"Well!" retorted Mrs. Pipchin shortly, "and there's nobody like me, I suppose."
"Ain't there really, though?" asked Paul, leaning forward in his chair, and looking at her very hard.
"No," said the old lady.
"I am glad of that," observed Paul, rubbing his hands thoughtfully. "That's a very good thing."
To which every one would say "Amen," if they could believe Mrs. Pipchin'sstatement to be actually true.
Mrs. Pipchin combined in her "system" many of the evils of child training.
She was not good-looking, and those who train children should be decidedlygood-looking. They need not be handsome; they ought to be winsome. Her"mottled face like bad marble, and hard grey eye" meant danger tochildhood.
She was gloomy in appearance, in manner, and in dress, alldisqualifications for any position connected with child development.
She was "a bitter old lady," and children should be surrounded with anatmosphere of sweetness and joyousness.
Her one diabolical rule was "to give children everything they didn't likeand nothing they did like." This rule is the logical limit of the doctrineof child depravity.
She was generally spoken of as a "great manager," simply because shecompelled children to do her bidding by fear of punishment in the"dungeon," or of being sent to bed, or robbed of their meals, or by someother mean form of contemptible coercion. These processes were praised asexcellent till Dickens destroyed their respectability. His title"child-queller" is admirable, and full of philosophy. Many a man has beenable to form a truer conception regarding child freedom through theinfluence of the word "child-queller." Every teacher should ask himselfevery day, "Am I a child-queller?" It will be a blessed thing for thechildren when there shall be no more Pipchinny teachers.
The environment of the ogress was not attractive. The gardens grew onlymarigolds, snails were on the doors, and bad odours in the house. "In thewinter time the air couldn't be got out of the castle, and in the summertime it couldn't be got in." Dickens knew that the environment of childrenhas a direct influence on their characters, and that ventilation isessential to good health. These lessons were needed fifty years ago.
Mrs. Pipchin made children dishonest by putting on collars for parade.
"The farinaceous and vegetable" diet, the "regaled with rice" criticismsshow that Dickens anticipated by half a century the present interest inthe study of nutrition as one of the most important educational subjects.
The combination of coercion and religion is ridiculed in the theologicalconstraint of Mrs. Pipchin, when she told little Miss Pankey "that nobodywho sniffed before visitors ever went to heaven."
The outrageous selfishness of adulthood was exposed by the description ofMrs. Pipchin's anger at the play of the children in the back room when itwas raining and they could not go out.
The injustice of the "child-queller" was shown because she filliped MasterBitherstone on the nose for nodding in the evening, whenever she woke upfrom her own nodding.
The sacrilege of having prayers between two processes of cruelty is worthyof note. Religion should never be associated in the mind of a child withinjustice, cruelty, or any meanness.
The dreadful practice of driving timid children to sleep in the dark wasanother of Mrs. Pipchin's accomplishments. The retiring hour of childhoodshould be made the happiest and most nerve soothing of the day. Wise andsympathetic adulthood, especially motherhood, can then reach the centralnature of the child most successfully.
The formal reading of a meaningless selection from the Bible byBitherstone tended to prevent the development of a true interest in thatmost interesting of all books.
The Early Readings, with the bad boy in the story "being finished offgenerally by a lion or a bear," were a fit accompaniment to a system inwhich no child's mind was encouraged to expand like a flower naturally,but to be opened by force like an oyster.
Dickens began with Mrs. Pipchin his revelation of the great blunder ofchecking the questions of children. "Remember the story of the little boythat was gored to death by a mad bull for asking questions," she said toPaul. The same evil is pointed out in the training of Pip in GreatExpectations.
Another common error is revealed by Mrs. Pipchin, when she called Paul "alittle infidel," because he did not accept her statement about the madbull, although she knew it to be false herself. Even when children doubtthe truth they should not be called "infidels," unless, indeed, it isdesired to make them definitely and consciously sceptical.
The Puritan Sabbath was a part of Mrs. Pipchin's quelling system too.
It was little wonder, therefore, that the wild children went home tameenough after a few months in her awful institution.
Few men who have ever lived have studied the child and his training sothoroughly as to be able to condense into such brief space so many of theevils of bad training.
Mrs. Pipchin and Mr. Squeers have been made to do good work for childhood.
Biler was so badly treated at the grinders' school that he played hookey,but that was not the worst feature of his education. They did not feel anyresponsibility for character development in the school of the CharitableGrinders.
