Chapter III: The Overthrow of Coercion (1)

Dickens, in the preface to Nicholas Nickleby, states that, as Pickwick Papers had given him an audience, he determined to carry out a long-cherished plan and write for the purpose of driving out of existence a class of bad private schools, of which certain schools in Yorkshire were the worst types. He drew a picture of low cunning, avarice, ignorance, imposture, and brutality in Squeers that astounded his audience, and led to the closing of most of the Yorkshire private schools and to the overthrow of tyranny in schools throughout the civilized world. Tyranny and corporal punishment still exist, but not in the best schools. Not one child weeps now on account of corporal punishment for every hundred who wailed bitterly for the same reason when Froebel and Dickens began their loving work. Year by year the good work goes on. Men are learning the better ways of guiding and governing childhood. We can not yet say when men and women in the homes and schools everywhere shall understand the child and their own powers so thoroughly that there shall be no more corporal punishment inflicted, but we do know that the abatement of the terrible brutality began with the revelations of Froebel and Dickens. Froebel taught the new philosophy, Dickens sent it quivering through the hearts and consciences of mankind.

Members of the highest classes in England have been imprisoned near the close of the nineteenth century for improper methods of punishing children that would have excited no comment when Dickens described Squeers a little more than half a century earlier. In the report to the British Government, at the close of his remarkable half-century of honourable and very able educational work, Sir Joshua Fitch said: "In watching the gradual development of the training colleges for women from year to year, nothing is more striking than the increased attention which is being paid in those institutions to the true principles of infant teaching and discipline. The circular which has recently been issued by your lordships, and which is designed to enforce and explain these principles, would, if put forth a few years ago, have fallen on unprepared soil, and would indeed have seemed to many teachers both in and out of training colleges to be scarcely intelligible. Now its counsels will be welcomed with sympathy and full appreciation."

Dickens describes Squeers as a man "whose appearance was not prepossessing."

He had but one eye, and the popular prejudice runs in favour of two.
The eye he had was unquestionably useful, but decidedly not
ornamental: being of a greenish gray, and in shape resembling the
fanlight of a street door. The blank side of his face was much
wrinkled and puckered up, which gave him a very sinister appearance,
especially when he smiled, at which times his expression bordered
closely on the villainous. His hair was very flat and shiny, save at
the ends, where it was brushed stiffly up from a low protruding
forehead, which assorted well with his harsh voice and coarse manner.

He then proceeds to reveal the character of Squeers by a series of incidents:

Mr. Squeers was standing in a box by one of the coffee-room
fireplaces. In a corner of the seat was a very small deal trunk, tied
round with a scanty piece of cord; and on the trunk was perched--his
lace-up half-boots and corduroy trousers dangling in the air--a
diminutive boy, with his shoulders drawn up to his ears, and his hands
planted on his knees, who glanced timidly at the schoolmaster, from
time to time, with evident dread and apprehension.

"Half-past three," muttered Mr. Squeers, turning from the window, and
looking sulkily at the coffee-room clock. "There will be nobody here
to-day."

Much vexed by this reflection, Mr. Squeers looked at the little boy to
see whether he was doing anything he could beat him for. As he
happened not to be doing anything at all, he merely boxed his ears,
and told him not to do it again.

"At midsummer," muttered Mr. Squeers, resuming his complaint, "I took
down ten boys; ten twentys is two hundred pound. I go back at eight
o'clock to-morrow morning, and have got only three--three oughts is an
ought--three twos is six--sixty pound. What's come of all the boys?
what's parents got in their heads? what does it all mean?"

Here the little boy on the top of the trunk gave a violent sneeze.

"Halloa, sir!" growled the schoolmaster, turning round. "What's that,
sir?"

"Nothing, please, sir," said the little boy.

"Nothing, sir?" exclaimed Mr. Squeers.

"Please, sir, I sneezed," rejoined the boy, trembling till the little
trunk shook under him.

"Oh! sneezed, did you?" retorted Mr. Squeers. "Then what did you say
'nothing' for, sir?"

