there.”Phil elevates his one eyebrow, and after respectfully staring at his master to express interest, swallows a great gulp of coffee, still staring at him.“There’s not a bird’s note that I don’t know,” says Mr. George. “Not many an English leaf or berry that I couldn’t name. Not many a tree that I couldn’t climb yet, if I was put to it. I was a real country boy once. My good mother lived in the country. Do you want to see the country, Phil?”“N-no, I don’t know as I do, particular.”“The town’s enough for you, eh?”“Why, you see, commander,” says Phil, “I ain’t acquainted with anythink else, and I doubt if I ain’t a-getting too old to take to novelties.”“How old are you, Phil?”
“And so, Phil,” says George of the Shooting Gallery, after several turns in silence, “you were dreaming of the country last night?”
Phil, by the bye, said as much, in a tone of surprise, as he scrambled out of bed.
“Yes, guv’ner.”
“What was it like?”
“I hardly know what it was like, guv’ner,” said Phil, considering.
“How did you know it was the country?”
“On account of the grass, I think. And the swans upon it,” says Phil, after further consideration.
“What were the swans doing on the grass?”
“They was a-eating of it, I expect,” says Phil.
“The country,” says Mr. George, plying his knife and fork; “why, I suppose you never clapped your eyes on the country, Phil?”
“I see the marshes once,” said Phil, contentedly eating his breakfast.
“What marshes?”
“Themarshes, commander,” returns Phil.
“Where are they?”
“I don’t know where they are,” says Phil; “but I see ’em, guv’ner. They was flat. And miste.”
Governor and commander are interchangeable terms with Phil, expressive of the same respect and deference, and applicable to nobody but Mr. George.
“I was born in the country, Phil.”
“Was you, indeed, commander?”
“Yes. And bred there.”
Phil elevates his one eyebrow, and after respectfully staring at his master to express interest, swallows a great gulp of coffee, still staring at him.
“There’s not a bird’s note that I don’t know,” says Mr. George. “Not many an English leaf or berry that I couldn’t name. Not many a tree that I couldn’t climb yet, if I was put to it. I was a real country boy once. My good mother lived in the country. Do you want to see the country, Phil?”
“N-no, I don’t know as I do, particular.”
“The town’s enough for you, eh?”
“Why, you see, commander,” says Phil, “I ain’t acquainted with anythink else, and I doubt if I ain’t a-getting too old to take to novelties.”
“How old are you, Phil?”
Phil’s answer is intended to indicate the lack of even mathematical power in those who, like Phil, never hadany training of the imagination, nor any other training to define their apperceptive centres of number beyond ten.
“I’m something with a eight in it. It can’t be eighty. Nor yet eighteen. It’s betwixt ’em somewheres. I was just eight, agreeable to the parish calculation, when I went with the tinker. That was April Fool Day. I was able to count up to ten; and when April Fool Day came round again I says to myself, ‘Now, old chap, you’re one and a eight in it.’ April Fool Day after that I says, ‘Now, old chap, you’re two and a eight in it.’ In course of time I come to ten and a eight in it; two tens and a eight in it. When it got so high it got the upper hand of me; but this is how I always know there’s a eight in it.”
“I’m something with a eight in it. It can’t be eighty. Nor yet eighteen. It’s betwixt ’em somewheres. I was just eight, agreeable to the parish calculation, when I went with the tinker. That was April Fool Day. I was able to count up to ten; and when April Fool Day came round again I says to myself, ‘Now, old chap, you’re one and a eight in it.’ April Fool Day after that I says, ‘Now, old chap, you’re two and a eight in it.’ In course of time I come to ten and a eight in it; two tens and a eight in it. When it got so high it got the upper hand of me; but this is how I always know there’s a eight in it.”
The folly of trying to make a man moral by precept alone; the fact that character is developed by what we do, by true living, by what goes out in action, not by what comes in in maxims or theories, is shown in Martin Chuzzlewit.
It has been remarked that Mr. Pecksniff was a moral man. So he was. Perhaps there never was a more moral man than Mr. Pecksniff, especially in his conversation and correspondence. It was once said of him by a homely admirer that he had a Fortunatus’s purse of gold sentiments in his inside. In this particular he was like the girl in the fairy tale, except that if they were not actual diamonds which fell from his lips, they were the very brightest paste and shone prodigiously. He was a most exemplary man; fuller of virtuous precept than a copy book. Some people likened him to a direction post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there.The best of architects and land surveyors kept a horse, in whom the enemies already mentioned more than once in these pages pretended to detect a fanciful resemblance to his master. Not in his outward person, for he was a raw-boned, haggard horse, always on a much shorter allowance of corn than Mr. Pecksniff; but in his moral character, wherein, said they, he was full of promise, but of no performance. He was always, in a manner, going to go, and never going.
It has been remarked that Mr. Pecksniff was a moral man. So he was. Perhaps there never was a more moral man than Mr. Pecksniff, especially in his conversation and correspondence. It was once said of him by a homely admirer that he had a Fortunatus’s purse of gold sentiments in his inside. In this particular he was like the girl in the fairy tale, except that if they were not actual diamonds which fell from his lips, they were the very brightest paste and shone prodigiously. He was a most exemplary man; fuller of virtuous precept than a copy book. Some people likened him to a direction post, which is always telling the way to a place, and never goes there.
The best of architects and land surveyors kept a horse, in whom the enemies already mentioned more than once in these pages pretended to detect a fanciful resemblance to his master. Not in his outward person, for he was a raw-boned, haggard horse, always on a much shorter allowance of corn than Mr. Pecksniff; but in his moral character, wherein, said they, he was full of promise, but of no performance. He was always, in a manner, going to go, and never going.
One of the worst results that can follow a system of training is to make a man a hypocrite. It is nearly asbad to store a mind with good thoughts or fill a heart with good feelings without giving the character the tendency by practical experience to carry into effect so far as possible its good feelings and high purposes. Mr. Pecksniff was a moral monstrosity. We should create no more Pecksniffs. A different ideal is taught in the remark made by Martin Chuzzlewit to Mary, “Endeavouring to be anything that’s good, and being it, is, with you, all one.”
Executive training is emphasized in Nicholas Nickleby. Old Ralph Nickleby said of Nicholas: “The old story—always thinking, and never doing.” The same thought is expressed very clearly in the pregnant sentence written about Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities: “Sadly, sadly, the sun rose; it rose upon no sadder sight than the man of good abilities and good emotions, incapable of their directed exercise.” The saddest sight in the world is a man or woman using power for evil. It is nearly as sad to see a man or woman with power, but without power to use it wisely.
In A Tale of Two Cities he caricatures admirably the class who cling to old customs and conventions, and decline even to discuss changes or improvements, in his description of Tellson’s Bank.
