CHAPTER IX: THE SCHOOLROOM
When Tom was seven and Anne nine, I decided to engage a governess. I had never lost the feeling of—shall we call it respect—that I had felt for my own governess; one does not lose a feeling like respect in ten years. Therefore, when I found myself interviewing a governess for some one else, I felt rather like a sheep engaging a butcher. You can picture the scene. A small office adjoining the shambles. The sheep, arrayed in all the panoply of its natural wool unshorn for many years, the place where the branded mark had been covered with a self-possessed growth, seated at a small table writing. The pen a fancy article in the humorous disguise of a knife.
“Well, Mr. Jones,” says the trembling, bleating voice. “Do you kill yourself, or do you purchase the—er—the carcasses? Youwere in your last shop how many years? Precisely—very painful—thank you. You left on account of an outbreak of anthrax amongst the lambs—quite so. Yes, you would have the dip to yourself after ten o’clock. The slaughter-house is next door to your room, and there is a convenient tannery within ten minutes’ walk kept by an excellent ogre with moderate charges; we are devoted to him. I will send the cart to the station for you on Tuesday, and you will be able to begin your rounds at once.”
I lost this feeling after I had been to one or two agencies, and I felt instead like the man with a whip, who took over the plantation from the kind master in “Uncle Tom’s Cabin.” Innocent old ladies with white wool on their heads and Bibles in their pockets came to offer their services as educational drudges, prepared to expose their pathetic cashmere backs to the lash of childish criticism and motherly arrogance. I wanted to engage them all just to ensure their being out of reach of some womenI knew. I would then leave them my house, and fly with Tom and Anne to some desert island where we never need employ anyone or improve our minds again.
But it was impossible to engage them all, so I tossed up in the end between two; “heads,” Miss Mathers, “tails,” Miss Cook, and Miss Mathers had it. Miss Cook was young and modern, very pretty and charming, with all the drawbacks of a boy and a few of his advantages. I knew the children would get on with her, but I had a secret fear that she would think me “quaint,” and perhaps develop an enthusiasm for my vices, which would have bothered me. Miss Mathers was above all things a gentlewoman, which I thought would be good for Anne because I was not. She liked refinement and regular hours, and, especially, her attitude towards “gentlemen” was such a delight to me.
“Have you ever had brothers, Miss Mathers?” I asked her once, to which she replied: “Oh, yes, I have a brother I am extremely fond of; he is a most delightfulman, so honest, generous, and witty. We have been the greatest of friends ever since our childhood.”
“But, then, surely, you must have seen him in his shirt-sleeves sometimes,” I suggested, “you know he is a human being and not a strange animal. Didn’t you ever sit on his knee?”
“No, Mrs. Molyneux,” she said after some thought, “I don’t remember ever doing so; I doubt whether he would have cared for it. But, of course, if anything of the kind had been necessary I should not have hesitated.”
I found great tonic properties in Miss Mathers’ conversation, for I had never seen men and women separated in the way she did it. It made exquisitely amusing so much in our social life that had been dull before. To her mind, so far as I understand, a man’s position in the scheme of creation is like that of the architect when a house is to be built. The only person who really matters is the lady who lives in the housewhen it is complete. The architect (it is disagreeable of course to have to employ one) merely sees that it is there. He is the man who does all the necessary and unpleasant part, what Miss Mathers called in every branch of art “the mechanical part.” I have heard her say of a picture that the “mechanical part was very nicely done.” I think her opinion of James was high, inasmuch as she considered his share in the establishment—the mechanical part—was very nicely done. That is, there was enough money to live on, the servants were well looked after, his children healthy, affectionate, and not too numerous.
But, while I was looked upon as a fellow-creature, James was to her a thing as utterly remote as the driver of a train in which she might be travelling, or, as I said, the architect of our house or the Archbishop of Canterbury. No, I think that is wrong. The Archbishop would be thought more human being a clergyman, because clergymen are almost like ladies they are so sensible—wewill say, rather, the Pope, because being a Roman Catholic he was, of course, not a clergyman, though no doubt an excellent man according to his lights.
Miss Mathers was full of pleasant surprises. I found that she enjoyed music-halls, approved of divorce (which she called a capital arrangement if two people could not agree), and disliked the idea of Women’s Suffrage. I pointed out that she was inconsistent in approving of divorce notwithstanding her religious principles, and she explained her reasons over some hot buttered toast before retiring to bed.
“My brother divorced his wife,” she said, “for reasons which are warranted by Scripture, and I hold him to be in the right. It was far better than if he had compelled her to live with him under false pretences of affection.”
“But if she ran away,” I suggested.
“In that case,” said Miss Mathers, “she would have continued to bear his name, and would therefore have been living in open sin.My brother, by taking the course he did, gave her the opportunity to retrieve her character by becoming respectably married. The Church is perfectly right in refusing to sanction divorce, because persons who place themselves in such a position ought to be outside the pale of religion, but I think the law acts wisely in providing for legitimate separation.”
On another buttered toast night I asked her why she disliked Women’s Suffrage. If I had had any knowledge of character I might have guessed her reason, but Miss Mathers was not like anyone I had met before.
“My dear Mrs. Molyneux,” she said, “the poet Byron has most truly observed that
‘Man’s love is of his life a thing apart;’Tis woman’s whole existence.’
‘Man’s love is of his life a thing apart;’Tis woman’s whole existence.’
‘Man’s love is of his life a thing apart;’Tis woman’s whole existence.’
‘Man’s love is of his life a thing apart;
’Tis woman’s whole existence.’
It is true that it does not fall to the lot of all of us to love in that sense, but the possibility can never be lost sight of. What could youconceive more ludicrous and unsuitable than that the whole existence of one of our rulers should be merged in passionate feelings for a fellow-creature? Public life demands whole-hearted devotion to the State.”
“But great statesmen often fall dreadfully in love,” I said.
“A thing apart, Mrs. Molyneux, believe me,” the romantic creature said with assurance. “When my brother’s nose is in his books or his inkpot or wherever else it may happen to be, it isthere; temporarily perhaps, but he gives his whole mind to it. When he emerges he may be the slave of any woman, only not at the time. But I assure you I have seen women attempt to transact the business of an office, when they were in love, with deplorable results. I do not say they are incapable of renouncing their private passions for the sake of what they apprehend to be their duty, but I maintain that their services to that duty will not be worth a pin so long as the renouncement is in progress. And the public service cannot wait while they recover.”
“A great many people will disagree with you, Miss Mathers,” I said.
“A great many people have not loved,” she replied. “I speak from observation only.”
Tom and Anne were as devoted as I was to Miss Mathers. Of course Anne never became a gentlewoman, but she learned to sew, and to write without inking her fingers, not to come into a room head first and feet last nor to trail a vanishing hand across the door before she shut it; not to giggle, not to finger the spoons and forks before the next dish came in, not to sit still when she ought to stand up, not to frown and show her teeth in the sun, not to fall into habits of speech, and—most valuable and delightful accomplishment—not to argue about anything that had to be done. Tom said Miss Mathers was very restful because she saved them so much trouble. He explained that so long as there was any chance of altering an order by discussion it would be unsporting not to have a shot at it, but the argumentwas, on the whole, more fatiguing than it was worth, even to gain a slight concession.
I do not know whether she returned our affection, but when she left because Anne grew up, she said she did not intend to teach any more. It was very up-hill work in the present state of affairs. Parents of breeding were dying out, and modern education appeared to become daily more medical and less moral. She could never acquire the requisite knowledge for turning out a child’s stomach to examine its character. She should, therefore, retire and live with her brother, who really needed a lady to look after him.