dusting the cabinet; indeed, I’m nearly sure I heard a crash.’
“But the child could not meet my eye, and there was a sort of blenching
as of fear about her.”
“But, as a rule, you do not notice these symptoms?”
“As a rule, poor Fanny’s tarradiddles come out in the most quiet, easy
way, with all the boldness of innocence; and even when she is found
out, and the lie brought home to her, she looks bewildered rather than
convicted.”
“My dear, I wish you would banish the whole tribe of foolish and
harmful expressions whose tendency is to make light of sin. Call a
spade a spade. A ‘tarradiddle’ is a thing to make merry over; a fib you
smile and wink at; but a _lie_--why, the soul is very far gone from
original righteousness that can endure the name, even while guilty of
the thing.”
“That’s just it; I cannot endure to apply so black a name to the
failings of our child; for, do you know, I begin to suspect that poor
little Fanny does it unawares--does not know in the least that she has
departed from the fact. I have had a horrible dread upon me from time
to time that her defect is a mental, and not a moral one. That she has
not the clear perception of true and false with which the most of us
are blessed.”
“Whe--ew!” from John; but his surprise was feigned. I could see now
that he had known what was going on all the time, and had said nothing,
because he had nothing to say; in his heart he agreed with me about
our lovely child. The defect arose from a clouded intelligence, which
showed itself in this way only, now; but how dare we look forward? Now
I saw why poor John was so anxious to have the offence called by the
blackest moral name. He wished to save us from the suspicion of an
evil--worse because less open to cure. We looked blankly at each other,
John trying to carry it all off with a light air, but his attempt was a
conspicuous failure.
I forgot to say that my sister Emma was staying with us, the ‘clever
woman of the family,’ who was “going in” for all sorts of things, to
come out, we believed, at the top of her profession as a lady doctor.
She had taken no part in the talk about Fanny--rather tiresome of her,
as I wanted to know what she thought; but now, while we were vainly
trying to hide from each other our dismay, she broke out into a long
low laugh, which, to say the least of it, seemed a little unfeeling.
“Oh, you absurd parents! You are too good and earnest, and altogether
too droll! Why in the world, instead of sitting there with blank
eyes--conjuring up bogeys to frighten each other--why don’t you look
the thing in the face, and find out by the light of modern thought what
really ails Fan? Poor pet! ‘Save me from my parents!’ is a rendering
which might be forgiven her.”
“Then you don’t think there’s any mental trouble?” we cried in a
breath, feeling already as if a burden were lifted, and we could
straighten our backs and walk abroad.
“‘Mental trouble?’ What nonsense! But there, I believe all you parents
are alike. Each pair thinks their own experiences entirely new; their
own children the first of the kind born into the world. Now, a mind
that had had any scientific training would see at once that poor
Fanny’s lies--if I must use John’s terrible bad word--inventions, I
should have called them, are symptomatic, as you rightly guessed,
Annie, of certain brain conditions; but of brain disease--oh, no! Why,
foolish people, don’t you see you are entertaining an angel unawares?
This vice of ‘lying’ you are mourning over is the very quality that
goes to the making of poets!”
“Poets and angels are well in their places,” said John, rather crossly,
“but my child must speak the truth. What she states for a fact, I must
know to be a fact, according to the poor common-sense view of benighted
parents.”
“And there is your work as parents. Teach her truth, as you would teach
her French or sums--a little to-day, a little more to-morrow, and every
day a lesson. Only as you teach her the nature of truth will the gift
she has be effectual. But I really should like to know what is your
notion about truth--are we born with it, or educated up to it?”
“I am not sure that we care to be experimented upon, and held up to
the world as blundering parents,” said I; “perhaps we had better keep
our crude notions to ourselves.” I spoke rather tartly, I know, for I
was more vexed for John than for myself. That he should be held up to
ridicule in his own house--by a sister of mine, too!
“Now I have vexed you both. How horrid I am! And all the time, as I
watch you with the children, I don’t feel good enough to tie your
shoes. Don’t I say to myself twenty times a day, ‘After all, the
insight and love parents get from above is worth a thousandfold more
than science has to teach’?”
“Nay, Emma, ’tis we who have to apologise for being jealous of
science--that’s the fact--and quick to take offence. Make it up,
there’s a good girl! and let Annie and me have the benefit of your
advice about our little girl, for truly we are in a fog.”
“Well, I think you were both right in considering that her failing had
two sources: moral cowardice the first; she does something wrong, or
wrong in her eyes, and does not tell--why?”
“Aye, there’s the difficulty; why is she afraid to tell the truth? I
may say that we have never punished her, or ever looked coldly on her
for any fault but this of prevarication. The child is so timid that we
feared severe measures might make the truth the more difficult.”
“There I think you are right. And we have our fingers on one of the
weak places: Fanny tells lies out of sheer fear--moral weakness;
causeless it may be, but there it is. And I’m not so sure that it is
causeless; she is always in favour for good behaviour, gentleness,
obedience, and that kind of thing; indeed, this want of veracity seems
to me her one fault. Now, don’t you think the fear of having her
parents look coldly on her and think less well of her may be, to such a
timid, clinging child, a great temptation to hide a fault?”
“Very likely; but one does not see how to act. Would you pass over her
faults altogether without inquiry or notice?”
“I’m afraid you must use the knife there boldly, for that is the
tenderest way in the end. Show little Fan the depth of your love--that
there is _no_ fault you cannot forgive in her, but that the one fault
which hurts you most is, not to hear the exact truth.”
“I see. Suppose she has broken a valuable vase and hides the fact, I am
to unearth her secret--not, as I am very much inclined to do, let it
lie buried for fear of involving her in worse falsehood, but show her
the vase and tax her with hiding it.”
“And her immediate impulse will be to say, ‘I didn’t.’ No; make sure
of your ground, then show her the pieces; say the vase was precious,
but you do not mind about that; the thing that hurts you is that she
could not trust her mother. I can imagine one of the lovely scenes you
mothers have with your children too good for outsiders to look in upon.”
The tears came into my eyes, for I could imagine the scene too. I could
see the way to draw my child closer and closer by _always_ forgiving,
always comprehending and loving her, and always protesting against the
falsehood which _would_ rise between us. I was lost in a delicious
reverie--how I might sometime come to show her that her mother’s
ever-ready forgiveness was but a faint picture of what some one calls
the “all-forgiving gentleness of God,” when I heard John break in:--
“Yes, I can see that if we both make a point of free and tender
forgiveness of every fault, on condition that she owns up, we may in
time cure her of lying out of sheer fear. But I don’t see that she gets
the principle of truth any more. The purely inventive lies go on as
before, and the child is not to be trusted.”
“‘Purely inventive,’ there you have it. Don’t you see? The child is
full of imagination, and figures to herself endless scenes, evolved
like the German student’s camel. The thousand and one things which
_might_ happen are so real to her that the child is, as you said,
bewildered; hardly able to distinguish the one which has happened. Now,
it’s perfect nonsense to lament over this as a moral failing--it is a
want of mental balance; not that any quality is deficient, but that
her conceptive power runs away with her perceptive; she sees the many
things that might be more readily than the thing that is. Doesn’t she
delight in fairy tales?”
“Well, to tell the truth, we have thought them likely to foster her
failing, and have kept her a good deal on a diet of facts.”
“I shouldn’t wonder if you are wrong there. An imperious imagination
like Fanny’s demands its proper nourishment. Let her have her
daily meal: ‘The Babes in the Wood,’ ‘The Little Match-Girl,’ ‘The
Snow-Maiden,’ tales and legends half-historic, above all, the lovely
stories of the Bible; whatever she can figure to herself and live over
and over; but _not_ twaddling tales of the daily doings of children
like herself, whether funny or serious. The child wants an opening into
the larger world where all things are possible and where beautiful
things are always happening. Give her in some form this necessary food,
and her mind will be so full of delicious imaginings, that she will be
under no temptation to invent about the commonplaces of every-day life.”
My husband laughed: “My dear Emma, you must let us do our best with the
disease; the cure is too wild! ‘Behold, this dreamer cometh!’--think of
sending the child through life with this label.”
“Your quotation is unfortunate, and you have not heard me out. I do
believe that to starve her imagination would be to do real wrong to
the child. But, at the same time, you must diligently cultivate the
knowledge and the love of the truth. Now, the truth is no more than the
fact as it is; and ’tis my belief that Fanny’s falsehoods come entirely
from want of perception of the fact through pre-occupation of mind.”
“Well, what must we do?”
“Why, give her daily, or half-a-dozen times a day, lessons in truth.
Send her to the window: ‘Look out, Fanny, and tell me what you see.’
She comes back, having seen a cow where there is a horse. She looks
again and brings a true report, and you teach her that it is not true
to say the thing which is not. You send a long message to the cook,
requiring the latter to write it down as she receives it and send you
up the slate; if it is all right, the kiss Fanny gets is for speaking
the truth: gradually, she comes to revere truth, and distinguishes
between the facts of life where truth is all in all, and the wide
realms of make-believe, where fancy may have free play.”
“I do believe you are right, Emma; most of Fanny’s falsehoods seem to
be told in such pure innocence, I should not wonder if they do come
out of the kingdom of make-believe. At any rate, we’ll try Emma’s
specific--shall we, John?”
“Indeed, yes; and carefully, too. It seems to me to be reasonable, the
more so, as we don’t find any trace of malice in Fanny’s misleading
statements.”
“Oh, if there were, the treatment would be less simple; first, you
should deal with the malice, and then _teach_ the love of truth in
daily lessons. That is the mistake so many people make. They think
their children are capable of loving and understanding _truth_ by
nature, which they are not. The best parents have to be on the watch to
hinder all opportunities of misstatement.”
“And now, that you may see how much we owe you, let me tell you of
the painful example always before our eyes, which has done more than
anything to make me dread Fanny’s failing. It is an open secret, I
fear, but do not let it go further out of this house. You know Mrs.
Casterton, our friend’s wife? It is a miserable thing to say, but you
cannot trust a word she utters. She tells you, Miss So-and-So has a bad
kind of scarlet fever, and even while she is speaking you know it is
false; husband, children, servants, neighbours, none can be blind to
the distressing fact, and she has acquired the sort of simpering manner
a woman gets when she loses respect and self-respect. What if Fanny had
grown up like her?”
“Poor woman! and this shame might have been spared her, had her parents
been alive to their duty.”
CHAPTER VII
_ABILITY_
“Be _sure_ you call at Mrs. Milner’s, Fred, for the address of her
laundress.”
“All right, mother!” And Fred was half-way down the path before his
mother had time to add a second injunction. A second? Nay, a seventh,
for this was already the sixth time of asking; and Mrs. Bruce’s
half-troubled expression showed she placed little faith in her son’s
“All right.”
“I don’t know what to do with Fred, doctor; I am not in the least sure
he will do my message. Indeed, to speak honestly, I am sure he will
not. This is a trifling matter; but when the same thing happens twenty
times a day--when his rule is to forget everything he is desired to
remember--it makes us anxious about the boy’s future.”
Dr. Maclehose drummed meditatively on the table, and put his lips
into form for a whistle. This remark of Mrs. Bruce’s was “nuts” to
him. He had assisted, professionally, at the appearance of the nine
young Bruces, and the family had no more esteemed friend and general
confidant. For his part, he liked the Bruces. Who could help it? The
parents intelligent and genial, the young folk well looking, well
grown, and open-hearted, they were just the family to make friends.
All the same, the doctor found in the Bruces occasion to mount his pet
hobby:--“My Utopia is the land where the family doctor has leave to
play schoolmaster to the parents. To think of a fine brood like the
young Bruces running to waste in half-a-dozen different ways through
the invincible ignorance of father and mother! Nice people, too!”
