Schools and Schoolmasters
Ow that I am within sight of the date
-i-^ on which what may he hroadly called my destiny was fixed, I must bring into relation several biographical threads essential to the progress and unity of my reminiscences. I cannot in this narrative always follow the sequence of time, simply because some things occur eccentrically, but principally because I myself am, in some respects, as one born out of due season — not inside a dated calendar, but somewhere out in the open and hedgeless field. Mine is not the case of the blade, the ear, and the full corn in the ear; it is rather the case of a man going back again and again upon himself, and starting new lines from germs that had been left without proper recognition or seasonable culture.
On his mother’s side my father came of a yeomaii Xorthiimbrian stock, who set great store by the holding and the tilling of sunny acres. I was called after one of those local magnates. 1 well remember hiii coming to our house, alighting from his horse, and sitting at the fireside with striking dignity; and I specially remember his giving me some lessons upon the points of a horse, all of which I have scandalously forgotten. When he was reseated upon his mare I mentally remarked that never before had I noticed so long and so straight a nose. He openly, but unAvisely, ridiculed all sordid shopkeejiers and apron-shaking mercers, proudly holding that landoAvners alone were the genuine sons of Qod.
A relative of this landholder was a dainty little lady avIio often came to see my father, and who on dividend or annuity days ahvays gave me half-a-sovereign, which I received with such a hang-dog look as to suggest that “the receiA’^er was as bad as the thief.” A AAonderful little woman was the trim little lady, Betty by name — a most curious little person indeed. She would unfold a cambric handkerchief, and, like a prophet, read off the meaning of all the crumpled lines. Again and again she has come to our house in the following circumstances: —
“Has anything strange happened?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Because last night I saw a spark in
the very middle”
“Nonsense!”
“There’s no nonsense about it.”
“Well, spark or no spark, nothing
has happened in this house.”
“Then it has happened at my
cousin’s.”
That something had “happened” was beyond douht, else why the spark? why the cross fold at the left-hand corner of the handkerchief? Why that tap on the top panel of the spare bedroom door when no Adsible person was within twenty feet of it? So she reasoned. And in truth my mother was every whit as bad — or as good. There was no end to the things that dear old woman saw: yet she did not appear to be looking at anything! The family eyes have never been externally large, but always large and keen in their inward relations and activities. I must in some degree take after these women — for I, too, see the wind, and the things that fly in it, and the i
SCHOOLS AND SUHOOL^fASTERS 23
shapes that figure in it; and I, too, hear its moan, its cry of pain, and its glad upbreaking of the winter, that a highway may be made for the green spring and the red-lipped summer, I thank God for this inner vision, for it often makes solitude a very festival of joy. It was this introvision that led Dr. John Pulsford, the mystic, to describe me as “a pulpit clairvoyant or medium.”
I can never be too thankful that I was from the very beginning drilled with the minutest care in the elements or rudiments of English and classical learning. With the whole force of my experience, neither short nor superficial, I would urge parents to ground their children thoroughly in whatever degree of learning they may be able to secure. When the rudiments are right, other things may to a large extent be left to come of themselves. There must, however, be no mistake about the rudiments. Children must be made familiar with the roots of words — so familiar that they can speak with confidence whatever they feel called upon to say. I say nothing to parents about making their children profoimd and expert classical scholars; my observations at this moment are limited to completeness and accuracy in the acquisition of rudimentary scholarship. In regard to this my one watchword is thoroughness. Whatever children know, they should know it in and out, up and down, through and through. Upon this matter my father was, to my infinite advantage, implacahly particular. He would have nothing scamped. His notion was that in building a house it was more important that the drains should he sound than that the drawing-room should be decorated. In all things he insisted upon postponing the ornamental until the essential had been completely mastered and secured. Whatever he himself knew, he knew as precisely as it could be known. This early drill has stood me in good stead throughout my public life. I have never had any need to confuse the termination of words as if I were uncertain as to their vowels. Some men pronounce the word sermon as if the 0 were au, or even an e, and as if they could not be positive of the real ending of the word. Some private letter writers have excelled in the trick of skilfully blurring a word when they were hesitant as to its orthography. Happily my early pastors and masters saw to it that I should know thoroughly whatever little I was entitled to profess in the way of knowledge. A friend, whose father must have been of a totally different type from mine, once kindly took me to task reg-arding the pronunciation of a word. The incident itself is insignificant, but it throws an important light on the point upon which I have endeavoured to insist. I report the interview literally: —
“Will you kindly excuse me if I
call your attention to the way in
which you pronounced a word twice
in your sermon this morning?”
