Part 5
"I know ... and that's why you have never reformed, my dear kid," I said.
"Ellen," said Janet, "d'ye mind that day when you and me got up and walked oot o' the room?"
"What day was that?" I asked; "you two went out of the room so often that I gave up trying to see you."
"It was the day when a man cam to the schule and stood in the room when ye was teachin' us. There was a new boy, the caravan boy that had never been to schule in his life, and ye said that he was better than any o' us."
"So Jan and me took the tig," said Ellen, "and we went oot and sat on the dike."
Janet hee-heed.
"D'ye mind what we said, Ellen? We said we werena to go back to the schule; we were to go up to Rinsley schule to Mester Lawson."
"Aye," said Ellen, "and we said we wudna gie ye another sweetie ... no, never!"
"And I suppose you gave me sweeties next day?" I suggested.
"We gave ye a whole ha'penny worth o' chocolate caramels," said Janet. Her head rested on my knee and she smiled up in my face. "Ye were far ower easy wi' us," she said seriously, "we never did half the lessons ye gave us to do."
"I know, Jan, but I didn't particularly want you to do lessons; all I wanted was that you should be Janet Brown and no one else. I wanted you to be a good kind lassie ... and of course, as you know, I failed." And she pulled my nose at this.
"I didn't like the school when I was there," said Margaret; "I never was so glad in my life as when I was fourteen."
"Poor Margaret," I said, "your schooling should be the pleasantest memory of your life. What you learned from books doesn't matter at all; what matters is what you were. And it seems that memory will bring to you a picture of an unhappy Margaret longing to leave school. What a tragedy!"
"Is being happy the best thing in life?" asked Margaret.
"Not the best," I answered; "the best thing in life is making other people happy ... and that's what the books mean by 'service.'"
* * *
Margaret came over to my bothy to-night to ask if I would help Nancy with her home lessons.
"She's crying like anything," said Margaret.
I went over to the farmhouse. Nancy sat at the kitchen table with her books spread out before her. She was wiping her eyes and looked like beginning to weep again.
"It's her pottery," explained Frank, "she canna get it up at all."
Macdonald had ordered the class to learn the first six verses of Gray's _Elegy_, and threatened dire penalties if each scholar wasn't word perfect.
"I'm afraid I can't help you much, Nancy," I said. "You'll just have to set your teeth and get it up. Don't repeat it line by line; read the six verses over, then read them again, then again. Read them twenty times, then shut the book and imagine the page is before you, and see how much of the stuff you can say." I used to find this method very effectual when I got up long recitations in my younger days.
Macdonald gives his higher classes long poems. They have learned up pages of _Marmion_ and pages of _The Lady of the Lake_; and now he is giving them the long and difficult _Elegy_. I must ask him some day what his idea is. I made learning poetry optional when I was in the school. I eschewed all long poems, and I never asked a child to stand up and "say" a piece. My view was that school poetry should be school folk-song; I used to write short pieces on the board and the classes recited them in unison. I gave no hint of expression, for expression should always be a natural thing. I have been timid of expression ever since the day I heard, or rather saw, a youth recite _The Dream of Eugene Aram_. When he came to the climax ... "And lo! the faithless stream was dry!" I suddenly discovered that I was dry too, and I did not wait until Eugene was led away with "gyves upon his wrists." I once saw Sir Henry Irving in _The Bells_. I was a schoolboy at the time and I straightway spent all my pocket money on books dealing with elocution; I also would tear my hair before the footlights! Looking back now I wonder why Irving bothered with stuff of that sort; why his sense of humour allowed him to grope about the stage for the axe to kill the Polish Jew I don't understand. All that melodramatic romantic business is simply theatrical gush. It appeals to the classes that devour the _Police News_.
Expression when taught is gush. When I gave my bairns a bit of _The Ancient Mariner_ the whole crowd brightened up and shouted when they came to the verse:--
I bit my arm, I sucked the blood And cried: "A sail! A sail!"
They understood that part, but they put no special expression into the stanza:--
All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody sun at noon Right up above the mast did stand, No bigger than the moon.
