H. M. I.

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H. M. I.
SOME PASSAGES IN THE LIFE OF ONE OF H. M. INSPECTORS OF SCHOOLS

BY

E. M. SNEYD-KYNNERSLEY

FORMERLY H. M. I. NORTH-WEST DIVISION

MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
ST. MARTIN’S STREET, LONDON
1913

COPYRIGHT

First Edition, 8vo, April 1908;
Reprinted September 1908.
Shilling Edition, Globe 8vo, 1910;
Reprinted 1913.

DEDICATION

To E. G. A. Holmes, Esq., H.M. Chief Inspector; and to my late Colleagues of the North-West Division, by whose desire these records were put together; in ever grateful memory.

E. M. S.-K.

CONTENTS

H.M.I.

CHAPTER I
THE BEGINNING

“The Man seems following still the funeral of the Boy.”

J. Keble.

My first acquaintance with the office of H.M. Inspector of Schools dates as far back as 1854. I was then twelve years old. At breakfast we were informed that the Reverend Henry Sandford was coming on a visit. “Who, and what is he?” I asked. “Firstly, he was the son of our neighbour, Archdeacon Sandford: secondly, he was ‘H.M.I.’: that is to say, one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Schools.”

“What do they do?”

“Oh, they travel about the country, and examine the school-children in the National Schools.”

“Travel about?” I said wistfully: “I should like to be an Inspector.”

It was pointed out to me, with that frankness which is necessary in dealing with the inquisitive boy, that if I wanted travelling I had better be an engine-driver. But I replied, with unconscious sarcasm, that there were certain qualifications needed for the post of engine-driver.

Thirty years later bitter experience wrested from me the frequent remark that I did not find my work hard or disagreeable when I was once in school: all that I complained of was the travelling.

And there came another curious reminder of the conversation of 1854. One day, in the ‘eighties, I was lunching with a Roman Catholic priest, and among my fellow-guests was a much-loved Canon, who apologized for having omitted his morning shave because he was suffering from neuralgia: “and,” he added, “I have often thought I should like to be a Capuchin Monk, so that I might be at liberty to grow a beard.”

Being myself a hairy man, I pointed out that Inspectors of Schools had the same privilege. But the Canon promptly retorted that he believed there were certain qualifications necessary for the office of inspector, and he had never heard that there were any required for being a Capuchin.

This would seem to point to a classification:

1. Engine-drivers.
2. Inspectors of Schools.
3. Capuchins.

From 1854 to 1871 I was not interested in Elementary Education, though after leaving Oxford I took some part in Classical teaching. The storms of Mr. Lowe’s Revised Code passed over my head: and the Elementary Education Bill of 1870 was fought in Parliament while I was sailing home from Australia. The School Board elections of November, 1870, caused some excitement in the large towns, but the Franco-German war was raging, and the siege of Paris was of more general interest. To the supporters of the Government the New Education Act appeared to be an admirable measure; the Opposition maintained the contrary opinion; but, as is usually the case, the great majority of the people adopted one or the other side without tedious enquiry into details. I think that was my case.

In the following year without any warning my destiny began to be shaped. About Easter there came a letter to my father from our old friend of 1854, H. Sandford, who was a cousin of Sir Francis Sandford, Secretary of the Education Department, and had become a Senior Inspector. He premised that certain officers were to be appointed to make enquiries under the new Education Act—men who had graduated with honours at Oxford or Cambridge—and that the nomination of these was in the hands of the District Inspectors. He went on to enquire whether my father had a son with the necessary qualifications.

Now at that time I was a briefless barrister of something less than two years’ standing, nearly one of which I had spent in the aforesaid visit to Australia; and the prospect of work with a living wage was alluring. I was assured by my briefless brethren that the solicitors would not miss me, and that they themselves were able and willing to fill the gap. The offer of the appointment was accepted for me, and at the end of April I found myself an “Inspector of Returns.” To my extreme delight I received notice that my work lay in North Wales: Anglesey, Carnarvonshire, Merioneth, and about a third of Denbighshire formed the district of my Chief, whom I was to assist. I was to begin in May; the pay was good; I was twenty-nine, and in robust health. With such a country what could a man wish for more? The nature of the work was obscure, but presumably explanations would follow, and credit might be given to the Government that the task would be neither dishonourable nor onerous.

On an appointed day we were to attend at the Education Department at 11 A.M. to meet Sir F. Sandford, and to receive further instructions. I went accordingly, starting, as I thought, in good time, so that I might not begin with a reputation for unpunctuality. But at Charing Cross I found that there were but three minutes left, and I nervously hailed a hansom to complete the journey. With admirable exactness I reached the office door at 10.59, and enquired for the Secretary.

“Not come down yet, sir,” said the porter: “he don’t generally get here till half-past.”

I felt that I had found a profession after my own heart. Judges sat at 10; Quarter Sessions’ Chairmen at 9; and nasty remarks were made, if counsel by the merest chance in the world happened to be a quarter of an hour late. The cases in which I held briefs (with a fee of £1 3s. 6d.) could not contemplate a delay of half an hour; they were not on that scale.

Eventually the great man arrived, and pleasantly greeted the roomful of novices. We got our instructions, and were promised further information. In the following week I began work at Carnarvon. There, and in other schools in the district, we spent a few days, partly to teach me the rudiments of school work, partly to arrange a plan of campaign for my special work. It was all new to me, and I could offer no suggestions.

But I thought of the poor briefless ones whom I had left behind me in London: Westminster or Guildhall from 10 to 4; Temple Chambers for an hour or so; smoking-room at the club at night, with some remarks on the Tichborne case, then superseding the Franco-German war as a topic of conversation; and I was more than content with my lot.

CHAPTER II
ANGLESEY

“You do yet taste
Some subtilties of the isle, that will not let you
Believe things certain.”—Tempest.

It next became necessary to find out what an “Inspector of Returns” had to do. What were these “Returns”? There was the Elementary Education Act, 1870, to study, and there were Instructions of the vaguest kind. In after years I became familiar with many dozens of such documents; and I used to associate them with the words which (“with that universal applicability which characterizes the bard of Avon”—to quote Mr. Micawber) Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Macbeth:

But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor.

It appeared that the Returns were answers to questions sent by the Department to every parish in the country; What was the population? What schools had they in the parish? What schools outside the parish did they use? and so on. When we had verified the answers, we were to recommend recognition of such schools as we found to be efficient, and to state what further provision was required, with detailed suggestions. For Parliament had decreed that every child should have an efficient school within reasonable distance of his home.

This seemed simple. But the word “parish” gave us endless trouble. When we speak of a parish, we think of an ecclesiastical district; and we picture to ourselves a cluster of houses, a long street, and an old church, with the village inn and a butcher’s shop in the background. But Parliament meant, or defined, a civil parish; that is, a finite area in which a separate rate can be collected. In most parts of England the difference is immaterial; but in Anglesey, and sometimes in other places, we were baffled at the outset. The people had long ago left the old centres, and had settled down where four cross-roads met, or near the railway station, or near a quarry, or a mine. There they had put up two chapels, three beer-shops, and a general store: they had called the place after the bigger chapel, Moriah, or Carmel, or Bethesda; and, except for a wedding or a funeral, they ceased to go up to Jerusalem.[1] Now Moriah was nearly always on the edge of two or more civil parishes, and if it wanted a school, the two or three parishes would have to pay for it, though they might have perfectly efficient schools of their own in the old centres. This of course roused protests.

Then there came another stumbling-block. If a school were ordered, it would probably be built and managed by a School Board; and in Anglesey the members of the Board would be five men whose opinion on a pig might be accepted, if the pig belonged to a perfect stranger, but on school matters the pig’s opinion would be equally valuable.

A third trouble. These parishes were often so small that one could not hope to see a competent Board, unless several parishes were united. But the parishes would often rather die single than live united to their next-door neighbours. I cannot forget the fury of the Rector of Llantwyddeldwm, when it was proposed to yoke him unequally with Llantwyddeldy, and to build a joint school for the two parishes.

Lastly came the great question of rates. All the Dissenters were determined to have School Boards elected everywhere; and, to calm the minds of the small-souled brethren who feared for their pockets, word had been passed round that the rate could not exceed 3d. in the pound. To prove this they appealed to the declarations of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Forster, and to Section 97 of the Education Act. That Section is nineteen lines long in the official copy, and there is nothing bigger than a comma by way of relief from beginning to end. In the seventh line occur the words “3d. in the pound.” Who can blame a Welshman imperfectly acquainted with English, if after diving into this sea of troubles he came up gasping for breath, but firmly clutching the comfortable words THREEPENCE IN THE POUND? Finding that I was a barrister, and supposing in the innocence of their hearts that this implied some knowledge of the law, the combatants frequently appealed to me; and I assured them, with all the self-assurance of the briefless, that the Section did not limit the rate: it merely provided an aid-grant for poor parishes. And it happened that I was right. When, in the ’nineties, they came to pay rates of from one to three shillings in the pound, they must have said a good deal.[2]

Our instructions said no word about any of these special difficulties. But the difficulties faced us everywhere we went, and caused us no little perplexity. At the same time the discussion roused much interest among the leaders of the contending parties, as we moved about from centre to centre. I think it was the most stormy month of my official life.

There were few compensating pleasures. Anglesey is not a good county for an uncommercial traveller. In 1871 it was almost wholly unknown to the ordinary Briton. Travellers to Ireland were whirled through twenty miles of desolation between the Straits and Holyhead. Yachting men knew the beautiful coast facing the Straits. Occasionally a Liverpool steamer full of sea-sick tourists called at Beaumaris. Once John Bright visited that dreary capital, admired the fine view of the Snowdon range, and deplored the deadness of the town. Finding that the landlord was a Baronet, he snorted, and described it as “withering in the cold shade of aristocracy.”

Also, of course, thousands of trippers visited the great bridges. But the interior was, and is, wholly uninteresting, and the fine sea-coast was at that time almost inaccessible by land, and had no accommodation for summer visitors. The roads, except the great London and Holyhead road, were generally atrocious, and there were only three or four places where a carriage could be hired. Trees, even hedges, were rare, and there was no shelter from the frequent gales. Marshes and moorland divided villages apparently connected. Who could ask a child to go to school across a mile of wind-swept “morfa” or “rhos”? I was told the current, and recurrent, anecdote of the Tutor of Jesus College, the Welsh College of Oxford. Jones, of Jesus, asked how it was that Tacitus spoke of Anglesey as “insula umbrosa,”[3] whereas nowadays there is hardly a tree to be seen inland. And the Tutor replied deprecatingly, “Well, you know, Mr. Jones, it’s rather a shady island still.” Also William Williams, Ysgol-feistr, had said that in most parishes there was “not a stick in the place except the parson.”

The inhabitants of this terra incognita were themselves incognitiores; for even the travellers who knew the railway and the coastline had no dealings with the people. In those days Anglesey was almost wholly ignorant of English. Our dealings lay, of course, chiefly with the clergy and the parish overseers; but the latter usually brought their own ministers and elders to support them. Then the proceedings raged lengthily in the vernacular: my chief, or his assistant, conducted the enquiries: “Druidaeque circum, preces diras sublatis ad caelum manibus fundentes” (as Tacitus said of their ancestors) denounced the Catechism, while I looked on and yawned.

Thanks to the freehold tenure of Church Benefices, the island was in the hands of the Chapel. There were practically only two Dissenting bodies in Anglesey; the Calvinistic Methodists and the Congregationalists. The Wesleyans locally were a small body. The Calvinists, like the Wesleyans, were an offshoot from the Church, forced out by the folly of its rulers. They held all the vital doctrines of the Church, and, even now, could accept the Thirty-nine Articles and the Liturgy as freely and with the same mental reservations as an orthodox Low Churchman. An intelligent Calvinist told me that “Calvinistic” had ceased to be anything but an epitheton ornans: but that may have been merely his own position. I imagine there is no difference in doctrine between the Calvinists, the Congregationalists, the Presbyterians, and the Wesleyans; but their views on Church government vary.

However this may be, and my ideas on the subject are very hazy, there is no doubt that the Chapel forms part of the Anglesey life, as the Kirk (of whatever sort) does of the Scottish life. But it does not produce the Scottish virtues, and the ministers of that date, 1871, were not morally, intellectually, or educationally of the Scottish type. Certainly Truth and Honesty were not well cultivated, or else the soil was bad.

“The Chapel has stood between Wales and Heathenism.”

“The Chapel stands between Wales and Religion.”

These are the rival cries, and the reader may choose which he prefers.

There is no freehold in the Chapel pulpit: a minister who was carried out of the “King’s Arms” would have short shrift. And morality is not the only rock on which the preacher may strike. During the South African War I was spending a Sunday at a Welsh watering place, and after lunch I was talking to the landlord at the door of the hotel.

“See that chapel?” he said: “they had a new minister this morning; preached his first sermon; turned out to be a pro-Boer, and preached against the war. They had a meeting in the vestry after service, and gave him the sack before dinner. Smart work, wasn’t it?”

Wales is chapel-ridden, but it is not priest-ridden: the wary minister adopts the platform of The Cause: and there is a tendency to put The Cause above the Great First Cause. Certainly there was a lamentable want of truth and honesty in the “Returns” investigated by us in 1871, and made by, and under the influence of, these ministers and elders: and also in their ordinary school statistics.

These schools were always known as British Schools; and in theory they were carried on in connexion with the British and Foreign School Society, one guiding principle of which was that the children should have plain, undenominational Bible teaching. Up to 1871 the inspection of Elementary schools was carried on by three sorts of H.M. Inspectors. The Church schools were inspected by clergymen; the Roman Catholic schools by Roman Catholic laymen; and the other schools by laymen, of whom the best known was Matthew Arnold. In Wales the British Schools in receipt of Government grant were not numerous; and North Wales was grouped with Lancashire and Cheshire. As a rule their inspector lived in London, and, except when he paid his annual visit, they saw nothing of him. Nor indeed had he, I believe, before May, 1871, the right to enter the doors without due notice. And as the managers were for the most part unlearned men, whose interest lay chiefly in the balance sheet, the schoolmaster farmed the whole concern—that is, he took the children’s school pence, the annual grant, and the subscriptions, and paid the expenses, retaining the remainder for his salary—or, alternatively, he had a salary varying with the grant. In either case his income depended on the regular attendance of the children: for the grant was paid in part on the unit of average attendance, and in part on the success in examination of each child who had attended 250 times.

All these statistics were recorded in registers, and it is easy to see that there were many temptations to fraud and few checks. In one case the master of a large British school confessed to me that he had had no registers for three months: he had recorded the attendance in copybooks and he was “going to transcribe them.”

The religious instruction which these worthies were supposed to give—and I believe that up to 1871 it was a condition precedent of the Code grant in all schools, as it certainly was an essential feature of British schools—often seemed to have been dropped. In one case I asked casually and unofficially what the arrangements were, and the master told me he read a chapter of the Bible every morning.

“In English or in Welsh?”

“Oh, in English,” he replied eagerly; for Welsh was discouraged by My Lords.

“And do the children understand it?”

“Well, no, indeed; but it is just while they are coming in, and it doesn’t matter.”

I made no remark. We were forbidden to make any enquiry.

A charge freely brought against these schools was that when the British school inspector came down from London, capable children likely to earn a grant were passed on from school to school to be examined under the names of less capable children on the books of the recipient school. The story was generally believed, and special precautions were taken to thwart the conspirators. Detection would be almost impossible, for children in the bulk are much alike, and in North Wales few are so eccentric as not to be called by one of the six names, Jones, Evans, Hughes, Davies, Williams, Roberts. Also the inspector would be always in a hurry, and always ignorant of Welsh, and enquiries could hardly be made. But I am bound to say that I never came across an instance of this particular fraud. The only authentic case within my knowledge occurred in a Church school in Liverpool, where an inspector who had the royal gift of remembering faces, recognized a number of children whom he had seen in another school. Let it be said for the manager’s sake that he was asking for recognition only, not for grant. Recognition, quotha! Well, he got that.

I believe the trick is more common in flower shows.

It will be gathered from the foregoing account that I was not favourably impressed by the islanders, though in many cases “the barbarous people showed me no little kindness.” This opinion was not confined to visitors. I received a letter from a resident, who gave me much help in my work, speaking doubtfully of the chances of success in dealing “with these Cretan people.”

“Cretan”? or was it “crétin”? No: clearly C-r-e-t-a-n. Crete is an island—ah, I have it—

Κρῆτες ἀεὶ ψεῦσται, κακὰ θηρία, γαστέρες ἀργαὶ.

I might add “Cretensis incidit in Cretenses”; the Anglesey man is down on the Anglesey men. But I would rather not translate the Greek. You will find it in St. Paul’s letter to the first bishop of Crete, Chapter I.

This, of course, is all ancient history. More than a generation of men has passed, and the new generation may be vastly different. Moreover, there was a revival in the island not long since. The people are changed in heart.

“Do you think a Tory candidate will be returned at the next election, Mr. Jones, Ynys Fôn?” (Mona’s Isle).

“’Deed, I don’t know; yes, perhaps, I think.”

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Thus, to take a few prominent cases, Colwyn Bay, Bethesda, Portmadoc, Barmouth, Bala were known officially as parts of the civil parishes of Eirias, Llandegai—Llanllechid, Ynyscynhaiarn, Llanbedr, Llanycil respectively.

[2] The Blue Book of 1902 gives the following returns:—

In Anglesey the expenses of administration were £850 11s. 2d.

In 1882 two parishes in Carnarvonshire, Criccieth, and Llanllyfni, levied rates of 39·4 and 44 pence respectively. (See Blue Book, 1883.)

[3] But I cannot find the phrase in the Annals xiv. 29; or in the Agricola.

CHAPTER III
VAGRANT

“Sports like these
In sweet succession taught e’en toil to please.”
Goldsmith.

So we fought a hard fight for two months or more, and began to see our way more clearly. It was then that I learned a lesson, which lasted me through my official life and did me much good service: the advisability of taking the public into one’s confidence. People like to know what is going on; and, if there is to be disagreement, it is better to have it early, when explanation will generally put matters right or effect a compromise. At that time this was a hateful doctrine in the eyes of Whitehall officials: they said it “led to correspondence.” My experience is in the opposite direction: why should men write letters if they know the facts? If official inference from the facts is wrong, they ought to write. I lived to see the “free and open” policy generally adopted, and commended by My Lords.

For this reason in our enquiry we[4] took the local magnates into counsel. Choosing some place central for two or more parishes, we invited the incumbent and the overseers to meet us. The incumbent brought the landowners, and the overseers brought the chapel dignitaries. From this collected wisdom we got all the information we wanted, and sometimes good advice. Above all, we got confidence; for those present saw and heard all the information that was given us: they learned the requirements of the Act, and were told exactly how far their district went towards satisfying the law. Confidence is a plant that for special reasons grows slowly in that land; and occasionally there were outbursts of fury; but, as we shall see later, the result was that our recommendations were received with hardly a single murmur.

Through these meetings sometimes one made friendships which lasted for years: less often one met men, whom, it was a consolation to think, one would never meet again in this world, or (with good fortune) in any other world. Sometimes in out of the way corners of the earth there were odd incidents which abide in the memory and after all the long interval blossom into mirth.

A dull June day, with cold rain hanging about: a mediæval gig, and an indigenous driver, lineally descended from Caliban, and all but monoglott. We meet an aged clergyman, and Caliban touches his hat.

“Who is that?” I ask, to make conversation.

“Well, they call him Menander.”

“Menander? What does that mean?”

“’Deed, I don’t know,” was the natural and national answer.

Menander—Greek poet—never read a word of him—must have been dead 2,000 years: perhaps he came to North Wales. Wasn’t there an Early Father of that name? I think I confused him with Neander,[5] though I could give no account of Neander then or now. But why? And who? A parson; perhaps an officer of the Church. Thus I mused. Then I put it to the driver: did he think it was the Welsh for a rural dean?

“Well, yes, I think,” said he, obviously having no idea what I meant.

On arriving at our meeting-place I told my chief that I had met Menander, and that I had ascertained that he was so called in virtue of the office of rural dean. He roared. I suppose the story is told of me to this day in Ruridecanal chapters. The holy man was a bard, and Menander was his bardic name; when he wrote poetry for an Eisteddfod, he took that for a pen-name.

Another dull cold day in September. We had assembled at a spot convenient for several parishes, and many local heads had been summoned. But the district was not interested in schools, and only one incumbent and two or three farmers met us on the top of a low hill overlooking the affected area. We soon settled our business, and were about to return, when the Major appeared. He was the squire, and his interest in schools was not his ruling passion. We explained matters, and it became apparent that the Major was not a total abstainer: he had been shooting, and seemed to have found it thirsty work. The question with him was, Would we come to lunch? We accepted with qualms. It was most unfortunate, the Rector said, but he had another engagement, and he fled.

We went to the Hall, and the Major joined us in some trifling alcoholic refreshment as a stop-gap, for it was still early. We surveyed the grounds, and enjoyed the Major’s conversation. It appeared that he was a many-sided man. Ares, Dionysus, and Aphrodite were among his idols, and (like Paris) he preferred the last-named to Athene. Eventually we lunched, and to our alarm the Major began with champagne, and finished up with port. I say advisedly “finished,” for during dessert, with a hasty apology, he retired; and after an awkward interval the butler appeared with a timid suggestion that we should go away, as “we had sewn the Major up.” We stopped only to disclaim the plain sewing: there were many stitches put in before we took the garment in hand. We learned afterwards that the unfortunate man had received some injury to the head in active service, and that his brain could stand no unusual pressure. I never saw him again: the inevitable end came within twelve months.

Another September day. The school-room where we met was rather full, and I gathered that there was a special grievance. The parishioners disclaimed any knowledge of English, and a brisk conversation in Welsh followed, while I filled up forms. After some time I asked my colleague what it was all about.

“Oh, the usual thing: the Conscience Clause, and the Catechism, and they want a School Board.”

“Tell them the usual thing: must adopt the method prescribed by the Act.”

But a more animated discussion ensued: what was the matter?

“They say the Rector lives in the school-house, and keeps his pig in the girls’ playground.”

I turned on the Rector, who was listening with some alarm, and asked him whether this were true. He admitted it. Where else was he to live? There was no parsonage. A man must live somewhere.

“Je n’en vois pas la nécessité,” I quote to myself. “And the pig?”

Well, yes, sure; there was the pig there; but where else was he to put it?

I was wroth, and told him emphatically that he might keep it in the church for anything I cared. The monoglott meeting roared with laughter. They had followed the conversation with some ease—for monoglotts. I fully expected a formal complaint to the Office from the aggrieved Rector. But he was too much frightened.

Another autumn visit brought me to the parish of Llandudwal. The Chapel party were aggrieved, and unfolded their piteous tale. Weeks ago they had brought over the Clerk to the Guardians, and had had a statutory meeting, at which they had passed a resolution in favour of a School Board, and had written to the Education Department: and yet there was no Board ordered.

I explained that my functions were limited to enquiry: I had no executive powers: they should “call him louder.” Then the story went out of my front brain to that dark chamber at the back, where so much lumber lies unsuspected. But in the course of the next year I happened to be studying the Educational affairs of Llandudwal, and sent for the file containing its annals. A flash of light lit up the lumber. There are two Llandudwals; one in A. shire, the other in B. shire. Llandudwal A, which I had visited, had voted for a Board, and the application was filed with the papers of Llandudwal B. The latter had not asked for a Board; but when they were informed that their prayer was granted, and that they were to elect a Board on the 25th prox., they thanked Heaven for a Liberal Government, and like

Obedient Yemen,
Answered Amen,
And did
As they were bid.

For twelve months they had lived, though not yet born, and had, no doubt, levied a rate to pay for their illegal election.

Full of horror I broke it gently to a magnate at Whitehall. He laughed consumedly, and said Wales was a strange country. A general Act of 1873 cured this and all other similar irregularities. But think of the humour of it!

Time would fail me to tell of other journeys: bright May days with the fresh green of the larch on the hillside, and the glories of the chestnut and the wild flowers in the valleys. Hot June sunshine with azalea, and honeysuckle, and rhododendron; and the cool sea-breeze at night. July and August with the tripper in the land; crowded hotels, and noisy table d’hôte dinners; the grass is brown, and the trees have taken a uniform tint, and the rivers are low; except when torrential rains have fallen for three days, and made the Swallow Falls to rival Niagara. September comes, and the tripper ceases from tripping; the trees begin to put on their own colours again, and their autumn robes are magnificent: by the middle of October they are blazing in red and yellow; and towards the end of the month there is often snow on the hills, and below the snow the bracken is red.

Then came wild drives in Welsh cars—a sort of clumsy “governess-cart,” now almost extinct—through rain and storm to remote villages in Merioneth, and Denbighshire valleys; and then frost and snow; and all travelling became a burden. Trains were very few on the Cambrian line in winter. The hotels were empty, but how glad the proprietors were to see any one! How amiable was the ever amiable landlady! Could I have a sitting-room? Yes, sure, there was No. 1. And a car to-morrow? Yes, indeed, to go anywhere. And Dobbin was reclaimed from the agricultural operations to which he had been devoted since the fall of the tripper.

There was one journey from which I confess I shrank, and I regret it to this day. Off the far west coast of the Carnarvonshire peninsula called Lleyn, beyond the cape called Braich-y-Pwll, lies Bardsey Island. It is approachable by sailing-boat, if wind and tide are favourable; the distance from Aberdaron is about four miles, and one might choose one’s day. But, I was warned, if anything went wrong with the wind, I might be kept on the island for a week: Baedeker did not mark the principal hotel with a star of approval. The population was about fifty-two; there should be eight children of school age. There was a king; the queen was dead. Say one king, no queen, eight knaves, the rest plain; a strange pack. If I went there, and was detained for a week, I should have to charge the Treasury something over £16 for wages, railways, carriages, and boats; there would be reams of letters about it, and a Radical M.P. might bring it up in the House. “Can’t you let it alone?” said Lord Melbourne: so I did. But the next year I reported the facts to Whitehall. Meanwhile the Vice President had ruled that if the number of children anywhere, for whom no school accommodation was or could conveniently be provided, were less than twenty it was negligible. And it was agreed that the Bardsey King should take the trick, and the Deuce might take the Eight. Q.E.F.

Even on dry land travelling was not always simple. One day a kind-hearted Rector, hearing that my intended route was more than usually difficult, offered to mount me and personally conduct me next day. To my dismay he arrived after breakfast with a horse for himself, and a Shetland pony for me. As I am, like Rosalind, “more than common tall,” it was like riding a safety bicycle, the stirrups taking the place of pedals for my feet. It was a wet morning, and the road was very hilly; my mackintosh covered my steed, and nearly touched the ground. The Rector rode behind me, convulsed with laughter, and commenting on my appearance. But one must not look a gift Shetland pony in the mouth. We were due at Tyn ddingwmbob at 10 A.M., and we arrived at 12.15. The school which I was to inspect had adjourned to dinner, and there was only a fat Vicar waving a large gold watch at me.

“Pray, sir, is this official punctuality?”

But I threw the blame on my guide, and when my steed had been surveyed, and measured, the excuse was admitted: peace was made, and we lunched at the Vicarage.

Everywhere hospitality was abundant. The clergy fed me on old port: the dissenting ministers on their choicest butter-milk. The squires offered me cigars: the elders an orthodox brand of Anglesey tobacco, which would have soon repelled Suetonius, if the Druids had been in a position to try it on him; and which was called “tobacco yr achos,” or “tobacco of The Cause.”

Here I should not omit to say that the port wine was a serious question to a moderate man. Especially in Anglesey there lurked danger in the bowl. Some of the College incumbents had so far profited by a University education as to have acquired a pretty taste in vintages. One of these excellent men, having feasted me royally, after dinner brought out a bottle of port that remembered Tract 90. We finished the bottle: if I drank my share, and I feel sure I did my best, I must have had five glasses. The Rector rose to ring for another bottle. I implored him to have mercy: I had to get back to my hotel, and my appointment was tenable only during good behaviour: what if I were found in the gutter? The good man looked at me more in anger than in sorrow: “Well,” he said, “you are the first man ever dined here that didn’t like my port.”

The laity were not behindhand. Arriving at one village where I had hoped to meet the usual incumbent and overseers, I found the squire only. He told me that no one else was coming; and that I was to come at once to the Hall to discuss the school supply, and to dine and sleep. It was some one’s birthday and relations were there to honour the occasion. The subsequent proceedings reminded me of Dean Ramsay’s Scotch stories. We had much port; many bottles: and we wound up with Family Prayers. I forget who read them: “it wasn’t me.” I only remember the Squire throwing in ‘Amens’ far more frequently than had been contemplated by the compiler. We all got safely to bed, and as I was not offered the chance of smoking, and did not expect another invitation to the Hall, I had a final pipe out of my bedroom window, risking detection, as I feasted my eyes on the beauty of the June night. Did my host glare at me in the morning, or was it my guilty conscience? Tobacco was often glared at in those days.

With one possible exception all that festive party has passed away, and the tale may be told.

These were oases in the desert of a life spent in hotels. And yet there is much fun in the desert, when there are good fellow-travellers. In those days at hotel dinners we sat at long tables, instead of the “separate tables” now general in this country: and at dinner, or in the smoking-room, one picked up many pleasant acquaintances. It was not always hotels; sometimes it was inns, and the inns gave one more insight into the life of the country. There after dinner we usually adjourned to the bar-parlour as a smoking-room, where the local chief citizens would assemble to discuss the affairs of their neighbours.

It was in such assemblies that I learned how little importance is attached to a surname in Wales. We all know that hundreds of years ago people in England acquired surnames by adding to their Christian name the name of their house, or of their town, or of their trade, or what not. Thus John of Chester became John Chester, and William the Miller became William Miller, thereby being differentiated from William Tailor. In Wales, the process was on other lines. John, son of William, was William’s John, or John Williams. But the next generation reverted: William, son of John Williams, became William Jones, because he was John’s William. This may still be the custom in remote parts of Wales. It was not extinct in West Carnarvonshire in 1871, where an incumbent told me of the difficulty he had in explaining the method to the Admiralty, or the Board of Trade, when his seafaring parishioners got drowned. “If William Jones was the son of this John Williams, who claims to be next of kin to the deceased, how is it that he was called Jones, and not Williams? I am to request that a declaration may be filed.”