For seventeen years Dr. Maclehose had been deep in the family counsels,
yet never till now had he seen the way to put in his oar anent any
question of bringing up the children. Wherefore he drummed on the
table, and pondered:--“Fair and softly, my good fellow; fair and
softly! Make a mess of it now, and it’s my last chance; hit the nail on
the head, and, who knows?”
“Does the same sort of thing go on about his school work?”
“Precisely; he is always in arrears. He has forgotten to take a book,
or to write an exercise, or learn a lesson; in fact, his school life is
a record of forgets and penalties.”
“Worse than that Dean of Canterbury, whose wife _would_ make him
keep account of his expenditure; and thus stood the entries for one
week:--‘Gloves, 5s.; Forgets, £4, 15s.’ His writing was none too
legible, so his wife, looking over his shoulder, cried, ‘Faggots!
Faggots! What in the world! Have you been buying wood?’ ‘No, my dear;
those are _forgets_;’--his wife gave it up.”
“A capital story; but what is amusing in a Dean won’t help a boy to get
through the world, and we are both uneasy about Fred.”
“He is one of the ‘Boys’ Eleven,’ isn’t he?”
“Oh, yes, and is wild about it: and there, I grant you, he never
forgets. It’s, ‘Mother, get cook to give us an early dinner: we must
be on the field by two!’ ‘Don’t forget to have my flannels clean for
Friday, will you mumsy?’ he knows when to coax. ‘Subscription is due
on Thursday, mother!’ and this, every day till he gets the money.”
“I congratulate you, my dear friend, there’s nothing seriously amiss
with the boy’s brain.”
“Good heavens, doctor! Whoever thought there was? You take my breath
away!”
“Well, well, I didn’t mean to frighten you, but, don’t you see, it
comes to this: either it’s a case of chronic disease, open only to
medical treatment, if to any; or it is just a case of defective
education, a piece of mischief bred of allowance which his parents
cannot too soon set themselves to cure.”
Mrs. Bruce was the least in the world nettled at this serious view of
the case. It was one thing for her to write down hard things of her
eldest boy, the pride of her heart, but a different matter for another
to take her _au sérieux_.
“But, my dear doctor, are you not taking a common fault of youth too
seriously? It’s tiresome that he should forget so, but give him a
year or two, and he will grow out of it, you’ll see. Time will steady
him. It’s just the volatility of youth, and for my part I don’t like
to see a boy with a man’s head on his shoulders.” The doctor resumed
his drumming on the table. He had put his foot in it already, and
confounded his own foolhardiness.
“Well, I daresay you are right in allowing something on the score of
youthful volatility; but we old doctors, whose business it is to study
the close connection between mind and matter, see our way to only one
conclusion, that any failing of mind or body, left to itself, can do no
other than strengthen.”
“Have another cup of tea, doctor? I am not sure that I understand.
I know nothing about science. You mean that Fred will become more
forgetful and less dependable the older he gets?”
“I don’t know that I should have ventured to put it so baldly, but
that’s about the fact. But, of course, circumstances may give him a
bent in the other direction, and Fred may develop into such a careful
old sobersides that his mother will be ashamed of him.”
“Don’t laugh at me, doctor; you make the whole thing too serious
for a laughing matter.” To which there was no answer, and there was
silence in the room for the space of fully three minutes, while the two
pondered.
“You say,” in an imperious tone, “that ‘a fault left to itself must
strengthen.’ What are we to do? His father and I wish, at any rate, to
do our duty.” Her ruffled maternal plumage notwithstanding, Mrs. Bruce
was in earnest, all her wits on the alert. “Come, I’ve scored one!”
thought the doctor; and then, with respectful gravity, which should
soothe any woman’s _amour propre_,
“You ask a question not quite easy to answer. But allow me, first, to
try and make the principle plain to you: that done, the question of
what to do settles itself. Fred never forgets his cricket or other
pleasure engagements? No? And why not? Because his interest is excited;
therefore his whole attention is fixed on the fact to be remembered.
Now, as a matter of fact, what you have regarded with full attention,
it is next to impossible to forget. First get Fred to fix his attention
on the matter in hand, and you may be sure he won’t forget it.”
“That may be very true; but how can I make a message to Mrs. Milner as
interesting to him as the affairs of his club?”
“Ah! There you have me. Had you begun with Fred at a year old the thing
would have settled itself. The _habit_ would have been formed.”
To the rescue, Mrs. Bruce’s woman’s wit:--“I see; he must have the
_habit_ of paying attention, so that he will naturally take heed to
what he is told, whether he cares about the matter or not.”
“My dear madam, you’ve hit it; all except the word ‘naturally.’ At
present Fred is in a delightful state of nature in this and a few other
respects. But the educational use of _habit_ is to correct nature.
If parents would only see this fact, the world would become a huge
reformatory, and the next generation, or, at any rate, the third, would
dwell in the kingdom of heaven as a regular thing, and not by fits and
starts, and here and there, which is the best that happens to us.”
“I’m not sure I see what you mean; but,” said this persistent woman,
“to return to this habit of attention which is to reform my Fred--do
try and tell me what to do. You gentlemen are so fond of going off
into general principles, while we poor women can grasp no more than a
practical hint or two to go on with. My boy would be cut up to know how
little his fast friend, the doctor, thinks of him!”
“‘Poor women,’ truly! and already you have thrown me with two
staggering buffets. My theories have no practical outcome, and, I
think little of Fred, who has been my choice chum ever since he left
off draperies! It remains for the vanquished to ‘behave pretty.’ Pray,
ma’am, what would you like me to say next?”
“To ‘habit,’ doctor, to ‘habit’; and don’t talk nonsense while the
precious time is going. We’ll suppose that Fred is just twelve months
old to-day. Now, if you please, tell me how I’m to make him begin to
pay attention. And, by the way, why in the world didn’t you talk to me
about it when the child really was young?”
“I don’t remember that you asked me; and who would be pert enough to
think of schooling a young mother? Not I, at any rate. Don’t I know
that every mother of a first child is infallible, and knows more about
children than all the old doctors in creation? But, supposing you had
asked me, I should have said--Get him each day to occupy himself a
little longer with one plaything than he did the day before. He plucks
a daisy, gurgles over it with glee, and then in an instant it drops
from the nerveless grasp. Then you take it up, and with the sweet
coaxings you mothers know how to employ, get him to examine it, in his
infant fashion, for a minute, two minutes, three whole minutes at a
time.”
“I see; fix his thoughts on one thing at a time, and for as long as
you can, whether on what he sees or what he hears. You think if you
go on with that sort of thing with a child from his infancy he gets
accustomed to pay attention?”
“Not a doubt of it; and you may rely on it that what is called
_ability_--a different thing from genius, mind you, or even
talent--ability is simply the power of fixing the attention steadily
on the matter in hand, and success in life turns upon this cultivated
power far more than on any natural faculty. Lay a case before a
successful barrister, an able man of business, notice how he absorbs
all you say; tell your tale as ill as you like, he keeps the thread,
straightens the tangle, and by the time you have finished, has the
whole matter spread out in order under his mind’s eye. Now comes in
talent, or genius, or what you will, to deal with the facts he has
taken in. But attention is the attribute of the trained intellect,
without which genius makes shots in the dark.”
“But, don’t you think attention itself is a natural faculty, or talent,
or whatever we should call it?”
“Not a bit of it; it is entirely the result of training. A man may be
born with some faculty or talent for figures, or drawing, or music, but
attention is not a faculty at all; it is simply the power of bending
such faculties as one has to the work in hand; it is a key to success
within the reach of every one, but the power to turn it comes of
training. Circumstances may compel a man to train himself, but he does
so at the cost of great effort, and the chances are ten to one against
his making the effort. For the child, on the other hand, who has been
trained by his parents to fix his thoughts, all is plain sailing. He
will succeed, not a doubt of it.”
“But I thought school-work, Latin and mathematics, and those sorts of
things, should give this kind of intellectual training?”
“They should; but it’s the merest chance whether the right spring is
touched, and from what you say of Fred’s school-work, I should say it
was not touched in his case. ’Tis incredible how much solid learning
a boy will contrive to let slip by him instead of into him! No; I’m
afraid you must tackle the difficulty yourself. It would be a thousand
pities to let a fine fellow like Fred run to waste.”
“What can I do?”
“Well, we must begin where we are; Fred _can_ attend, and therefore
remember: and he remembers what interests him. Now, to return to your
question, How are you to make a message to Mrs. Milner as interesting
to him as the affairs of his cricket club? There is no interest in the
thing itself; you must put interest into it from without. There are a
hundred ways of doing this: try one, and when that is used up, turn to
another. Only, with a boy of Fred’s age, you cannot form the habit of
attention as you could with a child. You can only aid and abet; give
the impulse; the training he must do for himself.”
“Make it a little plainer, doctor; I have not yet reduced your remarks
to the practical level of something I can do.”
“No? Well, Fred must train himself, and you must feed him with motives.
Run over with him what we have been saying about attention. Let him
know how the land lies; that you cannot help him, but that if he wants
to make a man of himself he must _make_ himself attend and remember.
Tell him it will be a stand-up fight, for this habit is contrary to
nature. He will like that; ’tis boy nature to show fight, and the
bigger and blacker you make the other side, the more will he like
to pitch in. When I was a boy I had to fight this very battle for
myself, and I’ll tell you what I did. I stuck up a card every week,
divided down the middle. One side was for ‘Remembers’; the other side
for ‘Forgets.’ I took myself to task every night--the very effort was
a help--and put a stroke for every ‘Remember’ and ‘Forget’ of the
day. _I_ scored for every ‘Remember,’ and ‘t’other fellow’ for every
‘Forget.’ You don’t know how exciting it got. If by Thursday I had
thirty-three ‘Remembers’ and he thirty-six ‘Forgets’ it behoved me to
look alive; it was not only that ‘Forget’ might win the game, which was
up on Saturday night, but unless ‘Remember’ scored ten in advance, the
game was ‘drawn’--hardly a remove from lost.”
“That’s delicious! But, I wish, doctor, you would speak to Fred
yourself. A word from you would go a long way.”
“I’ll look out for a chance, but an outsider cannot do much; everything
rests with the boy himself, and his parents.”
CHAPTER VIII
_POOR MRS. JUMEAU!_
“Now, young people, when I go out, let there be no noise in the house;
your mother is ill, so let her little folk be thoughtful for her!”
“Oh, is mother sick again?” said little Ned with falling countenance.
“Poor Neddie! he doesn’t like mother to be ill. We all have to be so
quiet, and, then, there’s nowhere to be! It isn’t like home when mother
isn’t about.”
“Mary is right,” chimed in Charlie, the eldest of the family; “if I
were big enough, I should run away and go to sea, mother’s so often
bad! But, father, isn’t it funny? Yesterday she was quite well, and
doing all sorts of horrid things, helping the maids to clear out
cupboards; and now, I dare say, she is too ill to move or speak, and
to-morrow, perhaps, she’ll be our jolly mother again, able to go
shrimping with us, or anything else.”
“That’s because your dear mother has no self, Charlie, boy; no sooner
does she feel a bit better than she does more than she can for us
all, and then she is knocked up again. I wish we could teach her to
be selfish, for our sakes as well as hers, for to have her with us is
better than anything she can do for us; eh, Charlie?”
“Indeed, yes! We’d take lots of care of her if she’d let us. But her
illness must be queer. You know when we had scarlet fever, father?
Well, for weeks and weeks, after the fever was gone, I had no more
strength than a tom-tit; and you know I could not go about and do
things, however unselfish I was (but I’m not, though). That’s what is
so queer. Do you think Dr. Prideau understands about mother?”
“Much better than you do, depend upon it, Charlie; but I confess your
mother’s illness is puzzling to all of us. There, children, off with
you! I must write a letter or two before I go out.”
