Dickens As an Educator Part 37

"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 Bra.s.s, 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."

d.i.c.kens showed the evil effects of eating too rapidly in his description of the dinner in Mrs. Pawkins's boarding house in New York, where Martin Chuzzlewit 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 a.s.sert 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 a.s.sembly. The sharpest pickles vanished, whole cuc.u.mbers 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.

d.i.c.kens repeats this criticism of rapid eating in his American Notes, when specifying the causes of disease among American people. He says: "The custom of hastily swallowing large quant.i.ties of animal food three times a day and rushing back to sedentary pursuits after each meal must be changed."

Poor Paul Dombey was sacrificed to his father's pride. Mrs. Toodle was dismissed by Mr. Dombey because she dared to take his infant son with her when she went to see her own children. Paul was thus robbed of the natural food, which his sensitive nature needed so much. This was largely responsible for the fact that Paul was delicate. By first depriving him of proper food, and then sending him to Doctor Blimber's school "to learn everything," Mr. Dombey led directly to Paul's death. His pride and vanity overreached themselves.

In Mrs. Pipchin's meals d.i.c.kens tried to show two things: First, the selfishness of adulthood in regard to children's diet as compared with its own; second, the absolute insufficiency of the kind of food commonly supplied to children for building up strong, energetic, and well-developed men and women.

She regaled the children with a repast of "farinaceous and vegetable foods--chiefly rice," but she herself had a good hot dinner with mutton chops.

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 kind gentlemen who provided food for him in the workhouse. The same mockery of religion by mixing it up with the starvation of childhood is made ridiculous in the letter which Squeers read to the unfortunate children in Dotheboys Hall, pretending that it had been written by the stepmother of Mobbs.

"Mobbs's stepmother," said Squeers, "took to her bed on hearing that he wouldn't eat fat, and has been very ill ever since. She wishes to know, by an 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's broth, after his good master had asked a blessing on it." "Cow's liver's broth" would not be a very strengthening diet for children even with the blessing of so good a man as Squeers upon it.

d.i.c.kens makes a characteristic hit at the fashionable idea which was popular at one time, that it was rather indelicate, especially in a lady, to have a good robust const.i.tution and a vigorous digestion in describing Mr. Vholes in Bleak House. "His digestion was impaired, which is always highly respectable."

Mrs. Cruncher, in A Tale of Two Cities, objected to the questionable ways in which Mr. Cruncher earned his money sometimes. Her husband charged her with flying in the face of Providence by refusing the "wittles and drink"

he provided for her, and especially for neglecting to give it to their son. "With you flying into the face of your own wittles and drink! I don't know how scarce you mayn't make the wittles and drink here by your flopping 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 not know a mother's first duty is to blow her son out."

Abel Magwitch, when describing the terrible training he received at the hands of a Christian community in the most advanced Christian civilization of the world, said that when he was in jail some philanthropists "measured his head to find out the cause of his wickedness," and added with great wisdom, "they had better a-measured my stomach."

The folly of hoping that healthy infants can be nourished by mothers who are compelled to labour continuously through long hours without rest is shown in the description of the child whose mother was a waitress, in Somebody's Luggage. Incidentally, too, d.i.c.kens reveals in this case the facts that the power of a.s.similation of little children is usually impaired, and that, as a consequence, they become more peevish, and therefore get shaken and otherwise abused for the ignorance of the adults responsible for their care. Speaking of the treatment of the baby, he says:

You were conveyed--ere yet your dawning powers were otherwise developed than to harbour vacancy in your inside--you were conveyed by surrept.i.tious 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 const.i.tution. 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 circ.u.mstances you were early weaned. Your unwilling grandmother, ever growing more unwilling as your food a.s.similated less, then contracted habits of shaking you till your system curdled, and your food would not a.s.similate at all.

The schoolmaster in Jemmy Lirriper's original story was captured and put into confinement for his treatment of the boys, and he was to have nothing to eat but the boys' dinners, and was to drink half a cask of their beer every day.

The schoolboy in The Schoolboy's Story describes the food given to the boys as one of the grievances they had against the inst.i.tution.

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 const.i.tutions 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 is no more outrageous practice than that of depriving a child of food as a means of punishment.

d.i.c.kens ended his sketch ent.i.tled A Walk in a Workhouse with a plea on behalf of the inmates for "a little more liberty--and a little more bread," and even in his last book, Edwin Drood, he was still directing attention to the poor food supplied in boarding schools.

Mrs. Billickin was very plain in her hints about the poor board supplied to Rosa at Miss Twinkleton's when she received the schoolmistress in her own home. Referring to Rosa, who was now residing with Mrs. Billickin, she said:

"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 const.i.tution, 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."

CHAPTER XV.

MINOR SCHOOLS.

The schools of Squeers, Doctor Blimber, Mr. Creakle, Doctor Strong, and Mr. Gradgrind and Mr. M'Choak.u.mchild are the most celebrated schools of d.i.c.kens, and they contain the greater part of his pedagogical teaching.

His other schools are, however, worthy of very careful study.