In default of a better answer to this question, the little boy screwed
a couple of knuckles into each of his eyes and began to cry, wherefore
Mr. Squeers knocked him off the trunk with a blow on one side of his
face, and knocked him on again with a blow on the other.

"Wait till I get you down into Yorkshire, my young gentleman," said
Mr. Squeers, "and then I'll give you the rest. Will you hold that
noise, sir?"

"Ye--ye--yes," sobbed the little boy, rubbing his face very hard with
the Beggar's Petition in printed calico.

"Then do so at once, sir," said Squeers. "Do you hear?"

The waiter at this juncture announced a gentleman who wished to interview Mr. Squeers, and the schoolmaster, in an undertone, said to the poor boy: "Put your handkerchief in your pocket, you little scoundrel, or I'll murder you when the gentleman goes."

Affecting not to see the gentleman when he entered, Mr. Squeers feigned to be mending a pen and trying to comfort the boy he had so grossly abused.

"My dear child," said Squeers, "all people have their trials. This early trial of yours, that is fit to make your little heart burst and your very eyes come out of your head with crying, what is it? Nothing--less than nothing. You are leaving your friends, but you will have a father in me, my dear, and a mother in Mrs. Squeers."

Our indignation is still further aroused when we hear the conversation between Mr. Squeers and his visitor, who is named Snawley, and who was "a sleek, flat-nosed man, bearing in his countenance an expression of much mortification and sanctity."

He had brought with him two little boys, whose stepfather he was. Their mother had a little money in her own right and he was afraid she might squander it on her boys, so he wished to dispose of them. Our blood runs cold as we hear the two scoundrels plotting against the unfortunate boys. They are to be kept by Squeers till grown up. No questions are to be asked "so long as the payments are regular." "They are to be supplied with razors when grown up, and never allowed home for holidays, and not permitted to write home, except a circular at Christmas to say they never were so happy and hope they may never be sent for, and no questions are to be asked in case anything happens to them."

We learn the unutterable selfishness of Squeers as he sits eating a sumptuous breakfast, while the five wretched and hungry little boys, who are to accompany him to Yorkshire to Dotheboys Hall, look at him. He had ordered bread and butter for three, which he cut into five portions, and "two-penn'orth of milk" for the five boys. While waiting for the bread to come he said, as he took a large mouthful of beef and toast, "Conquer your passions, boys, and don't be eager after vittles. Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you've conquered human natur."

Nicholas Nickleby had been engaged to teach under Squeers in Dotheboys Hall. He was shocked at many things he heard and saw the night he arrived in Yorkshire.

But the school itself and the appearance of the wretched pupils completed his discomfiture.

The pupils--the young noblemen! How the last faint traces of hope, the
remotest glimmering of any good to be derived from his efforts in this
den, faded from the mind of Nicholas as he looked in dismay around!
Pale and haggard faces, lank and bony figures, children with the
countenances of old men, deformities with irons upon their limbs, boys
of stunted growth, and others whose long meagre legs would hardly bear
their stooping bodies, all crowded on the view together; there were
the bleared eye, the harelip, the crooked foot, and every ugliness or
distortion that told of unnatural aversion conceived by parents for
their offspring, or of young lives which, from the earliest dawn of
infancy, had been one horrible endurance of cruelty and neglect. There
were little faces which should have been handsome, darkened with the
scowl of sullen, dogged suffering; there was childhood with the light
of its eye quenched, its beauty gone, and its helplessness alone
remaining; there were vicious-faced boys, with leaden eyes, like
malefactors in a jail; and there were young creatures on whom the sins
of their frail parents had descended, weeping even for the mercenary
nurses they had known, and lonesome even in their loneliness. With
every kindly sympathy and affection blasted in its birth, with every
young and healthy feeling flogged and starved down, with every
revengeful passion that can fester in swollen hearts, eating its evil
way to their core in silence, what an incipient hell was breeding
here!