Mr. Jumeau forgot to write his letters, and sat long, with his head
between his hands, pondering the nature of his wife’s ailments. What
Charlie had put with a boy’s rude bluntness had already occurred to
him in a dim way. Mrs. Jumeau’s illness certainly did not deprive her
of bodily vigour; the attacks came on suddenly, left her as suddenly,
and left her apparently in perfect health and gay spirits. And this was
the more surprising, because, while an “attack” lasted, the extreme
prostration, pallid countenance, and blue lips of the sufferer were
painful to behold. Besides, his wife was so absolutely truthful by
nature, so unselfish and devoted to her husband and family, that it was
as likely she should be guilty of flagrant crime as that she should
simulate illness. This sort of thing had gone on for several years.
Mr. Jumeau had spent his substance on many physicians, and with little
result. “No organic disease.” “Overdone.” “Give her rest, nourishing
food, frequent change of scene and thought; no excitement; Nature will
work the cure in time--_in time_, my good sir. We must be patient.”
This sort of thing he had heard again and again; doctors did _not_
differ, if that were any consolation.
He went up to have a last look at the sufferer. There she lay,
stretched out with limbs composed, and a rigidity of muscle terribly
like death. A tear fell on the cold cheek of his wife as Mr. Jumeau
kissed it, and he went out aching with a nameless dread, which, if put
into words, would run--some day, and she will wake no more out of this
death-like stillness.
And she? She felt the tear, heard the sigh, noted the dejected
footfalls of her husband, and her weak pulse stirred with a movement
of--was it joy? But the “attack” was not over; for hours she lay there
rigid, speechless, with closed eyes, taking no notice of the gentle
opening of the door now and then when one or another came to see how
she was. Were not her family afraid to leave her alone? No; we get used
to anything, and the Jumeaus, servants and children, were well used to
these “attacks” in the mistress of the house. Dr. Prideau came, sent
by her husband, and used even violent measures to restore her, but to
no effect; she was aware of these efforts, but was not aware that she
resisted them effectually.
Business engagements were pressing, and it was late before Mr. Jumeau,
anxious as he was, was able to return to his wife. It was one of those
lovely warm evenings we sometimes get late in May, when even London
windows are opened to let in the breath of the spring. Nearly at the
end of the street he heard familiar strains from _Parsifal_, played
with the vigour Wagner demands. His wife? It could be no one else. As
he drew nearer, her exquisite touch was unmistakable. The attack was
over, then? Strange to say, his delight was not unmixed. What were
these mysterious attacks, and how were they brought on?
The evening was delightful. Mrs. Jumeau was in the gayest spirits:
full of tenderness towards her husband, of motherly thought for her
children, now fast asleep; ready to talk brightly on any subject except
the attack of the morning; any allusion to this she would laugh off as
a matter of too little consequence to be dwelt upon. The next morning
she was down bright and early, having made up her mind to a _giro_
with the children. They did not go a-shrimping, according to Charlie’s
forecast, but Kew was decided upon as “just the thing,” and a long day
in the gardens failed to tire mother or children.
“I must get to the bottom of this,” thought Mr. Jumeau.
* * * * *
“Your question is embarrassing; if I say, Mrs. Jumeau is suffering from
_hysteria_, you will most likely get a wrong notion and discredit my
words.”
Mr. Jumeau’s countenance darkened. “I should still be inclined to trust
the evidence of my senses, and believe that my wife is unfeignedly ill.”
“Exactly as I expected: simulated ailments and hysteria are hopelessly
confounded; but no wonder; hysteria is a misnomer, used in the vaguest
way, not even confined to women. Why, I knew a man, a clergyman in the
North, who suffered from ‘clergyman’s sore throat’; he was a popular
evangelical preacher, and there was no end to the sympathy his case
evoked; he couldn’t preach, so his devoted congregation sent him, now
to the South of France, now to Algiers, now to Madeira. After each
delightful sojourn he returned, looking plump and well, but unable to
raise his voice above a hardly audible whisper. This went on for three
years or so. Then his Bishop interfered; he must provide a curate in
permanent charge, with nearly the full emoluments of the living. The
following Sunday he preached, nor did he again lose his voice. And this
was an earnest and honest man, who would rather any day be at his work
than wandering idly about the world. Plainly, too, in the etymological
sense of the word, his complaint was not hysteria. But this is not
an exceptional case: keep any man in his dressing-gown for a week or
two--a bad cold, say--and he will lay himself out to be pitied and
petted, will have half the ailments under the sun, and be at death’s
door with each. And this is your active man; a man of sedentary habits,
notwithstanding his stronger frame, is nearly as open as a woman to the
advances of this stealthy foe. Why, for that matter, I’ve seen it in a
dog! Did you never see a dog limp pathetically on his three legs that
he might be made much of for his lameness, until his master’s whistle
calls him off at a canter on all fours?”
“I get no nearer; what have these illustrations to do with my wife?”
“Wait a bit, and I’ll try to show you. The throat would seem to be
a common seat of the affection. I knew a lady--nice woman she was,
too--who went about for years speaking in a painful whisper, whilst
everybody said, ‘Poor Mrs. Marjoribanks!’ But one evening she managed
to set her bed-curtains alight, when she rushed to the door, screaming,
‘Ann! Ann! the house is on fire! Come at once!’ The dear woman believed
ever after, that ‘something burst’ in her throat, and described the
sensation minutely; her friends believed, and her doctor did not
contradict. By the way, no remedy has proved more often effectual than
a house on fire, only you will see the difficulties. I knew of a case,
however, where the ‘house-afire’ prescription was applied with great
effect. ’Twas in a London hospital for ladies; a most baffling case;
patient had been for months unable to move a limb--was lifted in and
out of bed like a log, fed as you would pour into a bottle. A clever
young house-surgeon laid a plot with the nurses. In the middle of the
night her room was filled with fumes, lurid light, &c. She tried to
cry out, but the smoke was suffocating; she jumped out of bed and made
for the door--more choking smoke--threw up the sash--fireman, rope,
ladder--she scrambled down, and was safe. The whole was a hoax, but
it cured her, and the nature of the cure was mercifully kept secret.
Another example: A friend of mine determined to put a young woman under
‘massage’ in her own home; he got a trained operator, forbade any of
her family to see her, and waited for results. The girl did not mend;
‘very odd! some reason for this,’ he muttered; and it came out that
every night the mother had crept in to wish her child good-night; the
tender visits were put a stop to, and the girl recovered.”
“Your examples are interesting enough, but I fail to see how they
bear; in each case, you have a person of weak or disordered intellect
simulating a disease with no rational object in view. Now the
beggars who know how to manufacture sores on their persons have the
advantage--they do it for gain.”
“I have told my tale badly; these were not persons of weak or
disordered intellect; some of them very much otherwise; neither did
they consciously simulate disease; not one believed it possible to make
the effort he or she was surprised into. The whole question belongs to
the mysterious borderland of physical and psychological science--not
pathological, observe; the subject of disease and its treatment is
hardly for the lay mind.”
“I am trying to understand.”
“It is worth your while; if every man took the pains to understand the
little that is yet to be known on this interesting subject he might
secure his own household, at any rate, from much misery and waste of
vital powers; and not only his household, but perhaps himself--for, as
I have tried to show, this that is called ‘hysteria’ is not necessarily
an affair of sex.”
“Go on; I am not yet within appreciable distance of anything bearing on
my wife’s case.”
“Ah, the thing is a million-headed monster! hardly to be recognised
by the same features in any two cases. To get at the _rationale_ of
it, we must take up human nature by the roots. We talk glibly in these
days of what we get from our forefathers, what comes to us through our
environment, and consider that in these two we have the sum of human
nature. Not a bit of it; we have only accounted for some peculiarities
in the individual; independently of these, we come equipped with stock
for the business of life of which too little account is taken. The
subject is wide, so I shall confine myself to an item or two.
“We all come into the world--since we are beings of imperfect
nature--subject to the uneasy stirring of some few primary desires.
Thus, the gutter child and the infant prince are alike open to the
workings of the desire for esteem, the desire for society, for power,
&c. One child has this, and another that, desire more active and
uneasy. Women, through the very modesty and dependence of their nature,
are greatly moved by the desire for esteem. They must be thought of,
made much of, at any price. A man desires esteem, and he has meetings
in the marketplace, the chief-room at the feast; the _pétroleuse_,
the city outcast, must have notoriety--the esteem of the bad--at any
price, and we have a city in flames, and Whitechapel murders. Each
falls back on his experience and considers what will bring him that
esteem, a gnawing craving after which is one of his earliest immaterial
cognitions. But the good woman has comparatively few outlets. The
esteem that comes to her is all within the sphere of her affections.
Esteem she must have; it is a necessity of her nature.
“‘_Praise_, blame, love, kisses, tears, and smiles,’
are truly to her, ‘human nature’s daily food.’”
“Now, experience comes to her aid. When she is ill, she is the centre
of attraction, the object of attention, to all who are dear to her; she
will be ill.”
“You contradict yourself, man! don’t you see? You are painting, not a
good woman, but one who will premeditate, and act a lie!”
“Not so fast! I am painting a good woman. Here comes in a condition
which hardly any one takes into account. Mrs. Jumeau will lie with
stiffened limbs and blue pale face for hours at a time. Is she
simulating illness? you might as well say that a man could simulate
a gunshot wound. But the thing people forget is, the intimate
relation and co-operation of body and mind; that the body lends
itself _involuntarily_ to carry out the conceptions of the thinking
brain. Mrs. Jumeau does not _think_ herself into pallor, but every
infinitesimal nerve fibre, which entwines each equally infinitesimal
capillary which brings colour to the cheek, is intimately connected
with the thinking brain, in obedience to whose mandates it relaxes
or contracts. Its relaxation brings colour and vigour with the free
flow of the blood, its contraction, pallor, and stagnation; and the
feeling as well as the look of being sealed in a death-like trance. The
whole mystery depends on this co-operation of thought and substance of
which few women are aware. The diagnosis is simply this, the sufferer
has the craving for outward tokens of the esteem which is essential
to her nature; she recalls how such tokens accompany her seasons of
illness, the sympathetic body perceives the situation, and she is ill;
by-and-by, the tokens of esteem cease to come with the attacks of
illness, but the habit has been set up, and she goes on having ‘attacks
’ which bring real suffering to herself, and of the slightest agency in
which she is utterly unconscious.”
Conviction slowly forced itself on Mr. Jumeau; now that his wife was
shown entirely blameless, he could concede the rest. More, he began to
suspect something rotten in the State of Denmark, or women like his
wife would never have been compelled to make so abnormal a vent for a
craving proper to human nature.
“I begin to see; what must I do?”
“In Mrs. Jumeau’s case, I may venture to recommend a course which would
not answer with one in a thousand. Tell her all I have told you. Make
her mistress of the situation.--I need not say, save her as much as you
can from the anguish of self-contempt. Trust her, she will come to the
rescue, and devise means to save herself; and, all the time, she will
want help from you, wise as well as tender. For the rest, those who
have in less measure--
“‘The reason firm, the temp’rate will’--
‘massage,’ and other devices for annulling the extraordinary physical
sensibility to mental conditions, and, at the same time, excluding the
patient from the possibility of the affectionate notice she craves,
may do a great deal. But this mischief which, in one shape or other,
blights the lives of, say, forty per cent. of our best and most highly
organised women, is one more instance of how lives are ruined by an
education which is not only imperfect, but proceeds on wrong lines.”
“How could education help in this?”
“Why, let them know the facts, possess them of even so slight an
outline as we have had to-night, and the best women will take measures
for self-preservation. Put them on their guard, that is all. It is not
enough to give them accomplishments and all sorts of higher learning;
these gratify the desire of esteem only in a very temporary way. But
something more than a danger-signal is wanted. The woman, as well
as the man, must have her share of the world’s work, whose reward
is the world’s esteem. She must, even the cherished wife and mother
of a family, be in touch with the world’s needs, and must minister
of the gifts she has; and that, because it is no dream that we are
all brethren, and must therefore suffer from any seclusion from the
_common_ life.”