I can imagine the annoyance of a Government Office at this departure from the normal.

But as the possible Welsh surnames were limited to the derivatives from possible Christian names, it followed that they ceased to be sufficiently distinctive, and the local habitation, or the trade had to be appended to the surname, as in England it was once appended to the Christian name. I once asked a friend whether John Davies, whom we had just left, was any relation to William Davies, whom we had seen a week ago.

“None whatever,” he said; “what makes you ask?”

“Chiefly the name being the same.”

“Ah,” he replied, “I suppose in England you would draw that inference: in Wales it would never occur to a man to do so.”

In a country inn you might hear, “Have you heard that John Jones, Ty Gwyn, is dead? I met William Roberts, the Gas, and he told me. John Jones’ daughter, you know, married the son of Evan Davies, the Bank, that used to live at Tyn-y-mynydd, and they built a house at Cwm-tir-Mynach, which used to belong to Mrs. Captain Roberts, Garth; and William Roberts, the Gas, is her son.”

Then the company identified John Jones.

Once, when I was inspecting a Welsh school, being disturbed by the hum of conversation, I called out to a ringleader, “John Jones, don’t make such a noise.” The master looked up in surprise; pondered, and then sidled up to me: how did I know that the boy’s name was John Jones?

I retorted that I didn’t know, but that it seemed likely. It turned out that John Jones was the boy’s name, and that there were seventeen John Jones’ on the list. I was firing into the brown.

In one part of the district there were seven clergymen bearing the same name, incumbents of seven consecutive parishes. But each had an agnomen, and no one ever confused Mr. Davies, Llanfihangel, with Dr. Davies, Llanfairfechan, or either with John Davies, Llanfor, who wrote indifferent poetry under the bardic name of Job.

In these inns we varied gossip with occasional gambling. Once to oblige three hungry players I took a hand at whist. We played long whist for penny points, and we counted “honours, spots, and corners.” Honours were honours: spots, I think, meant the ace of spades; and I am inclined to believe that corners denoted the “Jack of trumph” (knave of trumps); but I plead the Statute of Limitations on behalf of my memory. I know we played till closing time, and I won tenpence. An ardent gambler with a slender purse and a weak heart might try North Wales.

At another such inn I gathered that gambling is a perilous pastime, when you do not know your fellow gamblers. “There wass three young men” said a sort of an Elder to me in the smoking-room, “that wass very desirous to play cards, and they could not get an-ny one to play with them: and, while they were waiting for some one, you know, there ca-ame in a stranger that offered to play with them. And he sat down”—here the Elder’s voice sank, and he glared at me like the Ancient Mariner—“and it is truth that I am telling you, he won from them every penny that they had in the world, and went awa-ay with the money; and (molto misterioso) they say he wass the fery living spit and image of——” (and he named a famous Baptist preacher).

“Was it Satan” (I asked) “in this unlikely garb? Why did he ‘make up’ like that angel of sweetness and light? If it was the preacher revenant, how did he acquire this skill in cards? Did he cheat, or did he exhibit supernatural skill? What game was it? If whist, why did not his partner score also? Think it was Nap, or Loo? Then why did they insist on a fourth man?”

But the Elder knew no more about “the famous victory” than did old Kaspar of Blenheim.

At another inn, where I called for such lunch as one can get in country inns, I found a small party of villagers, and the arrival of a strange Saxon produced a momentary silence. This was broken by the oldest inhabitant, who seemed to be impressed by my length of limb. Evidently he was the Mercury, or chief speaker:

“Fery high,” said he.

I admitted the charge.

“Yes, sure: going to rain, think you?”

I disclaimed special knowledge, but remarked that the glass was going down.

“Ah, weather-glass?” said the old man, after an interval for mental translation. “There wass an old man, John Jones, Llanfair, fery old-fashioned man, had a weather-glass; and one time he wass wanting to get in his hay, and the glass go up, up, up, and the rain come down, down, down, and at last John get quite mad, and he ta-ake the glass and go to the door, and hold it up to the rain, and he say, ‘There, now, see for yourself.’”

I repaid him with laughter. I suppose the villagers knew that story from their cradles, but they laughed a gentle welcome to an old friend.

Mercury was encouraged to further efforts. “Another time it came on to rain worse than that time, and the river wass above the bank, and wass carry off all the hay that wass lying about; and John Jones wass trying to sa-ave it, but it wass all carried away, and he say, ‘TAD ANWYL! (dear Father), take the rake and fork too,’ and he throw them into the river. Fery old-fashioned man, John Jones, Llanfair.”

Alas! my train came in sight, and I had to run, leaving the tale of John Jones, like Cambuscan’s, half told.

There might be Tales of my Landlords also, for in the late autumn one saw much of them. It was my privilege to visit the School Board whereof Harry Owen of Pen-y-gwryd, was a member; Owen, beloved of Charles Kingsley, Tom Taylor, and Tom Hughes. Are not his praises written in Two Years Ago? Strange to find a man out of a novel serving on a School Board. At that time his visitors’ book still contained the verses written by the three above-mentioned heroes, which may be found on page 495, vol. i., of C. Kingsley’s Life. Owen was warned to cut out the page, and frame it, as had been done with Dean Buckland’s geological note in the Beddgelert book; and he promised to do so; but at my next visit it was gone. Some one, said, on I know not what authority, to be an American, had cut out the page, and carried it off.

Another landlord’s memory I cherish, though I conceal his name, because he told me a precious anecdote:—

“I took a few friends in a landau over the pass last week, and on the way we came to Mr. William Hughes, Rector of Llansgriw; you know Mr. Hughes? and I told my friends we would go in there for a minute, just to get a rise out of the old fellow: so in we went. ‘Morning, Mr. Hughes,’ I said, ‘just driving round; thought we would give you a call, and ask how you were.’

“‘Very glad to see you, Mr. Jones, and your friends, too, I am sure. Will you take a glass of sherry this cold morning?’

“Of course we said we would, and he went off to the cellar, and came back with a bottle, and filled our glasses. I took one mouthful of it, and said:—

“‘I see you’ve taken the pickles out, Mr. Hughes.’”

One more word. How did I get on without knowing the language? I have often been asked the question. In the official enquiries I had, as I have said, the good fellowship and support of Mr. E. Roberts, late H.M.I. in the Carnarvon district, who saved me from many perils then, and now has added to my debt of gratitude by correcting the fragments of Welsh quoted in these pages. In travelling it was very seldom that I was inconvenienced, though I often got no reply to my questions but “Dim Saesneg” (no English). And that never failed to bring to mind the simple-hearted Balliol don, whose lament over the rude profanity of the Welsh peasants it was the delight of his pupils to extract by judicious questioning:

“When I was in Wales I regret to say that I was not favourably impressed by the manners of the people. If at any time in the course of a walk I applied to any one for information, I always received the reply ‘Sassenach,’ which, I believe, means ‘Englishman,’ coupled with an expression that I should be very sorry to repeat.”

FOOTNOTES:

[4] Here and throughout this chronicle “we” stands for the Inspecting Staff.

[5] I have since ascertained that Neander was not an Early Father, but a German theologian.

CHAPTER IV
LLANGASTANAU

“O good old man; how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world.”
As You Like It.

On a dreary day in October I had to visit one of the remote villages high up in the moorland district. The wind howled, and the rain beat down pitilessly, as my Welsh-car jolted me, and swayed me to Llangastanau[6] Rectory, where I had been invited to spend the night. I was by no means sure of comfortable quarters, for I had never seen my host: his invitation came through my chief. But the alternative course, a long drive in the early morning to the parish school, was still less attractive, and I made up my mind to take college port, or butter-milk, as the case might be.

When the car turned off the bleak road into a sheltered drive leading up to a solid-looking house, with gleams of light in the windows, and smoke issuing from several chimneys, my spirits rose: and when I saw the neat-handed Phyllis at the door, and behind her a scholarly, yet sociable face beaming over a well-lined waistcoat, I felt that I was in for a good thing: the lot had fallen unto me in a fair ground. There was no Mrs. Rector—there is much to be said for celibacy of the clergy—and we made our way to a library with a bright leaping fire of logs, and the most admirable furniture that a library can have, two arm chairs, a long table, and three walls lined with books. As for seats other than the arm chairs, one remembers the remark of—was it not the visitor to Charles Lamb?—“all the seats were booked.” On each chair was a pile of volumes taken down from the shelves, and not replaced: so free and careless is the celibate life. But Phyllis Jones eyed them scornfully as she passed, and during dinner they were all “put back” where Phyllis thought they would fit in. Even the celibate life is not all free.

My bedroom was equally enticing. Is it wicked to enjoy hearing the wind moan, and the rain beat against the windows, when you have a good fire burning in the grate, and there are Red Curtains to the windows, reflecting the glow? I never see red curtains without thinking of that wild night.

Before leaving me to dress, my host informed me of Rule 1 of the house: “Smoking is allowed in every room in the house, except the drawing-room;” and I had a delicious pipe and a snooze before dinner.

On reaching the drawing-room aforesaid I was told whom I should meet. First, there was the Squire—who, by-the-bye, had wanted to have me at the Hall, but the Rector would not hear of it, “though he was painfully well aware that I should be far more comfortable there.” (Laughter and dissent.) The Squire, John Trevor, had been the Rector’s pupil at Oxford; they had kept up their friendship, and the Squire had given him the living; one of the best fellows in the world. With the Squire would come David Williams, Vicar of Llanbedr, formerly at a public-school with the Squire. At Oxford they had parted; David had been tempted by a Welsh scholarship to Jesus College; the Squire and my host were at St. Peter’s. David was another of the best fellows in the world, and also one of the most humorous.

Thirdly, Mr. Morgan, the Rector of Llanfair-castanwydd-uwch-y-mynydd, which I might call Llanfair for short, was coming, because he really wanted to see me about his School Board; a most worthy man, and an eminent bard and philologian. Men called him The Druid. And lastly, might he introduce his nephew, Harry, formerly a scholar of St. Peter’s, and now, after taking a degree that satisfied even the President, much engaged in developing the Squire’s slate-quarries. The Rector added no praises of Harry, but it was sufficiently plain that the nephew was the apple of the uncle’s eye. And a more charming “rosy-cheeked apple” I never saw.

Had Harry got up the wine as directed? Yes, he had; and in a low voice he recounted his auxiliary forces. There were, he said doubtfully, two of No. 6. Who was coming with the Squire? What, Dafydd Nantgwyn? Ah-h. And he turned to me. Did I know Mr. Williams, Vicar of Llanbedr?

I replied that I had met him officially. Why did he call him by some other name?

“What, David Nantgwyn? Don’t you know the story? Do you know Nantgwyn Junction, where you change trains, if you want to go to Llanfihangel, you know?”

I admitted so much.

“Well, you remember, the train waits there for six minutes, while the engine runs on to Llanfihangel with one carriage to pick up passengers, and brings them back to hook on to the train at Nant. There is no refreshment room at Nant Station, but the wary traveller with a thirst knows that there is just time to run 250 yards to the ‘Black Lion,’ to get a glass of beer, to drink it, and to run back to catch the train. David was there last month. He was wary, and thirsty; and he ran to the ‘Lion,’ and shouted ‘Glass of beer, please, Mary bach’; but a bagman had outstripped him, and had already ordered his beer. So just as David spoke, the bagman’s beer was served. David banged down his twopence and drank the bagman’s beer joyfully. ‘Sir,’ said the bagman, ‘that was my beer.’ By that time Mary had drawn David’s beer and had put it in front of him.

“‘Was it?’ said David; ‘then this is mine.’ And he drank that too. The engine whistle was heard in the distance, and they both had to nip back to the station. David was triumphant, and now they call him Dafydd Nantgwyn. Here he comes.”

The Squire arrived with his guest. I was introduced. The Squire looked doubtfully at me, and formally regretted that he had been unable to have the honour of entertaining me. Warming a little, he added that he had heard dreadful things of me. Was I not engaged in forming School Boards everywhere? What was to become of the farmers when the rates went up again?

I laughed, and threw the responsibility on the Education Department. I was only a servant.

But he had also heard that I had said at dinner in Carnarvonshire that if a man had more than a certain income, the balance should be given to the Exchequer. He was glad to find that I had named £50,000 a year, which left him untouched; but it was a dangerous doctrine.

I dimly remembered some such obiter dictum at some one’s house, but this was, I think, the first time in my life that I had heard of any importance being attached to a remark of mine. In the smoking-room at the Club, in chambers at the Temple, or at Bar Mess, one might propose the confiscation of Grosvenor Square for the benefit of briefless barristers, and no one would object; nay, much advice as to details would be offered. It seemed that an Inspector of Returns must weigh his words. Official life has its drawbacks.

While I was thus musing the Rector of Llanfair was announced, and our party was complete. A little man, round, quick in eye and movement, and with that “tip-tilted” nose which is sure evidence of enjoyment of a joke. Friar Tuck with the accent of Sir Hugh Evans of Windsor.

I forgot to say that “David Nantgwyn” had greeted me as an old friend. I had lunched with him at Llanbedr, when I visited his parish; and had laughed at his Welsh stories till I could laugh no more. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. Alas, poor Yorick! What was he doing in that galley?

We went in to dinner, and as I passed by I heard Harry mutter to David, “Sut yma Dafydd Nantgwyn?” (How is David of Nantgwyn?) and there was a scuffle.

It is good to dine at Llangastanau. The trout came out of the burn; the Welsh mutton was a native growth; the game, if I may judge from a smile passing from host to squire, came from the Hall. The port was from the college cellars, and St. Peter’s has a reputation. These delicacies, or the like, might be got in London; but David and the Druid were local and priceless: it did one good to look at the Squire and Harry; and the Rector would have adorned—not Lambeth, but a choicest Deanery. “If there was many like him,” said Mrs. Gamp, “we shouldn’t want no churches.”

We talked of many things, wheeling round, and lighting here and there; for I was a stranger, and all that they knew of me was that I was a Socialist, and probably a Turk, Infidel, or Heretic; otherwise I should not have been sent down there by THAT Government. But by some chance remark it was found that we had Oxford as a common nursing mother, and we did better. The Rector was thirty years my senior. He was of Mr. Gladstone’s standing, and had been one of his ardent supporters: now mourned his decadence. The Squire preceded me by ten years; David was very slightly his junior; Harry was five years my junior; thus we covered thirty-nine years. Still the Squire was rather distant, till in the course of our memories I let fall something which inclined him to believe that our views of the Prime Minister’s policy coincided. After that he became most friendly. It is better, as Mrs. Malaprop remarked, to begin with a little aversion.

He “took a glass of wine with me” in the old Oxford fashion, and we got on capitally. Where had I been last week? I told him. Had I seen old Micaiah Roberts there? I thought I had, but there were two or three Robertses.

“Did you see Mrs. Micaiah?” said David; “they say that she lost her wedding-ring last year, and went to her husband to get a new one:

“‘Micaiah, I’ve lost my wedding-ring.’

“‘Well, Mrs. Roberts, what of that?’

“‘Won’t you get me another, Micaiah?’

“‘No-a, Mrs. Roberts, I will not; your a-age and your personal appearance will preserve you from insult.’”

The Druid was hot on the scent. Had I heard about Micaiah’s son?

“Some one asked Micaiah what he was going to do with his two sons. He said, ‘The eldest will be a solicitor, if he can get his articles. The other will go into the Church, like his father.’

“‘But that will be costly, my dear sir. Shall you send him to Oxford?’

“‘No-a, sir,’ replied Micaiah, ‘he will become a Nonconformist preacher; then after a year or two he will go to the Bishop and say, “My Lord, I haf seen reason to change my opeenionss, and I wish to be ordained,” and the Bishop will ordain him, and gif him a living moreofer.’”

David turned to me. “The Druid doesn’t love the Bishop; says he is a (Welsh expression—I think ‘Hwntw drwg’ or ‘bad man from yonder’); that is what we call the South Walians; and he says the Bishop’s accent is lamentable.”

The Druid admitted his dislike. “The Bishop couldn’t say ‘Hollalluog’ (Almighty) to save his mitre; and he is worse than Jeroboam; he makes priests of the lowest of the people. Five Calvinist preachers has he ordained in two years; the last couldn’t speak decent English; he was reading the Second Lesson in church the other day, and he came to the chapter in St. Luke, you know, where it says ‘there came down a storm, and they were filled with wãt-ter; and were in’—(he was following the words, you know, with his fat, greasy forefinger, and he stopped suddenly, and went on slowly, as if the ice were thin)—‘gee-o-par-dy.’ English or Welsh, the Bishop is no good.”

“Druid, Druid,” said the good Rector gently. I saw he did not like to hear the Chief Ruler thus spoken of, or his dissenting brethren scornfully entreated. “You must remember that we don’t get the pick of the chapel for our converts.”

“No, indeed,” said the other, quite unabashed, “nor of the schoolmasters either. Have you met William Williams, Rhos, yet, Mr. Inspector? He went to preach a Harvest Festival sermon for old Howell the other day. Mr. Howell, you know, Rector of Llanfochyn, is rather an old swell,” he added, for my information, “and Williams was a British schoolmaster....”

“And an excellent young man,” interposed our host.

“Oh yes, indeed, I was not saying anything against him; I would not do it whatever; but he is not quite of the same ways of acting as old Howell,” said the narrator, pleading for his story. “Well, he came, and he preached a very excellent sermon, I am sure; and whilst they were in the church a storm came on, and when service was over it was still raining very hard, and Howell said, ‘Look here, Williams, you can’t go home in this weather, let me put you up at the Rectory to-night.’ Of course he was much obliged, and they had supper, and so on, and then Howell showed Williams his bedroom, and there was a nightshirt, you know, and everything, they thought; and Williams, when he was asked whether he had got all he wanted, says, ‘inteet it iss fery kind of you, Mr. Howell; eferything, thank you,’ and they said ‘good-night.’ But in about five minutes Howell comes back, and knocks at the door; ‘Sorry to disturb you, Williams, but it occurs to me that you would not have a tooth-brush, and I have brought you one.’

“Williams took it, and looked at it, and he says, ‘Well, indeed, Mr. Howell, it is very kind of you, and I am much obliged; yes sure; but I do feel that I am depriving you and Mrs. Howell of it.’”

The Druid could hardly have found a more appreciative audience. Notably the Rector gasped for breath, and wiped away many tears of pure delight. Harry and David Nantgwyn (I have already got into the habit of speaking thus of him) shouted for joy, like the morning stars; and the Squire chortled in his glee.

“Llanfochyn is becoming famous,” said the Squire; “it was in that parish that a very remarkable sermon was preached one week-night in July. The orator was a local preacher in Zion Chapel, and the congregation were farm labourers, male and female. After some short preliminary exercises, he began:

“‘Well, my friends, you have all been busy in the hay to-day, and instead of a sermon let us take some of the principal Bible characters, and see what we know of them. There was Moses: what shall we say of Moses? He was man for meekness. And then there was h’m, h’m, Samson: Samson slew a thousand men with the jawbone of a lion: was it lion? Yes, I think: well, he was man for strength. Then there was Samuel ... and David ... and Solomon: Solomon had 300 wives, and h’m, h’m: he was man for marriage. And there was Jonah: was three days and three nights in the belly of a whale: what shall we say of Jonah? He was man for fish. And now, &c., &c.’”

I thanked the Squire warmly, for he had told the story well. But, as he truly remarked, the song wants singing; write it down on paper and it is nought. There was a short lull in the conversation while we ate, and chewed the cud of the Llanfochyn sermon. I turned to my neighbour, the Druid: “Have you been long at Llanfair, Mr. Morgan?” I asked, hoping to draw him out.

“Thirty years: ever since I was ordained. I went there as curate at first, and my rector never came near the place. I was only a deacon, of course, and the first Sunday in every month I would go down to Rhosfawr, and John Evans, Rhosfawr, would take my service, while I took his. And the first Sunday I was there, we began, as usual in those days, with the Morning Hymn, and the choir in the chancel sang it, and then we went on reading; but I was quicker than John Evans, being a young man, and when we got to Te Deum there was no singing. I looked about, and there was no choir, and I heard the clerk say (in Welsh, you know) to a lad, ‘Go down to the ‘Red Lion,’ and tell them that the little chap they have got from Llanfair has read so quick that they must come back and sing Te Deum.’ And it seemed that there was a door at the back of the chancel, and every Sunday the men would go out after the hymn, and stop at the ‘Red Lion’ till it was time to sing again. But I was too quick for them whatever. I could give John Evans (he added modestly) down to ‘Pontius Pilate,’ and beat him.”

This anecdote was evidently an old favourite with the party, and it was duly honoured.

“Had any trouble with Richard Jones, Ty’n-y-felin, lately, Druid?” asked Harry, I think, to draw him out once more.

Mr. Morgan chuckled. “He won’t have anything to say to me for a month or two, now. Last week after the equinoctial gale—you remember?—the roof of my church had suffered a little, and I was going down to the builder to see about it, when I met Richard Ty’n-y-felin. ‘Good morning, Mr. Morgan,’ he said, ‘wass blow fery hard last night: got slates off your church roof, they tell me?’

“‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I’m on my way to Moses Jenkins to get it mended.’

“He leered at me with horrible malice and cunning: ‘Wass no-a sle-ates off our chapel roof, Mr. Morgan.’

“I leered back at him: ‘D’ye think, Risiard, the Prince of the power of the air would unroof his own chapel?’ And he fled.”

“Too bad, too bad,” protested the Rector feebly; for he had laughed with the rest, though all unwillingly.

“Too bad for Richard Jones,” murmured David to me.

“Well, I am not so bad as Dr. Johnson, whatever,” retorted the Druid. “I was reading last week how Boswell found him throwing snails over his garden wall.”

“‘Sir,’ remonstrated Bozzy, ‘that is rather hard on your neighbour.’

“‘Sir,’ replied the Doctor, ‘I believe the dog is a Dissenter.’”

The Rector rose from his chair with marked disapproval. “Shall we go into the study?” he said. And we adjourned.

FOOTNOTES:

[6] Llangastanau: Castanau is the Welsh for chestnuts: I cannot imagine how the parish got its name. I saw no chestnuts, and I ought to know one.

CHAPTER V
LLANGASTANAU: THE LIBRARY

Dissolve frigus ligna super foco
Large reponens, atque benignius
Deprome quadrimum Sabina,
O Thaliarche, merum diota.

Horace, Od. I. 9.

Heap high the logs, and melt the cold,
Good Thaliarch; draw the wine we ask,
That mellower vintage, four-year old,
From out the cellar’d Sabine cask.

Conington.

I found that the Rector had a quaint custom, a survival of his Common-room days at St. Peter’s. Dinner was in the dining-room; Wine with the eponymous chestnuts was served in the library, and it was an older bin than Horace offered to his guests. We sat in a half-circle before the fire, and each man had a small table in front of him. There was even a mimic railway, copied from the St. Peter’s Common-room, to carry the decanters across the fireplace, under the mantel-shelf.

But at the dining-room door my host stopped me, and at the same time signalled to the Druid to stop. With many apologies he explained that the schoolmaster, Mr. Evans, whom I was to inspect next morning, was very anxious to see me just for a moment, if I would oblige the worthy man. Mr. Morgan, who was one of the managers, would accompany me.

Of course I consented, and we went into another room. As we passed through the hall I noticed that the Rev. David gave the master a kindly greeting, and that the latter returned it with a respectful but reproachful smile. Our business was entirely uninteresting, and in fact might have well been postponed to the morrow; but I had already learned that in country schools the Annual Inspection was the event of the year, and the filling up of Form IX. (the school statistics supplied to the Department) was like the settling of a marriage contract. Two minutes sufficed to pacify the master, and I bade him good-night. As I was leaving the room, however, I heard him say to the Druid:

“You have Mr. Williams, Llanbedr, here to-night, Mr. Morgan. Fery pleasant chentleman: eferybotty likes Mr. Williams, indeed. Did you hear about Capel Zion? Oh it wass too bahd.” And he stroked his beard with intense enjoyment.

“Capel Zion? No, what was it?” asked the Druid eagerly. “Stop, Inspector, this is good for the digestion.”

“Well indeed it wass too bahd,” repeated Evans. “You know Capel Zion, Mr. Morgan, that they have built between Llanbedr and Llanfawr? and just before it wass finished, Mr. Williams wass riding past the chapel door, and saw that they were putting up a board with a text painted on it, and it wass ‘Tʸ Gweddi y Gelwir Fy nhʸ i’; that is, sir (he explained to me), ‘My house shall be called the House of Prayer.’ So Mr. Williams looks at it, and just then Meshach Morgan, the deacon, you know, came out, and Mr. Williams says, ‘Morning, Meshach: pity to haf it painted like thaht: it will want doing again efery two years in this valley: why not have it carved on slate?’ ‘Too much money, Mr. Williams,’ says the deacon. But Reverend Williams says, oh, he should like to have the pri-vi-ledsh of presenting the new chapel with a suitable text like thaht, out off the Book that they all valued (thaht wass bahd for Meshach, because he would not haf it in the Board School at the last meeting), just to show his friendship for his Nonconformist brethren. And so it wass settled. Mr. Williams goes down to Dolgellau and orders a slab of slate to be carved, and he gives the man a copy of the text: and after a time it comes, and the Capel Zion congregashun were very proud of it, and efery one praised the Vicar for being so liberal to those from whom he differed, and the Herald bach (Carnarvon Herald) praised him too.

“But one day Elias Morgan, Felin-ddu, wass riding by the chapel after dining with the Captain, and they say he had had a glass or two—well, it is a peety—and he sees the deacon there, and calls out, ‘Hallo, Meshach, Hen Ogof Lladron!’—that iss, sir, ‘old den of thieves’—and he points to the slab. Well, Meshach Morgan looked up, and all in a moment it came to him what it wass, when he saw the slab, and the text: there it wass ofer the door:

‘Tʸ Gweddi y Gelwir Fy nhʸ i; eithr chwi a’i
gwnaethoch yn ogof Lladron.’

That iss, sir, ‘My House shall be called the House of Prayer, but ye have made it a den of thieves.’ Oh, it wass too bahd; and now they don’t know what to do with the slahb whatefer. Well, good-night now, gentlemen,” and he went.

The Druid lay back in a low chair, and kicked his little fat legs in the air, screaming with suppressed joy, but anxiously looking round to see whether the Rector was within hearing. I think I enjoyed the story no less. There are moments when life is worth living.

We made our way to the library, and found that our host was waxing impatient. The chestnuts were getting cold. “Castan da iawn” (first-rate chestnut) said the Druid with a reminiscent chuckle, and we sat down to the College port.

“Old wine, old friends, old books,” murmured the Rector, and the squire grasped his hand with a tear of affection in his eye.

“Old jokes too, eh? hen Castan,”[7] said David.

“Hen ogof lladron,”[8] replied the Druid in a low voice, and they both looked nervously to see whether the Rector was listening. Happily he was absorbed in meditation. I wondered at times whether there had been some tragedy in his life, leaving him a lonely man. But it was not my business.

“Good old chap, Evans,” said the Squire: “parish couldn’t get on without him; but he gets bothered a bit when you fellows come round every autumn. Runs the school from nine to four; keeps the accounts of a small quarry, and of a Co-operative Store at night: measures land for the farmers on Saturdays.”

“Helps me with my figures on Saturdays, too,” murmured Harry, whose education had been severely classical.

“Runs Sunday School on Sundays, and plays the organ in Church,” continued the Squire.

“With approximate accuracy,” added Harry in a carping spirit; “gets a foot on the wrong pedal now and then.” It seemed that Harry was choirmaster; and choirmaster and organist are like Bishop and Dean.

“Extraneous duties: hard work,” said I professionally.

“But good pay,” pleaded the Rector: “one way and another he gets not less than £250, with house, garden and coal.”

I admitted that this was better than the Bar; but a man who could measure an irregularly polygonous field with a semi-circular bulge in it was worth all that.

David Nantgwyn sagely remarked that some of these men were better than others. Harry interpolated the offensive comment that this differentiation applied equally to Vicars. David waved him aside with an “Avaunt, stripling,” and proceeded with a recent painful experience. His school had been vacant, and a man had applied with a testimonial from the Rural Dean, deposing that Mr. A. B. was equally admirable whether you regarded him as a schoolmaster or as a Christian—“rather implying, you know, that they are separate walks in life”—in the former capacity he was most efficient; in the latter he was exemplary. David went to see the Rural Dean, and asked his real opinion of A. B. The reply was that A. B. was a reprobate person: he had been dismissed for a series of offences, culminating in brawling in church with suspicions of intemperance.

“But, Good Heavens,” David had objected, “you stated in black and white that he was ‘equally efficient’ and all the rest of it.”

The Rural Dean was entirely unabashed: “that was only a tes-ti-mo-ni-al.”

I remarked that this sin was not confined to the Principality. An English Inspector had told me a story of a school manager who came to him at the inspection about the middle of October with a lamentable account of the schoolmistress. Visiting the school a few days back he had found that the mistress was absent; and on calling at her house he had found her dead drunk. She had been but recently appointed, chiefly on the strength of an excellent character from a clerical neighbour. He added that this giving of false testimonials was immoral and unneighbourly.

(“Whether you regard him as a Christian or a neighbour,” suggested David aside, and I accepted the amendment.)

The inspector agreed, and suggested that he should prosecute his friend and get him six months. The manager said he should hardly like to do that, but it was a scandal. Meanwhile the inspector had been glancing at what we call Form IX., the paper that Evans brought just now, and on page four he read:

“Qu. (4) Are the managers satisfied with the teacher’s character, conduct, and attention to duty?”

The answer was “YES.”

“Quite so,” the official said, in continuation of the discussion, “but I think if I were you I would modify the answer to that question,” and he laid an incisive finger on Qu. (4).

The manager was not at all abashed. “That refers,” he retorted, “to her conduct up to the end of the school year, September 30. It was on October 7 that I found her so drunk.”

My modest contribution to the gaiety of the evening was received with the courtesy due to a stranger, and many similar stories followed. The Squire, who in those dark days before the invention of county councils had to give many votes in the appointment of officials, besides his own considerable share as landlord, and quarry-lord, was strong on the moral side. The Druid and David were lamentably lax. What were you to do when a poor beggar, or (still worse) a half starved widow, demanded a testimonial for himself, herself, or son?

