CHILDREN
“Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortune more bitter: they
increase the cares of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of
death.”
_Bacon._
Bacon’s theory is very sound, and it is one that appeals to both
inspectors and teachers. There are times when the essayist labours to
be short, and becomes obscure; but here his meaning is plain, as is his
cipher to the American expert: children (in school) are delightful; but
if you are mentally worried, or physically in poor case, they are very
trying. The work (of inspecting or teaching) takes it out of you, but
it is a consolation to think that death will bring you relief.
I do not speak without experience. In my first year at Chester the
population of the district was about 205,000, of whom 34,000 should
have been at school. In my last year at Manchester the district
comprised about 880,000 people, of whom more than 150,000 were under
inspection: for the Higher Grade and Higher Elementary Schools had
brought in many more of the lower-middle class than used to patronise
us.
Roughly speaking, I may say that for thirty-two years I spent five
days a week, holidays and extra work excepted, in the study of my
ever-increasing flock; their habits, their physical characteristics in
connection with education, their morals and manners (if any), their
likes and dislikes, their work and their play. In the course of another
thirty-two years I might have got to know a little about them. For the
benefit of other searchers, and that they may begin where I leave off,
I record here a very small fraction of the result of my experiences in
school.
The physical characteristic side is one of absorbing interest. I
have long regretted that I did not give special attention to “Ears,
their influence on, and indication of, character.” There is room for a
valuable monograph on this subject. The kindred topic of hair was my
special study. I regret that my theories on hair were received with
such general incredulity that I shrink from crushing this simple record
of facts by introducing matter so debatable.
Even the rough conclusions which one formed by noting the size and
shape of heads were not wholly acceptable. It is not always easy at
first sight of a massive brow (“top-heavy for Shakespeare”)[24] to
decide whether it contains brains or water on the brain. Similarly I
believe in the political world the man with a swollen head is often
mistaken in the earlier days of acquaintance for--but I am going beyond
my last.
Let us keep to safer ground.
It was once pointed out to me that the main feature of American humour
is best described by a Greek phrase meaning “contrary to expectation.”
This certainly is the most delightful feature of children, but it is
manifest chiefly in their conversation. In most respects they are the
slaves of habit, and their games are the strongest instance of this.
Of all boys it may be asserted that, if Socrates were to enquire into
their ideas of Pleasure, he would reduce them to “motion without
exertion, and something to do with a ball.” “A wheel and a ball” is
tempting as a concise summary, but “wheel” would exclude horse-riding,
boating, skating, and some others. If it is argued that cycling,
skating, and boating connote exertion, I reply that to boys of Public
Elementary School age the delightful part is the continuous motion
which they get by intermittent exertion, and that they will cheerfully
drag a bicycle up a steep hill for the sake of the gratuitous descent.
This great theory comprehends all English boys from top to bottom of
the social ladder: in details there are points of similarity and of
the opposite between the old Public Schools and the 15,000 Public
Elementary Schools. The theory of periodicity is common to both, but
in the former the principle which allots the summer months to cricket
(or the cult of the lesser ball), and the winter to football (or the
cult of the greater ball), is climatic. The “little, wee, wee” balls
used for fives, racquets, and tennis, are perennial. In our elementary
schools, also, there is a law of seasons, but I have never been able to
formulate it, and I know of no reason for the alternations. At one time
all the boys play tip-cat, which Shakespeare would call “a dreadful
trade”: a crusty old bachelor says “it counts fifty if you break a
window, and it is game if you put out one eye of a passer-by”: this
apocryphal Rule I. is the only one promulgated. At another season hoops
are _de rigueur_: at another marbles: these recreations are little
known “in the playing fields of Eton, where the battle of Waterloo was
won.” The girls have skipping-ropes, less deadly than tip-cat, but very
injurious to the bridge of the nose, or the best hat of the peaceful
passenger: and they have Jacks, _alias_ skip-jacks, knuckle bones,
astragaloi. I think hop-scotch, which drives the passer-by on to the
high-road to be juggernauted by motors, is common to both sexes. The
pursuit of a football, or any cheap spheroidal substitute, is perennial
for boys.
In this rotation of games, then, there is resemblance of a sort. But
there is a lamentable dissimilarity in the spirit of the gamesters. Our
elementary boy has hardly the most elementary idea of schoolboy honour.
