rebuked her. If it was only new-mown, it was grass: it would not become
hay till it had undergone a process of fermentation. She looked so sad
that I struck in, saying ‘hay’ meant hedge. (I am not so sure about it
now as I was then; but ‘hay’ sounds very like ‘haie,’ which is the
French for ‘hedge,’ and Anglo-Saxon ‘hæg’ comes down to ‘hay’ as well as
‘dæg’ to ‘day.’) I declared that the grass had been hay from the time
when it was hedged, that is, layed up for mowing; and, getting bolder, I
declared it had been hay ever since the seeds were sown. The distinction
is, you put in grasses that ripen in succession if you are sowing for
pasture, and grasses that ripen simultaneously if you are sowing for
hay. Mr Y said that he did not care for these distinctions, and walked
away repeating ‘fermentation.’ And the girl was singing again.
On roads near Cambridge one often saw Dons walking steadily on till they
came to a mile-stone, touching the stone with their hands, and then
walking just as steadily back. They had found out by experience how many
miles they needed for their afternoon walk, and they always walked that
number of miles, neither more nor less. An undergraduate told me that he
went out for a walk one Saturday afternoon with a foreign Jew, who was
at Cambridge lecturing; and he wondered how the Sabbath Day’s Journey
would work in. Instead of turning back at a mile-stone, the pious man
took out a biscuit, put it down, and then walked on; and he did the same
at every mile-stone that they passed. On getting back, my friend
inquired about the biscuits; and the answer was quite clear--a Sabbath
Day’s Journey is a certain distance from your home; and the Mishnah says
that where your food is, there also is your home. The biscuits were his
food, and every mile-stone was his home.
In 1882 the Regius Professor of Hebrew at Cambridge brought out a book
on _The Hebrew Text of the Old Covenant_, two volumes and upwards of
1200 pages; and I used to see it at the house of a friend of mine, who
died some years ago. Wishing to look at it again, I asked a bookseller
to get it for me, but he could not hear of a copy of it anywhere, either
new or second-hand: so I had the University Library copy sent down to me
from Cambridge. Though it had been in the Library for close on forty
years, there were only two pages in the whole of it that had their edges
cut. Of course, a prophet is without honour in his own country, and
Jarrett was only a minor prophet; but it seems strange that nobody had
curiosity enough to see more of the book.
There was a Professor at Oxford at whose blunders people laughed,
forgetting that his blunders were only a by-product of a large output of
learning. But once, when I was joining others in the laugh, we were all
reduced to silence by a question from a friend of his, “Do any of you
know of any other man in England who would sit for two hours up to his
neck in a Syrian sewer in order to copy an inscription?”
There was also a Don I went to see whenever I was in Oxford--he was
always ready for a talk on Dante or Strabo--and I usually found him
seated in an easy-chair exactly in front of the fire with Minos and
Rhadamanthus seated on foot-stools on each side of it. They were cats;
and he had given them these names (when kittens) on returning from a
tour in Crete. He had travelled a good deal, and was able to tell me
that Albanians really had got tails--a fact that I had never been able
to ascertain. The tails are very short, only the last few bones of the
spine; and they are only on people whose Pelasgian ancestry has not been
swamped by intermarrying with other races.
In my brother’s time at Cambridge there was a story of a Senior Wrangler
lecturing an undergraduate for forty minutes on the theory of the common
pump, and the undergraduate then asking him, “But why does the water go
up?” There were men like that who could not get their knowledge out, and
there were other men who could--it came down like a thunderstorm that
goes streaming off the surface and does not sink into the ground. They
did not teach you much of what they meant to teach, but every now and
then they would come out with something that implied a mode of reasoning
or a point of view which was entirely new to you. And these illuminating
things made up for all the rest.
There is talk enough now of the training of teachers and the art of
teaching. These men had no such training, and would have scoffed at it
as a mere trick by which a silly man could make the most of what he
knew. And possibly there are schoolteachers now whose knowledge would
look small unless they made the most of it. Education now means
class-rooms, attendances, inspections, salaries, and such like things,
and very little of what it used to mean; and I fear that it may someday
meet the fate of monasteries under Henry VIII. The monasteries saved
learning from extinction in the depths of the Dark Ages, and afterwards
they were the guardians of the poor: yet they were all swept away, for
no shortcomings of their own, but just because there were so many of
them that they ate the country up.