“What I do,” said David, the Oxford casuist, “in such cases, is to ignore the special exigencies of the post. A man comes to me for help to get a place as organist. I know he can’t play any more than your Evans; so I dilate on his moral character, his tenor voice, and his excellent business capacity. The appointer looks at the signature, and says ‘Excellent man, Mr. Williams, Vicar of Llanbedr; glad to find he speaks so highly of you,’ and ten to one the man is appointed merely by reason of my superabundant merits.”

Much plain speaking followed this audacious assertion, and all talked at once for some minutes. The Squire effected a diversion by enquiring about the expected visit of a common friend named Jenkins, a returned missionary, who was to preach for his Society next Sunday. David also knew him; had entertained him as a guest at Llanbedr a fortnight before; and in turn had been entertained by him with anecdotes of his deputation tour. “In August he was staying with Hugh Hughes, Pen-y-garth, and Hugh had kept him there for three days, so cheery a guest was he. On the Monday they had started over the pass to collect some subscriptions from the farmers; it was very hot, and old Hugh is a bad walker: when they had got about half-way, Hugh stopped him and said with his delightful stammer, ‘I s-say, w-w-what do you think this f-f-fellow will give?’

“‘Five shillings, I should say.’

“‘W-well, l-look here; here’s five shillings; l-let’s g-go home again.’ And they went home.

“Hugh admitted that he was not interested in missionary work. He added that the only Society he subscribed to was the Patagonian Mission. Jenkins naturally enquired why he selected that one.

“‘Because they tell me,’ said Hugh, ‘that the P-p-patagonians eat all the m-missionaries.’ Jenkins declared that was worthy of Sydney Smith.”

The Druid lit a cigar with thoughtful care. “We want a missionary in my parish,” said he deliberately; “some of my people are heathens. Last week I met William Roberts, Tan-y-fron: you know him, Mr. Trevor? and after a little talk—I wanted him to subscribe to the school—he says to me: ‘Well, indeed, Mr. Morgan, I don’t believe there is a God at all.’

“‘Singular thing, Roberts,’ I said, ‘but I have a cow in my field of the same opeenion.’ Oh, he wass mahd.”

This led to an acrimonious discussion on “Christian Missions,” all leaning forward in their chairs and filling and lighting their pipes with feverish haste; the Druid and David pessimist, the Rector optimist, the Squire benevolent, for, as he remarked, if the missionaries don’t do much good, they don’t have much of a time out there; and he waved a comprehensive hand over the earth beyond Wales.

Harry and I pulled out of the stream, and filled up a whisky and soda to last till peace should be declared. And Harry told me of his strange life up in the hill-country, where the joy of living atoned for the loss of Oxford society. The Rector was the finest old chap in the world; the Squire was a rattling good sort, and gave him a free hand; some of the quarrymen were first-rate fellows; of course they wanted a lot of looking after, and an Englishman would have a rough time of it, but he himself was a Welshman, and he knew their little ways. Then there was fishing, and there was shooting, and he was always fit.

And so on, till the war of words ended, and the Druid came for his whisky, and sat down by my side.

“You seem to have some remarkable parishioners, Mr. Morgan,” I remarked with deference; “but I gather that you get the better of them.”

He was much flattered. He admitted that he was too many for them. When he first came there, he confessed it was uphill work, but he had learned by ex-pee-ri-ence, and he prolonged the word to indicate the time required for his complete education. It was in the autumn, after he came to Llanfair, that a young man came to him one Saturday evening, and asked him (in Welsh) “to cry the nuts in church next morning.” “Well, of course, I did not like to let him know that I did not understand, and I asked a few questions about it; in the end I found that his mother had an orchard full of nut-trees, and the nuts were ripe, and I was to give out after the Second Lesson that an-ny one that took them, you know, would be prosecuted by law.”

“With the Banns of Marriage? And what did you do, Mr. Morgan?”

He smiled in a superior manner. “I told him it wass no use for me to cry the nuts to the people that were in church; they would not touch his nuts; it wass the people outside that wanted to be told.”

What an admirable doctrine! and what simplification of sermons it would produce if generally promulgated. But most congregations prefer to

“Compound for sins they are inclined to”

in the manner indicated by Butler. “I suppose the population is scattered in your parish?” I rashly remarked.

The Druid seized his opportunity, and drew up his chair nearer to me.

“Well, yes, my dear sir, that is what I wanted to speak to you about. It is like this. Llanfair-castanwydd-uwch-y-mynydd—that is the Church of St. Mary of the chestnut trees on the mountain, and Harry there calls me ‘Old Chestnuts,’ and I tell him if there were no chestnut trees there would be no chestnuts, that is castanau, you know—well, the parish is divided in two: there is Llanfair-castanwydd-uwch-y-mynydd-uchaf, that is the upper part, and we call that Moriah, because of the big chapel up there; and there is uwch-y-mynydd-isaf, that is the lower part at the foot of the mountain, and they call it Llan; that is where the church is. Well, the chapel folk in Moriah say——”

But at this moment—sic me servavit Apollo—Phyllis Jones, parlourmaid, announced the Squire’s carriage, and the others, who had been watching my bewilderment with much delight, rose from their arm-chairs and came around us, laughing uproariously.

“Come with me, Mr. Morgan,” said the Squire; “I will put you down outside your gate.”

“Don’t go, Druid,” protested Harry, “don’t be put down; the Rector will put you up. The inspector doesn’t yet understand which is ‘uchaf,’ and which is ‘isaf,’ and how can you expect him to make it clear to those fellows in London? Stop, and I will lend you a tooth-brush.”

The Druid saw the lead and followed suit. “Thank you, Harry,” he said, “but I will not deprive you and the Rector of it.”

And so they vanished into the night.

FOOTNOTES:

[7] Old chestnut.

[8] Old den of thieves.

CHAPTER VI
THE VILLAGE SCHOOL

“You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;
To-morrow’ll be the happiest day of all the glad New Year.”

Conceive, oh ye inhabiters of towns, a condition of existence so devoid of incident that the annual inspection of the village school is the event of the year. “Never comes the trader”; never comes Wombwell or Sanger; the Bishop holds no Confirmation here, and the Eisteddfod keeps afar off. To this people October is the first of months, because of the “Xaminashun.” September is the long Vigil, during which, in spite of late harvest, truants are hunted up, cajoled, threatened, bribed to complete their tale of 250 attendances. Rising early, and so late taking rest, the teachers struggle with their little flock. The third week comes, and the post is watched with keenest anxiety. Has the day been fixed? Surely he won’t come on the First! Surely he won’t keep us in suspense till the last week! Suppose it rains! Suppose they get the measles! “Suppose there is an earthquake,” says the Rector cheerfully.

The children do not look so far ahead, but when the actual day is fixed they catch the infection, and weary their mothers with speculations of probable success, possible failure. The eve of the awful day brings a half-holiday, on which the school floor has its annual wash: but the children hang about the playground and the school gate; for even blackberrying has lost its charm to-day. Do they lie awake at night? I doubt it, but I have no knowledge. Certainly they rise early, and clamour for early breakfast. Do they, like Falkland at Newbury, “put on a clean shirt to be killed in”? There, again, I have no information; but I know that it is a day of best frocks, of ribbons, above all of BOOTS.

And the Inspector? The children, nay, possibly the youngest teachers, think (like Poor Peter Peebles), “I have not been able to sleep for a week for thinking of it, and, I dare to say, neither has the Lord President himsell.” Alas! at Llangastanau the inspector wants yet ten years to teach him the most needful lesson, that what to him is “Wednesday’s job” is the day of the year to them. He sleeps a solid eight hours’ sleep, and dreams that he is playing football with Harry and the Druid.

In 1871 school inspection was, as a science, still in its infancy. The chief function of H.M. Inspector was to assess the amount which the Treasury should pay; and this was done by rapid examination of every child above seven years of age who had attended 250 times in the school year. Those who had made less than the specified number usually came to school to see the stranger; but in most cases they were rewarded for their habitual truancy by being sent home as soon as the great man arrived. Whereby they got a holiday, with the additional relish of thinking that the good children were on the rack.

The children under seven were, and are, called infants. There was a grant of 8s. (or 10s. if the teacher was certificated) for these sucklings, if they were present. If the weather was so bad that they could not come, or if they got measles, whooping cough, chicken-pox, scarlet fever, or any other of the dreadful list, and were unable to appear, the grant for the absentees was lost. The principal function of the Inspector in an Infant School was to call over the names of the children on the Schedule. He might go on to hear them sing; and, if he were an enthusiast, he might carry his enquiries to any length. The instructions issued by the Department advised that “every fourth child in the first class should be called out and strictly examined.” But even in my greenest days I cannot remember that I was so green as to obey that recommendation. A little experience taught me that infants should be left in the hands of their own teachers, and that the inspectors should look on. My Lords had not discovered this in May, 1871, when they issued Circular 11.

It was seldom that the examination of the elder children went beyond the three elementary subjects commonly known as the Three R’s. (What philosopher was it who first found out that reading, writing, and arithmetic all begin with R? Think of him as a time-saver!) But a town school might hunt up a few boys, who in Oxford parlance ambiebant honores in geography, grammar, history, or mathematics. There was an extra grant for a child who “passed” in one of these luxuries, but Circular 18 safeguarded the public purse by requiring that the examination should be on paper. To express themselves intelligibly on paper was far beyond the powers of these mute inglorious Miltons.

As for investigation of methods of teaching, or of causes of weakness in any subject, such refinements were but just beginning to be known. The great aim of inspector, teacher, and children was to finish by 12.30 at the latest.

Our plan of campaign was delightfully simple. Most of the children were in the two lowest standards. These were supplied with slates, pencils, and a reading-book, and were drawn up in two long lines down the middle of the room. They stood back-to-back, to prevent copying, and did dictation, and arithmetic, sometimes dropping their slates, sometimes their pencils, sometimes their books, not infrequently all three, with a crash on the floor. When we had marked the results on the Examination Schedule, all these children were sent home, and the atmosphere was immensely improved. Then we proceeded to examine the rest, the aristocracy, who worked their sums on paper. As a rule, if we began about 10 we finished about 11.45. If the master was a good fellow, and trustworthy, we looked over the few papers in dictation and arithmetic, marked the Examination Schedule, and showed him the whole result before we left. Then he calculated his “percentage of passes,” his grant, and his resulting income; and went to dinner with what appetite he might. But if the man were cross-grained, and likely to complain that the exercises were too hard, the standard of marking too high, and so on, he would be left in merciful ignorance of details. Half an hour in the evening sufficed for making up the Annual Report, and the incident was closed. Think of the simplicity of it!

We breakfast early at the Rectory, and during the meal we chew the cud of last night’s mirth. Harry and I are full of reminiscences: the Druid’s stories; David’s flashes of humour; the surpassing merits of the Squire. The Rector is a little uneasy and rather silent: at 7.30 the weather was rather bad, and if the children are kept away by rain—some of them having long distances to walk over the bleak country—not only will the grant suffer, but the teachers will be grievously disappointed. Happily the clouds lift and hope returns.

Soon after nine we visit the stables to arrange about sending me to the station in the afternoon, and the groom touches his cap to me, gazing with a wistful eye. He expresses an ardent wish that it may be a fine day for the school children, and as we make our way to the school the Rector informs me that there is a young person teaching there, to whom the groom is much attached; in fact he believes there is an engagement.

We find a long, rather low building with a thatched roof: the windows are somewhat low and narrow, and filled with diamond panes; and inside the light is scanty. There is a tiled floor; there are desks for the upper standards only; the other children sit on benches with no back-rails: both desks and benches are evidently the work of the carpenter on the estate. There is no cloak-room, and the damp clothes of the children are hung round the walls, sending out a gentle steam, as if it were washing-day next door, and the water were not very clean. About a quarter of the room at one end is occupied by a platform, which is found convenient for village entertainments; and a narrow passage by its side leads to a small class-room, “contrived a double debt to pay”: it holds the small Infant Class and it serves as a Green Room for the performers at the aforesaid entertainments.

The children greet us with effusion, and I am introduced to the teachers. Mr. Evans receives me with a smile that remembers Capel Zion, but does not presume unduly. There is Mrs. Evans, who takes the Infant Class, and also teaches the girls to sew for four afternoons a week, during which time a big girl “minds” the infants: an admirable woman, Mrs. Evans, but getting rather middle-aged for the little ones; always motherly, but not always fresh and gamesome. And there is pretty Myfanwy Roberts, formerly a Pupil Teacher here, now Assistant Mistress, “till she can save a bit.” Clearly this is “the young person,” and I admire the groom’s taste. Myfanwy is trembling with excitement in her Celtic manner, and Evans himself is uneasy, for he does not know my ways, and I may frighten the children. If I insist on giving out the Dictation, my deplorable English accent will be fatal; and if I laugh at the children’s efforts to talk English, they will close up like tulips in a shower.

The children are for the most part either black-haired and dark eyed, or red-haired, freckled, and snub-nosed: but some are pure Saxon:

“Blue-eyed, white-bosomed, with long golden hair.”

All wear their best clothes, and ribbons, and the maidens know it. They too are uneasy, and they discuss my appearance in their own tongue, which leaves me neither elated nor depressed: as when a Venetian gondolier scathingly delineates his passenger in local patois to another boatman: but the passenger’s withers are unwrung. Only when I venture into the Infants’ room I hear a murmur from a four-year-old, which the Rector intercepts and translates to me. It was, if I remember rightly, “Welwch-’i-farf-o,” “look at his beard.” I admit that in those days I had a beard which reached to the third button of my waistcoat: it had an extraordinary fascination for infants.

I call over the names of the fifteen infants, and find great difficulty in distinguishing between Mary Jones, Ty-gwyn; Mary Jones, Hendre; and Mary Jones, The Red Lion. One of them is absent, and her name must be struck off: Mrs. Evans will not admit that it is immaterial which name is cancelled, so long as she gets sixteen shillings for the two survivors: if John Jones, The Red Lion, heard that his Mary was wrongfully marked absent, there would be letters in the paper, and a meeting at Capel Carmel. Yes, sure! Mary Ty-gwyn is sacrificed on the altar of expediency.

Then I lose my heart to Gwen, aged four, and thereby win Mrs. Evans’ heart. It was Gwen, I find, who commented on my beard, and she is still so wholly absorbed in contemplation of it, that my addresses are unheeded. As I stoop down to press my suit in a language that she does not in the least understand—but the language of Love is universal—she makes a sudden grab at the object of her admiration, to see whether it is real. The other babes hold their breath in terror; but finding that Gwen does not swell up and die, that no she-bears appear, and that I am laughing, they break into a long ripple of choking mirth, in the midst of which I escape.

I return to the main-room, where the fifty “elder scholars” await me. “Will I hear a song?” Certainly I will. Is it the “Men of Harlech”? It is; and it is rendered with a vigour that leaves nothing to be desired. Mr. Evans volunteers another of a more plaintive character, and we have a native lament in a minor key, which leads me hastily to assure him that the grant is now secure.

The Rector is a keen Shakespearean scholar, and he mutters to me:

“This passion and the death of a near friend would go near to make a man look sad.”

I cap his quotation:

“An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him: I had as lief have heard the night raven.”

The Rector is so much pleased to have his trump returned, that he beams, and pats me gently on the sleeve. Think what it must be for a man to live in a parish where you may lead trumps from January to December without a chance of getting them back!

We proceed with the examination. I begin with Standards I. and II. They find the sums a little trying, though they count most carefully on their fingers. When you have a slate in your arms, it is hard to carry the reckoning across from one hand to the other without dropping the slate. I suggest to Mr. Evans that counting on fingers is not practised in the best circles of mathematicians. He is so much surprised by this novel theory, that he gasps: then, recovering himself, he says, “Well, indeed, why did Providence give them ten fingers for whatever?”

Angharad Davis, a charming maid of seven, to whom I transfer the affection which Gwen scorned, gets one sum right (out of three), and one that is not without merit. She has “borrowed” and omitted to “pay back.” I have known grown-ups to do the same thing. I ask her what she makes of four fours: she looks at me with tearful eyes and mutters something in Welsh. “What does she say, Myfanwy?”

“She says ‘nid wn i ddim,’ and that is, ‘I don’t know.’”

I think Angharad may pass for her frankness, combined with good looks.

The Squire arrives with the school accounts; and brings Mrs. Trevor, who announces that she is particularly interested in the sewing, and wants to have my opinion as an expert. Horror! Meanwhile Standards III., IV., and V. are struggling with sums, and, at intervals, with Dictation, given out by the master in a convincing accent. Then they read with a fluency that in those early days used to amaze me, knowing, as I did, that they knew very little English; till I found by greater experience that they knew the two books by heart, and could go on equally well if the book fell on the ground.

All the work is done—Geography, Grammar, History, Needlework—done before the Inspector’s eyes—all these must wait till October, 1875:[9] the children go home with undisguised joy, and I proceed to mark the papers. Evans has passed 92 per cent.; great rejoicings follow, and I am classed above the last inspector, who drew the line at 88. I fear the Consolidated Fund loses by my inexperience, but I hold my tongue.

Mrs. Trevor insists that I shall report on the sewing. There is a table covered with female garments in unbleached calico (which smells like hot glue), linen, and flannel; and I am expected to look as if I knew one stitch from another. By great good luck I drive away both Mrs. Squire and Mrs. Evans by picking up, in my ignorance, a garment so shocking to the modest eye that my critics turn hastily away, and are speechless. I hold it up to the light; comment on the backstitching (which I now have reason to believe was hemming); pull at the seams; and find that my lay assessors have fled. Rather abashed I also go, and find the Druid at the door. He has had a wedding, and he has left the loud bassoon and its moaning that he may explain to me about those hamlets with the cacophonous names.

“Good-bye, Mr. Evans: 92 per cent. is excellent. Good-bye, Mrs. Evans: love to Gwen. Ffarwel, Myfanwy.”

“Beg pardon, sir,” interposes Evans, nervously; “but you haven’t signed the Log Book, or seen the Accounts; and you have left Form IX. and the Schedule behind, and here they are.” This dims the glory of my departure, and I return to sign the Log Book, a custom of those days. The Squire comes with me, and as I open the cash-book, and wonder which is Income and which Expenditure, he remarks quite casually to the master: “By-the-bye, Mr. Evans, I have arranged with the architect and the builder to carry out the improvements in the premises recommended by H.M. Inspector last year, if this gentleman approves.”

I, of course, intimate that I should not presume to have an opinion contrary to my chief’s: and the Squire continues:

“The windows will be enlarged; the diamond panes will be taken out; the floor will be boarded; and I have ordered some new desks. If we can manage to get three weeks’ holiday without frost at Christmas, we can do all the work then.”

Evans was radiant with joy, and we started for the street. Just by the gate I again hear a soft murmur from infant lips; this time as a soliloquy: “welwch-’i-farf-o!” It is Gwen. Ffarwel, Gwen bach.

“Now, Mr. Inspector,” says the pertinacious Druid, “from here you can see my parish. On the hill-side is Llanfair-castanwydd-uwch-y-mynydd-uchaf....”

“Look here, Mr. Morgan,” the Squire says hurriedly, “come up to the Hall with the Inspector; the Rector is coming, and we will settle Moriah after lunch. Give him a rest now. Hang Moriah.”

“But it isn’t all Moriah,” the Druid was beginning.

The Rector saw his chance:

“Non omnis Moriah: multaque pars mei
Vitabit Libitinam.”

“Ye-es, sure,” said the Druid vaguely: and so it was settled.

FOOTNOTES:

[9] These and other subjects were introduced for general use by the Code of 1875.

CHAPTER VII
WINDING UP

“If it were done, when ’tis done, then ’twere well
It were done quickly.”—Macbeth.

When you are paid by the day it is very unwise to work quickly. I was very young in the public service in 1871, and that immortal, if immoral, truth had not come home to me. Therefore I had worked almost continuously for eight months, and at a speed that, if the Civil Service had possessed a well organized trade union, would have ensured a heavy penalty for “spoiling the place.”

About the second week in December, just at the time when all men were watching with bated breath the drawing near of the dark shadow at Sandringham, my task was done. I was grieved to leave the lovely country; the host of friends, an exceeding great army that had sprung up from the dry bones of Returns; and especially my chief and his family. He must have found me an all but intolerable nuisance, for I was very green, and very unofficial in disposition: but he had never reproached me, or hindered my steps. I was a little sorry, too, to leave the work in so crude a state. The plans were finished, but the execution was hardly begun. There is a fine line, which one is surprised to trace to the Rejected Addresses, because it ought to be in Shakespeare:

“And deems nought done, while ought remains to do.”[10]

And that was my lamentable case.

Let me add, too, that I was grieved to lose my pay. There were no such almug trees in the Inner Temple.

But I sent in my last batch of Reports, and my resignation. In those times of official inexperience I supposed that I should receive a polite reply, regretting, &c., and trusting, &c., and especially commenting on the fact that I had finished my work so soon. When Clive was “amazed at his own moderation,” it was, doubtless, a shock to him to find that no one shared his amazement. The only reply that I received was a formal acknowledgment of the receipt of my communication. It was not their Lordships’ way to be effusive. More than 30 years later, one of my staff, who was resigning after 35 years’ service, told me that he had not received even a postcard, unstamped, On His Majesty’s Service, to thank him, and bid him farewell. It is recorded of Lord Chancellor Thurlow that one summer afternoon on the last day of term before the Long Vacation the Bar rose from their seats, and bowed with expectancy when the Chancellor had risen. It was usual that his Lordship should say something: but he was mute; and a leader remarked, in an audible aside, “He might have d——d us, anyhow.”

Being unemployed I returned to the Bar. My practice had not suffered by my absence: no solicitors had felt any inconvenience; and my briefless brethren showed no displeasure at my return to compete with them. One remarked that he thought he hadn’t seen me about lately; and I was pleased to find that my eight months’ absence had attracted so much attention.

There is no part of Anglesey so repulsive to the well-regulated mind as is Fleet Street in the City of London. There is nothing in the work of an Elementary School so dull as the proceedings in the Law Courts. And on going the usual rounds to attend Sessions and Assizes I found that the necessity of paying one’s own travelling expenses, instead of charging them to the Treasury, was a distinct falling off.

This lasted till after Easter. About that time I got notice from the Education Department that I should be required to attend at the Office for the preparation and issue of notices under the Act of 1870, and with some hesitation, for this was neither a permanent billet nor a road to the Woolsack, I accepted the call.

The Department, having accumulated sufficient information about school supply and deficiency, was now to send to every parish in England and Wales a Statutory Notice containing their Lordships’ decision. It was my duty to advise on the issue of these notices to my former district. This occupied, with occasional intervals, about two months.

I have always since been glad that I had this opportunity of seeing the inner working of the machinery, and in after years I found it of great service. It brought me face to face with officials who signed only initials to their minutes addressed to the outdoor staff, and were disposed, if there was any dispute, to shelter themselves behind the shield of “my Lords.” When one knew that “my Lords” was J. B., or B. J., and that J. B. was only old Brown, and B. J. only young Benjamin Jones, one felt less downtrodden than when one supposed J. B. and B. J. to be possessed of the inner confidence of the Vice-President.

There were some other Inspectors of Returns summoned for similar work. Several of these rose to more important positions in the public service, but the only man that attained to distinction was one already well known to me, the late Henry Traill, whose comments on his district inspector, and on the Office generally, were our daily delight. We assembled in a decayed mansion in Parliament Street, now entirely destroyed. I suppose it stood in front of the new Foreign Office. Our hours were those of the permanent staff: we began at 11 A.M. with a margin of at least half an hour. About one P.M. there was a generous interval for lunch. The man who stayed till Big Ben struck five might have had a final half hour of quiet work. Of course there was no night work. This was better than rushing about the country in Welsh cars, catching the 8.30 A.M. train, and sitting up after midnight to make up Reports.

For the most part our work was to transcribe our recommendations from the Reports which we had sent in. When these were done, we conferred with the Senior Examiner of each area, who had to sign each notice. It was trivial work for those who had already gone thoroughly into the details.

It must be understood that the examiners—whose existence as an unexamined but nominated body of Civil Servants occasionally excites the wrath of Radical M.P.’s—never examined children. Nec examinati, nec examinantes, is their proud motto, and I think they would add sed sicut angeli in caelo. But they examined our Reports and the correspondence of the Office. There were similar officials in the old India Office. James Mill was an examiner; but in the National Biography Charles Lamb and John Stuart Mill are styled “clerks,” and probably they were of lower rank. Our examiners were appointed by the Lord President, and in answer to those carping Radicals it is alleged that high academical distinction already earned renders further examination unnecessary. I think there were exceptions, but certainly many were men of remarkable ability, and in some cases this was combined with practical aptitude for affairs. If this latter qualification were conspicuously wanting, I suppose some hint was dropped that in another career there would be more scope for obvious abilities, which, &c., &c. “The stage, or the army, or something very superior in the licensed victualling way,” suggested Mr. Sampson Brass. The fittest survivors rose by degrees to be Assistant Secretaries, and until recently one of this select body was chosen to be Secretary when a vacancy occurred.

The examiners were of two orders, senior and junior, and between the juniors and the younger inspectors intermittent war smouldered and raged. The indoor man was shocked at the irregular habits of the outdoor man; the outdoor man was disgusted by the pedantry and ignorance of details shown by the indoor official. But no blood was shed, and on both sides advancing years brought toleration. Of late years a much better tone has prevailed throughout the Office. The machinery had been oiled.

There was another class of officials, in some respects the most meritorious: these were the clerks. They were appointed in the ordinary way of the Civil Service, and rose to great eminence in their class. I imagine they worked with reasonable diligence during office hours, and if they spent some part of the time on the Civil Service Co-operative Store, and similar toys, that is better than writing poetry on office paper in office hours; which was the crime laid at the doors of the examiners. During the thirty-five years of my correspondence with the Office I think I saw only three of these excellent men, but I knew by name and high repute many more. Their mission in life was to keep the examiners in the straight path, and at times they treated both them and the younger inspectors much as a caddie treats a beginner at the game of golf; or, to put it more respectfully, as an old sergeant treats a newly-joined subaltern. Their merit was accuracy and trustworthiness; their foible was pedantry. In a treatise blending the Politics with the Ethics, Aristotle would have said that the virtue of a Civil Servant’s life was Orderly Method; its Defect is Muddle; and its Excess is Red Tape. As a rule the higher branches of the service lean to the Defect, and the lower to the Excess. The critic of Ministerial and official disasters would do well to bear this in mind when he is seeking a victim to denounce.

Among the three clerks whom I met, there was one who gave me some remarkable information. It was in my early days, and I had recently met an angry Welshman on the church side, who complained that his party did not get fair-play. There was a certain Welshman, whom we may call Jones, highly placed in the Red Tape and Sealing Wax Office, discovered by Anthony Trollope. Jones was strong on the chapel side, and according to my complainant, when there was any special controversy about schools raging at the Education Department, Jones got access to the correspondence, and put his party in possession of the case for the other side. I had declared that the story was absurd: Jones had no access to the portfolios of another Office; also it would be dishonourable, and it would be a breach of etiquette, and so on. Now, finding that the clerk whose room I was visiting had a pile of portfolios on his table, it suddenly occurred to me to ask: “Suppose Mr. Jones of the Red Tape Office sent to you for one of these files, would you let him have it?”

“Certainly; they have a right to see our files, and we have a right to see theirs.”

I made no further enquiry, and I did not communicate the result to my Welsh acquaintance. He might have replied that there was what logicians call “an undistributed middle” in the story; but that if it is found (1) that A. B. is improperly using private information; and (2) that A. B. has access to documents containing that information, one may reasonably assume (3) that A. B. went to the private documents for his private information.

With the aid of all these officials, and in spite of many obstacles offered by an army of lesser servants, called “writers” and “boys,” who hid, or lost, documents of vital importance with the easy unconcern of a slavey in lodgings, we made rapid progress. Once, when I complained that the progress was not sufficiently rapid, I was taught a valuable lesson: “you must remember that in a Government office it doesn’t do to make mistakes: it is better to go slow than to go wrong.”

Difficult cases arose at times, and these were referred to the higher officers; on one or two occasions the direction of the Vice-President was taken, and general rules were made. But, as a rule, it was straightforward filling up of forms; Form A, if the parish supply was complete; Form B, if there was a deficiency; and so on. When the cases were settled, a notice was sent to the local officials, and publication in local newspapers and on church doors was required.

By the terms of the Act objection might be made within a month after the publication of the notice, and, as popular feeling had run high during our enquiries, I looked forward to a general rising in North Wales. But in due course I received an informal communication from Whitehall: the month was up, and from all that “infected area” not an objection had been received. I replied that this must not be taken as evidence of acquiescence: it was July; the people were getting in their hay and plundering the early tourist; when they were at liberty, they would fight. “Pooh, pooh,” said the Office, “they have lost their chance.”

A little disappointed, as a schoolboy might be, that there was to be no fight, I went to Switzerland; returning in September, I found one letter awaiting me. It alleged that my proposal to unite the parish of Llanon with the parish of Llanof was the most monstrous outrage on common sense within the experience of the writer. Secondly, the writer would be glad to know why I had not kept my appointment to meet him and a neighbour on August 20. It gave me some satisfaction to reply that the meeting to which he referred was fixed for August, 1871, and that, as we were now in 1872, he and his neighbour were a year late.

No explanation was tendered by the complainant. I suspected that the local Mrs. Mailsetter had intercepted the 1871 invitations, probably at the instigation of some local politician, and had warmed them up a year later.

Was Llanon wedded to Llanof? “Jeanie’s mairit weel eneuch,” said the Scottish matron; “to be sure she canna abide her mon, but there’s aye a something.” The subsequent proceedings interested me no more. Except for occasional requests for information, I had no further concern with the district, and though I have paid very many visits to the beautiful country in these thirty-five years, it has always been as a tourist.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] A kindly critic points out that the line is merely an exact translation from Lucan’s Pharsalia, II. 657—

“Nil actum credens, quum quid superesset agendum.”

CHAPTER VIII
H.M.I.

JUDGE (pianissimo): “It was managed by a job.”
ALL: “And a good job too.”—W. S. Gilbert.

I returned to the hunt after the elusive brief. The life of this class of hunter is familiar to readers of fiction. It is ex hypothesi without incident. Month after month went on, and the Woolsack came no nearer. But one night, dining at the Club, I met a friendly official from Whitehall. Had I heard that the Lord President was going to appoint a batch of Inspectors, and that he had expressed an opinion that the Inspectors of Returns were entitled to first claim? I had heard nothing, but the idea took root, and I made immediate application.

