Dickens As an Educator

by James L. Hughes

  CHAPTER VI.

  FREE CHILDHOOD.

  Adulthood can never be truly free till childhood is free. Perfect freedomcan not be developed in a soul filled with the apperceptive experiences oftyranny. No man is fully free in the freest country in the world whowishes to dominate even his child. The practice of tyranny develops thetyrant. Guiding control is entirely different from domination.

  Dickens taught the doctrine of a rich, full, free childhood from the timehe wrote Nicholas Nickleby in 1839.

  Even the sunburned faces of gipsy children, half naked though they be, suggest a drop of comfort. It is a pleasant thing to see that the sun has been there; to know that the air and light are on them every day; to feel that they _are_ children, and lead children's lives; that if their pillows be damp, it is with the dews of heaven, and not with tears; that the limbs of their girls are free, and that they are not crippled by distortions, imposing an unnatural and horrible penance upon their sex; that their lives are spent, from day to day, at least among the waving trees, and not in the midst of dreadful engines which make young children old before they know what childhood is, and give them the exhaustion and infirmity of age, without, like age, the privilege to die. God send that old nursery tales were true, and that gipsies stole such children by the score!

  If he had written nothing but this exquisite quotation from NicholasNickleby he would have deserved recognition as an educator. It shows aclear insight into the great principles of physical freedom, intellectualfreedom, and spiritual freedom.

  In The Old Curiosity Shop he made the world sympathize with a child wholived with an old man. He gives the keynote to this fundamental thought ofthe book in the opening chapter:

  It always grieves me to contemplate the initiation of children into the ways of life when they are scarcely more than infants. It checks their confidence and simplicity--two of the best qualities that Heaven gives them--and demands that they share our sorrows before they are capable of entering into our enjoyments.

  Little Nell had the sadness of a lonely childhood, though her grandfatherlived with but the one aim of making her happy.

  In Martin Chuzzlewit--

  Tom Pinch's sister was governess in a family, a lofty family; perhaps the wealthiest brass and copper founder's family known to mankind. They lived at Camberwell; in a house so big and fierce that its mere outside, like the outside of a giant's castle, struck terror into vulgar minds and made bold persons quail.

  When Mr. Pecksniff and his daughters went to visit Miss Pinch she

  was at that moment instructing her eldest pupil; to wit, a premature little woman of thirteen years old, who had already arrived at such a pitch of whalebone and education that she had nothing girlish about her, which was a source of great rejoicing to all her relations and friends.

  One of the unsolved mysteries is the fact that such a large proportion ofparents are so anxious to have their children grow up. The desire may beunderstood when poverty longs for the time when the little hands may helpto win bread, but that wealthy parents should hasten the premature stateof adulthood in their children is incomprehensible.

  A great deal of attention is paid to the blunder of robbing children ofreal childhood in Dombey and Son, which is so rich in several departmentsof educational philosophy. Doctor Blimber regarded the young gentlemen "asif they were born grown up."

  Paul's life and death were intended as warnings to ambitious parents.Florence was robbed of a true childhood by her mother's death and herfather's lack of sympathy. Briggs and Tozer had no childhood; they werepersecuted by the ingenious and ignorantly learned adults at home duringvacations, as well as by Doctor Blimber during school time; so that "Tozersaid, indeed, that choosing between two evils, he would rather stay atschool than go home."

  Poor Bitherstone had no childhood. He was shipped away from his parents inIndia to the respectable hell conducted by that widely known and highlyreputed child trainer Mrs. Pipchin.

  Poor little Miss Pankey spent a great deal of her time in Mrs. Pipchin's"correctional dungeon." What a mercy it would be if all such unfortunatechildren could be stolen by the gipsies!

  Mrs. Pipchin's theory taught "that it was wrong to encourage a child'smind to develop and expand itself like a young flower, but to open it byforce like an oyster."

  When Doctor Blimber asked Paul, six-year-old Paul, "if he would like themto make a man of him," the child replied:

  "I had rather be a child."

  One of Dickens's most successful hits at the common philosophy, that thedesired adult characteristics must be developed in childhood in theiradult forms, was made in describing Mrs. Tozer's effort to qualify Tozerfor the position of a clergyman by making him wear a stiff, starchednecktie while he was a boy.