He begins with the loathsome practice of telling tales, not to be named
among Christians; A. tells tales of B., not because he hates wrong
or loves rules, but to raise his own value in the eyes of the common
enemy. This is to put self above the common good. From this beginning
he easily arrives at the deadly vice of the working class, the
incapacity for playing fair, and for playing without quarrelling. When
they are boys, their cricket and football are one long wrangle; when
they grow up, they not only buy and sell contests, they even attempt
the life of the umpire, who should be sacrosanct as the herald. And
from this blunted sense of honour comes another abominable habit, first
among boys: they ask a boon--some special indulgence, perhaps--and
obtain it on special terms of doing or abstaining from doing something
else; but when the boon is granted they have no scruple whatever about
breaking the condition precedent. Hence comes one of the ugliest
features of trade disputes, the incapacity for keeping a bargain.
Here, as I said, they are the slaves of habit. It is in their speech
that the unexpectedness triumphs; and the younger the child the more
unexpected are his remarks. Many an inspector, many a teacher, has been
reduced to utter confusion by these random shots. It was one of my own
staff who came to grief in a country school in this way. He had been
examining Standard II. in the multiplication table, and the village
idiot was in the class. They dealt with fair success with the simpler
problems, and Mr. Rackem was emboldened to soar higher.
“How much is eleven twelves?” he asked, and there was none to answer.
He put it in a more searching way: “_Who_ knows how much is eleven
twelves?” And the village idiot answered “Gawd,” that being
the generally accepted answer to difficult questions couched in that
form.
In another country school I met a boy, who by reason of his wit and
his wits was the joy of the rector’s heart. He was in Standard III.,
age about nine. I gave him an arithmetic card containing, among
others, the question: “How much would one million penny postage stamps
cost?” George took the contract with a friendly grin, and in due time
intimated that he had completed it.
“What do you make of the stamps, George?” I asked: “Is it £4,166 13_s._
4_d._? Yes: that is right,” and I marked his paper.
George grinned a larger grin, and remarked confidentially, as he sat
down again, “Thet come to a dale more nor what I’d care tu give far un.”
When Mr. Bultitude (in _Vice Versâ_) was given bills of parcels to do,
he was “disgusted as a business man by the glaring improbabilities of
their details.” George took the same view.
A colleague tells of a similar rebuff. He was examining in mental
arithmetic, and took pains to adapt his questions to local industries.
Picking out a big lad, he asked, “What does your father do?”
“Cotches sawmon i’ th’ river.”
“Capital: you will be able to do this sum; 20lbs. of salmon at 3_d._ a
lb., what is that worth? Twen-ty pounds of sal-mon at 3_d._?”
“Yah: tha’ wouldn’t be worth a dom.”
I think this is what logicians would call “Ignoratio Elenchi.”
Still more unexpected was the reply that demolished the present
truthful chronicler in an infant school. The mistress was giving a
lesson on an elephant. It was in the days when etiquette forbade that
the subject of the lesson should be directly announced to the class:
it had to be approached by artful devices. Therefore she began with a
question: “What is the largest animal in the world?”
Chorus: An elephunt, teacher.
Mistress: Yes, quite right.
This heresy shocked me; but etiquette again forbade that I should
contradict her. Yet--for _magis amica veritas_--I might, and did,
interpose a question:
“Which is the bigger, an elephant or a whale?” Chorus: A
wheele.
The mistress looked scornfully at me, and returned the oblique shot:
“Is a whale an animal, children?” Chorus: Noo, teacher.
Mistress: What is a whale, children? Chorus: A fish.
I was roused to more defence of truth, though tacitly accepting the
fishhood of whales: “Isn’t a fish an animal, children?” Chorus
(sarcastically): Noo.
“Is a girl an animal?” Chorus: Noo.
“Is a girl a vegetable? Do you grow them in a garden, like cabbages?”
Chorus: Noo.
“Is a girl a mineral? Do you dig them out of a mine, like coals?”
Chorus: Noo.
Now I seemed to have the landing-net ready: “If a girl is not an
animal, nor a vegetable, nor a mineral, what is a girl?”
The first and second classes felt the horns of the trilemma, and they
were silent: but a boy aged four, or so, rose from his seat in the
third class, and in strident tones supplied the crushing answer:
“Hoo’s A WENCH.”
I fled into the next room.