It happened by specially good fortune that my father knew two of the Ministry, one of whom was in the Cabinet. The services of both statesmen were invoked; my former chief in North Wales supported me, rather out of the goodness of his heart, I fear, than out of conviction, for he regarded me as a firebrand; and others, of whom the most helpful and thorough was my former tutor at Rugby, the present Dean of Wells, did kindest service. In a few days a letter from the Lord President to the friendly Cabinet Minister was forwarded to my father; it ran thus:

“Dear ——

I have had great pleasure in putting your friend Mr. Kynnersley’s name on my list.

Yours sincerely,
Carabas.”

And on a folded corner was a note: “Thanks for appointing X.Y.” It was evident that X.Y. and I had been bartered. I always regret that I did not make a note of X.Y.’s real name, so that I might have followed up his public career.

Last scene of all. Some three weeks later my clerk, of whom indeed I owned barely one-fourth undivided share, came to my lodgings before I had breakfasted, with the extraordinary news that there was a brief for me in Chambers. This had never occurred before. There were briefs at Sessions and Assizes, few and far between, but in Paper Buildings hitherto the solicitors had respected the privacy of my apartment. I took a hansom as soon as possible, and drove to the Temple. There on the table was a real brief, and side by side with it lay an official envelope containing my appointment as “one of H.M. Inspectors of Schools.” This was dramatic. I accepted the brief, which instructed me to examine a bankrupt in Chambers, and I examined him accordingly. Never was I more convinced of my unpreparedness for the Woolsack.

It remained to interview the Secretary of the Department; and to leave a card on the Lord President, who regretted that he was so busy that he could not see me. Bear in mind that I did not see him; my thanks were received vicariously by his private secretary.

Now let me pause. Should I have “told tales out of school” about that letter? I doubt. And yet I decide in favour of the reader. As far as I am concerned, I think meanly of the man who will hide a good story because it is to his own disparagement; and I think that the Marquis of Carabas is untouched in his honour, I would even say in his judgment. Remember that I had all necessary qualifications for the post, including practical experience, in addition to good testimonials. And then you admit that it was an admirable appointment? That being so, I will let the story stand.

Some twenty-five years afterwards it happened that I was on a cycling tour, and chance brought me to a noble park which, by the courtesy of the owner, was open to cyclists. At the entrance there was the usual instruction to cyclists to ring a bell on approaching people or carriages; but bell-ringing had already fallen into disuse as an indispensable ceremony, though retained for emergencies. Therefore, when I saw a wagonette drawn up in the middle of the park road, I did not ring; it was the first year of “free-wheelers,” and I merely slackened pace, and planned circumvention of the carriage. In the wagonette sat an elderly gentleman, who looked reproachfully at me and said, “Yes, but you didn’t ring your bell.” The experienced Civil Servant acquires a habit of not “answering back”; he keeps silence even from good words, and I did not reply that I never rang a bell unless I wanted something; that I did not wish him to move; nor had I any intention of running into his carriage, which would have buckled my front wheel. Merely I looked at him with some surprise, and rode on pondering on the phenomenon.

Suddenly it flashed across my mind that this was the monarch of all he surveyed—my Lord of Carabas, formerly Lord President of the Council, patron of my youth, whom I had failed to see when I called in Whitehall; through whose discernment in the selection of Inspectors I had been battening on the Consolidated Fund for a quarter of a century. Ring a bell! I would have rung a triple bob major. Should I go back, and explain, ringing carillons as I drew near? Long before I could decide, I had left the park far behind. It was a Hard Case, such as the ingenious editor of Vanity Fair propounds for solution every week. What should A. do?

This is quite irrelevant to the preparations for my assumption of office. I had to pass a medical examination, and then I was gazetted. In that day, and up to 1903, Inspectors of Schools were actually appointed by the Sovereign in Council, and for this reason they were really entitled to the prefix H.M., which is assumed by many other inspectors “of lesser breed.”[11]

This being done, I bade an informal farewell to the Bar, and put away my wig and gown in a safe place, to be resumed if I were dismissed from office. Once only was an attempt made to entice me back to the Law Courts. At a London hotel, some few years after my appointment, I met a County Court Judge whom I had known in his caterpillar stage. He hailed me. Had I heard that old Z., County Court Judge at Y., was dying? I did not know the man, but I expressed decent regret.

“I thay, Kynnerthley,” he went on, with the lisp so familiar to many common juries, “why thouldn’t you go in for hith plathe? I know —— hath much interetht with the Government, and he would get it for you.”

“My dear Judge,” I said, “you forget that I have left the Bar some time, and that when I was at it I had no practice.”

He looked at me pityingly: “What doth that matter? Do you know Q., now County Court Judge at Dufferby? Give you my word he hadn’t got a wig and gown.”

“Good gracious! why did the Chancellor appoint him?”

“He taught in Thunday Thcoolth in Twaddleton.”

Alas! I had not even that scanty qualification, and I did not apply. The suitors at Y. have much to be thankful for.

FOOTNOTES:

[11] A recently created H.M.I. assures me that the method of appointment by the Sovereign is unaltered. I apologise.

CHAPTER IX
ARCADIA

“I am here with thee and thy goats, as the most capricious poet, honest Ovid, was among the Goths.”—As You Like It.

The Lord President might appoint, but the Secretary disappoints, and he ordered me to Norfolk, there to act as second inspector to the Rev. F. Synge. The alternative, for there were two places to be filled up, was Oxford, and I was a good deal annoyed at my billet. At Oxford I could have dined in hall and common-room, read my Times at the Union, and at the same time have been within easy reach of my home. But I have reason to believe that there were thorns on the Oxford rose-trees: certainly my successful rival made a very short stay in the Civil Service.

Of Norfolk I knew nothing, and it seemed intolerably remote. In those days it had no golf links, and its Broads were as little frequented as Lake Balaton. Its railway system was arranged on the plan of the Roman camp: there was a Via Principalis running north and south; King’s Lynn to Wells, Norwich, and London: and a cross line (I forget the Latin term) running east and west—Yarmouth to Norwich and Ely. The traveller who wished to wander in the back streets of the county, drove, rode, or walked. Safety bicycles were not yet: the Boneshaker was not tempting, and the Spider was perilous. Add to this a curious collection of third-class inns, and the climate of Siberia. There were days in spring when one left home in the morning with a bright blue sky overhead and a N.W. wind far more attractive than Kingsley’s north-easter: but with little warning the sky would be overcast, and whirlwinds of rain, snow, or sleet would drive one to depths of misery, and back to the third-class inn, where the chimney smoked, and there were woolly mutton chops for dinner.

There were days in April at Yarmouth, for by some perversity of judgment Yarmouth school inspections had been fixed in April, when the black east wind, fresh from the Ural Mountains, paid no more heed to the impediment offered by a brick wall than would the Röntgen rays to a deal door. There were days in June when a pitiless sun scorched the traveller till about five in the afternoon, at which time a sea-breeze from the east rose up and afflicted his throat and lungs with all the diseases that begin with a cold and end in ’itis. At such times the parched light soil rose up in clouds, and much real property changed hands.

Let me offer you the local anecdote of the parts about Brandon and Thetford, where Suffolk and Norfolk meet:

First farmer: “Neow which county dew your land lay in, Mr. A.?”

Second farmer: “Well, Mr. B., thet dew depend mostly on the wind: last week, when the wind was so wonnerful strong, thet fare to lay mostly in Norfolk.”

But, if there were thorns to the roses of Oxford, there were roses to the thorns of Norfolk. I was singularly fortunate in my chief, both socially and professionally: singularly fortunate, also, in the assistant whom we shared: both, alas! gone before. And the North-folk are among the most lovable of the peoples of the earth. It was told of Bishop Wilberforce that, after meeting with a brother Bishop, he said he had often heard of the milk of human kindness, but never hitherto had he met the cow. That cow family still browses on the Norfolk pastures, and the east wind does not ruffle its sweet temper.

Our district included, perhaps, two-thirds of the county, and overflowed into the ragged edges of Suffolk: the remaining fraction, the Fen district, was annexed to Cambridge. We had only one large town, Norwich: Great Yarmouth, the next in size, had only nine schools. Then there were about half a dozen market towns, where generally Church and Chapel maintained rival schools: the bulk of the work lay in country parishes, and involved drives of from ten to twenty miles before the morning’s school was reached.

Our general plan of campaign was that my chief, being a family man with his home in Norwich, took the Norwich schools, and many others that were within a morning drive or a railway journey. I, being a bachelor, whose abode was in Early English lodgings, usually went off on the Monday morning to one of the outlying settlements, and made that a centre for the five days. As a rule I got to school about 10 with a margin. The children did nothing beyond the rudiments. I finished the work by 11.45, went to the Rectory, and inspected the garden, or played croquet with the Rector’s daughters: had a noble lunch; drove back to my inn, marked the school papers, wrote the Report, and posted it: and then—there was a night of Arctic winter length, and not a soul to speak to. Coming fresh from London club life, I found this plunge into solitude quite appalling.

A philosopher, whose name I forget, remarked (see Cicero de Officiis) that he was never less alone than when he was alone. But he would have admitted that he was never so much alone as when he was alone in a market town inn:[12] the banal laughter of the commercial-room, and the murmurs of talk from the nightly assemblage of local magnates who frequented the bar-parlour, and interchanged pleasantries with the young lady at the bar—these rose up, as did similar sounds in Sweet Auburn, and made the hearer as melancholy as the bard.

But this is merely a matter of habit. At the end of two years I found the life quite agreeable, and two of the hotels—Dereham and Fakenham, but I am not sure of the eponymous beasts, or heraldic bearings—sweetened comfort with an ever genial welcome.

The country schools were usually very small, and sometimes very bad. A very green girl, fresh from the training college, would take a school, and at the end of the year would get a poor report. In her second year she would work with more vigour and more skill, and would get a Report sufficiently good to earn her Parchment Certificate.[13] Then she would take another school, or a husband, and the education of the village would relapse. I wonder whether this alternate method still obtains. “Amant alterna Camaenae” we are told, but I cannot remember that any of the Nine Sisters took any interest in Elementary Education.

What girl of 20 to 30 would willingly stay for more than two years in a country village from five to ten miles distant from a railway station, with no shop windows to look at, and no eligible young men to look at her?

“For either it was different in blood,
(O cross! too high to be enthralled to low)
Or else misgraffed in respect of years,
(O spite! too old to be engaged to young.)”

In North Wales I hardly ever saw a village school mistress other than a married woman. Owing to the deplorably low moral tone of the people it was said to be impossible for a single girl to hold such an appointment. In Norfolk there was not a shadow of hesitation on this account: brains were scarce there, as everywhere, but morals were sound: a good girl at £50 was better than a bad man at £80, and the managers took their chance of the good girl who would go, in preference to the bad man who would stay.

I have my old official note-books of that time, recording the school statistics and draft reports, and I see that in two autumn weeks I inspected a total of 606 children at a cost to the country in travelling expenses of £11. In Manchester, 30 years later, I could find 600 children in a single department of a school by spending twopence on a tram-car, and the day’s travelling from doorstep to doorstep might take 40 minutes. In Norfolk the real labour of the day was the travelling, and it would often take two hours’ drive to reach a school with no more children than you could put in a tram-car.

Yet there were compensations in these long drives. The dearth of railways made it worth the while of the hotel proprietors to keep good cattle, and the horses were splendid. I have driven 14 miles in an hour, without use of whip, to catch a train. Equally precious were the drivers. O Charlie B.! aged friend and charioteer for three years. How many miles we journeyed behind that black horse, or those black horses; and how delightful was your conversation! We began daily with the same opening:

He: “Let’s see: where is it tu this marnin? Norton? (meditatively) Norton Red Lion? (he always associated the village with its inn). Neow which way du thet lay, I wonder?”

I: “According to the map it is beyond Weston.”

He: “Weston Black Dog: why I was there last week for a funeral: let me see, where did I fetch that corpse from?”

For when not driving me and the black horse to school, he was driving the black horse, or horses, in a hearse to a funeral; and during the Burial Service he baited the horses and himself at the “Red Lion” or the “Black Dog.”

Thus guided by the association of ideas, Charlie took my vile body within three or four miles of Norton, and then hailed a native: “Which way should I go to get to Norton; far to go the nighest way?” Implying that he knew several routes, but was unable to decide on the best. The school was then found. Very seldom he put up at the “Red Lion”; usually he went straight to the Rectory, where he got entertainment for man and beast, and provided entertainment for the cook by retailing the latest news from Norwich.

Our conversation was most improving. All that I knew about “The Principles of Agriculture”—a possible subject of examination in schools—I got from Charlie in those drives. He did his best to teach a short-sighted man the difference between swedes, mangolds, and turnips; and between wheat, oats, and barley, before their ears were developed. He taught me not to expect a field of wheat where I had been so much pleased with the crop last year. It would be three years before the phenomenon recurred, and in those years other vegetables would be seen. This was not to relieve the monotony of agricultural life, and so to bring the labourer “back to the land,” but for certain agricultural-chemical reasons which Charlie did not explain.

He had views about cattle, too, and their approximate value, and attributed the introduction of cattle plague to Gu-anner. Also he discoursed upon birds, plants, and flowers under their Norfolk names, such as Stubin wood, Pretty Betsy, Mergule, and White Rim, and gave me much information. In return one day, as I travelled with my colleague, I taught him indirectly the mysteries of Roadside Cribbage: you know the game? A. and B., sitting right and left, count all the men and beasts on their respective sides of the road within the limits of two hedges, marking ten for a white horse and ten for a windmill: the higher score at the end of an agreed distance or time wins the game, but a cat on the window-sill, or an old woman in spectacles is Game at once. Charlie was referee about the shade of the horses claimed as “white”; he watched the game with the keenest interest, and once, when I snatched a victory at the last moment in the face of a heavy majority, by espying a spectacled hag, he rolled about in tearful laughter till the black horse wondered if we had been to a funeral in his dog-cart.

The scenery was tame as a rule. On the east side about Yarmouth, and on the west edge towards the Fens it was hideous. But in May and June the rest of the district was pleasant enough, and the typical English village, with its broad main street edged with white-walled, thatch-roofed cottages; its old grey church and snug Rectory and neat school, all in a ring fence, made such a charming picture that I recommended an American tourist visiting England in search of antiquity to drive 20 miles in East Anglia in June. I suppose he would think little of a hundred-acre field of wheat; but to us men of small standards—I am told you may put all England into New York State—this great expanse of rolling gold, when

“A light wind blew from the gates of the sun,
And waves of shadow went over the wheat,”

atoned for a long drive on a burning August day.

September in Norfolk is said to be delightful. I distrust people who boast of only one month in the year, and that a month which falls in the holidays. (We began our year’s work on October 1.) But I love them much, and I am ready to concede September.

The records of those old note-books are often astonishing. These are village schools noted in one volume:

A. Certificated Teacher’s salary, £36 without house; 72 children present: 34 examined: passed 22¹⁄₂ per cent.

B. Out of 121 children on the books only 36 have made 250 attendances: deep snow kept away 11 of these on the day of inspection.

C. 76 children on the books: 38 examined: passed 18 per cent.

D. 17 examined: passed 37¹⁄₂ per cent.

Let me explain the technical terms. If a child did not come to school 250 times in the year he could not be examined. As the schools were usually open 440 times (that is 220 days) in the year, it was not a hard bargain. This was before the Act of 1876, which made attendance compulsory everywhere. Now in the case of School C, which “passed 18 per cent.,” each of the 38 children might have passed in three subjects, called the Three R’s, making 114 passes in all: instead of which, 12 passed in Reading, 5 in Writing, and 4 in Arithmetic.

A little further on I have a note of a poem in use at a school, marking an early attempt at the co-ordination of elementary education with undenominational morality:

20 pence are ¹⁄₈,
Wash your face and comb your hair.
30 pence are ²⁄₆,
Every day to school repair.
(Here is a lamentable gap.)
80 pence are ⁶⁄₈,
Mind what you are taught in school:
90 pence are ⁷⁄₆,
Never call your brother a fool.

Write it myself? Certainly not. I could have managed the mathematical part, but the ethical deductions would never have occurred to me.

Elsewhere I come to notes of odd names borne by the children. Here is a girl called Himalaya, because she was born in the troopship of that name, the ship that carried Charles Ravenshoe to Malta and the East. She was a lucky girl, felix opportunitate nativitatis, for the other troopers were Serapis and Crocodile. Who would marry a Crocodile?

Also there is a child named Laste. I asked the Rector whether I should say Last, or Lastee? and whether It was a boy or a girl. It was a boy, and the Rector well remembered baptizing It. “Name this child,” he said, and the father replied “Last.” “How do you spell it?” said the puzzled priest. The father said he didn’t spell it at all, but It was the tenth, and he wasn’t going to have any more. But he had three more.

“What did he call them?”

The Rector did not know! What amazing indifference! The Curate suggested “Knave, Queen, King,” and was “Highly Commended.”

The ingenuity of parents in choosing names for their offspring was truly remarkable. At the end of one note-book I find this list, the result of six months’ collection: in each case I have the name of the school in which the child was enrolled:

“Loral, Iho, Bylettia, Jerusia, Fitty, Belden (girl), Asabiah (boy), Dees (boy), Atelia, Ebert.”

I suspected Jerusia and Asabiah of Biblical extraction, and after searching Smith’s Dictionary I can identify them with Jerusha, and Hashabiah, whose history I do not remember. Atelia must have been Athaliah. “Fitty,” the note says, “is a nickname, but his mother doesn’t know any other.” Why not Commodus? “who, under the appellation of Commodious, was held by Mr. Boffin not to have acted up to his name.”

Another book contains an epitaph. There are many collections of such things published, but I do not possess one, and for anything I know this may be as well known to collectors as the epitaph of her who was “first cousin to Burke, commonly called the Sublime.” For those who share my ignorance I subjoin it, premising that it was in memory of a former Rector of—let us call it Cornerstone:

“Who for his uniform exemplary practice
of the moral and Social virtues
and a faithful discharge of
the duties of his Ministerial office
was greatly and deservedly esteemed,
and with that decent unconcern
which the Review of a well-spent life
naturally inspires,
Quitted this world Aug—, 1769.”

I like “decent unconcern.”

But Cornerstone is memorable in another way not recorded in my school note-book. The Rectory had at one time been haunted by two ghosts. One was a former Rector with a wooden leg, who every night at the midnight hour came stumping down the cellar steps to fetch himself beer. I like to think that he was the “decently unconcerned” one, who had found out his mistake. The other was a lady, and an illustrious one: no less than Amy Robsart. How it came to pass that Amy (who, according to Sir Walter, lived “on the frontiers of Devon” and was murdered at Cumnor) haunted a Norfolk Rectory, you must ask Mr. Andrew Lang. Sir Walter never let history or geography stand in his way, and one would not condemn a ghost on his evidence. There she was; she was known as Mistress Amy, and she walked about at the midnight hour in a silk dress that rustled. The Rector for the time being no doubt regarded this strangely assorted couple of incorporeal hereditaments with decent unconcern, but no servant would stay in the house. I think it was my host who put an end to the servile war by importing some Breton lasses who spoke no word of English. As it was impossible that any villager should forewarn them, they were not on the look out: or perchance the ghosts were only

“Doomed for a certain term to walk the night”

and the term had expired. Certainly the plague ceased, and the confidence of the village was restored. Thenceforth servants were plentiful.

That veritable history is not in my note-book: there is little in it of the slightest interest: there is no record of the human element in our inspecting life; no record of the constant succession of anxious managers, distracted teachers, half-distracted and half-delighted children, whose absorbing interest in the day’s work was a constant reproach to me.

The teachers alone would fill a volume:

“with your remembered faces,
Dear men and women, whom I sought and slew,”

as an Inspector-poet[14] once sang—the note-books record only your names with a few dry official details; but memory brings back much more. It was a hard life for the pioneers in the back-woods of Arcady in the early ’seventies. You laboured, and other men have entered into your labours. Ill-paid, often ill-housed; worried by inspectors; worried by managers and managers’ wives; worried by parents, and worried by children, who came to school as a personal favour, and, if affronted, stayed away for a week, you served your generation. There can be few, if any, still at work whom I knew in Arcady thirty years ago; but as I look through these books I see the names of many whom all men honoured, and who reaped a full reward in the affectionate gratitude of the children.

And those children! shall they have never a word? How they assembled in the early morning, and haunted the precincts till 8.50, when they were admitted into school, and harangued on behaviour; how they, beribboned, brought down flaxen-haired, blue-eyed infants still more beribboned, and too much pleased with the ribbons to take thought for the inspector; while comely matrons stood at their doors representing the past, but carrying in their arms the scholars of the future: how they waited wearily till the Man arrived, and then in audible whispers discussed the question whether It was The Same—with apparent reference to the inspection of the previous year; how they struggled tearfully through the morning; fled home; and, what time the Inspectors had emerged from the ever hospitable Rectory, and were gazing at the tombs of the rude forefathers in the churchyard, were ready, clad in their workaday suits, to see their enemies off with faintly subdued derisive cheers.

And the Rector and Rectoress said, “Well, that’s over for another year.”

And the teachers said, “Thank Goodness, that is done; he seemed in a pretty good temper.”

And H.M.I. said to his colleague: “Nice old boy. What induced him to marry her? Never mind; sha’n’t see her again for a year. What school to-morrow? Home, Charlie.”

FOOTNOTES:

[12] “In respect that it is solitary I like it very well, but in respect that it is private it is a very vile life,” said Touchstone.

[13] Certificate printed on parchment, attesting competence as teacher. See Chapter on “Reports.”

[14] F. H. Myers, St. Paul.

CHAPTER X
ARCADIA CLERICORUM

“I am one that had rather go with sir priest,
than sir knight.”—Twelfth Night.

The chief charm of Norwich, which was my headquarters, lies in its Cathedral. Architecturally it is a delight to the soul of man. Gazing on arcade piled on arcade; Norman pillars, pointed clerestory, and triforium; mystic curves and intersections of window tracery; and the noble vaulted roof above; one could sit undisturbed while the Canon in Residence took his weekly toll of our time, and discharged one-thirteenth of his yearly task:

“I ’eered un a bummin’ awaay loik a buzzard-clock ower my yead,
An’ I thowt a said whot a owt to ’a said, an’ I comed awaay.”

The music was remarkable for the perfect training of the boys’ voices by Dr. Buck, and for the incompetence of the aged men, who, though past work, could not be dismissed, because they were freeholders and had not been convicted of felony; as though petty larceny were a graver offence than singing out of tune! Freehold! always freehold!

To me, however, the great attraction was the Dean, Dr. Goulburn. He had been my headmaster at Rugby twenty years earlier; and though I had not had the slightest acquaintance with him, the sight of that familiar face, and the tones of that sonorous voice were sufficient to call up priceless memories of bygone days and long-lost friends.

In Norwich the Dean was venerated. In London and Oxford he was famous as a preacher: as a writer of religious books he had done excellent work, which, if one may judge from advertisements, still holds its ground. As a headmaster he had been less successful, and I gathered from some slight conversation with him as Dean that the very name of Rugby jarred on his ears. He was a scholar, a divine, a gentleman, a saintly man, and a good companion: but there was something lacking, something essential in dealing with boys. I doubt if he ever was a boy. At Eton, as we learn from his biographer, his short sight debarred him from games, and his “sapping” propensities made him so unpopular with the drones that, although bene natus, bene vestitus, and bene doctus, his election to the Debating Society, called Pop, was secured only by the interposition of the headmaster.[15] This was Keate, and probably he threatened to flog the Opposition.

When he was himself headmaster in after years, this want of sympathy with athletes and drones must have limited his sphere of influence. In some way he had failed to assimilate himself to Boy, and Boy saw that something was wanting. Without boy-knowledge a headmaster is like a coachman without horse-knowledge: he cannot drive.

I could fill many pages with stories of him, and many pages with tributes to his excellent merits, but I forbear. As Inspector I had no dealings with him. Peace be to his memory.

Both in the city and in the county my acquaintance during the three years that I spent in East Anglia was almost wholly clerical. The parochial clergy managed the schools, collected the funds, often supplied a large share of the funds, and entertained the inspector. In a short time I found that there was infinite variety in the seeming monotony. Parson A. was literary, and his name was known to all men of letters. B. was archæological, and had views about ruins. C. grew bulbs, and the district was so badly arranged (quâ C.) that his school inspection came in January, when only the noses of his aconites, snowdrops, and crocuses were visible; but from February to June, and even later, he lived in splendid happiness.

D. grew coniferæ, a pursuit which requires expectation of long life; E. grew orchids, and told me of his parlour-maid’s bon mot. She was helping in some stage of the culture, and in amazement inquired the name of the unsightly vegetable. “Orchids,” she was told. “And a wera good name far un tew,” said the maiden with wholly unconscious pleasantry; “awkidest things I ever handled.”

F. was absorbed in schools, and spent half his days there. G. added to the cares of his life by doctoring the bodies of his flock. A neighbouring duly qualified practitioner had threatened him with a prosecution for manslaughter if any more of his patients died. One likes to see the thing done properly, and quâ medicus the Rector was a nonconformist; quâ artifex a blackleg.

H. was High and told me of his persecutions; L. was Low and tried to interest me in the conversion of the Jews.

The alphabet becomes wearisome. Suffice it to say that the society never became wearisome. In their reception of the common enemy, the Inspector, they varied, as they varied in their pursuits: it is not every man that can stand being told that his school is bad, and that the grant will be reduced; and therefore the smiles of welcome varied a good deal in direct proportion with last year’s school balance: but we were very good friends on the whole. If old Bookworm compared me to Gloster—

“the clergy’s bags
Are lank and lean with thy extortions”—

I knew that love of Shakespeare, not hatred of Inspectors, moved him. If Carker complained that I had plucked his best boy in Arithmetic, he melted into apologies on seeing the prodigy’s prodigiously incorrect sums.

The Norwich district barely touched the Fens. That dismal region where, as a Cambridge man assured me, the inhabitants are web-footed and speckle-bellied (like frogs) was naturally and officially wedded to Cambridge; and I regret that I am unable to report on the accuracy of my friend’s statement. On our side the livings of the clergy in the ’seventies were fat, and the churches were magnificent. I fancy that, even then, the congregations were not equal to the splendour of the buildings. There may have been reasons for this. It used to be said in Cambridge in the early years of the last century, that the incumbents of the Fen district lived in Cambridge from Monday to Saturday. On the last day of the week they sought their sphere of labour—where no gentleman could be expected to live—and got through their Sunday duty with tolerable acceptance. A select band would centre at the “Lamb” at Ely, and with the aid of the hebdomadal rubber made the place almost as snug as Cambridge. Freeholders! Freeholders! “O sainte Église! something divine must indeed dwell in thee, when even thy ministers have not been able to ruin thee.”

In the ’seventies the Norfolk clergy as a rule were resident. There was indeed a strip of country in one quarter, where for several miles the incumbents had “left their country for their country’s good,” but retained the income of the benefice, only deducting (with much reluctance) the salary of a cheap curate: and there were others whose throats and chests were not strong enough to stand the Norfolk winter: but Providence tempers even the Norfolk wind in certain cases, and I was assured that the common herd, whose livings were of less value than £1,200 a year, bore up well. There is a system of compensation in the distribution of good things.

I still remember one hoary sinner—possibly still alive, for he was the sort of man who would be likely to live for another thirty years, to support Mrs. Poyser’s theory, “it seems as if them as aren’t wanted here are th’ only folk as aren’t wanted i’ th’ other world”—who boasted that, being entitled to ninety days’ leave of absence from his flock in each year, he arranged to take the last quarter of one year and the first quarter of the next, whereby he got six months’ solid holiday. The drawback, he said, was that he couldn’t get another holiday till October 1 of the third year.

I cannot say what provision he made for the services in his absence, and it was not for me to ask. But on a visit to a country school in another parish I found that the incumbent had been away for four months by special leave from the Bishop, because his wife was ill, and that he had thoughtfully arranged for the Vicar of the adjoining parish “to come over and give them a service on Sunday afternoons.” The benefice in his case was valued in the “Clergy List” at over £700 a year, with a house.

These cases of neglect and the worse cases of evil-livers sounded strange in the ears of a Civil Servant whose tenure of office was on a frailer footing. I used to point the finger of scorn at the Bishop, who might be supposed to intervene. “But how is he to get evidence?” his defenders would say. I replied that if I were Bishop with £5,000 a year, I should hire a private detective and send him down to old Boozer’s parish (Rev. O. Boozer, Great Tiplingham) for a month to collect evidence. But I was told with some warmth that the clergy would consider that a most ungentlemanly proceeding.

This surely is to put vermin on a level with game.

I said that the churches were magnificent. It is another instance of the compensatory tendency of the gifts of Providence, that ugly countries generally have fine churches. Look at Norfolk, Cambridgeshire, Northamptonshire. There was a time when even Holland received the benefit of this arrangement, and did not build shanties round the bases of its cathedrals. The decay of agriculture, the diminution of the rural population, and, above all, the migration of the weavers to the coalfields have wrought havoc with the congregations, charm the Rector never so wisely. Who, outside Norfolk, knows that “worsted” gets its name from Worstead in East Norfolk, a village with a noble church that might hold from 800 to 1,000 people? I see in the “Clergy List” that the population is now 781, of whom 54 per cent. might be expected to go to church, if they valued statistics—and our incomparable Liturgy.

Take another case. There was a time when Our Lady of Walsingham had an extraordinary reputation, not only in England but in the Low Countries. Five English sovereigns sought her shrine: three Henries and two Edwards. Erasmus visited it in 1511, and wrote an account of it, which for wit, irreverence, and general impropriety could hardly be surpassed.[16] The cult lasted for 300 years, and when it was at its height pilgrims came over in great numbers to Yarmouth and King’s Lynn, and made their way along a Via Sacra of noble churches and priories. The finest of eastern counties’ churches, in my recollection, is at Sawell, or Sall, within easy reach of Walsingham; and it was suggested that pilgrims were persuaded to drop a coin or two at churches on the road, whereon Sall flourished (Sall—profits—yes, I see; I leave it), as did the Lady Chapel at King’s Lynn, and the churches on the Palmers’ way from London and the South.