But they never taught honour at the grinders' school, where the system that prevailed was particularly strong in the engendering of hypocrisy; insomuch that many of the friends and masters of past grinders said, if this were what came of education for the common people, let us have none. Some more rational said, Let us have a better one; but the governing powers of the grinders' company were always ready for _them_, by picking out a few boys who had turned out well in spite of the system, and roundly asserting that they could have only turned out well because of it. Which settled the business of those objectors out of hand, and established the glory of the grinders' institution.
In David Copperfield, Uriah Heep, utterly detestable in character, is thenatural product of the system of training under which both he and hisfather were brought up. Uriah said:
"Father and me was both brought up at a foundation school for boys; and mother, she was likewise brought up at a public, sort of charitable, establishment. They taught us all a deal of umbleness--not much else that I know of--from morning to night. We was to be umble to this person, and umble to that; and to pull off our caps here, and to make bows there; and always to know our place, and abase ourselves before our betters. And we had such a lot of betters! Father got the monitor medal by being umble. So did I. Father got made a sexton by being umble. He had the character, among the gentlefolks, of being such a well-behaved man that they were determined to bring him on. 'Be umble, Uriah,' says father, 'and you'll get on. It was what was always being dinned into you and me at school; it's what goes down best. Be umble,' says father, 'and you'll do!' And really it ain't done bad!"
It was the first time it had ever occurred to me that this detestable cant of false humility might have originated out of the Heep family. I had seen the harvest, but had never thought of the seed. I had never doubted his meanness, his craft and malice; but I fully comprehended now, for the first time, what a base, unrelenting, and revengeful spirit must have been engendered by this early, and this long, suppression.
David himself tells how he suffered after the death of his mother from thecold neglect of Mr. Murdstone and Jane Murdstone. No child can be sodestitute as the child who is neglected through dislike.
And now I fell into a state of neglect, which I can not look back upon without compassion. I fell at once into a solitary condition--apart from all friendly notice, apart from the society of all other boys of my own age, apart from all companionship but my own spiritless thoughts--which seems to cast its gloom upon this paper as I write.
What would I have given to have been sent to the hardest school that ever was kept! to have been taught something, anyhow, anywhere! No such hope dawned upon me. They disliked me, and they sul
lenly, sternly, steadily overlooked me. I think Mr. Murdstone's means were straitened at about this time; but it is little to the purpose. He could not bear me; and in putting me from him he tried, as I believe, to put away the notion that I had any claim upon him--and succeeded.
I was not actively ill used. I was not beaten or starved; but the wrong that was done to me had no intervals of relenting, and was done in a systematic, passionless manner. Day after day, week after week, month after month, I was coldly neglected. I wonder sometimes, when I think of it, what they would have done if I had been taken with an illness--whether I should have lain down in my lonely room and languished through it in my usual solitary way, or whether anybody would have helped me out.
But the greatest lesson in wrong training given in David Copperfield isthe character development of Steerforth. He was ruined by the misdirectedlove of his mother, and his life is a fine psychological study.
He was a boy of unusually good ability and great attractiveness. Hepossessed by nature every element of power and grace required to make hima strong, true, and very successful man; but the love of his motherdegenerated to pride and admiration, indulgence was substituted forguidance, and the strong woman became weak at the vital point of trainingher boy. She allowed him to become selfish and vain by yielding to hiscaprices. She thought she was making his character strong by allowing norestraint to be put upon it. She failed to distinguish between license andliberty. She had conceived the ideal of the need of freedom, but she knewnaught of the true harmony between control and spontaneity. She allowedthe spontaneity, and gloried in his resistance to control. She was blindto the balancing element in "the perfect law of liberty." She made her boya powerful engine without a governor valve. So his selfhood becameselfishness, and his character was wrecked. Among other immoral opinionsthat he gained from his mother's training was the idea that he belonged toa select class superior to common humanity. How Dickens hated thisthought! Rosa Dartle asked Steerforth about
"That sort of people--are they really animals and clods, and beings of another order? I want to know so much."
"Why, there's a pretty wide separation between them and us," said Steerforth, with indifference. "They are not to be expected to be as sensitive as we are. Their delicacy is not to be shocked or hurt very easily. They are wonderfully virtuous, I dare say--some people contend for that, at least, and I am sure I don't want to contradict them; but they have not very fine natures, and they may be thankful that, like their coarse, rough skins, they are not easily wounded."