Tellson’s Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the house were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. Tellson’s (they said) wanted no elbowroom, Tellson’s wanted no light, Tellson’s wanted no embellishment. Noakes and Co.’s might, or Snooks Brothers’ might: but Tellson’s, thank heaven!Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding Tellson’s. In this respectthe house was much on a par with the country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly objectionable, but were only the more respectable.
Tellson’s Bank by Temple Bar was an old-fashioned place, even in the year one thousand seven hundred and eighty. It was very small, very dark, very ugly, very incommodious. It was an old-fashioned place, moreover, in the moral attribute that the partners in the house were proud of its smallness, proud of its darkness, proud of its ugliness, proud of its incommodiousness. They were even boastful of its eminence in those particulars, and were fired by an express conviction that, if it were less objectionable, it would be less respectable. This was no passive belief, but an active weapon which they flashed at more convenient places of business. Tellson’s (they said) wanted no elbowroom, Tellson’s wanted no light, Tellson’s wanted no embellishment. Noakes and Co.’s might, or Snooks Brothers’ might: but Tellson’s, thank heaven!
Any one of these partners would have disinherited his son on the question of rebuilding Tellson’s. In this respectthe house was much on a par with the country; which did very often disinherit its sons for suggesting improvements in laws and customs that had long been highly objectionable, but were only the more respectable.
Every child should get into his consciousness by experience, not by theory, the idea that he is expected to do his share in the improvement of his environment. The worst conception he can get is that “whatever is is right”; that things can not be improved. Every child should be encouraged to make suggestions for the improvement of his own environment and conditions in the schoolroom, in the yard, in the details of class management, or in anything else that he thinks he can improve.
The closing sentence of Our School should ring always in the minds of teachers, especially the last clause: “And will do far better yet.”
Dickens had implicit faith in even weak humanity, and taught the hopeful truth, that every man and every child may be improved, if the men and women most directly associated with them are wise and loving. Harriet Carker said to Mr. Morfin:
“Oh, sir, after what I have seen, let me conjure you, if you are in any place of power, and are ever wronged, never for any wrong inflict punishment that can not be recalled; while there is a God above us to work changes in the hearts he made.”
“Oh, sir, after what I have seen, let me conjure you, if you are in any place of power, and are ever wronged, never for any wrong inflict punishment that can not be recalled; while there is a God above us to work changes in the hearts he made.”
The Goblin of the Bell said to Toby Veck in The Chimes:
“Who turns his back upon the fallen and disfigured of his kind; abandons them as vile; and does not trace and track with pitying eyes the unfenced precipice by which they fell from good, grasping in their fall some tufts and shreds of that lost soil, and clinging to them still when bruised and dying in the gulf below, does wrong to Heaven and man, to time and to eternity.”
“Who turns his back upon the fallen and disfigured of his kind; abandons them as vile; and does not trace and track with pitying eyes the unfenced precipice by which they fell from good, grasping in their fall some tufts and shreds of that lost soil, and clinging to them still when bruised and dying in the gulf below, does wrong to Heaven and man, to time and to eternity.”
The influence of Nature on the awakening mind of the child was outlined in A Child’s Dream of a Star.
These children used to wonder all day long. They wondered at the beauty of the flowers; they wondered atthe height and blueness of the sky; they wondered at the depth of the bright water; they wondered at the goodness and the power of God who made the lovely world.
These children used to wonder all day long. They wondered at the beauty of the flowers; they wondered atthe height and blueness of the sky; they wondered at the depth of the bright water; they wondered at the goodness and the power of God who made the lovely world.
Nature is the great centre of interest to the child, and it may be the child’s first true revealer of God, if adulthood does not impiously come between the child and God by trying to give him a word God for his intellect too soon to take the place of the true God of his imagination.
Dickens’s best characters loved Nature. Esther, when recovering from her illness, said:
I found every breath of air, and every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass, and every passing cloud, and everything in Nature, more beautiful and wonderful to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of delight to me!
I found every breath of air, and every scent, and every flower and leaf and blade of grass, and every passing cloud, and everything in Nature, more beautiful and wonderful to me than I had ever found it yet. This was my first gain from my illness. How little I had lost, when the wide world was so full of delight to me!
The deep, spiritual influences of Nature are revealed in the effects of life in the growing country on Oliver Twist.
Who can describe the pleasure and delight, the peace of mind and soft tranquility, the sickly boy felt in the balmy air, and among the green hills and rich woods of an inland village! Who can tell how scenes of peace and quietude sink into the minds of pain-worn dwellers in close and noisy places, and carry their own freshness deep into their jaded hearts! Men who have lived in crowded, pent-up streets, through lives of toil, and who have never wished for change; men, to whom custom has indeed been second nature, and who have come almost to love each brick and stone that formed the narrow boundaries of their daily walks; even they, with the hand of death upon them, have been known to yearn at last for one short glimpse of Nature’s face; and, carried from the scenes of their old pains and pleasures, have seemed to pass at once into a new state of being. Crawling forth from day to day, to some green sunny spot, they have had such memories wakened up within them by the sight of sky, and hill, and plain, and glistening water, that a foretaste of heaven itself has soothed their quick decline, and they have sunk into their tombs as peacefully as the sun, whose setting they watched from their lonely chamber window but a few hours before,faded from their dim and feeble sight! The memories which peaceful country scenes call up are not of this world, nor of its thoughts and hopes. Their gentle influence may teach us how to weave fresh garlands for the graves of those we love—may purify our thoughts, and bear down before it old enmity and hatred; but beneath all this there lingers, in the least reflective mind, a vague and half-formed consciousness of having held such feelings long before, in some remote and distant time, which calls up solemn thoughts of distant times to come, and bends down pride and worldliness beneath it.It was a lovely spot to which they repaired. Oliver, whose days had been spent among squalid crowds, and in the midst of noise and brawling, seemed to enter on a new existence there.
Who can describe the pleasure and delight, the peace of mind and soft tranquility, the sickly boy felt in the balmy air, and among the green hills and rich woods of an inland village! Who can tell how scenes of peace and quietude sink into the minds of pain-worn dwellers in close and noisy places, and carry their own freshness deep into their jaded hearts! Men who have lived in crowded, pent-up streets, through lives of toil, and who have never wished for change; men, to whom custom has indeed been second nature, and who have come almost to love each brick and stone that formed the narrow boundaries of their daily walks; even they, with the hand of death upon them, have been known to yearn at last for one short glimpse of Nature’s face; and, carried from the scenes of their old pains and pleasures, have seemed to pass at once into a new state of being. Crawling forth from day to day, to some green sunny spot, they have had such memories wakened up within them by the sight of sky, and hill, and plain, and glistening water, that a foretaste of heaven itself has soothed their quick decline, and they have sunk into their tombs as peacefully as the sun, whose setting they watched from their lonely chamber window but a few hours before,faded from their dim and feeble sight! The memories which peaceful country scenes call up are not of this world, nor of its thoughts and hopes. Their gentle influence may teach us how to weave fresh garlands for the graves of those we love—may purify our thoughts, and bear down before it old enmity and hatred; but beneath all this there lingers, in the least reflective mind, a vague and half-formed consciousness of having held such feelings long before, in some remote and distant time, which calls up solemn thoughts of distant times to come, and bends down pride and worldliness beneath it.
