University of Virginia Library

4. EDUCATION

EDUCATION in the 'forties was the Cinderella of the Legislature. Parliament, it is true, spent laborious hours in discussing the theory of education, but in debating the principle overlooked the practice. Money was doled out in homœopathic doses. In 1841 the sum of £10,000 was voted for the education of the people in the same session in which £70,000 was voted for the Royal Stables at Windsor, a contrast which Punch had not forgotten five years later. The direct connexion between ignorance and crime was constantly forced on the attention of humane magistrates. When the Lord Mayor of London, in January, 1846, declared that "society was responsible for the contamination to which poor children were subjected," and that there was no calamity, to his way of thinking, "comparable to that which sprang from the bringing up of youth in habits and practices of idleness and vice," Punch found himself in the unfamiliar position of being called upon to eulogize a functionary who as a rule never gave him a chance. "Juvenile delinquents," he points out, were "as much reared for Newgate as many of the beautiful babies, taking their morning airings in the parks, are reared for hereditary legislators." In another graphically brusque passage describing the transportation for life of four lads aged from 18 to 21, we read "they were brought up as brutes, and society reaps the terrible fruits of their rearing." Hullah's music classes for the people at Exeter Hall in 1842 were excellent in their way, but the solace of song was a doubtful boon in the Hungry 'Forties, and though Punch supported the establishment of schools of cookery throughout the kingdom, the supply of things to cook was more urgently needed. The years rolled on, the Corn Laws were repealed, and prosperity revived, but illiteracy remained, and it was due in the country districts, in Punch's view, to the fact that "contending zealots

cannot agree with what theological mysteries they shall leaven the common information which the schoolmaster is to impart to the country bumpkin."

In 1850 the following dialogue was given in The Times police report of Wednesday, January 9, and quoted in Punch:—

George Ruby, a boy aged 14, was put into the box to be sworn, and the Testament was put into his hand. He looked quite astonished upon taking hold of the book.

Ald. Humphrey. Well, do you know what you are about? Do you know what an oath is?

Boy. No.

Ald. H. Do you know what a Testament is?

Boy. No.

Ald. H. Can you read?

Boy. No.

Ald. H. Do you ever say your prayers?

Boy. No, never.

Ald. H. Do you know what prayers are?

Boy. No.

Ald. H. Do you know what God is?

Boy. No.

Ald H. Do you know what the devil is?

Boy. I've heard of the devil, but I don't know him.

Ald. H. What do you know, my poor boy?

Boy. I knows how to sweep the crossing.

Ald. H. And that's all?

Boy. That's all. I sweeps the crossing. The Alderman said he, of course, could not take the evidence of a creature who knew nothing whatever of the obligation to tell the truth.

It was to cope with this sort of destitution that the Ragged Schools movement had been started several years before. From the first Punch lent it his hearty support, though in his first notice, in 1846, he was unable to resist the opportunity of combining his approval with a dig at the aristocracy:—

WHAT RAGGED SCHOOLS MAY COME TO
It is with peculiar satisfaction that we view the establishment of Ragged Schools in various parts of the Metropolis. We speak advisedly when we describe our satisfaction as peculiar. For it is not merely that we are rejoiced at the idea of a number of youthful mendicants being prevented from becoming thieves and pickpockets, taught to earn an honest livelihood, and rescued from vice and misery through the instrumentality of these seminaries. No; our views are much higher than such plebeian considerations as these, and they also extend far beyond the present time. We have an eye to the benefit of our posterity and to, that of the superior classes generally.

When we consider that Eton was established for the reception of poor and indigent scholars, and that Winchester and most of our

other public schools were, at their first foundation, charities, we may not unreasonably indulge the hope that the Ragged Schools, originally, like them, destined for the instruction of the tag-rag-and-bobtail, may ultimately become gratuitous institutions for the education of the children of the aristocracy.

Yet it was an aristocrat of the "old nobility" who started and devoted his best energies to the furtherance of the Ragged Schools movement, as all the world knows. His name is not even mentioned here, and when it is mentioned in these years is too often coupled with tasteless gibes at Lord Shaftesbury's proclivities and Sabbatarianism. Punch could not forgive Lord Shaftesbury for his association with Exeter Hall (which to Punch meant fireside philanthropy and Jellybyism) and his support of laws which enabled magistrates to fine boys fifteen shillings or a fortnight's wages each for playing cricket on Sunday. Sir Robert Peel had to die before Punch did him justice. Lord Shaftesbury was more fortunate, for thirty years before he died Punch made the amende in "The Earl King, or the Earl of Shaftesbury and the juvenile Mendicant."