When I saw the great church in 1876 it was going fast to decay, and the sum mentioned as necessary for repairs was alarming. The population in 1901 was 191.

In another of these fine churches I found the Rector in much trouble. Bats had got into the roof and multiplied. The parish would gladly have retained the Pied Piper of Hamelin to rid them of their foes; besides ordinary pollution they had made the church their slaughter-house and their dining-room—the wings of moths, and all sorts of garbage lay about.

“Bats!” said the Rector, who was a Biblical scholar; “Isaiah couples them with the moles, according to our translation, but I doubt whether chephor peroth refers to moles.”

“Perhaps it was the church mouse?” I suggested.

“Bats,” he went on, after giving me a suspicious glance, “are clearly indicated by the word atalleph.”

“It is ystlumod in Welsh,” I said, not to be overcrowed by a Rural Dean, “and Fledermaus in German; flittermouse in Ben Jonson.”

But the Rector was intent on murder, and heeded not my pedantic flippancies:

“Bats,” he repeated, with a far-away look in his eyes.

What a parody Calverley would have made:

“They hunted for moths in the Rector’s garden,
And though they possibly no harm meant,
They littered the pew of the Churchwarden:
They spoiled the gold of the Tenth Commandment.”

That is a bad rhyme: I am not equal to the task. The case was serious: what did I suggest?

I said it was rather out of my province: bats never built in schools: had he tried incense?

His eyes were again fixed intently on me, but I gazed at the roof. It seemed that the good man was Low. How was I to know? Finally he gave me credit for guilelessness. “But what would the Archdeacon say?” I inferred that the Archdeacon also was Low. Certainly the bats were High.

It is sad that I cannot carry the tale further. Did he try the remedy? I cannot but think that

“good strong thick stupefying incense-smoke,”

such as Browning’s Bishop loved to taste, would have evicted the cheiroptera. Fear of the Archdeacon might have held the Rector’s hand when Divine Service was toward, but I suspect he would still have six week-days undisturbed.

This was not the only instance of want of practical common-sense in the management of the freehold. Another incumbent remarked to me that he couldn’t understand why his people didn’t come to church. I thought it might be that his preaching was deterrent, but politeness suggested “the singing?”

“Oh no; it isn’t the singing: there’s plenty of that. To be sure,” he added pensively, as if the thought came to him for the first time, “it may be that it is because there is no heating apparatus.”

That is one of the drawbacks of official life. You cannot tell a school manager what you really think of him. If his church had been a school, we should have taken a tenth off his grant after a year’s warning; and the next year, if his school was still uninhabitable, we should have struck it off the list.

No doubt in Norfolk, as elsewhere, a great change has come over the country clergy. Most of the valuable livings in that diocese were in the gift of the Cambridge colleges, and probably at Cambridge, as at Oxford, clerical fellows hung about the combination rooms for years, either giving indifferent lectures, or, in the preferable alternative, merely consuming the college port; while they waited for the shoes of richly beneficed incumbents, who showed an indecent reluctance to put them off. It was often discovered, when the long-deferred inheritance fell in, that there was lurking in the background a virgin, who had but too often passed the flower of her youth, and who thus tardily became Rectoress Consort. A strange couple they would be to administer the affairs of a country parish.

But though too often hampered by lack of training, and sometimes by lack of zeal, in their ecclesiastical duties, they did much for education. The traditions of a college living required, long before the Act of 1870, that there should be a parochial school, and they built generously, if “not according to knowledge”: strange schools in the University-Gothic style; externally picturesque; internally ill-lighted, ill-ventilated, ill-warmed; but no worse than you would find in the great public schools. And Mrs. Rector looked after the sewing, and the girls’ ailments; and both husband and wife were diligent attendance officers, bribing, threatening, persuading parents and children.

Let me not omit to add that some of these ex-dons were of the salt of the earth, though not too earthy. I knew them only as school managers, but it was sufficiently clear that in such cases the school was part of an admirably organized parish: their acquaintance with the children, and their complete knowledge of the home life of the children never ceased to surprise and interest me: the discipline and the school work were proof of the Rector’s watchful eye; and the greeting of the teachers showed the affectionate respect in which he was held.

Three great changes have come about in the last forty years. The abolition of clerical fellowships has cut off the supply of academical idlers. It is hard nowadays for a college to find men to take the college livings. “And oh, the heavy change,” the collapse of agriculture in corn-growing, and the consequent fall in rental of glebe lands, and in tithe, have all but extinguished the old-fashioned broadcloth Rector. Thirdly, recent legislation has all but extinguished the criminous clerk, and made it comparatively easy to stir up the mere idler.

Are the people grateful? I doubt it. They grumbled at the old style, and they grumble at the new style; but they made more out of the old style. A few years ago I happened to be in Wales, and, meeting a fruit-seller with a cart bearing the name of Llanbeth, I got into conversation with him, and casually enquired whether my old friend, the Rev. J. Jones, sometime Rector of Llanbeth, was still living. No: he was dead, and Reverend Williams reigned in his stead. I expressed sorrow.

“Fery different gentleman now,” said the fruit man, disparagingly: “I am parish clerk, and I know: fery different gentlemen eferywhere. Yes, sure.” And the wretch leered hideously.

“Well, I will tell you,” he continued unasked, “they are men that have failed at the Institushun (meaning the Training College, then at Carnarvon); that iss what they are.”

“After all,” I suggested, “they are better men now?”

“Well, I will tell you: they are more men of the world: that iss what they are.”

“But, at least,” I pleaded, “they don’t drink?”

“No-a, indeed; because they can’t afford it: Else——”

“Thou shalt not escape calumny,” said Hamlet. “Did a day’s work?” “Yes: because he is a man of the world.” “Didn’t get drunk?” “No: can’t afford it.” And even the wise and (comparatively) virtuous Inspector, when he meets in school the man of the world, who in general demeanour compares unfavourably with the schoolmaster, remembers easy-going old Broadcloth with a sigh, and hopes the new broom will sweep clean.

FOOTNOTES:

[15] See “Memoir of Dean Goulburn,” page 15.

[16] From a professional point of view Erasmus’ Geography was lamentable. He speaks of “this sea-side saint,” and says that the place is on “the extreme coast of England on the North West.” It is 7 miles from the Wash.

CHAPTER XI
MILLER’S

“A merrier man
Within the limit of becoming mirth
I never spent an hour’s talk withal.”
Love’s Labour’s Lost.

It was not in Norfolk that I met the Rev. Joseph Miller, Hon. Canon of his Cathedral, Rural Dean, and formerly Fellow and Tutor of some College in Oxford. Having at one time or another inspected schools in ten different counties I may leave the venue uncertain. It is merely for convenience that I record the visit here.

At the time when I made his acquaintance, he had acquired some notoriety in clerical circles in a singular way. In those days—I know not whether the rule is altered—the Bampton Lecturer at Oxford was appointed by a committee: there was a list of subjects to which the lecturer was confined, and any one who felt a call to the University pulpit sent in his application, specifying the particular subject upon which he was moved to discourse.

Miller proposed to give a course of lectures on “The Failure of Moses.” I suppose he sent in a syllabus with his application: but possibly the syllabus which he showed me was made merely for his own use.

The argument, briefly stated, was that in spite of the divine and miraculous assistance which it enjoyed; in spite of the purity and simplicity of its doctrines, the Mosaic system had never up to the time of the Captivity spread over even the little country of Palestine. Assuming the correctness of the popular chronology, there was an interval of 881 years between the Exodus and the Captivity, and at no time during that period was the country as a whole free from gross idolatry. But after the return from the Captivity idolatry seems to have disappeared in the course of years; at least there is no mention of it in the Gospels. To what was this change due? Clearly to the introduction from the East of the doctrine of a future life, with future rewards and punishments.

Moses and his followers (said the Canon) promised temporal prosperity to the righteous, and in the end ruin to the ungodly. This was not the common experience, and the people, seeming to gain little by virtue in this world, and having no hope for another, tried other forms of worship, which combined pleasure with religion.

Solomon, who was strong enough to enforce uniformity, became the founder of the doctrines of Religious Equality and Concurrent Endowment, and applied them to his own household. Then came the schism, and things became worse. Miller’s description of Jeroboam as the first Home Ruler, the parent of Free Churches, would have convulsed the undergraduate gallery. The lectures would have set Oxford in an uproar between the Torpids and the Eights, and when published in the following year would have filled the Guardian and the Spectator with correspondence. They would eventually have attracted the attention of Convocation, and odium theologicum would have blossomed into a gravamen, or even an articulus cleri.

But it was not to be. The committee chose another man, and an informal message was sent to Miller to the effect that the success or failure of Moses was not among the Bampton list of subjects. Moreover, his theory was opposed to Article VII. One Divinity Professor privately complained to Miller’s Bishop that he should have a Rural Dean holding such views “directly contravening the Articles.”

“Let us see the Article,” said the wary Bishop; and he opened a Prayer Book:

“Wherefore they are not to be heard, which feign that the old Fathers did look only for transitory promises.”

“It seems to me, Professor, that the Article is satisfied. The Rural Dean will not be heard.”

“But, my dear Lord, he may preach the same doctrines from his own pulpit.”

The Bishop picked up Liddell and Scott, and turned to his favourite passage in that work:

ὀρθρο-φοιτο-συκοφαντο-δικο-ταλαίπωροι τρόποι:
“early-prowling base-informing sad-litigious plaguy ways”

“There is a branch of that Society in the Diocese, and I shall receive prompt intimation of any breach of Article VII.”

The Professor “retired hurt,” as cricketers would put it; and his score was 0.

Miller told me the whole story, and probably improved it a little. Who (except the present chronicler) does not throw in a little pourboire for the ever thirsty reader? “But,” he added with mock resignation, “it has cost me a mitre. Junior Proctor I was: Rural Dean I am: Bishop I shall never be. Do you remember Scott’s (of Balliol) lines on Shuttleworth, Warden of New, when, according to Common Room gossip, that dignitary refrained from giving his vote for fear of imperilling his promotion?” He opened a drawer, and in the very tones of the Master he read:

ἀνδρῶν δ’ οὒχ ἡγεῖτο περικλυτὸς Ἀξιόκερκις,
στῇ δ’ ἀπάνευθε μάχης πεφοβημένος εἵνεκα μίτρης:

“Shuttleworth, Warden renowned, led not his men to the battle;
Standing aloof from the fray, much afraid on account of the mitre.”

“No one can say that of me, and I shall not wear the mitre.”

He never did: but in fullness of time he made an excellent Dean.

One year I sent him formal notice of his school inspection, and received a pathetic reply. I had chosen the very day which he had fixed for a ruridecanal meeting. He could not put it off, and he could not leave his rurideacons unshepherded, even to wait upon H.M.I. Would I forgive him, and, partly in evidence of forgiveness, partly by way of penance for having selected a day so obviously unsuitable, would I dine with the “Rurideacons” at 5.30—old Oxford hours, and convenient in the country, because it enabled the brethren to dine, and to get home before dark, without “falling out by the way”? He added in a P.S.—“Towzer has got the gout and can’t come.”

I was glad Towzer could not come: I had seen him last at his own school, when he was mad with gout, and shook his fist at me in his fury. Miller knew this.

On the appointed day I examined the school, and, when the afternoon work was done, strolled up to the Rectory, to wait for the arrival of the exhausted clerics.

There were seven or eight of them at dinner: the rest went empty away. It would be easy to describe the guests individually, but all the clergy between the North Sea and the Irish Channel, between Carlisle and the borders of Salop, would waste their precious time in hunting for the lineaments of themselves, or their neighbours. I need mention only two: first, the Archdeacon, who had views about the Burials Bill (which was the burning question of that day), the Revised Version, and the Unity of Christendom. He was full of goodness; rather lacking in humour, and rather hostile to inspectors, whom he regarded as a lay and inferior form of archdeacon. There were two Archdeacons in the diocese, both worthy, and both wooden; so that Canon Miller had said, in his epigrammatic way, “The Archdeacon is the oculus episcopi, and our Bishop suffers from that form of ophthalmia which is known to the faculty as amaurosis, or dullness of sight.”

The other notable was the Rev. O. Goodfellow. He was the butt of the Rural Deanery. For five tedious years he had toiled at Oxford for his degree; his college had ejected him at the end of his fourth year, and he had taken refuge in a Hall. There he exhausted the pass-coaches of Oxford, and he might have exhausted his father’s patience, but a soft-hearted examiner took pity on him, and his fate was like that of Augustus Smalls of old:

“Men said he made strange answers
In his Divinity;
And that strange words were in his Prose
Canine to a degree:
But they called his vivâ voce ‘Fair,’
And they said his books would do;
And native cheek, where facts were weak,
Brought him in triumph through.”

Possibly he might have done better in the schools if he had not devoted the October term to football, the Lent term to the Torpids, and the summer term to cricket. There is little time for reading, if a man really tries to do his duty by his college in these three branches of industry. In his parochial work his athletics helped him greatly; for the rest he was the most good-natured of men, and his wife was charming. Every one laughed at him, and everybody liked him. Also he was known to all men as Robin.

The dinner was simple and good; the conversation was varied, except in two directions: the Canon announced at the outset that if any one mentioned the Burials Bill or the word “education” he should be sconced. This, as my neighbour on the left remarked sotto voce, trumped the Archdeacon’s best trick, and left me without a card to lead.

I have omitted to mention Mrs. Miller, most delightful of hostesses, whom I, “as the representative of the Crown,” had, with friendly laughter, been instructed to take in to dinner. At this moment she asked me confidentially what would happen if she were sconced. I told her that the penalty in the case of a man was to pay for a quart of beer for the company; but that if the sconcee could drink the whole quart without stopping to take breath, the penalty rebounded on to the informer; presumably in the cases of “lunatics, infants, and married women” (under the law of that date) the guardian, parent, or husband would be liable. I gave this legal opinion with some solemnity, and the company rather embarrassed me by suspending their conversation that they might hear the decision of the Court. The Archdeacon, who, like St. Peter, “was himself a married man,” showed marked disapproval, and I hastily diverted discussion by adding that I had seen the draught completed, and the penalty reflected.

Johnson, my left-hand neighbour, a Yorkshire man, said that in his county it would not be a remarkable feat. “I remember a case in point,” he continued; “a discussion arose at the ‘Red Lion’ in ——ton, whether any man could drink two quarts without stopping to take breath. Finally it was agreed that if such a man existed, it was Will Pike. Bets were made, Will was sent for, and the case was laid frankly before him; would he try?

“To the surprise of his backers he hesitated, and at last asked whether they could give him a two-three minutes just to see about it. This was conceded; Will retired, and in less than three minutes he returned, and drank his two quarts in manner prescribed. The opposition paid up, but one man, feeling a little sore, complained of the delay. Why didn’t Will begin at once?

“Will hesitated a minute, and then confessed that he himself didn’t feel quite sure of his ability—I might say ‘capacity’—so, to make sure, he had just stepped down to the ‘Black Lion’ to try. As he stood there, he contained four quarts.”

Mrs. Miller was quite unmoved by the horror of this anecdote; she laughed with the rest, but added a word of caution to me: “They do very strange things in Yorkshire, Mr. Kynnersley; if you could hear Mr. Johnson’s fishing stories, you would add to your knowledge of natural history.”

“This is hard,” said Johnson, plaintively; “Mrs. Miller alludes to a very remarkable experience of mine last June. I was fishing for trout in the West Riding, and a farmer offered to show me the way, and gave me some hints. He pointed out the best pool to begin on; advised a particular fly; and specially charged me, when I hooked a trout, not to let the line get slack, or the fish would get clear. A big trout took the farmer’s pet fly, and by bad luck I stumbled against a root, let the line slack as I fell, and in a moment the fish drew the line over a sharp-edged rock, cut it, and sank.

“‘Now watch him,’ said the farmer: I saw that trout slowly rise, and swim to a log that checked the current: there it worked with its mouth against the wood, till it had extracted the hook: it caught the hook between its jaws; swam close to the log, and deliberately planted it with its barb fixed in the soft wood. Finally it drew back, and contemplated its trophies. There was a complete row, January, February, March, April, the Mayfly....”

A shout of indignant laughter cut short the list. Only the Archdeacon was grave. He waited till the “mirth unseemly” was done, and then in solemn tones asked Johnson whether this had really happened to him.

“Well, not exactly to me, I admit: it was a friend of mine who witnessed the feat: but the story is more effective in the first person. I hope, Mr. Archdeacon, you don’t doubt my friend’s veracity? He is a Diocesan Inspector.”

“Oh, not at all,” said the other hastily. But he looked grave, and Mrs. Miller crumbled her bread.

“Very hearty, genial sort of folk in Yorkshire, are they not?” I interposed by way of eirenicon.

“Very much so: not quite that refinement of thought and manner which stamps the caste of—er—the Lower House of Convocation,” said he, with a glance at the sceptic. “I remember a singular instance of this so-to-say lack of delicacy. A young doctor in my first parish was coming home late at night, when he heard the noise of wheels; then a crash, and then a shout. He ran hastily in the direction of the sound, and by the help of a feeble moon and a cart-lantern found a young collier in difficulties: a wheel had come off the cart, and he was extricating what seemed to be a long box. The doctor offered first aid, which was readily accepted.

“‘Aw’ve ’ad a reight mullock (a regular misfortune), tha’ sees. Aw’ve been ovver tut t’Union, wheer ar owd man deed, an getten leeave to tak ’im hooam, and burry ’im in t’ Church yard, an nar me cart is brokken daan: aw s’all hav to leeave all t’ job in t’ field whol mornin’. Nowt’ll mell (meddle) on ’em.’

“It was his father!

“The doctor gave a hand, and together they carried the light shell down through the gateway into the field, and left it in a corner. The driver turned his lantern on his helper’s face, and said briskly:

“‘Why, it’s Maister Smith, t’ yung doctor, for sewer?’

“Smith assented.

“‘Sithee,’ said the collier confidentially; ‘aw’ll tell tha wot aw’ll do’; and, coming closely to him, he said in an undertone, ‘Aw’ll sell tha t’owd un fer awf a crawn.’

“It was his father.”

Mrs. Miller shuddered. “If any one mentions Yorkshire again,” she declared, “I will talk about the Burials Bill (which seems much wanted in that county), and if the Canon is sconced, and drinks all that beer, he will have the gout, and I pity the Rural Deanery.”

Johnson chuckled with the satisfaction of a man who has hit the mark, and the conversation became general. The Archdeacon tried to interest our hostess in the Revised Version, but she did not know the aorist from the paulo-post-futurum. She skilfully played a spade, and introduced gardening: but he did not know a pelargonium from a potentilla. Then she led a small club, and brought in the Girls’ Friendly Society Annual Meeting, and he followed suit.

Some one mentioned the Bishop, and though not much could be said about the local Diocesan in the Archdeacon’s presence—for as you would not abuse a man’s eye to the owner, so you should not abuse the owner to the eye—yet it led to talk about bishops generally, and we became anecdotical, as we ate our gooseberry tart. At that date men told stories of S. Wilberforce, and Magee: Stubbs and Temple were not yet in all men’s mouths. Most of the stories were familiar, but we enjoyed them as old friends, and in the telling of them, and in the subsequent discussion, curious light was thrown on the gradual accretion and expansion to which such legends are subject. In the case of one well-known story we were able to trace the aboriginal myth:

“Bishop Magee was at a meeting of bishops, discussing the rubrical words ‘Before the table.’ He wrote on a bit of paper, and passed it to a colleague:

“‘Before the table’ means ‘at the north end of the table.’ Qu.: was ‘the piper that played before Moses’ standing at the north end of Moses?”

And this is the complete legend, many years younger.

The Bishop of Peterborough was standing on a railway platform in Northamptonshire, waiting for a train, when he was accosted by a prominent Evangelical clergyman in his diocese, who was much exercised about the question of the “Eastern Position.” “My Lord,” said the latter, “the case is perfectly clear: when the rubric says ‘Before the table’ it means standing ‘at the north end of the table.’”

“I see,” replied the Bishop, meditatively; “in my country we have a saying, ‘By the piper that played before Moses’: hitherto I have always supposed that the piper stood in front of Moses: now I see that he stood at the north end of Moses. Here is my train: good morning.”

The stories of Wilberforce were equally familiar, and all went to illustrate what we may call his diplomatic talent. One came from private sources, and may perhaps be recorded here. A man fresh from the Oxford diocese told it:

There was a great function of some sort in a church near Oxford, and many clergy had assembled to meet the Bishop, and were using the schoolroom as a vestry. Five minutes before service time the Rector came in great trouble to Wilberforce: the clergy had been specially requested to bring their surplices, but Mr. A. and Mr. B. had come with black gowns, and the effect would be ruined: would the Bishop speak to them?

“My dear Mr. X., leave them to me,” was the only reply.

Three minutes passed, and again the Rector pleaded for help: “Leave them to me,” was repeated.

Just before the clock struck the Bishop moved down to the two black-legs. “How do you do, Mr. A.? so glad to see you here: will you read the first lesson for us? How do you do, Mr. B.? will you read the second lesson? so much obliged.”

Greatly flattered, the two men hastily borrowed white robes, and the situation was saved.

“That,” he added, “is a true story.”

I resent this sort of warranty. It has a tendency (firstly) to imply that previous stories were not true: (secondly) to assume that truth is better than fiction. Moved by this feeling I ventured to interpose. If truth was to gain extra marks, I knew a Wilberforce story of such authenticity that it was vouched by a Judge of the Common Pleas, and a Bishop: and I offered this contribution to the chronicles of the evening:

It happened just after the Summer Assizes at Oxford that Mr. Justice Keating was going on to Worcester; and in the carriage with him (among others) was Bishop Wilberforce. Opposite the latter was a seat untenanted, but littered with correspondence. A lady looked in, just before the train was starting, and asked whether the empty seat was engaged:

“Occupied,” said the courtly prelate with a courtly smile, and the lady moved hurriedly on.

He turned to the judge: “‘Occupied,’ not ‘Engaged’; you observe the distinction: I have a great deal of work to do in the train, and the guard is good enough to allow me the use of a second seat for my papers.”

The judge, an Irishman by birth, was much tickled, and told the story to a friend in London. The friend repeated it at a dinner table, where Archdeacon John Allen of Salop was a fellow guest; and concluded with much virtuous indignation, boldly asserting that the distinction was inconsistent with honesty. The Archdeacon was the most excellent and the most combative of men, except his brother Archdeacon of Taunton (Denison). He went to the root of the matter by denying emphatically that the Bishop ever made the remark, and undertook to get his Lordship’s authority for his denial. Accordingly he wrote to Cuddesden that night: told his story in full, and asked for an official contradiction. The maligned man vouchsafed no answer, good or bad: only he forwarded the petition to the Bishop of Lichfield, and wrote at the bottom:

“Dear Bishop of Lichfield,

Can’t you find something for your archdeacons to do?

Yours always,
S. Oxon.”

The man who told me the story had, I believe, heard it from Sir Henry Keating. I repeated it to a clerical friend, who, when I reached the end, said, “Yes, that is quite right: I was examining chaplain to the Bishop of Lichfield, and he told me the story.”

A vehement discussion arose during dessert: some accusing, others excusing, and Mrs. Miller looked anxious. But the Canon broke in, just as she was preparing to retreat to the drawing-room: “Why,” he exclaimed, “do you have two standards of morality? Let me tell you two stories: I cannot tell them in parallel columns, but you must put them side by side in your minds.”

He told them in order, and I, the chronicler, put them in parallel columns:

“Now when you hear one story, you say, ‘Good old Pam’ and admire his worldly wisdom: when you hear the other, you say ‘How like Sam’ and deplore his crafty cunning.”

We looked at one another, and shame covered our faces. “Agreed,” said Johnson: “S. Oxon was great; he was genial, and he was witty. What was his best saying? I am inclined to give the first prize to his comment on Bishop X’s marriage. Let me recite it. The Bishop, you remember, married some one of humble station, and that so quietly that no one knew of it for some time. Then there was an outcry, and the Bishop resigned the see. This was reported to Wilberforce, who remarked that his right-reverend brother might fitly be appointed to the See of Ossory and Ferns, then vacant, for he believed ferns were cryptogamous.”

The laughter was partial, for certainly Goodfellow, and possibly another, besides Mrs. Miller, failed to catch the point, and the Archdeacon seemed in doubt whether the story were quite proper: but Mrs. Miller turned calmly to me, and begged that I would perform the necessary surgical operation, if I was quite sure——eh?

“Quite safe,” I assured her: “I examine in Botany: plants which have visible flowers and so on are phanerogams: the others, which marry in secret, are cryptogamous: ferns are cryptogams.”

“No joke can survive a post mortem”: Mrs. Miller smiled sadly and left us.

“Have a cigar before you go?” said our host, and we made for the study.

CHAPTER XII
MILLER’S STUDY

“Pereant qui ante nos nostra narraverint.”

But not all. I stopped in the hall to search my great-coat pocket for my pipe, and I overheard the farewell of the Archdeacon. Domestic circumstances called him home, and the Canon remained to see him off the premises. It fell to me, therefore, to break to the others the news that the venerable one would not join them. They bore up.

“He can’t take my new hat,” said the Rev. Patrick O’Brien, LL.D., “it hasn’t the curly brim: but he gets first pick of the umbrellas. I suppose he was created for some wise purpose, but he doesn’t eat, he doesn’t drink, he doesn’t talk, and he doesn’t smoke. Hwat can ye do with um?” And he lit a fat cigar.

“Reminds me of what Topers of Brasenose said to the Professor,” commented an elderly rector named Oldbury: (Oxford; high and dry; broadcloth, silk hat, bit of a squarson; good old chap). “Do you remember Topers?” he asked me.

I pleaded comparative youth.

“Ah, of course. Well, Topers and another man were dining at Balliol High Table with one of the dons, and the only other don present was Professor Aldrich, who hated Topers and all his ways, and was infinitely disgusted to meet him as a guest. Topers was quick to see this, and excelled himself in wit and anecdote, while the Professor was mute. The dinner was prolonged: the undergraduates departed: even the scholar whose duty it was to say Grace was released, when Topers turned to his host, and pleaded for a bottle of that admirable Balliol port to mellow the Stilton. This was too much for Aldrich: he got up and said, ‘Gentlemen, you will find coffee in the Common-room, when you are ready for it,’ and he was stalking down the empty hall.

“Topers rose from his seat with tragic solemnity: ‘Go, sir,’ he said, with a majestic wave of his hand, ‘and take with you that appreciation of the good things of this world which Heaven has not given you, and the conversation of which we have heard not a word.’”

Ah me! As the others laughed, I saw the old Hall, now used as a library, the three black-gowned figures at High Table, the empty Hall half-lighted, and at the far end two or three scouts who were clearing away dishes, turning stupidly to stare at the short square don with firm-set chin and gleaming eyes; while John de Baliol, Dervorguilla, his wife, “and others, benefactors of this college,” in their gilt-framed pictures, looked on with the cold impartiality of Gallio.

“Topers was a brilliant man,” said Miller, free from his Archdeacon: “he had the marvellous gift of concentration which so few possess.”

“Would you call it absorption, Canon?” murmured Johnson: and there was a stifled laugh, which annoyed Miller: Topers’ weakness was notorious.

“Concentration, I prefer. Day after day he used to go to Parker’s, the bookseller’s in the Broad, and take up the new book of the day. As he stood there, he read in spite of all distractions, and picked the entire marrow of it before he came away. What a faculty for a barrister, a judge, a statesman to possess! Yet he did nothing but make epigrammatical remarks which are mostly forgotten. I never meet a man called Littler without thinking of Topers. Littler came up for vivâ voce in Collections: ‘Mr. Littler,’ said Topers with venomous looks, ‘your Greek prose is disgusting, your Latin prose is disgusting, your translation is disgusting, and your name is ungrammatical.’”

“What was his name?” asked Goodfellow, whose mind travels slowly.

“Topers,” said the narrator hastily, determined that there should be no more post mortems; and went on, while Goodfellow pondered on the grammatical defects of this proper noun: “It was severe; but a more caustic address is recorded of the great Dean Mansel. That eminent philosopher was examining a raw Cockney in Greek. The lad came to the word ‘hippos,’ which he pronounced ‘ippos,’ and translated ‘orse.’ ‘I can understand your calling it ORSE,’ drawled Mansel, ‘for I suppose your father and mother called it ORSE, and you never heard it called anything else: but I can’t conceive why you should call it IPPOS, because I don’t suppose they ever heard the expression.’”

“Mansel was great,” Oldbury remarked: “Tommy Short was brilliant: greatest and most brilliant was Henry Smith of Balliol. Did you ever hear his comment on the mathematical papers of two of his friends? Brown and Jones were in for what is called ‘Second Schools,’ that is to say, a pass in Mathematical Greats after the Classical Honours examination. ‘How did you get on to-day, Mr. Brown?’ he asked.

“Brown produced the paper of Questions: ‘In the Euclid I did that, and that, and that; I left out those, and I had a shot at those. In the Algebra I did those, and left out those.’

“‘Oh yes,’ said Smith, without faintest comment: ‘and Mr. Jones, what did he do?’

“‘In the Euclid he did those, and left out those; in the Algebra he did those and left out those.’

“‘Oh yes,’ said Smith with increased politeness: ‘then I should think he would be ploughed TOO.’”

What evil spirit prompted Robin Goodfellow to rush into the fray? When was any anecdote of his not condemned? Yet at this moment he started forward:

“I say, I heard a good story the other day,” he began, chuckling feebly at the reminiscence; “and I doubt if even you, Miller, ever heard it before. A woman brought her girl to be christened, and when the parson, you know, asked her to name the child, she said, ‘Luthy thir,’ because she lisped, don’t you know. ‘Lucifer!’ said the parson, ‘you might as well call him Beelzebub: I shall christen him John,’ and so he did. Good, wasn’t it?”

The story was not well received. “You’ve forgotten the end, Robin,” shouted one man: “when I first heard that story at a private school in Lancashire about thirty years ago, it went on:

“But the father muttered, ‘Tha’st called hoo Jahn, and hoo’s a wench.’” (General assent.)

