Dickens As an Educator Part 22

The adult may sometimes lead the child indirectly to a change of plan, but he should not do it by direct suggestion. The joy is lost for the child when he becomes conscious of the adult as interfering even sympathetically with his own personality. There is a great deal of well-intentioned dwarfing of childhood.

The consciousness of partnership, of unity, of sympathetic co-operation, is the best result of such blessed work as the Major did with Jemmy in carrying out Jemmy's plans. He is the child's best friend who most wisely and most thoroughly develops his imagination as a basis for all intellectual strength and clearness, and for the highest spiritual growth.

He is the wealthiest man who sees diamonds in the dewdrops and unsullied gold in the sunset tints.

David Copperfield tells the names of the wonderful books he found in his father's blessed little room, and describes their influence upon his life.

They kept alive my fancy and my hope of something beyond that place and time--they and the Arabian Nights and the Tales of the Genii. It is curious to me how I could ever have consoled myself under my small troubles (which were great troubles to me) by impersonating my favourite characters in them, as I did, and by putting Mr. and Miss Murdstone into all the bad ones, which I did, too. I have been Tom Jones--a child's Tom Jones, a harmless creature--for a week together.

I have sustained my own idea of Roderick Random for a month at a stretch, I verily believe.

"Let us end with the Boy's story," said Mrs. Lirriper, "for the Boy's story is the best that is ever told."

There are no other stories so enchanting, or so stimulating, as the stories that fill the imaginations of childhood.

CHAPTER IX.

SYMPATHY WITH CHILDHOOD.

The dominant element in d.i.c.kens's character was sympathy _with_ childhood, not merely for it. He had the productive sympathy that feels and thinks from the child's standpoint.

The ill.u.s.tration just given of Major Jackman's co-operative sympathy with Jemmy Lirriper in the perfect carrying out of what to most people would have been only "the foolish ideas" of a child, as sincerely as if he had been executing commissions from the prime minister, is an excellent exemplification of the true ideal of sympathy in practice. The Major was not working for Jemmy's amus.e.m.e.nt merely; he was a very active and genuinely interested partner with Jemmy. "Jemmy was far outdone by the serious and believing ways of the Major" in the imaginative plays which were the most real life of Jemmy. Such was the sympathy of d.i.c.kens with his own children; such sympathy he believed to be the most productive power in the teacher or child trainer for beneficent influence on the character of the child.

There is no other characteristic of his writings so marked as his broad sympathy with childhood. Sympathy was the origin of all he wrote against coercion in all its dread forms, of all he wrote about robbing children of a real childhood, about the dwarfing of individuality, about the strangling of the imagination, about improper nutrition, about all forms of neglect, and cruelty, and bad training. The more fully his nature is known the more deeply he is loved, because of his great love for the child.

From the beginning of his educational work his overflowing, practical sympathy is revealed.

He tells us in the preface to Nickleby that his study of the Yorkshire schools and his delineation of the character of Squeers resulted from a resolution formed in childhood, which he was led to form by seeing a boy "with a suppurated abscess caused by its being ripped open by his Yorkshire guide, philosopher, and friend with an inky penknife."

The sympathy of Nicholas, and John Browdie, and the Cheeryble brothers with Smike and all suffering childhood are strong features of the book.

d.i.c.kens's own sympathy has cleared his mind of many fogs that still linger in some minds regarding a parent's rights in regard to his child, even though the parent has never recognised any of the child's rights. The movement in favour of the recognition of the rights of children even against their parents began with d.i.c.kens. When Nicholas discovered that Smike was the son of his uncle, Ralph Nickleby, he went to consult brother Charles Cheeryble in regard to his duty under the circ.u.mstances.

He modestly, but firmly, expressed his hope that the good old gentleman would, under such circ.u.mstances as he described, hold him justified in adopting the extreme course of interfering between parent and child, and upholding the latter in his disobedience; even though his horror and dread of his father might seem, and would doubtless be represented, as a thing so repulsive and unnatural as to render those who countenanced him in it fit objects of general detestation and abhorrence.

"So deeply rooted does this horror of the man appear to be," said Nicholas, "that I can hardly believe he really is his son. Nature does not seem to have implanted in his breast one lingering feeling of affection for him, and surely she can never err."

"My dear sir," replied brother Charles, "you fall into the very common mistake of charging upon Nature matters with which she has not had the smallest connection, and for which she is in no way responsible. Men talk of Nature as an abstract thing, and lose sight of what is natural while they do so. Here is a poor lad who has never felt a parent's care, who has scarcely known anything all his life but suffering and sorrow, presented to a man who he is told is his father, and whose first act is to signify his intention of putting an end to his short term of happiness by consigning him to his old fate, and taking him from the only friend he has ever had--which is yourself. If Nature, in such a case, put into that lad's breast but one secret prompting which urged him toward his father and away from you, she would be a liar and an idiot."

Nicholas was delighted to find that the old gentleman spoke so warmly, and in the hope that he might say something more to the same purpose, made no reply.

"The same mistake presents itself to me, in one shape or other, at every turn," said brother Charles. "Parents who never showed their love complain of want of natural affection in their children; children who never showed their duty complain of want of natural feeling in their parents; lawmakers who find both so miserable that their affections have never had enough of life's sun to develop them are loud in their moralizings over parents and children too, and cry that the very ties of Nature are disregarded. Natural affections and instincts, my dear sir, are the most beautiful of the Almighty's works, but, like other beautiful works of his, they must be reared and fostered, or it is as natural that they should be wholly obscured, and that new feelings should usurp their place, as it is that the sweetest productions of the earth, left untended, should be choked with weeds and briers. I wish we could be brought to consider this, and, remembering natural obligations a little more at the right time, talk about them a little less at the wrong one."