It was a lovely spot to which they repaired. Oliver, whose days had been spent among squalid crowds, and in the midst of noise and brawling, seemed to enter on a new existence there.
In the story of The Five Sisters of York Alice said to her sisters:
“Nature’s own blessings are the proper goods of life, and we may share them sinlessly together. To die is our heavy portion, but, oh, let us die with life about us; when our cold hearts cease to beat, let warm hearts be beating near; let our last look be upon the bounds which God has set to his own bright skies, and not on stone walls and bars of iron! Dear sisters, let us live and die, if you list, in this green garden’s compass.”
“Nature’s own blessings are the proper goods of life, and we may share them sinlessly together. To die is our heavy portion, but, oh, let us die with life about us; when our cold hearts cease to beat, let warm hearts be beating near; let our last look be upon the bounds which God has set to his own bright skies, and not on stone walls and bars of iron! Dear sisters, let us live and die, if you list, in this green garden’s compass.”
Dickens had very advanced opinions in regard to the importance of physical training, especially of play, as an agent not only in physical culture, but in the development of the mind and character. Doctor Blimber’s school is condemned because the boys were not allowed to play, and Doctor Strong’s school is highly commended because the boys “had noble games out of doors” there.
What splendid runners and jumpers and divers and swimmers those grand boys were whom Mr. Marton had the good fortune to teach in his second school in The Old Curiosity Shop!
Mrs. Crupp recommended David Copperfield to take up some game as an antidote for his despondency during his early love experience.
“If you was to take to something, sir,” said Mrs. Crupp, “if you was to take to skittles, now, which ishealthy, you might find it divert your mind and do you good.”
Mrs. Chick told Mr. Dombey that Paul was delicate. “Our darling is not altogether as stout as we could wish. The fact is that his mind is too much for him. His soul is a great deal too large for his frame.” Yet his father paid no attention to the boy’s food, and sent him, when but a little sickly child, to Doctor Blimber’s to learn everything—not to play. “They had nothing so vulgar as play at Doctor Blimber’s.”
One of the most vicious conventions is that which makes vigorous play vulgar and unladylike for girls.
He called attention in American notes to the advantages possessed by the students of Upper Canada College, Toronto, inasmuch as “the town is well adapted for wholesome exercise at all seasons.” In the same book he gives his opinion that American girls “must go more wisely clad, and take more healthful exercise.”
He praised the free life of the gipsy children in Nicholas Nickleby.
In Martin Chuzzlewit, when Tom Pinch and Martin had to walk to Salisbury instead of riding in Mr. Pecksniff’s gig, Dickens says it was better for them that they were compelled to walk. What a breezy enthusiasm he throws into his advocacy of walking as an exercise:
Better! A rare strong, hearty, healthy walk—four statute miles an hour—preferable to that rumbling, tumbling, jolting, shaking, scraping, creaking, villainous old gig? Why, the two things will not admit of comparison. It is an insult to the walk to set them side by side. Where is an instance of a gig having ever circulated a man’s blood, unless when, putting him in danger of his neck, it awakened in his veins and in his ears, and all along his spine, a tingling heat much more peculiar than agreeable? When did a gig ever sharpen anybody’s wits and energies, unless it was when the horse bolted, and, crashing madly down a steep hill with a stone wall at the bottom, his desperate circumstances suggested to the only gentleman left inside some novel and unheard-of mode of dropping out behind? Better than the gig!Better than the gig! When were travellers by wheelsand hoofs seen with such red-hot cheeks as those? when were they so good-humouredly and merrily bloused? when did their laughter ring upon the air, as they turned them round, what time the stronger gusts came sweeping up; and, facing round again as they passed by, dashed on, in such a glow of ruddy health as nothing could keep pace with, but the high spirits it engendered? Better than the gig! Why hereisa man in a gig coming the same way now. Look at him as he passes his whip into his left hand, chafes his numbed right fingers on his granite leg, and beats those marble toes of his upon the footboard. Ha, ha, ha! Who would exchange this rapid hurry of the blood for yonder stagnant misery, though its pace were twenty miles for one?Better than the gig! No man in a gig could have such interest in the milestones. No man in a gig could see, or feel, or think, like merry users of their legs.
Better! A rare strong, hearty, healthy walk—four statute miles an hour—preferable to that rumbling, tumbling, jolting, shaking, scraping, creaking, villainous old gig? Why, the two things will not admit of comparison. It is an insult to the walk to set them side by side. Where is an instance of a gig having ever circulated a man’s blood, unless when, putting him in danger of his neck, it awakened in his veins and in his ears, and all along his spine, a tingling heat much more peculiar than agreeable? When did a gig ever sharpen anybody’s wits and energies, unless it was when the horse bolted, and, crashing madly down a steep hill with a stone wall at the bottom, his desperate circumstances suggested to the only gentleman left inside some novel and unheard-of mode of dropping out behind? Better than the gig!
Better than the gig! When were travellers by wheelsand hoofs seen with such red-hot cheeks as those? when were they so good-humouredly and merrily bloused? when did their laughter ring upon the air, as they turned them round, what time the stronger gusts came sweeping up; and, facing round again as they passed by, dashed on, in such a glow of ruddy health as nothing could keep pace with, but the high spirits it engendered? Better than the gig! Why hereisa man in a gig coming the same way now. Look at him as he passes his whip into his left hand, chafes his numbed right fingers on his granite leg, and beats those marble toes of his upon the footboard. Ha, ha, ha! Who would exchange this rapid hurry of the blood for yonder stagnant misery, though its pace were twenty miles for one?
Better than the gig! No man in a gig could have such interest in the milestones. No man in a gig could see, or feel, or think, like merry users of their legs.
Dickens taught comparatively little about the subjects of instruction or the methods of teaching them. He dealt cramming its most stunning blow in Doctor Blimber’s school, and he criticised sharply the methods of teaching classics and literature in the same school. He advocated the objective method of teaching number in Jemmy Lirriper’s training at home by Major Jackman.