The boys used to emphasise the adjective in the second line, but that was perhaps natural in a community where strong language is the prerogative of grown-ups. I suppose that a teacher of expression would have pointed out that the right arm must be raised gracefully at the third line, and the voice lowered awfully to show the marvellous significance of the fact that the crudoric sun was no bigger than the moon.
All I tried to give my bairns was an appreciation of rhythm. They loved the trochaic rhythm of a poem, _Marsh Marigolds_, by G. F. Bradby, that I discovered in a school anthology:--
Slaty skies and a whistling wind and a grim grey land, April here with a sullen mind and a frozen hand, Hardly a bird with the heart to sing, or a bud that dares to pry, Only the plovers hovering, On the lonely marsh, with a heavy wing And a sad slow cry.
And it used to make me joyful to hear them gallop through Stevenson's delightful _My Ship and I_:--
Oh! it's I that am the captain of a tidy little ship, Of a ship that goes a-sailing on the pond, And my ship it keeps a-turning all around and all about, But when I'm a little older I shall find the secret out How to send my vessel sailing on beyond!
I never gave them a poem that needed any explanation. I picture Macdonald painfully explaining the _Elegy_.... "Yes, children, the phrase 'incense-breathing morn' means...."
I'm gravelled; I haven't the faintest notion of what the phrase means. Gray annoys me; he is far too perfect for me. I fancy that he rewrote each line about a score of times in his mania for the correct word. Gray is Milton with a dictionary.
I once read that Stevenson studied the dictionary often, used to spend a rainy day reading the thing, and his prose does give me the impression that he cared more for how he said a thing than for the thing itself. I think George Douglas a greater writer; indeed I should call him the greatest novelist Scotland has produced. His style is inevitable; his whole attention seems to be riveted on the matter of his story, and his arresting phrases seem to come from him naturally and thoughtlessly. When you read of Gourlay's agony in Barbie market on the day that his son's disgrace is known to everyone, you see the great hulk of a man, you hear his great breaths ... you are one of the villagers who peep at him fearfully. Every word is inevitable; the picture is perfect. I should be surprised if anyone told me that Douglas altered a single word after he had written it.
When I want to feel humble I take up _The House with the Green Shutters_. I have read it a score of times, and I hope to read it a score of times again.
VII.
Margaret looked up from the novelette she was reading.
"Are the aristocracy really like what they are in this story?" she asked.
"I don't know," I replied; "I'm not acquainted with the aristocracy, but I should say that they aren't like the aristocracy in that yarn. You see, Margaret, I happen to know some of the men who write these novelettes. Murray is a don at them; he'll turn one out between breakfast and dinner. To the best of my knowledge Murray has never dined in any restaurant more expensive than an A.B.C. shop ... and his characters always dine at the Ritz."
"But have you never met anybody with a title?"
"I once collided with a man at the British Museum door," I said. "He was a Scot.... I know that because neither of us apologised; we merely jerked out 'Oh!' I am almost sure that the man was Sir J. M. Barrie. And I shook hands with two dukes and three lords at a university dinner, but they possibly have forgotten the incident."
No. I don't know the aristocracy well.
I met a titled lady last summer. I was staying at a country house near London, and this lady had the neighbouring house. She came over on the Sunday afternoon. My host informed me that she had lost two sons in the war. After she had gone I was asked what I thought of the English aristocracy, and I gave my opinion in these words:--"To the English aristocracy property alone is sacred. That woman has given the lives of her two sons willingly for her country, but if she were asked to give half an acre of her estate to help pay for the war she would go mad with rage and disgust."
When I heard that lady grumble about the wickedness of the munition-workers.... "And, my dear, women in shawls are buying pianos and seal-skin jackets!" ... I realised how hopeless was the cry of _The New Age_ for the Conscription of Wealth. The powerful classes will resist Conscription of Wealth as strenuously as they resist the Germans. Yet the Conscription of Men was in very many cases a Conscription of Wealth. One had only to read the Tribunal cases to discover that thousands of men had to deliver up all their wealth when they joined the army. There was Wrangler the actor; his property was his talent to portray character, and from that he drew his income. His property was conscripted along with him. It was fitting that he should give up all when the State required him to give it up. But the State requires all the wealth of the moneyed classes, and because economic power controls political power the State will not conscript the wealth of its real governors.
