Dickens As an Educator Part 45

"When it comes on dark the lamps are lighted down in the court, and they show up here quite bright--almost quite bright. Don't they, Tom?"

"Yes, Charley," said Tom; "almost quite bright."

The hearts must be hard that are not moved to a deeper and more practical interest in the children of the poor by this pathetic story, and others of a kindred character which d.i.c.kens told over and over again for the Christian world to study. And the study led to feeling and thought and co-operative action.

The fruits of these wonderful stories are the splendid homes, and organizations for children, and the laws to protect them from cruelty by parents or teachers, or employers, and the free public schools to educate them, and the joy, and happiness, and freedom, that are taking the place of the sorrow, and tears, and coercion of the time when d.i.c.kens began his n.o.ble work.

The tragic story of poor Jo ill.u.s.trated the poverty, the ignorance, the dest.i.tution, the hopelessness, the barrenness, and the dreadful environment of a London street boy. The world has done much better since, as d.i.c.kens prophesied it would do, and the good work is going on. Hundreds of thousands of the poor Joes of London are now in the public schools of London alone of whom the Christian philanthropy of the world thought little till d.i.c.kens told his stories.

In n.o.body's Story d.i.c.kens returns to his special purpose of changing the att.i.tude of civilization toward the education of the poor. The Bigwigs represent society, and "the man" means the poor man.

But the Bigwig family broke out into violent family quarrels concerning what it was lawful to teach to this man's children. Some of the family insisted on such a thing being primary and indispensable above all other things; and others of the family insisted on such another thing being primary and indispensable above all other things; and the Bigwig family, rent into factions, wrote pamphlets, held convocations, delivered charges, orations, and all varieties of discourses; impounded one another in courts Lay and courts Ecclesiastical; threw dirt, exchanged pummellings, and fell together by the ears in unintelligible animosity. Meanwhile, this man, in his short evening s.n.a.t.c.hes at his fireside, saw the demon Ignorance arise there, and take his children to itself. He saw his daughter perverted into a heavy slatternly drudge; he saw his son go moping down the ways of low sensuality, to brutality and crime; he saw the dawning light of intelligence in the eyes of his babies so changing into cunning and suspicion, that he could have rather wished them idiots.

d.i.c.kens objected to a certain kind of sentimentality exhibited in his day toward criminals, and draws a very suggestive picture full of elements for psychological study in David Copperfield, in which he makes the brutal schoolmaster Creakle a very considerate Middles.e.x magistrate, with an unfailing system for a quick and effective method of converting the wickedest scoundrels into the most submissive, Scripture-quoting saints by solitary confinement. d.i.c.kens did not approve of the system, and he did not approve either of the plan of the spending of so much money by the state in erecting splendid buildings for criminals, while the honest poor were in hovels, and especially while the state allowed the boys and girls, through neglect, to be transformed into criminals by thousands every year.

d.i.c.kens would have made criminals earn their own living, and he urged the establishment of industrial schools for the boys and girls of the streets, so that they might become respectable, intelligent, self-reliant, law-abiding citizens instead of criminals.

David said:

Traddles and I repaired to the prison where Mr. Creakle was powerful.

It was an immense and solid building, erected at a vast expense. I could not help thinking, as we approached the gate, what an uproar would have been made in the country if any deluded man had proposed to spend one half the money it had cost, on the erection of an industrial school for the young, or a house of refuge for the deserving old.

As usual with great reformers, the philanthropists of his own day refused to accept the theories of d.i.c.kens, but succeeding generations adopted them. The reforms for which he pleaded began to be practised so soon because he winged his thought with living appeals to the deepest, truest feelings of the human heart.

d.i.c.kens said truly of Barnaby Rudge:

"The absence of the soul is far more terrible in a living man than in a dead one; and in this unfortunate being its n.o.blest powers were wanting."