He took more interest in reading and literature than in any other department of school study, so far as can be judged from his writings. He deplored the practice of allowing children to try to read before they could recognise the words readily, and understand their meaning in the training of Pip and Charley Hexam. At the great party at Mr. Merdle’s,
the Bishop consulted the great Physician on the relaxation of the throat with which young curates were too frequently afflicted, and on the means of lessening the great prevalence of that disorder in the church. Physician, as a general rule, was of opinion that the best way to avoid it was to know how to read before you made a profession of reading. Bishop said, dubiously, did he really think so? And Physician said, decidedly, yes, he did.
the Bishop consulted the great Physician on the relaxation of the throat with which young curates were too frequently afflicted, and on the means of lessening the great prevalence of that disorder in the church. Physician, as a general rule, was of opinion that the best way to avoid it was to know how to read before you made a profession of reading. Bishop said, dubiously, did he really think so? And Physician said, decidedly, yes, he did.
He criticised, too, the reading in the school visited in an American city, because “the girls blundered throughthree or four dreary passages, obviously without comprehending ten words,” and said “he would have been much better pleased if they had been asked to read some simpler selections which they could understand.”
Mr. Wegg, when reading for Mr. Boffin in Our Mutual Friend, “read on by rote, and attached as few ideas as possible to the text.”
He discusses the advantages of reading suitable books in David Copperfield, giving to David his own real experience in early boyhood. After describing the cruel treatment of the Murdstones, he says:
The natural result of this treatment, continued, I suppose, for some six months, was to make me sullen, dull, and dogged. I was not made the less so by my sense of being daily more and more shut out and alienated from my mother. I believe I should have been almost stupefied but for one circumstance.It was this. My father had left a small collection of books in a little room upstairs, to which I had access (for it joined my own) and which nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time—they, and the Arabian Nights, and the tales of the Genii.
The natural result of this treatment, continued, I suppose, for some six months, was to make me sullen, dull, and dogged. I was not made the less so by my sense of being daily more and more shut out and alienated from my mother. I believe I should have been almost stupefied but for one circumstance.
It was this. My father had left a small collection of books in a little room upstairs, to which I had access (for it joined my own) and which nobody else in our house ever troubled. From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope of something beyond that place and time—they, and the Arabian Nights, and the tales of the Genii.
His faith in the influence of reading increased as he grew older. In Our Mutual Friend he says: “No one who can read ever looks at a book, even unopened on a shelf, like one who can not read.”
Dickens taught a useful lesson in Martin Chuzzlewit regarding the way teachers used to be treated by society. Even yet there is need of a higher recognition of the teaching profession in its true dignity by a civilization that reverences wealth more than intellectual and spiritual character.
Tom Pinch’s sister was engaged in the family of a wealthy brass founder. She was treated contemptuously by him and his wife, yet they complained to Tom that hissister was unable to command the respect of her pupil. Tom was naturally indignant, and he spoke his mind very clearly to the brass founder.
“Sir!” cried Tom, after regarding him in silence for some time. “If you do not understand what I mean I will tell you. My meaning is that no man can expect his children to respect what he degrades.”“When you tell me,” resumed Tom, who was not the less indignant for keeping himself quiet, “that my sister has no innate power of commanding the respect of your children, I must tell you it is not so; and that she has. She is as well bred, as well taught, as well qualified by Nature to command respect as any hirer of a governess you know. But when you place her at a disadvantage in reference to every servant in your house, how can you suppose, if you have the gift of common sense, that she is not in a tenfold worse position in reference to your daughters?”“Pretty well! Upon my word,” exclaimed the gentleman, “that is pretty well!”“It is very ill, sir,” said Tom. “It is very bad and mean and wrong and cruel. Respect! I believe young people are quick enough to observe and imitate; and why or how should they respect whom no one else respects, and everybody slights? And very partial they must grow—oh, very partial!—to their studies, when they see to what a pass proficiency in those same tasks has brought their governess! Respect! Put anything the most deserving of respect before your daughters in the light in which you place her, and you will bring it down as low, no matter what it is!”“You speak with extreme impertinence, young man,” observed the gentleman.“I speak without passion, but with extreme indignation and contempt for such a course of treatment, and for all who practise it,” said Tom. “Why, how can you, as an honest gentleman, profess displeasure or surprise at your daughter telling my sister she is something beggarly and humble when you are forever telling her the same thing yourself in fifty plain, outspeaking ways, though not in words; and when your very porter and footman make the same delicate announcement to all comers?”
“Sir!” cried Tom, after regarding him in silence for some time. “If you do not understand what I mean I will tell you. My meaning is that no man can expect his children to respect what he degrades.”
“When you tell me,” resumed Tom, who was not the less indignant for keeping himself quiet, “that my sister has no innate power of commanding the respect of your children, I must tell you it is not so; and that she has. She is as well bred, as well taught, as well qualified by Nature to command respect as any hirer of a governess you know. But when you place her at a disadvantage in reference to every servant in your house, how can you suppose, if you have the gift of common sense, that she is not in a tenfold worse position in reference to your daughters?”
“Pretty well! Upon my word,” exclaimed the gentleman, “that is pretty well!”
“It is very ill, sir,” said Tom. “It is very bad and mean and wrong and cruel. Respect! I believe young people are quick enough to observe and imitate; and why or how should they respect whom no one else respects, and everybody slights? And very partial they must grow—oh, very partial!—to their studies, when they see to what a pass proficiency in those same tasks has brought their governess! Respect! Put anything the most deserving of respect before your daughters in the light in which you place her, and you will bring it down as low, no matter what it is!”
“You speak with extreme impertinence, young man,” observed the gentleman.
“I speak without passion, but with extreme indignation and contempt for such a course of treatment, and for all who practise it,” said Tom. “Why, how can you, as an honest gentleman, profess displeasure or surprise at your daughter telling my sister she is something beggarly and humble when you are forever telling her the same thing yourself in fifty plain, outspeaking ways, though not in words; and when your very porter and footman make the same delicate announcement to all comers?”
Dickens described a great variety of weak, and mean, and selfish, and degraded people in order to expose weakness, and meanness, and selfishness, and baseness, so that humanity might learn to overcome them, but he reserved his supreme contempt for those who oppose the general education of “the masses,” because it fills their mind with ideas above their station, or disqualifies them for the work they were intended to do. This being interpreted, means in plain language that certain human beings who, because they possess wealth, or belong to what they arrogantly call the “upper classes,” claim the right to dominate those who have not a sufficient amount of money to be independent of them; to fix what they selfishly call “the sphere of the lower classes”; and to prescribe the limits beyond which the children of the poor must not be educated, lest they be lifted beyond tame subserviency to their natural lords and masters, and fail to abase themselves dutifully or to be sufficiently grateful to those above them for the pittance they grudgingly give them for labouring in the menial occupations assigned them.