I remember an old lady saying it would be horrible if her maids could
read--she would not be able to leave her letters lying about. That was
before the Education Act of 1870, but was only a faint echo of things
said in 1807. “From the first dawning of that gracious benevolence,
which issued spontaneously from the bosoms of their present Majesties,
in promoting the instruction of the poor by the establishment of Sunday
Schools, the Surveyor has looked forward with a sort of dread to the
probable consequences of such a measure.” That is on page 465 of _A
General View of the Agriculture of the County of Devon_ by Charles
Vancouver, Surveyor to the Board of Agriculture. It also says, page 469,
“How will it be possible to suppress communications and a concert among
the multitude, when they are all gifted with the means of corresponding
and contriving schemes of sedition and insurrection with each other?...
The Surveyor thus respectfully submits to the consideration of the
Honourable Board the propriety of opposing any measures that may
rationally be supposed to lead to such a fatal issue.” But in some ways
he was right. If there is agriculture, there must be labourers. He
preferred “exciting a general emulation to excel in all their
avocations,” page 468, rather than making them despise these avocations
without fitting them for any others.
When the Education Act was passed in 1870, nobody expected more than the
three R’s and nobody expected less--I remember what a talk there was
about it at the time--but more has been attempted and much less has been
done, at any rate, in village schools. There is the child that can’t
learn, and the child that won’t. Not many years ago a small girl in the
village made up her mind that she wouldn’t learn no Readin’ nor ‘Ritin’
and couldn’t learn no ‘Rithmetic; and she didn’t learn ’n, though she
made attendances and thereby earned the school some money in the shape
of Government grants. But she did not look far enough ahead. She was
quite happy without her R’s till she came to the age of Flirtation; but
then she found she could not read the little notes that she received,
nor write notes in reply; and she did not much like asking other folk to
read her the contents of notes that were intended for herself alone. And
so she found that education has its uses after all. But even if it has
its uses, it also has its risks: at least, some people think so. An old
man here was asked to witness the execution of a Deed, and signed the
Attestation with very great misgivings. “There now, if ’t ’ad bin for
anyone but you, I’d ’ve bin mazin’ coy o’ that. I’ve heerd of men
a-losin’ thousan’s by just settin’ hand to paper.” A man here, not much
older than myself, escaped all schooling and has prospered greatly; and
he tells me he has never set hand to paper, and this is why he is so
prosperous. When people sign agreements, they do not always see the full
effect of them; and he avoids that risk. He signs nothing but his
cheques, and they are often for substantial sums.
Children now know many things of which their grandfathers had never
heard, but I doubt their being so observant or so shrewd: they get too
much from print. There was a very cultivated man who was often in this
neighbourhood some years ago, and he delighted in reading novels about
Devon and the West, but was quite unconscious that he was in the midst
of the real thing. He was so accustomed to getting his impressions out
of books that he had lost the power of getting them in any other way.
The children have not come to that, and never may; but they are being
overdosed with books. There is a history in use at Lustleigh school that
gives three chapters to the times before the Romans came: the Stone and
Bronze and Iron Ages. But here at Lustleigh we have the real thing close
at hand--there are hut-circles within a mile of the school, and at
Torquay, only fifteen miles away, there is Kent’s Cavern itself and a
Museum containing what was found there, the best evidence in England for
the Stone Age periods. Children would learn a great deal more by seeing
the real thing than they will ever learn by reading of it in a book. And
books are sometimes wrong. This history says that the Britons came over
here about 400 B.C., and it calls them Britons all through the chapter;
but another history (in the same series) always calls these people
Celts, and says that the Britons were a cross-breed between the Celtic
invaders and the old inhabitants. Which of these statements are the
children to believe?