He pleaded again for those who are weak-minded in Mr. d.i.c.k's case in David Copperfield. Mr. d.i.c.k was evidently introduced into the story to show the effect of kind treatment on those who are defective in intellect. The insane were flogged and put in strait-jackets in the time of d.i.c.kens. His teaching is now the practice of the civilized world. The insane are kindly treated, and weak-minded children are taught in good schools by the best teachers that can be obtained for them.

Betsy Trotwood, David's aunt, was an embodiment of a good heart united with an eminently practical head. She did not talk about religion, as did the Murdstones, but she showed her religious life in good, reasonable, self-sacrificing, helpful living. David asked her for an explanation of Mr. d.i.c.k's case.

"He has been _called_ mad," said my aunt. "I have a selfish pleasure in saying he has been called mad, or I should not have had the benefit of his society and advice for these last ten years and upward--in fact, ever since your sister, Betsy Trotwood, disappointed me."

"So long as that?" I said.

"And nice people they were, who had the audacity to call him mad,"

pursued my aunt. "Mr. d.i.c.k is a sort of distant connection of mine--it doesn't matter how; I needn't enter into that. If it hadn't been for me, his own brother would have shut him up for life. That's all."

I am afraid it was hypocritical in me, but seeing that my aunt felt strongly on the subject, I tried to look as if I felt strongly too.

"A proud fool!" said my aunt. "Because his brother was a little eccentric--though he is not half so eccentric as a good many people--he didn't like to have him visible about the house, and sent him away to some private asylum place; though he had been left to his particular care by their deceased father, who thought him almost a natural. And a wise man _he_ must have been to think so! Mad himself, no doubt."

Again, as my aunt looked quite convinced, I endeavoured to look quite convinced also.

"So I stepped in," said my aunt, "and made him an offer. I said, 'Your brother's sane--a great deal more sane than you are, or ever will be, it is to be hoped. Let him have his little income, and come and live with me. _I_ am not afraid of him; _I_ am not proud; _I_ am ready to take care of him, and shall not ill treat him as some people (besides the asylum folks) have done.' After a good deal of squabbling," said my aunt, "I got him; and he has been here ever since. He is the most friendly and amenable creature in existence; and as for advice!--but n.o.body knows what that man's mind is, except myself."

d.i.c.kens was greatly delighted with the asylums of the United States, and he strongly advocated the adoption in England of American methods of treating the insane. He says, in American Notes:

At South Boston, as it is called, in a situation excellently adapted for the purpose, several charitable inst.i.tutions are cl.u.s.tered together. One of these is the State Hospital for the Insane; admirably conducted on those enlightened principles of conciliation and kindness, which twenty years ago would have been worse than heretical, and which have been acted upon with so much success in our own pauper asylum at Hanwell. "Evince a desire to show some confidence, and repose some trust, even in mad people," said the resident physician, as we walked along the galleries, his patients flocking round us unrestrained. Of those who deny or doubt the wisdom of this maxim after witnessing its effects, if there be such people still alive, I can only say that I hope I may never be summoned as a juryman on a commission of lunacy whereof they are the subjects; for I should certainly find them out of their senses, on such evidence alone.

Each ward in this inst.i.tution is shaped like a long gallery or hall, with the dormitories of the patients opening from it on either hand.

Here they work, read, play at skittles, and other games; and, when the weather does not admit of their taking exercise out of doors, pa.s.s the day together. In one of these rooms, seated, calmly, and quite as a matter of course, among a throng of mad women, black and white, were the physician's wife and another lady, with a couple of children.

These ladies were graceful and handsome; and it was not difficult to perceive at a glance that even their presence there had a highly beneficial influence on the patients who were grouped about them.

Every patient in this asylum sits down to dinner every day with a knife and fork; and in the midst of them sits the gentleman whose manner of dealing with his charges I have just described. At every meal, moral influence alone restrains the more violent among them from cutting the throats of the rest; but the effect of that influence is reduced to an absolute certainty, and is found, even as a means of restraint, to say nothing of it as a means of cure, a hundred times more efficacious than all the strait-waistcoats, fetters, and handcuffs, that ignorance, prejudice, and cruelty have manufactured since the creation of the world.