I see now that our education is founded on the unpleasant fact that property is more sacred than life. Teachers are encouraged to make their pupils patriotic; every boy must be brought up in the belief that it is great and glorious to die for one's country. A real patriotism would lead a boy to realise that it is a great and glorious thing to live for one's country; the true patriot would teach his lads to make their country a great and glorious country to die for. Somehow our schools for the most part ignore this branch of patriotism; it does not seem so important as the flag-waving and standing to attention that passes for patriotism.
Macdonald is decorating the walls of the school with coloured prints of our warships. "To make them realise how much the navy means to them," he explained to me as I looked at them.
"Excellent!" I said. "The navy deserves all the respect we can give it. But, Macdonald, in your position I should give a further lesson on patriotism; I should point out to these bairns that while the glorious navy is defending our shores from a foreign enemy the enemy within is plundering the nation. I should tell them that under the protection of the navy the profiteers are raising the prices of necessaries hand over fist. All the patriotic flag-waving in the world won't help these bairns to understand that the patriotism of the masses is being exploited by the self-seeking of the dirty few."
Patriotism! We have popular weeklies that endeavour to make the people patriotic. They lash themselves into a fury over momentous questions: The Ich Dien on the crest of the Prince of Wales Must Go; The Duke of So-and-So must have his Garter taken from him; Who was the Spy who sent Kitchener to his doom?
The only way to encourage children to be patriotic is to tell them the sober truth about the important things of life. The invention of the word "shirker" managed to effect that the most timid of men should fight for his country; public opinion will always look after the patriotism necessary for war. But my complaint is that public opinion will not look after the patriotism necessary for peace. If we were all true patriots there would be no slums, no exploitation, no profiteering. And the "patriotic" lesson in school should deal with economics instead of jingo ballads of victories won.
* * *
I cycled twelve miles to-night, and I raised a comfortable thirst. When I came to the village I dropped into the Glamis Arms and had a bottle of lager. As I came out I ran into Macdonald.
"Lucky fellow!" he laughed, "you have no position to maintain now and you can afford to quench a thirst!"
"Position be blowed!" I said, "I drink when I'm dry, and I always did. When I was dominie here I dropped in here more than once in the hot weather."
"And they sacked you!"
"Not because of that," I said, "but in spite of it. Believe me it was the one thing that made one or two villagers more amiable to me."
The Scot's attitude to the public-house is entertaining. If you have any position to keep up you must not enter a public-house ... you must get it in by the dozen. When I first went to London and entered a saloon bar in the Strand I was amazed to find women sitting with their husbands; I was also amazed to find no drunks about. In a Scots bar the most apparent phenomenon is wrangling. I never heard an argument in a London bar, and I have been in many: I never saw a drunk man in London, and I was there for two years.
The public-house in Scotland is not respectable: in England it is. Why this should be I can only guess. The Scot may be a bigger hypocrite than the Englishman; what is more probable is that he may be a harder drinker. In Scotland entering a public-house is synonymous with getting drunk. Yet there are what you might call alcoholic gradations. A respectable farmer may enter a bar without comment, but a teacher must not enter it. He is the guide of the young, and he must be an example. Teachers seldom enter village bars ... and yet Scotland is notorious for drinking. If the teachers determined to become regular bar customers I conclude that Scotland would drink herself off the face of the map.