"The greater the employment of the primer, the less the need of the `cat' " is an aphorism which sums up the creed of the humanitarian reformers of the 'forties and 'fifties. The "ladder of learning" was not yet planted in the modern sense, and efforts to ascend from the lower to the upper rungs were frowned upon by those in authority. At a meeting of the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in June, 1849, a clerical speaker ridiculed the questions, set in an examination paper for National School teachers, which presupposed a knowledge of the works of Shakespeare, Milton, Adam Smith, Johnson and Scott, and of the Life of Mrs. Fry. Learning was at a discount; authors of note, with few exceptions—such as Thackeray and Macaulay—were generally impecunious, and sometimes on the border-land of destitution. Douglas Jerrold had a life-long struggle to keep his head above water, for all his industry. There were no royalties in those days, and for Black-Eyed Susan, which brought tens

NEWSVENDOR: "Now, my man, what is it?" Boy: "I vonts a nillustrated newspaper with a norrid murder and a likeness in it."

[Description: Cartoon in which a tough-looking boy addresses a female news vendor who is holding a baby. Leaning against the counter are papers announcing "Horrid Murder" and the like. The newsvendor says "Now, my man, what is it?" Replies the Boy: "I vonts a nillustrated newspaper with a norrid murder and a likeness in it." ]

of thousands of pounds to theatrical lessees and popular actors, he received from first to last the sum of £60. Punch was the constant champion of the distressed author fallen on evil days, such as Joseph Haydn of the Dictionary of Dates, who was granted a Civil List pension of £25 a year just three weeks before his death in January, 1856, or old Joseph Guy, "the man of many books, the ever-green `Spelling Book' among the number." One of the finest (but posthumous) tributes to Sir Robert Peel was on the occasion of the Literary Fund dinner in 1856, when a sum of £100 was sent from the proceeds of the first portion of the Peel Papers:—

From the tomb of Sir Robert speaks the spirit that, when in the flesh and baited by the dogs of party [not to mention the bitter

satire of Punch himself], still beneficently thought of the wants of spasmodic Haydn; still, by sympathy in word and act, smoothed the dying pillow of poor Tom Hood.

The respect and admiration with which George Stephenson and Joseph Paxton were invariably treated was largely due to the fact that they were self-taught men. And when Joseph Hume died in 1855, Punch, who had so often chaffed him for his love of figures and returns, while applauding his attack on "gold lace" and extravagance, paid fitting homage to the perseverance which enabled him to fight his way up from poverty and obscurity, to his rugged honesty, his hard-won triumphs, and his honourable participation in all victories over wrong in Church and State. An alarming ignorance, however, was not monopolized by the lower orders. In his scheme for the reform of the House of Lords Punch suggests that peers should only be admitted to the Upper House after an examination in the three R's, history, geography and political economy. Geography even in our own enlightened days remains a stumbling-block to Ministers, even Prime Ministers. Disraeli's ignorance of arithmetic on the occasion of his appointment as Chancellor of the Exchequer in the Derby Cabinet is a frequent source of ribaldry in Punch, who suggested the establishment of an infants' school for the new Cabinet. So recently as the eve of the twentieth century a Chancellor of the Exchequer was reported to have been so ignorant of decimals that he asked what was meant by those "damned dots."

Reverting to elementary education, we can find no better commentary on its progress in the mid 'fifties than two extracts from Punch's "Essence of Parliament" in the spring of 1856:—

Thursday, March 6th. In the Commons, Lord John Russell moved a series of resolutions on the subject of Education, and afterwards withdrew them. What they were, therefore, does not seem to be a matter of any very overwhelming interest, especially as he threatens them again on the 10th of April. His plan, however, comprised a sort of timid notion of a rate not to be altogether voluntary; but the fact, disclosed by the census of 1851, that of four millions of our children, between five and fifteen years of age, two

millions are proved to be on no school list at all, while a great mass of the other two millions are receiving the most miserable tuition, did not excite either Lord John, or our Blessed House of Representatives, into an indignant declaration that the children should be taught, that the nation should pay for their teaching, and that the parents who hindered or neglected the work should be punished. On the contrary, they chattered and talked commonplace, and complimented one another, and an old Dissenting Attorney called Hadfield[1] said that the people were taught as well as any other people, which he proved from the fact that they wrote and posted a great many letters; and he opposed all further interference. Having thus got rid of the Education of the Poor, the House went on to the Education of the Rich, and had a discussion on the Oxford Reforms, but it also ended in nothing.