How much those benighted teachers who so tragically ask "What _can_ you do with bad boys, if you do _not_ use corporal punishment?" might learn from the last sentence!

Blinded by old ideals, these teachers whip away, admitting that they fail to reform many of the best boys, and quieting their consciences with the horrible thought that the evil course was the natural one for the boys, and that they are not responsible for their blighted lives. They comfort themselves with the thought that it is G.o.d's business, and if he made a boy so bad that flogging would not reform him, they at any rate are free from blame, because they "have beaten, and beaten, and beaten him, and it did him no good." Having beaten him, and beaten him, and beaten him, they rest contented with the sure conviction that they have faithfully done their duty; and when, perchance, the poor boy becomes a criminal, they solemnly say without a blush or a pang: "I knew he would come to a bad end, but I am so thankful that I did my duty to him."

Ignominious failure to save the brave boys who are not cowardly enough to be deterred from doing wrong by beating has taught nothing to some teachers. Even yet they placidly beat on, and get angry if they are requested to try freedom as a subst.i.tute for coercion in the training of beings created in G.o.d's image. They even question the sanity and the theology of those who dare to doubt the efficiency of the sacred rod. They do not deem it possible that by studying the child and their own higher powers they could find easier, pleasanter, and infinitely more successful methods of guiding a boy to a true, strong life than by beating, and beating, and beating him.

The keepers of asylums in the time of d.i.c.kens were equally severe on the wise friends of the insane. They honestly believed that terrible evils would necessarily result from giving greater freedom to the afflicted patients in asylums. d.i.c.kens took the side of freedom and common sense, and the strait-jackets, and handcuffs, and fetters have been taken off, and, _even as a means of restraint_, kindness and freedom have done better work than all the coercive fetters that "ignorance, prejudice, and cruelty have manufactured since the creation of the world."

So all teachers who have grown wise enough have found that kindness and freedom are much better even as restraining agents, and infinitely better in the development of true, independent, positive, progressive characters than all the coercive terrors of rod, rule, strap, rawhide, or any form of cruelty ever practised on helpless childhood by ignorance, prejudice, and perverted theology since the creation of the world.

In American Notes d.i.c.kens gave a long description of Laura Bridgman written by Dr. Howe, and showed his intense interest in what was then a new movement in favour of the education of the blind.

Speaking of Laura Bridgman, d.i.c.kens himself wrote:

The thought occurred to me as I sat down in another room before a girl, blind, deaf, and dumb; dest.i.tute of smell, and nearly so of taste; before a fair young creature with every human faculty, and hope, and power of goodness and affection inclosed within her delicate frame, and but one outward sense--the sense of touch. There she was before me; built up, as it were, in a marble cell, impervious to any ray of light, or particle of sound; with her poor white hand peeping through a c.h.i.n.k in the wall, beckoning to some good man for help, that an immortal soul might be awakened.

Long before I looked upon her the help had come. Her face was radiant with intelligence and pleasure. Her hair, braided by her own hands, was bound about her head, whose intellectual capacity and development were beautifully expressed in its graceful outline, and its broad open brow; her dress, arranged by herself, was a pattern of neatness and simplicity; the work she had knitted lay beside her; her writing book was on the desk she leaned upon. From the mournful ruin of such bereavement there had slowly risen up this gentle, tender, guileless, grateful-hearted being.

The touching story of Caleb Plummer and his blind daughter was intended to arouse interest in blind children.

Doctor Marigold should be one of the best beloved of all the beautiful characters of d.i.c.kens. If any kind of language could awaken an intense interest in the education of deaf-mutes, the story of the dear old Cheap Jack must surely do it.

The sad picture of the cruel treatment of his own little Sophy by her mother; of her dying on his shoulder while he was selling his wares to the crowd, whispering fondly to her between his jokes; and the suicide of the mother, when she afterward saw another woman beating her child, and heard the child cry piteously, "Don't beat me! Oh, mother, mother, mother!"--these prepare the heart for full appreciation of the tender, considerate, and intelligent treatment of the deaf-mute child adopted by Doctor Marigold in Sophy's place.