Another story of discomfiture--more touching, because the discomfited
one had not provoked her fate--comes to memory. The scene was a Sunday
School. The suffering lady had hurried down on a sultry afternoon,
and found her class unusually anæmic. She toiled womanfully, in spite
of heat and consequent torpor, and it was not till she was faint with
exertion that she seemed to detect a spark of interest. There was a low
mutter, and she cheered up, as a fisherman does when after hours of
nothingness he feels a timid bite.
“That is right, Mary dear; speak up; what did you say?”
“Woipe yer face.”
She never smiled again--in a Sunday School.
They spared neither age nor sex, and even the lookers on might be
overwhelmed. This was the case at a school managed by a worthy vicar,
whose most devoted ministrations were so little acceptable to his flock
that his congregation had dwindled down almost to the point specified
by Professor Henry J. S. Smith, of Oxford: “The attendants at Professor
Z.’s lectures might be counted on the thumbs of two hands.” That at
least was the current rumour. I was examining Standard II. (aged
eight or nine) in the rudiments of geography, and we came to the word
“desert,” which they defined as “a sandy plain where nothing grew.”
I was anxious to get at the meaning of the word, in connection with
“deserted,” and remembering a long-untenanted house at the end of their
street, and just below the church, I put it thus: “As I was coming here
I saw an empty building, all shut up, where nobody lives, and nobody
goes: what should you say that house was?”
And a fatal boy replied, “The House of God.”
Never before or since have I seen a good man so utterly prostrated as
was that Vicar.
If I were bound by chronology, I should keep to the end a comment
on my own personal appearance made by a Manchester infant. I was
coming out of school at dinner-time, and far below me, as I stood on
the outer doorstep, I heard a shrill cry of “Hey!” There
was an exceedingly small boy, aged four or five, gazing up into my
sexagenarian face and grey beard.
“Hullo, Tommy! what’s the matter with you?” I replied.
The imp pointed over his shoulder at another infant, smaller and a
shade dirtier:
“’Ee says you’re old Father Christmas.”
It was well for Tommy that he did not live in the days of Elisha: well
for Tommy that the she-bears were shut up in the Belle Vue Gardens.
Not even the Diocesan Inspectors in Religious Knowledge are safe.
One writes to me: “The children have a holiday after the diocesan
inspection. Alluding to this yesterday in ---- school I said, ‘What is
the pleasantest part of my visit to you?’
A. ‘That you don’t come often.’”
The unexpected remarks were not always humorous: nay, at times they
were intensely pathetic. I once picked up a beautifully clean baby from
the front desk, and planted her on my knee, while the usual lesson on
the cow, or the camel was droning on. She sat there in perfect content,
apparently absorbed in contemplation of her best shoes, worn in honour
of the inspection. Suddenly she turned to me, and murmured, “My daddy’s
been thoompin’ our baby like anythink this mornin’.”
“Gracious!” I said; “what had the baby been doing?”
“Nothink,” she said, and relapsed into silence.
It does not bear comment; it hardly bears thinking of.
Less pathetic, perhaps, but yet touching in its way, was a remark
reported to me from another Infant School. A little boy was gazing at a
wall-picture of a bear. The mistress asked what he would do if he met a
creature like that.
“I’d run away.”
“But the bear can run ever so quick, and he would catch you.”
The infant pondered on the clumsy-looking beast; calculated its rate of
speed by some method of his own, and finally replied:
“He wouldn’t; not if I ’ad my mended boots on.”
A pleasanter reminiscence from the same town. It was in the babies’
room: I was talking to the mistress, when suddenly a baby made a remark
to the class-teacher, and both teachers exploded in hastily suppressed
laughter. “What did the baby say?” I asked.
“She saw you coming in, Mr. Kynnersley, and she said, ‘Is that my
daddy?’”
The situation might be embarrassing. Conceive it in a French novel;
with the Inspector’s wife lurking in the doorway.
The answers of these infants to their own teachers were a source of
endless amusement; and sometimes they were saved up for me. One teacher
had been giving a first lesson to her class on some animals. “That,”
she said, in conclusion, “is what we call Natural History: all about
birds, beasts, fishes, and insects. I will write it on the board:
‘Natural History.’ Now can any little girl tell me any fact
that she has ever observed in Natural History--anything about a bird,
or a beast, or a fish, or an insect? Yes, Mary, that is a good girl:
what is it that you observed?”
Mary: “Please, teacher, our baby ate a slug once.”
