Part 8 (1/2)

”Ah! Easily said. I am the son, Mr. Meagles, of a hard father and mother. I am the only child of parents who weighed, measured, and priced everything; for whom what could not be weighed, measured, and priced had no existence. Strict people, as the phrase is, professors of a stern religion, their very religion was a gloomy sacrifice of tastes and sympathies that were never their own, offered up as a part of a bargain for the security of their possessions. Austere faces, inexorable discipline, penance in this world and terror in the next--nothing graceful or gentle anywhere, and the void in my cowed heart everywhere--this was my childhood, if I may so misuse the word as to apply it to such a beginning of life.”

When he returned to the presence of his mother, after an absence of many years in China, ”the old influence of her presence, and her stern, strong voice, so gathered about her son that he felt conscious of a renewal of the timid chill and reserve of his childhood.”

It was a terrible indictment of all coercive, child-quelling, will-breaking training that Arthur made when he said to his stern mother:

”I can not say that I have been able to conform myself, in heart and spirit, to your rules; I can not say that I believe my forty years have been profitable or pleasant to myself, or any one; but I have habitually submitted, and I only ask you to remember it.”

Speaking of her own training, Mrs. Clennam said: ”Mine were days of wholesome repression, punishment, and fear,” and she frankly avowed her deliberate purpose of ”bringing Arthur up in fear and trembling.”

Those were the dreadful ideals that d.i.c.kens aimed to destroy. Repression, punishment, fear, and trembling are no longer the dominant ideals of the Christian world regarding child training. They are rapidly giving way to the new and true gospel of stimulation, happiness, freedom, and creative self-activity.

Great Expectations was a valuable contribution to the literature of child training. Mrs. Gargery was a type of repressive, coercive, unsympathetic women, who regard children as necessarily nuisances, and who are continually thankful for the fact that by the free use of ”the tickler”

they may be subdued and kept in a state of bearable subjection.

Mrs. Gargery had no children of her own, but she had a little brother, Pip, whom she ”brought up by hand.” Her husband, Joe Gargery, was an honest, affectionate, sympathetic man, who pitied poor Pip and tried to comfort him when his wife was not present. The dear old fellow said to Pip one evening, as they sat by the fire and he beat time to his kindly thoughts with the poker:

”Your sister is given to government.”

”Given to government, Joe?” I was startled, for I had some shadowy idea (and I am afraid I must add hope) that Joe had divorced her in favour of the lords of the Admiralty, or Treasury.

”Given to government,” said Joe. ”Which I meantersay the government of you and myself.”

”Oh!”

”And she ain't over partial to having scholars on the premises,” Joe continued, ”and in particular would not be over partial to my being a scholar, for fear as I might rise. Like a sort of rebel, don't you see?”

I was going to retort with an inquiry, and had got as far as ”Why----”

when Joe stopped me.

”Stay a bit. I know what you're a-going to say, Pip? stay a bit! I don't deny that your sister comes the mo-gul over us, now and again. I don't deny that she do throw us back-falls, and that she do drop down upon us heavy. At such times as when your sister is on the ram-page, Pip,” Joe sunk his voice to a whisper and glanced at the door, ”candour compels fur to admit that she is a buster....

”I wish it was only me that got put out, Pip; I wish there warn't no tickler for you, old chap; I wish I could take it all on myself; but this is the up-and-down-and-straight on it, Pip, and I hope you'll overlook shortcomings.”

Poor Joe! His father had been a blacksmith, but he took to drink, and, as Joe said, ”Hammered at me with a wigour only to be equalled by the wigour with which he didn't hammer at his anwil.”

d.i.c.kens gives an ill.u.s.tration of Mrs. Gargery's training which reveals not only her coercive and unsympathetic tendencies, but points to other errors in training children that are yet too common. Pip was warming himself before going to bed one night, when a cannon sounded from the Hulks, or prison s.h.i.+ps, near the Gargery home.

”Ah!” said Joe; ”there's another conwict off.”

”What does that mean?” said I.

Mrs. Joe, who always took explanations upon herself, said snappishly: ”Escaped. Escaped.” Administering the definition like medicine.

”There was a conwict off last night,” said Joe, aloud, ”after sunset gun. And they fired warning of him. And now it appears they're firing warning of another.”

”Who's firing?” said I.

”Drat that boy,” interposed my sister, frowning at me over her work; ”what a questioner he is! Ask no questions and you'll be told no lies.”

It was not very polite to herself, I thought, to imply that I should be told lies by her, even if I did ask questions. But she never was polite, unless there was company.

”Mrs. Joe,” said I, as a last resort, ”I should like to know--if you wouldn't much mind--where the firing comes from?”