Dickens's England: Life in Victorian Times

by Pritchard, R. E.

  ‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself for asking such a simple question,’ added the Gryphon . . .

  The Mock Turtle went on.

  ‘We had the best of educations – in fact we went to school every day–’

  ‘I’ve been to a day-school, too,’ said Alice; ‘you needn’t be so proud as all that.’

  ‘With extras?’ asked the Mock Turtle a little anxiously.

  ‘Yes,’ said Alice, ‘we learned French and music.’

  ‘And washing?’ said the Mock Turtle.

  ‘Certainly not!’ said Alice indignantly.

  ‘Ah! then yours wasn’t a really good school,’ said the Mock Turtle in a tone of great relief. ‘Now at ours they had at the end of the bill, “French, music, and washing extra.”’

  ‘You couldn’t have wanted it much,’ said Alice; ‘living at the bottom of the sea.’

  ‘I couldn’t afford to learn it,’ said the Mock Turtle with a sigh. ‘I only took the regular course.’

  ‘What was that?’ inquired Alice.

  ‘Reeling and Writhing, of course, to begin with,’ the Mock Turtle replied; ‘and then the different branches of Arithmetic – Ambition, Distraction, Uglification, and Derision.’

  ‘I never heard of “Uglification”,’ Alice ventured to say. ‘What is it?’

  The Gryphon lifted up both its paws in surprise. ‘What! Never heard of uglifying!’ it exclaimed. ‘You know what to beautify is, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Alice doubtfully; ‘it means – to – make – anything – prettier.’

  ‘Well, then,’ the Gryphon went on, ‘if you don’t know what to uglify is, you are a simpleton.’

  Alice did not feel encouraged to ask any more questions about it, so she turned to the Mock Turtle, and said, ‘What else had you to learn?’

  ‘Well, there was Mystery,’ the Mock Turtle replied, counting off the subjects on his flappers, ‘ – Mystery, ancient and modern, with Seaography; then Drawling – the Drawling-master was an old conger-eel, that used to come once a week: he taught us Drawling, Stretching, and Fainting in Coils.’

  ‘What was that like?’ said Alice.

  ‘Well, I can’t show it you myself,’ the Mock Turtle said. ‘I’m too stiff. And the Gryphon never learnt it.’

  ‘Hadn’t time,’ said the Gryphon. ‘I went to the Classical master, though. He was an old crab, he was.’

  ‘I never went to him,’ the Mock Turtle said with a sigh; ‘he taught Laughing and Grief, they used to say.’

  ‘So he did, so he did,’ said the Gryphon, sighing in his turn; and both creatures hid their faces in their paws.

  ‘And how many hours a day did you do lessons?’ said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.

  ‘Ten hours the first day,’ said the Mock Turtle, ‘nine the next, and so on.’

  ‘What a curious plan!’ exclaimed Alice.

  ‘That’s the reason they’re called lessons,’ the Gryphon remarked, ‘because they lessen from day to day.’

  Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865)

  SCHOOLGIRLS AND THE GENIUS TUTELARY

  Cousin Sophy is, I should perhaps remark, about seventeen, but looks nearly two years older . . . She has even entrusted me (in the strictest confidence) with a copy of the regulations of the seminary, Acacia Lodge, in which her education is still being imparted; and I have extracted a few of them for the purpose of publication. Sophy, who is charmingly natural, and indeed forcible, in her language, says her schoolmistress, Miss Maigre, is a ‘disgusting creature’, and a ‘nasty thing’. Upon the whole, that lady appears to be a screw [mean person]. Witness the following extracts from the Code Maigre:

  ‘Rule 73. To eat two pieces of bread-and-butter at tea, and two at breakfast.’

  These pieces, I am given to understand, are ‘as thick as that’ . . . and destroy all subsequent appetite for dinner. The butter is infinitesimally thin . . .

  ‘Rule 63. Not to be allowed two cups of tea.’

  What a halfpennyworth of sack to this intolerable amount of bread! Supposing, as Sophy tells me, that these cups are perfect thimbles, I think this regulation cruel. Can it be that Miss Maigre has made this edict in remembrance of the orgies of the Rev. Stiggins and his shepherdesses? With all respect to the conductor of this journal, I think it probable that Miss Maigre would cut her hands off, mittens and all, rather than confess to have read Pickwick [especially Chapter 33]. She is ‘so very, so very genteel’. Consider, for instance,

  ‘Rule 61. Not to speak more than is absolutely necessary to a servant.’

  How right it is that young ladies who are able to pay two hundred pounds a year for their education should be taught to know their exalted position, and the gulf that lies between them and those whom the Rev. Milkan Walters calls ‘our humbler sisters’. To the same effect, and with a yet higher teaching, runs this.

  ‘Rule 14. Not to kiss the governesses.’

  Not to bestow their well-born or richly-endowed affection upon poor people! The ‘know thyself’ of the old philosopher is in the Code Maigre thus translated: ‘Remember, young lady, that you are the salt of the earth; keep separate from the common clay; never lose sight of the fact that your first cousin is a baronet and your mother a Bodgers; or that your uncle (who was in trade, and is personally to be forgotten) has left you ten thousand pounds with interest to accumulate; always stand on tip-toe in relation to your inferiors, and bestow on them the fewest possible words, and no thought whatever; beware especially of sympathy . . . ’ The first rule in reference to the masters, is this:

  ‘Rule 1. Wear always gloves or mitts in the presence of a master.’

  This, I think, must be a winter regulation. Rule twenty-two is more explicit:

  ‘Rule 22. Not to go on your knees when a master is present.’

  Why not? This surely must be a law for the masters and not for the misses! Cousin Sophy, for instance, never dreams of going on her knees in my presence. Quite the reverse. Can it be that Miss Maigre’s young ladies habitually throw themselves into that attitude; or is the rule only actually enforced during leap year?

  Rule twenty rather puzzles me:

  ‘Rule 20. Not to have any matches.’

  What kind of matches – those that are said to be made in heaven, or lucifer matches? Certainly not the former, when rule forty is read in connection with it:

  ‘Rule 40. Never to wear white gloves.’

  With regard to the edicts which are to follow, I have no solution to offer that wears the shadow of probability. . . .

  ‘Rule 69. Not to look out of a window.’

  Gracious mercy, is Acacia Lodge a nunnery? . . . Indeed, the manner in which those dangerous weapons of offence, the eyes, are legislated for is worthy of Confucius:

  ‘Rule 94. Not to look behind when walking.’

  ‘Rule 83. Not to stare in church.’ . . .

  By rule twenty-five, you must not write in the week without especial leave. . . . Let me, however, have the pleasure of extracting this regulation also:

  ‘Rule 53. All letters, except to relations, to be inspected.’

  This is a wise and prudent edict: there is no knowing, else, with how many designing young men communications may not be kept up. . . .

  There are several edicts in the code with regard to the getting-up – I mean the toilettes – of the young ladies, which I feel it would be unbecoming (however interesting) to allude to. Rule eighty-four, however, – the governess to enter your rooms six times during the nightly toilettes – is too remarkable to be passed over in silence. What an enormous time must these toilettes occupy which admit of six periodical visits! Some suspicions regarding the natural wave in Sophia’s hair I confess have been awakened since reading the above. . . .

  There are kow-tow edicts concerning Miss Maigre herself, suggesting the ceremonials of an Eastern court. The whole establishment rises at her entrance (rule ninety-three), as the roses and lilies spring up at the footfall of the fair
y queen; and beware! beware! rash mortal, saith regulation twelve, who shall, on any pretence whatever, sit in Miss Maigre’s seat. Nay, you dare not even approach it; for what says rule thirteen?

  ‘Rule 13. Not to step on the rug’ where, of course, Miss Maigre’s throne is placed.

  Finally, I will extract one edict more – the one-hundredth. It closes the Code Maigre with a snap, and is, above all others, to be resolutely obeyed. It is defined, and dwelt upon, more emphatically than any; and the italics (as the newspapers say) are all Miss Maigre’s own:

  ‘Rule 100. Not even to look at a boys’ school.’*

  (* All the extracted rules are from a genuine document.)

  James Payn, Household Words, Vol. XII (1855)

  A CRY FROM THE HEART

  Miss Buss and Miss Beale

  Cupid’s darts do not feel:

  How different from us,

  Miss Beale and Miss Buss.

  [Frances Buss founded the North London Collegiate School for Girls in 1850, and Dorothea Beale became headmistress of Cheltenham Ladies’ College in 1854.]

  Anon., mid-nineteenth century

  WHY GO TO SCHOOL

  Tom Brown’s father, on sending him to Rugby:

  I won’t tell him to read his Bible, and love and serve God; if he won’t do that for his mother’s sake and teaching, he won’t for mine. Shall I go into the sort of temptations he’ll meet with? No, I can’t do that. Never do for an old fellow to go into such things with a boy. Do him more harm than good, ten to one. Shall I tell him to mind his work, and say he’s sent to school to make himself a good scholar? Well, but he isn’t sent to school for that – at any rate, not for that mainly. I don’t care a straw for Greek particles, or the digamma; no more does his mother. What is he sent to school for? Well, partly because he wanted so to go. If he’ll only turn out a brave, helpful, truth-telling Englishman, and a gentleman, and a Christian, that’s all I want.

  Tom Brown, on education:

  ‘What were you sent to Rugby for?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know exactly – nobody ever told me. I suppose because all boys are sent to a public school in England.’

  ‘But what do you think yourself? What do you want to do here, and to carry away?’

  Tom thought a minute. ‘I want to be A1 at cricket and football, and all the other games, and to make my hands keep my head against any fellow, lout or gentleman. I want to get into the sixth before I leave, and to please the Doctor [Arnold, the headmaster]; and I want to carry away just as much Latin and Greek as will take me through Oxford respectably. There now, young ’un, I never thought of it before, but that’s pretty much about my figure.’

  Thomas Hughes, Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1857)

  AN OXFORD UNDERGRADUATE’S ROOM

  Mr Verdant Green found himself in a room that had a pleasant look-out over the gardens of Brazenface, from which a noble chestnut tree brought its pyramids of bloom close up to the very windows. The walls of the room were decorated with engravings in gilt frames, their variety of subject denoting the catholic taste of their proprietor. ‘The start for the Derby’ and other coloured hunting prints showed his taste for the field and horse-flesh; Landseer’s ‘Distinguished Member of the Humane Society’, ‘Dignity and Impudence’ and others, displayed his fondness for dog-flesh; while Byron beauties, ‘Amy Robsart’ and some extremely au naturel pets of the ballet proclaimed his passion for the fair sex in general. Over the fireplace was a mirror (for Mr Charles Larkyns was not averse to the reflection of his good-looking features, and was rather glad than otherwise of ‘an excuse for the glass’), its frame stuck full of tradesmen’s cards and (unpaid) bills, invites, ‘bits of pasteboard’ pencilled with a mystic ‘wine’, and other odds and ends – no private letters, though! Mr Larkyns was too wary to leave his ‘family secrets’ for the delectation of his scout. Over the mirror was displayed a fox’s mask, gazing vacantly from between two brushes, leaving the spectator to imagine that Mr Charles Larkyns was a second Nimrod, and had in some way or other been intimately concerned in the capture of these trophies of the chase. This supposition of the imaginative spectator would be strengthened by the appearance of a list of hunting appointments (of the past season) pinned up over a list of lectures, kings of Israel and Judah, and the Thirty-nine Articles, which did duty elsewhere on the walls, where they were presumed to be studied in spare minutes – which were remarkably spare indeed.

  Cuthbert Bede, The Adventures of Mr Verdant Green. An Oxford Freshman (3rd edn, 1853)

  A WONDERFUL STATE OF AFFAIRS

  Consider our primary schools and what is taught in them. A child learns:-

  1. To read, write and cipher, more or less well; but in a very large proportion of cases not so well as to take pleasure in reading, or to be able to write the commonest letter properly.

  2. A quantity of dogmatic theology, of which the child, nine times out of ten, understands next to nothing.

  3. Mixed up with this, so as to seem to stand or fall with it, a few of the broadest and simplest principles of morality. This, to my mind, is much as if a man of science should make the story of the fall of the apple in Newton’s garden an integral part of the doctrine of navigation and teach it as of equal authority with the law of the inverse squares.

  4. A good deal of Jewish history and Syrian geography, and perhaps a little something about English history and the geography of the child’s own country. . . .

  5. A certain amount of regularity, attentive obedience, respect for others: obtained by fear, if the master be incompetent or foolish; by love and reverence, if he be wise. . . .

  What do the higher schools, those to which the great middle class of the country sends its children, teach, over and above the instruction given in the primary schools? There is a little more reading and writing of English. But, for all that, everone knows that it is a rare thing to find a boy of the middle or upper classes who can read aloud decently, or who can put his thoughts on paper in clear and grammatical (to say nothing of good or elegant) language. The ‘ciphering’ of the lower schools expands into elementary mathematics in the higher . . . Of theology, the middle-class schoolboy gets rather less than poorer children, because there are so many other claims upon his attention. . . .

  Modern geography, modern history, modern literature; the English language as a language; the whole circle of the sciences, physical, moral and social, are even more completely ignored in the higher than in the lower schools. Up till within a few years back, a boy might have passed through any one of the great public schools with the greatest distinction and credit, and might never so much as heard of one of the subjects I have just mentioned. . . .

  Now let us pause to consider this wonderful state of affairs; for the time will come when Englishmen will quote it as the stock example of the stolid stupidity of their ancestors in the nineteenth century. The most thoroughly commercial people, the greatest voluntary wanderers and colonists the world has ever seen, are precisely the middle classes of this country. If there be a people which has been busy making history on the great scale for the last three hundred years – and the most profoundly interesting history – history which, if it happened to be that of Greece or Rome, we should study with avidity – it is the English. If there be a people which, during the same period, has developed a remarkable literature, it is our own. If there be a nation whose prosperity depends absolutely and wholly upon their mastery over the forces of Nature, upon their intelligent apprehension of, and obedience to the laws of, the creation and distribution of wealth, and of the stable equilibrium of the forces of society, it is precisely this nation. And yet this is what these wonderful people tell their sons: ‘At the cost of from one to two thousand pounds of our hard-earned money, we devote twelve of the most precious years of your lives to school. There you shall toil, or be supposed to toil; but there you shall not learn one single thing of all those you will most want to know directly you leave school and enter upon the practical business of life.’
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  Thomas Huxley, ‘A Liberal Education and Where to find It’, Collected Essays, Vol. III (1897)

  SUCCESS

  To succeed in the Church, people must believe in you, first of all, as a gentleman, secondly as a man of means, thirdly as a scholar, fourthly as a preacher, fifthly, perhaps, as a Christian.

  Thomas Hardy, ‘A Tragedy of Two Ambitions’ (1888)

  THE RELIGIOUS PURSUIT

  The most striking thing, however, in the whole business [of fox-hunting], to German eyes, is the sight of the black-coated parsons, flying over hedge and ditch. I am told they often go to the church, ready booted and spurred, with the hunting-whip in their hands, throw on the surplice, marry, christen, or bury, with all conceivable velocity, jump on their horses at the church-door, and off – tally-ho! They told me of a famous clerical fox-hunter, who always carried a tame fox in his pocket, that if they did not happen to find one, they might be sure of a run. The animal was so well trained that he amused the hounds for a time; and when he was tired of running, took refuge in his inviolable retreat – which was no other than the altar of the parish church. There was a hole broken for him in the church wall, and a comfortable bed made under the steps. This is right English religion.

  Prince von Pückler-Muskau, trans. S. Austin, Tour by a German Prince (1832)

  PRIMITIVE METHODISM IN DARKEST NORFOLK

  I entered the village [of Hockering] in the summer of the year 1830, and endured one of the most awful conflicts with the enemy of souls that I ever experienced. Prior to the service, I got into a dry ditch covered over with briars and thorns, and for hours wrestled against principalities and powers; the conflict was so horrible, that I was afraid at one time I should lose my reason. I opened my pocket Bible on Psalm cxxi, and read it; and while reading the last verse, the snare was instantly broken, the powers of darkness were scattered, and hell’s legions routed; my soul was in a moment filled with light and love.