Thursday, April 10th. The House of Commons was occupied during this night and the next with discussing Lord John Russell's Education resolutions. They were opposed, of course, by representatives of the Church, of Dissent, and of the Manchester school: the first think that their religion only should be taught by the State; the second that their religion only should be taught, but not by the State; and the third that no religion should be taught at all. It is needless to say that Government has no practical views on the subject, but like all half-hearted people contrived to get the worst in the fray.

In July, 1856, at the end of the session, the Education Bill for England and Scotland figured in the "Massacre of the Innocents," sixteen in all. As a set-off the Cambridge University Bill introduced some useful reforms, though it failed to secure the admission of Dissenters; and a Minister for Education was created under the title of Vice-President of the Committee of the Council of Education. But Punch, in these years at any rate, had no love for the older universities. He regarded them, and especially Oxford, as the strongholds of mediævalism, obscurantism, and all the "isms" against which he was always tilting in Church and State; and he seldom failed to satirize the opposition of academic authorities to inquiry and reform. The romance of "the home of lost causes" made no appeal

AWFUL EXAMPLE OF INFANT PRECOCITY PRODIGY: "Mamma! Look dere, dere Papa!"

[Description: Cartoon entitled "Awful Example of Infant Precocity." A well-dressed mother and her child are walking down the street when they see a monkey dressed in a coat and hat and holding a magnifying glass. The "prodigy" says : "Mamma! Look dere, dere Papa!," causing the mother to grimace. ]

to his practical mind. Yet of classical scholarship and the classical curriculum he was a loyal supporter. Classical allusions, quotations and parallels abound in his pages: he even printed translations in doggerel Greek by Dr. Kenealy. But the education of the masses was his prime concern, and after the fiasco of 1856 Parliament remained inactive for nearly six years—until the notable measure, establishing the principle of "payment by results," was introduced by Lowe in 1862. In this context it may be noted that as early as 1848 Punch avowed his belief in the value of making lessons interesting to children:—

The reason why school books are so dreary to the child is because they are full of subjects he has no sympathy with. Children's books should be written for children. The child may be father to the man, but that is no reason why he should be treated with literature which is only fit for a father. . . . If battles are to be fought before children they should be fought with tin soldiers. . . . Study should

HOMAGE TO HANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN

[Description: Drawing of the "Homage to Hans Christian Anderson," in which a happy mob of children surrounds Anderson, holding up books and clamoring for his attention. ]

be made into a good romp, learning turned into a game, and children then could run into the schoolroom with the same eagerness they rush now into the playground.

Here we have a crude anticipation of the Montessori system, around which so much controversy rages to-day. Punch has always been a lover of children, gentle and simple, but at the same time a faithful critic of the enfant terrible and of juvenile precocity. One of the most delightful letters that ever appeared in his pages was the genuine epistle from a little girl printed in the issue of January 10, 1857:— "MY DEAR MR. PUNCH,

"we Hope you are Quite well and i wish you many Happy returns of Christmas and i hope you will Excuse me riting to You but mamma Says you allways are Fond of little people so i Hope you will Excuse as me and charley read in the illusterated London [News] that Mr. Hans Christian anderson is Coming to spend His Hollidays in England And We shold like to see Him becase he as Made us All so Happy with is Betiful storys the ugly duck the Top and the ball the snow Quen the Red shoes the Storks little ida the Constant tinsoldier great claws and Little Claws the darning Neddle and All the rest of Them and it says in the illustat [several attempts, a smear, and the spelling evaded] Paper the children shold Meet him in the Crys -pallace and we shold Like

to Go and tell him how much We Love him for his betiful stores do you know the tinder box and tommelise and charley liks the wild Swans best but i Hope you will Excuse bad riting and i Am

"Yours affectionate
"NELLY.

charley says i Have not put in wat We ment if you please Will you put In punch wat everybody is to Do to let Mr. hans Ansen know how Glad we are He is Coming."

We hope that Hans Andersen—who, by the way, as a writer of fairy stories is regarded with disfavour by Madame Montessori—saw this letter. On the relations of parents and children generally, two of Punch's aphorisms are not without their bearing on present-day conditions. In the year 1844 the Comic Blackstone reads: "Children owe their parents support; but this is a mutual obligation, for they must support each other, though we sometimes hear them declaring each other wholly insupportable." And the other, under the heading "The World's Nursery," runs: "The spoilt children of the present age rarely turn out the great men of the next." It should be added, as some readers will remember, that in neither of the decades under review were the children of the poor in any danger of being spoiled.