CHAPTER XVI: AN OLD SCOTTISH PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER
ADVERTISEMENT
"If any Gentlemen, and others, will be pleased to send me any relations about Spirits, Witches, and Apparitions, In any part of the Kingdom; or any Information about the Second Sight, Charms, Spells, Magic, and the like, They shall oblige the Author, and have them publisht to their satisfaction.
"Direct your Relations to Alexander Ogstouns, Shop Stationer, at the foot of the Plain-stones, at Edinburgh, on the North-side of the Street."
Is this not a pleasing opportunity for Gentlemen, and Others, whose Auntshave beheld wraiths, doubles, and fetches? It answers very closely tothe requests of the Society for Psychical Research, who publish, as someone disparagingly says, "the dreams of the middle classes." Thanks toFreedom, Progress, and the decline of Superstition, it is now quite safeto see apparitions, and even to publish the narrative of theirappearance.
But when Mr. George Sinclair, sometime Professor of Philosophy inGlasgow, issued the invitation which I have copied, at the end of his"Satan's Invisible World Discovered," {12} the vocation of a seer was notso secure from harm. He, or she, might just as probably be burned asnot, on the charge of sorcery, in the year of grace, 1685. However,Professor Sinclair managed to rake together an odd enough set of legends,"proving clearly that there are Devils," a desirable matter to havecertainty about. "Satan's Invisible World Discovered" is a very rarelittle book; I think Scott says in a MS. note that he had greatdifficulty in procuring it, when he was at work on his "infernaldemonology." As a copy fell in my way, or rather as I fell in its way, ahelpless victim to its charms and its blue morocco binding, I take thischance of telling again the old tales of 1685.
Mr. Sinclair began with a long dedicatory Epistle about nothing at all,to the Lord Winton of the period. The Earl dug coal-mines, andconstructed "a moliminous rampier for a harbour." A "moliminous rampier"is a choice phrase, and may be envied by novelists who aim at distinctionof style. "Your defending the salt pans against the imperious waves ofthe raging sea from the NE. is singular," adds the Professor, addressing"the greatest coal and salt-master in Scotland, who is a nobleman, andthe greatest nobleman who is a Coal and Salt Merchant." Perhaps it isalready plain to the modern mind that Mr. George Sinclair, though aProfessor of Philosophy, was not a very sagacious character.
Mr. Sinclair professes that his proofs of the existence of Devils "are noold wife's trattles about the fire, but such as may bide the test." Helived, one should remember, in an age when faith was really seeking aidfrom ghost stories. Glanvil's books--and, in America, those of CottonMather--show the hospitality to anecdotes of an edifying sort, which weadmire in Mr. Sinclair. Indeed, Sinclair borrows from Glanvil and HenryMore, authors who, like himself, wished to establish the existence of thesupernatural on the strange incidents which still perplex us, but whichare scarcely regarded as safe matter to argue upon. The testimony for aGhost would seldom go to a jury in our days, though amply sufficient inthe time of Mr. Sinclair. About "The Devil of Glenluce" he tookparticular care to be well informed, and first gave it to the world in avolume on--you will never guess what subject--Hydrostatics! In thepresent work he offers us
"The Devil of Glenluce Enlarged With several Remarkable Additions from an Eye and Ear Witness, A Person of undoubted Honesty."
Mr. Sinclair recommends its "usefulness for refuting Atheism." ProbablyMr. Sinclair got the story, or had it put off on him rather, through oneCampbell, a student of philosophy in Glasgow, the son of GilbertCampbell, a weaver of Glenluce, in Galloway; the scene in our own time,of a mysterious murder. Campbell had refused alms to Alexander Agnew, abold and sturdy beggar, who, when asked by the Judge whether he believedin a God, answered: "He knew no God but Salt, Meal, and Water." Inconsequence of the refusal of alms, "The Stirs first began." The "Stirs"are ghostly disturbances. They commenced with whistling in the house andout of it, "such as children use to make with their small, slender glasswhistles." "About the Middle of November," says Mr. Sinclair, "the FoulFiend came on with his extraordinary assaults." Observe that he takesthe Foul Fiend entirely for granted, and that he never tells us the dateof the original quarrel, and the early agitation. Stones were throwndown the chimney and in at the windows, but nobody was hurt.