It was Mr. Squeers's custom on the first afternoon after his return from London to call the school together to make announcements, and read letters written by himself, which he pretended had been written by the relatives of the boys. Accordingly, the first afternoon after the arrival of Nicholas, Squeers entered the schoolroom "with a small bundle of papers in his hand, and Mrs. S. followed with a pair of canes."

"Let any boy speak a word without leave," said Mr. Squeers, "and I'll take the skin off his back."

Two letters will serve as samples of the rest:

"Graymarsh. Stand up, Graymarsh."

Graymarsh stood up, while Squeers read his letter:

"Graymarsh's maternal aunt is very glad to hear he's so well and
happy, and sends her respectful compliments to Mrs. Squeers, and
thinks she must be an angel. She likewise thinks Mr. Squeers is too
good for this world; but hopes he may long be spared to carry on the
business. Would have sent the two pair of stockings as desired, but is
short of money, so forwards a tract instead, and hopes Graymarsh will
put his trust in Providence. Hopes, above all, that he will study in
every thing to please Mr. and Mrs. Squeers, and look upon them as his
only friends; and that he will love Master Squeers; and not object to
sleeping five in a bed, which no Christian should. Ah!" said Squeers,
folding it up, "a delightful letter. Very affecting indeed."

"Mobbs" was next called, and his letter was read to him:

"Mobbs's stepmother," said Squeers, "took to her bed on hearing that
he wouldn't eat fat, and has been very ill ever since. She wishes to
know, by an early post, where he expects to go to, if he quarrels with
his vittles; and with what feelings he could turn up his nose at the
cow's-liver broth, after his good master had asked a blessing on it.
This was told her in the London newspapers--not by Mr. Squeers, for he
is too kind and too good to set anybody against anybody--and it has
vexed her so much, Mobbs can't think. She is sorry to find he is
discontented, which is sinful and horrid, and hopes Mr. Squeers will
flog him into a happier state of mind; with this view, she has also
stopped his halfpenny a week pocket-money, and given a double-bladed
knife with a corkscrew in it to the missionaries, which she had bought
on purpose for him."

"A sulky state of feeling," said Squeers, after a terrible pause,
during which he had moistened the palm of his right hand again, "won't
do. Cheerfulness and contentment must be kept up. Mobbs, come to me!"

Mobbs moved slowly toward the desk, rubbing his eyes in anticipation
of good cause for doing so; and he soon afterward retired by the side
door, with as good a cause as a boy need have.

There are still school tyrants who talk with philosophic air of flogging children to make them happier, and others who say with hard tones and clenched hands that "the one thing they will not allow in their schools is a sulky boy or girl," and they mean, when they say so, that if a boy is sulky they take no steps to find out the cause of his disease or the natural remedy for it, but they apply the universal remedy of the old-fashioned quack trainer and whip the poor boy, who is already suffering from some physical or nervous derangement. Squeers and such teachers are brother tyrants. They practise the Squeers's doctrine--"A sulky state of feeling won't do. Cheerfulness and contentment must be kept up. Mobbs, come to me"--to make children cheerful and contented.

One of the most heart-stirring cases in Dotheboys Hall was that of poor Smike. He had been sent to Squeers when an infant. He was a young man now, but he had been starved so that he wore still around his long neck the frill of the collar that loving hands had placed there when he was a little child. Ill treatment and lack of proper food had made him almost an imbecile, and he was the drudge of the institution. Nicholas was attracted by the anxious, longing looks of the boy, as his eyes followed Squeers from place to place on their arrival from London.

He was lame; and as he feigned to be busy in arranging the table,
glanced at the letters with a look so keen, and yet so dispirited and
hopeless, that Nicholas could hardly bear to watch him.

"What are you bothering about there, Smike?" cried Mrs. Squeers; "let
the things alone, can't you."

"Eh!" said Squeers, looking up. "Oh! it's you, is it?"

"Yes, sir," replied the youth, pressing his hands together, as though
to control, by force, the nervous wandering of his fingers; "is
there----"

"Well!" said Squeers.