“Certainly.’’ This I said in a tone of infinite appreciation and gratitude.
“I may tell you that I am very
critical upon such points.”’
“So am I,” was my reply. “In fact, I am so particular that I shall regard you not only as a deacon, but a friend, if you will call attention to any error you may detect in my speaking. Pray, what was the word ‘r” “It was ’ propagate.’” “How did I pronounce it r” You pronounced it ’ jiropgate,’ and you did pronounce it so very distinctly and emphatically that I could not help noticing it. ’
“How would you pronounce it r “
“It should be ’ propogate. ’
“Thank you very much,” said I. “I consider this most friendly. Never let an error pass without noticing it. I thank you heartily. Now look in the dictionary, and see me this evening.”
My friend did look in the dictionary, and he did see me that evening. I make no record of what passed. The kind man is dead now, and has been dead for many years; yet the lesson remains, which simply is, Do be careful that your children should have more than a mere smattering of knowledge. Smatterers are great nuisances; they know half a thing, and expect the man to whom they are talking to know the other half. Public speakers, in particular, should bel masters of the language in which they! express their thoughts.
In connection with this incident I recall a letter I received some years ago from a country deacon whose epistolary style was most formal and pompous. He wrote to me for a reference in the matter of a young minister who was a candidate for a provincial pulpit. The deacon told me that the town in which he resided was notable for its intelligence, and that the “nuclus of an infant Church” had just been formed, and it was important that the minister should be a man of high literary culture. I replied that without knowing how wonderful an Athens the little town had become, it was probable that my friend would speak of a nucleus rather than a “nuclus,” and that he would hesitate before he spoke of the “nucleus of an infant.” The man who received my letter died soon afterwards, though I am not vain enough to connect the events. These are undoubtedly little things when considered in themselves, but they point to other things which are of solid consequence.
My first schoolmaster was, as to violence of temper, a fiend. When I made the acquaintance of the infamous Mr. Squeers, of Dotheboys Hall, I immediately recognised a familiar figure. Squeers is neither overdrawn nor over-coloured in a single particular. My own early years were spent under the rod of a kindred tyrant. Por sheer cruelty I have never known such a man. All day long he was thrashing one boy or another, and the heavier the hazel stick the better the tyrant liked it. Yet this man was a deacon in the Independent Church, and in his official capacity he examined young people as to their views of the fundamental truths of the Christian religion! He was the terror of his own house, but quite a tower of strength in the chapel. That he was an able schoolmaster was l)eyond the shadow of a doubt, and that he had one or two favourites in his school, who knew nothing about the bite of his cane, only made his general cruelty more obvious and detestable. The great advantage of my attending this man’s school was that he continued my father’s discipline in the matter of condemning and punishing everything that looked like scamping. It was no use taking an excuse to him in palliation or explanation of superficial work, for he would thrash a boy for having a headache, and shut him up in the “black hole” (a large cavity under his desk) for pleading that the task was not ready because he had to “go an errand” for his father. I have reason to hate the name of my first schoolmaster, and I will not stain my page by reproducing it. If there is a world in which cruel tyranny is punished, I have no desire to witness the suffering to which he entitled himself.