Naturally Gilbert Campbell carried his tale of sorrow to the parishMinister. This did not avail him. His warp and threads were cut on hisloom, and even the clothes of his family were cut while they were wearingthem. At night something tugged the blankets off their beds, a favouriteold spiritual trick, which was played, if I remember well, on a RomanEmperor, according to Suetonius. Poor Campbell had to remove his stock-in-trade, and send his children to board out, "to try whom the troubledid most follow." After this, all was quiet (as perhaps might beexpected), and quiet all remained, till a son named Thomas was broughthome again. Then the house was twice set on fire, and it might have beenenough to give Thomas a beating. On the other hand, Campbell sent Thomasto stay with the Minister. But the troubles continued in the old way. Atlast the family became so accustomed to the Devil, "that they were nomore afraid to keep up the Clash" (chatter) "with the Foul Fiend than tospeak to each other." They were like the Wesleys, who were so familiarwith the fiend Jeffrey, that haunted their home.
The Minister, with a few of the gentry, heard of their unholy friendship,and paid Campbell a visit. "At their first coming in the Devil says:'_Quum Literarum_ is good Latin.'" These are the first words of theLatin rudiments which scholars are taught when they go to the GrammarSchool. Then they all prayed, and a Voice came from under the bed:"Would you know the Witches of Glenluce?" The Voice named a few,including one long dead. But the Minister, with rare good sense,remarked that what Satan said was not evidence.
Let it be remarked that "the lad Tom" had that very day "come back withthe Minister." The Fiend then offered terms. "Give me a spade andshovel, and depart from the house for seven days, and I will make agrave, and lie down in it, and trouble you no more." Hereon Campbell,with Scottish caution, declined to give the Devil the value of a straw.The visitors then hunted after the voice, observing that some of thechildren were in bed. They found nothing, and then, as the novelistssay, "a strange thing happened."
There appeared a naked hand and an arm, from the elbow down, beating uponthe floor till the house did shake again. "The Fiend next exclaimed thatif the candle were put out he would appear in the shape of Fireballs."
Let it be observed that now, for the first time, we learn that all thescene occurred in candle-light. The appearance of floating balls of fireis frequent (if we may believe the current reports) at spiritualisticseances. But what a strange, ill-digested tale is Mr. Sinclair's! Helets slip an expression which shows that the investigators were in oneroom, the But, while the Fiend was diverting himself in the other room,the Ben! The Fiend (nobody going Ben) next chaffed a gentleman who worea fashionable broad-brimmed hat, "whereupon he presently imagined that hefelt a pair of shears going about his hat," but there was no such matter.The voice asked for a piece of bread, which the others were eating, andsaid the maid gave him a crust in the morning. This she denied, butadmitted that something had "clicked" a piece of bread out of her hand.
The seance ended, the Devil slapping a safe portion of the children'sbodies, with a sound resembling applause. After many months of thisreally annoying conduct, poor Campbell laid his case before thePresbyters, in 1655, thirty years before the date of publication. So a"solemn humiliation" was actually held all through the bounds of thesynod. But to little purpose did Glenluce sit in sackcloth and ashes.The good wife's plate was snatched away before her very eyes, and thenthrown back at her. In similar "stirs," described by a Catholicmissionary in Peru soon after Pizarro's conquest, the cup of an Indianchief was lifted up by an invisible hand, and set down empty. In thatcase, too, stones were thrown, as by the Devil of Glenluce.
And what was the end of it all? Mr. Sinclair has not even t
aken thetrouble to inquire. It seems by some conjuration or other, the Devilsuffered himself to be put away, and gave the weaver a habitation. Theweaver "has been a very Odd man that endured so long these marvellousdisturbances."
This is the tale which Mr. Sinclair offers, without mentioning hisauthority. He complains that Dr. Henry More had plagiarised it, from hisbook of Hydrostatics. Two points may be remarked. First: modernPsychical Inquirers are more particular about evidence than Mr. Sinclair.Not for nothing do we live in an age of science. Next: the stories ofthese "stirs" are always much the same everywhere, in Glenluce, atTedworth, where the Drummer came, in Peru, in Wesley's house, in heroicIceland, when Glam, the vampire, "rode the roofs." It is curious tospeculate on how the tradition of making themselves little nuisances inthis particular manner has been handed down among children, if we are tosuppose that children do the trick. Last autumn a farmer's house inScotland was annoyed exactly as the weaver's home was, and that within aquarter of a mile of a well-known man of science. The mattress of thefather was tenanted by something that wriggled like a snake. Themattress was opened, nothing was found, and the disturbance began againas soon as the bed was restored to its place. This occurred when thefarmer's children had been sent to a distance.