The Canon rose wrathfully from his seat: “Goodfellow, you call that a new story! do you know that it is to be found in the ‘Life of St. Augustine,’ in the chapter describing his reception in Kent in the year 596? Where is the book?” And he went to the bookshelves, picked up a huge folio, and read with some fluency:

Inde, precibus finitis, postquam omnes dispersi essent, advenit femina filiolam in manibus gerens. “Quid petis, mea filia” inquit Augustinus: “Ut infantem baptizare velis” respondet mater. (H’m, it’s very poor print.) Quo concesso omnes redierunt, et ad Fontem aggrediebantur.

“Now that is very interesting,” interposed Johnson, to give the Canon time. “You see ‘Fons’ would not be the font, of course, but a spring: Augustine, no doubt, was preaching on a hillside, and at the foot in the meadow there would be a fons, or spring. I beg pardon for interrupting you, Miller.”

“Not at all,” said the Canon, grinning with complete understanding of the motive: he had spent the interval in careful study of the folio, and now resumed more easily:

“Nomina hunc infantem” inquit sacerdos.

“Lu-lu-lucia” respondit illa, balbutiens propter quandam hesitationem linguæ.

“Quid dixisti, mulier?” petit Augustinus; quippe qui—(“‘quippe qui’ is good,” muttered Johnson to me)—post tot pericula per terram et mare, et tantos labores paululum surdus erat;—

“Is it ‘erat’ or ‘esset’?” enquired Johnson, with kindly concern for the Latinity of Augustine, or his biographer.

“‘Esset’ of course: it’s the vilest print,” said the Canon, smothering a laugh: “where was I? h’m, h’m”:

surdus esset: “num audes infanti mox Christiano futuro nomen Luciferum ascribere? quem ego certe Johannem appellare mallem”; et ita factum est.

“There, Goodfellow, I think that settles the antiquity of your story.”

With furtive laughter we applauded the student of Augustine. Robin, who like Cedric at Torquilstone, was a little deaf in his Latin ear, asked to be allowed to read the passage for himself: but it happened most unfortunately that as the book was being handed to him, it fell, and the reference was lost, nor could it be found again. The conversation was hurriedly changed by Johnson, who congratulated the Canon on his intimate acquaintance with the Fathers, and also with the Latin language.

“Some of us,” he went on to say, “get a little rusty in our dead languages. Last month I was dining with my squire (who, you know, is a scholarly man) and a clerical friend, who shall be nameless, was there. The squire reads the lessons for me: he does it well, and the people like to hear him. After dinner he suddenly asked me whether in reading the Revelation he ought to say ‘õ-mĕgã’ as a dactyl with the accent on the O, or ‘õ mégger’ as two words, if you understand me. I said the latter might be right, but it would be as pedantic as Samarĩa, or Alexandrĩa: I preferred the former. And my clerical brother volunteered approval: he said it was õmĕgã in the original Hebrew. And he made the statement quite with the air of a man who had the gift of tongues more than we all. The squire stared, but we made no remark, and the fellow’s complacency was undisturbed.”

Oldbury remarked that not all of us lose our acquaintance with the classics. He had written lately to the Bishop in reply to a request for information as to church attendance: and had stated that on Sunday mornings the attendance was very good, especially in the case of aged people; but whether that was due to piety, or to the necessity of adducing regular church-going as a condition precedent of benefiting by Tomkins’ dole, he should be sorry to say. And the Bishop wrote back:

“Sit dolus, an virtus, quis in hoste requirat?”

Oldbury considered that neat. But Miller objected that it only went to show that even a bishop knew the second “Æneid.”

“A little knowledge is a dangerous thing,” said a man opposite, who was the Diocesan Inspector of Religious Knowledge; “I was complaining to Squire B., who, you know, made his money in the Black Country, about the character of his schoolmaster, a notoriously intemperate man:

“‘Well of course,’ replied the squire, ‘if we ever found him drunk, we should give him his sine quâ non at once.’”

Goodfellow had been pondering silently. At this point he pushed his chair near Johnson’s, and whispered, “I say, did Joe Miller make up all that rot about St. Augustine?”

“My dear chap,” replied Johnson soothingly, “what, all that? ‘Bradley’s Exercises’ couldn’t have done it right off: it would have taken Cicero all his time.”

“Well, of course, it was a long story,” Robin admitted; and confidence was partially restored. A bold stroke of Miller’s completed the work. I think he must have overheard part of Robin’s question, as he passed behind us to concoct a parting drink for O’Brien. He returned with a post card in his hand.

“Talking of Latin reminds me that I got a Latin postcard from an old Oxford friend this morning, which you may like to hear:

“‘Dives quidam ad portas’—h’m, let me translate it to save time.”

A certain rich man having arrived at the gates of heaven begged St. Peter to admit him into the company of the blest. “Admit thee, O Dives?” said the holy janitor: “what good thing hast thou done in thy life?”

Dives paulisper meditatus—er—that is, after a little thought Dives replied, “Once I gave an obol to a poor man who asked an alms of me.”

“One obol! thou!” said the saint: “is there nothing more of good?”

“And another time,” pleaded Dives, “on a very cold day, a poor boy, scantily clad and ill fed, offered to sell me for an obol a box of fire-bringing sticks (I suppose Dives meant matches), and moved with compassion, I gave him the obol, nor accepted the sticks.”

The saint, much perplexed, turning to the Archangel Michael, enquires what should be done: “O sancte Petre” inquit ille, “hunc duobus obolis donatum ad Orcum demittas.”

“Which, I think, we may translate ‘give him twopence, and send him downstairs.’ Like to see the card, Goodfellow?” And Robin was satisfied, though the Latin was beyond his grasp. “Is it St. Augustine?” he asked.

“Ulpian, I think, from the style,” replied Miller; and Robin tacitly admitted Ulpian into the company of Early Fathers.

“I have a lot of these cards,” said Miller; “my friend supplies me with the Common Room anecdotes in this inexpensive manner. Here is another, which I give in English—for the sake of the Inspector:”

A certain undergraduate, erudite and devout, Puseyite and Augustan, went to his Father-Confessor; and, the secrets of his heart having been revealed, asked for absolution not without penance.

“Thou hast erred, my son,” said the priest, devout but not erudite; “go to thy chamber and recite the Attendĩte.”

“It is short, father,” said the young man shuddering.

“Then say it twice,” replied the Confessor with placid countenance.

“What is the Attendĩte?” I asked.

“The 78th Psalm, ‘Attendĩte, popule,’ ‘Hear My law, O ye people’; 15th evening, don’t you know?”

“Short!” said Goodfellow: “it’s 73 verses!”

And he hasn’t seen the joke yet.

O’Brien finished his stirrup-cup, and obtained leave to go home: he had a seven miles’ drive. I was not sorry to lose him, for I disliked the man, though he had the merit of furnishing the diocese with a good story. It is said that when he went up for Ordination, the Bishop put him up for the night, or nights, at the Palace with the other candidates; and on the Saturday night, though there were no outside guests, the examining chaplains and the future priests and deacons made a large party at dinner. About half way through the meal the attention of all was arrested by the voice of Mr. O’Brien addressing the Bishop:

“Have ye read my sermon, my lord?” (It appears that each candidate had to submit a sample sermon for the episcopal criticism.)

“Not yet, Mr.—er——”

“O’Brien, my lord.”

“Mr. O’Brien, I have not yet had time: may I ask what is the subject that you have chosen?”

“It’s on the Atonement, my lord.”

The Bishop shuddered, and replied coldly: “You have chosen a very difficult subject, Mr. O’Brien.”

“Faith, my lord, it’s signs ye haven’t read it, or ye’d say it was easy enough.”

But he was ordained, and, still more surprising, he found a woman with money to marry him. With her money he bought a good living and settled down in the country. As the late Master of Trinity would have said, “The little time he could spare from the neglect of his parochial duties he devoted to the breeding of prize poultry;” and on that point his opinion was deemed valuable. Also he had the national fluency, and the Colonial and Continental Society offered him holiday chaplaincies in the choicest spots of Middle Europe.

“What is the name of Dr. O’Brien’s parish?” I asked the Canon, when he came back from the door: “I don’t meet him in any school.”

“Exby: he succeeded a very different man, old Wright, of whom many stories are told. It is not a college living, but Wright had been a don for many years, and, having a good bit of money, bought Exby sooner than wait any longer for Zedtown, his fat college living. He never married, and he kept up his Common Room habits, especially including the rubber, which was the delight of his life. But he was a very prudent man, and he didn’t like losing his money. If he was losing, he went to bed early: if he was winning, he would sit up all night, or as long as he could get the other men to sit up. One night, they say, he had a great run of luck, and went on playing till after the early hours of the morning: in fact, it was about five, when they heard a most fearful rumbling in the chimney, increasing in noise, till at last with a cloud of soot a black apparition in human form descended, and stood on the hearthstone.

“I may tell you in confidence that it was only the sweep: his proceedings were perfectly in order, but the servants had omitted to notify the Rector that the visit was impending.

“The gamblers, and especially the Rector, reasonably concluded that it was the Prince of Darkness, who had come to carry them off; and they started from the table. Old Wright dropped on his knees, and held up his trembling hands with a goodly assortment of trumps and court-cards, and stammered out:

“‘Spare me, oh, spare me, till I have finished the rubber.’”

All the “Ruri-deacons,” as Miller called them, knew the story; but familiarity with it even now cannot hinder me from laughing in sleepless hours of the night at the picture of the blear-eyed four, with shattered nerves, clinging to the table, and gazing at the still more startled sweep.

“I knew Wright,” said one on my right: “he told me he used to keep his store of money in £5 notes which he hid in a volume of Tillotson’s sermons in his study. I asked, ‘Why Tillotson?’ and he said, ‘Because it is not likely that a burglar would be fond of sermons, and if he was, he wouldn’t want to read Tillotson.’”

It needs some acquaintance with Tillotson to get the full aroma of this appreciation.

“He was a great man for schools, Inspector,” said another: “used to do all the thrashing for the schoolmistress; and one time he did his duty to a boy so nobly that the mother came to complain. ‘You know, parson,’ she said, ‘as Scripture says as a man should be merciful to his beast.’

“‘But he wasn’t my beast, Mrs. Green,’ retorted old Wright: and she was so much pleased with the homely repartee that she retired chuckling.”

“Have you met O’Brien’s new Curate, Rogers, yet?” said Johnson to the Rural Dean. “A very different man from our friend. He told me of a singular experience that befell a fellow student: he was, you know, formerly a Dissenter of sorts, and was educated at one of their colleges.”

“That accounts for the excellence of his preaching, I suppose?” said our cynical host.

“No doubt,” replied the narrator coolly; “any how, he is a good fellow. Well, at those colleges it is the custom to send out students to preach in outlying districts, both to give them the confidence that comes from experiments on vile bodies, and also to keep the cause together. One Saturday afternoon Rogers’ friend was sent off with instructions to go some miles by train; then to walk two miles to Blankby; and there to ask the way to Mudby, where one John Hodge would put him up for the night. He got all right to Blankby, and so on to Mudby. Then he enquired for Mr. Hodge.

“‘Which Mr.’Odge would ’a be?’

“He explained that he was going to preach at the chapel next day; and it was agreed that Jahn ’Odge o’ th’ owd farm, being great wi’ th’ chapel folk, was like to be the mon, and full directions were given. As that sort of people always tells you ‘right,’ when they mean ‘left,’ it was late and dark when the missioner arrived. Old Mrs. Hodge opened the door, and admitted his plea for hospitality. Her husband had not yet come in. It was a mere cottage, and the evening meal did not take long. Noticing that her guest was weary, the dame suggested, ‘’appen yo’d loike ta goo ta bed?’ He gladly agreed, and followed his hostess. As he went, it struck him that there were not many rooms, but it was not his affair, and he was soon in bed and asleep. He knew not at what later hour he felt a dig in the ribs, saw a light, and heard Mrs. Hodge’s voice:

“‘Thee move a bit furder on, yoong mon: theer’s me an’ my owd mon to coom yet.’”

“Oh, but that is good,” shouted Miller, “and I don’t care whether it is true or not. Not going away, Oldbury? Tell the Inspector the story of Wilberforce and Lady A. before you go. He has never heard it.”

“I always obey my Rural Dean,” said Oldbury. “The story was told me many years ago by a pillar of the Church, and I think it is little known.

“It was at the time of the Crimean War that the Bishop was dining at a solemn banquet given by one of the Peelite Ministry of that time. There were three or four ministers present, and among the ladies was an illustrious Marchioness, Lady A. She sat next to the Bishop, and when the solemnity of the statesmen had killed all other conversation, they became aware that the Church and the world were still full of life. And this is what they heard:

Lady A. Do you ever go down to Boreham now, Bishop?

Bishop. It is seldom that I can find time: but from old associations the place has a peculiar interest for me. Last year I was fortunate enough to be able to accept an invitation from my friend Mr. Goodheart, and at dinner I sat next a very worthy, elderly, man of the name of Polycarp, who in a very touching manner was recounting to me the many blessings which he had received in the course of a life prolonged beyond the usual limits.

Lady A. (stifling a yawn). Dear me, Bishop.

Bishop. Yes: and it appeared that he considered the chief of his blessings to be that he had had twenty-three children. And while I was trying to find words to express my opinion that some people might regard that as a not unmixed blessing, a black-eyed lady, whom I had observed to be listening with much attention to our conversation, leant across the table, and said with remarkable distinctness: ‘Only Sixteen by me, Mr. Polycarp.’”

“Good-night, Miller. Good-night, Mr. Inspector.”

Solvuntur risu tabulae; they all went home. But the night was still young, and Miller and I drew up our chairs to the fire.

“Good men, and true!” said the Rural Dean, turning over in his hands a bundle of the Oxford postcards. I was turning over in my mind the men to whom I had just bidden farewell. One puzzled me:

“Who was the big man with gold spectacles, sitting next O’Brien; hardly spoke a word all the time?” I asked.

“Gold spectacles? Oh, old Weights of Slobury; most worthy, but not lively. There is a story of him. It is said that when the new railway was being made through his parish, he one day paid a pastoral visit to the navvies’ huts; and having gained admission to one hut, he talked and read till the master grew weary, and suggested that it was about tea-time. Weights took the hint, and his leave. As he closed the door, the man pointed compassionately over his shoulder at the ponderously retreating figure, and muttered:

“‘Theer goos a good navvy—spiled.’”

“But here, Inspector,” he continued, “here is a postcard that will suit you. You were at Balliol, were you not?”

He gave it to me, and it may be anglicised thus:

A traveller in Central Africa was surprised and carried off by hostile natives, who brought him before their chief. A drum-head court-martial was held, and sentence of death was speedily passed. But while the executioner was making the necessary preparations, the tribe were ransacking his baggage, and one of them with a shout of joy held up an Oxford blazer of the Balliol pattern. The chief saw it, and his grim features relaxed. In excellent English he said—

“Were you at Balliol? So was I: you may go. Good old Jowett!” (Abi in pacem: Jowettii, et nostrum, haud immemor.)

CHAPTER XIII
CHESHIRE

“Then there is the County Palatine.”
Merchant of Venice.

Three profitable years I spent in Norfolk, learning my business, and I became weary of exile. When on my appointment I received my instructions from the Secretary, he said that, looking to my experience gained as Inspector of Returns, it was not necessary that I should serve any further apprenticeship: I “need not take up my headquarters in Norfolk.” This in official language meant that as soon as possible I should be given a district of my own; and in my ignorance of official life I took no thought for the morrow. But, as my third year of expatriation began to draw to a close, it occurred to me that the Secretary was not personally interested in me, and that in the Civil Service, as elsewhere, a man who wants promotion must see that he gets it.

I reminded Sir Francis that I was hungry—not for promotion, but for amotion to less remoteness. He at once admitted my claim, and created a new district for me, the headquarters of which would be King’s Lynn, and the territory West Norfolk and East Cambridgeshire. I remember that Wisbech and Whittlesey were included. I never saw either, but I should class them with Timbuctoo and Borrioboola Gha. My capital had a population of 17,000, and a member of Parliament: the grass grew in the streets, and on Tuesdays the cattle from the Hinterland came to market and ate it down. There was no Grand hotel, and no place where I could lodge; it would be necessary to take a house, and manage it. Matrimony stared me in the face. The greater part of the aforesaid Hinterland was fen district, imprudently reclaimed from the great dismal swamp. I pointed out these drawbacks to the Secretary, and he kindly suggested that I should beguile the tedium of existence by shooting gulls. It might have come to secretary-birds.

In a few weeks Providence intervened. I heard that H.M.I. at Chester wanted, for family reasons, to live near Lynn: would I change? I felt as Clive must have felt when the pistol, which he snapped at his own head, failed to go off. “He burst forth (says Macaulay) into an exclamation that surely he was reserved for something great.” Can it ever at any other time have happened that a man wanted to leave Chester to go to King’s Lynn?

With great difficulty I persuaded Sir Francis that to the Cheshire and Norfolk people it must be a matter of profound indifference whether Gyas or Cloanthus inspected their schools. Granted that Cheshire suffered loss, yet how pleasant to think of the joy of Norfolk. He grudgingly agreed, and in due course it was arranged. On October 1, 1877, I took charge of the Chester district.

We read at times in the history of great men that after some turning-point in their career they “never looked back.” I am not a great man, and in one sense I often looked back. There were many days when I thought of my successor; in winter frostbitten in the fens; in spring shivering in a dogcart, beating up against the east wind, smothered with yellow dust on Roudham Heath; at any time of the year wearily waiting for slow trains at dismal roadside stations: and at such times the old pious ejaculation rose to my lips, “There but for the Grace of God goes poor John Bradford.”

For I had got the best, or at least the most comfortable, district in England. In six months I was relieved of the eastern side of Cheshire, and my limit was a radius of from 10 to 20 miles round Chester. There were eight railway lines centred in the ancient city to carry me about, and on some of the lines trains were frequent. The school inspections had been so craftily arranged that I could spend the winter months in Birkenhead, where all the travelling was done in cabs; the spring in and around Chester, where there were hansom cabs instead of the perilous dogcart; the summer months in the more distant places at the end of my chain; and the autumn in the Wirral peninsula, between the Dee and the Mersey.

Late in the ’eighties an old colleague asked why I did not apply for a London district, and so get rid of all the travelling. There was the leading case of S. who used to inspect the four northern counties, giving six months to Northumberland and Durham, and six to Cumberland and Westmorland: now he had a compact area in East London, a mile across one way, and a mile and a quarter the other.

“And a yellow fog by way of a change from a black fog, and absolute monotony of schools all the year round,” I replied: “town children differing only in degrees of dirt; school buildings which would not be tolerated outside the large towns; and managers who take a cab to Whitehall, if they don’t like their Report. And at the back, and using private and political influence at the Office, a Debating Society calling itself the London School Board. Here in Cheshire I get variety. On Monday I had a town school of 400 boys in a black hole: on Tuesday a suburban school of 150 girls in a beautiful building with a lavish supply of teachers: on Wednesday I drove 10 miles to a country village, where the whole 45 lambs of the flock were collected in what an esteemed inspector called ‘a third class waiting-room and a jam cupboard.’ I am going to get Monday’s school shut up in 12 months: in London it would take 12 years. London! I had rather be a country dog, and bay the moon.”

He admitted that the School Board was as bad as the fog. H.M.I. is all but powerless in Board Schools; the Board inspectors hold the purse strings and control the promotion, and if H.M.I. tries to raise the standard of education to the level of other towns the Board combine with the teachers to worry his life out.

“But,” he added, “H.M.I. sometimes has an innings and scores freely. Did you hear about Bouncer? Member of the Board, you know: prominent educational reformer. Went down to a Board School the other day, and walked through the class-rooms. When he got to Standard V. he found them sitting upright, and a middle-aged sort of man balanced on the fireguard in front of the class.

“‘Hallo,’ said Bouncer, ‘what is this class doing?’

“‘At present,’ said the middle-aged man, not liking the Bouncerian manner, ‘they are doing nothing.’

“‘Nothing! then they had better go home,’ snorted Bouncer.

“‘Not a bad idea,’ said the middle-aged man meditatively.

“Bouncer was furious. ‘Pray, sir,’ he asked, ‘do you know who I am?’

“‘Haven’t a notion,’ said the middle-aged man.

“‘My name is Bouncer, sir, John Bouncer; and I am a member of the School Management Committee.’

“‘Ah,’ said the man on the fireguard, ‘and do you know who I am?’

“‘You, sir? No, I do NOT know.’

“‘I am the inspector, what you call Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools. Now, boys, here is teacher with the map of Europe. What is the capital of Herzegovina?’”

I thought I would do without Bouncer. No one behaved like that in West Cheshire: I should be frightened.

“And then,” I continued, “look at my playground. There are three railways to take me into Wales; eighty minutes to Llandudno, three and a half hours to the foot of Snowdon, two and a half hours to the foot of Cader Idris. Do you offer me Margate and Primrose Hill?”

So I abode in Chester for twenty-five years. This is not a biography. I got to know the whole district topographically and individually—managers, teachers, and children. A new generation of managers sprang up; many of the teachers had been children under my inspection; the children were the sons and daughters of my earliest victims. The buildings had grown up with the teachers and children; there were few, indeed, that had not been enlarged, modernised, or practically reconstructed, and many of them brought pleasant recollections of hard fought battles waged with managers for the sake of the children, or with the powers of darkness for the sake of both managers and children.

But I began to think that I had been there too long. We knew one another too well, and there was an increasing danger of my standard being regarded as the standard standard. So I mused, and waited.

CHAPTER XIV
MY LORDS

“Nay, do not think I flatter:
For what advancement may I hope from thee?”
Hamlet.

Some years ago the present chronicler and others were staying at a small hotel in a remote corner of Silesia. After breakfast the waiter appeared and addressed the linguist of the party. What did the Herrschaft propose? he should recommend the ascent of the Flaschenberg. At what hour would the Herrschaft dine?

“What does he call us?” I asked the linguist.

“Herrschaft,” he said: “Their Lordships; you ought to know.”

We were “My Lords”! Probably some Hanoverian monarch had imported the title from Germany, and had applied it to a Committee of the Privy Council. Under this sign they conquered. It took the place of the kingly and editorial WE. It called up a vision of phantasmal, coroneted heads, shaking a negative, more rarely nodding an affirmative. In front there might seem to be a Secretary, an Assistant Secretary, even a clerk: but when the suppliant got as far as “What ho! Arrest me that agency,” the official vanished, and there was but a voice, “My Lords regret.” “And so the vision fadeth.” With this weapon they put to silence inquisitive members of the Opposition, who “wanted to know” things better unknown: with this they conquered School Boards and school managers of all denominations: with this they even tried to intimidate H.M. Inspectors themselves, who well knew that it was no lion that roared, but only Snug the joiner.

My Lords were but a Parliamentary fiction; in theory composed of the Lord President, the First Lord of the Treasury, and some Secretaries of State: in practice they had no existence; but I think the Whitehall staff had by long “making believe” persuaded themselves that they were flesh and blood. A newly appointed examiner would go to his immediate superior with a letter from the School Board of Swaggerby, protesting against a deduction of one-tenth from the annual grant paid in respect of the Slum Street Board School: how should he reply?

“Pooh, pooh: it’s Article 32, c. (3): tell them to go to the deuce.” And the beardless stripling would sit down, and write:—

“Adverting to your letter of the 24th inst., I am directed to inform you that My Lords regret that They are unable to reconsider Their decision in the matter. I am to refer you to Art. 32, c. (3) of the Code; and I am to add that Their Lordships will look for a marked improvement in the results of the next examination as a condition of the payment of any further grant.”

The capital letter prefixed to the third personal pronoun always seemed to me the height of impertinent arrogance. But the examiners enjoyed it immensely; and I am convinced that, if they ever went to church and heard the petition in the Litany supplicating wisdom and understanding for the Lords of the Council, they mentally added, “Meaning US, though WE are already well supplied.”

The composition of the Education Department was very simple in 1872 when I trod the corridors. At that time elementary education pure and simple was controlled from Whitehall. Science and art were the care of another establishment, which we knew as “South Kensington.” The Montague and Capulet retainers never met; only they bit their thumbs when the other house was mentioned. When—in the later ’seventies—we began to clash, science and art were considered pastimes for retired officers, who had exchanged the sword for an H.B. pencil, and all sorts of majors and captains used to be mixed up with the study thereof. They used to examine in drawing, and they conducted examinations in May and December with a code of regulations of their own composing. They even invented an envelope with a fastening that reminded one of Rob Roy’s purse—(“the simplicity of the contrivance to secure a furred pouch, which could have been ripped open without any attempt on the spring, &c.”)—and when, as occasionally happened, we were appealed to for help in superintending their examinations at the training colleges, we danced in fetters of red-tape.

It used to be told of one of the best known of the Whitehall officials, F. T. Palgrave, of Golden Treasury fame, that a school manager once interviewed him on some grievance, and, getting little satisfaction, enquired whether he might ask whom he had the honour of addressing.

“Oh, certainly,” said he, “my name is Francis Palgrave.”

The visitor thanked him, but explained that he rather wished to know the official’s rank: for instance, was his opinion final?

“Not at all,” replied Palgrave airily; “I am what they call a Senior Examiner: above me are the three Assistant Secretaries, Mr. A., Mr. B., and Mr. C.: above them is the Secretary, Sir Francis Sandford: above him the Vice-President, Mr. Forster: above him the Lord President, Lord Ripon: and above him, I believe, the Almighty.”

I served the Department, or Board, in one capacity or another and with some interval for more than thirty-five years. In all that time I never saw a Lord President, and I should often have found it hard to tell the name of the reigning potentate if I had been asked suddenly. He was always a peer: I dimly remember two dukes, two marquises, some earls, and a viscount. Barons were nothing accounted of. It was said that when Greville, the diarist, sometime Clerk of the Council, had attended his first Council meeting, some one asked a Cabinet Minister whether he had noticed that they had a new clerk: and the noble lord replied, “Not I; when the tall footman puts coals on the fire, do you suppose I notice whether it is Charles or James?” And the remark being repeated to Greville induced him to form a low estimate of the statesman.

That was very much our attitude towards the Lord President of the Council. For our master at the Education Department of the Privy Council was master of all the branches of that Vehmegericht, if I may adopt Sir Walter Scott’s spelling. I believe agriculture and public health were our rivals in his affections, and it was often said that the chief knew more about cattle plague than he did about the education code. In actual practice he confined himself (as we understood) to the patronage; that is to say, to the appointment of the indoor staff (examiners) and outdoor staff (inspectors). Sometimes a Lord President would take the same kindly interest in education that his wife might take in the gardens of the family place; liking to see a good show of flowers, and at times venturing to give a hint to the head-gardener, but shrinking back if that magnate showed signs of impatience or resentment. It was even said of one Lord President that he liked to read reports, if type-written, on educational matters; but we were warned, “you mustn’t talk to him about P.T.’s and Article 68 or Circular 321: he dislikes technical details.”

Alas! the Lord President is extinct as the mammoth.

The Vice-President, known in the Office as the V.P., was a much more real person. He was always in the Lower House, and quite often was chosen for some fancied fitness for the post. It was his duty to defend the Office and the Inspectors against the attacks of numerous enemies, and once a year, late in the Session, when the House was getting thin, he was allowed to move the Estimates, and to make a nice long speech. For anything I know to the contrary he may have thought that he both reigned and governed. But the ever watchful Permanent Secretary knew better. Let us hear Susan Nipper on a similar situation.

Oh! bless your heart, Mrs. Richards, temporaries always order permanencies here, didn’t you know that? Why, wherever was you born, Mrs. Richards? But wherever you was born, and whenever, and however (which is best known to yourself), you may bear in mind, please, that it’s one thing to give orders and quite another thing to take ’em.—(Dombey.)

There was often a good deal of Nipperism in the Secretary when the temporary V.P. wanted to give orders.

The outdoor staff troubled itself very little about the temporaries. Almost every new V.P. came in like a lion, and rumours would reach us from time to time that the new man was giving trouble, and might be expected to produce a new Code. Generally the malady took the form of what we may call Circularitis,[17] and after that the patient experienced relief. When the furthest recesses of our peninsula had been made to tremble at the new policy, the afflicted man began to amend, and the disease yielded to treatment at the hands of the permanent physician. Then he went out like a lamb.

Of all the V.P.’s of my era, the most obtrusive was Mr. Anthony John Mundella. Everyone knows Tacitus’ estimate of Galba, that “by universal consent he was fit for empire, if he had not been an emperor.” But I doubt if even this faint praise could be given to Mundella. He was made Vice-President, we may suppose, to pacify the Birmingham League, to keep the fussy man himself quiet, to satisfy the advanced wing of the party. And it was generally conceded that no man ever in the office was more keenly interested in education; no man more anxious to do and say the right thing. At times he soared above earth, and won admiration for his absence of pretence, and his strenuous endeavours to carry out what he conceived to be the right policy. But no one could have thought him fit to govern. He had never held office before, and neither the manufacture of hosiery, nor the part which he had played in the local politics of Nottingham had fitted him for the difficult and delicate task which fell upon him. Men in the Office said he was a pulpit-cushion thumper, and nothing more: he was incapable of deciding a case submitted to him.

Moreover, as is often the case in similar circumstances, he could not work with men above him, or below him. It was told me by one in the secrets of the Office that the Secretary went one day in subdued fury to the Lord President with a paper in his hand. “Look,” he said, “what Mr. Mundella has said to me.” The noble earl read it, and said soothingly, “I assure you that this is nothing to what he says to me.”

The argument, if it can be so called, is a bad one; for a rude remark to a subordinate differs from a rude remark to a superior. But pity for the helpless chieftain stayed the other’s wrath.

On the retirement of Sir Francis Sandford, in 1884, Mundella determined to have a secretary after his own heart. Sir Francis had recommended the appointment of one of the ablest of the Inspectorate as his successor, and the Lord President had agreed: but when this was revealed to Mundella, he protested vehemently that the Board Schools would not be safe in such hands, and insisted on the appointment of Mr. Cumin, then an assistant secretary in the Office. The President adhered to his choice, and Mundella straight-way seized a piece of paper, wrote his resignation, and handed it to his superior officer. What could be done? It is easy to say with Dogberry, “Why, then, take no note of him, but let him go, and thank God that you are rid of—an undesirable person.” But the situation was difficult. Mundella would have given his reasons in the House, and would have stirred up the Radicals against the old Whigs: the Birmingham League and the Dissenters in both camps would have supported their Goliath against the Whig David: I think there was no remedy. Cumin was appointed.