  When Edith upbraided her mother for practically compelling her to marryMr. Dombey, her mother asked angrily:

  "What do you mean? Haven't you from a child----"

  "A child!" said Edith, looking at her; "when was I a child? What childhood did you ever leave to me? I was a woman--artful, designing, mercenary, laying snares for men--before I knew myself or you, or even understood the base and wretched aim of every new display I learned. You gave birth to a woman. Look upon her. She is in her pride to-night."

  "You talk strangely to-night, Edith, to your own mother."

  "It seems so to me; stranger to me than to you," said Edith. "But my education was completed long ago. I am too old now and have fallen too low, by degrees, to take a new course, and to stop yours, and to help myself. The germ of all that purifies a woman's breast, and makes it true and good, has never stirred in mine, and I have nothing else to sustain me when I despise myself."

  Later, on the night before she was to marry Mr. Dombey, she said:

  "Oh, mother, mother, if you had but left me to my natural heart when I too was a girl--a younger girl than Florence--how different I might have been!"

  Bleak House gives Dickens's most striking picture of the deteriorationresulting from giving no real childhood to children for a series ofgenerations.

  During the whole time consumed in the slow growth of this family tree, the house of Smallweed, always early to go to business and late to marry, has strengthened itself in its practical character, has discarded all amusements, discountenanced all storybooks, fairy tales, fictions, and fables, and banished all levities whatsoever. Hence the gratifying fact that it has had no child born to it, and that the complete little men and women whom it has produced have been observed to bear a likeness to old monkeys with something depressing on their minds.

  There has been only one child in the Smallweed family for several generations. Little old men and women there have been, but no child, until Mr. Smallweed's grandmother, now living, became weak in her intellect, and fell (for the first time) into a childish state. With such infantine graces as a total want of observation, memory, understanding, and interest, and an eternal disposition to fall asleep over the fire and into it, Mr. Smallweed's grandmother has undoubtedly brightened the family.

  There could be no more awful picture than that of a family in which for aseries of generations the children had been, through heredity andtraining, made "little old men and women," who were never permitted toindulge in any childish plays, or to enjoy any stories, or in any way havea genuine childhood, so that they not only came to look like monkeys, but"like monkeys with something depressing on their minds"; and in which theonly child for several generations had been Mr. Smallweed's grandmother,when she became weak in intellect and "fell (for the first time) into achildish state."

  In The Haunted House the wretched child who came to Mr. Redlaw's room isdescribed as "a baby savage, a young monster, a child who had never been achild."

  Dickens made his greatest plea for a free childhood in Hard Times. Thewhole of the educational part of the bo
ok condemns the training of Mr.Gradgrind, although he was an earnest, high-minded gentleman, whosesupreme purpose was to train his family in the best possible way. IndeedMr. Gradgrind was so sure he was right in his views regarding childtraining that he founded a school to teach the children of Coketown inaccordance with what he believed to be correct principles.

  Mr. Gradgrind is described as

  a kind cannon loaded to the muzzle with facts, and prepared to blow children clean out of the regions of childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus, too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young imaginations that were to be stormed away.

  There were five young Gradgrinds, and they were models every one. They had been lectured at from their tenderest years; coursed, like little hares. Almost as soon as they could run alone they had been made to run to the lecture room. The first object with which they had an association or of which they had a remembrance was a large blackboard with a dry ogre chalking ghastly white figures on it.

  Not that they knew, by name or nature, anything about an ogre. Fact forbid! I only use the word to express a monster in a lecturing castle, with heaven knows how many heads manipulated into one, taking childhood captive, and dragging it into gloomy statistical dens by the hair.

  No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in the moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had ever learned the silly jingle, "Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder what you are"; it had never known wonder on the subject, having at five years old dissected the Great Bear like a Professor Owen and driven Charles's Wain like a locomotive engine driver. No little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled horn who tossed the dog who worried the cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb; it had never heard of those celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous ruminating quadruped with several stomachs.

  The effect of preventing all kinds of enjoyment for his children in theirown home was that they naturally sought for enjoyment surreptitiously in away of which their father disapproved. But when a man disapproves oflegitimate amusements in his family his condemnation of what is improperwill have little weight with his children.