One cannot but be perplexed by the problem which these tales suggest.Almost bare of evidence as they are, their great number, their widediffusion, in many countries and in times ancient and modern, mayestablish some substratum of truth. Scott mentions a case in which theimposture was detected by a sheriff's officer. But a recent anecdotemakes me almost distrust the detection.
Some English people, having taken a country house in Ireland, were vexedby the usual rappings, stone-throwings, and all the rest of the business.They sent to Dublin for two detectives, who arrived. On their firstnight, the lady of the house went into a room, where she found one of thepolicemen asleep in his chair. Being a lively person, she rapped twiceor thrice on the table. He awakened, and said: "Ah, so I suspected. Itwas hardly worth while, madam, to bring us so far for this." And nextday the worthy men withdrew in dudgeon, but quite convinced that they haddiscovered the agent in the hauntings.
But they had not!
On the other hand, Scott (who had seen one ghost, if not two, and hadheard a "warning") states that Miss Anne Robinson managed the Stockwelldisturbances by tying horsehairs to plates and light articles, which thendemeaned themselves as if possessed.
Here we have _vera causa_, a demonstrable cause of "stirs," and it may beinferred that all the other historical occurrences had a similar origin.We have, then, only to be interested in the persistent tradition, inaccordance with which mischievous persons always do exactly the same sortof thing. But this is a mere example of the identity of human nature.
It is curious to see how Mr. Sinclair plumes himself on this Devil ofGlenluce as a "moliminous rampier" against irreligion. "This oneRelation is worth all the price that can be given for the Book." Theprice I have given for the volume is Ten Golden Guineas, and perhaps theFoul Thief of Glenluce is hardly worth the money.
"I believe if the Obdurest Atheist among men would seriously and in goodearnest consider that relation, and ponder all the circumstances thereof,he would presently cry out, as a Dr. of Physick did, hearing a story lessconsiderable, 'I believe I have been in the wrong all the time--if thisbe true.'"
Mr. Sinclair is also a believer in the Woodstock devils, on which Scottfounded his novel. He does not give the explanation that Giles Sharp,alias Joseph Collins of Oxford, alias Funny Joe, was all the Devil inthat affair. Scott had read the story of Funny Joe, but could neverremember "whether it exists in a separate collection, or where it is tobe looked for."
Indifferent to evidence, Mr. Sinclair confutes the Obdurest Atheists withthe Pied Piper of Hamelin, with the young lady from Howells' "Letters,"whose house, like Rahab's, was "on the city wall," and with the ghost ofthe Major who appeared to the Captain (as he had promised), and scoldedhim for not keeping his sword clean. He also gives us Major Weir, atfull length, convincing us that, as William Erskine said, "The Major wasa disgusting fellow, a most ungentlemanlike character." Scott, on theother hand, remarked, long before "Waverley," "if I ever were to become awriter of prose romances, I think I would choose Major Weir, if not formy hero, at least for an agent and a leading one, in my production." Headmitted that the street where the Major lived was haunted by a woman"twice the common length," "but why should we set him down for anungentlemanly fellow?" Readers of Mr. Sinclair will understand thereason very well, and it is not necessary, nor here even possible, tojustify Erskine's opinion by quotations. Suffice it that, by virtue ofhis enchanted staff, which was burned with him, the Major was enabled "tocommit evil not to be named, yea, even to reconcile man and wife when atvariance." His sister, who was hanged, had Redgauntlet's horse-shoe markon her brow, and one may marvel that Scott does not seem to haveremembered this coincidence. "There was seen an exact Horse-shoe, shapedfor nails, in her wrinkles. Terrible enough, I assure you, to thestoutest beholder!"
Most modern readers will believe that both the luckless Major and hissister were religious maniacs. Poverty, solitude, and the superstitionof their time were the true demon of Major Weir, burned at the stake inApril 1670. Perhaps the most singular impression made by "Satan'sInvisible World Discovered" is that in Sinclair's day, people who did notbelieve in bogies believed in nothing, while people who shared the commoncreed of Christendom were capable of believing in everything.
Atheists are as common as ghosts in his marvellous relations, and thevery wizards themselves were often Atheists.