* * * * *
Mrs. Jumeau’s life was not “spoilt.” It turned out as the doctor
predicted; for days after his revelations she was ashamed to look her
husband in the face; but then, she called up her forces, fought her own
fight and came off victorious.
CHAPTER IX
“_A HAPPY CHRISTMAS TO YOU!_”
The Christmas holidays! Boys and girls at school are counting off the
days till the home-coming. Young men and maidens, who have put away
childish things, do not reckon with date-stones, but consult their
Bradshaws. The little ones at home are storing up surprises. The father
says genially, “We shall soon have our young folk at home again.”
The mother? Nobody, not the youngest of the schoolgirls, is so glad
as she. She thinks of setting out for church on Christmas Day with,
let us hope, the whole of her scattered flock about her. Already she
pictures to herself how each has altered and grown, and yet how every
one is just as of old. She knows how Lucy will return prettier and more
lovable than ever; Willie, more amusing; Harry, kinder; and how the
elders will rejoice in baby May!
And yet, there is a shade of anxiety in the mother’s face as she
plans for the holidays. The brunt of domestic difficulties falls,
necessarily, upon her. It is not quite easy to arrange a household
for a sudden incursion of new inmates whose stay is not measured by
days. Servants must be considered, and may be tiresome. Amusements,
interests, must be thought of, and then---- Does the mother stop short
and avoid putting into shape the “and then,” which belongs to the
holiday weeks after Christmas Day is over?
“Let us have a happy Christmas, any way,” she says; “we must leave the
rest.”
What is it? Pretty Lucy’s face clouds into sullenness. Kind Harry
is quick to take offence, and his outbursts spoil people’s comfort.
Willie, with all his nonsense, has fits of positive moroseness. Tom
argues--is always in the right. Alice--is the child always quite
straightforward? There is reason enough for the strain of anxiety that
mingles with the mother’s joy. It is not easy to keep eight or nine
young people at their best for weeks together, without their usual
employments, when you consider that, wanting their elders’ modicum of
self-control, they may have their father’s failings, and their mother’s
failings, and ugly traits besides hardly to be accounted for. Is it a
counsel of perfection that mothers should have “Quiet Days” of rest for
body and mind, and for such spiritual refreshment as may be, to prepare
them for the exhausting (however delightful) strain of the holidays?
Much arrears of work must fall to the heads of the house in the young
folk’s holidays. They will want to estimate, as they get opportunity,
the new thought that is leavening their children’s minds; to modify,
without appearing to do so, the opinions the young people are
forming. They must keep a clear line of demarcation between duties
and pastimes, even in the holidays; and they must resume the work of
character-training, relinquished to some extent while the children are
away at school. But, after all, the holiday problem is much easier than
it looks, as many a light-hearted mother knows.
There is a way of it, a certain “Open sesame,” which mothers know,
or, if they do not, all the worse for the happiness of Holiday House.
Occupation? Many interests? Occupation, of course; we know what
befalls idle hands; but “interests” are only successful in conjunction
with the password; without it, the more excitingly interesting the
interests the more apt are they to disturb the domestic atmosphere and
make one sulky, and another domineering, and a third selfish, and each
“naughty” in that particular way in which “’tis his nature to.”
Every mother knows the secret, but some may have forgotten the magic
of it. Paradoxical as the statement may sound, there is no one thing
of which it is harder to convince young people than that their parents
love them. They do not talk about the matter, but supposing they did,
this would be the avowal of nine children out of ten:
“Oh, of course, mother loves me in a way, but not as she loves X.”
“How ‘in a way’?”
“You know what I mean. She _is_ mother, so of course she cares about
things for me and all that.”
“But how does she love X.?”
“Oh, I can’t explain; she’s fond of her, likes to look at her, and
touch her, and--now don’t go and think I’m saying things about mother.
She’s quite fair and treats us all _just_ alike; but who could help
liking X. best? I’m so horrid! Nobody cares for me.”
Put most of the children (including X.) of good and loving parents into
the Palace of Truth, children of all ages, from six, say, to twenty,
and this is the sort of thing you would get. Boys would, as a rule,
credit “mother,” and girls, “father,” with the more love; but that is
only by comparison; the one parent is only “nicer” than the other. As
for appropriating or recognising the fulness of love lavished on them,
they simply do not do it.
And why? Our little friend has told us; mother and father are quite
fair, there is no fault to be found in them, but “I’m so horrid, nobody
cares for me.” There you have the secret of “naughtiness.” There is
nothing more pathetic than the sort of dual life of which the young
are dimly conscious. On the one hand there are premonitions of full
and perfect being, the budding wings of which their thoughts are full,
and for which their strong sense of justice demands credit. Mother
and father ought to know how great and good and beautiful they are
in possibility, in prospective. They must have the comprehension,
appreciation, which, if they cannot get in the drawing-room, they will
seek in the kitchen or the stable-yard. Alnaschar visions? If so, it is
not young Alnaschar, but his parents, who kick over the basket of eggs.
If the young folk are pugnacious about their “rights,” and are
over-ready with their “It’s not fair!” “It’s a shame!” it is because
they reckon their claims by the great possible self, while, alas! they
measure what they get by the actual self, of which they think small
things. There is no word for it but “horrid;” bring them to book, and
the scornful, or vain, or bumptious young persons we may know are alike
in this--every one of them is “horrid” in his or her own eyes.
Now, if you know yourself to be horrid, you know that, of course,
people do not love you; how can they? They are kind to you and all
that, but that is because it’s their business, or their nature, or
their duty to be kind. It has really nothing to do with you personally.
What you want is some one who will find you out, and be kind to you,
and love you just for your own sake and nothing else. So do we reason
when we are young. It is the old story. The good that I would I do not,
but the evil that I would not, that I do. Only we feel things more
acutely when we are young, and take sides alternately with ourselves
and against ourselves; small is the wonder that their elders find young
people “difficult;” that is just what they find themselves.
“Fudge!” says the reader, who satisfies himself with the surface,
and recalls the fun and frolic and gaiety of heart, the laughter and
nonsense and bright looks of scores of young people he knows: of course
they are gay, _because_ they are young; but we should have many books
about the sadness of youth if people in their “teens” might have the
making of them. Glad and sad are not a whole octave apart.
How soon does this trouble of youth begin? That very delightful little
person, the Baby, is quite exempted. So, too, are the three, four,
and five-year-old darlings of the nursery. They gather on your knee,
and take possession of you, and make no doubt at all of your love or
their deserts. But a child cannot always get out of the nursery before
this doubt with two faces is upon him. I know a boy of four, a healthy
intelligent child, full of glee and frolic and sense, who yet has many
sad moments because one and another do not love him, and other very
joyful, grateful moments because some little gift or attention assures
him of love. His mother, with the delicate tact mothers have, perceives
that the child needs to be continually reinstated in his own esteem.
She calls him her “only boy,” treats him half as her little lover, and
so evens him with the two bright little sisters whom, somehow, and
without any telling, poor Georgie feels to be sweeter in temper and
more lovable than he. An exceedingly instructive little memorial of a
child who died young came under our notice some time ago. His parents
kept their children always in an atmosphere of love and gladness; and
it was curious to notice that this boy, a merry, bright little fellow,
was quite incapable of realising his parents’ love. That they should
love his sister was natural, but how _could_ they love him?
The little ones in the nursery revel in love, but how is it with even
the nursery elders? Are they not soon taught to give place to the
little ones and look for small show of love, because they are “big
boys” and “big girls”? The rather sad aloofness and self-containedness
of these little folk in some families is worth thinking about. Even
the nursery is a microcosm, suffering from the world’s ailment,
love-hunger, a sickness which drives little children and grown-up
people into naughty thoughts and wicked ways.
I knew a girl whose parents devoted themselves entirely to training
her; they surrounded her with care and sufficient tenderness; they
did not make much of her openly, because they held old-fashioned
notions about not fostering a child’s self-importance and vanity.
They were so successful in suppressing the girl’s self-esteem that it
never occurred to her that all their cares meant love until she was
woman-grown, and could discern character, and, alas! had her parents
no more to give them back love for love. The girl herself must have
been unloving? In one sense, all young beings are unloving; in another,
they are as vessels filled, brimming over with love seeking an outlet.
This girl would watch her mother about a room, walk behind her in the
streets--adoringly. Such intense worship of their parents is more
common in children than we imagine. A boy of five years was asked
what he thought the most beautiful thing in the world. “Velvet,” he
replied, with dreamy eyes, evidently thinking of his mother in a velvet
gown. His parents are the greatest and wisest, the most powerful, and
the best people within the narrow range of the child’s world. They are
royal personages--his kings and queens. Is it any wonder he worships,
even when he rebels?
But is it not more common, now-a-days, for children to caress and
patronise their parents, and make all too sure of their love?
It may be; but only where parents have lost that indescribable
attribute--dignity? authority?--which is their title to their
children’s love and worship; and the affection which is lavished too
creaturely-wise on children fails to meet the craving of their nature.
What is it they want, those young things so gaily happy with doll or
bat or racquet? They want to be reinstated; they labour, some poor
children almost from infancy, under a sad sense of demerit. They find
themselves so little loveworthy, that no sign short of absolute telling
with lip and eye and touch will convince them they are beloved.
But if one whom they trust and honour, one who _knows_, will, seeing
how faulty they are, yet love them, regarding the hateful faults as
alien things to be got rid of, and holding them, in spite of the
faults, in close measureless love and confidence, why, then, the young
lives expand like flowers in sunny weather, and where parents know this
secret of loving there are no morose boys nor sullen girls.
Actions do not speak louder than words to a young heart; he must
feel it in your touch, see it in your eye, hear it in your tones, or
you will never convince child or boy that you love him, though you
labour day and night for his good and his pleasure. Perhaps this is
the special lesson of Christmas-tide for parents. The Son came--for
what else we need not inquire now--to reinstate men by _compelling_
them to believe that they--the poorest shrinking and ashamèd souls of
them--that they live enfolded in infinite personal love, desiring with
desire the response of love for love. And who, like the parent, can
help forward this “wonderful redemption”? The boy who knows that his
father and his mother love him with measureless patience in his faults,
and love him out of them, is not slow to perceive, and receive, and
understand the dealings of the higher Love.
But why should good parents, more than the rest of us, be expected to
exhibit so divine a love? Perhaps because they are better than most of
us; anyway, that appears to be their vocation. And that it is possible
to fulfil even so high a calling we all know, because we know good
mothers and good fathers.
Parents, love your children, is, probably, an unnecessary counsel to
any who read this paper; at any rate, it is a presuming one. But let
us say to reserved undemonstrative parents who follow the example of
righteous Abraham and _rule_ their households,--Rule none the less, but
let your children feel and see and be quite sure that you love them.
We do not suggest endearments in public, which the young folk cannot
always abide. But, dear mother, take your big schoolgirl in your arms
just once in the holidays, and let her have a good talk, all to your
two selves; it will be to her like a meal to a hungry man. For the
youths and maidens--remember, they would sell their souls for love;
they do it too, and that is the reason of many of the ruined lives we
sigh over. Who will break down the partition between supply and demand
in many a home where there are hungry hearts on either side of the
wall?
CHAPTER X
_PARENTS IN COUNCIL_
PART I
“Now, let us address ourselves to the serious business of the evening.
Here we are:
‘Six precious (pairs), and all agog,
To dash through thick and thin!’
_Imprimis_--our desire is for reform! Not reform by Act of Parliament,
if you please; but, will the world believe?--we veritably desire to _be
reformed_! And that, as a vicarious effort for the coming race. Why, to
have conceived the notion entitles us to sit by for our term of years
and see how the others do it!”
