Dickens As an Educator

by James L. Hughes

  CHAPTER X.

  CHILD STUDY AND CHILD NATURE.

  Dickens was a profound student of children, and he revealed hisconsciousness of the need of a general study of childhood in all he wroteabout the importance of a free childhood, individuality, the imagination,coercion, cramming, and wrong methods of training children.

  He criticised the blindness of those who saw boys as a class or in alimited number of classes, distinguished by external and comparativelyunimportant characteristics, in Mr. Grimwig, "who never saw any differencein boys, and only knew two sorts of boys, mealy boys and beef-faced boys."

  He exposed the ignorance--the wilful ignorance--of vast numbers of parentsand teachers who indignantly resent the suggestion that they need to studychildren, in Jane Murdstone. When Jane was interfering in the managementof David, and with her brother totally misunderstanding him andmisrepresenting him, his timid mother ventured to say:

  "I beg your pardon, my dear Jane, but are you quite sure--I am certain you'll excuse me, my dear Jane--that you quite understand Davy?"

  "I should be somewhat ashamed of myself, Clara," returned Miss Murdstone, "if I could not understand the boy, or any boy. I don't profess to be profound, but I do lay claim to common sense."

  Many Jane Murdstones still claim that it is not necessary to study socommon a thing as a boy. Yet a child is the most wonderful thing in theworld, and, whether the Jane Murdstones in the schools and homes like itor not, the wise people _are_ studying the child with a view to findingout what he should be guided to do in the accomplishment of his owntraining.

  Richard Carstone had been eight years at school, and he was a miserablefailure in life, although a man of good ability.

  "It had never been anybody's business to find out what his natural bentwas, or where his failings lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to him."Esther wisely said: "I did doubt whether Richard would not have profitedby some one studying him a little, instead of his studying Latin verses somuch."

  Dickens studied every subject about which he wrote with great care anddiscrimination. As an instance of this careful study it may be stated thatmedical authorities say that the description of Smike's sickness and deathis the best description of consumption ever written. Dickens had awonderful imagination, but he never relied on his imagination for hisfacts or his philosophy. It is therefore reasonable to believe that as hewrote more about children than any other man or woman, he was the greatestand most reverent student of childhood that England has produced.

  In addition to the revelations of his conclusions given in the evolutionof his child characters, and in the many illustrations of good and of badtraining, he continually makes direct statements in regard to child natureand how to deal with it in its varied manifestations.

  His central motive was expressed by the old gentleman who found LittleNell astray in London: "I love these little people; and it is not a slightthing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us."

  His ideal of unperverted child nature was entirely different from thatwhich had been taught by theology and psychology. He believed the child tobe pure and good, and that even when heredity was bad, its banefulinfluences need not blight the divinity in his life, if he was wiselytrained and had a free life of self-activity, a suitable environment, andtruly sympathetic friends.

  "It would be a curious speculation," said I, after some restless turns across and across the room, "to imagine her in her future life, holding her solitary way among a crowd of wild, grotesque companions, the only pure, fresh, youthful object in the throng."

  To keep children pure and fresh was the chief aim of his life work. He hadno respect for those who treated children as if they were grown-up,reasonable beings; who judged children as they would judge adults, andtherefore misjudged them. He always remembered that a child was a littlestranger in a new world, and that his complex nature had to adjust itselfto its environment. He had a perfect, reverent, considerate sympathy forthe timid young soul venturing to look out upon its new conditions. One ofthe most pathetic things in the world to him was the fact that childrenare nearly universally misunderstood and misinterpreted. How he longed totear down the barriers of formalism, and conventionality, andindifference, and misconception from the lives of parents and teachers, sothat timid children might be true to their better natures in theirpresence.

  When little Florence timidly presented herself, Mr. Dombey stopped in his pacing up and down and looked toward her. Had he looked with greater interest and with a father's eye, he might have read in her keen glance the impulses and fears that made her waver; the passionate desire to run clinging to him, crying, as she hid her face in his embrace, "Oh, father, try to love me! there's no one else!" the dread of a repulse; the fear of being too bold, and of offending him; the pitiable need in which she stood of some assurance and encouragement; and how her overcharged young heart was wandering to find some natural resting place for its sorrow and affection.

  But he saw nothing of this. He saw her pause irresolutely at the door and look toward him; and he saw no more.

  "Come in," he said, "come in; what is the child afraid of?"

  She came in, and after glancing round her for a moment with an uncertain air, stood pressing her small hands hard together, close within the door.

  "Come here, Florence," said her father coldly. "Do you know who I am?"

  "Yes, papa."

  "Have you nothing to say to me?"

  The tears that stood in her eyes as she raised them quickly to his face were frozen by the expression it wore. She looked down again and put out her trembling hand.

  Mr. Dombey took it loosely in his own, and stood looking down upon her for a moment, as if he knew as little as the child what to say or do.

  "There! Be a good girl," he said, patting her on the head, and regarding her, as it were, by stealth with a disturbed and doubtful look. "Go to Richards. Go!"