He was trained to despise work, which is a good start toward the utterloss of character. A boy who despises his fellow-beings whom he assumes torank below him, and who also despises work, instead of recognising theduty of every man to be a producer or a distributor of power, may easilyfall into moral degeneracy.
"Help yourself, Copperfield!" said Steerforth. "We'll drink the daisies of the field, in compliment to you; and the lilies of the valley that toil not, neither do they spin, in compliment to me--the more shame for me!"
His character lacked seriousness. He had the fatal levity that led him todiscuss the most sacred subjects in a flippant manner.
His mother knew that Creakle's school was not a proper place for him, butshe wished to make him conscious of his superiority even over his teacher,and she knew that Creakle, tyrannical bully though he was, would yield toSteerforth, because his mother was wealthy.
"It was not a fit school generally for my son," said she; "far from it; but there were particular circumstances to be considered at the time, of more importance even than that selection. My son's high spirit made it desirable that he should be placed with some man who felt its superiority, and would be content to bow himself before it; and we found such a man there."
What a perversion of the ideal of freedom in the development of character,to suppose that it could only reach perfection by a consciousness ofsuperiority; by having some one who should control him bow down beforehim! No man in the world is truly free who has a desire to dominate someone else--another man, a woman, or a child. Yet Mrs. Steerforth sacrificedher son's education in order that his manly spirit might be cultivated bythe subordination of the man who should have governed him. She showedbetter judgment in deciding that a coercive tyrant like Creakle would makea subservient sycophant.
"My son's great capacity was tempted on there by a feeling of voluntary emulation and conscious pride," the fond lady went on to say. "He would have risen against all constraint; but he found himself the monarch of the place, and he haughtily determined to be worthy of his station. It was like himself."
As Steerforth began consciously to feel his better nature surrendering tohis sensuality, he experienced the pangs that all strong natures feel atthe loss of moral power, and one time when he and David were visiting Mr.Peggotty at Yarmouth he seemed to be moody and disposed to sadness. Hesaid suddenly to David when they were alone one day:
"David, I wish to God I had had a judicious father these last twenty years!"
"My dear Steerforth, what is the matter?"
"I wish with all my soul I had been better guided!" he exclaimed. "I wish with all my soul I could guide myself better!"
There was a passionate dejection in his manner that quite amazed me. He was more unlike himself than I could have supposed possible.
"It would be better to be this poor Peggotty, or his lout of a nephew," he said, getting up and leaning moodily against the chimney piece, with his face toward the fire, "than to be myself, twenty times richer and twenty times wiser and be the torment to myself that I have been, in this Devil's bark of a boat, within the last half hour!"
He had already begun to poison the fountains of little Emily's purity.
When Steerforth, after running away with Emily and deserting her, wasdrowned and brought home, Rosa Dartle, who had loved him, charged hismother with his ruin. She had a scar on her lip, made by a hammer thrownby Steerforth when he was a boy.
"Do you remember when he did this?" she proceeded. "Do you remember when in his inheritance of your nature, and in your pampering of his pride and passion, he did this, and disfigured me for life? Look at me, marked until I die with his high displeasure, and moan and groan for what you made him!"
"Miss Dartle," I entreated her, "for Heaven's sake----"
"I _will_ speak," she said, turning on me with her lightning eyes. "Be silent you! Look at me, I say, proud mother of a proud false son! Moan for your nurture of him, moan for your corruption of him, moan for your loss of him, moan for mine!"
She clinched her hand, and trembled through her spare, worn figure, as if her passion were killing her by inches.
"YOU resent his self-will!" she exclaimed. "YOU injured by his haughty temper! YOU, who opposed to both, when your hair was gray, the qualities which made both when you gave him birth! YOU, who from his cradle reared him to be what he was, and stunted what he should have been! Are you rewarded, _now_, for your years of trouble?"
"Miss Dartle," said I, "if you can be so obdurate as not to feel for this afflicted mother----"
"Who feels for me?" she sharply retorted. "She has sown this. Let her moan for the harvest that she reaps to-day!"
To show that the seed for the harvest had been sown by his mother wasDickens's aim in the delineation of his character. Yet she loved him as apart of her own life. She said to Mr. Peggotty, when he came to plead withher for Emily:
"My son, who has been the object of my life, to whom its every thought has been devoted, whom I have gratified from a child in every wish, from whom I have had no separate existence since his birth."
There was a double sadness in David's soliloquy about Steerforth, who hadbeen his friend:
In the keen distress of the discovery of his unworthiness, I thought more of al
l that was brilliant in him, I softened more toward all that was good in him, I did more justice to the qualities that might have made him a man of a noble nature and a great name, than ever I had done in the height of my devotion to him.