“Don’t be absurd, Ned, as if it were all a joke! We’re dreadfully in
earnest, and can’t bear to have the time wasted. A pretty President you
are.”
“Why, my dear, that’s the joke; how can a man preside over a few
friends who have done him the honour to dine at his table?”
“Mrs. Clough is quite right. It’s ‘Up boys, and at it!’ we want to be;
so, my dear fellow, don’t let any graceful scruples on your part hinder
work.”
“Then, Henderson, as the most rabid of us all, you must begin.”
“I do not know that what I have to say should come first in order; but
to save time I’ll begin. What I complain of is the crass ignorance
of us--of myself, I mean. You know what a magnificent spectacle the
heavens have offered these last few frosty nights. Well, one of our
youngsters has, I think, some turn for astronomy. ‘Look, father, what a
great star! It’s big enough to make the night light without the moon.
It isn’t always there; what’s its name, and where does it go?’ The boy
was in the receptive ‘How I wonder what you are’ mood; anything and
everything I could have told him would have been his--a possession for
life.
“‘That’s not a star, it’s a planet, Tom,’ with a little twaddle about
how planets are like our earth, more or less, was all I had for his
hungry wonder. As for how one planet differs from another in glory, his
sifting questions got nothing out of me; what nothing has, can nothing
give. Again, he has, all of his own wit, singled out groups of stars
and, like Hugh Miller, wasn’t it?--pricked them into paper with a pin.
‘Have they names? What is this, and this?’ ‘Those three stars are the
belt of Orion’--the sum of my acquaintance with the constellations, if
you will believe it! He bombarded me with questions all to the point. I
tried bits of book knowledge which he did not want. It was a ‘bowing’
acquaintance, if no more, with the glorious objects before him that
the child coveted, and he cornered me till his mother interfered with,
‘That will do, Tom: don’t tease father with your questions.’ A trifling
incident, perhaps, but do you know I didn’t sleep a wink that night,
or rather, I did sleep, and dreamt, and woke for good. I dreamt the
child was crying for hunger and I had not a crust to give him. You
know how vivid some dreams are. The moral flashed on me. The child had
been crying to me with the hunger of the mind. He had asked for bread
and got a stone. A thing like that stirs you. From that moment I had
a new conception of a parent’s vocation and of my unfitness for it.
I determined that night to find some way to help ourselves and the
thousands of parents in the same ignorant case.”
“Well, but, Henderson, you don’t mean to say that every parent should
be an astronomer? Why, how can a man with other work tackle the study
of a lifetime?”
“No, but I do think our veneration for science frightens us off open
ground. Huxley somewhere draws a line between science and what he calls
‘common information,’ and this I take to mean an acquaintance with the
facts about us, whether of Nature or of society. It’s a shameful thing
to be unable to answer such questions as Tom’s. Every one should know
something about such facts of Nature as the child is likely to come
across. But how to get at this knowledge! Books? Well, I don’t say but
you may get to know _about_ most things from books, but as for knowing
the thing itself, let me be introduced by him that knew it before me!”
“I see what you mean; we want the help of the naturalist, an enthusiast
who will not only teach but fire us with the desire to know.”
“But don’t you find, Morris, that even your enthusiast, if he’s a
man of science, is slow to recognise the neutral ground of common
information?”
“That may be; but, as for getting what we want--pooh! it’s a question
of demand and supply. If you don’t mind my talking about ourselves
I should like just to tell you what we did last summer. Perhaps you
may know that I dabble a little in geology--only dabble--but every
tyro must have noticed how the features of a landscape depend on its
geological formation, and not only the look of the landscape, but the
occupations of the people. Well, it occurred to me that if, instead of
the hideous ‘resources’--save the word!--of a watering-place, what if
we were to study the ‘scape’ of a single formation? The children would
have that, at any rate, in visible presentation, and would hold a key
to much besides.
“My wife and I love the South Downs, perhaps for auld sake’s sake, so
we put up at a farmhouse in one of the lovely ‘Lavants’ near Goodwood.
Chalk and a blackboard were inseparably associated; and a _hill_ of
chalk was as surprising to the children as if all the trees were bread
and cheese. Here was _wonder_ to start with, wonder and desire to
know. Truly, a man hath joy in the answer of his mouth! The delight,
the deliciousness of pouring out answers to their eager questions!
and the illimitable receptivity of the children! This was the sort of
thing--after scrawling on a flint with a fragment of chalk:--
“‘What is that white line on the flint, Bob?’--‘Chalk, father,’
with surprise at my dulness; and then the unfolding of the tale of
wonder--thousands of lovely infinitely small shells in that scrawl of
chalk; each had, ages and ages ago, its little inmate, and so on. Wide
eyes and open mouths, until sceptical Dick--‘Well, but, father, how did
they get here? How could they crawl or swim to the dry land when they
were dead?’ More wonders, and a snub for that small boy. ‘Why, this
hillside we are sitting on is a bit of that old sea-bottom!’ And still
the marvel grew, until, trust me, there is not a feature of the chalk
that is not written down in _le journal intime_ of each child’s soul.
They know the soft roll of the hills, the smooth dip of the valleys,
the delights of travellers’ joy, queer old yews, and black-berrying in
the sudden ‘bottoms’ of the chalk. The endless singing of a solitary
lark--nothing but larks--the trailing of cloud-shadows over the hills,
the blue skies of Sussex, blue as those of Naples--these things are
theirs to have and to hold, and are all associated with the chalk; they
have the sense of the earth-mother, of the connection of things, which
makes for poetry.
“Then their mother has rather a happy way of getting pictures printed
on the ‘sensitive plate’ of each. She hits on a view, of narrow range
generally, and makes the children look at it well and then describe it
with closed eyes. One never-to-be forgotten view was seized in this
way. ‘First grass, the hill-slopes below us, with sheep feeding about:
and then a great field of red poppies--there’s corn, but we can’t see
it; then fields and fields of corn, quite yellow and ripe, reaching out
a long way; next, the sea, very blue, and three rather little boats
with white sails; a lark a long way up in the sky singing as loud as a
band of music; and _such_ a shining sun!’ No doubt our little maid will
have all that to her dying day; and isn’t it a picture worth having?”
“Mr. Morris’s hint admits of endless expansion; why, you could cover
the surface formations of England in the course of the summer holidays
of a boy’s schooldays, and thus give him a key to the landscape, fauna,
and flora of much of the earth’s surface. It’s admirable.”
“What a salvage! The long holidays, which are apt to hang on hand,
would be more fully and usefully employed than schooldays, and in ways
full of out-of-door delights. I see how it would work. Think of the
dales of Yorkshire, where the vivid green of the mountain limestone
forms a distinct line of junction with the dim tints of the heather on
the millstone grit of the moors, of the innumerable rocky nests where
the ferns of the limestone--hartstongue, limestone polypody, beech
fern, and the rest--grow delicately green and perfect as if conserved
under glass. Think of the endless ferns and mosses and the picturesque
outlines of the slate, both in the Lake Country and in Wales. What
collections the children might form, always having the geological
formation of the district as the leading idea.”
“You are getting excited, Mrs. Tremlow. For my part, I cannot rise to
the occasion. It is dull to have ‘delicious!’ ‘delightful!’ ‘lovely!’
hailing about one’s ears, and to be out of it. Pray, do not turn me out
for the admission, but my own feeling is strongly against this sort of
dabbling in science. In this bird’s-eye view of geology, for instance,
why in the world did you begin with the chalk? At least you might have
started with, say, Cornwall.”
“That is just one of the points where the line is to be drawn; you
specialists do one thing thoroughly--begin at the beginning, if a
beginning there is, and go on to the end, if life is long enough. Now,
we contend that the specialist’s work should be laid on a wide basis of
common information, which differs from science in this amongst other
things--you take it as it occurs. A fact comes under your notice; you
want to know why it is, and what it is; but its relations to other
facts must settle themselves as time goes on, and the other facts turn
up. For instance, a child of mine should know the ‘blackcap’ by its
rich note and black upstanding headgear, and take his chance of ever
knowing even the name of the family to which his friend belongs.”
“And surely, Mr. Morris, you would teach history in the same way; while
you are doing a county, or a ‘formation’--isn’t it?--you get fine
opportunities for making history a real thing. For instance, supposing
you are doing the--what is it?--of Dorsetshire? You come across Corfe
Castle standing in a dip of the hills, like the trough between two
waves, and how real you can make the story of the bleeding prince
dragged over the downs at the heels of his horse.”
“Yes, and speaking of the downs, do you happen to know, Mrs. Tremlow,
the glorious downs behind Lewes, and the Abbey and the Castle below,
all concerned in the story of the great battle; and the ridge of Mount
Harry across which De Montfort and his men marched while the royal
party were holding orgies in the Abbey, and where, in the grey of the
early morning, each man vowed his life to the cause of liberty, face
downwards to the cool grass, and arms outstretched in the form of a
cross? Once you have made a study on the spot of one of those historic
sites, why, the place and the scene is a part of you. You couldn’t
forget it if you would.”
“That is interesting, and it touches on a point to which I want to
call your attention; have you noticed that in certain districts you
come across, not only the spots associated with critical events, but
monuments of the leading idea of centuries? Such as these are the
ruined abbeys which still dominate every lovely dale in Yorkshire; the
twelfth-century churches, four or five of which--in certain English
counties--you come across in the course of a single day’s tramp, and of
which there is hardly a secluded out-of-the-way nook in some counties
that has not its example to show; such, again, are the endless castles
on the Welsh border, the Roman camps on the downs, each bearing witness
to the dominant thought, during a long period, whether of war, or, of
a time when men had some leisure from fighting.”
“And not only so. Think of how the better half of English literature
has a local colouring; think of the thousand spots round which there
lingers an aroma of poetry and of character, which seems to get into
your brain somehow, and leave there an image of the man, a _feeling_
of his work, which you cannot arrive at elsewhere. The Quantocks,
Grasmere, Haworth Moors, the Selborne ‘Hanger,’ the Lincolnshire
levels--it is needless to multiply examples of spots where you may see
the raw material of poetry, and compare it with the finished work.”
“All this is an inspiring glimpse of the possible; but surely,
gentlemen, you do not suppose that a family party, the children, say,
from fifteen downwards, can get in touch with such wide interests in
the course of a six weeks’ holiday? I doubt if, even amongst ourselves,
any but you, Mr. Meredith, and Mr. Clough, have this sort of grasp of
historical and personal associations.”
“We must leave that an open question, Mrs. Henderson; but what I
do contend for is, that children have illimitable capacity for all
knowledge which reaches them in some sort through the vehicle of the
senses: what they _see_ and delight in you may pin endless facts,
innumerable associations, upon, and children have capacity for them
all: nor will they ever treat you to lack-lustre eye and vacant
countenance. Believe me ‘’tis their nature to’ hunger after knowledge
as a labouring man hungers for his dinner; only, the _thing_ must come
in the first, the words which interpret it in the second place.”
“You mean that everything they see is to lead to a sort of object
lesson?”
“Indeed I do not! Object lesson! talkee, talkee, about a miserable
cut-and-dried scrap, hardly to be recognised by one who knows the
thing. I should not wonder if it were better for a child to go without
information than to get it in this unnatural way. No, let him see
the thing big and living before him, behaving according to its wont.
Specimens are of infinite use to the scientist whose business it is to
generalise, but are misleading to the child who has yet to learn his
individuals. I don’t doubt for a minute that an intelligent family out
for a holiday might well cover all the ground we have sketched out, and
more; but who in the world is to teach them? A child’s third question
about the fowls of the air or the flowers of the field would probably
floor most of us.”
“That’s coming to the point. I wondered if we ever meant to touch our
subject again to-night. To skim over all creation in an easy, airy way
is exciting, but, from an educational standpoint, ’tis comic to the
father with a young swarm at home who care for none of these things.”