NOTE.--I have said that Scott himself had seen one ghost, if not two, andheard a "warning." The ghost was seen near Ashestiel, on an open spot ofhillside, "please to observe it was before dinner." The anecdote is inGillis's, "Recollections of Sir Walter Scott," p. 170. The vision ofLord Byron standing in the great hall of Abbotsford is described in the"Demonology and Witchcraft ." Scott alleges that it resolved itself into"great coats, shawls, and plaids"--a hallucination. But Lockhart remarks("Life," ix. p. 141) that he did not care to have the circumstancediscussed in general. The "stirs" in Abbotsford during the night whenhis architect, Bullock, died in London, are in Lockhart, v. pp. 309-315."The noise resembled half-a-dozen men hard at work putting up boards andfurniture, and nothing can be more certain than that there was nobody onthe premises at the time." The noise, unluckily, occurred twice, April28 and 29, 1818, and Lockhart does not tell us on which of these twonights Mr. Bullock died. Such is the casualness of ghost story-tellers.Lockhart adds that the coincidence made a strong impression on SirWalter's mind. He did not care to ascertain the point in his own mentalconstitution "where incredulity began to waver," according to his friend,Mr. J. L. Adolphus.
CHAPTER XVII: THE BOY
As a humble student of savage life, I have found it necessary to makeresearches into the manners and customs of boys. Boys are not what avain people supposes. If you meet them in the holidays, you find themaffable and full of kindness and good qualities. They will condescend toyour weakness at lawn-tennis, they will aid you in your selection of fly-hooks, and, to be brief, will behave with much more than the civility oftame Zulus or Red Men on a missionary settlement. But boys at school andamong themselves, left to the wild justice and traditional laws whichmany generations of boys have evolved, are entirely different beings.They resemble that Polynesian prince who had rejected the errors ofpolytheism for those of an extreme sect of Primitive Seceders. For weeksat a time this prince was known to be "steady," but every month or so hedisappeared, and his subjects said he was "lying off." To adopt anAmerican idiom, he "felt like brandy and water"; he also "felt like"wearing no clothes, and generally rejecting his new conceptions of dutyand decency. In fact, he had a good bout of savagery, and then hereturned to his tall hat, his varnished boots, his hymn-book, and hisedifying principles. The life of small boys at school (before they getinto long-tailed coats and the upper-fifth)
is often a mere course of"lying-off"--of relapse into native savagery with its laws and customs.
If any one has so far forgotten his own boyhood as to think thisdescription exaggerated, let him just fancy what our comfortablecivilised life would be, if we could become boys in character and custom.Let us suppose that you are elected to a new club, of which most of themembers are strangers to you. You enter the doors for the first time,when two older members, who have been gossiping in the hall, pounce uponyou with the exclamation, "Hullo, here's a new fellow! You fellow,what's your name?" You reply, let us say, "Johnson." "I don't believeit, it's such a rum name. What's your father?" Perhaps you areconstrained to answer "a Duke" or (more probably) "a solicitor." In theformer case your friends bound up into the smoking-room, howling, "Here'sa new fellow says his father is a Duke. Let's take the cheek out ofhim." And they "take it out" with umbrellas, slippers, and othersurgical instruments. Or, in the latter case (your parent being asolicitor) they reply, "Then your father must be a beastly cad. Allsolicitors are sharks. _My_ father says so, and he knows. How manysisters have you?" The new member answers, "Four." "Any of themmarried?" "No." "How awfully awkward for you."
By this time, perhaps, luncheon is ready, or the evening papers come in,and you are released for a moment. You sneak up into the library, whereyou naturally expect to be entirely alone, and you settle on a sofa witha novel. But an old member bursts into the room, spies a new fellow, andputs him through the usual catechism. He ends with, "How much tin haveyou got?" You answer "twenty pounds," or whatever the sum may be, forperhaps you had contemplated playing whist. "Very well, fork it out; youmust give a dinner, all new fellows must, and _you_ are not going tobegin by being a stingy beast?" Thus addressed, as your friend is a bigbald man, who looks mischievous, you do "fork out" all your ready money,and your new friend goes off to consult the cook. Meanwhile you "shed ablooming tear," as Homer says, and go home heart-broken. Now, does anygrown-up man call this state of society civilisation? Would life beworth living (whatever one's religious consolations) on these terms? Ofcourse not, and yet this picture is a not overdrawn sketch of the careerof some new boy, at some schools new or old. The existence of a smallschoolboy is, in other respects, not unlike that of an outsider in alawless "Brotherhood," as the Irish playfully call their murder clubs.