In Bleak House a great deal of attention is paid to child training.
Esther's sadness because of her neglected birthday touches a tender chord.
It was my birthday. There were holidays at school on other birthdays; none on mine. There were rejoicings at home on other birthdays, as I knew from what I heard the girls relate to one another; there were none on mine. My birthday was the most melancholy day at home in the whole year.
There is more than mere sentiment in birthday celebrations both at homeand in school. It develops a pleasant consciousness of individuality andcommunity--two of the greatest educational ideals.
The cruelty of telling children of any supposed blight of heredity or ofany other shadow that arrogant conventionality dares to throw over them,is criticised in the hard, gloomy way in which Esther's godmother referredto her mother.
Even worse than this in the refinement of its cruelty was her partinginjunction. It is a shameful thing to make a child believe that she isdifferent from other children in any sense of either badness or goodness.
"Submission, self-denial, diligent work, are the preparations for a life begun with such a shadow on it. You are different from other children, Esther, because you were not born, like them, in common sinfulness and wrath. You are set apart."
I went up to my room and crept to bed, and laid my doll's cheek against mine wet with tears, and holding that solitary friend upon my bosom cried myself to sleep. Imperfect as my understanding of my sorrow was, I knew that I had brought no joy, at any time, to anybody's heart, and that I was to no one upon earth what Dolly was to me.
Dickens evidently meant to reveal more than her godmother's cruelty in herclosing moralizings. She made the mistake of using self-denial anddiligent work as curses instead of blessings. They were for the time nonethe less curses to the child, however.
The gross negligence of parents in regard to the sacredness of thechildren's retiring hour is exposed in the management of the Jellybychildren. Indeed, Mrs. Jellyby may be regarded as several volumes oftreatises on how not to train children. Caddy expressed her views of thetraining they received by saying: "I wish I was dead. I wish we were alldead. It would be a great deal better for us." She wisely added: "Oh,don't talk of duty as a child! where's ma's duty as a parent?" Esther saidwisely:
It struck me that if Mrs. Jellyby had discharged her own natural duties and obligations before she swept the horizon with a telescope in search of others, she would have taken the best precautions against becoming absurd; but I need scarcely observe that I kept this to myself.
Esther describes the process of putting the children to bed one eveningshe was visiting at the Jellyby home:
Mrs. Jellyby stopped for a moment her conversation with Mr. Quale, on the Brotherhood of Humanity, long enough to order the children to bed.
As Peepy cried for me to take him to bed, I carried him upstairs, where the young woman with the flannel bandage charged into the midst of the little family like a dragon, and overturned them into cribs.
Peepy was the unfortunate child who had fallen downstairs, who now interrupted the correspondence by presenting himself with a slip of plaster on his forehead, to exhibit his wounded knees, in which Ada and I did not know which to pity most, the bruises or the dirt. Mrs. Jellyby merely added, with the serene composure with which she said everything, "Go along, you naughty Peepy!" and fixed her fine eyes on Africa again.
Here Mrs. Jellyby was guilty of two wrongs, one of commission, the otherof omission. She did a positive wrong in unjustly calling the child"naughty" when he was merely unfortunate. Even if children are so badlyguided that they do wrong, it is a serious mistake to make them feelconsciously "bad" by calling them unpleasant names. It is always wrong todefine in the child's consciousness a passing wave of evil.
Mrs. Jellyby's sin of omission was her neglect of the opportunity ofsympathizing with the suffering boy, and of training him to bear sufferingbravely by the suggestion that he was "a brave little soldier home fromthe war."
Mr. Jarndyce, in speaking of Harold Skimpole's children, said, whenRichard Carstone asked if he had any children:
"Yes, Rick! Half a dozen. More! Nearer a dozen, I should think. But he has never looked after them. How could he? He wanted somebody to look after _him_. He is a child, you know!" said Mr. Jarndyce.
"And have the children looked after themselves at all, sir?" inquired Richard.
"Why, just as you may suppose," said Mr. Jarndyce, his countenance suddenly falling. "It is said that the children of the very poor are not brought up, but dragged up. Harold Skimpole's children have tumbled up somehow or other----"
Again Dickens was impressing the responsibility of parents for the careand proper training of their children.
Mr. Jarndyce accounted for the utterly unpractical nature of Mr. Skimpoleby saying:
"Why, he is all sentiment, and--and susceptibility, and--and sensibility--and--and imagination. And these qualities are not regulated in him, somehow. I suppose the people who admired him for them in his youth attached too much importance to them, and too little to any training that would have balanced and adjusted them; and so he became what he is."
Mrs. Pardiggle was given as a type of the philanthropic woman who does_not_ neglect her children, but whose training is worse--much worse thanMrs. Jellyby's neglect. The Jellyby children had as much motherly sympathyas the Pardiggles, and they had freedom. There is always this advantage inneglect. Louisa Gradgrind gave utterance to a philosophical principle whenshe said to her father: "Oh! if you had only neglected me, what a muchbetter and much happier creature I should have been." Dickens did notteach that neglect is good training, but he did teach that it is a lightercurse than the Gradgrind or Pardiggle training.
The Jellyby children had a slight chance to turn out moderately well, butthe Pardiggle children were certain to be morose, hypocritical, andvicious. They were certain to hate all forms of Christian philanthropy.Mrs. Pardiggle's intentions were undoubtedly good, but she destroyed thecharacter of her children, nevertheless.
"These, young ladies," said Mrs. Pardiggle with great volubility, after the first salutations, "are my five boys. You may have seen their names in a printed subscription list (perhaps more than one) in the possession of our esteemed friend Mr. Jarndyce. Egbert, my eldest (twelve), is the boy who sent out his pocket money, to the amount of five and threepence to the Tockahoopo Indians. Oswald, my second (ten and a half), is the child who contributed two and ninepence to the Great National Smithers Testimonial. Francis, my third (nine), one and sixpence halfpenny; Felix, my fourth (seven), eightpence to the Superannuated Widows; Alfred, my youngest (five), has voluntarily enrolled himself in the Infant Bonds of Joy, and is pledged never through life to use tobacco in any form."
We had never seen such dissatisfied children. It was not merely that they were weazened and shrivelled--though they were certainly that too--but they looked absolutely ferocious with discontent. At the mention of the Tockahoopo Indians I could really have supposed Egbert to be one of the most baleful members of that tribe, he gave me such a savage frown. The face of each child as the amount of his contribution was mentioned darkened in a peculiarly vindictive manner, but his was by far the worst. I must except, however, the little recruit into the Infant Bonds of Joy, who was stolidly and evenly miserable.
"You have been visiting, I understand," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "at Mrs. Jellyby's?"
We said yes, we had passed one night there.
"Mrs. Jellyby is a benefactor to society, and deserves a helping hand. My boys have contribut
ed to the African project--Egbert, one and six, being the entire allowance of nine weeks; Oswald, one and a penny halfpenny, being the same; the rest, according to their little means. Nevertheless, I do not go with Mrs. Jellyby in all things. I do not go with Mrs. Jellyby in her treatment of her young family. It has been noticed. It has been observed that her young family are excluded from participation in the objects to which she is devoted. She may be right, she may be wrong; but, right or wrong, this is not my course with _my_ young family. I take them everywhere."
I was afterward convinced (and so was Ada) that from the ill-conditioned eldest child these words extorted a sharp yell. He turned it off into a yawn, but it began as a yell.
"They attend matins with me (very prettily done) at half past six o'clock in the morning all the year round, including, of course, the depth of winter," said Mrs. Pardiggle rapidly, "and they are with me during the revolving duties of the day. I am a school lady, I am a visiting lady, I am a reading lady, I am a distributing lady; I am on the local linen box committee, and many general committees; and my canvassing alone is very extensive--perhaps no one's more so. But they are my companions everywhere; and by these means they acquire that knowledge of the poor, and that capacity of doing charitable business in general--in short, that taste for the sort of thing--which will render them in after life a service to their neighbours, and a satisfaction to themselves. My young family are not frivolous; they expend the entire amount of their allowance in subscriptions, under my direction; and they have attended as many public meetings, and listened to as many lectures, orations, and discussions as generally fall to the lot of few grown people. Alfred (five), who, as I mentioned, has of his own election joined the Infant Bonds of Joy, was one of the very few children who manifested consciousness on one occasion, after a fervid address of two hours from the chairman of the evening."
Alfred glowered at us as if he never could, or would, forgive the injury of that night.
"You may have observed, Miss Summerson," said Mrs. Pardiggle, "in some of the lists to which I have referred, in the possession of our esteemed friend Mr. Jarndyce, that the names of my young family are concluded with the name of O. A. Pardiggle, F. R. S., one pound. That is their father. We usually observe the same routine. I put down my mite first; then my young family enrol their contributions, according to their ages and their little means; and then Mr. Pardiggle brings up the rear. Mr. Pardiggle is happy to throw in his limited donation, under my direction; and thus things are made, not only pleasant to ourselves, but, we trust, improving to others."
Mrs. Pardiggle invited Esther and Ada to go out with her to visit a"wicked brickmaker" in the neighbourhood. Ada walked ahead with Mrs.Pardiggle and Esther followed with the five children. She had aninteresting experience.
I am very fond of being confided in by children, and am happy in being usually favoured in that respect, but on this occasion it gave me great uneasiness. As soon as we were out of doors, Egbert, with the manner of a little footpad, demanded a shilling of me, on the ground that his pocket money was "boned" from him. On my pointing out the great impropriety of the word, especially in connection with his parent (for he added sulkily "By her!"), he pinched me and said, "Oh, then! Now! Who are you? _You_ wouldn't like it, I think! What does she make a sham for, and pretend to give me money, and take it away again? Why do you call it _my_ allowance, and never let me spend it?" These exasperating questions so inflamed his mind, and the minds of Oswald and Francis, that they all pinched me at once, and in a dreadfully expert way; screwing up such little pieces of my arms that I could hardly forbear crying out. Felix at the same time stamped upon my toes. And the Bond of Joy, who, on account of always having the whole of his little income anticipated, stood, in fact, pledged to abstain from cakes as well as tobacco, so swelled with grief and rage when we passed a pastry-cook shop, that he terrified me by becoming purple. I never underwent so much, both in body and mind, in the course of a walk with young people, as from these unnaturally constrained children, when they paid me the compliment of being natural.
In the brickmaker's hovel they heard something of how the very poorbrought up children, or failed to bring them up, in Dickens's time. Thebrickmaker was lying at full length on the floor, smoking his pipe. Hegave them no welcome.
I wants a end of these liberties took with my place. I wants a end of being drawed like a badger. Now you are a-going to poll-pry and question according to custom--I know what you're a-going to be up to. Well! You haven't got no occasion to be up to it. I'll save you the trouble. Is my daughter a-washin'? Yes, she is a-washin'. Look at the water. Smell it! That's wot we drinks. How do you like it, and what do you think of gin, instead? An't my place dirty? Yes, it is dirty--it's nat'rally dirty, and it's nat'rally onwholesome; and we've had five dirty and onwholesome children, as is all dead infants, and so much the better for them, and for us besides.
The utter carelessness of some "society gentlemen" in regard to theeducation of their children is referred to in the description CaddyJellyby gave of her lover, the son of the great Turveydrop.
Caddy told me that her lover's education had been so neglected that it was not always easy to read his notes. She said if he were not so anxious about his spelling, and took less pains to make it clear, he would do better; but he put so many unnecessary letters into short words that they sometimes quite lost their English appearance. "He does it with the best intention," observed Caddy, "but it hasn't the effect he means, poor fellow!" Caddy then went on to reason how could he be expected to be a scholar when he had passed his whole life in the dancing school, and had done nothing but teach and fag, fag and teach, morning, noon, and night! And what did it matter? She could write letters enough for both, as she knew to her cost, and it was far better for him to be amiable than learned. "Besides, it's not as if I was an accomplished girl, who had any right to give herself airs," said Caddy. "I know little enough, I am sure, thanks to ma!"
The products of the fashionable education of Dickens's time (there is notso much of it now, thanks largely to Dickens) were shown in the cousins ofSir Leicester Dedlock.
The rest of the cousins are ladies and gentlemen of various ages and capacities; the major part, amiable and sensible, and likely to have done well enough in life if they could have overcome their cousinship; as it is, they are almost all a little worsted by it, and lounge in purposeless and listless paths, and seem to be quite as much at a loss how to dispose of themselves as anybody else can be how to dispose of them.
In Little Dorrit Mrs. General is used as a type of two varieties of falsetraining. Her pupils were never to be allowed to know that there wasanything vulgar or wrong in the world. She believed the good old theory,that adulthood had two duties in developing purity of character, one toprevent children knowing that there was any evil, the other to chain themback or beat them back from evil, if they accidentally found it and wishedto investigate it. She never thought of training a child to do its part inreducing the evil around him. Seclusion and exclusion took the place ofcommunity in her perverted philosophy.
She believed, too, in educating the surface. She did not work from withinintellectually or spiritually. She varnished the surface that it mightreceive the proper society polish, therefore neither heart nor headrequired much attention. According to her theory, young ladies shouldnever be so unladylike as to have great purposes or great ideas.Unfortunately some of her descendants are still living.
"Fanny," observed Mrs. General, "at present forms too many opinions. Perfect breeding forms none, and is never demonstrative.
"I have conversed with Amy several times since we have been residing here on the general subject of the formation of a demeanour. She has expressed herself to me as wonde
ring exceedingly at Venice. I have mentioned to her that it is better not to wonder."
Her father sent for Amy to reprove her for her lack of what Mrs. Generalregarded as true culture, and Amy said:
"I think, father, I require a little time."
"Papa is a preferable mode of address," observed Mrs. General. "Father is rather vulgar, my dear. The word papa, besides, gives a pretty form to the lips. Papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes, and prism are all very good words for the lips; especially prunes and prism. You will find it serviceable, in the formation of a demeanour, if you sometimes say to yourself in company--on entering a room, for instance--papa, potatoes, poultry, prunes and prism, prunes and prism.
"If Miss Amy Dorrit will direct her own attention to, and will accept of my poor assistance in, the formation of a surface, Mr. Dorrit will have no further cause of anxiety. May I take this opportunity of remarking, as an instance in point, that it is scarcely delicate to look at vagrants with the attention which I have seen bestowed upon them by a very dear young friend of mine? They should not be looked at. Nothing disagreeable should ever be looked at. Apart from such a habit standing in the way of that graceful equanimity of surface which is so expressive of good breeding, it hardly seems compatible with refinement of mind. A truly refined mind will seem to be ignorant of the existence of anything that is not perfectly proper, placid, and pleasant."
Great Expectations has numerous illustrations of bad training. Mrs.Gargery had many of the worst characteristics of disrespectful andcoercive adulthood. She abused Pip for asking questions, scolded him,thimbled him, and sent him to bed in the dark. She told him he was on theway to commit murder and a great variety of crimes, because criminalsalways "begin by asking questions." She kept him in a state of constantterror. She tried in every possible way to lower his opinion of himself,which is a crime against childhood. One of the worst features of the oldeducation was its teaching of a spurious humility, a depreciation ofselfhood. One of the greatest weaknesses of humanity is the general lackof true faith of men and women in their own powers. He was told that hewas "naterally wicious," and made the butt of all the observationsrelating to boys who possessed any vices whatever.
Dickens revealed all these characteristics to condemn them.
Pip discussed a very grave question for students of children when he wasaccounting for the fact that he deliberately misstated facts sosystematically in answering the questions of his sister and Mr.Pumblechook, in regard to Miss Havisham and the peculiarities of hermysterious home.
When I reached home my sister was very curious to know all about Miss Havisham's, and asked a number of questions. And I soon found myself getting heavily bumped from behind in the nape of the neck and the small of the back, and having my face ignominiously shoved against the kitchen wall, because I did not answer those questions at sufficient length.
If a dread of not being understood be hidden in the breasts of other young people to anything like the extent to which it used to be hidden in mine--which I consider probable, as I have no particular reason to suspect myself of having been a monstrosity--it is the key to many reservations. I felt convinced that if I described Miss Havisham's as my eyes had seen it I should not be understood.
Whitewash on the forehead hardens the brain into a state of obstinacy perhaps. Anyhow, with whitewash from the wall on my forehead, my obstinacy was adamantine.
Two thoughts are worthy of note in this part of Pip's training: abuse,especially of the thumping, bumping, shaking variety, makes a childobstinate; and many of childhood's difficulties arise from not beingunderstood, or the fear of being misunderstood.
Pip resented, as all children do, more than they can show, the unpleasanthabit of taking patronizing liberties with them.
And here I may remark that when Mr. Wopsle referred to me, he considered it a necessary part of such reference to rumple my hair and poke it into my eyes. I can not conceive why everybody of his standing who visited at our house should always have put me through the same inflammatory process under similar circumstances. Yet I do not call to mind that I was ever in my earlier youth the subject of remark in our social family circle, but some large-handed person took some such ophthalmic steps to patronize me.
And Mr. Pumblechook! What could a boy do but hate him?
Meanwhile, councils went on in the kitchen at home, fraught with almost insupportable aggravation to my exasperated spirit. That ass, Pumblechook, used often to come over of a night for the purpose of discussing my prospects with my sister; and I really do believe (to this hour with less penitence than I ought to feel) that if these hands could have taken a linchpin out of his chaise cart, they would have done it. The miserable man was a man of that confined stolidity of mind that he could not discuss my prospects without having me before him--as it were, to operate upon--and he would drag me up from my stool (usually by the collar) where I was quiet in a corner, and, putting me before the fire as if I were going to be cooked, would begin by saying, "Now, mum, here is this boy! Here is this boy which you brought up by hand. Hold up your head, boy, and be forever grateful unto them which so did so. Now, mum, with respections to this boy!" And then he would rumple my hair the wrong way--which from my earliest remembrance, as already hinted, I have in my soul denied the right of any fellow-creature to do--and would hold me before him by the sleeve: a spectacle of imbecility only to be equalled by himself.
Mrs. Pocket's training was given as an illustration of the folly of givinggirls no practical education.
Her father had directed Mrs. Pocket to be brought up from her cradle as one who, in the nature of things, must marry a title, and who was to be guarded from the acquisition of plebeian domestic knowledge.
So successful a watch and ward had been established over the young lady by this judicious parent, that she had grown up highly ornamental, but perfectly helpless and useless.
Her home proved that she had grown up a credit to her training. Therenever was a family more utterly without order, management, or system thanMrs. Pocket's. Servants and children indulged in unending turmoil andconflict. Dickens added a grim humour to the picture by saying:
Mr. Pocket was out lecturing; for he was a most delightful lecturer on domestic economy, and his treatises on the management of children and servants were considered the very best text-books on those themes. But Mrs. Pocket was at home and was in a little difficulty, on account of the baby's having been accommodated with a needle-case to keep him quiet during the unaccountable absence (with a relative in the Foot Guards) of Millers. And more needles were missing than it could be regarded as quite wholesome for a patient of such tender years either to apply externally or to take as a tonic.
Mrs. Pocket continued to read her one book about the dignities of thetitled aristocracy, and prescribed "Bed" as a sovereign remedy for baby.
Dickens believed a mother should find her highest joy and most sacred dutyin training her own children. Mrs. Pocket was a type to be avoided.
The description of the dinner at Mr. Pocket's, after which the sixchildren were brought in, and Mrs. Pocket attempted to mind the baby, isone of the raciest bits of Dickens's humour. One observation in connectionwith the dinner is worth studying.
After dinner the children were introduced, and Mrs. Coiler made admiring comments on their eyes, noses, and legs--a sagacious way of improving their minds.
How few yet clearly understand this profound criticism of bad training!How many children are still made vain and frivolous by having theirattention directed especially to their physical attributes and theirdress, rather than to the things that would yield them much greaterimmediate happiness and a much truer basis for future development!
In his last book, Edwin Drood, Dickens showed that he still hated thetyranny that dwarfs and
distorts the souls of children.
Neville Landless described his own training to his tutor, who had won hisconfidence as it had never been won before.
"We lived with a stepfather there. Our mother died there, when we were little children. We have had a wretched existence. She made him our guardian, and he was a miserly wretch who grudged us food to eat and clothes to wear.
"This stepfather of ours was a cruel brute as well as a grinding one. It was well he died when he did, or I might have killed him."
Mr. Crisparkle stopped short in the moonlight and looked at his hopeful pupil in consternation.
"I surprise you, sir?" he said, with a quick change to a submissive manner.
"You shock me; unspeakably shock me."
The pupil hung his head for a little while, as they walked on, and then said: "You never saw him beat your sister. I have seen him beat mine, more than once or twice, and I never forgot it.
"I have had, sir, from my earliest remembrance, to suppress a deadly and bitter hatred. This has made me secret and revengeful. I have been always tyrannically held down by the strong hand. This has driven me, in my weakness, to the resource of being false and mean. I have been stinted of education, liberty, money, dress, the very necessaries of life, the commonest pleasures of childhood, the commonest possessions of youth. This has caused me to be utterly wanting in I do not know what emotions, or remembrances, or good instincts--I have not even a name for the thing, you see--that you have had to work upon in other young men to whom you have been accustomed."
Hatred instead of love; product, a secret and revengeful character."Tyrannically held down by a strong hand"; product, falseness andmeanness. "Stinted of education, liberty, money, dress, the verynecessaries of life, the commonest pleasures of childhood, the commonestpossessions of youth"; product, a manhood utterly barren in true emotions,or pleasant memories, or good instincts.
No other writer has described so many phases of bad training as Dickens.
Dickens As an Educator Page 15