I went to that Fair as a mere civilian, leaving the cart outside the town, and I looked about the back of the Vans while the performing was going on, and at last, sitting dozing against a muddy cart wheel, I come upon the poor girl who was deaf and dumb. At the first look I might almost have judged that she had escaped from the Wild Beast Show; but at the second I thought better of her, and thought that if she was more cared for and more kindly used she would be like my child. She was just the same age that my own daughter would have been, if her pretty head had not fell down upon my shoulder that unfortunate night.

It was happy days for both of us when Sophy and me began to travel in the cart. I at once gave her the name of Sophy, to put her ever toward me in the att.i.tude of my own daughter. We soon made out to begin to understand one another, through the goodness of the Heavens, when she knowed that I meant true and kind by her. In a very little time she was wonderful fond of me. You have no idea what it is to have anybody wonderful fond of you, unless you have been got down and rolled upon by the lonely feelings that I have mentioned as having once got the better of me.

You'd have laughed--or the rewerse--it's according to your disposition--if you could have seen me trying to teach Sophy. At first I was helped--you'd never guess by what--milestones. I got some large alphabets in a box, all the letters separate on bits of bone, and say we was going to WINDSOR; I gave her those letters in that order, and then at every milestone I showed her those same letters in that same order again, and pointed toward the abode of royalty. Another time I give her CART, and then chalked the same upon the cart. Another time I give her DOCTOR MARIGOLD, and hung a corresponding inscription outside my waistcoat. People that met us might stare a bit and laugh, but what did _I_ care if she caught the idea? She caught it after long patience and trouble, and then we did begin to get on swimmingly, I believe you! At first she was a little given to consider me the cart, and the cart the abode of royalty, but that soon wore off.

The way she learned to understand any look of mine was truly surprising. When I sold of a night, she would sit in the cart, unseen by them outside, and would give a eager look into my eyes when I looked in, and would hand me straight the precise article or articles I wanted. And then she would clap her hands, and laugh for joy. And as for me, seeing her so bright, and remembering what she was when I first lighted on her, starved and beaten and ragged, leaning asleep against the muddy cart wheel, it give me such heart that I gained a greater height of reputation than ever.

This happiness went on in the cart till she was sixteen years old. By which time I began to feel not satisfied that I had done my whole duty by her, and to consider that she ought to have better teaching than I could give her. It drew a many tears on both sides when I commenced explaining my views to her; but what's right is right, and you can't neither by tears nor laughter do away with its character.

So I took her hand in mine, and I went with her one day to the Deaf and Dumb Establishment in London, and when the gentleman come to speak to us, I says to him: "Now, I'll tell you what I'll do with you, sir.

I am nothing but a Cheap Jack, but of late years I have laid by for a rainy day notwithstanding. This is my only daughter (adopted), and you can't produce a deafer nor a dumber. Teach her the most that can be taught her in the shortest separation that can be named--state the figure for it--and I am game to put the money down. I won't bate you single farthing, sir, but I'll put down the money here and now, and I'll thankfully throw you in a pound to take it. There!" The gentleman smiled, and then, "Well, well," says he, "I must first know what she has learned already. How do you communicate with her?" Then I showed him, and she wrote in printed writing many names of things and so forth; and we held some sprightly conversation, Sophy and me, about a little story in a book which the gentleman showed her, and which she was able to read. "This is most extraordinary," says the gentleman; "is it possible that you have been her only teacher?" "I have been her only teacher, sir," I says, "besides herself." "Then," says the gentleman, and more acceptable words was never spoke to me, "you're a clever fellow, and a good fellow." This he makes known to Sophy, who kisses his hands, claps her own, and laughs and cries upon it.

"Now, Marigold, tell me what more do you want your adopted daughter to know?"

"I want her, sir, to be cut off from the world as little as can be, considering her deprivations, and therefore to be able to read whatever is wrote with perfect ease and pleasure."

No one ever read this story and its delightful closing without being more deeply interested in deaf-mutes and their education.