The small boy is _in_ the society, but not _of_ it, as far as anybenefits go. He has to field out (and I admit that the discipline issalutary) while other boys bat. Other boys commit the faults, and compelhim to copy out the impositions--say five hundred lines of Virgil--withwhich their sins are visited. Other boys enjoy the pleasures offootball, while the small boy has to run vaguely about, never within fiveyards of the ball. Big boys reap the glories of paperchases, the smallboy gets lost in the bitter weather, on the open moors, or perhaps (as inone historical case) is frozen to death within a measurable distance ofthe school playground. And the worst of it is that, as a member of thegreat school secret society, the small boy can never complain of hiswrongs, or divulge the name of his tormentors. It is in this respectthat he resembles a harmless fellow, dragged into the coils of anAnarchist "Inner Brotherhood." He is exposed to all sorts of wrongs fromhis neighbours, and he can only escape by turning "informer," by breakingthe most sacred law of his society, losing all social status, and,probably, obliging his parents to remove him from school. Life atschool, as among the Celtic peoples, turns on the belief that law andauthority are natural enemies, against which every one is banded.
The chapter of bullying among boys is one on which a man enters withreluctance. Boys are, on the whole, such good fellows, and so full offine unsophisticated qualities, that the mature mind would gladly turnaway its eyes from beholding their iniquities. Even a cruel bully doesnot inevitably and invariably develop into a bad man. He is, let ushope, only passing through the savage stage, in which the torture ofprisoners is a recognised institution. He has, perhaps, too littleimagination to understand the pain he causes. Very often bullying is notphysically cruel, but only a perverted sort of humour, such as Kingsley,in "Hypatia," recognised among his favourite Goths. I remember a feeblefoolish boy at school (feeble he certainly was, and was thought foolish)who became the subject of much humorous bullying. His companions used totie a thin thread round his ear, and attach this to a bar at such aheight that he could only avoid breaking it by standing on tiptoe. Buthe was told that he must not break the thread. To avoid infringing thiscommandment, he put himself to considerable inconvenience and affordedmuch enjoyment to the spectators.
Men of middle age, rather early middle age, remember the two followingspecies of bullying to which they were subjected, and which, perhaps, areobsolescent. Tall stools were piled up in a pyramid, and the victim wasseated on the top, near the roof of the room. The other savages broughthim down from this bad eminence by hurling other stools at those whichsupported him. Or the victim was made to place his hands against thedoor, with the fingers outstretched, while the young tormentors played atthe Chinese knife-trick. They threw knives, that is to say, at the doorbetween the apertures of the fingers, and, as a rule, they hit thefingers and not the door. These diversions I know to be correctlyreported, but the following pretty story is, perhaps, a myth. At one ofthe most famous public schools, a praepostor, or monitor, or sixth-formboy having authority, heard a pistol-shot in the room above his own. Hewent up and found a big boy and a little boy. They denied having anypistol. The monitor returned to his studies, again was sure he heard ashot, went up, and found the little boy dead. The big boy had beenplaying the William Tell trick with him, and had hit his head instead ofthe apple. That is the legend. Whether it be true or false, all boyswill agree that the little victim could not have escaped by complainingto the monitor. No. Death before dishonour. But the side not so seamyof this picture of school life is the extraordinary power of honour amongboys. Of course the laws of the secret society might well terrify apuerile informer. But the sentiment of honour is even more strong thanfear, and will probably outlast the very disagreeable circumstances inwhich it was developed.
People say bullying is not what it used to be. The much abusedmonitorial system has this in it of good, that it enables a clever andkindly boy who is high up in the school to stop the cruelties (if hehears of them) of a much bigger boy who is low in the school. But heseldom hears of them. Habitual bullies are very cunning, and I amacquainted with instances in which they carry their victims off to lonelytorture cells (so to speak) and deserted places fit for the sport. Someyears ago a small boy, after a long course of rope's-ending in out-of-the-way dens, revealed the abominations of some naval cadets. There was notmuch sympathy with him in the public mind, and perhaps his case was notwell managed. But it was made clear that whereas among men an unpopularperson is only spoken evil of behind his back, an unpopular small boyamong boys is made to suffer in a more direct and very unpleasant way.
Most of us leave school with the impression that there was a good deal ofbullying when we were little, but that the institution has died out. Thetruth is that we have grown too big to be bullied, and too good-naturedto bully ourselves. When I left school, I thought bullying was anextinct art, like encaustic painting (before it was rediscovered by SirWilliam Richmond). But a distinguished writer, who was a small boy whenI was a big one, has since revealed to me the most abominable crueltieswhich were being practised at the very moment when I supposed bullying tohave had its day and ceased to be. Now, the small boy need only havementioned the circumstances to any one of a score of big boys, and thetormentor would have been first thrashed, and then, probably, expelled.