It was not a good appointment; but if the new secretary did not justify his patron’s praises, he equally failed to justify his expectations of favouritism. The traditions of the Office require that the permanent staff shall treat all classes and sects of schools with equal hand; and though there were many willing to cast a stone at the Secretary, I cannot remember that he was ever accused of undue partiality to one type. There were times, whoever might be secretary, when the balance seemed to be depressed on one side or the other; but it was always explained by nods, and upheaval of the shoulder that pointed to the V.P.’s room, that THOSE FELLOWS were giving trouble. In the last few months a recently emancipated secretary, who employs his well-earned leisure in theological warfare, has informed us that he “puts Protestantism before politics.” I believe I am correct in saying that during his long period of service in Whitehall no one even suspected him of ecclesiastical prejudices.

This habit of mind Mundella could not understand. In office, as in business, he did not seem to run straight; but when financial troubles caused his downfall, men pitied him, because they thought his errors, there also, were errors of judgment rather than of moral sense.

Of other Vice-Presidents before the arrival of Sir John Gorst, I think Mr. Acland was the most demonstrative. He had been a clergyman in Priest’s Orders, but he “renounced them all,” and entered Parliament, and in 1892 was made Vice-President by Mr. Gladstone. It was said that the Premier was under the impression that his new Minister had never gone beyond Deacon’s Orders, and that, knowing that the abandonment of Priest’s Orders involved excommunication, he would with fuller knowledge have made another choice. Ecclesiastical law is one of the few subjects that I have never examined in, and I repeat the canonical proposition without any warranty. It may be a joke. When Mr. Gladstone is concerned, one must always remember the excellent rule laid down by a critic in the Times, when reviewing a book of Oxford anecdotes: “What one requires of a story (at Oxford) is not that it should be true, but that it should be suitable to the character of the man of whom it is told.” (I quote from memory.) Accepting the story with this reservation, I think it was open to the new Minister to retort that the change from Tory M.P. for Oxford to Radical M.P. for Mid Lothian more richly deserved the greater excommunication.

However that may be, the new V.P. had little sympathy with his former brethren. His zeal for education was great, but whether in Whitehall or in the West Riding it has always been the zeal of the tailless fox yearning to bite the well-tailed little ones. To us inspectors much of this fury was welcome. There were many schools which we had long been anxious to close on account of the defects of their buildings, and always hitherto, whether Tories or Radicals were in power, we were thwarted by My Lords. Now we began to hope. But it was not till November, 1893, that the V.P. succeeded in forging a weapon with which to smite his foes. In that month appeared the famous Circular 321, which demanded full information about the premises of every Public Elementary School, and we spent a busy year in compiling the answers. The mesh was narrow, and if we had been properly supported in Whitehall we should have netted all the offenders. But there never was any backbone to My Lords. Voluntary Schools and Board Schools for once went hand-in-hand: the backstairs of the Office crawled with protestants of all denominations: there ensued consternation, procrastination, prevarication. In some districts we kept the fire banked up, and in a later year, with the help of the Aid Grant,[18] we moved. But it required continual stoking. Excommunicated Mr. Acland may be, but many a child has to thank him for increased health and comfort; and I trust that when he comes to work off his sentence in Purgatory, he may be able to plead these good works as an equitable set off.

The last of the V.P.’s, and the only one that I ever saw, was Sir John Gorst. Nature had not designed him for the position of second fiddler; but the Lord President, finding that his understudy, when he got hold of the first fiddle, played out of tune and threw out the band, insisted on his keeping the lower place. This amused the House of Commons, and the Duke omitted to stipulate that Sir John never should

“With arms encumbered thus, or thus head shake,
Or by pronouncing of some doubtful phrase,
As, ‘Well, we know’; or, ‘There be, an if there might’;
Or such ambiguous giving out——”

intimate that some people could play fiddles better than others who had a great name. Then the Secretary asserted that he was Conductor, whoever was playing first fiddle. It was rumoured that there was incompatibility of temper in exalted circles. “What odds to Hippokleides?” we said, we others.

There came a new Code,[19] that was to put elementary education on a really satisfactory basis. This was so common a phenomenon that we hardly turned our heads to look at it: but to our amazement it was followed by an invitation to attend at the Foreign Office one March day, that we might hear the V.P.’s opinions on his new baby, and on education generally. We assembled from the Solway to the Channel, from the Irish Sea to the German Ocean. Whitehall lay down with South Kensington, and the great Hall of the Foreign Office had a novel congregation. There for the first and only time I saw a V.P. His views on education were pronounced “very crude,” “amateurish,” and so on; but it was a holiday, and the country paid our expenses: I think my bill came to about £4. I lunched with a Treasury clerk, who suggested that the V.P. had not spent all his “Vote,” and wanted to knock down the balance, instead of refunding it to the Treasury. But it is the way of the Treasury to take low views of human motives.

The Lord President and the Vice-President have passed away. It may be that the dual control was unworkable; but there was something to be said for it. The V.P. was not a first-class Minister; the President was not a first-class educationalist. Therefore the V.P. put on the steam, and the other put on the brake. We are now better able to appreciate the value of the arrangement.

There came a change after an Act of 1899. The Education Department of the Privy Council cut the cable, became independent, and took the title of “Board of Education.” My Lords vanished, and the Lord President and Vice-President were transformed into a President and a Parliamentary Secretary. The former may be chosen from either House, but the first to hold office was a noble lord who would have fitly adorned the post of Lord President of the Council. He was followed by a philosophic commoner; and he again by other commoners, whom their friends applauded, and their enemies severely censured for their activity. It may be suggested that a more experienced statesman in the Upper House might have exercised a wholesome restraining influence.

On a former page the Lord President was disrespectfully compared with the tall footman. The permanent secretary occupies the more exalted position of head waiter. It is to the head waiter that the experienced traveller pays court. He controls the loaves and fishes, and without him one may hang on and starve while others wax fat. He arranges the tables, and gives to his chosen friends corner seats by the fire, or choice spots in the bow window commanding a rich prospect; but to the ungodly a draughty place near the door. As the older visitors drop off, it is his to move up those who find favour in his eyes, and to let the runagates continue in scarceness. If he smiles, the understrappers scowl in vain: a word to the great man will do all that is wanted. The directors, the manager who appointed him, pretend to superior dignity, and their emoluments are on a more generous scale: but in their secret hearts they admit that the key to the success of the establishment is in the hands of the maître d’hôtel.

These valuable, if tedious, reflections come to me too late. I never paid court to the great man: I never went near him, unless I wanted something very much. It was sufficient for me to cultivate the goodwill of the waiter at my table, though I was well aware that he would endure but for a time. As soon as I had got to know Rosencrantz he was moved on, and I had to begin again with Guildenstern. I sat in a dark corner and carefully avoided the master eye. But I was very well treated.

Presidents, V.P.’s, secretaries, and all the host that called themselves “My Lords” trouble me no more. I can sit like Amyas Leigh on Lundy and dream of my old friends and foes:

“And I saw him sitting in his cabin like a valiant gentleman of Spain, and his officers were sitting round him with their swords upon the table at the wine. And the prawns and the crayfish, and the rockling they swam in and out above their heads....”

Shadowy presidents and vice-presidents; sturdy Sir Francis with his pleasant smile and rich Doric accent; the grim and cautious head of Cumin; sharp-tongued A., rough-tongued B., double-tongued C., honey-tongued D.

“She lies in fifteen fathoms at the edge of the rocks, upon the sand, and her men are lying all around her, asleep until the Judgment Day.”

And so I bid them farewell. Requiescant in pace, as they let me do.

FOOTNOTES:

[17] Circularitis: the symptoms of this distressing complaint are eruptions of Circulars, Memoranda, and Instructions addressed to the servants of the Department, or to School Boards, or other local authorities, and often producing great local irritation. It is said that the disease is almost wholly confined to Whitehall.

[18] Aid Grant: the Voluntary School Act, 1897, gave an ‘aid grant’ not exceeding 5s. per scholar, &c., to Voluntary schools. This enabled the managers to increase the teachers’ salaries, or to improve the buildings and furniture.

[19] Code: every year the Board issue a Code of regulations for Public Elementary Schools. This directs the course of instruction and fixes the annual Government grant.

CHAPTER XV
MANAGERS

“To say ‘ay’ and ‘no’ to these particulars is more than to answer in a Catechism.”—As You Like It.

What is a manager? Generally one that manages; particularly one who manages a school. Before 1903 every school was supposed to have at least three of these potentates: over the others towered the Correspondent; in some cases there was no one behind or below the Correspondent; and when the three necessary signatures had to be provided as a warranty for the accuracy of statistical returns, the Department advised recourse to a minister of religion, a J.P., or a banker. But Squire Broadlands used to call in his wife and his gardener. They put their names where they were told, and asked no questions.

“Managing” included the appointment of teachers, general supervision of the process of Education, upkeep of the fabric, and paying the bills. Incidentally this brought with it the raising of the necessary funds. There was the weight that pulled them down.

The Correspondent was usually the Rector; or, in Roman Catholic schools, the Priest. He carried on the endless letter-writing with My Lords; secured teachers; kept them in order; and, above all, kept H.M.I. in good temper, especially by votive offerings of lunch. In Board schools the Clerk, as a rule, did all this work, except the lunch. There H.M.I. was left to the uncovenanted mercies of the charitable.

At the present day all this is changed. The so-called managers have the shadow of power without the substance: they appoint teachers, who at once pass from their control: and they have to raise money for landlord’s repairs from ratepayers who are already overburdened with the expenses of their tenancy. But they have got rid of Form IX.

What was Form IX.? In the dark ages before the Act of 1902 this was the stumbling-stone of managers and a rock of offence to inspectors. At the end of the school year Form IX. arrived at the correspondent’s house, and thenceforth sleep was banished from his pillow. There were countless questions spread over nine pages of foolscap, and arranged sometimes in horizontal, sometimes in vertical columns. For the unwary there were more traps to the square inch than are contained in any other nine pages in the world. Two pages were devoted chiefly to signatures and general declarations. (Dolus latet in generalibus.) Two more were for the school accounts; five remained for the statistics of the school; the size of the rooms; the names, ages, salaries, qualifications, and past histories of all the teachers; the number of children on the rolls; the number in average attendance; the number at each age between 3 and 14; and so on.

It required many hours of labour from the head teachers before it reached the treasurer: a skilful financier was the treasurer who could complete his share in a day.

At the office in Whitehall there was an army of clerks, whose duty it was to examine Form IX. and to hunt for errors and omissions. I have heard them compared with the railway men at important junctions, who tap the carriage wheels with a hammer in search of flaws or fractures; and, according to popular rumour, receive as much as half-a-sovereign if they detect a fault. But it was alleged that in the case of the clerks the reward was as low as sixpence; this, I feel sure, was a libel on the liberality of the Department.

Their Lordships encouraged accuracy by a printed warning to the effect that any mistake might involve a delay of six weeks in the payment of the grant; and as the sum involved might be £1,000, or more, and as interest on an overdraft at the bank might be running on (with a possible Bank Rate of from five to ten per cent.) this was a serious consideration.

It is often said that the Clergy are bad men of business. If this means that they have a habit, which they share with widows, and other narrow-incomed persons, of investing in speculative undertakings of the wild-cat type, I have nothing to say to the contrary. But when we get beyond this, let one who has officially been a malleus monachorum for many years enter a protest. In the ordinary local affairs, and especially in the control of public meetings, they are as a rule superior to the average layman, simply because they have more experience. And for this reason they—and I emphatically include the clergy of the Church of Rome—were able to fill up Form IX. with an ease to which the unhallowed lawyer or land agent never attained. It was a solicitor who in two successive years presented me with a balance sheet showing a surplus on both sides of the account: it was an estate agent who—but let sleeping dogs lie.

When Form IX. was approximately finished, it was tentatively offered to the Inspector, and nearly all classes of managers were grateful for suggestions of improvement. The benevolent Inspector would run his eye down the pages, and would say, “Just put in ‘NO’ twelve times in these columns, and ‘YES’ thirty-six times down there;” and the thing was done. It mattered little what was thereby affirmed or denied, if the Inspector vouched it.

But this editing was often a serious addition to our labours; for it might involve a considerable amount of research and some delicate enquiries.

“Date of birth of the assistant mistress?” What a question to ask a lady! I used to soothe the patient by jestingly proposing impossible pre-historic dates, and so coming gently down to the irreducible minimum of the approximate truth. And the managers always liked to hear the old Bar story:

Counsel: Pray, how old are you, madam?
Witness: Well, if you must know, I was born in the year ’64.
Counsel (blandly): A.D. or B.C.?

Once a manager came to me during the inspection and asked to have Form IX. back for a minute. I produced it, and he explained: “Old Miss Grey, when she brings me the Form, always asks to have it back again, before you come, so that she may run her eye over it. Then I look at it, and I always find that she has left a blank for her ‘date of birth.’ She gets it back from me, fills in the date, and gives you the Form: then I get it back again to see how she is getting on, and very slow progress she makes.”

“‘Character of the late master?’ How very awkward: after the last report, you know, we really were obliged to make a change, and people do say he was not quite—he seemed at times a little—what can I put there?”

“‘Present address of the late mistress’—and she died last November. Eh?”

It was not always possible to go into these details: there might be a train to catch: and then, if anything went wrong, the manager would lay the blame on the broad back of the Inspector. “I had Form IX. returned to me last year,” said a south-country incumbent to me: “I think Pluckham, our Inspector—do you know Pluckham?—might have corrected it for me: I gave the fellow lunch, don’t you know.” I assured him that there was no reciprocal obligation in the matter of lunch.

These were comparatively simple questions. But the accounts were appalling; and they had to be audited. Till recent years this was not much of an ordeal, for an amateur auditor was easily satisfied. I myself was witness of an audit when a treasurer presented his accounts to a friendly banker for his certificate. The skilled accountant added up the figures, and pronounced the result very good. “Now,” he asked, “what have I to certify: ‘That I have compared this balance sheet with the accounts, and with the registers’? Where are the registers?” and he seized the vouchers, and ran through them: then he signed the certificate. The school was not in my district, and I was not bound to remark that a register of school attendance is not the same as a receipted account.

In the late ’nineties a professional auditor was required, and after some experience I concluded that compound addition and subtraction are no part of an auditor’s education. But the process inspired confidence in the public mind.

When ladies and other simple souls undertook the office of treasurer, there was a chance of trouble. Two instances occur to me.

The first was in the depths of Bœotia. My sub-inspector and I had to inspect a school supported by the Earl of X., and managed by the Dowager Countess. I had been warned that her Ladyship was a little trying, and I was prepared for the worst. On the appointed day we drove a few miles from the railway station, and caught a glimpse of the Hall as we passed the lodge gates. “That’s built in the Grotto style,” said my driver, and after much meditation on this order of architecture, I decided that he meant “Gothic.” You could hardly put an Earl into a grotto.

At the school door—the school also was Gothic, but I prefer the Vandals—I was invited into a sort of lobby, which should have been the girls’ cloakroom; and there was the Countess. She was stately, but gracious. The accounts were a little perplexing; what should I advise? I suggested some trivial alterations, and then noticed that on the Income side there was no record of “School-pence” paid by the children: if any had been received they must be entered. The Dowager scorned the idea: there were school-pence, but they had been received by the Mistress and had been kept by the mistress: I think she considered them Korban. In that case, I said, they must appear on both sides of the account; on the Expenditure side they must be added to “Mistress’s Salary.”

The Dowager was wroth: she clutched me by the arm, and went nigh to shake me, as Queen Elizabeth “shook the dying countess.” “My good sir,” she said with biting sarcasm, “Lord X. is willing to pay the ordinary expenses of the school, but he cannot be expected to meet these additional charges. Is he to put down in the accounts every trifling present that he has given the mistress during the year?”

I pointed out that if the children had paid the pence, and the mistress had received the pence, the Earl was safe: all that remained was to record the payment and receipt. Otherwise, I said very emphatically, the accounts would be returned by the Department, and payment of the grant would be delayed for weeks.

Her grasp relaxed. “I think I see,” she said slowly: and I escaped into the school and joined my colleague in the examination of the children. The Dowager finished her accounts by the light of my suggestions, and followed. My sub. was hearing the first class read, and at the same time was keeping an eye on the second class, to which the teacher was giving Dictation. I saw her Ladyship make her way between the wall and back row of desks, glancing over the girls’ shoulders, as they wrote: I saw her pause behind one girl, and with a suggestive finger indicate that a word was wrongly spelt: I saw my ever watchful colleague shoot out a long arm, clutch the girl’s paper, crumple it up in his pocket: I heard him continue in his cheerful tones, “Very nicely read, Mary Smith; go on, Jane Brown.”

The Countess withdrew: the Grotto Hall did not provide lunch: I would have given a good deal to hear her Ladyship’s account of the morning’s work.

“And other simple souls,” I said: for I had in my mind the strangely parallel conduct of my friend Mr. Shippon. Citoyen fermier Shippon was elected treasurer of the village school, and he found Form IX. a hard thing to tackle. So far his experience of public education had only taught him that it interfered with the supply of cheap labour on farms; notably in the scaring of crows, and the dropping of ’taters. When it came before him as an offshoot of the Civil Service in connexion with a code and a balance sheet, he was—in the expressive language of north-west England—“fairly moithered,”[20] and he came to me for help. I got a slate and collected the items: income from school-pence, subscriptions, and proceeds of a bazaar—£98 11s. 4d. Expenditure on salaries, books, coal, &c.—£36 8s. 8d. Balance in treasurer’s hand—£62 2s. 8d. If he would copy down those figures, he would be safe.

“Na, na, it conna be,” said Shippon with much emotion: “yo’ve rackoned in t’ skule pence, and t’ governess ’as took ’em all.”

“Yes,” I said, “but I have included them in her salary: it’s as broad as it is long.”

“It conna be,” he repeated very emphatically; “yo knaw nowt about it.”

When a man holds all the cards, he can keep his temper, and I laughed, and left him. But I added a warning that if he didn’t bring out a balance of £62 2s. 8d. he would get no grant; and after some weeks’ meditation he yielded.

Managers generally were far more agreeable than these two: we got to tolerate one another, and established an armed neutrality; then we made advances on either side, and in most cases we became friends. They became part of our little solar system in our annual revolution round the district, and as the years rolled on we got strangely to associate them with the season of the year in which their school inspection fell due. “I hope, Mr. Kynnersley, you don’t regard me as November,” said a rector’s wife to whom I had made this confession. I prevaricated, but the association of ideas was unavoidable. We never met in any other month.

There were places which I never saw except in winter: there were others which I connected with climbing roses in the village, and great bunches of wild flowers in white jugs inside the school. If I lunched with A., I had ducks and green peas: B. came in rhubarb-tart time (I hate rhubarb): C. fed me on game: D. gave me the first mince-pies of Advent. I knew the exact spot in E.’s garden where he would draw himself up to his full height and say, “November’s sky is chill and drear”: and I was prepared for F.’s annual defence of the rainy weather by his cheerful cry of “February fill-dyke, don’t you know?”

It was on the way to G. that I expected to see the first lamb of March, irresponsible as a daddy-long-legs: and the big meadows beyond H. seldom failed to show the first infant colt. In May the cuckoo—but that reminds me of a story told me by one of my most hospitable managers, good old Mr. S., now gone to his rest. He was exceedingly deaf, and one talked to him through tubes and trumpets, but he bore his affliction most cheerily. One May night at dinner—he himself told me the story—his neighbour, being a little embarrassed with the trumpet, lost her head, and shouted into the apparatus:

“Have you heard the cuckoo, Mr. S.?”

“Not for thirty years,” he replied with keen enjoyment, and with his most fatherly smile.

The rest was silence.

To the Inspector, possibly to the manager’s wife, lunch was a more serious question than Form IX. Soon after my appointment I consulted an eminent London doctor about some ailment, and was given a string of dietary rules, among which one remains in my memory: “For lunch you’ll have a piece of bread and butter and a glass of cold water.” That, I said firmly, was impossible; I was an inspector of schools, and part of my official duty was to lunch with the parson of the parish. If I were to confine myself to this convict fare, I should give grave offence; and, moreover, should weaken public confidence in my judgment. Who would accept the report of a man who lunched on bread and butter, when he could get fatted calf? He admitted the plea.

My superior officer of that time never lunched with the managers: he said he liked to lunch with his own family. I was only a lodger, and a hungry one; and when the clergy found that I would gladly accept their hospitable offers, I rose in their estimation. But as work increased, this mid-day meal became a burden; and as years increased, what Homer calls “the love of meat and drink” abated; then came the end of formal inspections,[21] and for the remaining time I lunched chiefly at railway stations. Yet while the luncheon season lasted, I had many pleasant hours, and made many valued friendships.

Many managers invited us out of pure brotherly kindness: some possibly because it was usual to “lunch” the inspector: a few perhaps with a faint hope that a good lunch might soothe the savage beast. “Ask him to lunch,” wrote one of them to a brother manager on a piece of paper, which was by chance laid on the table in front of my unexpectant eyes, and read before I knew what I was reading: “a little civility is never thrown away;” and I was feasted royally, while my sub., who was going to mark the examination papers, was sent empty away. I enjoyed that lunch.

There were some managers who craftily tried to charge the inspectors’ lunch to the school expenses. When this was detected, we ceased to lunch there. But it was not always easy to trace. I have heard of its being included under the head of “Repairs.” “You can’t tell what’s in a bill,” said a Liverpool man to me in this connexion; “did you ever hear about the Captain’s horse?” I never had.

A Liverpool Captain, returning from Calcutta, presented to the owners his account for out-of-pocket expenses. Times were bad, and the owners criticised it with unusual care. There was a charge of ten shillings for horse hire: what was this? Horses from the river to the office? How far? Why didn’t he walk? The Captain pleaded the climate, the custom of the country, saving of time. All in vain: the charge was disallowed.

After the next voyage the Captain reappeared with his usual account. The owners examined it minutely, and the senior partner congratulated the Captain on the improvement: that horse didn’t appear again.

“He’s there all right,” said the Captain frankly; “you don’t see him, but he’s there.”

A colleague told me he disliked lunching with managers because it was so unpleasant to give them a bad report after having eaten their salt. I had no such scruple, because I admitted no connection between the two things. It would be an affront to my hosts to suppose that they wished to corrupt me.

There were, of course, managers with whom one did not lunch. The hand of Douglas is his own and so is his mouth. But I never was reduced to such strong words as were attributed by tradition to one of my predecessors, whom a squire had rather commanded than invited to lunch at the Manor. “Tell him I would rather eat my lunch in a ditch under a hedge,” said H.M.I. Taken by itself without knowledge of antecedent justification this almost seems rude.

Lunch, I maintained, was extra-official: and much of our work was extra-official. After a few years in a district we became informal advisers to very many managers. We advised on sites; recommended architects; advised on the plans with the architects; recommended head teachers and assistants. Where did we stop? Was I not constantly appealed to at lunch to recommend a really nice cook, and a curate who wanted a title? I think I earned my lunches.

A remarkable instance occurs to me. In a country parish the Rector was lamenting the collapse of his school at that morning’s inspection. He attributed it to the stupidity of his parishioners: his last lot in the south had been full of genius. I assured him that this was a delusion: if you cut off the heads of 50 boys in Arcadia, and 50 in Bœotia, and weighed their brains—Arcadia v. Bœotia—you would not find an ounce of difference. What he wanted was not a new horse but a new driver.

“Could I find one?”

Certainly: there was a first rate man just leaving a school a few miles away; and I gave particulars. The man was appointed at once; the school passed out of my district, and I thought no more of it. But four years later I got a letter from the Rector, full of gratitude: my nominee had effected a reformation: he had raised the Government Grant from £77 to £132, rendering unnecessary the collection of a voluntary rate. He was “good all round, in fact invaluable.” In the thirtieth year after my recommendation, when the Rector had retired, and the master had, alas! broken down, I got from the former a complete history. Not only had the grant risen to £170, “it had never looked back”: the master’s influence out of school had been equally priceless: the parish was changed.

I think I earned that lunch.

The humorous feature of this branch of our work was that most of it was bitterly resented by the Department. They instructed us to assist managers with advice, but the selection of good teachers and the weeding out of bad ones sadly interfered with the policy of the National Teachers’ Union, and Whitehall trembles when it sees the weakest of the N. U. T.’s.

A word of farewell is due to the lady manager. There was a time when she was a prominent personage: she assisted at the inspection, and waited for hours that she might see the Inspector blundering over the “garments.” She called his attention to specially meritorious stitches, and deplored the blindness of My Lords in their selection of sewing tests: she deprecated mathematics, and urged the superior claims of housewifery. She gave private information on the characters of the pupil-teachers and the children, generally hinting that the pretty ones were undesirable. And she had the strongest views about their dress, views that the male inspector regarded with lack-lustre eye. It was not only at the inspection that she appeared: in many schools she was to be found without fail two or three days a week; possibly assisting in the needlework; possibly taking a general interest in the girls: always full of good works.

Alas! her class is extinct. I think the cold disapproval shown by the professional teacher has frozen her out. Or is it that the haughty children resent intrusion? Or that the comprehensive, critical glance, which even Standard I. would cast at her dress when she entered the room, made it impossible for her to continue her visits without “making a toilette” for every visit? These are mysteries hidden from the male eye.

With the passing of the Act of 1902 came the Passing of the manager, male and female. Now there is a committee; there is a correspondent; there is a caretaker; but the greatest of these is the caretaker.

And with the other change came the passing of Form IX. as an amateur work. Part of it is done by the teachers, part by the local authority; the managers are free from it, and the inspector sees it no more.

If I thought any manager of the many who befriended me would read what I write, I would bid him farewell; and for his consolation I would refer him to the opening sentences of Dr. Johnson’s Preface to his Dictionary:

“It is the fate of those who toil ... to be rather driven by the fear of evil than attracted by the prospect of good; to be exposed to censure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced by miscarriage, or punished for neglect, where success would have been without applause, and diligence without reward.”

FOOTNOTES:

[20] ‘Moithered’ equivalent to ‘harassed’ or ‘embarrassed,’ but much easier to spell. In Norfolk it is ‘mĩthered’.

[21] In the ’nineties annual inspections in a given month, with formal notice to the managers sent at least ten days in advance, were discontinued, and ‘visits without notice,’ paid at any time of the year, were substituted. The result was, that the managers did not know of our presence in their schools, and, unless we sent for them, we saw no one.

CHAPTER XVI
SCHOOL BOARDS

“Allowing him a breath, a little scene
To monarchize, be fear’d, and kill with looks.”
Richard II.

The object of the Education Act of 1870 was to supply all England with efficient schools. If voluntary effort failed, special machinery was devised “not to supplant, but to supplement.” Purists objected that “supplement” was a vile misuse of a noun as a verb. On the analogy of “complete,” “complement,” it should be “supplete”; but the nation shrugged its shoulders.

This machinery was summed up in the phrase “School Board”; and for thirty-two years the School Board was the idol of one party and the bugbear of another. It had the same strange effect on the morals of men that is attributed to horses. It is said that men, who in the ordinary affairs of life are honest, truthful, and temperate, lose all control over these qualities when they are concerned in the sale or purchase of a horse. And so it was with these Boards. When a question arose of the formation of a School Board, the parties on each side lapsed into heathenism; heathenism of a low type. Distorted figures and facts poured in at Whitehall, and were eventually forwarded to the Inspector “for report, and observations”; and if it had not been an unofficial act, H.M.I. would have blushed as he read them. “And then I saw what I had never seen before, Thrasymachus blushing,” says Plato in his Republic. There was one particular combatant, a buttress and eke a pillar of his denomination, a philanthropist, and an educational missionary, who, when any question of School Boards arose, exhibited so much of what a certain Lord Justice called “the inaccuracy of Ananias” that I had to warn the Education Department to allow him a special discount. He was happy in the opportuneness of his death; for he did not live to see the Act of 1902, which destroyed School Boards and thus took away the occupation alike of iconolaters and iconoclasts.

“Ower bad for blessing, and ower gude for banning like Rob Roy” was Andrew Fairservice’s immortal phrase, and it may be the epitaph of School Boards. “I watched by their cradle, and I followed their hearse” I may add in Grattan’s no less renowned phrase: for I rocked the cradle of many Boards in 1871, and mine were two of the dry eyes that noted the interment of the Manchester Board in 1903. But happily my connection with the institution did not end there; in the Isle of Man School Boards still exist; a population of 50,000 has twenty-one Boards to superintend its education, and not less than 110 devoted men and women struggle to keep down the rates.

The advantage of the School Board system was that it provided a body of men who had an opportunity of being acquainted with the wants of the place; usually qualified by residence to attend meetings; and with large powers of raising money to carry on the work.

The disadvantage was that it put technical, skilled labour into the hands of men from whom no proof of skill was required; and in very many places into the hands of men who were manifestly skill-less. In the large towns the Board might become a Debating Society, but if it escaped this snare, it often did well. In small villages sometimes it was a farce, sometimes a tragedy. In most places, whether large or small, the real power fell into the hands of one man, either the clerk or the chairman, who managed both School Board and Board School.

Do you ask for an instance? At a Board School inspection, noticing that there were not enough desks for the children, I asked the chairman, who was present, to see that the deficiency was made good at once. He assured me that it would be done without delay.

“When does the Board meet?” I asked.

“Oh, we don’t meet: I get what is wanted and then on market-day I go down to the town, where I am sure to find the members; they are all farmers. I say to Brown, ‘The Inspector was here last week; wants some more desks; always asking for something; suppose you agree?’ And he says, ‘Whatever you think is right, Mr. Chairman.’ Then I go on to Jones, and Robinson, and Snooks, and they all agree. We don’t bother about a meeting, except once a year to make up Form IX. for your inspection.”

What admirable discipline!

The absolute unfitness for any educational work of some Boards led to strange results. Somewhere in Wales I had sent notice to a Board that I proposed to meet them at a certain place on a certain day. They sent no answer, but I kept my own appointment, and found the Board duly assembled. I began by suggesting that it was usual to answer official letters. They declared inteet they did not know where I lived, and how could they send a letter? I pointed out that the official notepaper, upon which I wrote, had the address printed at the top. This embarrassed them: but the true explanation was given to me afterwards. There was not a man on the Board who could read and write, and they had to take all their correspondence to the market-town to get the advice of the Clerk to the Guardians before they could reply. They were in too small a way of educational business to have a clerk of their own.

