Dickens As an Educator Part 31

The description of the dinner at Mr. Pocket's, after which the six children were brought in, and Mrs. Pocket attempted to mind the baby, is one of the raciest bits of d.i.c.kens's humour. One observation in connection with the dinner is worth studying.

After dinner the children were introduced, and Mrs. Coiler made admiring comments on their eyes, noses, and legs--a sagacious way of improving their minds.

How few yet clearly understand this profound criticism of bad training!

How many children are still made vain and frivolous by having their attention directed especially to their physical attributes and their dress, rather than to the things that would yield them much greater immediate happiness and a much truer basis for future development!

In his last book, Edwin Drood, d.i.c.kens showed that he still hated the tyranny that dwarfs and distorts the souls of children.

Neville Landless described his own training to his tutor, who had won his confidence as it had never been won before.

"We lived with a stepfather there. Our mother died there, when we were little children. We have had a wretched existence. She made him our guardian, and he was a miserly wretch who grudged us food to eat and clothes to wear.

"This stepfather of ours was a cruel brute as well as a grinding one.

It was well he died when he did, or I might have killed him."

Mr. Crisparkle stopped short in the moonlight and looked at his hopeful pupil in consternation.

"I surprise you, sir?" he said, with a quick change to a submissive manner.

"You shock me; unspeakably shock me."

The pupil hung his head for a little while, as they walked on, and then said: "You never saw him beat your sister. I have seen him beat mine, more than once or twice, and I never forgot it.

"I have had, sir, from my earliest remembrance, to suppress a deadly and bitter hatred. This has made me secret and revengeful. I have been always tyrannically held down by the strong hand. This has driven me, in my weakness, to the resource of being false and mean. I have been stinted of education, liberty, money, dress, the very necessaries of life, the commonest pleasures of childhood, the commonest possessions of youth. This has caused me to be utterly wanting in I do not know what emotions, or remembrances, or good instincts--I have not even a name for the thing, you see--that you have had to work upon in other young men to whom you have been accustomed."

Hatred instead of love; product, a secret and revengeful character.

"Tyrannically held down by a strong hand"; product, falseness and meanness. "Stinted of education, liberty, money, dress, the very necessaries of life, the commonest pleasures of childhood, the commonest possessions of youth"; product, a manhood utterly barren in true emotions, or pleasant memories, or good instincts.

No other writer has described so many phases of bad training as d.i.c.kens.

CHAPTER XII.

GOOD TRAINING.

d.i.c.kens wrote much less about good training than about bad training. It was the part of a true philosopher and a profound student of human nature to do so. Pictures of wrong treatment of children accomplished a double purpose. They made men hate the wrong, and made them more clearly conscious of the right than pictures of the right alone could have done.

Descriptions of ideal conditions can not make as deep impressions as descriptions of utterly bad conditions in the present stage of human evolution.

His revelation of cruel tyranny, of will breaking, of cramming, of dwarfing of individuality, of distorting of imagination, of harshness, of lack of sympathy, of evil in a hundred hideous forms, made men more conscious of their corresponding opposites than attempts to reveal these opposites by direct effort could have done; and in addition it stirred in human hearts everywhere the determination to remove or remedy the wrong.

Little Nell's grandfather gave her a good training. Omitting poverty and loneliness, and some strange companions.h.i.+ps, she had a training calculated to make her the supremely pure and attractive child she was. Her grandfather loved her pa.s.sionately; he had never been unkind to her, he had taught her carefully in the virtues that are learned by the unselfish performance of duty; she had the opportunity for simple, loving service, and she was trained to have profound reverence for and true faith in G.o.d.

Her grandfather left her alone every night, yet she was never afraid.

d.i.c.kens describes their usual parting in the evening.

Then she ran to the old man, who folded her in his arms and bade G.o.d bless her.

"Sleep soundly, Nell," he said in a low voice, "and angels guard thy bed! Do not forget thy prayers, my sweet."

"No, indeed," answered the child fervently, "they make me feel so happy!"

"That's well; I know they do; they should," said the old man. "Bless thee a hundred times! Early in the morning I shall be home."

"You'll not ring twice," returned the child. "The bell wakes me, even in the middle of a dream."

The Toodle family is painted in direct contrast to the Dombey family in the relations.h.i.+p of parents to children. Mrs. Toodle came to nurse Paul Dombey when his mother died. Mr. Toodle himself came too, and Mr. Dombey called him in to speak to him.

He was a strong, loose, round-shouldered, shuffling, s.h.a.ggy fellow, on whom his clothes sat negligently; with a good deal of hair and whisker, deepened in its natural tint, perhaps, by smoke and coal-dust; hard knotty hands; and a square forehead, as coa.r.s.e in grain as the bark of an oak. A thorough contrast in all respects to Mr. Dombey, who was one of those close-shaved, close-cut moneyed gentlemen who are glossy and crisp like new bank notes, and who seem to be artificially braced and tightened as by the stimulating action of golden shower baths.

"You have a son, I believe?" said Mr. Dombey.

"Four on 'em, sir. Four hims and a her. All alive!"

"Why, it's as much as you can afford to keep them!" said Mr. Dombey.

"I couldn't hardly afford but one thing in the world less, sir."

"What is that?"

"To lose 'em, sir."

"Can you read?" asked Mr. Dombey.

"Why, not partick'ler, sir."

"Write?"

"With chalk, sir?"

"With anything?"

"I could make s.h.i.+ft to chalk a little bit, I think, if I was put to it," said Toodle, after some reflection.

"And yet," said Mr. Dombey, "you are two or three and thirty, I suppose?"

"Thereabout, I suppose, sir," answered Toodle, after more reflection.

"Then why don't you learn?" asked Mr. Dombey.

"So I'm agoing to, sir. One of my little boys is agoing to learn me, when he's old enough, and been to school himself."

What a beautiful picture of the true relations.h.i.+p that should exist between a mother and her children is given in the reception to Mrs. Toodle when she went home to visit her family!

"Why, Polly!" cried her sister. "You! what a turn you _have_ given me!

who'd have thought it! come along in, Polly! How well you do look, to be sure! The children will go half wild to see you, Polly, that they will."