A friend of my own was travelling lately in a wild and hilly region onthe other side of the world, let us say in the Mountains of the Moon. Ina mountain tavern he had thrust upon him the society of the cook, a veryuseless young man, who astonished him by references to one of ouruniversities, and to the enjoyments of that seat of learning. This youth(who was made cook, and a ve
ry bad cook too, because he could do nothingelse) had been expelled from a large English school. And he was expelledbecause he had felled a bully with a paving-stone, and had expressed hisreadiness to do it again. Now, there was no doubt that this cook in themountain inn was a very unserviceable young fellow. But I wish more boyswho have suffered things literally unspeakable from bullies would trywhether force (in the form of a paving stone) is really no remedy.
The Catholic author of a recent book ("Schools," by Lieut.-Col. RaleighChichester), is very hard on "Protestant Schools," and thinks that theCatholic system of constant watching is a remedy for bullying and otherevils. "Swing-doors with their upper half glazed, might have theiruses," he says, and he does not see why a boy should not be permitted tocomplain, if he is roasted, like Tom Brown, before a large fire. Theboys at one Catholic school described by Colonel Raleigh Chichester, "arenever without surveillance of some sort." This is true of most Frenchschools, and any one who wishes to understand the consequences (there)may read the published confessions of a _pion_--an usher, or "spy." Amore degraded and degrading life than that of the wretched _pion_, it isimpossible to imagine. In an English private school, the system of_espionnage_ and tale bearing, when it exists, is probably not unlikewhat Mr. Anstey describes in _Vice Versa_. But in the Catholic schoolsspoken of by Colonel Raleigh Chichester, the surveillance may be, as hesays, "that of a parent; an aid to the boys in their games rather than acheck." The religious question as between Catholics and Protestants hasno essential connection with the subject. A Protestant school might, andGrimstone's did, have tale-bearers; possibly a Catholic school mightexist without parental surveillance. That system is called by its foes a"police," by its friends a "paternal" system. But fathers don't exercisethe "paternal" system themselves in this country, and we may take it forgranted that, while English society and religion are as they are,surveillance at our large schools will be impossible. If any one regretsthis, let him read the descriptions of French schools and schooldays, inBalzac's _Louis Lambert_, in the "Memoirs" of M. Maxime du Camp, in anybook where a Frenchman speaks his mind about his youth. He will findspying (of course) among the ushers, contempt and hatred on the side ofthe boys, unwholesome and cruel punishments, a total lack of healthyexercise; and he will hear of holidays spent in premature excursions intoforbidden and shady quarters of the town.
No doubt the best security against bullying is in constant occupation.There can hardly (in spite of Master George Osborne's experience in"Vanity Fair") be much bullying in an open cricket-field. Big boys, too,with good hearts, should not only stop bullying when they come across it,but make it their business to find out where it exists. Exist it will,more or less, despite all precautions, while boys are boys--that is, arepassing through a modified form of the savage state.
There is a curious fact in the boyish character which seems, at firstsight, to make good the opinion that private education, at home, is thetrue method. Before they go out into school life, many little fellows ofnine, or so, are extremely original, imaginative, and almost poetical.They are fond of books, fond of nature, and, if you can win theirconfidence, will tell you all sorts of pretty thoughts and fancies whichlie about them in their infancy. I have known a little boy who liked tolie on the grass and to people the alleys and glades of that miniatureforest with fairies and dwarfs, whom he seemed actually to see in a kindof vision. But he went to school, he instantly won the hundred yardsrace for boys under twelve, and he came back a young barbarian,interested in "the theory of touch" (at football), curious in the art ofbowling, and no more capable than you or I of seeing fairies in a greenmeadow. He was caught up into the air of the boy's world, and hisimagination was in abeyance for a season.
This is a common enough thing, and rather a melancholy spectacle tobehold. One is tempted to believe that school causes the loss of a gooddeal of genius, and that the small boys who leave home poets, and comeback barbarians, have been wasted. But, on the other hand, if they hadbeen kept at home and encouraged, the chances are that they would haveblossomed into infant phenomena and nothing better. The awful infancy ofMr. John Stuart Mill is a standing warning. Mr. Mill would probably havebeen a much happier and wiser man if he had not been a precociouslinguist, economist, and philosopher, but had passed through a healthystage of indifference to learning and speculation at a public school.Look again, at the childhood of Bishop Thirlwall. His _Primitiae_ werepublished (by Samuel Tipper, London, 1808), when young Connop was buteleven years of age. His indiscreet father "launched this slender bark,"as he says, and it sailed through three editions between 1808 and 1809.Young Thirlwall was taught Latin at three years of age, "and at four readGreek with an ease and fluency which astonished all who heard him." Atseven he composed an essay, "On the Uncertainty of Human Life," but "histaste for poetry was not discovered till a later period." His sermons,some forty, occupy most of the little volume in which these _Primitiae_were collected.