  When Mr. Gradgrind was going home from the school examination he had topass near the circus, and he was amazed to find his daughter Louisa andhis son Thomas stealing a view of the performance.

  Phenomenon almost incredible though distinctly seen, what did he then behold but his own metallurgical Louisa peeping with all her might through a hole in a deal board, and his own mathematical Thomas abasing himself on the ground to catch but a hoof of the graceful equestrian Tyrolean flower act!

  Dumb with amazement, Mr. Gradgrind crossed to the spot where his family was thus disgraced, laid his hand upon each erring child, and said:

  "Louisa! Thomas!"

  Both rose, red and disconcerted. But Louisa looked at her father with more boldness than Thomas did. Indeed, Thomas did not look at him, but gave himself up to be taken home like a machine.

  "In the name of wonder, idleness, and folly!" said Mr. Gradgrind, leading each away by a hand; "what do you do here?"

  "Wanted to see what it was like," returned Louisa shortly.

  "What it was like?"

  "Yes, father."

  There was an air of jaded sullenness in them both, and particularly in the girl; yet, struggling through the dissatisfaction of her face, there was a light with nothing to rest upon, a fire with nothing to burn, a starved imagination keeping life in itself somehow, which brightened its expression. Not with the brightness natural to cheerful youth, but with uncertain, eager, doubtful flashes, which had something painful in them, analogous to the changes on a blind face groping its way.

  "You! Thomas and you, to whom the circle of the sciences is open, Thomas and you, who may be said to be replete with facts, Thomas and you, who have been trained to mathematical exactness, Thomas and you, here!" cried Mr. Gradgrind. "In this degraded position! I am amazed."

  "I was tired, father. I have been tired a long time," said Louisa.

  "Tired? Of what?" asked the astonished father.

  "I don't know of what--of everything, I think."

  When they reached home, Mr. Gradgrind in an injured tone said to Mrs.Gradgrind, after telling her where he had found the children:

  "I should as soon have expected to find my children reading poetry."

  "Dear me," whimpered Mrs. Gradgrind. "How can you, Louisa and Thomas! I wonder at you. As if, with my head in its present throbbing state, you couldn't go and look at the shells and minerals and things provided for you, instead of circuses!" said Mrs. Gradgrind. "You know as well as I do, no young people have circus masters, or keep circuses in cabinets, or attend lectures about circuses. What can you possibly want to know of circuses then? I am sure you have enough to do, if that's what you want. With my head in its present state, I couldn't remember the mere names of half the facts you have got to attend to."

  "That's the reason!" pouted Louisa.

  "Don't tell me that's the reason, because it can be nothing of the sort," said Mrs. Gradgrind. "Go and be something-ological directly."

  After Louisa had married Mr. Bounderby, Tom and Mr. Harthouse werediscussing her one evening, and Tom said she thought a great deal when shewas alone:

  "Ay, ay? Has resources of her own," said Harthouse.

  "Not so much of that as you may suppose," returned Tom; "for our governor had her crammed with all sorts of dry bones and sawdust. It's his system."

  "Formed his daughter on his own model?" suggested Harthouse.

  "His daughter? Ah! and everybody else. Why, he formed me that way," said Tom.

  "Impossible!"

  "He did though," said Tom, shaking his head. "I mean to say, Mr. Harthouse, that when I first left home and went to old Bounderby's, I was as flat as a warming-pan, and knew no more about life than any oyster does."

  Dickens describes a visit Louisa made to her father's house, and shows howlittle of the true home feeling was stirred in her heart, as sheapproached the place, where she should have had a happy childhood.

  Neither, as she approached her old home now, did any of the best influences of old home descend upon her. Her remembrances of home and childhood were remembrances of the drying up of every spring and fountain in her young heart as it gushed out. The golden waters were not there. They were flowing for the fertilization of the land where grapes are gathered from thorns, and figs from thistles.

  When her father proposed to Louisa that she should marry Mr. Bounderby,she said:

  "The baby preference that even I have heard of as common among children has never had its innocent resting place in my breast. You have been so careful of me, that I never had a child's heart. You have trained me so well, that I never dreamed a child's dream. You have dealt so wisely with me, father, from my cradle to this hour, that I never had a child's belief or a child's fear."