I have a theory that the Calvinistic attitude to the public-house is the chief cause of Scots drunkenness. When a Scot enters a bar he knows that he won't have the courage to be seen coming out again ... and he very naturally says to himself: "Ach, to hell! Aw'll hae another just to fortify mysel' for gaein' oot!" The public-house isn't a public-house at all; it is the most private of houses. Peter Soutar the leading elder in the kirk here always carries a bundle of church magazines in his hand when he enters the Glamis Arms; when the date is past magazine time he enters by the back door. Jeemes Walker the leading Free Kirk elder goes in to read the gospel to old Mrs. Melville the invalid mother of the landlord, and the village is uncharitable enough to remark in his hearing that he really goes to interview his brother "Johnny." I think that it was the doctor who originated that joke.
A public-house is no place for a public man in Scotland.
* * *
The opening of the coal mines has brought to the neighbourhood a new type of person. He is usually an engineer who has spent a good few years abroad, and he is usually married ... very much married. His wife is always a grade above the wife of the engineer next door, and the men appear to spend most of their leisure time in mending quarrels that their wives began. Most of the men are amiable fellows with the minimum of ideas and the maximum of knowledge of fishing and card-playing. They have a certain dignity, and they instantly freeze if you casually ask where such-and-such a light railway is to run.
The wives seem to have no interest other than in servants and their manifold wickedness and cussedness. They hold their noses high when they pass through the village, and they bully the local shopkeepers.
When I was a dominie these women patronised me delightfully, but now that I am a cattleman they are quite frank with me. I puzzled over this for some time, and the solution came to me suddenly. They are all English women, and in the English village the dominie is on very much the same social level as the vicar's gardener.
Mrs. Martinlake likes to chat to me now. She is a middle-aged lady who loves to reminisce about duchesses she has known. She once complained to me because the boys did not touch their caps to her, and on my suggesting that they hadn't been introduced she became very indignant. She called to me this morning as she passed the field I was working in.
"Ah! Good morning! I've been looking for you for a long time. I wanted to tell you how much the children have improved; every village boy touches his cap to me now!" and she laughed gaily.
"Good!" I cried. "If this sort of thing goes on they will be touching their caps to their mothers next."
"And why not?" she demanded with a slight touch of aggression.
I shrugged my shoulders.
"As you say--why not? I think that you ought to persuade your little boy to touch his cap to all the mothers in the village. I notice that he doesn't do it. You take my tip and send him down to Macdonald's school; he'll soon pick it up."
She went off without a word, and I realised that I had been distinctly rude to her. Somehow I felt glad that I had been rude to her.
I told Margaret about the incident afterwards.
"I hate manners, Margaret," I said.
"But," she said wonderingly, "you are very mannerly."
"To you I believe I am, Margaret," I laughed. "But that is because you don't look for manners. Mrs. Martinlake is eternally looking for manners, and to her manners mean respect, deference, boot-licking. She doesn't want the boys to doff their caps to her because she is a woman; no, she wants them to recognise the fact that she is Mrs. Martinlake, self-alleged friend of duchesses. She doesn't care a tupenny damn for the boys and their lives; she is thinking of Mrs. Martinlake all the time. She once talked to me of the respect due to motherhood ... and you know that she sacked Liz Smith when she discovered that Liz had had an illegitimate child.
"Women of that type get my back up," I went on. "They are stupid, low-minded, arrogant. They are poor imitations of the Parisian ladies who curled their lips contemptuously at the plebeian rabble that led them to the guillotine. The Parisian ladies had a fine pride of race to redeem their arrogance, but these women have nothing but pride of class. Margaret, if a teacher failed to teach a boy anything except the truth that deference is one of the Seven Deadly Virtues, I should say that that teacher was a successful teacher."
* * *
The concert was a success to-night. The singing was good, but the speech of the chairman, Peter MacMannish, was great.
"Ladies and Gentlemen,
"We're a' verra weel pleased to see sik a big turn-oot the nicht. Aw need hardly say onything aboot the object o' this concert, but it's to get a puckle bawbees to send oot a clean pair o' socks and maybe a clean sark to oor local sojers oot in France.--(Cheers).
"Weel, ladies and gentlemen, Aw've made mony a speech on this platform in the days when Aw fought for the Conservative Candidate, Mester Fletcher (cheers, and a voice: 'Gie it a drink, cobbler!')"