I have lately been looking through the books that are in use in
Lustleigh school. One of them, a geography of the World, makes the
Bosporos wider than the Dardanelles. It might be better not to teach
geography at all than teach it wrong. Another one, a geography of
Europe, goes out of its way to say that Marseilles is one of the oldest
cities in the Mediterranean. This is quite untrue--Marseilles was not
founded until 600 B.C.--and even if it were true, it would not be a
thing worth teaching to children in an elementary school here. In
another one, a geography of England and Wales, the first chapter starts
with this--“Our country really forms a part of the Continent of Eurasia,
though not now joined to it. Eurasia is the name given to the Continents
of Europe and Asia. Eurasia is only separated from the Continent of
Africa by a canal.” Well, at the geological period when our country was
joined to the Continent, Africa also was joined to it near Gibraltar and
near Sicily: so, if our country really forms a part of the Continent,
Africa must really form a part of it as well. And the word Eurasia could
not possibly mean Europe and Asia: it is only the jargon of
half-educated men.
Logically one may begin geography with Space, the Solar System, our
rotating globe, the oceans and the continents, and so on; but children
may do better by beginning at the other end with maps of places where
they live. I have sent Lustleigh school a map of Lustleigh, 6 ft. wide
and 4 ft. high, Ordnance Survey, 25 inches to the mile, or one square
inch for each square acre, with the acreage of all the fields and
gardens printed on them. On that map the children see their homes and
other things they know; and having seen how these are mapped, they get a
better notion of what maps really mean. A map is easily misunderstood.
At one point the Bosporos is less than half a mile in width--no wider
than the estuary of the Teign--and thus would be invisible on ordinary
maps unless its width was much exaggerated. With this exaggeration and
different colouring on each side, the maps make people think there is a
great gulf fixed between the Europeans and the Asiatics there; whereas,
as all Levantines say, Europe really ends at the Balkans.
Another of those school-books says that the beginning of a letter (my
dear So-and-so) is to be called the Salutation, and the address is to be
called the Superscription. That is a pretty bit of pedantry for a
village school. It also says that words of opposite meaning, such as
‘far’ and ‘near,’ are known as Antonyms. That is jargon, and quite
wrong. (Antonyms could only be produced by antonomasia, and therefore
would be substituted words, like ‘Carthaginis Eversor’ for Scipio and
‘Iron Duke’ for Wellington.) The authors of those books all claim
experience in the art of teaching; but that does not make up for their
imperfect knowledge of the subjects they have taught. What is the good
of teaching children that the reign of George the Third “was marked by
disaster and disgrace”? They have heard of Trafalgar and of Waterloo.
Yet one of their school-books says this. Another one says that Edward
the First gave England “a Parliament in which all classes were
represented.” The serfs were far the largest class: they were not
represented at all; and very few of the free men had any voice in
choosing representatives.
When children are learning about England and its place in Europe and the
World, they might as well be taught that English is an Aryan language,
and that all Aryan languages have grown from the same roots, whereas
Semitic languages are of another growth. ‘What do they know of England
who only England know?’ Change ‘England’ into ‘English,’ and the answer
is the same. Children could be taught Grimm’s Law which shows how words
assume a different shape in different languages. They need not learn the
languages: merely a few words on a list to give them mastery of their
mother tongue. Time would be better spent on this than on their physical
drill, a thing for children in a slummy town but quite superfluous here.
Amongst other useful things, the children have been taught to run along
in single file and leap an obstacle; and I scoffed at this, not seeing
how very useful it might be. One sunny day a worthy man was lying on the
grass, flat on his back, dead drunk; and they ran along and leaped over
him in single file in the way they had been taught at school, just
clearing his capacious waistcoat which stood up like a dome.
The old school at Lustleigh was founded by Parson Davy in 1825; and he
gave land to endow it, and set forth its objects in his deed of gift, 4
August 1825. It was “for the educating and instructing of the poor
children, being parishioners of the said parish, on the principles of
the established Church of England, in reading and needlework, in
learning their catechism, and in such other proper and useful learning
for poor children as is hereinafter directed and appointed,” namely,
“teaching the boys reading and spelling, and the girls reading and
spelling and knitting and needlework, and also instructing such poor
children in such other proper and useful learning as the majority of the
feoffees shall think proper and direct,” the feoffees being the eight
persons whom he thereby enfeoffed of the land as trustees.