Sometimes, too, the teachers would bring us stories of our colleagues,
and of the unexpected answers given to them. The unconscious humour
was often prominent. It was said that one Inspector asked, “What sort
of people do you think they were, who called the most northerly county
of Scotland ‘Sutherlandshire’?” (It may be well to state here that the
proper answer is “Norwegians.”) And a child answered “Irishmen.”
Another H.M.I. was credited with this elaborate interrogatory:
Q. “What is that island called which from its name you would suppose
contained neither women nor children?”
A. “Please, sir, the Scilly Isles.”
Enough for the Unexpected. Constant familiarity with school life
gave us a good deal of insight into children’s ways, and in many
matters we could calculate their probable course of conduct with the
assurance of a weather prophet. We got to know, also, what a thin
wall separates mischief from Hooliganism, and the latter from crime.
In the poorer districts we dealt with children, to whom the wall was
a transparent veil. In the best districts--and the remark is equally
true of the great Public Schools--there is a very thin crust over the
volcano. From Monday to Friday, between 9 A.M. and 4.30 P.M. conduct
is exemplary. The Roman poet dreamt of the return of _Saturnia regna_,
and the British schoolboy dreams of what he will do when Saturday comes
again. But every evening school discipline is suspended, and the home
resumes its influence. “You mustn’t be too hard on these children, Mr.
Kynnersley,” said a wise manager of a poor school to me: “after leaving
here they don’t hear a decent word till to-morrow morning.”
Then there is Sunday School, and the animal gets the upper hand.
_Grattez l’écolier, et trouvez l’écolier de Dimanche._ It was only
second-hand, and perhaps from seeing the wreckage on Monday morning,
that we got to know what boy-without-cane is like.
Of later years the Sabbatical revels have been extended to week-nights.
Under the names of Bands of Hope and Boys’ Brigades caneless boy has
had many happy hours. We used to read in the school log-books: “Nov.
14. Meeting of Band of Hope here last night: two desks wrecked, maps
pulled down, and a picture broken.” Nov. 20. “Meeting of Boys’ Brigade
here last night. Found the floor strewn with matches and cigarette
ends: maps pulled down, &c.”
Some Oxford men of the early ’sixties may remember a famous _Oratio
Procuratoria_ of the Rev. J. Riddell, honoured name to all Balliol men.
Speaking of the conduct of undergraduates at concerts, he lamented that
men, who at other times are perfectly well conducted, when they appear
at these meetings--_nulla reverentia praepediti, fumum strepitumque
edentes, barbarorum more ululantes, promiscue tumultuantur_.
Who shall say that Latin is a dead language!
Once in a boys’ school, where discipline was not rigidly enforced,
I was imploring the first class not to drown my voice with their
conversation while I was examining the adjacent class; and the Rector’s
wife, who was looking on, whispered to me, “Mr. Kynnersley, do tell me;
do you really think they are disorderly _now_?”
“Very disorderly,” I said.
“Dear me!” she sighed: “you should see them on a Sunday.”
It is not always easy for a stranger to decide whether a
baddish-seeming boy has really over-topped the line which separates
seeming from being. Such an one’s mother came to me one day to consult
me about her Jem; and from what she told me I went to the schoolmaster
for further information.
“What do you think of James X.?”
“Well, sir, he is not a bad sort of boy, but he is--er--er----”
I broke in to his relief: “His mother says he is RONK.”
The master jumped at it: “That’s exactly what he is, sir: he’s ronk.”
This was in the Midlands, and the word when spelt “rank” is
Shakespearean. In Cheshire the positive “ronk” is not used, but the
comparative or superlative is “gallus,” which in French is _pendard_.
But “ronk” is a low mark for character, and when a country school board
presented as candidates for pupil-teachership three boys so ronk that
their last examination had been in the Police Court on a charge of
arson, I thought that the bounds of charitable construction had been
passed. Certainly their “offence was rank.” Nor did I think the clerk’s
plea, that “there was nothing else you could put ’em to,” a sufficient
excuse. I would not dwell on the proved fact that they could neither
spell nor do a sum.
Choir-boys have an established reputation for ronkness. I was told of
an example in my district of that date. A number of them had been out
for a Saturday afternoon expedition into the country: returning on foot
they found themselves dead beat, some way from home, and they had no
money for rail or tram fares. The leader on the _Decani_ side--he who
sings up to A, and dies of consumption, young, with soft music--solved
the difficulty. He went to the nearest house and rang the door-bell.