He was especially concerned about Sabbath desecration. "I confess,"observes this sage of ten, "when I look upon the present and past stateof our public morals, and when I contrast our present luxury,dissipation, and depravity, with past frugality and virtue, I feel notmerely a sensation of regret, but also of terror, for the result of thechange." "The late Revolution in France," he adds, "has afforded us aremarkable lesson how necessary religion is to a State, and that from adeficiency on that head arise the chief evils which can befall society."He then bids us "remember that the Nebuchadnezzar who may destroy ourIsrael is near at hand," though it might be difficult to show howNebuchadnezzar destroyed Israel.
As to the uncertainty of life, he remarks that "Edward VI. died in hisminority, and disappointed his subjects, to whom he had promised a happyreign." Of this infant's thirty-nine sermons (just as many as theArticles), it may be said that they are in no way inferior to otherexamples of this class of literature. But sermons are among the least"scarce" and "rare" of human essays, and many parents would rather seetheir boy patiently acquiring the art of wicket-keeping at school thanmoralising on the uncertainty of life at home. Some one "havingpresented to the young author a copy of verses on the trite and familiarsubject of the Ploughboy," he replied with an ode on "The Potboy."
"Bliss is not always join'd to wealth, Nor dwells beneath the gilded roof For poverty is bliss with health, Of that my potboy stands a proof."
The volume ends with this determination,
"Still shall I seek Apollo's shelt'ring ray, To cheer my spirits and inspire my lay."
If any parent or guardian desires any further information about _LesEnfans devenus celebres par leurs ecrits_, he will find it in a work ofthat name, published in Paris in 1688. The learned Scioppius publishedworks at sixteen, "which deserved" (and perhaps obtained) "the admirationof dotards." M. Du Maurier asserts that, at the age of fifteen, Grotiuspleaded causes at the Bar. At eleven Meursius made orations andharangues which were much admired. At fifteen, Alexandre le Jeune wroteanacreontic verses, and (less excusably) a commentary on the Institutionsof Gaius. Grevin published a tragedy and two comedies at the age ofthirteen, and at fifteen Louis Stella was a professor of Greek. But noone reads Grevin now, nor Stella, nor Alexandre le Jeune, and perhapstheir time might have been better occupied in being "soaring human boys"than in composing tragedies and commentaries. Monsieur le Duc de Mainepublished, in 1678, his _OEuvres d'un Auteur de Sept Ans_, a royalexample to be avoided by all boys. These and several score of otherexamples may perhaps reconcile us to the spectacle of puerile geniusfading away in the existence of the common British schoolboy, who isnothing of a poet, and still less of a jurisconsult.
The British authors who understand boys best are not those who havewritten books exclusively about boys. There is Canon Farrar, forexample, whose romances of boyish life appear to be very popular, butwhose boys, somehow, are not real boys. They are too good when they aregood, and when they are bad, they are not perhaps too bad (that isimpossible), but they are bad i
n the wrong way. They are bad with amannish and conscious vice, whereas even bad boys seem to sin lessconsciously and after a ferocious fashion of their own. Of the boys in"Tom Brown" it is difficult to speak, because the Rugby boy under Arnoldseems to have been of a peculiar species. A contemporary pupil wasasked, when an undergraduate, what he conceived to be the peculiarcharacteristic of Rugby boys. He said, after mature reflection, that"the _differentia_ of the Rugby boy was his moral thoughtfulness." Nowthe characteristic of the ordinary boy is his want of what is calledmoral thoughtfulness.