Dickens despised all Barnacles, and Dedlocks, and Podsnaps, and Dombeys, and Merdles; he ridiculed all who violate the sacred bond of human brotherhood; but the vials of his bitterest wrath were poured upon those who because a child was born in the home of poor parents would therefore restrict its education and dwarf its soul.
Mr. Dombey, after the christening of Paul, called Mrs. Toodle before his guests, and in a very condescending but rigidly majestic manner told her he had graciously decided to send her son to the school of the Charitable Grinders. He prefaced his announcement by a brief statement of his views regarding education:
“I am far from being friendly,” pursued Mr. Dombey, “to what is called by persons of levelling sentiments, general education. But it is necessary that the inferior classes should continue to be taught to know their position, and to conduct themselves properly. So far I approve of schools.”In Mr. Dombey’s eyes, as in some others that occasionally see the light, they only achieved that mighty piece of knowledge, the understanding of their own position, whoshowed a fitting reverence for his. It was not so much their merit that they knew themselves, as that they knew him, and bowed low before him.
“I am far from being friendly,” pursued Mr. Dombey, “to what is called by persons of levelling sentiments, general education. But it is necessary that the inferior classes should continue to be taught to know their position, and to conduct themselves properly. So far I approve of schools.”
In Mr. Dombey’s eyes, as in some others that occasionally see the light, they only achieved that mighty piece of knowledge, the understanding of their own position, whoshowed a fitting reverence for his. It was not so much their merit that they knew themselves, as that they knew him, and bowed low before him.
There are thousands of Dombeys still. Two Canadian judges recently said in speaking of education precisely what Mr. Dombey and his class said in the time of Dickens. One objected to educating the common people because it unfitted them for positions as house servants, and made them so outrageously independent that they would not bow (bend their bodies properly, bow their heads, and look reverently at the floor) when in the presence of their mistresses. The other said that the very derivation of the word “education” meant to lead out, and it was therefore clear that “education should be used to develop a few, ‘lead them out,’ beyond the masses in order that they might be qualified for leadership.” The necessary development to be imposed upon all but the favoured few in his system of government is willingness to follow leaders, and ignorance is the only condition that can make this possible. The glory of education is the awakening of the consciousness of freedom in the soul of the race and the revelation of the perfect law of liberty—individual right, social duty. The shackles, physical, intellectual, and spiritual, have fallen from humanity, as education has done its true work of emancipating the individual soul and revealing its own value and its responsibility for its brother souls.
The most brutal of all the characters described by Dickens is Bill Sikes. The most degraded and despicable of his characters is Dennis the hangman in Barnaby Rudge. Dickens makes Bill Sikes and Dennis use the very same arguments, from their standpoint, that the so-called upper classes have used and still do use against the education of the masses.
Bill Sikes, referring to the need of small boys in the trade of burglary, said:
“I want a boy, and he mustn’t be a big ’un. Lord!” said Mr. Sikes, reflectively, “if I’d only got that young boy of Ned, the chimbley sweeper’s! He kept him small on purpose, and let him out by the job. But the father getslagged; and then the Juvenile Delinquent Society comes and takes the boy away from a trade where he was arning money, teaches him to read and write, and in time makes a ’prentice of him. And so they go on,” said Mr. Sikes, his wrath rising with the recollection of his wrongs, “so they go on; and, if they’d got money enough (which it’s a Providence they haven’t), we shouldn’t have half a dozen boys left in the whole trade in a year or two.”
“I want a boy, and he mustn’t be a big ’un. Lord!” said Mr. Sikes, reflectively, “if I’d only got that young boy of Ned, the chimbley sweeper’s! He kept him small on purpose, and let him out by the job. But the father getslagged; and then the Juvenile Delinquent Society comes and takes the boy away from a trade where he was arning money, teaches him to read and write, and in time makes a ’prentice of him. And so they go on,” said Mr. Sikes, his wrath rising with the recollection of his wrongs, “so they go on; and, if they’d got money enough (which it’s a Providence they haven’t), we shouldn’t have half a dozen boys left in the whole trade in a year or two.”
And Fagin agreed with Bill Sikes.
When Hugh was formally admitted as a member of Lord Gordon’s mob Dennis the hangman was much delighted at the addition of such a strong young man to the ranks, and Dickens adds:
If anything could have exceeded Mr. Dennis’s joy on the happy conclusion of this ceremony it would have been the rapture with which he received the announcement that the new member could neither read nor write: those two arts being (as Mr. Dennis swore) the greatest possible curse a civilized community could know, and militating more against the professional emoluments and usefulness of the great constitutional office he had the honour to hold than any adverse circumstances that could present themselves to his imagination.
If anything could have exceeded Mr. Dennis’s joy on the happy conclusion of this ceremony it would have been the rapture with which he received the announcement that the new member could neither read nor write: those two arts being (as Mr. Dennis swore) the greatest possible curse a civilized community could know, and militating more against the professional emoluments and usefulness of the great constitutional office he had the honour to hold than any adverse circumstances that could present themselves to his imagination.
Bill Sikes objected to education because it spoiled the boys for the trade for which he required them; Dennis the hangman objected to education because “it reduced the professional emoluments of his great constitutional office,” or, in other words, reduced the number who had to be hanged; and their reasons are just as respectable as the reason given by any man in any position who objects to free education because it unfits boys for certain trades, or girls for “service,” or because “it fills their minds with ideas above their station,” or because they have to pay their just share of its cost, or for any other narrow and selfish reason. Selfishness is selfishness, and it is as utterly loathsome in a bishop as in Bill Sikes, in a judge as in Dennis the hangman.
Dickens never did any more artistic work than when he painted the aristocratic objectors to popular education in their natural hideousness with Bill Sikes and Dennis the hangman for a harmonious background.
THE TRAINING OF POOR, NEGLECTED, AND DEFECTIVE CHILDREN.
It is a singular fact that humanity in its highest development so long neglected the poor, and the weak, and the defective. They were practically left out of consideration by educators and philanthropists. The fact that they more than any others needed education and care was not seen clearly enough to lead to definite plans for the amelioration of their misfortunes until the nineteenth century. Dickens must always have the honour of being the great English apostle of the poor—especially of neglected childhood.
He wrote in the Uncommercial Traveller:
I can find—mustfind, whether I will or no—in the open streets, shameful instances of neglect of children, intolerable toleration of the engenderment of paupers, idlers, thieves, races of wretched and destructive cripples both in body and mind; a misery to themselves, a misery to the community, a disgrace to civilization, and an outrage on Christianity. I know it to be a fact as easy of demonstration as any sum in any of the elementary rules of arithmetic, that if the State would begin its work and duty at the beginning, and would with the strong hand take those children out of the streets while they are yet children, and wisely train them, it would make them a part of England’s glory, not its shame—of England’s strength, not its weakness—would raise good soldiers and sailors, and good citizens, and many great men out of the seeds of its criminal population; it would clear London streets of the most terrible objects they smite the sight with—myriads of little children who awfully reverse our Saviour’s words, and are not of the Kingdom of Heaven, but of the Kingdom of Hell.