Within my recollection there used to be a dozen children at the school,
or sometimes a few more. The endowment was not large enough to make it a
free school, and there were fees to pay. If parents could not manage it,
there were always people who would pay the fees for any promising child;
and thus admission to the school was rather like admission to the Navy
now that competitive examination has been replaced by interview. It was,
of course, a mixed school, boys and girls together. They were taught
Scripture by the Rector and other subjects by a Dame; and the Dame
enforced her teaching with a stick. And she (or her predecessor) lived
in the old school-house itself, a building with four rooms.
Then came the Education Act of 1870, and the old school-room was not
thought nearly good enough for elementary teaching then, though it was
just about as good as some of those old rooms at Harrow in which much
better work was done. A new building was erected a little higher up the
hill, and the old Dame and her pupils moved up there at the end of 1876.
The old school was shut up, and its endowment is now frittered away in
prizes at the new school and a Sunday school. I always wish the old
school had been kept alive as a nucleus for a secondary school here. The
endowment seemed too small: yet Harrow began with very little more--“our
House was built in lowly ways, God brought us to great honour.”
The old school-house has a tablet in the wall, with the date of 1825 and
then these words, “Built by subscription | and endowed with Lowton
Meadow in Moreton | for supporting a school for ever | by the Rev.
William Davy | curate of this parish.” His motives were set forth in his
_Apology for giving Lowton Meadow to the Parish of Lustleigh_, a leaflet
that he printed with his own printing-press. “Whereas from my long
service in that church I have a strong regard and hearty desire for its
present and future welfare, and being from repeated proofs too unhappily
convinced of the unœconomical and profligate disposition of my immediate
successors, and being willing in my lifetime to do the greatest and most
lasting good with the little property I have in fee, I do hereby with
the consent of my son (who by good conduct and kind providence is
sufficiently provided for) offer to give to the officiating minister and
churchwardens of the parish of Lustleigh all that one close or meadow
called Morice or Lowton Meadow in Moreton Hampstead to have and to hold
the same with the rents and profits thereof from and after the 25th of
March 1824 in trust for ever for the support and maintenance of a school
for poor children in the parish of Lustleigh aforesaid in the house to
be erected in the parish town for that purpose.”
The inscription and the leaflet both have the words ‘for ever,’ and
these words are also on two patens that he had given to the church. They
are “for the use of the Sacrament for ever”; and there is the same
inscription on a chalice given by Edward Basill, who was Rector from
1660 to 1698. No doubt Davy copied Basill here, and hence applied ‘for
ever’ to his later gift; and there is no question what ‘for ever’
meant--his gifts were to be kept.
The patens have not yet been sold, but the meadow has. The adjoining
owner wanted it, and wanted it very badly, as he had erected a pair of
semi-detached residences close up to the hedge. And it was sold him for
£300, or £25 less than Davy gave for it a century ago. As a matter of
business, the thing seemed indefensible; and as a matter of sentiment,
it certainly was vile.
Sir Joshua Reynolds was born at Plympton, and in the zenith of his fame
the Corporation made him Mayor. He acknowledged this by sending down his
portrait, painted by himself, to be hung in the Town Hall. Finding it
was worth a good round sum, the Corporation sold it.--Of course, Parson
Davy was not as eminent a man as Sir Joshua, but he was the only man of
any eminence who ever lived in Lustleigh, at any rate, the only one in
the Dictionary of National Biography. It was at Lustleigh that he did
the work on which his reputation rests--I have described it in my first
_Small Talk_, pages 32 to 34--and for forty years, as curate for an
absent pluralist, he was devoted to the interests of the place. It was
as scandalous for Lustleigh to sell a gift of his as for Plympton to
have sold Sir Joshua’s.