“Of course they don’t, Withers, if they have never been put in the
way of it; but try ’em, that’s all. Now, listen to my idea; I shall
be too glad if any one strikes out a better, but we must come to a
point, and pull up the next who wanders off on his own hobby. Each of
us wishes to cover all, or more, or some of, the ground suggested in
our desultory talk. Difficulty, we can’t teach because we don’t know.
We are in a corner with but one way out. _We must learn_ what we should
teach. How? Well, let us form ourselves into a college, or club, or
what you like. Now, it’s simply the A B C of many things we wish to
learn. Once organised, we shall see our way to the next step. Even in
the small party here to-night, some know something of geology, some are
at home in the byways of history; what we cannot evolve from our midst
we must get from outside, and either amateur recruits or professional
folk must be pressed into service; recruits would be much the best,
for they would learn as well as teach. Then, when we are organised, we
may consider whether our desire is to exhaust a single district in the
way suggested, or to follow some other plan. Only, please, if it be a
district, let it be a wide one, so that our intercourse be confined to
‘speaking’ in passing, like ships at sea. Don’t, for pity’s sake, let
it be a social thing, with tennis, talk, and tea!”
“Suppose we do enrol ourselves, how frequent do you think should be our
meetings?”
“We’ll leave that question; in the meantime, those in favour of
Mr. Morris’s motion that we form ourselves into a society for the
consideration of matters affecting the education of children--the
parents’ part of the work, that is--will signify the same in the usual
way.”
“Carried unanimously!”[23]
FOOTNOTES:
[23] Ancient history now; a forecast fulfilled in the
formation of the Parents’ National Educational Union.
CHAPTER XI
_PARENTS IN COUNCIL_
PART II
“We have listened to you, gentlemen, with great deference. We have
profited much, and perceive a great field of work before us. I hope we
may get a little outside help. I heard the other day of a young lady
learned in mosses who is in the habit of taking the children she knows
on ‘mossing’ expeditions. But what I wish to say is, education, like
charity, begins at home, and you have chosen to lead us far afield at
the very outset!”
“Truly, we did go off at a canter! But don’t you think ’tis a matter
for curtain discipline? If your son Tom had not ‘wondered what you are’
we might have begun quite at the beginning, if there is one; or, most
likely, should have been till this moment wondering where to begin. We
are grateful to you, Henderson, for starting us anywhere; and more so
to Mrs. Henderson for her axiom, Education begins at home.”
“I daresay experienced people get to know all about it,” said Mrs.
Clough; “but the mother of even two or three little ones has a sense
of being at sea without rudder or compass. We know so little about
children, or, indeed, about human beings at all! Parents before our
time had something to go upon; and the young mother could ask counsel
of her elders on all matters from ‘cinder tea’ to the choice of a
school. But now science is abroad; many of the old wise saws turn out,
not only mischievous, but ridiculous. We can’t keep hold of the old, we
can’t get hold of the new, and there we are, like Mahomet’s coffin.”
“You have described our quandary exactly, Mrs. Clough! And what you
say accounts for many things. The older people complain that the
children of these days are growing up lax, self-pleasing, disobedient,
irreverent. Now, I think myself there is a great deal that’s fine in
our children. They are much more of _persons_ than we were at their
age; but that they do pretty much what is right in their own eyes, are
neither obedient nor reverent, nor even respectful, is, I am afraid, a
true bill. But don’t you see how it is? We are afraid of them. We feel
as a navvy might, turned in to dust the drawing-room ornaments! The
mere touch of his clumsy great fingers may be the ruin of some precious
thing. We parents, no doubt, get tenderness and insight from above to
enable us for our delicate work; so I suppose it is our own fault that
the children are beyond us.”
“How do you mean, Mrs. Meredith? And if you, mothers, don’t know what
to do with the children, who does? The enlightened father lays himself
out for a snub if he sets up for an authority at home.”
“Oh, yes! you men make ludicrous blunders about children. But that’s
no help. A young mother gets a tender human creature into her keeping,
full of possibilities. Her first concern is, not only to keep it in
health, but, so to speak, to fill it with reserves of health to last
a lifetime. At once her perplexities begin. I shall not even ask to
be excused for venturing upon details; the affairs of a young human
being are important enough to engage the attention of Queen, Lords,
and Commons, did they but know it. Well, a mother I know wished her
child to be clothed delicately, as befits a first-born. She sent
to Ireland for a delicious baby trousseau of lace and cambric. You
gentlemen don’t understand. Hardly had the dear little garments gone
through their first wash, when somebody tells her that ’oo’ a’ ’oo’
is the only wear for babies and grown ups. I doubt if to this day she
knows why, but there was a _soupçon_ of science in the suggestion, so
the sweet cambrics were discarded and fine woollens took their place.
By-and-by, when the child came to feed like other mortals, there was
a hail of pseudo-science about her ears. ‘Grape-sugar,’ ‘farinaceous
foods,’ ‘saliva,’ and what not; but this was less simple than the wool
question. She could make nothing of it, so asked her doctor how to feed
the child. Further complications arose: ‘the child sees everything;’
‘the child knows everything;’ ‘what you make him now he will be through
life;’ ‘the period of infancy is the most important in his life.’ My
poor friend grew bewildered, with the result that, in her ignorant
anxiety to do right, she is for ever changing the child’s diet, nurse,
sleeping hours, airing hours, according to the last lights of the most
scientific of her acquaintance; and ’tis my belief the little one would
be a deal better off brought up like its mother before it.”
“Then, Mrs. Meredith, you would walk in the old paths?”
“Not a bit of it! Only I want to see where I’m going. I think we live
in an age of great opportunities. But my contention is, that you cannot
bring up children on hearsay in these days; there is some principle
involved in the most everyday matter, and we must go to school to
learn the common laws of healthy living and well-being.”
“Mrs. Meredith is right: here is serious work sketched out for us, and
of a kind as useful for ourselves as for our children. We _must_ learn
the first principles of human physiology.”
“Would not it do to learn what is called Hygiene? I have a notion that
is physiology made easy; that is, you are just taught what to do,
without going _fully_ into the cause why.”
“No, we must stick to physiology: I don’t believe a bit in learning
_what_ to do, unless founded upon a methodical, not scrappy, knowledge
of _why_ we do it. You see, all parts of the animal economy are so
inter-dependent, that you cannot touch this without affecting that.
What we want to get at is, the laws for the well-being of every part,
the due performance of every function.”
“Why, man, you would have every one of us qualify to write M.D. to his
name.”
“Not so; we shall not interfere with the doctors; we leave sickness
to them; but the preservation of health, the increase in bodily
vigour, must be our care. In this way, we acquaint ourselves fully
with the structure of the skin, for example, with its functions,
and the inter-dependence between these and the functions of certain
internal organs. Now, secure vigorous action of the skin, and you gain
exhilaration of spirits, absolute joy for the time, followed by a rise
in the sense of general well-being, _i.e._, happiness. You remember
how a popular American poet sits on a gate in the sun after his bath,
using his flesh-brushes for hours, until he is the colour of a boiled
lobster, and ‘more so.’ He might be more seemly employed, but his _joy_
is greater than if daily telegrams brought him word of new editions
of his poems. Well, if due action of the skin is a means to a joyous
life, to health and a genial temper, what mother is there who would
not secure these for her child? But the thing is not so simple as it
looks. It is not merely a case of bath and flesh-brush: diet, clothes,
sleep, bedroom, sunshine, happy surroundings, exercise, bright talk, a
thousand things must work together to bring about this ‘happy-making’
condition. What is true of the skin is true all round, and we cannot go
to work with a view to any single organ or function; all work together:
and we must aim at a thorough grip of the subject. Is it, then, decided
‘without one if or but,’ that we get ourselves instructed in the
science of living?”
“The ‘science of living’--yes, but that covers much beyond the range of
physiology. Think of the child’s mind, his moral nature, his spiritual
being. It seems to me that we already make too much of the body.
Our young people are encouraged to sacrifice everything to physical
training; and there is a sensuousness well hit-off in George Eliot’s
‘Gwendoline,’ in the importance given to every detail of the bath and
the toilet. One is weary of the endless magnification of the body and
its belongings. And, what is more, I believe we are defeating our own
ends. ‘Groom’ the skin, develop the muscles, by all means; but there
is more to be thought of, and I doubt if to live to the flesh, even in
these ways, is permissible.”
“Right, Mrs. Meredith! But don’t think for a moment that physiology
lends itself to the cult of muscle. Here is a youth whose _biceps_
are his better part: like most of us, he gets what he aims at--some
local renown as an athlete. But what does he pay for the whistle? His
violent ‘sports’ do not materially increase the measure of blood which
sustains him: if the muscles get more than their share, their gain
implies loss elsewhere, to the brain, commonly, and, indeed, to all
the vital organs. By-and-by, the sports of youth over, your brawny,
broad-chested young fellow collapses; is the victim of _ennui_, and
liver, lungs, or stomach send in their requisition for arrears of
nourishment fraudulently made away with.”
“But, surely, Mr. Meredith, you do not think lightly of physical
development? Why, I thought it one of the first duties of parents to
send their offspring into the world as ‘fine animals.’”
“So it is; but here, as elsewhere, there is a ‘science of the
proportion of things,’ and the young people who go in violently and
without moderation for muscular feats are a delusion and a snare: in
the end they do not prove ‘fine animals;’ they have little ‘staying’
power.”
“But a child is more than an animal; we want to know how mind and moral
feelings are to be developed?”
“Even then, Mrs. Tremlow, we should find much help in the study
of physiology--mental physiology, if you like to call it so. The
border-line where flesh and spirit meet seems to me the new field, an
Eldorado, I do believe, opened to parents and to all of us concerned
with the culture of character. I mean, the habits a child grows up with
appear to leave some sort of register in his material brain, and thus
to become part of himself in even a physical sense. Thus it rests with
parents to ease the way of their child by giving him the habits of
the good life in thought, feeling, and action, and even in spiritual
things. We cannot make a child ‘good,’ but, in this way; we can lay
paths for the good life and the moral life in the very substance of
his brain. We cannot make him hear the voice of God; but, again, we
can make paths where the Lord God may walk in the cool of the evening.
We cannot make the child clever; but we can see that his brain is
nourished with pure blood, his mind with fruitful ideas.”
“I suppose all this would be encouraging if one were up to it. But I
feel as if a great map of an unknown country were spread before me,
where the few points one wants to make for are unmarked. How, for
instance, to make a child obedient, kind, and true?”
“Your question, Mrs. Tremlow, suggests further ground we must cover: a
few set rules will be of little service; we must know how much there is
in ‘human nature,’ and how to play upon it as a musician on the keys
of his instrument. We must add to our physiology, psychology, and, to
psychology, moral science. Complex, yet most simple, manifold, yet one,
human nature is not to be ticked off in a lecture or two as a subject
we have exhausted; but there is no conceivable study which yields such
splendid increase for our pains.”
“And the spiritual life of the child? Does either of these ‘ologies’
embrace the higher life, or is it not susceptible of culture?”
“Ah, there we have new conditions--the impact of the Divine upon the
human, which generates _life_, ‘without which there is no living.’ The
life is there, imparted and sustained from above; but we have something
to do here also. Spirit, like body, thrives upon daily bread and daily
labour, and it is our part to set before the child those ‘new thoughts
of God, new hopes of Heaven,’ which should be his spiritual diet;
and to practise him in the spiritual labours of prayer, praise, and
endeavour. How?--is another question for our Society to work out.”
CHAPTER XII
_A HUNDRED YEARS AFTER_
(AT THE CLOUGHS’ DINNER-TABLE, SEPT. 10, 1990.)