He lives in simple obedience to school traditions. These may compel him,at one school, to speak in a peculiar language, and to persecute and beatall boys who are slow at learning this language. At another school hemay regard dislike of the manly game of football as the sin with which"heaven heads the count of crimes." On the whole this notion seems auseful protest against the prematurely artistic beings who fill theirstudies with photographs of Greek fragments, vases, etchings by thenewest etcher, bits of China, Oriental rugs, and very curious old brasscandlesticks. The "challenge cup" soon passes away from the keeping ofany house in a public school where Bunthorne is a popular and imitatedcharacter. But when we reach aesthetic boys, we pass out of the savagestage into hobbledehoyhood. The bigger boys at public schools are oftenterribly "advanced," and when they are not at work or play, they arevexing themselves with the riddle of the earth, evolution, agnosticism,and all that kind of thing. Latin verses may not be what conservativesfondly deem them, and even cricket may, it is said, become too absorbinga pursuit, but either or both are better than precocious freethinking andsacrifice on the altar of the Beautiful.
A big boy who is tackling Haeckel or composing _virelais_ in playtime isdoing himself no good, and is worse than useless to the society of whichhe is a member. The small boys, who are the most ardent ofhero-worshippers, either despise him or they allow him to address them in_chansons royaux_, and respond with trebles in _triolets_. At present agreat many boys leave school, pass three years or four at theuniversities, and go back as masters to the place where some of their oldschoolfellows are still pupils. It is through these very young masters,perhaps, that "advanced" speculations and tastes get into schools, where,however excellent in themselves, they are rather out of place. Indeed,the very young master, though usually earnest in his work, must be a sageindeed if he can avoid talking to the elder boys about the problems thatinterest him, and so forcing their minds into precocious attitudes. Theadvantage of Eton boys used to be, perhaps is still, that they came up tocollege absolutely destitute of "ideas," and guiltless of readinganything more modern than Virgil. Thus their intellects were quitefallow, and they made astonishing progress when they bent their fresh andunwearied minds to study. But too many boys now leave school withsettled opinions derived from the very latest thing out, from the newestGerman pessimist or American socialist. It may, however, be argued thatideas of these sorts are like measles, and that it is better to take themearly and be done with them for ever.
While schools are reformed and Latin grammars of the utmost ingenuity anddifficulty are published, boys on the whole change very little. Theyremain the beings whom Thackeray understood better than any other writer:Thackeray, who liked boys so much and was so little blind to theirdefects. I think he exaggerates their habit of lying to masters, or, ifthey lied in his day, their character has altered in that respect, andthey are more truthful than many men find it expedient to be. And theyhave given up fighting; the old battles between Berry and Biggs, orDobbin and Cuff (major) are things of the glorious past. Big boys don'tfight, and there is a whisper that little boys kick each other's shinswhen in wrath. That practice can hardly be called an improvement, evenif we do not care for fisticuffs. Perhaps the gloves are the bestpeacemakers at school. When all the boys, by practice in boxing, knowpretty well whom they can in a friendly way lick, they are less temptedto more crucial experiments "without the gloves."
But even the ascertainment of one's relative merits with the gloves hurtsa good deal, and one may thank heaven that the fountain of youth (asdescribed by Pontus de Tyarde) is not a common beverage. By drinkingthis liquid, says the old Frenchman, one is insensibly brought back fromold to middle age, and to youth and boyhood. But one would prefer tostop drinking of the fountain before actually being reduced to boy'sestate, and passing once more through the tumultuous experiences of thatperiod. And of these, _not having enough to eat_ is by no means theleast common. The evidence as to execrable dinners is ratherdispiriting, and one may end by saying that if there is a worse fellowthan a bully, it is a master who does not see that his boys are suppliedwith plenty of wholesome food. He, at least, could not venture, like adistinguished headmaster, to preach and publish sermons on "Boys' Life:its Fulness." A schoolmaster who has boarders is a hotel-keeper, andthereby makes his income, but he need not keep a hotel which would bedispraised in guide books. Dinners are a branch of school economy whichshould not be left to the wives of schoolmasters. _They_ have never beenboys.
FOOTNOTES
{1} "Mauth" is Manx for dog, I am told.
{2} It is easy to bear the misfortunes of others.
{3} In the third volume of his essays.
{4} "I remember I went into the room where my father's body lay, and mymother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my hand, and fella-beating the coffin and calling 'Papa,' for I know not how, I had someslight idea that he was locked up there."--STEELE, _The Tatler_, June 6,1710.
{5} Longmans.
{6} I like to know what the author got.
{7} Salmon roe, I am sorry to say.
{8} "Why and Wherefore," Aytoun.
{9} _Fersitan legendum_, "Help Thou."
{10} I know, now, who Miriam was and who was the haunter of theCatacombs. But perhaps the people is as well without the knowledge of anold and "ower true tale" that shook a throne.
{11} Cannot the reader guess? I am afraid that I can!
{12} Edinburgh, 1685.
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