I can find—mustfind, whether I will or no—in the open streets, shameful instances of neglect of children, intolerable toleration of the engenderment of paupers, idlers, thieves, races of wretched and destructive cripples both in body and mind; a misery to themselves, a misery to the community, a disgrace to civilization, and an outrage on Christianity. I know it to be a fact as easy of demonstration as any sum in any of the elementary rules of arithmetic, that if the State would begin its work and duty at the beginning, and would with the strong hand take those children out of the streets while they are yet children, and wisely train them, it would make them a part of England’s glory, not its shame—of England’s strength, not its weakness—would raise good soldiers and sailors, and good citizens, and many great men out of the seeds of its criminal population; it would clear London streets of the most terrible objects they smite the sight with—myriads of little children who awfully reverse our Saviour’s words, and are not of the Kingdom of Heaven, but of the Kingdom of Hell.
He sympathized with childhood on account of every form of coercion and abuse practised upon it by tyrannical, selfish, or ignorant adulthood, under the most favourable conditions; but his great heart was especially tender toward the little ones who, in addition to coercion and abuse, and bad training by the selfish, the ignorant, and the careless, were compelled to endure the terrible sufferings and deprivations of poverty. He was conscious not only of the material and physical evils to which the children of the very poor were exposed, but of the mental and spiritual barrenness of their lives, and one of his most manifest educational purposes was to improve social conditions, to arouse the spirit of truly sympathetic brotherhood (not merely considerate altruism, but genuine brotherhood) to place the poorest children in conditions that would develop by experience the apperceptive centres of intellectual and spiritual growth, and to direct special attention to the urgent need of education for the blind, the deaf, and the mentally defective.
No other American touched his heart and won his reverence quite so thoroughly as Dr. Howe, of Boston, who will undoubtedly be recognised as one of the greatest men yet produced by American civilization when men are tested by their purposes, and by their unselfish work for humanity in hitherto untrodden paths. After describing Dr. Howe’s work for the blind, he reverently says: “There are not many persons, I hope and believe, who, after reading these passages, can ever hear that name with indifference.”
Dickens charged on humanity, on society, the crime of making criminals. He said with great force and truth in the preface to Martin Chuzzlewit:
Nothing is more common in real life than a want of profitable reflection on the causes of many vices and crimes that awaken general horror. What is substantially true of families in this respect, is true of a whole commonwealth. As we sow, we reap. Let the reader go into the children’s side of any prison in England, or, I grieve to add, of many workhouses, and judge whether those are monsters who disgrace our streets, people our hulks andpenitentiaries, and overcrowd our penal colonies, or are creatures whom we have deliberately suffered to be bred for misery and ruin.
Nothing is more common in real life than a want of profitable reflection on the causes of many vices and crimes that awaken general horror. What is substantially true of families in this respect, is true of a whole commonwealth. As we sow, we reap. Let the reader go into the children’s side of any prison in England, or, I grieve to add, of many workhouses, and judge whether those are monsters who disgrace our streets, people our hulks andpenitentiaries, and overcrowd our penal colonies, or are creatures whom we have deliberately suffered to be bred for misery and ruin.
This thought was the motive that led him throughout his whole life to try to arouse sympathetic interest of the most active kind in the conditions and circumstances of the poor.
One of his most striking appeals to thoughtful people is made in Martin Chuzzlewit. These profound words will always be worthy of careful study by teachers and reformers:
Oh, moralists, who treat of happiness and self-respect, innate in every sphere of life, and shedding light on every grain of dust in God’s highway, so smooth below your carriage wheels, so rough beneath the tread of naked feet, bethink yourselves in looking on the swift descent of men whohavelived in their own esteem, that there are scores of thousands breathing now, and breathing thick with painful toil, who in that high respect have never lived at all, nor had a chance of life! Go ye, who rest so placidly upon the sacred bard who had been young, and when he strung his harp was old, and had never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging their bread; go, teachers of content and honest pride, into the mine, the mill, the forge, the squalid depths of deepest ignorance, and uttermost abyss of man’s neglect, and say can any hopeful plant spring up in air so foul that it extinguishes the soul’s bright torch as fast as it is kindled! And, oh! ye Pharisees of the nineteen hundredth year of Christian knowledge, who soundingly appeal to human nature, see that it be human first. Take heed it has not been transformed, during your slumber and the sleep of generations, into the nature of the beasts.
Oh, moralists, who treat of happiness and self-respect, innate in every sphere of life, and shedding light on every grain of dust in God’s highway, so smooth below your carriage wheels, so rough beneath the tread of naked feet, bethink yourselves in looking on the swift descent of men whohavelived in their own esteem, that there are scores of thousands breathing now, and breathing thick with painful toil, who in that high respect have never lived at all, nor had a chance of life! Go ye, who rest so placidly upon the sacred bard who had been young, and when he strung his harp was old, and had never seen the righteous forsaken, or his seed begging their bread; go, teachers of content and honest pride, into the mine, the mill, the forge, the squalid depths of deepest ignorance, and uttermost abyss of man’s neglect, and say can any hopeful plant spring up in air so foul that it extinguishes the soul’s bright torch as fast as it is kindled! And, oh! ye Pharisees of the nineteen hundredth year of Christian knowledge, who soundingly appeal to human nature, see that it be human first. Take heed it has not been transformed, during your slumber and the sleep of generations, into the nature of the beasts.
Dickens saw clearly the depravity of human nature, but he looked beyond the depravity to its cause, and he found a natural cause for the degradation, but not the cause that had been commonly assigned. He taught that the highest and holiest elements in human nature were the causes of its swiftest deterioration when misused, perverted, or neglected.