The light of battle leapt to Peter's eyes.
"Aw ken that wheezin' Radical's voice!" he cried, "and Aw wud just like to tell that voice that there's no room for Radicals in this war. What was the attitude o' that man's party to Protection? When Mester Chamberlain stood up in Glesga Toon Hall what did he say?" I gently touched Peter on the arm and reminded him of the concert and its object.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, we'll no touch on thae topics here, for ye cam here for another object than to listen to me (several voices: 'Hear, hear!') Afore we begin to the programme Aw wud just like to say that we have to thank oor late dominie for gettin' up this concert. Some o' us had no love for him as a dominie, but Aw say let bygones be bygones. We a' ken that he's no a teacher (laughter), but he's a clever fellow for a' that, and we'll maybe see him in Parliament yet. That hoose has muckle need o' new blood. When Aw think o' Lloyd George and that man Churchill; when Aw see the condeetion they've brocht the country till; when Aw think o' the slack wye they've let the Trade Unions rob the country; when Aw see--" I coughed here, and Peter drew up.
"Weel, Ladies and Gentlemen, this is no a poleetical meetin', and Aw've muckle pleasure in callin' upon Miss Jean Black for a sang," he peered at his programme, "a sang enteeled: A Moonlight Sonnita." Miss Jean Black forthwith sat down at the piano.
During the interval Peter digged me in the ribs.
"What d'ye think o' my suggestion, dominie, eh?"
"What suggestion?"
"Aboot standin' for Parliament. It's a payin' game noo-a-days ... fower hunner a year and yer tea when the hoose is sittin'. Goad, dominie, think o' sittin' takkin' yer tea wi' Airthur Balfoor!" and he sighed wistfully as a child sighs when it dreams of fairyland and wakes to reality.
"Aye," he said after a long pause, "Aw wance shook hands wi' Joe Chamberlain. His lawware says to him: 'This is Mester MacMannish, wan o' yer chief supporters in the county,' and Aw just taks my hand oot o' my breek pooch. 'Verra pleased to meet ye,' says Aw ... 'and hoo is yer missis and the bairns?' Man, he lauched at that. Goad he lauched!"
Peter forgot the crowded hall; he stared at the ceiling unseeingly, and he lived over again the greatest day of his life. It was fitting that a Scot should have originated the title "Heroes and Hero-Worship."
VIII.
Macdonald came up to-night. I hadn't seen him for weeks.
"I am making out a scheme of work for the Evening School," he said. "What line did you take?"
"My scheme was simple," I replied, "and luckily I had an inspector who appreciated what I was trying to do. I made the history lessons lessons in elementary political economy. Arithmetic and Algebra were the usual thing."
"What about Reading and Grammar?" he asked.
"We read David Copperfield, and I meant to read a play of Shakespeare and Ibsen's _An Enemy of the People_, but I never found time for them. The class became a sort of debating society. I gave out subjects. We discussed Votes for Women, Should Women Smoke? Is Money the Reward of Ability? I told them about the theory of evolution; I began to trace the history of mankind, or rather tried to make out a likely history, but at the end of the session we hadn't arrived at the dawn of written history."
"Did you find any pupil improving?"
"Macdonald, you are a demon for tangible results. The only tangible result of my heresies I can think of is the fact that Margaret Thomson smokes my cigarettes now."
"Have a look at this scheme," he said, and he handed me a lengthy manuscript. The arithmetic was a detailed list of utilitarian sums ... how to measure ricks of hay and fields, how to calculate the price of papering walls and so on. My own attitude to utilitarian sums is this: if you know the principles of pure mathematics all these things come easily to you, hence teach pure mathematics and let the utilitarian part take care of itself.
His English part dealt minutely with grammar; he was to give much parsing and analysis; compound sentences were to be broken up into their component parts.
In History he was to do the Stuart Period, and Geography was to cover the whole world "special attention being paid to the agricultural produce of the British Colonies."
"It is a 'correct' scheme," I said.
"Give me your candid opinion of it."