  Mr. Gradgrind was delighted at his apparent success. He could not see, hewas so practical and so self-opinionated, that her heart was breakingwhile she was yielding with external calmness.

  But the reaping time came soon. Mr. Harthouse, young, attractive, andunscrupulous, made love to Louisa, and finally persuaded her to run awaywith him. Unable to resist the temptation in her own strength, she fled toher father's house through an awful storm.

  The thunder was rolling into distance, and the rain was pouring down like a deluge, when the door of his room opened. He looked round the lamp upon his table, and saw with amazement his eldest daughter.

  "Louisa!"

  "Father,
I want to speak to you."

  "What is the matter? What is it? I conjure you, Louisa, tell me what is the matter."

  She dropped into a chair before him, and put her cold hand on his arm.

  "Father, you have trained me from my cradle."

  "Yes, Louisa."

  "I curse the hour in which I was born to such a destiny."

  He looked at her in doubt and dread, vacantly repeating, "Curse the hour! Curse the hour!"

  "How could you give me life, and take from me all the inappreciable things that raise it from the state of conscious death? Where are the graces of my soul? Where are the sentiments of my heart? What have you done, O father, what have you done, with the garden that should have bloomed once, in this great wilderness here?"

  She struck herself with both her hands upon her bosom.

  "If it had ever been here, its ashes alone would save me from the void in which my whole life sinks."

  He tightened his hold in time to prevent her sinking on the floor, but she cried out in a terrible voice, "I shall die if you hold me! Let me fall upon the ground!" And he laid her down there, and saw the pride of his heart and the triumph of his system lying, an insensible heap, at his feet.

  In the Schoolboy's Story, the boy who was to have no holiday at home wasinvited to spend his holidays with "Old Cheeseman" and Mrs. Cheeseman.

  So I went to their delightful house, and was as happy as I could possibly be. They understand how to conduct themselves toward boys, _they_ do. When they take a boy to the play, for instance, they _do_ take him. They don't go in after it's begun, or come out before it's over. They know how to bring a boy up, too. Look at their own! Though he is very little as yet, what a capital boy he is! Why, my next favourite to Mrs. Cheeseman and Old Cheeseman is young Cheeseman.

  When Dickens came to his last book his heart was still full of sympathywith the child.

  Edwin Drood said to Mr. Jasper: "Life for you is a plum with the naturalbloom on. It hasn't been over-carefully wiped off for _you_."

  In the same book Mr. Grewgious is described:

  He was an arid, sandy man, who, if he had been put into a grinding mill, looked as if he would have ground immediately into high-dried snuff. He had a scanty flat crop of hair, in colour and consistency like some very mangy yellow fur tippet; it was so unlike hair, that it must have been a wig, but for the stupendous improbability of anybody's voluntarily sporting such a head. The little play of feature that his face presented was cut deep into it, in a few hard curves that made it more like work; and he had certain notches in his forehead, which looked as though Nature had been about to touch them into sensibility or refinement, when she had impatiently thrown away the chisel, and said, "I really can not be worried to finish off this man; let him go as he is."

  He tried to explain the reason for his peculiarities to Rosa:

  "I mean," he explained, "that young ways were never my ways. I was the only offspring of parents far advanced in life, and I half believe I was born advanced in life myself. No personality is intended toward the name you will so soon change, when I remark that while the general growth of people seem to have come into existence buds, I seem to have come into existence a chip. I was a chip--and a very dry one--when I first became aware of myself."

  Dickens takes a front rank among the educators who have tried to save thechild from "child-quellers," and preserve for them the right to a free,rich, real childhood. The saddest sight in the world to him was a childsuch as he pictured in A Tale of Two Cities: "The children of St. Antoinehad ancient faces and grave voices."

  In Barbox Brothers Mr. Jackson said of himself: "I am, to myself, anunintelligible book, with the earlier chapters all torn out and thrownaway. My childhood had no grace of childhood, my youth had no charm ofyouth, and what can be expected from such a lost beginning?"

  Dickens tried to save all children from such a beginning.