Dear Madam,—In a communication received from the managers on the 13th
of November, the committee were asked “if they will kindly remove
Mrs. Higdon to a sphere more genial.”
I may remind you that this is the second place in which you have come
into conflict with the managers.
The committee have decided that the managers’ instructions are to be
obeyed, and as they have instructed you that the fire is not to be
lit, I am to give you directions to obey these instructions. I trust
there will be no further friction.
Yours faithfully,
Thos. A. Cox, _Secretary_.
Mrs. A. K. Higdon, Burston School, Diss.
It seems the old method of fire-lighting still prevails. That is by
friction.
In reading this parochial letter of complaint one cannot help but admire
the warm interest which the Reverend Managers’ Committee display in Mrs.
Higdon.
They are so solicitous about her welfare that they desire the Norfolk
Education Committee to “kindly remove her to a sphere more genial.”
One is here tempted to quote Ingersoll’s advice to his wife. Once upon a
day, when the lady was suffering from heat in the head—vulgarly termed
temper—he turned to her, and mildly remarked:
“Darling, I am afraid that you have not yet shed all your Christian
virtues.”
Unfortunately, the reverend chairman, with Machiavellian subtlety, omits
to mention whether the “genial sphere” to which he recommends Mrs.
Higdon’s removal is on this planet or the other one.
The many readers of Pickwick will have vivid recollections of the
memorable part played by a warming pan, but who would believe that a
similar amount of indignation could be aroused in the breasts of the
Reverend Managers’ Committee at the lighting of a schoolroom fire to dry
the wet clothes of the agricultural labourers’ children. The great
difficulty one is confronted with in placing these items before the
general public is to convince folks that these complaints were made
against Council School teachers and not High Church ones. These
backstairs, intriguing, silly, childish complaints might well be laughed
out of court if they were not being launched with a definite object in
view. That object was to strike at Higdon through his wife.
This is a very ancient pastime. Satan, by all accounts, was an early
exponent of it. He had a similar object in view, _viz._, to assist
emigration and check sympathetic vibration.
Readers may have noted the paragraph: “This is the second place in which
you have come into conflict with the managers.”
To understand this sentence is to possess the key to all the petty
persecution and to gain a grip upon the problems of the countryside.
Mr. Higdon has constantly, at Wood Dalling, his previous place, and at
Burston, tried to secure brighter conditions of life and better housing
for the tillers and toilers.