A long-abandoned fad of mine for keeping diaries comes to my aid at this time. I may say, perhaps once for all, that probably no one has commenced more diaries, and no one has finished fewer, than myself. What curious reading the diary of a boy is to the boy himself when he has become a man! Though my diaries have been long destroyed, here are some edited entries which exactly represent their spirit and purport: —
Have sold my white mice and bought a squirrel. Old Whacker [the Christian schoolmaster] did not know that the little squirrel was tied up in my topcoat pocket and hung up over Bob Jackson’s Avallet. I was in such a funk for fear the squirrel should squeak.
Old AVhacker has been in a hot fury to-day. Tom Williams complained that Jack Ritson had called him a grasshopper, so Jack was called up and got thirteen from the hazel; but he took it as if it had been a lick o’ treacle, and said to me when he sat down, Ala4nging his left hand, “By George! I’m glad I didn’t call him a hippopotamus!”
Ritson wants to borrow sixpence of me, to be paid back a little at a time.
Life has its compensations. During my slavery under this unnamed liend I acquired a proud distinction. I hope that even those undesirable persons who are so anxious that other people should be modest will not be irritated unduly by my saying that at this rough period oi” my life I became known as “the champion marble player.” It appears from general testimony that no one could stand before me in the matter of marbles. In marbles I was a millionaire. To this day (though all my skill is dead) I cannot see boys playing at marbles without feeling a strong wish to join them. If I must speak the whole truth, it should be clearly said that I do sometimes actually join them when they are playing in a nice shady corner and I am quite sure that the newspaper man is at breakfast. It is enough to cast a gloom on the whole camp of Dissent to know that the minister of the City Temple does even now like to take a hand at marbles, though he who, according to contemporaneous history, was the champion bitter has for many years imliappily been the champion misser.
My next schoolmaster was an enthusiast in his work. He was a born teacher. To be with him was part of an education. In many respects he was a fellow-scholar with his own pupils. When a problem was somewhat beyond his solution he would take to or three of us to his lodgings and spend a few hours in thoroughly thrashing it out.
My third schoolmaster was a spirit of kindred quality, though of much wider culture. He was literally a “man of letters.” I began Caesar under my second schoolmaster, and under my third I went into OA’id, and Luciau, and Homer, reading the whole of them under the inspiration of a reverend teacher who was devoted to his calling. He was the strictest of disciplinarians in the matter of Greek and Latin. I well remember how each boy in the senior class had to stand out and repeat an assigned portion of Ovid or Homer in a distinct tone, and how suddenly he had to answer questions in syntax, and to find equivalent words which were beyond a merely literal translation. Our gentle taskmaster (whose very face was a benediction) believed not only in gerund-grinding, but in the literary discipline of paraphrasing an author as well as translating him. I still have a copy of my Ovid, in which, upon the margin of the “Metamorphoses,” I have made the non-consenting poet say some wonderful things.
A s;ood soul was the Rev. Joseph Walker, ex- Independent minister, lawfully married to a Avonian who ruled him AA^th a rod of iron — a hulky, worldly, aggressive woman, who kncAv nothing about religion except what she gathered from books of extracts from “the pious Quesncl” and other celebrated men of their own long-vanished day. The master himself was often so deeply absorbed in his studies as to forget his scholars and his subjects; and they thanked him for it as for special favours, many of the junior scholars being able to arrange for fights in a neighbouring lane and to exchange confidences about football whilst he was cloudily explaining the function and responsibilities of the first aorist.
Here’s my Diary as I now imperfectly remember it: —
Nov. 7. Mr. Walker has been very cloudy to-day, all over. Wilson says that “the Missus “was roAving him after breakfast because the family prayer had not been” sufficiently personal,’’ when he kncAv perfectly well that Lilburn was going to leave school without paying for two plates and a flower-pot he had broken. She thought the matter might have been mentioned in prayer, as, she was sure, the “pious Quesnel” would have done. The poor master is quite dazed. He is not apt at reiroachful prayer.