“It’s a capital idea! the thing ought to be commemorated. At any rate,
we can give a little dinner in honour of it. Whom shall we have?”
“Dr. and Mrs. Oldcastle, and Harry’s form-master, young Mr. Hilyard,
and his wife, will represent school-work; _we_ shall stand for parents
in general; and with Dr. and Mrs. Brenton for our medical advisers, and
the Dean and Mrs. Priestly to witness for things spiritual, we shall be
quite a ‘representative gathering.’ Will my list do?”
“Famously! Couldn’t be better. We all know the subject and each other.
I shouldn’t wonder if we have some good things said.”
Mr. Clough was a City merchant, as had been his fathers before him for
four or five generations; he was reputed wealthy, and was a rich man,
but one who held his wealth as a public trust, reserving for personal
uses only what should keep his family in refined and comfortable
living. Not that there was much virtue in this, for he, and others like
him, held in aversion luxurious living, and whatever savoured of the
“barbarous opulence” of earlier days. Dr. Oldcastle was the head-master
of an old-established foundation school; for the remaining guests they
have been sufficiently introduced by Mrs. Clough.
During the dinner there was the usual gay talk, and some light handling
of graver subjects until the ladies retired. Then--
“I wonder, gentlemen, has it occurred to you why my wife and I have
been so pertinacious in trying to get you here to-night?”
Every one’s countenance showed that he was struck by an interesting
recollection.
“A little circumstance connected with this room, and a certain date
that I fear I may have mentioned more than once or twice?”
“Oh, to be sure,” said the Dean; “haven’t I said a dozen times to my
wife, ‘There’s but one thing that Clough plumes himself on--that the
Fathers’ and Mothers’ Club was born in his dining-room!’”
“But why to-night more than any other night?”
“Why, to-night is the hundredth anniversary of that great event!”
A good-humoured smile passed round. “Yes, gentlemen, I know I’m
house-proud, and give you leave to laugh. But would not you cherish an
old-fashioned house in a by-street, when it’s the one thing that links
you to history?”
“But, my dear fellow, why in the world should this Club with the
stuttering initials (how I hate initials!) be glorified? It does not
get in my way, as a head-master, it’s true; but, mind you, a man
can’t play up to his Busby in the face of it! There was a man for his
calling! How he’d walk over your ‘F. M. C.’s.’ Fumble! aye, that’s the
word. Knew ‘F. M. C.’ reminded me of something.”
“I’m slow to see how our Club links us with history, certainly,”
murmured Dr. Brenton reflectively.
“Why, in this way: if the Club did not initiate, it certainly marked
a stage in the progress of the great educational revolution in which
we have been moving for the last hundred years. Wait for two or three
centuries, and you will find this revolution of ours written down as
the ‘New Education’ just as some one gave the happy name of the ‘New
Learning’ to the revival of letters in the Dark Ages.”
“Sorry to disoblige you, but I’m afraid none of us sees his way to more
than a century of waiting, though it be to verify the statements of his
best friend. But go on, old fellow, I’m with you! Make the ‘revolution’
plain sailing for us.”
“Thanks, Hilyard; your sanction emboldens me. But which am I to ‘go on’
with, the word or the thing?”
“A distinction _with_ a difference. If I say ‘the thing,’ off we go to
the Dark Ages themselves; and shall come out to find the ladies cloaked
and hooded in the hall!”
“A thing endurable to us elder Benedicts.”
“Now, Doctor! As if you weren’t tied to Mrs. Oldcastle’s apron-string
every minute you’re not in school. Fanny and I follow you for
encouragement when we feel our bond growing slack.”
“To order, gentlemen, to order! or we shall get neither word nor thing.
We shall all want to put in an oar anent ‘my wife and I.’”
“Brenton’s right. Seer, take up thy parable, and go ahead!”
“Who would contemn a behest of the Church?” (with a bow which
threatened a candle-shade, deftly saved by Hilyard.) “I go ahead;
I’m not to talk about the thing, but the name. Why I call this,
which has been working itself out in the last hundred years or more,
an educational _revolution_. In the first place, what was called
‘Education’ a century since and what we call Education are essentially
different things.”
“Come, come! Isn’t that rather strong? We go in for the classics and
mathematics; and so did the schools of a hundred, or, for the matter
of that, five hundred years ago. ’Tis true we have to work much more
with modern languages, natural science, and other subjects of which we
can give but a smattering, to the confusion alike of boys and masters.
Give me a classical education, or, in default, a mathematical; ’tis
training! And, for my part, I vote for the pre-Revolutionists, if
that’s what you choose to call them,”--with a subdued snort, which
epitomised much that was not civil to the reform party.
“How much clearing of the decks must take place for even a friendly
discussion! Tell us, gentlemen both, what you mean by education?”
“Mean by education, Doctor? I should not have thought our united
wisdoms need be called on to answer that! A boy is educated when he
knows what every gentleman should know, and when he is trained to take
his place in the world.”
“Dr. Oldcastle’s definition suits me as well as another. Putting aside
the polite acquirements, the question turns on the training--how much
it includes, and how it is to be given.”
“There you have it, Clough,” put in Dr. Brenton; “and my contention
is, that you owe the incalculable advance in _character_ which has
taken place in the period we are considering entirely to us doctors.
Wasn’t it we who found out for you that you were all blundering in
the dark; that you hadn’t even set your feet on the scientific basis
of education; that all your doings were tentative? About a hundred
years ago, men spent a third of a lifetime on mathematics. Cambridge
made men Senior Wranglers in those days, and perhaps the distinction
was worth the work. But the world said, in that weighty way in which
the world likes to talk: ‘Mathematics afford a mental discipline, a
fortifying of character, which no other study gives.’ Now I’m not
denying the worth of mathematics as a factor in education; but look
at your mathematician; do you find him more to the fore, more his own
master, than other men? Often enough he is irritable, obstinate, all
the more wrongheaded the more he’s in the right. But now we (observe
the we--royalty itself couldn’t make more of it) find you fumbling
about blindly, snatching up now this tool, now that, natural science,
languages, or what not, in order to work upon material you knew nothing
about, was it mind, or morals, or what? To effect issues you had not
determined on--intellectual power? Force of character? In the slough we
found you--parent, schoolmaster, parson--all whose business is, more or
less, the bringing up of the young; and what have we done for you? Why,
we’ve discovered to you the nature of the material you have to work
upon, the laws according to which it must be wrought. We have even put
it into your hands as clay in the hands of a potter, and we’ve shown
you what is the one possible achievement before you; that is, _the
elevation of character_. Education which fails to effect this, effects
nothing. There, that’s what _we_’ve done. Every man to his trade, say
I; and there’s nothing like leather!”
“Well, but, but,--all this is very fine talk; but what demonstration
can you give? And where in the world have I been while all this was
going on? Pshaw! You delude yourselves, my dear friends. This airy talk
makes flighty brains; but do you suppose I’ve been a schoolmaster
these forty years while all this has been going on, and yet know
nothing of it?”
“That comes of fumbling over our F. M. C., instead of holding us up
with both hands. But, honour bright, Dr. Oldcastle, do you see in these
days any change in the manner of boy that comes to your hands fresh
from his home?”
“Yes, yes! a thousand times, yes!”
“If Mr. Hilyard’s courtesy had permitted me to answer for myself,
I, also, should have said ‘yes.’ I see a most remarkable change,
upon which society is to be congratulated. But what would you have?
Civilisation and education must of necessity produce results,
appreciable even within a single lifetime.”
“Don’t you think, Doctor, you might have made a trilogy of it, and
promoted Christianity?” interposed the ever suave and gentle tones of
the Dean. “I myself feel with Dr. Brenton, ‘every man for his master,’
and would fain lay every advance at the feet of mine.”
“I must beg the Dean to look over a little assumed pugnacity. That we
all agree with him, he may rest assured. And for this reason. Every
other avenue towards perfection leads you, after weeks or months or
years of delightful going, to a blank wall. You see nothing beyond;
all that remains is to retrace your steps, and retrogression is always
bitter. You try through Christ, and find yourself in the way of endless
progress cheered by perennial hope. But the talk is growing serious.
We of the ‘New Education’ party take to ourselves the credit of the
advances Dr. Oldcastle perceives, and as testimony from an alien is
very valuable, perhaps he would not mind telling us in detail what
differences he perceives between the young boys of to-day and their
kind of forty years ago?”
“Let me consider a moment; your question is not easy to answer in a
breath.... Well, in the first place, they are more apt to learn: I
conceive that there has been an extraordinary advance in intelligence
during the last half-century. The work we would grind over for hours in
my day, these youngsters have at their finger-ends in half-an-hour, and
are on the alert for more. I do believe they have a real appetite for
knowledge--a weakness of which not more than one or two in a hundred
was guilty when I was a boy.”
“Will you let me, as a parent, give you our explanation of these facts?
For, with deference to Dr. Brenton, who justly claims so much for his
craft, I think we parents deserve a pat, too. You may bring a horse
to the well, but you can’t make him drink. The advance, I think, is
not in intelligence, but in power of attention. This, the Fathers’ and
Mothers’ Club and its agencies recognise as the practical power of man;
that which makes all the difference between the able and successful
man and the poor lag-last. And yet it is not a faculty, but is the
power and habit of concentrating every faculty on the thing in hand.
Now this habit of attention parents, mothers especially, are taught
to encourage and cultivate in their children from early infancy. What
you regard with full attention, if only for a minute, you know, and
remember always. Think of the few scenes and conversations we all have
so vividly fixed that we cannot possibly forget them. Why? Because
at the moment our attention was powerfully excited. You reap some
benefit from this early training directly the boy goes to school. The
psychologists--not your craft, this time, Doctor--tell us that enormous
curiosity, a ravenous appetite for knowledge, is as natural to
children as bread-and-milk hunger. Put the two together; the boy has an
eager desire to know--has the power of fixing his whole mind on the new
thoughts set before him, and it’s as easy as A B C; of course he learns
with magical quickness. The field has been ploughed by the parents, and
you have only to sow your seed.”
“H’m! it sounds rational; I must think it over. Anyway, the results are
pleasant enough. Four hours a day instead of six or seven--and much
more work done, mind you--is good for both masters and boys. Then, most
of them have resources and are on nobody’s hands. You’d be astonished
to hear how much these fellows know, and each has his speciality.
One little chap has butterflies, for instance. Ah, that reminds me!
Don’t tell, or I might be invited to resign; but I don’t to this day
know the difference between a moth and a butterfly. It’s the sort of
thing one ought to know, so I set up a classification of my own, no
doubt correct, because it was mine! Well, this befell me. ‘What have
you there?’ I asked a little chap, who had evidently netted a prize.
‘A moth, sir, the ----,’ scientific name, pat. ‘A moth, boy! That
beautiful creature is no moth. Moths live in houses.’ You should have
seen the fellow suppress his grin! I couldn’t ask, so don’t know now;
but make a point of not meeting that little chap’s eye. A friend of
mine, a Fellow of his College, was worse. ‘I say, Oldcastle, the poets
make a mighty pother about the song of the lark. Now, do tell me--do
you know it when you hear it?’ But as for the boys that enter now,
there’s not the natural object that they don’t both recognise and know
all about. Their collections are of scientific worth--at least, so that
fellow Hilyard thinks, so we are going in for a museum of local natural
history!”
“Why, Dr. Oldcastle, you’re like the man in the play, who talked prose
all his life, and at last found it out! You’re our warmest friend,
though you decline the connection. This, again, is the work of mothers
following the lines of the ‘New Education.’ We make a great point of
developing intelligent curiosity in the children about all that lives
and grows within their ken. For instance, I should think most of
‘our’ mothers would feel disgraced if her child of six were not able
to recognise any ordinary British tree from a twig with _leaf-buds_
only. It’s Nature’s lore, and the children take to it like ducks to
the water. The first seven or eight years of their lives are spent out
of doors--in possible weather--learning this sort of thing, instead of
pottering over picture-books and A B C. But do fill the witness-box
a minute longer. All this is delicious. An outsider who speaks with
authority is worth a score of partisans.”