Full of fictitious strength they ran for a hundred yards. Another ring,
and another run, and so on _da capo al fine_.
I wonder whether he was a ronk boy who discomfited the butcher. It is
often charged against our schools that they do not give a practical
education, equipping a boy to fight the battle of life. But the lamb of
my flock, of whom I am thinking, was a remarkable proof to the contrary.
The butcher had advertised in Monday’s paper for “A Smart Lad.” That
same morning a candidate applied.
“What name? Age? Been to the Board School? Passed your Standards?
What’s four eights? Ah, and seven eights? Fifty-six? Good: seem a smart
lad. Got a character? At home? How long to get it? Twenty minutes? Run
and get it, and if it’s all right, I’ll put you on in the morning.”
Thus the butcher. In _ten_ minutes the smart lad returned.
“Got back already? You _are_ a smart lad. Thought you said it would
take twenty minutes, and you’re back in ten.”
The smart lad grinned. “It ’ud take me twenty minutes to get _my_
character, but I got yours in ten, and I ain’t coming. G’Mornin’.”
These veritable histories, I see, on looking back, are almost wholly
concerned with boys and infants: where are the girls? It was constantly
impressed upon me by ladies interested in schools, that I, as a mere
man, was wholly unfit to be entrusted with the inspection of girls’
and infants’ schools. It was even thrown in my teeth that I, being a
miserable old bachelor, could know nothing about children of any kind.
This was the argument of Constance (_King John_, Act III. sc. iv.) to
the Cardinal:
“He talks to me that never had a son.”[25]
And this was the view of Mrs. Gamp, when she contemplated “the
unconscious Chuffey”: “Drat the old creetur,” said that skilled
practitioner, “he’s a layin’ down the law tolerable confident too. A
deal he knows of sons or darters either.”
The taunt of inexperience is applied to others besides school
inspectors. A clerical (bachelor) friend of mine found a woman in his
parish feeding her three-months’ old baby on kippered herring and tea.
He remonstrated, and she turned indignantly upon him:
“I should think I’d ought to know more about babies than you, seein’ as
I’ve buried seven of ’em.”
_Peritis credendum est in arte sua._
Now I should be loath to assert that I know anything about children.
Some one in Sophocles (I think it was a Chorus in the _Antigone_)
remarked that “of all weird things in nature Man is the weirdest.”
And by reason of his unexpectedness Child is weirder than Man. But
comparing my ignorance with female ignorance of Child, I do not see
that I have any natural disqualification by reason of sex. And when my
critic has been a maiden lady, it has been difficult to repress the
obvious repartee.
I might add that so strong are the chains of custom that these critics,
if they wished to crush me by an appeal to authority, would bring
forward none but the names of men. In French, it has been unkindly
remarked, _ange_ is always masculine, _bête_ always feminine: there is
no _belle-ange_, no _bête-noir_: and so “Writer-on-school-method” is
always masculine. This should be seen to. Lancaster, Bell, Pestalozzi,
Fröbel, Herbert Spencer--are there no she-prophets? If “Man marks the
earth with ruin, his control” should stop short of girls’ schools.
Far be it from me to dispute the point here. It may be on account of
this inability to understand girl, that I have only one anecdote in
stock for my 50,000 daughters:
The Squire’s wife at Exhurst is not pleased with the manners of the
girls, since _that_ Miss A. took charge of the school. The other day
Her Excellency met Mary Hodge in the lane, and did not meet with due
reverence. She went on to Mrs. Hodge’s cottage, and made complaint: “I
met Mary in the lane just now, and she didn’t curtsey to me, and I
_do_ think, &c., &c.”
“Well, ma’am,” said Mrs. Hodge, deprecatingly, “you see curtseying’s
gone hout now; but if you’d ’a _sloped_ to our Mary, I’m sure she’d a’
sloped to you.”
Dear girls! I have no stories to tell of them; but though they did not
lend themselves to humorous treatment, they were very delightful; and
there was not one among the whole 50,000 who would have changed me for
Tabitha Brown, or Priscilla Jones, or Minerva Robinson.
FOOTNOTES:
[24] Dickens: _Little Dorrit_.
[25] And so Macduff: “He has no children.”
--_Macbeth_, Act IV. sc. iv.