Nov. 20. In the French class to-day
Gill Grant was asked by Mr. Walker
to parse “Des beaux jardins” and
“Des belles fleurs,” comparing the
two as to number and gender. The
master forgot what he was talking
about, and told Gill that Mrs. Walker
would see about it.
Good Mr. Walker! He had no cane. He threatened no life. He made no boy unhappy. How, then, can I pass over his name without a kindly sigh that I did not “go for” his wife when I saAV how she preferred “the pious Quesnel” to the man she had cruelly subdued?
I must have acquired some little repute in all the schools through which I passed — for the first man, whom I have not hesitated to describe as a fiend, used to seek my assistance in some of his official duties, and take me out on Saturday mornings to assist him in his work as a land surveyor. I could assist him in some delicate calculations, and I had some little skill in measuring land and mapping out small estates. I became usher both in the second school and the third, receiving my remuneration partly in money and partly in instruction. I succeeded one of the schoolmasters in continuing the school from which he retired, and in pursuing my professional duties I was enabled considerably to extend the scope of my reading. My Saturday afternoons I employed in visiting a Dissenting minister, for the purpose of reading with him the Greek Testament. Thus, in one way and another, I was up to my twenty-first year undergoing a process of special discipline and culture.
I well remember the circular or prospectus in which I announced my succession to my former chief and teacher. I called the school Ebenezer Seminary, though for what reason I have no recollection; possibly because the schoolroom was attached to the Independent Chapel, and therefore was supposed to have about it an odour of sanctity, and to be worthy of a Bible name. I offered to teach Grammar, Algebra, Latin, Greek, and Book-keeping by single and double entry, the prospectus concluding with the awe-inspiring words, “The conductor of Ebenezer Seminary does not undertake to supply his pupils with brains.” This was frank on the part of a youth who was about nineteen years of age, yet the announcement enabled him to maintain an attitude of freezing reserve.
I may interrupt the narrative for a moment by saying that all the teachers, the whole four of them, did not receive more than a total of two hundred and seventy pounds jjer annum! My Greek Testament teacher had hardly more than thirty pounds a year, which was, no doubt, eked out by little kindnesses on the part of some of the neighbouring farmers. We must remember, however, that this was something like the rate of remuneration common in small towns about half a century ago. My painter-“^ relative would have painted any man’s portrait for two guineas, not including the frame; but this looks to me now as a huge sum, when I remember that I paid a penny a week for my first school, fifteen shillings a quarter for my second, and a pound a quarter for my third. I can say with the bishop who was asked whilst getting into a carriage what the Apostle Paul would think of riding in such a chariot, and who answered that the Apostle Paul would say that things had greatly improved since his day. In the course of writing this paragraph I have come upon an extract from a letter of Southey’s, written twelve years before I was born, which throws some light upon the then value of small sums of money. “We find Southey in 1818 expressing his satisfaction at becoming possessed for the first time in his life of the sum of three hundred pounds, which he proposes to invest in the Three per Cents. ‘I have already a hundred pounds there,’ he writes triumphantly; ‘I shall be worth twelve pounds a year.’”
Before this experience in teaching, a very serious question had been tentatively settled under the parental roof. The great family question of the time was, “What is Joseph to be?” My father was a mason, both a working man and an employer, and it was felt to be natural that his son should take up his occupation. When I was fourteen it was decided that I should follow my father’s trade and succeed him in the employment of a handful of men; but this arrangement was to be on the proud understanding that in wearing my moleskins I was to serve my father only, and never to be the servant of any other man. There was pride! I was greatly sustained in my choice of a calling by being told that Dr. Cumming’s father was a mason, that Dr. Kitto’s father was a mason, that Thomas Carlyle’s father was a mason, that Jay of Bath was a mason, and that Hugh Miller, the famous geologist and the brilliant editor, began life by being a mason. In fact, it was made quite clear by a dazzling array of names that to begin life otherwise than as a mason was to invite disgrace and make success impossible. The whole arrangement seemed also to have a classical flavour about it, for I had spent a long time over the Latin book which assured me that “Balbus is building a wall,” “Balbus was building a wall,” “Balbus has been building a wall,” and that “Balbus would have been building a wall.” I felt, therefore, completely sustained in my practical venture. But alas! within the year — one poor little grey year — I was ignominiously sent back to school, and thus the honest occupation of building lost its most promising ornament. The scholars received me with applause. Balhm murum non cedi-Jicabat! They had wonderful confidence in faculties of whose existence I was unaware.