One of the first of the Sketches by Boz described a man who had pa.s.sed through many vicissitudes, and at length was reduced to such poverty that he applied to the parish board for charity. This led to his appointment as a schoolmaster. d.i.c.kens clearly intended to teach the lesson, afterward emphasized in Nicholas Nickleby and other books, that poverty should not establish a claim to the position of a school-teacher.

Minerva Hall, also in Sketches by Boz, reveals "one of those public nuisances, a spoiled child," spoiled because his papa was too busy with public duties and his mamma with society duties to train him properly. It also shows the reason Mrs. Cornelius Brook Dingwall had for sending her daughter to school. She said: "One of my princ.i.p.al reasons for parting with my daughter is that she has lately acquired some sentimental ideas, which it is most desirable to eradicate from her young mind." Here the public nuisance fell out of a chair, and mamma and papa showed their usual mode of training him. Mamma called him "a naughty boy," and threatened "to send for James to take him away"--both name and threat being wrong. Papa merely excused the cherub on the ground of "his great flow of spirits."

The school also shows the silly training of so-called "finishing schools," as chiefly intended to teach young ladies the small conventionalities of "society."

In The Old Curiosity Shop there are four schools: Mr. Marton's two schools, Mrs. Wackles's school, and Miss Monflathers's school. Mr.

Marton's first school was introduced to reveal all the good qualities that Mr. Squeers lacked, especially sympathy. Mr. Marton was the immediate successor of Mr. Squeers, and they possessed directly opposite traits of character in their relationship to childhood. Mr. Squeers was coa.r.s.e, unsympathetic, and coercive. Mr. Marton was kind, considerate, and a perfect type of true sympathy with the child. It is reasonable to believe that Mr. Marton and Mr. Squeers were drawn as companion pictures to ill.u.s.trate and enforce the same truth--that sympathy with the child is the fundamental element in the character of a true teacher.

The old bachelor emphasized this when he said to Mr. Marton, "You are none the worse teacher for having learned humanity."

There is a great deal of food for psychological and pedagogical study in the introduction of the boys he was to teach in his second school, given by the bachelor to Mr. Marton. The bachelor was as full of genuine boyish spirit as it is possible for any adult to be, and was in some respects a more perfect type for an ideal teacher than Mr. Marton. Mr. Marton had the tender, spiritual sympathy of a true woman, the motherhood spirit that const.i.tutes the atmosphere in which all right elements of childhood find their richest development; the bachelor had the perfect manly sympathy that enabled him to enter heartily into boy life. He had especially the power of recognising in the things for which boys are often rebuked the best evidences of their strength, and he could remember his own boyhood so well as to fully sympathize _with_ the boys. Mr. Marton and the bachelor reveal the whole range of sympathetic possibilities.

When nothing more was left to be done he charged the boy to run off and bring his schoolmates to be marshalled before their new master and solemnly reviewed.

"As good a set of fellows, Marton, as you'd wish to see," he said, turning to the schoolmaster when the boy was gone; "but I don't let 'em know I think so. That wouldn't do at all."

The messenger soon returned at the head of a long row of urchins, great and small, who, being confronted by the bachelor at the house door, fell into various convulsions of politeness; clutching their hats and caps, squeezing them into the smallest possible dimensions, and making all manner of bows and sc.r.a.pes, which the little old gentleman contemplated with excessive satisfaction, and expressed his approval of by a great many nods and smiles. Indeed, his approbation of the boys was by no means so scrupulously disguised as he had led the schoolmaster to suppose, inasmuch as it broke out in sundry loud whispers and confidential remarks which were perfectly audible to them every one.

"This first boy, schoolmaster," said the bachelor, "is John Owen; a lad of good parts, sir, and frank, honest temper; but too thoughtless, too playful, too light-headed by far. That boy, my good sir, would break his neck with pleasure, and deprive his parents of their chief comfort--and between ourselves, when you come to see him at hare and hounds, taking the fence and ditch by the finger post, and sliding down the face of the little quarry, you'll never forget it. It's beautiful!"

John Owen having been thus rebuked, and being in perfect possession of the speech aside, the bachelor singled out another boy.

"Now look at that lad, sir," said the bachelor. "You see that fellow?

Richard Evans his name is, sir. An amazing boy to learn, blessed with a good memory and a ready understanding, and moreover with a good voice and ear for psalm singing, in which he is the best among us.

Yet, sir, that boy will come to a bad end; he'll never die in his bed; he's always falling asleep in sermon time--and to tell you the truth, Mr. Marton, I always did the same at his age, and feel quite certain that it was natural to my const.i.tution, and I couldn't help it."

This hopeful pupil edified by the above terrible reproval, the bachelor turned to another.

"But if we talk of examples to be shunned," said he, "if we come to boys that should be a warning and a beacon to all their fellows, here's the one, and I hope you won't spare him. This is the lad, sir; this one with the blue eyes and light hair. This is a swimmer, sir, this fellow--a diver, Lord save us! This is a boy, sir, who had a fancy for plunging into eighteen feet of water, with his clothes on, and bringing up a blind man's dog, who was being drowned by the weight of his chain and collar, while his master stood wringing his hands upon the bank, bewailing the loss of his guide and friend. I sent the boy two guineas anonymously, sir," added the bachelor, in his peculiar whisper, "directly I heard of it; but never mention it on any account, for he hasn't the least idea that it came from me."