You may have forgotten young Harry Smith, whom I casually mentioned in
my first section, the schoolboy of fifteen. I should not be surprised
to hear that you had forgotten him. He is often forgotten in the home of
the Smiths., Compared with Mr. Smith, the creator of the home, or with
the lordly eldest son John, who earns his own living and is nearly
engaged, or with Mary, who actually is engaged, young Harry is
unimportant. Still, his case is very interesting, and his own personal
impression of the home of the Smiths must be of value. .
Is Harry Smith happy in the home? Of course, one would not expect him
to be perfectly happy. But is he as happy as circumstances in themselves
allow? My firm answer is that he is not. I am entirely certain that on
the whole Harry Smith regards home as a fag, a grind, and a bore. Mr.
Smith, on reading these lines, is furious, and Mrs. Smith is hurt.
What! Our dear Harry experiences tedium and disappointment with his dear
parents? Nonsense!
The fact is, no parents will believe that their children are avoidably
unhappy. It is universally agreed nowadays, that children in the
eighteenth century, and in the first half of the nineteenth, had a
pretty bad time under the sway of their elders. But the parent of those
epochs would have been indignant at any accusation of ill-treatment. He
would have called his sway beneficent and his affection doting. The same
with Mr. and Mrs. Smith! Now, I do not mean, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, that
you crudely ill-treat your son, tying him to posts, depriving him of
sleep, or pulling chestnuts out of the fire with his fingers. (See
reports of S.P.C.C.) A thousand times, no! You are softhearted. Mrs.
Smith is occasionally somewhat too soft-hearted. Still, I maintain that
you ill-treat Harry in a very subtle, moral way, by being fundamentally
unjust to him in your own minds.
Just look at your Harry, my excellent and conscientious Mr. Smith. He
is all alive there, a real human being, not a mechanical doll; he
has feelings just like yours, only, perhaps, more sensitive. He finds
himself in a world which--well, of which the less said the better. _You_
know what the world is, Mr. Smith, and you have often said what you
know. He is in this world, and he can’t get out of it. You have started
him on the dubious adventure, and he has got to go through with it. And
what is the reason of his being here? Did you start him out of a desire
to raise citizens for the greatest of empires? Did you imagine he would
enjoy it hugely? Did you act from a sense of duty to the universe?
None of these things, Mr. Smith! Your Harry is merely here because you
thought that Mrs. Smith was somehow charmingly different from other
girls. He is a consequence of your egotistic desire to enlarge your
borders, of your determination to have what you wanted. Every time
you cast eyes on him he ought to remind you what a self-seeking and
consequence-scorning person you are, Mr. Smith. And not only is he from
no choice or wish of his own in a world as to which the most powerful
intellects are still arguing whether it is tragic or ridiculous; but he
is unarmed for the perils of the business. He is very ignorant and
very inexperienced, and he is continually passing through disconcerting
modifications.
These are the facts, my dear sir. You cannot deny that you, for your
own satisfaction, have got Harry into a rather fearful mess. Do you
constantly make the effort to be sympathetic to this helpless victim
of your egotism? You do not. And what is worse, to quiet your own
consciences, both you and Mrs. Smith are for ever pouring into his ear a
shocking--I won’t call it “lie”--perversion of the truth. You are always
absurdly trying to persuade him that the obligation is on his side. Not
a day wears to night but Mrs. Smith expresses to Harry her conviction
that by good behaviour he ought to prove his _gratitude_ to you for
being such a kind father.
And you talk to him in the same strain of Mrs. Smith. The sum of your
teaching is an insinuation--often more than an insinuation--that you
have conferred a favour on Harry, Supposing that some one pitched you
into the Ship Canal--one of the salubrious reaches near Warrington, Mr.
Smith--and then clumsily dragged you half-way out, and punctured his
efforts by a reiterated statement that gratitude to him ought to fill
your breast, how would you feel?
*****
Things are better than they were, but the general attitude of the parent
to the child is still fundamentally insincere, and it mars the success
of the home, for it engenders in the child a sense of injustice. Do
you fancy that Harry is for an instant deceived by the rhetoric of his
parents? Not he! Children are very difficult to deceive, and they are
horribly frank to themselves. It is quite bad enough for Harry to be
compelled to go to school. Harry, however, has enough sense to perceive
that he must go to school. But when his parents begin to yarn that
he ought to be _glad_ to go to school, that he ought to _enjoy_ the
privilege of solving quadratic equations and learning the specific
gravities of elements, he is quite naturally alienated.
He does not fail to observe that in a hundred things the actions of his
parents contradict their precepts. When, being a boy, he behaves like a
hoy, and his parents affect astonishment and disgust, he knows it is an
affectation. When his father, irritated by a superabundance of noise,
frowns and instructs Harry to get away for he is tired of the sight of
him, Harry is excusably affronted in his secret pride.
These are illustrations of the imperfect success of the Smiths’ home as
an organisation for making Harry happy. Useless for Mr. Smith to argue
that it is “all for Harry’s own good.” He would simply be aggravating
his offence. Discipline, the enforcement of regulations, is necessary
for Harry. I strongly favour discipline. But discipline can be practised
with sympathy or without sympathy; with or without the accompaniment
of hypocritical remarks that deceive no one; with or without odious
assumptions of superiority and philanthropy.
I trust that young John and young Mary will take note, and that their
attitude to _their_ Harrys will be, not: “You ought to be glad you’re
alive,” but: “We thoroughly sympathise with your difficulties. We quite
agree that these rules and prohibitions and injunctions are a nuisance
for you, but they will save you trouble later, and we will be as
un-cast-iron as we can.” Honesty is the best policy.