Alice Marwood, in Dombey and Son, was introduced toteach parents and society in general the duties they owe to childhood, and to show how lives are wrecked by neglect and by a false use of power. When she returned, an outcast, to her mother, and her mother upbraided her, the young woman said:
“I tell you, mother, for the second time, there have been years for me as well as you. Come back harder? Of course I have come back harder. What else did you expect?”“Harder to me! To her own dear mother!” cried the old woman.“I don’t know who began to harden me, if my own dear mother didn’t,” she returned, sitting with her folded arms, and knitted brows, and compressed lips, as if she were bent on excluding, by force, every softer feeling from her breast. “Listen, mother, to a word or two. If we understand each other now, we shall not fall out any more, perhaps. I went away a girl, and have come back a woman. I went away undutiful enough, and have come back no better, you may swear. But have you been very dutiful to me?”“I!” cried the old woman. “To my own gal! A mother dutiful to her own child!”“It sounds unnatural, don’t it?” returned the daughter, looking coldly on her with her stern, regardless, hardy, beautiful face; “but I have thought of it sometimes, in the course ofmylone years, till I have got used to it. I have heard some talk about duty first and last; but it has always been of my duty to other people. I have wondered now and then—to pass away the time—whether no one ever owed any duty to me.”Her mother sat mowing, and mumbling, and shaking her head, but whether angrily, or remorsefully, or in denial, or only in her physical infirmity, did not appear.“There was a child called Alice Marwood,” said the daughter with a laugh, and looking down at herself in terrible derision of herself, “born among poverty and neglect, and nurtured in it. Nobody taught her, nobody stepped forward to help her, nobody cared for her.”“Nobody!” echoed the mother, pointing to herself and striking her breast.“The only care she knew,” returned the daughter, “was to be beaten, and stinted, and abused sometimes; andshe might have done better without that. She lived in homes like this, and in the streets, with a crowd of little wretches like herself; and yet she brought good looks out of this childhood. So much the worse for her. She had better have been hunted and worried to death for ugliness.”“Go on! go on!” exclaimed the mother.“She’ll soon have ended,” said the daughter. “There was a criminal called Alice Marwood—a girl still, but deserted and an outcast. And she was tried, and she was sentenced. And Lord, how the gentlemen in the court talked about it! and how grave the judge was on her duty, and on her having perverted the gifts of Nature—as if he didn’t know better than anybody there that they had been made curses to her!—and how he preached about the strong arm of the Law—so very strong to save her, when she was an innocent and helpless little wretch! and how solemn and religious it all was! I have thought of that many times since, to be sure!”She folded her arms tightly on her breast, and laughed in a tone that made the howl of the old woman musical.“So Alice Marwood was transported, mother,” she pursued, “and was sent to learn her duty where there was twenty times less duty, and more wickedness, and wrong, and infamy, than here. And Alice Marwood is come back a woman. Such a woman as she ought to be, after all this. In good time, there will be more solemnity, and more fine talk, and more strong arm, most likely, and there will be an end of her; but the gentlemen needn’t be afraid of being thrown out of work. There’s crowds of little wretches, boy and girl, growing up in any of the streets they live in, that’ll keep them to it till they’ve made their fortunes.”
“I tell you, mother, for the second time, there have been years for me as well as you. Come back harder? Of course I have come back harder. What else did you expect?”
“Harder to me! To her own dear mother!” cried the old woman.
“I don’t know who began to harden me, if my own dear mother didn’t,” she returned, sitting with her folded arms, and knitted brows, and compressed lips, as if she were bent on excluding, by force, every softer feeling from her breast. “Listen, mother, to a word or two. If we understand each other now, we shall not fall out any more, perhaps. I went away a girl, and have come back a woman. I went away undutiful enough, and have come back no better, you may swear. But have you been very dutiful to me?”
“I!” cried the old woman. “To my own gal! A mother dutiful to her own child!”
“It sounds unnatural, don’t it?” returned the daughter, looking coldly on her with her stern, regardless, hardy, beautiful face; “but I have thought of it sometimes, in the course ofmylone years, till I have got used to it. I have heard some talk about duty first and last; but it has always been of my duty to other people. I have wondered now and then—to pass away the time—whether no one ever owed any duty to me.”
Her mother sat mowing, and mumbling, and shaking her head, but whether angrily, or remorsefully, or in denial, or only in her physical infirmity, did not appear.
“There was a child called Alice Marwood,” said the daughter with a laugh, and looking down at herself in terrible derision of herself, “born among poverty and neglect, and nurtured in it. Nobody taught her, nobody stepped forward to help her, nobody cared for her.”
“Nobody!” echoed the mother, pointing to herself and striking her breast.
“The only care she knew,” returned the daughter, “was to be beaten, and stinted, and abused sometimes; andshe might have done better without that. She lived in homes like this, and in the streets, with a crowd of little wretches like herself; and yet she brought good looks out of this childhood. So much the worse for her. She had better have been hunted and worried to death for ugliness.”
“Go on! go on!” exclaimed the mother.
“She’ll soon have ended,” said the daughter. “There was a criminal called Alice Marwood—a girl still, but deserted and an outcast. And she was tried, and she was sentenced. And Lord, how the gentlemen in the court talked about it! and how grave the judge was on her duty, and on her having perverted the gifts of Nature—as if he didn’t know better than anybody there that they had been made curses to her!—and how he preached about the strong arm of the Law—so very strong to save her, when she was an innocent and helpless little wretch! and how solemn and religious it all was! I have thought of that many times since, to be sure!”
She folded her arms tightly on her breast, and laughed in a tone that made the howl of the old woman musical.
“So Alice Marwood was transported, mother,” she pursued, “and was sent to learn her duty where there was twenty times less duty, and more wickedness, and wrong, and infamy, than here. And Alice Marwood is come back a woman. Such a woman as she ought to be, after all this. In good time, there will be more solemnity, and more fine talk, and more strong arm, most likely, and there will be an end of her; but the gentlemen needn’t be afraid of being thrown out of work. There’s crowds of little wretches, boy and girl, growing up in any of the streets they live in, that’ll keep them to it till they’ve made their fortunes.”
Bleak House is one of the greatest of the educational works of Dickens. One of its chief aims was to arouse a sympathetic interest in the lives of poor children. The Neckett children, Charlotte, and Tom, and Emma, revealed a new world to many thousands of good people.
“Charley, Charley!” said my guardian. “How old are you?”“Over thirteen, sir,” replied the child.“Oh! what a great age,” said my guardian. “What a great age, Charley!”“And do you live alone here with these babies, Charley?” said my guardian.“Yes, sir,” returned the child, looking up into his face with perfect confidence, “since father died.”“And how do you live, Charley? Oh! Charley,” said my guardian, turning his face away for a moment, “how do you live?”“Since my father died, sir, I’ve gone out to work. I’m out washing to-day.”“God help you, Charley!” said my guardian. “You’re not tall enough to reach the tub!”“In pattens I am, sir,” she said, quickly. “I’ve got a high pair as belonged to mother.”“And when did mother die? Poor mother!”“Mother died just after Emma was born,” said the child, glancing at the face upon her bosom. “Then father said I was to be as good a mother to her as I could. And so I tried. And so I worked at home, and did cleaning and nursing and washing, for a long time before I began to go out. And that’s how I know how; don’t you see, sir?”“And do you often go out?”“As often as I can,” said Charley, opening her eyes, and smiling, “because of earning sixpences and shillings!”“And do you always lock the babies up when you go out?”“To keep ’em safe, sir, don’t you see?” said Charley. “Mrs. Blinder comes up now and then, and Mr. Gridley comes up sometimes, and perhaps I can run in sometimes, and they can play, you know, and Tom ain’t afraid of being locked up, are you, Tom?”“No-o!” said Tom stoutly.“When it comes on dark the lamps are lighted down in the court, and they show up here quite bright—almost quite bright. Don’t they, Tom?”“Yes, Charley,” said Tom; “almost quite bright.”