A parallel but more amusing case occurred in England. There was a fierce contention among the members of a Board about the site of the proposed new school, and the knot seemed worthy of the intervention of My Lords. After some correspondence I was sent down with instructions to report. It was arranged that I should meet the Board at the chairman’s house (he was a farmer), and thither I went, and found him alone. And let me here remark, that a Norfolk farmer is not like a farmer in the shires. He might farm from 3,000 to 4,000 acres. He explained the arguments for and against each site, and went on to express his regret that I was not likely to meet some members of the Board.

“Where is the Rector?” I asked.

“Very ill, and confined to the house.”

“I see in the correspondence file that Mr. A. is strongly in favour of the north site. Will he be here?”

“Well, I fear not: the fact is that there is an affiliation summons out against him, and, as he is an elder of the —— chapel, he is rather ashamed to show his face.”

“Mr. B., the treasurer, is on the same side?”

“Yes, and I expect him here every minute: but, if you will excuse me, I would rather you saw him in the other room: I have had to serve him with a writ for slander in consequence of some remarks he made at the last Board meeting, and we don’t speak.”

“Then there is only Mr. C?”

“Yes: and he promised to be here. Perhaps you could call at his house on your way to the sites? And here comes the treasurer.”

I met the First Lord of the Treasury in the dining-room. “Morning, Mr. B. About that site: here is the ordnance map: you want the school to be built just there, don’t you?”

“Well, sir,” said he, “I’m no scholar. But whatever you think right, I am agreeable to.”

I bowed him out, and returned to the chairman: “Says he is no scholar, Mr. Chairman?”

“What, John B.? No, he can’t read or write.”

I roared. A cricket team would have been more particular in choosing a scorer. Would I mind calling on the erring elder, and on William C.? Not at all. We sallied forth and sought them. The affiliated elder was not at home. William C. was haymaking: he was old and deaf, and the chairman reproached him in stentorian tones:

“Why, William, you did promise me to come down to mine[22] to meet the Inspector, if you never came again.”

The old man grinned, and shook hands, and excused himself: “Yu see, sir, I’ve a dale of hay out, and I’m a bit hard of hearin, and they du all talk at once.”

I gave him plenary absolution, and asked his consent to the better site. Whatever I thought right, he was agreeable to. And we parted the best of friends. I had tea at the farm, and went back home. I laughed all the way to the station, and in the train, and I laughed in the small hours of the night. And I recalled how I once went with a colleague to see “The Tempest.” At the end of the first Act he turned in his stall and said:

“Did you ever consider what admirable materials for a School Board they had on that island? Look here:” and he showed me his annotated programme.

“Prospero, Tory Landlord, expert in Elementary Science, and Language, which he taught to Caliban.

Miranda, qualified by entire ignorance to superintend the Girls’ sewing.

Antonio, Liberal, Leader of the Opposition.

Stephano, a drunken butler, representing the Trade.

Caliban, Agricultural Labourers’ Union, Primitive Methodist interest. There you are; five members complete.”

“And Ariel?” I asked, much interested.

“The tricksy spirit shall be Clerk to the Board, and shall bamboozle the lot, and My Lords too.”

There are some Educationists who never get free of the shop.

Another Board annually stirred me to mirthful compassion, because I knew, and none other knew, that it owed its birth to defective arithmetic. The parish had a population of several thousands; when the school accommodation and requirements were compared in the early ’seventies, a nought got wrong, as noughts will do at times, and a deficit of 130 places was announced. The real deficit was 13, but it was no one’s business to check the figures, and 130 prevailed. The parish declined to build, and a School Board was duly elected. It spent the next ten years in pointing out to the Department in London that no new school was wanted; and My Lords unwillingly agreed: but no one found out about the nought. And it was a very useful Board, and, like the young man, Godfrey Bertram Hewitt, in Guy Mannering, was “in a fair way of doing well in the world, although he came somewhat irregularly into it.”

We often laughed, or groaned—according to our stand-point—at the niggardliness of country School Boards; but the shoe did not pinch us. Both in North Wales and in Norfolk we had to deal with many parishes where a penny rate brought in less than £10. Every third year there might be a contested election, and the cost varied from ¹⁄₂d. to 1¹⁄₂d. in the pound. Add to this the cost to each candidate, and the intolerable worry of a storm in a tea-cup, and it is not surprising that parishes thus afflicted were held up as awful warnings to unwilling subscribers elsewhere. An experienced observer in Cheshire once remarked, “If the average farmer had to choose between the Colorado beetle and a School Board, he wouldn’t know which way to go.”

In all these small parish Boards there was a clerk, who charged from £10 to £20 a year for carrying on the correspondence which the rector had hitherto undertaken gratuitously. An Anglesey incumbent told me that he had offered to do the clerk’s work for nothing; but the chapel leader said that nothing should induce him to entrust the work to a churchman. One Norfolk Board School had an average attendance of five children; they cost £26 apiece, and it took a 3d. rate to pay the clerk: the total rate was 13d. in the pound. A Norfolk farmer rated on his thousand acres might be pardoned for an economic zeal that was not always well directed. It was proposed in one parish to raise the salary (£40 a year) of the head mistress. “Why,” said one member, “thet there young woman is gettin a matter of saxteen shellin a week: look what thet is for a young woman as hesn’t only harself tu keep.”

“Don’t shoot them: they are doing their best,” might have been inscribed on the council chambers of many Boards. It was unfamiliar and uninteresting work for most of them; and they must have spent many weary days on it. In the early days of the institution it was usual for two or three members to attend the school inspection. I think the clerk would tell them it might soften “than which what’s harder? the (Jewish) heart” of the Inspector. They touched their foreheads like ploughboys, when H.M.I. arrived, and huddled together like their own ewes in nervous apprehension—near the gate. Where would this questioning end? Were the Board immune? “If yow were tu ast me some of them questions yow ast the childer,” said one bucolic bulwark of education, “I’d be tarrible put about. Same time, if I had yow on my farm——”

I admitted my limitations.

Latterly they ceased to attend. In one parish I saw no member of the Board for ten years, and when it happened that the school got a lower grant than usual, the Board of the adjacent parish reproached the absentees: “Yo shuld ha loonched th’ inspector: our chairman did, and us did well.”

“Most people have their price,” said Walpole, usually misquoted: but mine is not so moderate.

In the ’nineties, as I have said, visits without notice took the place of the field-day inspections, and we lost sight of the country Boards. Then came the great Act of 1902, which abolished all the Boards and made the county or county borough the unit, instead of the civil parish. “These our actors are melted into air, into thin air,” and the name of School Board remains only to the School Attendance Officers, the paidagogoi,[23] who, though they now represent the Education Committees, still keep their old titles among the populace.

Before I close the history, let me append a story in connection with the old triennial elections mentioned above. I read it in a Norfolk paper more than thirty years ago.

There were not fewer than five members in the smallest School Board, and, as the vote was cumulative, there were often ten or twelve candidates for the five, or seven seats. As these elections were frequent, and elections to Boards of Guardians were annual, voters and onlookers were accustomed to a long list of office seekers; and when there was a Parliamentary by-election in a Norfolk division, and the result was posted on the walls, the rustic mind was a little perplexed to find so small a field. There it was in black and white:

Two yokels gazed at it and wondered.

“I ’xpact thet’s about thet there elaction.”

“Ya-as: there was only tew of un got in, though.”

“Ya-as: only they tew a’ the top.”

And the other added with an indescribable air of cunning:

“Ole Majority di’nt get many, did ’a?”

FOOTNOTES:

[22] “Mine” and “yours” in E. Anglia stand for “my house” and “your house.”

[23] Paidagogoi (see Galatians iii) were “not schoolmasters but slaves who led children to the house of the schoolmaster.”

CHAPTER XVII
CHILDREN

“Children sweeten labours, but they make misfortune more bitter: they increase the cares of life, but they mitigate the remembrance of death.”

Bacon.

Bacon’s theory is very sound, and it is one that appeals to both inspectors and teachers. There are times when the essayist labours to be short, and becomes obscure; but here his meaning is plain, as is his cipher to the American expert: children (in school) are delightful; but if you are mentally worried, or physically in poor case, they are very trying. The work (of inspecting or teaching) takes it out of you, but it is a consolation to think that death will bring you relief.

I do not speak without experience. In my first year at Chester the population of the district was about 205,000, of whom 34,000 should have been at school. In my last year at Manchester the district comprised about 880,000 people, of whom more than 150,000 were under inspection: for the Higher Grade and Higher Elementary Schools had brought in many more of the lower-middle class than used to patronise us.

Roughly speaking, I may say that for thirty-two years I spent five days a week, holidays and extra work excepted, in the study of my ever-increasing flock; their habits, their physical characteristics in connection with education, their morals and manners (if any), their likes and dislikes, their work and their play. In the course of another thirty-two years I might have got to know a little about them. For the benefit of other searchers, and that they may begin where I leave off, I record here a very small fraction of the result of my experiences in school.

The physical characteristic side is one of absorbing interest. I have long regretted that I did not give special attention to “Ears, their influence on, and indication of, character.” There is room for a valuable monograph on this subject. The kindred topic of hair was my special study. I regret that my theories on hair were received with such general incredulity that I shrink from crushing this simple record of facts by introducing matter so debatable.

Even the rough conclusions which one formed by noting the size and shape of heads were not wholly acceptable. It is not always easy at first sight of a massive brow (“top-heavy for Shakespeare”)[24] to decide whether it contains brains or water on the brain. Similarly I believe in the political world the man with a swollen head is often mistaken in the earlier days of acquaintance for—but I am going beyond my last.

Let us keep to safer ground.

It was once pointed out to me that the main feature of American humour is best described by a Greek phrase meaning “contrary to expectation.” This certainly is the most delightful feature of children, but it is manifest chiefly in their conversation. In most respects they are the slaves of habit, and their games are the strongest instance of this. Of all boys it may be asserted that, if Socrates were to enquire into their ideas of Pleasure, he would reduce them to “motion without exertion, and something to do with a ball.” “A wheel and a ball” is tempting as a concise summary, but “wheel” would exclude horse-riding, boating, skating, and some others. If it is argued that cycling, skating, and boating connote exertion, I reply that to boys of Public Elementary School age the delightful part is the continuous motion which they get by intermittent exertion, and that they will cheerfully drag a bicycle up a steep hill for the sake of the gratuitous descent.

This great theory comprehends all English boys from top to bottom of the social ladder: in details there are points of similarity and of the opposite between the old Public Schools and the 15,000 Public Elementary Schools. The theory of periodicity is common to both, but in the former the principle which allots the summer months to cricket (or the cult of the lesser ball), and the winter to football (or the cult of the greater ball), is climatic. The “little, wee, wee” balls used for fives, racquets, and tennis, are perennial. In our elementary schools, also, there is a law of seasons, but I have never been able to formulate it, and I know of no reason for the alternations. At one time all the boys play tip-cat, which Shakespeare would call “a dreadful trade”: a crusty old bachelor says “it counts fifty if you break a window, and it is game if you put out one eye of a passer-by”: this apocryphal Rule I. is the only one promulgated. At another season hoops are de rigueur: at another marbles: these recreations are little known “in the playing fields of Eton, where the battle of Waterloo was won.” The girls have skipping-ropes, less deadly than tip-cat, but very injurious to the bridge of the nose, or the best hat of the peaceful passenger: and they have Jacks, alias skip-jacks, knuckle bones, astragaloi. I think hop-scotch, which drives the passer-by on to the high-road to be juggernauted by motors, is common to both sexes. The pursuit of a football, or any cheap spheroidal substitute, is perennial for boys.

In this rotation of games, then, there is resemblance of a sort. But there is a lamentable dissimilarity in the spirit of the gamesters. Our elementary boy has hardly the most elementary idea of schoolboy honour. He begins with the loathsome practice of telling tales, not to be named among Christians; A. tells tales of B., not because he hates wrong or loves rules, but to raise his own value in the eyes of the common enemy. This is to put self above the common good. From this beginning he easily arrives at the deadly vice of the working class, the incapacity for playing fair, and for playing without quarrelling. When they are boys, their cricket and football are one long wrangle; when they grow up, they not only buy and sell contests, they even attempt the life of the umpire, who should be sacrosanct as the herald. And from this blunted sense of honour comes another abominable habit, first among boys: they ask a boon—some special indulgence, perhaps—and obtain it on special terms of doing or abstaining from doing something else; but when the boon is granted they have no scruple whatever about breaking the condition precedent. Hence comes one of the ugliest features of trade disputes, the incapacity for keeping a bargain.

Here, as I said, they are the slaves of habit. It is in their speech that the unexpectedness triumphs; and the younger the child the more unexpected are his remarks. Many an inspector, many a teacher, has been reduced to utter confusion by these random shots. It was one of my own staff who came to grief in a country school in this way. He had been examining Standard II. in the multiplication table, and the village idiot was in the class. They dealt with fair success with the simpler problems, and Mr. Rackem was emboldened to soar higher.

“How much is eleven twelves?” he asked, and there was none to answer. He put it in a more searching way: “Who knows how much is eleven twelves?” And the village idiot answered “Gawd,” that being the generally accepted answer to difficult questions couched in that form.

In another country school I met a boy, who by reason of his wit and his wits was the joy of the rector’s heart. He was in Standard III., age about nine. I gave him an arithmetic card containing, among others, the question: “How much would one million penny postage stamps cost?” George took the contract with a friendly grin, and in due time intimated that he had completed it.

“What do you make of the stamps, George?” I asked: “Is it £4,166 13s. 4d.? Yes: that is right,” and I marked his paper.

George grinned a larger grin, and remarked confidentially, as he sat down again, “Thet come to a dale more nor what I’d care tu give far un.”

When Mr. Bultitude (in Vice Versâ) was given bills of parcels to do, he was “disgusted as a business man by the glaring improbabilities of their details.” George took the same view.

A colleague tells of a similar rebuff. He was examining in mental arithmetic, and took pains to adapt his questions to local industries. Picking out a big lad, he asked, “What does your father do?”

“Cotches sawmon i’ th’ river.”

“Capital: you will be able to do this sum; 20lbs. of salmon at 3d. a lb., what is that worth? Twen-ty pounds of sal-mon at 3d.?”

“Yah: tha’ wouldn’t be worth a dom.”

I think this is what logicians would call “Ignoratio Elenchi.”

Still more unexpected was the reply that demolished the present truthful chronicler in an infant school. The mistress was giving a lesson on an elephant. It was in the days when etiquette forbade that the subject of the lesson should be directly announced to the class: it had to be approached by artful devices. Therefore she began with a question: “What is the largest animal in the world?”

Chorus: An elephunt, teacher.

Mistress: Yes, quite right.

This heresy shocked me; but etiquette again forbade that I should contradict her. Yet—for magis amica veritas—I might, and did, interpose a question:

“Which is the bigger, an elephant or a whale?” Chorus: A wheele.

The mistress looked scornfully at me, and returned the oblique shot:

“Is a whale an animal, children?” Chorus: Noo, teacher.

Mistress: What is a whale, children? Chorus: A fish.

I was roused to more defence of truth, though tacitly accepting the fishhood of whales: “Isn’t a fish an animal, children?” Chorus (sarcastically): Noo.

“Is a girl an animal?” Chorus: Noo.

“Is a girl a vegetable? Do you grow them in a garden, like cabbages?” Chorus: Noo.

“Is a girl a mineral? Do you dig them out of a mine, like coals?” Chorus: Noo.

Now I seemed to have the landing-net ready: “If a girl is not an animal, nor a vegetable, nor a mineral, what is a girl?”

The first and second classes felt the horns of the trilemma, and they were silent: but a boy aged four, or so, rose from his seat in the third class, and in strident tones supplied the crushing answer:

“Hoo’s A WENCH.”

I fled into the next room.

Another story of discomfiture—more touching, because the discomfited one had not provoked her fate—comes to memory. The scene was a Sunday School. The suffering lady had hurried down on a sultry afternoon, and found her class unusually anæmic. She toiled womanfully, in spite of heat and consequent torpor, and it was not till she was faint with exertion that she seemed to detect a spark of interest. There was a low mutter, and she cheered up, as a fisherman does when after hours of nothingness he feels a timid bite.

“That is right, Mary dear; speak up; what did you say?”

“Woipe yer face.”

She never smiled again—in a Sunday School.

They spared neither age nor sex, and even the lookers on might be overwhelmed. This was the case at a school managed by a worthy vicar, whose most devoted ministrations were so little acceptable to his flock that his congregation had dwindled down almost to the point specified by Professor Henry J. S. Smith, of Oxford: “The attendants at Professor Z.’s lectures might be counted on the thumbs of two hands.” That at least was the current rumour. I was examining Standard II. (aged eight or nine) in the rudiments of geography, and we came to the word “desert,” which they defined as “a sandy plain where nothing grew.” I was anxious to get at the meaning of the word, in connection with “deserted,” and remembering a long-untenanted house at the end of their street, and just below the church, I put it thus: “As I was coming here I saw an empty building, all shut up, where nobody lives, and nobody goes: what should you say that house was?”

And a fatal boy replied, “The House of God.”

Never before or since have I seen a good man so utterly prostrated as was that Vicar.

If I were bound by chronology, I should keep to the end a comment on my own personal appearance made by a Manchester infant. I was coming out of school at dinner-time, and far below me, as I stood on the outer doorstep, I heard a shrill cry of “Hey!” There was an exceedingly small boy, aged four or five, gazing up into my sexagenarian face and grey beard.

“Hullo, Tommy! what’s the matter with you?” I replied.

The imp pointed over his shoulder at another infant, smaller and a shade dirtier:

“’Ee says you’re old Father Christmas.”

It was well for Tommy that he did not live in the days of Elisha: well for Tommy that the she-bears were shut up in the Belle Vue Gardens.

Not even the Diocesan Inspectors in Religious Knowledge are safe. One writes to me: “The children have a holiday after the diocesan inspection. Alluding to this yesterday in —— school I said, ‘What is the pleasantest part of my visit to you?’

A. ‘That you don’t come often.’”

The unexpected remarks were not always humorous: nay, at times they were intensely pathetic. I once picked up a beautifully clean baby from the front desk, and planted her on my knee, while the usual lesson on the cow, or the camel was droning on. She sat there in perfect content, apparently absorbed in contemplation of her best shoes, worn in honour of the inspection. Suddenly she turned to me, and murmured, “My daddy’s been thoompin’ our baby like anythink this mornin’.”

“Gracious!” I said; “what had the baby been doing?”

“Nothink,” she said, and relapsed into silence.

It does not bear comment; it hardly bears thinking of.

Less pathetic, perhaps, but yet touching in its way, was a remark reported to me from another Infant School. A little boy was gazing at a wall-picture of a bear. The mistress asked what he would do if he met a creature like that.

“I’d run away.”

“But the bear can run ever so quick, and he would catch you.”

The infant pondered on the clumsy-looking beast; calculated its rate of speed by some method of his own, and finally replied:

“He wouldn’t; not if I ’ad my mended boots on.”

A pleasanter reminiscence from the same town. It was in the babies’ room: I was talking to the mistress, when suddenly a baby made a remark to the class-teacher, and both teachers exploded in hastily suppressed laughter. “What did the baby say?” I asked.

“She saw you coming in, Mr. Kynnersley, and she said, ‘Is that my daddy?’”

The situation might be embarrassing. Conceive it in a French novel; with the Inspector’s wife lurking in the doorway.

The answers of these infants to their own teachers were a source of endless amusement; and sometimes they were saved up for me. One teacher had been giving a first lesson to her class on some animals. “That,” she said, in conclusion, “is what we call Natural History: all about birds, beasts, fishes, and insects. I will write it on the board: ‘Natural History.’ Now can any little girl tell me any fact that she has ever observed in Natural History—anything about a bird, or a beast, or a fish, or an insect? Yes, Mary, that is a good girl: what is it that you observed?”

Mary: “Please, teacher, our baby ate a slug once.”

Sometimes, too, the teachers would bring us stories of our colleagues, and of the unexpected answers given to them. The unconscious humour was often prominent. It was said that one Inspector asked, “What sort of people do you think they were, who called the most northerly county of Scotland ‘Sutherlandshire’?” (It may be well to state here that the proper answer is “Norwegians.”) And a child answered “Irishmen.”

Another H.M.I. was credited with this elaborate interrogatory:

Q. “What is that island called which from its name you would suppose contained neither women nor children?”

A. “Please, sir, the Scilly Isles.”

Enough for the Unexpected. Constant familiarity with school life gave us a good deal of insight into children’s ways, and in many matters we could calculate their probable course of conduct with the assurance of a weather prophet. We got to know, also, what a thin wall separates mischief from Hooliganism, and the latter from crime. In the poorer districts we dealt with children, to whom the wall was a transparent veil. In the best districts—and the remark is equally true of the great Public Schools—there is a very thin crust over the volcano. From Monday to Friday, between 9 A.M. and 4.30 P.M. conduct is exemplary. The Roman poet dreamt of the return of Saturnia regna, and the British schoolboy dreams of what he will do when Saturday comes again. But every evening school discipline is suspended, and the home resumes its influence. “You mustn’t be too hard on these children, Mr. Kynnersley,” said a wise manager of a poor school to me: “after leaving here they don’t hear a decent word till to-morrow morning.”

Then there is Sunday School, and the animal gets the upper hand. Grattez l’écolier, et trouvez l’écolier de Dimanche. It was only second-hand, and perhaps from seeing the wreckage on Monday morning, that we got to know what boy-without-cane is like.

Of later years the Sabbatical revels have been extended to week-nights. Under the names of Bands of Hope and Boys’ Brigades caneless boy has had many happy hours. We used to read in the school log-books: “Nov. 14. Meeting of Band of Hope here last night: two desks wrecked, maps pulled down, and a picture broken.” Nov. 20. “Meeting of Boys’ Brigade here last night. Found the floor strewn with matches and cigarette ends: maps pulled down, &c.”

Some Oxford men of the early ’sixties may remember a famous Oratio Procuratoria of the Rev. J. Riddell, honoured name to all Balliol men. Speaking of the conduct of undergraduates at concerts, he lamented that men, who at other times are perfectly well conducted, when they appear at these meetings—nulla reverentia praepediti, fumum strepitumque edentes, barbarorum more ululantes, promiscue tumultuantur.

Who shall say that Latin is a dead language!

Once in a boys’ school, where discipline was not rigidly enforced, I was imploring the first class not to drown my voice with their conversation while I was examining the adjacent class; and the Rector’s wife, who was looking on, whispered to me, “Mr. Kynnersley, do tell me; do you really think they are disorderly now?”

“Very disorderly,” I said.

“Dear me!” she sighed: “you should see them on a Sunday.”

It is not always easy for a stranger to decide whether a baddish-seeming boy has really over-topped the line which separates seeming from being. Such an one’s mother came to me one day to consult me about her Jem; and from what she told me I went to the schoolmaster for further information.

“What do you think of James X.?”

“Well, sir, he is not a bad sort of boy, but he is—er—er——”

I broke in to his relief: “His mother says he is RONK.”

The master jumped at it: “That’s exactly what he is, sir: he’s ronk.”

This was in the Midlands, and the word when spelt “rank” is Shakespearean. In Cheshire the positive “ronk” is not used, but the comparative or superlative is “gallus,” which in French is pendard. But “ronk” is a low mark for character, and when a country school board presented as candidates for pupil-teachership three boys so ronk that their last examination had been in the Police Court on a charge of arson, I thought that the bounds of charitable construction had been passed. Certainly their “offence was rank.” Nor did I think the clerk’s plea, that “there was nothing else you could put ’em to,” a sufficient excuse. I would not dwell on the proved fact that they could neither spell nor do a sum.

Choir-boys have an established reputation for ronkness. I was told of an example in my district of that date. A number of them had been out for a Saturday afternoon expedition into the country: returning on foot they found themselves dead beat, some way from home, and they had no money for rail or tram fares. The leader on the Decani side—he who sings up to A, and dies of consumption, young, with soft music—solved the difficulty. He went to the nearest house and rang the door-bell. Full of fictitious strength they ran for a hundred yards. Another ring, and another run, and so on da capo al fine.

I wonder whether he was a ronk boy who discomfited the butcher. It is often charged against our schools that they do not give a practical education, equipping a boy to fight the battle of life. But the lamb of my flock, of whom I am thinking, was a remarkable proof to the contrary.

The butcher had advertised in Monday’s paper for “A Smart Lad.” That same morning a candidate applied.

“What name? Age? Been to the Board School? Passed your Standards? What’s four eights? Ah, and seven eights? Fifty-six? Good: seem a smart lad. Got a character? At home? How long to get it? Twenty minutes? Run and get it, and if it’s all right, I’ll put you on in the morning.”

Thus the butcher. In ten minutes the smart lad returned.

“Got back already? You are a smart lad. Thought you said it would take twenty minutes, and you’re back in ten.”

The smart lad grinned. “It ’ud take me twenty minutes to get my character, but I got yours in ten, and I ain’t coming. G’Mornin’.”

These veritable histories, I see, on looking back, are almost wholly concerned with boys and infants: where are the girls? It was constantly impressed upon me by ladies interested in schools, that I, as a mere man, was wholly unfit to be entrusted with the inspection of girls’ and infants’ schools. It was even thrown in my teeth that I, being a miserable old bachelor, could know nothing about children of any kind. This was the argument of Constance (King John, Act III. sc. iv.) to the Cardinal:

“He talks to me that never had a son.”[25]

And this was the view of Mrs. Gamp, when she contemplated “the unconscious Chuffey”: “Drat the old creetur,” said that skilled practitioner, “he’s a layin’ down the law tolerable confident too. A deal he knows of sons or darters either.”

The taunt of inexperience is applied to others besides school inspectors. A clerical (bachelor) friend of mine found a woman in his parish feeding her three-months’ old baby on kippered herring and tea. He remonstrated, and she turned indignantly upon him:

“I should think I’d ought to know more about babies than you, seein’ as I’ve buried seven of ’em.”

Peritis credendum est in arte sua.

Now I should be loath to assert that I know anything about children. Some one in Sophocles (I think it was a Chorus in the Antigone) remarked that “of all weird things in nature Man is the weirdest.” And by reason of his unexpectedness Child is weirder than Man. But comparing my ignorance with female ignorance of Child, I do not see that I have any natural disqualification by reason of sex. And when my critic has been a maiden lady, it has been difficult to repress the obvious repartee.

I might add that so strong are the chains of custom that these critics, if they wished to crush me by an appeal to authority, would bring forward none but the names of men. In French, it has been unkindly remarked, ange is always masculine, bête always feminine: there is no belle-ange, no bête-noir: and so “Writer-on-school-method” is always masculine. This should be seen to. Lancaster, Bell, Pestalozzi, Fröbel, Herbert Spencer—are there no she-prophets? If “Man marks the earth with ruin, his control” should stop short of girls’ schools.

Far be it from me to dispute the point here. It may be on account of this inability to understand girl, that I have only one anecdote in stock for my 50,000 daughters:

The Squire’s wife at Exhurst is not pleased with the manners of the girls, since that Miss A. took charge of the school. The other day Her Excellency met Mary Hodge in the lane, and did not meet with due reverence. She went on to Mrs. Hodge’s cottage, and made complaint: “I met Mary in the lane just now, and she didn’t curtsey to me, and I do think, &c., &c.”

“Well, ma’am,” said Mrs. Hodge, deprecatingly, “you see curtseying’s gone hout now; but if you’d ’a sloped to our Mary, I’m sure she’d a’ sloped to you.”

Dear girls! I have no stories to tell of them; but though they did not lend themselves to humorous treatment, they were very delightful; and there was not one among the whole 50,000 who would have changed me for Tabitha Brown, or Priscilla Jones, or Minerva Robinson.

FOOTNOTES:

[24] Dickens: Little Dorrit.

[25] And so Macduff: “He has no children.”

—Macbeth, Act IV. sc. iv.

CHAPTER XVIII
INSPECTORS

“Many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased.”

Daniel xii. 4.

Not so much Inspectors, as H.M. Inspectors: that distinction was always present to the mind of a self-respecting H.M.I. The indoor staff fell back on the imaginary peerage, which they called “My Lords”: the outdoor staff went straight to the fountain of honour. And when on some sudden emergency I called at the house of an exceedingly deaf Rector (who had forgotten my face) and shouted through a trumpet that I was The Inspector, I was a little hurt to be asked “What of?” I fear he ranked me with my esteemed colleague in the other nuisances branch.

There were strange rumours thirty years ago of the all but regal position assumed by the pioneers of inspection. And no doubt they received much encouragement in country districts. In one corner of Bœotia I found a surprising instance of this homage. I had spent the night at “The Lion” at Littletown; the accommodation was humble, but sufficient; the bill presented in the morning was aspiring, and more than sufficient. I suggested some abatement and got it. Two or three years afterwards my successor proposed to sleep at “The Lion,” but prudently enquired beforehand whether they were likely to make him comfortable. The landlord assured him there was no cause for alarm; he had been patronised by Royalty. On further enquiry it appeared that the Royalty was Me. L’état, c’était moi. Thanks to large envelopes, “On Her Majesty’s Service,” addressed to H.M. Inspector, and unsoiled with the common postage stamp, I had been raised to Royal rank, and the reputation of the hotel and its charges had risen accordingly. I fear those loyal spirits are more cautious now.

In a leading article in The Times I read one day that a fact, which the writer had just discussed, occurred at a time “when Inspectors of Schools were really men of mark.” And about the same time I read in a novel by a lady writer that the objectionable young man of the story had got “one of those appointments which require no special capacity, such as an Inspectorship of Schools.” In the latter case I took pains to find out in what Inspector’s district the lady lived: and I discovered that her tyrant was one of the most amiable and most exemplary of men. Among other qualifications for the post he had the voice of a turtle-dove afflicted with tonsilitis; and as a preacher—he was in Holy Orders—he was inaudible at a distance of twenty feet from the pulpit. It is recorded of him that one Sunday, after he had been preaching in a strange church, the verger, or beadle, met one of the clerical staff, who had been engaged elsewhere, and said, “You ’aven’t missed much to-night, sir; we ’ad a bee in a bottle.”