It was chiefly to break the power of ignorant and cruel parenthood over suffering childhood that Ralph Nickleby was painted with such dark and repellent characteristics, and that poor Smike's sufferings were detailed with such minuteness. The sympathy of the world was aroused against the one and in favour of the other, as a basis for the climax of thought which brother Charles expressed so truly and so forcefully.

The same thought was driven home by the complaint of Squeers about one of the boys in Dotheboys Hall.

"The juniorest Palmer said he wished he was in heaven. I really don't know, I do _not_ know what's to be done with that young fellow; he's always a-wishing something horrid. He said once he wished he was a donkey, because then he wouldn't have a father as didn't love him!

Pretty wicious that for a child of six!"

It required the genius of d.i.c.kens to make such a clear picture of an unloving father.

Even before Nicholas Nickleby was written d.i.c.kens had revealed his sympathetic nature. Oliver Twist's story was written to stir the hearts of his readers in favour of unfortunate children. What a contrast is made between the hardening effects of his treatment by b.u.mble and the "gentleman in the white waistcoat," and the humanizing influence of Rose Maylie's tear dropped on his cheek.

Surely no sensitive little boy ever submitted to more unsympathetic treatment than poor Oliver.

When little Oliver was taken before "the gentlemen" that evening, and informed that he was to go that night as general house lad to a coffin maker's, and that if he complained of his situation, or ever came back to the parish again, he would be sent to sea, there to be drowned or knocked on the head, as the case might be, he evinced so little emotion that they by common consent p.r.o.nounced him a hardened young rascal, and ordered Mr. b.u.mble to remove him forthwith.

For some time Mr. b.u.mble drew Oliver along, without notice or remark; for the beadle carried his head very erect, as a beadle always should; and, it being a windy day, little Oliver was completely enshrouded by the skirts of Mr. b.u.mble's coat as they blew open and disclosed to great advantage his flapped waistcoat and drab plush knee breeches. As they drew near to their destination, however, Mr. b.u.mble thought it expedient to look down and see that the boy was in good order for inspection by his new master: which he accordingly did, with a fit and becoming air of gracious patronage.

"Oliver!" said Mr. b.u.mble.

"Yes, sir," replied Oliver in a low, tremulous voice.

"Pull that cap off your eyes, and hold up your head, sir."

Although Oliver did as he was desired at once, and pa.s.sed the back of his unoccupied hand briskly across his eyes, he left a tear in them when he looked up at his conductor. As Mr. b.u.mble gazed sternly upon him, it rolled down his cheek. It was followed by another, and another. The child made a strong effort, but it was an unsuccessful one. Withdrawing his other hand from Mr. b.u.mble's, he covered his face with both, and wept until the tears sprung out from between his chin and bony fingers.

"Well!" exclaimed Mr. b.u.mble, stopping short, and darting at his little charge a look of intense malignity. "Well! Of _all_ the ungratefullest and worst-disposed boys as ever I see, Oliver, you are the----"

"No, no, sir," sobbed Oliver, clinging to the hand which held the well-known cane; "no, no, sir; I will be good indeed; indeed, indeed I will, sir! I am a very little boy, sir; and it is so--so----"

"So what?" inquired Mr. b.u.mble in amazement.

"So lonely, sir! So very lonely!" cried the child. "Everybody hates me. Oh, sir, don't, don't, pray, be cross to me!" The child beat his hand upon his heart, and looked in his companion's face with tears of real agony.

The poor boy was put to bed by Sowerberry the first night. His master said, as they climbed the stairs:

"Your bed's under the counter. You don't mind sleeping among the coffins, I suppose? But it doesn't much matter whether you do or don't, for you can't sleep anywhere else. Come, don't keep me here all night!"

d.i.c.kens pitied children for the terrors with which they were threatened, as Oliver was threatened by the board, and he pitied them also for the terrors that their imaginations brought to them at night. Sowerberry's lack of sympathy was as great as b.u.mble's. When one of his own children showed evidence of dread of retiring alone, d.i.c.kens sat upstairs with his family in the evenings afterward. He did not tell the child the reason, but she was saved from terror.

Oliver ran away from Sowerberry's, and when pa.s.sing the workhouse he peeped between the bars of the gate into the garden. A very little boy was there who came to the gate to say "Good-bye" to him. He had been one of Oliver's little friends.

"Kiss me," said the child, climbing up the low gate and flinging his little arms round Oliver's neck: "Good-bye, dear! G.o.d bless you!"

The blessing was from a young child's lips, but it was the first that Oliver had ever heard invoked upon his head; and through the struggles and sufferings and troubles and changes of his after-life he never once forgot it.

When Oliver was taken to commit burglary by Bill Sykes, and was wounded and brought into the home he was a.s.sisting to rob, the good lady of the house sent for a doctor. The doctor dressed the arm, and when the boy fell asleep he brought Mrs. Maylie and Rose to see the criminal.

Rose sat down by Oliver's bedside and gathered his hair from his face.

As she stooped over him her tears fell upon his forehead.

The boy stirred and smiled in his sleep, as though these marks of pity and compa.s.sion had awakened some pleasant dream of a love and affection he had never known. Thus a strain of gentle music, or the rippling of water in a silent place, or the odour of a flower, or the mention of a familiar word, will sometimes call up sudden dim remembrances of scenes that never were in this life; which vanish like a breath; which some brief memory of a happier existence, long gone by, would seem to have awakened; which no voluntary exertion of the mind can ever recall.

"What can this mean?" exclaimed the elder lady. "This poor child can never have been the pupil of robbers!"