“Charley, Charley!” said my guardian. “How old are you?”
“Over thirteen, sir,” replied the child.
“Oh! what a great age,” said my guardian. “What a great age, Charley!”
“And do you live alone here with these babies, Charley?” said my guardian.
“Yes, sir,” returned the child, looking up into his face with perfect confidence, “since father died.”
“And how do you live, Charley? Oh! Charley,” said my guardian, turning his face away for a moment, “how do you live?”
“Since my father died, sir, I’ve gone out to work. I’m out washing to-day.”
“God help you, Charley!” said my guardian. “You’re not tall enough to reach the tub!”
“In pattens I am, sir,” she said, quickly. “I’ve got a high pair as belonged to mother.”
“And when did mother die? Poor mother!”
“Mother died just after Emma was born,” said the child, glancing at the face upon her bosom. “Then father said I was to be as good a mother to her as I could. And so I tried. And so I worked at home, and did cleaning and nursing and washing, for a long time before I began to go out. And that’s how I know how; don’t you see, sir?”
“And do you often go out?”
“As often as I can,” said Charley, opening her eyes, and smiling, “because of earning sixpences and shillings!”
“And do you always lock the babies up when you go out?”
“To keep ’em safe, sir, don’t you see?” said Charley. “Mrs. Blinder comes up now and then, and Mr. Gridley comes up sometimes, and perhaps I can run in sometimes, and they can play, you know, and Tom ain’t afraid of being locked up, are you, Tom?”
“No-o!” said Tom stoutly.
“When it comes on dark the lamps are lighted down in the court, and they show up here quite bright—almost quite bright. Don’t they, Tom?”
“Yes, Charley,” said Tom; “almost quite bright.”
The hearts must be hard that are not moved to a deeper and more practical interest in the children of the poor by this pathetic story, and others of a kindred character which Dickens told over and over again for the Christian world to study. And the study led to feeling and thought and co-operative action.
The fruits of these wonderful stories are the splendid homes, and organizations for children, and the laws to protect them from cruelty by parents or teachers, or employers, and the free public schools to educate them, and the joy, and happiness, and freedom, that are taking the place of the sorrow, and tears, and coercion of the time when Dickens began his noble work.
The tragic story of poor Jo illustrated the poverty, the ignorance, the destitution, the hopelessness, the barrenness, and the dreadful environment of a London street boy. The world has done much better since, as Dickens prophesied it would do, and the good work is going on. Hundreds of thousands of the poor Joes of London are now in the public schools of London alone of whom the Christian philanthropy of the world thought little till Dickens told his stories.
In Nobody’s Story Dickens returns to his special purpose of changing the attitude of civilization toward the education of the poor. The Bigwigs represent society, and “the man” means the poor man.
But the Bigwig family broke out into violent family quarrels concerning what it was lawful to teach to this man’s children. Some of the family insisted on such a thing being primary and indispensable above all other things; and others of the family insisted on such another thing being primary and indispensable above all other things; and the Bigwig family, rent into factions, wrote pamphlets, held convocations, delivered charges, orations, and all varieties of discourses; impounded one another in courts Lay and courts Ecclesiastical; threw dirt, exchanged pummellings, and fell together by the ears in unintelligible animosity. Meanwhile, this man, in his short evening snatches at his fireside, saw the demon Ignorance arise there, and take his children to itself. He saw his daughter perverted into a heavy slatternly drudge; he saw his son go moping down the ways of low sensuality, to brutality and crime; he saw the dawning light of intelligence in the eyes of his babies so changing into cunning and suspicion, that he could have rather wished them idiots.
But the Bigwig family broke out into violent family quarrels concerning what it was lawful to teach to this man’s children. Some of the family insisted on such a thing being primary and indispensable above all other things; and others of the family insisted on such another thing being primary and indispensable above all other things; and the Bigwig family, rent into factions, wrote pamphlets, held convocations, delivered charges, orations, and all varieties of discourses; impounded one another in courts Lay and courts Ecclesiastical; threw dirt, exchanged pummellings, and fell together by the ears in unintelligible animosity. Meanwhile, this man, in his short evening snatches at his fireside, saw the demon Ignorance arise there, and take his children to itself. He saw his daughter perverted into a heavy slatternly drudge; he saw his son go moping down the ways of low sensuality, to brutality and crime; he saw the dawning light of intelligence in the eyes of his babies so changing into cunning and suspicion, that he could have rather wished them idiots.
Dickens objected to a certain kind of sentimentality exhibited in his day toward criminals, and draws a verysuggestive picture full of elements for psychological study in David Copperfield, in which he makes the brutal schoolmaster Creakle a very considerate Middlesex magistrate, with an unfailing system for a quick and effective method of converting the wickedest scoundrels into the most submissive, Scripture-quoting saints by solitary confinement. Dickens did not approve of the system, and he did not approve either of the plan of the spending of so much money by the state in erecting splendid buildings for criminals, while the honest poor were in hovels, and especially while the state allowed the boys and girls, through neglect, to be transformed into criminals by thousands every year. Dickens would have made criminals earn their own living, and he urged the establishment of industrial schools for the boys and girls of the streets, so that they might become respectable, intelligent, self-reliant, law-abiding citizens instead of criminals.
David said:
Traddles and I repaired to the prison where Mr. Creakle was powerful. It was an immense and solid building, erected at a vast expense. I could not help thinking, as we approached the gate, what an uproar would have been made in the country if any deluded man had proposed to spend one half the money it had cost, on the erection of an industrial school for the young, or a house of refuge for the deserving old.
Traddles and I repaired to the prison where Mr. Creakle was powerful. It was an immense and solid building, erected at a vast expense. I could not help thinking, as we approached the gate, what an uproar would have been made in the country if any deluded man had proposed to spend one half the money it had cost, on the erection of an industrial school for the young, or a house of refuge for the deserving old.
As usual with great reformers, the philanthropists of his own day refused to accept the theories of Dickens, but succeeding generations adopted them. The reforms for which he pleaded began to be practised so soon because he winged his thought with living appeals to the deepest, truest feelings of the human heart.
Dickens said truly of Barnaby Rudge: