Dickens As an Educator
Page 18
CHAPTER XIV.
NUTRITION AS A FACTOR IN EDUCATION.
The influence of diet in the development not only of physical power, butof intellectual and spiritual power also, has now begun to attract generalattention. There is no longer any doubt that the character of the bones,of the muscles, of the nerves, and of the brain itself, is decided to aconsiderable extent by the food that is eaten. There is no longer anydoubt that many children have been urged to do work which becomesdestructive beyond the fatigue point of their little brains, when theirbrains have not been properly nourished, either from lack of proper foodor of properly cooked food, or from eating too much or too little.
The deterioration of the physical system, and especially the deteriorationof the neurological system, is one of the most startling subjects withinthe range of view of educators and psychologists. One of the mostattractive departments of child study is that which investigates the meansof deciding from external manifestations of form, proportion, action,voice, and attitude the nature and condition of the brain and neurologicalsystem of the child. When this discovery has been made, however, it butprepares the way for further investigation to discover in what wayabnormal or weak systems may be helped to become normal and strong.
One of the fundamental things to be done by scientists and educators is todiscover the kinds of food adapted to different stages of the child'sgrowth, and to the varied functions of study and work required of him. Byproper nutrition and by proper exercise much may be done to increase thepower and efficiency of the body and the brain and the rest of theneurological system.
Dickens saw the need of attention to the problems of nutrition veryclearly. He began to write about it in Oliver Twist.
He first exposed the horrors of baby farming, with its terrible percentageof deaths, resulting almost entirely from the villainous indifference tothe diet of the children. Children yet die in homes from similar causes,or, if they do not die, they go through life weakened and dwarfed.
For the next eight or ten months Oliver was the victim of a systematic course of treachery and deception. He was brought up by hand. The hungry and destitute situation of the infant orphan was duly reported by the workhouse authorities to the parish authorities. The parish authorities inquired with dignity of the workhouse authorities whether there was no female then domiciled "in the house" who was in a situation to impart to Oliver Twist the consolation and nourishment of which he stood in need. The workhouse authorities replied with humility that there was not. Upon this the parish authorities magnanimously and humanely resolved that Oliver should be "farmed," or, in other words, that he should be despatched to a branch workhouse some three miles off, where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders against the poor laws rolled about the floor all day, without the inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing, under the parental superintendence of an elderly female, who received the culprits at and for the consideration of sevenpence halfpenny per small head per week. Sevenpence halfpenny's worth per week is a good round diet for a child; a great deal may be got for sevenpence halfpenny, quite enough to overload its stomach, and make it uncomfortable. The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and experience; she knew what was good for children; and she had a very accurate perception of what was good for herself. So she appropriated the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned the rising parochial generation to even a shorter allowance than was originally provided for them. Thereby finding in the lowest depth a deeper still; and proving herself a very great experimental philosopher.
The system did not work well for the children.
For at the very moment when a child had contrived to exist upon the smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food, it did perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it sickened from want or cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got half-smothered by accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable little being was usually summoned into another world, and there gathered to the fathers it had never known in this.
It can not be expected that this system of farming would produce any very extraordinary or luxuriant crop. Oliver Twist's ninth birthday found him a pale, thin child, somewhat diminutive in stature, and decidedly small in circumference. It _was_ his ninth birthday; and he was keeping it in the coal cellar with a select party of two other young gentlemen, who, after participating with him in a sound thrashing, had been locked up for atrociously presuming to be hungry.
The famous meal in the workhouse when Oliver asked for more was intendedto direct attention to the way children were fed and treated ininstitutions. The boys were fed on gruel.
Of this festive composition each boy had one porringer, and no more--except on occasions of great public rejoicing, when he had two ounces and a quarter of bread besides. The bowls never wanted washing. The boys polished them with their spoons till they shone again; and when they had performed this operation (which never took very long, the spoons being nearly as large as the bowls), they would sit staring at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if they could have devoured the very bricks of which it was composed; employing themselves, meanwhile, in sucking their fingers most assiduously, with the view of catching up any stray splashes of gruel that might have been cast thereon. Boys have generally excellent appetites. Oliver Twist and his companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months; at last they got so voracious and wild with hunger that one boy who was tall for his age, and hadn't been used to that sort of thing (for his father had kept a small cookshop), hinted darkly to his companions that unless he had another basin of gruel _per diem_, he was afraid he might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next to him, who happened to be a weakly youth of tender age. He had a wild, hungry eye; and they implicitly believed him. A council was held; lots were cast who should walk up to the master after supper that evening, and ask for more; and it fell to Oliver Twist.
The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his cook's uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long grace was said over a short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys whispered each other and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbours nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger and reckless with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master, basin and spoon in hand, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:
"Please, sir, I want some more."
The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralyzed with wonder; the boys with fear.
"What!" said the master at length, in a faint voice.
"Please, sir," replied Oliver, "I want some more."
The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle; pinioned his arms; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.
The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble rushed into the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high chair, said:
"Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for more."
There was a general start. Horror was depicted in every countenance.
"For _more_!" said Mr. Limbkins. "Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?"
"He did, sir," replied Bumble.
"That boy will be hung," said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. "I know that boy will be hung."
Having shown how infants were starved in "farming," and how boys werestarved in the workhouses, he next directed attention to the wayapprentices were treated.
When Oliver had been driven to desperation by Noah Claypole, and hadpunished him as he deserved, Mrs. Sowerberry sent for Mr. Bumble. When Mr.Bumble asked Oliver if he was not afraid of him, Oliver bravely answered"No!" The Beadle was petrified with amazement, and he accounted forOliver's wickedness by saying:
"It's meat."
"What?" exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry.
"Meat, ma'am, meat," replied Bumble, with stern emphasis. "You've overfed him, ma'am. You've raised a artificial soul and spirit in him, ma'am, unbecoming a person of his condition; as the board, Mrs. Sowerberry, who are practical philosophers, will tell you. What have paupers to do with soul or spirit? It's quite enough that we let 'em have live bodies. If you had kept the boy on gruel, ma'am, this would never have happened."
"Dear, dear!" ejaculated Mrs. Sowerberry, piously raising her eyes to the kitchen ceiling; "this comes of being liberal!"
The liberality of Mrs. Sowerberry to Oliver had consisted in a profuse bestowal upon him of all the dirty odds and ends which nobody else would eat.
By this conversation Dickens meant to teach that a well-fed child is adifferent type from one who is not properly nourished; that food has aninfluence on the spirit, as well as on the body. He did not disapprove ofOliver's spirit, but he heartily commended him for resenting the way hewas treated. This lesson was needed too, as children were expected tosubmit uncomplainingly to those who were their legal guardians, whetherstrangers or parents. Now, largely through Dickens, children are not onlyencouraged to defend themselves against cruel and tyrannical guardians orparents, and to run away from them, but the state itself will take themaway, if cruelty is proved against those who should be their protectors.
Dickens also revealed by this incident the meanness of adults not only ininstitutions but in homes, in giving to the children the "odds and ends,"the scraps, the parts of the fowl or the meat that older people do notcare for. He brought the matter up again in Great Expectations. At theChristmas dinner Pip "was regaled with the scaly tips of the drumsticks ofthe fowls, and with those obscure corners of pork of which the pig, whenliving, had least reason to be vain."
One of the reasons given by Snawley to Squeers to induce him to take hisstepsons at a lower rate was that "they were not great eaters."
The selfishness of adulthood toward childhood, and the stupidity of thegeneral idea, that children do not require good food because they areyoung and do not have to work hard, were held up to deserved ridicule, inSqueers's manner of breakfasting in London, and the food he provided forthe five hungry little boys to strengthen them for their long ride toYorkshire in cold weather.
He found that learned gentleman sitting at breakfast, with the three little boys before noticed, and two others who had turned up by some lucky chance since the interview of the previous day, ranged in a row on the opposite seat. Mr. Squeers had before him a small measure of coffee, a plate of hot toast, and a cold round of beef; but he was at that moment intent on preparing breakfast for the little boys.
"This is two penn'orth of milk, is it, waiter?" said Mr. Squeers, looking down into a large blue mug, and slanting it gently, so as to get an accurate view of the quantity of liquid contained in it.
"That's two penn'orth, sir," replied the waiter.
"What a rare article milk is, to be sure, in London!" said Mr. Squeers with a sigh. "Just fill that mug up with lukewarm water, William, will you?"
"To the wery top, sir?" inquired the waiter. "Why, the milk will be drownded."
"Never you mind that," replied Mr. Squeers. "Serve it right for being so dear. You ordered that thick bread and butter for three, did you?"
"Coming directly, sir."
"You needn't hurry yourself," said Squeers; "there's plenty of time. Conquer your passions, boys, and don't be eager after vittles." As he uttered this moral precept, Mr. Squeers took a large bite out of the cold beef, and recognised Nicholas.
"Sit down, Mr. Nickleby," said Squeers. "Here we are, a-breakfasting you see!"
Nicholas did _not_ see that anybody was breakfasting, except Mr. Squeers; but he bowed with all becoming reverence, and looked as cheerful as he could.
"Oh! that's the milk and water, is it, William?" said Squeers. "Very good; don't forget the bread and butter presently."
At this fresh mention of the bread and butter the five little boys looked very eager, and followed the waiter out, with their eyes; meanwhile Mr. Squeers tasted the milk and water.
"Ah!" said that gentleman, smacking his lips, "here's richness! Think of the many beggars and orphans in the streets that would be glad of this, little boys. A shocking thing hunger is, isn't it, Mr. Nickleby?"
"Very shocking, sir," said Nicholas.
"When I say number one," pursued Mr. Squeers, putting the mug before the children, "the boy on the left hand nearest the window may take a drink; and when I say number two, the boy next him will go in, and so till we come to number five, which is the last boy. Are you ready?"
"Yes, sir," cried the little boys with great eagerness.
"That's right," said Squeers, calmly getting on with his breakfast; "keep ready till I tell you to begin. Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human natur. This is the way we inculcate strength of mind, Mr. Nickleby," said the schoolmaster, turning to Nicholas, and speaking with his mouth very full of beef and toast.
Nicholas murmured something--he knew not what--in reply; and the little boys, dividing their gaze between the mug, the bread and butter (which had by this time arrived), and every morsel which Mr. Squeers took into his mouth, remained with strained eyes in torments of expectation.
"Thank God for a good breakfast," said Squeers, when he had finished. "Number one may take a drink."
Number one received the mug ravenously, and had just drunk enough to make him wish for more, when Mr. Squeers gave the signal for number two, who gave up at the same interesting moment to number three; and the process was repeated until the milk and water terminated with number five.
"And now," said the schoolmaster, dividing the bread and butter for three into as many portions as there were children, "you had better look sharp with your breakfast, the horn will blow in a minute or two, and then every boy leaves off."
Permission being thus given to fall to, the boys began to eat voraciously, and in desperate haste, while the schoolmaster (who was in high good humour after his meal) picked his teeth with a fork, and looked smilingly on. In a very short time the horn was heard.
"I thought it wouldn't be long," said Squeers, jumping up and producing a little basket from under the seat; "put what you haven't had time to eat in here, boys! You'll want it on the road!"
Young Wackford Squeers was fed on the fattest meats, so that he might bekept plump and energetic, in order that he might be taken to London toshow intending patrons how well the boys were fed in Dotheboys Hall.
Again, in The Old Curiosity Shop, the starving of child servants iscondemned by the way Sally Brass fed the Marchioness. Dick Swiveller'scuriosity led him to peep through a crack in the kitchen door one daywhile Sally was giving the little servant her dinner.
Everything was locked up; the coal cellar, the candle box, the salt box, the meat safe were all padlocked. There was nothing that a beetle could have lunched upon. The pinched and meagre aspect of the place would have killed a chameleon; he would have known, at the first mouthful, that the air was not eatable, and must have given up the ghost in despair.
The small se
rvant stood with humility in presence of Miss Sally, and hung her head.
"Are you there?" said Miss Sally.
"Yes, ma'am," was the answer, in a weak voice.
"Go farther away from the leg of mutton, or you'll be picking it, I know," said Miss Sally.
The girl withdrew into a corner, while Miss Brass took a key from her pocket, and opening the safe, brought from it a dreary waste of cold potatoes, looking as eatable as Stonehenge. This she placed before the small servant, ordering her to sit down before it, and then, taking up a great carving knife, made a mighty show of sharpening it upon the carving fork.
"Do you see this?" said Miss Brass, slicing off about two square inches of cold mutton, after all this preparation, and holding it out on the point of the fork.
The small servant looked hard enough at it with her hungry eyes to see every shred in it, small as it was, and answered, "Yes."
"Then don't you ever go and say," retorted Miss Sally, "that you hadn't meat here. There, eat it up."
This was soon done. "Now, do you want any more?" said Miss Sally.
The hungry creature answered with a faint "No." They were evidently going through an established form.
"You've been helped once to meat," said Miss Brass, summing up the facts; "you have had as much as you can eat, you're asked if you want any more, and you answer 'No!' Then don't you ever go and say you were allowanced, mind that."
Dickens showed the evil effects of eating too rapidly in his descriptionof the dinner in Mrs. Pawkins's boarding house in New York, where MartinChuzzlewit boarded for a short time after reaching America.
It was a numerous company, eighteen or twenty perhaps. Of these, some five or six were ladies, who sat wedged together in a little phalanx by themselves. All the knives and forks were working away at a rate that was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and everybody seemed to eat his utmost in self-defence, as if a famine were expected to set in before breakfast time to-morrow morning, and it had become high time to assert the first law of Nature. The poultry, which may perhaps be considered to have formed the staple of the entertainment--for there was a turkey at the top, a pair of ducks at the bottom, and two fowls in the middle--disappeared as rapidly as if every bird had had the use of its wings, and had flown in desperation down a human throat. The oysters, stewed and pickled, leaped from their capacious reservoirs, and slid by scores into the mouths of the assembly. The sharpest pickles vanished, whole cucumbers at once, like sugarplums, and no man winked his eye. Great heaps of indigestible matter melted away as ice before the sun. It was a solemn and an awful thing to see. Dyspeptic individuals bolted their food in wedges; feeding not themselves, but broods of nightmares, who were continually standing at livery within them. Spare men, with lank and rigid cheeks, came out unsatisfied from the destruction of heavy dishes, and glared with watchful eyes upon the pastry. What Mrs. Pawkins felt each day at dinner time is hidden from all human knowledge. But she had one comfort. It was very soon over.
Dickens repeats this criticism of rapid eating in his American Notes, whenspecifying the causes of disease among American people. He says: "Thecustom of hastily swallowing large quantities of animal food three times aday and rushing back to sedentary pursuits after each meal must bechanged."
Poor Paul Dombey was sacrificed to his father's pride. Mrs. Toodle wasdismissed by Mr. Dombey because she dared to take his infant son with herwhen she went to see her own children. Paul was thus robbed of the naturalfood, which his sensitive nature needed so much. This was largelyresponsible for the fact that Paul was delicate. By first depriving him ofproper food, and then sending him to Doctor Blimber's school "to learneverything," Mr. Dombey led directly to Paul's death. His pride and vanityoverreached themselves.
In Mrs. Pipchin's meals Dickens tried to show two things: First, theselfishness of adulthood in regard to children's diet as compared with itsown; second, the absolute insufficiency of the kind of food commonlysupplied to children for building up strong, energetic, and well-developedmen and women.
She regaled the children with a repast of "farinaceous and vegetablefoods--chiefly rice," but she herself had a good hot dinner with muttonchops.
The children were required to repeat a form of grace thanking Mrs.Pipchin for a good dinner. Oliver was told he must be thankful to the kindgentlemen who provided food for him in the workhouse. The same mockery ofreligion by mixing it up with the starvation of childhood is maderidiculous in the letter which Squeers read to the unfortunate children inDotheboys Hall, pretending that it had been written by the stepmother ofMobbs.
"Mobbs's stepmother," said Squeers, "took to her bed on hearing that hewouldn't eat fat, and has been very ill ever since. She wishes to know, byan early post, where he expects to go to if he quarrels with his vittles;and with what feelings he could turn up his nose at the cow's liver'sbroth, after his good master had asked a blessing on it." "Cow's liver'sbroth" would not be a very strengthening diet for children even with theblessing of so good a man as Squeers upon it.
Dickens makes a characteristic hit at the fashionable idea which waspopular at one time, that it was rather indelicate, especially in a lady,to have a good robust constitution and a vigorous digestion in describingMr. Vholes in Bleak House. "His digestion was impaired, which is alwayshighly respectable."
Mrs. Cruncher, in A Tale of Two Cities, objected to the questionable waysin which Mr. Cruncher earned his money sometimes. Her husband charged herwith flying in the face of Providence by refusing the "wittles and drink"he provided for her, and especially for neglecting to give it to theirson. "With you flying into the face of your own wittles and drink! I don'tknow how scarce you mayn't make the wittles and drink here by yourflopping tricks and your unfeeling conduct. Look at your boy: he is yourn,ain't he? He's as thin as a lath. Do you call yourself a mother, and notknow a mother's first duty is to blow her son out."
Abel Magwitch, when describing the terrible training he received at thehands of a Christian community in the most advanced Christian civilizationof the world, said that when he was in jail some philanthropists "measuredhis head to find out the cause of his wickedness," and added with greatwisdom, "they had better a-measured my stomach."
The folly of hoping that healthy infants can be nourished by mothers whoare compelled to labour continuously through long hours without rest isshown in the description of the child whose mother was a waitress, inSomebody's Luggage. Incidentally, too, Dickens reveals in this case thefacts that the power of assimilation of little children is usuallyimpaired, and that, as a consequence, they become more peevish, andtherefore get shaken and otherwise abused for the ignorance of the adultsresponsible for their care. Speaking of the treatment of the baby, hesays:
You were conveyed--ere yet your dawning powers were otherwise developed than to harbour vacancy in your inside--you were conveyed by surreptitious means into a pantry adjoining the Admiral Nelson, Civic and General Dining-Rooms, there to receive by stealth that healthful sustenance which is the pride and boast of the British female constitution. Under the combined influence of the smells of roast and boiled, and soup, and gas, and malt liquors, you partook of your earliest nourishment; your unwilling grandmother sitting prepared to catch you when your mother was called and dropped you; your grandmother's shawl ever ready to stifle your natural complainings; your innocent mind surrounded by uncongenial cruets, dirty plates, dish covers, and cold gravy; your mother calling down the pipe for veals and porks, instead of soothing you with nursery rhymes. Under these untoward circumstances you were early weaned. Your unwilling grandmother, ever growing more unwilling as your food assimilated less, then contracted habits of shaking you till your system curdled, and your food would not assimilate at all.
The schoolmaster in Jemmy Lirriper's original story was captured and putinto c
onfinement for his treatment of the boys, and he was to have nothingto eat but the boys' dinners, and was to drink half a cask of their beerevery day.
The schoolboy in The Schoolboy's Story describes the food given to theboys as one of the grievances they had against the institution.
As to the beef, it's shameful. It's _not_ beef. Regular beef isn't veins. You can chew regular beef. Besides which, there's gravy to regular beef, and you never see a drop to ours. Another of our fellows went home ill, and heard the family doctor tell his father that he couldn't account for his complaint unless it was the beer. Of course it was the beer, and well it might be!
However, beef and Old Cheeseman are two different things. So is beer. It was Old Cheeseman I meant to tell about; not the manner in which our fellows get their constitutions destroyed for the sake of profit.
Why, look at the pie crust alone. There's no flakiness in it. It's solid--like damp lead. Then our fellows get nightmares, and are bolstered for calling out and waking other fellows. Who can wonder!
Old Cheeseman one night walked in his sleep, put his hat on over his nightcap, got hold of a fishing rod and a cricket bat, and went down into the parlour, where they naturally thought from his appearance he was a Ghost. Why, he never would have done that if his meals had been wholesome. When we all begin to walk in our sleeps, I suppose they'll be sorry for it.
At Doctor Blimber's school they used "to crib the boys' dinners." There isno more outrageous practice than that of depriving a child of food as ameans of punishment.
Dickens ended his sketch entitled A Walk in a Workhouse with a plea onbehalf of the inmates for "a little more liberty--and a little morebread," and even in his last book, Edwin Drood, he was still directingattention to the poor food supplied in boarding schools.
Mrs. Billickin was very plain in her hints about the poor board suppliedto Rosa at Miss Twinkleton's when she received the schoolmistress in herown home. Referring to Rosa, who was now residing with Mrs. Billickin, shesaid:
"I did think it well to mention to my cook, which I 'ope you will agree with, Miss Twinkleton, was a right precaution, that the young lady being used to what we should consider here but poor diet, had better be brought forward by degrees. For a rush from scanty feeding to generous feeding, and from what you may call messing to what you may call method, do require a power of constitution, which is not often found in youth, particularly when undermined by boarding school! I was put in youth to a very genteel boarding school, the mistress being no less a lady than yourself, of about your own age, or, it may be some years younger, and a poorness of blood flowed from the table which has run through my life."