Yet still the building idea haunted the parental mind, and that something might be done in that direction a private tutor was engaged to give me instruction in architecture. Mr. Glyn, my teacher, was very asthmatic and very fond of smoking. I remember well the drawing-board, the drawing-paper, the brass-headed nails by which it was attached to the board; and I remember too the case of instruments, the mahogany square, the bottle of Indian ink, and above all and most useful of all a large piece of indiarubber. What I Owed to that indiarubber only richer eloquence than mine can tell! Whether it was the smoking of my tutor or my own mental incapacity, it must be said, as a matter of fact, that I became so confused about triglyphs, groins, and architraves, together Avitli bases and pediments, that my bewildered mother, a woman of piercing insight as well as of natural tenderness, was really glad when Mr. Glyn disappeared from her table and her son was sent back to study more thoroughly the neid and the Iliad.
In 1846 or soon afterwards the most distressing intelligence reached our far-off town. As I have said, news travelled to
US slowly, so that the Chartism of 1837 probably reached us, in a kind of backwash movement, some three or four years later. Ahvays remember we were far off and slow.
But this disastrous intelligence, Avliat was it? I will tell you. A lunatic had suddenly developed in the town of Leicester — that metropolis of social dynamite. His name — at least, so we understood — was Miall, of whom personally little was known except that he was a minister and that he wore spectacles. It was reported of this lunatic that he was going to pull down all church steeples, and bury all bishops and curates under the ruins of their own belfries. We were told that this man had given up his ministry on purpose that he might pull down the churches and run away with the sacrament money. The alarm rose to a panic.
“There’ll be nee mair [no more] ‘Resurrection and the Life ’ for me,” said the affrighted sexton, who lived on the funerals of other people.
“And poor Mr. Airey!” said the
senior and intemperate bell-ringer.
“And him with that fine voice,”
said a widow lady.
A PEEACHER’S LIFE
Thus it was in our quaking town! We found little by little that the Leicester lunatic had started some kind of society, which he called the “Anti- State Church Association.” It was a new kind of machine, which took in bishops at the one end and sent them out mendicants at the other; and Miall made a profit out of the process. In the light of that hideous suggestion every Dissenter in the town was regarded. Every Dissenter thus became a robber. Peargus O’Connor was nothing where a l)urgling Dissenter came. But the sturdy Dissenters were unabashed. Their goods were taken from them and sold in the market-place in payment of Church rates. The senior Dissenter always put a notice of such sales in his shop- window. I remember one such notice perfectly. Here it is, as it was written with a quill upon whitey-brown paper: —
“The old strumpet and her paramour have stolen another hed. The
auction sale will take place at the
market cross on Thursday at Twelve
o’clock.”
The language was strong, I admit. Nonconformity has now slumberously evolved ‘r.Ni:iio-ME, .■^OUTII HaMI’STEAU.
into milk and water sold in large hottles labelled “Charity.” What wonder that Nonconformity is anaemic, and tottery on its shrivelling pins P When I first knew it, Dissent was full of purpose, and a force to be reckoned with; noAV it lives too much on statistics and apologies. Once, if so much as a beast touched its mountain, it was thrust through with a dart; now. Dissent hobnobs with the Opposition, and eats sandwiches in ecclesiastical picnics amidst the grieved solitudes of the Alps! Those sandwiches are not nutritious enough for Dissent to thrive upon.