The strange thing is that Davy should have made a gift to Lustleigh,
knowing what had happened to the gift of Robert Phipps. By his Will (2
October 1676) Phipps gave £40 to be bestowed in lands of inheritance,
the rents and profits whereof were to be employed to buy linen cloth at
Easter for such old men and women of the parish of Lustleigh as had none
or little relief from the parish, the linen cloth to be dowlas of 10d.
per yard or thereabouts, and each poor man or woman to have three yards.
The linen was distributed until 1802, and then the trust-fund
disappeared, and has not been heard of since. It had not been invested
in land; and this may have been the reason why Davy chose to give a
piece of land in his own lifetime rather than bequeath a sum of money by
Will.
He could have given the school a larger income by putting his £325 into
the Three per Cents. at the price they stood at then. As he did not do
that, he would hardly have approved of selling the land and putting the
proceeds into Funding Loan, though this will give a larger income than
the rent in recent years. The present rent is not the only thing to be
considered in trusts that are in perpetuity. Harrow accepted a fixed
annual sum in lieu of the rent of land that then was farms and now is
part of London.
At the Parish Meeting there was an overwhelming majority against the
sale--only five people voting for it--and nearly the same majority for a
resolution calling on the trustees to resign. But the sale was carried
through by a majority of the trustees in spite of every protest. Three
of the trustees in the majority were people who had only lately come to
live in Lustleigh, and the most active of them was a new arrival who
soon went away. Things have changed since Parson Davy’s time. He was
here for forty years himself: the living of Lustleigh was held by two
Rectors for ninety-six years, 1791 to 1887; and the living of Bovey was
held by two Vicars for a hundred years, 1735 to 1835. In the present
century there have already been four Rectors of Lustleigh, and the
vacancies have not been caused by death.
These people who come and go, will never take the same amount of
interest in a place as those who spend the best part of their lives
there; and they may even take delight in doing some lasting damage to a
place that has not quite appreciated them. That is a kindly view to
take. Unkind people called the sale a job; and nobody believed the talk
of getting more money for school prizes--Lustleigh is some miles from
Buncombe. If more money was wanted for the prizes, there were plenty of
people who would have subscribed the few pounds’ difference between the
rent of the meadow and the interest on the Funding Loan.
The new-comers at Lustleigh always call the old school-house ‘the old
vestry’ for some reason that I cannot comprehend--vestry-meetings were
held in one of the rooms there, but the building was always called the
school. What they call ‘the new vestry’ is an excrescence from the
church: it is in the angle between the chancel and south transept,
spoiling the exterior of the church, and making the interior dark by
blocking windows up. It contains the organ; and organs are not always
worth the space they take and the disfigurement they cause. The south
transept of Exeter Cathedral is disfigured by a row of 32-foot pipes,
standing by themselves; and this bit of hideousness only gives a dozen
extra notes. I do not think the extra notes are worth the sacrifice.
Churches suffer badly from additions and improvements and injudicious
gifts, and Lustleigh church has suffered very badly in that way--there
is always something being done. A pavement of coloured marbles has just
been laid down in the chancel there, to replace a pavement of encaustic
tiles that was laid down sixty years ago in place of the old pavement of
rough granite slabs. The tiles were an Albert Memorial, and had the
monogram of V. and A.; but they were very slippery, and it looked
undignified for any cleric to sit down unexpectedly upon the chancel
floor. The marble pavement is a gift, and people consider it unmannerly
to look a gift-horse in the mouth, even if the beast is not worth
stabling. Nevertheless, there is a way of saying courteously that your
stable is unworthy of such a noble steed, and the steed might find some
better stabling in another place.
When a building has a character of its own, you ought not merely to
abstain from putting in things that are out of character with it: you
ought to put in things that will bring its character out. Siena
cathedral is a gorgeous building, and it has the finest pavement in the
world; and the pavement makes the building look more gorgeous still. You
can tell exactly how much the building is indebted to the pavement, as
the pavement is covered over with boarding (to protect it) during a
great part of the year, and then the building looks comparatively poor.
If the Siena pavement could be laid in Lustleigh church, it would not
give splendour to the church: it would only make you discontented with
the roughness of the pillars and arches and the effigies of the old
knights who held the place six centuries ago. The old pavement of rough
granite slabs was far more suited to the rugged grandeur of the church.