I am inclined to think that the people of Broad-minster are about the
best informed of all people in the county in regard to general topics.
But sometimes this opinion, which so many visitors form, is not
confirmed by residence in the town. In these days, when one hears that
it is impossible to educate a girl as she should be educated for less
than £200 a year, one expects a great deal of knowledge from girls
generally. A clergyman of the town, who is not connected with the
Minster, is constantly telling me of instances that have come under
his notice of the most expensively educated girls showing an amount of
ignorance that should, but probably would not, make a Board School girl
blush were it brought home to her. He assured me that the daughter of
one of the Minster dignitaries, in seeing a casual reference to Elaine,
had begged him to tell her in which of Shakespeare's plays she appeared:
she herself had made a diligent search through that author without
success.
I could scarcely believe that such an incident had taken place, for I
was under the impression that Tennyson was still read by girls; but a
short time afterwards I overheard a couple of young women--one of them
not so very young--talking on literature.
The elder had mentioned that she had read in a magazine that the best
account of the great plague was in a book written by Defoe, and she
wondered if the other girl knew what book it was in. The other shook her
head, saying--
“You need not ask me; the only book of Defoe's that I ever read was
_The Pilgrim's Progress_, and I never finished it.”
“I thought you might chance to know,” said the other complacently,
evidently not seeing her way into any side issue in respect of the
authorship of _The Pilgrim's Progress._ “I'm tremendously interested in
something I have been reading on tropical diseases, and I thought that I
should like to learn something about the old plagues.”
I fancy that both young women went through a course of English
literature at their expensive school, and they probably would reply to
your assurance that you knew the difference between Daniel Defoe and
John Bunyan and their works when you were twelve years of age, that they
could have done the same. What chance has Defoe against golf or Bunyan
against badminton. If a girl only puts her heart into it she can
forget between eighteen and twenty-four much that she has learned
previously--at a cost of a couple of thousand pounds or thereabout.
But, I repeat, there is a great deal of intelligence to be found in all
circles in Broadminster, and now and again one is confronted by some
strong piece of evidence of original investigation on a historical as as
well as a literary subject. Seldom, however, does one have an important
logical conclusion to an apparently trivial incident enforced upon one
with the same lucidity as characterised a lady's expression of surprise
that the hallucinations of the great Duke of Wellington in the latter
years of his life had not been commented on by any of his biographers.
People were accustomed to laugh at the assertion of the Prince Regent
that he had been present at the battle of Waterloo, and at the
Duke's reply to him when appealed to for confirmation: “Indeed, I
have frequently heard your Royal Highness say so.” But what about the
Duke's own hallucination? Is it not recorded of him that upon one
occasion, when watching the playing fields at Eton, he declared that
the battle of Waterloo had been fought there? Yet although everyone
knew that Waterloo was in Belgium, no one seemed to have noticed the
extraordinary mental lapse on the part of a man who might reasonably be
supposed to have the chief features of the locality impressed upon him.
She added that she feared, if the error were not pointed out in time,
the Duke's statement might become generally accepted, and so posterity
might be led to believe that Napoleon's career had been brought to a
close on the banks of the Thames, which was not a fact.