“I bow my thanks, Clough, for the handsome things you are good enough
to say. Of course my impartial witness would be quite as valuable if it
told on the other side. Why, Hilyard, you’re nowhere! ’Tis I am the man
of the day. But no; he’s the go-ahead fellow, and I’m the drag; yet a
drag has its uses.”
“Granted, if you go down hill. But out of thine own mouth art thou
convicted, most learned Master! What hast thou talked all this night
but progress? But one thing more: tell us, do you find these Admirable
Crichtons of yours the least in the world priggish? Or are they
namby-pamby youths, who do as they’re bid, and haven’t much taste for
unlawful adventure?”
“Taste for adventure! Why, little fellows of nine come, able to swim,
row, ride, do everything man or boy needs do, and how are fellows of
that sort to be kept out of adventures? But they do as they’re bid,
I grant you, and the way they do it shows fifty times the spirit of
the fellows who shirked. Mind, I’m speaking of the boys who have been
brought up at home, not of those who have ‘growed.’ But don’t run away
with the notion that the best of them are perfect. We must be _at it_
all the time, or the ground gained is gone from under our feet.”
“Look, look! do look at Brenton: something will happen if he doesn’t
get an innings.”
“Gentlemen, you must, you really must, hear me on this matter! You must
let me show Dr. Oldcastle the ‘reason why’ of what he observes.”
“Hear, hear! Let’s have it, Doctor. Don’t spare a word.”
“Well, to begin at the beginning (no! not with Adam, nor even with the
Dark Ages); some five-and-twenty or so, years before Clough’s EVENT,
men of science began to grope for a clue to the understanding of this
queer riddle of human nature. That action (including speech) depends on
thought, and that action--repeated action--forms character, had long
ago been got at by inductive processes. Now, these meddling scientific
fellows were not content with, It is, because it is! they must needs
come poking round with their everlasting--‘Why?’ This particular ‘Why’
proved a most hard nut to crack; indeed, it is only within living
memory that their guesses at truth have become entirely demonstrable;
but, as early as I said, they had thus much ground under their
feet--analogy and probability were altogether on their side, and it
was impossible to prove, or even to show a fair case for, the contrary
view. These scientists perceived that they were undermining the
methods, the aims, the very idea of education as popularly held. They
indicated new lines, suggested new principles. But their discoveries
were to be like that corn of wheat--first they must fall into the
ground and die. Years passed before educationalists woke up to what
had been done. At last it dawned upon them that it was now possible
to formulate a _science of education_; to propose laws which should
work out definite ends with mathematical certainty. The days of casual
bringing-up were numbered. A basis, and that a physical basis, was
found. The principle which underlies the possibility of all education
was discovered to them as it is to us to-day. They were taught that the
human frame, brain as well as muscle, _grows to the uses it is earliest
put to_. In a hundred years, we have advanced no further in principle,
but we have applied the principle in many directions. It is, indeed,
hardly possible to get beyond the ground covered by this so simple
sounding axiom: that is, it is hardly within our power to overstate the
possibilities of education. _Anything_ may be made of a child by those
who first get him into their hands. No doubt, propagandism becomes the
immediate duty of any who have perceived a saving principle for the
race. And efforts were made in many directions to bring before parents
of all classes the notion that the formation of habits is among the
chief aims of education. Our host’s EVENT is one of these efforts,
and the Parents’ Club spread like wildfire; every one was ready for
it, because people were beginning to feel the wretched uncertainty of
the casual method. How is it, they asked, that, bring up two boys in
the same way, and one turns out a villain, the other, a credit to his
family? Now, the ‘New Education’ deals entirely with individuals; not
with children, but with the child; the faulty habit is supplanted,
observe the word, the desirable habit produced, within a definite
period, say a month or so, and then the parents’ easy work is to keep
the child upon the lines of habit thus produced.”
“Now, stop a minute, Doctor, stop a minute! I’m afraid I’m about to
lose my easily won laurels. You, who are a classical scholar, must know
how familiar to the mind both of Roman and Greek was this doctrine of
habit. Again, a poet of our own, an eighteenth-century man--wasn’t he
Dryden?--expresses capitally the time-out-of-mind English feeling on
this subject--
“‘Children, like tender osiers, take the bow,
And, as they first are fashion’d, always grow;
For what we learn in youth, to that alone
In age we are by second nature prone.’”
“Most happy; but don’t you see, Dr. Oldcastle, I began by admitting
that people have always had a notion that they must bring up their
children in good habits, and suppress faulty ones. But now, they
have something more than a notion; they have scientific certainty.
And, instead of dawdling through the whole period of childhood with
spasmodic efforts to get a boy to tie his shoe-strings fast, they take
it in hand once and for all, keep incessant watch for the week or two
it will take to form the habit, and then the thing is done with for
a lifetime. The new habit once formed, the parent’s part is no more
than to watch against chance returns to the old ways until the habit
is ingrained in the stuff of the child’s character. Now, don’t you see
that this is a very different thing from the desultory way in which a
child was allowed to try off and on for a habit all his days, and never
got it?”
“I admit there’s a difference; it tallies, too, with what I notice in
the young boys who enter with us. You mean that their mothers have
definitely set themselves for a month or two, say, to form a habit--now
obedience, now truthfulness, now attention, and so on--and that is why
the boys come to me with _character_, not mere disposition?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean; and it’s on these lines we have been
advancing for a whole century. In another direction, too, education has
been going forward; but, here, we have only analogy to guide us, not
yet certainty. It cannot be predicated as yet, whether we are simple or
complex beings, whether in each of us is bound up one life or several.
It is not impossible, for instance, that, just as our physical life is
sustained because multitudinous organisms come to life, feed, grow,
multiply, and die, perpetually in our substance, so, perhaps what we
may call our immaterial life is sustained by multitudinous lives such
as our philosophy has never dreamed of. An idea, for instance, what
is it? We don’t know yet; but this we know, that every idea we get is
quick within us as a living being, that it feeds, grows, multiplies,
and then, behold it is no more! There are bodies natural and there
are bodies spiritual. Perhaps this sort of thing is too immature to
be pressed into service. But of other parts of us, to which names and
ideas of something like personality are attached--conscience, will,
our spiritual being--this it is quite safe to assert: they thrive upon
their appropriate meat and work, they perish of inanition and idleness.
This, too, we take into our scheme of education, and with great
results.”
The Dean got up:--
“I, for one, must heartily thank Dr. Brenton for his most suggestive
lecture. No, don’t look ‘castigated’ Doctor; ’tis a lecture for weight
and worth, but of commendable brevity. Speaking for the ‘cloth’ I
should like to say how much we owe to this educational revolution. A
century ago, our Church was supposed to show some signs of decadence;
to-day she is _quick_ to her remotest extremities. And why? simply
because she has gone with the times in following up the advances of
the ‘New Education.’ She, with the rest of you, perceives that the
world has ever one great thing to do--to bring up the young in advance
of the generation before them; that the sole valuable inheritance the
present has to leave behind is--exalted national character. Wherefore,
she has laboured assiduously on the two lines Dr. Brenton emphasises
to-night--‘that Habit is _ten_ natures’; and, that the spiritual life
must flourish or decay as it is duly fed and exercised, or allowed to
lie idle and unfed. Therefore, is every clergyman instructed, above
all, to minister to the young of his parish--of all classes. The
growing soul cannot thrive upon husks--therefore must the truth be
divested of the husks of the past, and clothed upon with the living
thought of the present. The young soul must be taught its work, the
spiritual exercises of prayer and praise, the bodily exercise of
service; and as no man can teach what he does not know, the minister to
the young must be qualified and ever active in these. Seeing these and
kindred truths, our clergy are raising up about them a body of ardent
young spirits to whom self-sacrifice is a law; labour in spiritual
uplands a necessity. And for much of this progress, I say, we are
indebted to the labours of the ‘New Educationists,’ whom we therefore
gladly hold up with both hands.”
“This is very gratifying hearing; we have all along been very sensible
of the cordiality and helpfulness of the clergy, who so commonly throw
in their lot with us. But that we should be doing them some service all
the time--this is news indeed. May I imitate the Dean, and say a word
professionally. We doctors have reaped where we sowed--and abundantly.
In the old days, families had each ‘their doctor,’ who was called in
now and then to do battle with disease which had already made headway.
But now, people are beginning to see that low vitality, poor physique,
and even organic disease--hereditary or other--are very commonly the
results of faulty education, or bringing up, if that is the better way
of putting it. What is the consequence? Why, the doctor is retained,
like husband or wife, for sickness and health; he is the medical
adviser by the year, or usually by the lifetime. He thrives not on
sickness, but upon health. Drops in on his clients unawares, finds one
girl doubled up over a book, another standing on one foot, notes the
hectic flush and bright eye of this child, the tendency to drowsiness
in that--the flabby arms and quick intelligence of the little town-bred
family, the stolid dulness of the farmer’s boy--for rich and poor come
in course to him. He does not wait for disease to be set up, but averts
the _tendency_; and though he has found no elixir of life, nor means
of averting death--this, he may almost venture to promise his clients,
that so long as they live, they shall live with eye not waxed dim, nor
natural force abated. And all this because he knows that the body, too,
must have its education, its careful regulation, and that bone and
muscle and vital organs alike grow to the _habits_ you set up in them.”
Mr. Hilyard had been using his pencil for the last few minutes, and
was evidently preparing to show on what lines the schools, too, had
been advancing during this age of many revolutions, when--“’Tis eleven
o’clock, and the ladies!” brought the discussion to an end.
NOTE
(_To Page 111, Translation._)
Hobbes followed, to the letter, the philosophy which derives ideas
from sense impressions; he did not fear the consequences, and said
boldly that the soul was as subservient to necessity as is society to
despotism. The cultivation of noble and pure aspirations is so firmly
established in England, by political and religious institutions, that
speculation moves round these mighty pillars without ever shaking
them. Hobbes had few supporters in his country, but Locke’s influence
was everywhere felt. He was moral and religious in character, and he
never admitted any of the dangerous arguments which naturally follow in
the train of his theories; the majority of his fellow-countrymen, in
accepting his theories, were inconsistent enough to separate cause from
effect, whilst Hume and the French philosophers, admiring his system,
have applied it in a much more logical way.
Locke’s system of metaphysics had but one effect on the minds of
Englishmen; it dulled their intuitive originality. Even when it
parched the sources of philosophical thought, it could not destroy
the deeply rooted religious sentiment of the nation. But this system
of metaphysics, which was received by all Europe, Germany excepted,
has been one of the chief causes of the spread of immorality; in
the philosophy of the materialist men found the precepts which give
sanction to every immoral practice.
_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
_Edinburgh and London_
Transcriber’s Note:
This book was written in a period when many words had not become
standardized in their spelling. Words may have multiple spelling
variations or inconsistent hyphenation in the text. These have
been left unchanged unless indicated below. Dialect, obsolete and
alternative spellings were left unchanged.
Words and phrases in italics are surrounded by underscores, _like
this_. Footnotes were renumbered sequentially and were moved to the
end of the chapter. Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, upside
down, or partially printed letters and punctuation, were corrected.
Final stops missing at the end of sentences and abbreviations were
added. Spaces were added between run together words. Accents were
adjusted where needed.
The following were changed:
delighful to delightful, line 2754
benefical to beneficial, line 3582
Thackery to Thackeray, Footnote [12]
carollary to corollary, line 4531
precedure to procedure, line 6267
titilated to titillated, line 7550
De Foe to Defoe, line 7565
hypocondriac to hypochondriac, line 8140
incalulable to incalculable, line 12262