  His little daughter hesitated for another instant as though she would have clung about him still, or had some lingering hope that he might raise her in his arms and kiss her. She looked up in his face once more. He thought how like her expression was then to what it had been when she looked round at the doctor--that night--and instinctively dropped her hand and turned away.

  It was not difficult to perceive that Florence was at a great disadvantage in her father's presence. It was not only a constraint upon the child's mind, but even upon the natural grace and freedom of her actions.

  The child, in her grief and neglect, was so gentle, so quiet and uncomplaining, was possessed of so much affection that no one seemed to care to have, and so much sorrowful intelligence that no one seemed to mind or think about the wounding of, that Polly's heart was sore when she was left alone again.

  The same lesson was given to parents and teachers in Murdstone's treatmentof Davy. The sensitive, shy boy was regarded as sullen, and treated "likea dog" in consequence. Oh, what bitterness it puts into a child's life tobe misunderstood by its dearest friends! If there were no other reason forthe co-operative study of children by parents and teachers, it would be asufficient reason that they might be understood and appreciated. Manylives are made barren and wicked by the failure of parents and teachers tounderstand them.

  It is so easy for children to get the impression that they are not likedby adults. When Walter started life in Mr. Dombey's great warehouse, hisuncle, old Solomon Gills, with whom he lived, asked him on his returnfrom work the first day:

  "Has Mr. Dombey been there to-day?"

  "Oh, yes! In and out all day."

  "He didn't take any notice of you, I suppose?"

  "Yes, he did. He walked up to my seat--I wish he wasn't so solemn and stiff, uncle--and said, 'Oh! you are the son of Mr. Gills, the ships' instrument maker.' 'Nephew, sir,' I said. 'I said nephew, boy,' said he. But I could take my
oath he said son, uncle."

  "You're mistaken, I dare say. It's no matter."

  "No, it's no matter, but he needn't have been so sharp, I thought. There was no harm in it, though he did say son. Then he told me that you had spoken to him about me, and that he had found me employment in the house accordingly, and that I was expected to be attentive and punctual, and then he went away. I thought he didn't seem to like me much."

  "You mean, I suppose," observed the instrument maker, "that you didn't seem to like him much."

  "Well, uncle," returned the boy, laughing, "perhaps so; I never thought of that."

  This short selection reveals the disrespect for childhood which leadsadulthood to flatly contradict what a child says, whether he is making astatement of fact or of opinion. This is most inconsiderate, and naturallyleads to a corresponding disrespect for adulthood on the part of thechild. The selection clearly intimates that childhood would be more happy,and like adulthood better, if adulthood was not so "solemn and stiff."Parents and teachers should learn from Solomon's philosophy that a child'sfeelings toward an adult partly determine his impressions regarding theattitude of adulthood toward him.

  The first thing necessary in training a child to be his real, best self isto win his affectionate regard and confidence. One has to be very true,very unconventional, and very joyous, to do this fully.

  Dickens pitied the child because, even when he is understood, his wishes,plans, and decisions are not treated with respect. This is a grossinjustice to the child's nature. As Pip so truly said: "It may be onlysmall injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small,and its world is small, and its rocking horse stands as many hands high,according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter."

  Adulthood needs to learn no lesson more than that childhood lives a lifeof its own, that that life should not be tested by the scales and tapelines of adulthood, and that within its range of action its choice shouldbe respected, and its opinions treated with reverent consideration.

  Mrs. Lirriper said that when she used to read the Bible to Mrs. Edson,when that lady was dying, "though she took to all I read to her, I used tofancy that next to what was taught upon the Mount she took most of all tohis gentle compassion for us poor women, and to his young life, and to howhis mother was proud of him, and treasured his sayings in her heart."

  The divinity in any child will grow more rapidly if his mother "treasureshis sayings in her heart." We need more reverence for the child.

  Dickens tried to make parents regard the child as a sacred thing, whichshould always be the richest joy of his parents.

  Speaking of Mrs. Darnay, in The Tale of Two Cities, he says:

  The time passed, and her little Lucie lay on her bosom. Then, among the advancing echoes, there was the tread of her tiny feet and the sound of her prattling words. Let greater echoes resound as they would, the young mother at the cradle side could always hear those coming. They came, and the shady house was sunny with a child's laugh, and the divine Friend of children, to whom in her trouble she had confided hers, seemed to take her child in his arms, as he took the child of old, and made it a sacred joy to her.

  Dickens had profound faith in children whose true development had not beenarrested.

  Doctor Strong had a simple faith in him that might have touched the stone hearts of the very urns upon the wall.... He appealed in everything to the honour and good faith of the boys, and relied on their possession of those qualities unless they proved themselves unworthy.

  Reliance begets reliance. Faith increases the qualities that merit faith.

  David said the doctor's reliance on the boys "worked wonders." No wonderit worked wonders. We can help a boy to grow no higher than our faith inhim can reach.