But let me return to the market cross referred to in the above legend. The day of sale has come. The auctioneer is on the stump. Not a soul can be seen within fifty yards. The feather bed is in painful evidence. Now a loud laugh rises from unseen mockers; now the mockers disclose themselves; they come nearer and nearer to the apprehensive auctioneer; no policeman is to be seen.
“Blae away, old hammer!” shouts
a young Dissenter.
“What’s the price on’t, Billy?”
[Auctioneer’s classical name.]
“Who bids?”
“Mr. Airey and the churchwardens;
nobody else.”
“Gentlemen, I offer the bed at
twelve shillings.”
“Ila, ha, ha!”
“Going at twelve, if anybody will
offer it.’’
“Going where?”
“Going to the best bidder, gentlemen: who may he be?”
“There’s blood on’t, Billy.”
“No good Church sells other people’s beds.”
“Get away, Billy, and try to make
an honest living.”
Amid such execrations the auctioneer disappears, with the bailiff and the bed behind him. It was a proud day for the young Dissenters, kindling their rhetorical blood to fever heat, and setting them energetically to all manner of “demonstrations” and angry protests. “Billy and the Bed” was the headline of a rousing placard vehemently calling upon the inhabitants to “rise and rally!” I have noticed that alliteration is essential to a battle-cry. It must not be supposed that there were no alliterative cries on the other side, and cries non-alliterative: “The Church in danger.” “Dissent and destruction.” “Dissent and dishonesty.’” “Kohber s of churches.” But the young Dissenting orators (always remember our youth) were far ahead. One of them roused the Dissenting soul to holy madness by passionately finishing a speech with: —
“We’re the sons of sires that baffled
Crowned and mitred tyranny.
They defied the field and scaffold
For their birthright — so will we.”
This “Nvas uttered by a man ai)prenticed to a wheelwright, who never lost a night’s rest for any cause, human or divine. But he felt it all the same.
Results followed such sales by auction.
“Well form a branch of the Anti-State Church Association,” said one.
“Ay! twenty branches, and twenty more,” said another, heedless of limitations.
So it was resolved. Would the lunatic himself come from Leicester if a meeting could be got up r How many of the ministers would attend such a meeting? The Wesleyan minister would not, for he remembered the expulsion of Rayner Stephens. The Primitive Methodist would come, but would not take any part. The man whose bed was stolen would take the chair, and the man who wrote on whitey-brown paper would entertain the speaker. In due time arrangements were completed, and the Independent Chapel was to be the scene of a worse than Ephesian uproar. The speaker’s appearance greatly surprised the nervous section of the community. He was not dressed in scarlet; his head in no way resembled the head of Robespierre; and as for his “sleeve,” not the sharpest eye could detect the hiding of a dagger! To the surprise of the younger section of the Dissenting public, the meeting was opened with singing and prayer. To the still greater surprise of the same observers, the meeting was further opened by the reading of selected portions of Holy Scripture: “My kingdom is not of this world,” “Render under Caesar the things that arc Caesar’s, and unto God the things that are God’s,” and the like. Then came the speech! There was nothing in it about “hereditary bondsmen, know ye not,” etc.; nor was there the slightest reference to our being “the sons of sires that baffled,” etc.; and as for defying “the field
SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL.NrASTERS 45
and scaffold,” not one word was said; not even a furtive glance was wasted on the vicar, nor was the shadow of a hint given that any one intended either to wreck the belfry or steal the vicar’s surplice, and nobody could justly think that even the vested interests of the trembling sexton were threatened. Everybody seemed to say, and some literally did say, “It was more like a sermon than a speech!” It was so. It was blessedly and instructively so. It was felt that the kingdom of God was at hand, and that Christ’s Church, blood-bought and sealed with a seal, was as a holy Virgin waiting the coming again of her long-desired Lord.