"Have you--did anybody--has nothing been heard--about me?"

"Devil a bit," replied Squeers testily.

The lad withdrew his eyes, and, putting his hand to his face, moved
toward the door.

"Not a word," resumed Squeers, "and never will be."

This is one of the pathetic pictures that awoke the heart of humanity. Nicholas was the first person who had ever sympathized with Smike, so the poor fellow naturally gave to Nicholas the pent-up love of his dwarfed nature, and kept near him whenever it was possible to do so.

Dickens made Smike the centre of the terrible interest in Dotheboys Hall.

Poor Smike was so badly treated that he ran away, but, after a long chase, he was brought home in triumph by Mrs. Squeers, bound like an animal. Squeers, of course, determined to flog him before all the boys as an example, and this led to the first great step toward the overthrow of the power of Squeers in Dotheboys Hall.

The news that Smike had been caught and brought back in triumph, ran
like wildfire through the hungry community, and expectation was on
tiptoe all the morning. On tiptoe it was destined to remain, however,
until afternoon; when Squeers, having refreshed himself with his
dinner, and further strengthened himself by an extra libation or so,
made his appearance (accompanied by his amiable partner) with a
countenance of portentous import, and a fearful instrument of
flagellation, strong, supple, wax-ended, and new--in short, purchased
that morning, expressly for the occasion.

"Is every boy here?" asked Squeers, in a tremendous voice.

Every boy was there, but every boy was afraid to speak; so Squeers
glared along the lines to assure himself; and every eye drooped, and
every head cowered down, as he did so.

"Each boy keep his place," said Squeers, administering his favourite
blow to the desk, and regarding with gloomy satisfaction the universal
start which it never failed to occasion. "Nickleby! to your desk,
sir."

It was remarked by more than one small observer that there was a very
curious and unusual expression in the usher's face; but he took his
seat, without opening his lips in reply. Squeers, casting a triumphant
glance at his assistant, and a look of most comprehensive despotism on
the boys, left the room, and shortly afterward returned, dragging
Smike by the collar--or rather by that fragment of his jacket which
was nearest the place where his collar would have been had he boasted
such a decoration.

In any other place the appearance of the wretched, jaded, spiritless
object would have occasioned a murmur of compassion and remonstrance.
It had some effect, even there; for the lookers-on moved uneasily in
their seats, and a few of the boldest ventured to steal looks at each
other, expressive of indignation and pity.

They were lost on Squeers, however, whose gaze was fastened on the
luckless Smike, as he inquired, according to custom in such cases,
whether he had anything to say for himself.

"Nothing, I suppose?" said Squeers, with a diabolical grin.

Smike glanced round, and his eye rested for an instant on Nicholas, as
if he had expected him to intercede; but his look was riveted on his
desk.

"Have you anything to say?" demanded Squeers again; giving his right
arm two or three flourishes to try its power and suppleness. "Stand a
little out of the way, Mrs. Squeers, my dear; I've hardly got room
enough."

"Spare me, sir!" cried Smike.

"Oh! that's all, is it?" said Squeers. "Yes, I'll flog you within an
inch of your life, and spare you that."

"Ha, ha, ha," laughed Mrs. Squeers, "that's a good 'un!"

"I was driven to do it," said Smike faintly, and casting another
imploring look on him.

"Driven to do it, were you?" said Squeers. "Oh! it wasn't your fault;
it was mine, I suppose--eh?"

"A nasty, ungrateful, pig-headed, brutish, obstinate, sneaking dog,"
exclaimed Mrs. Squeers, taking Smike's head under her arm, and
administering a cuff at every epithet; "what does he mean by that?"

"Stand aside, my dear," replied Squeers. "We'll try and find out."

Mrs. Squeers, being out of breath with her exertions, complied.
Squeers caught the boy firmly in his grip; one desperate cut had
fallen on his body--he was wincing from the lash, and uttering a
scream of pain--it was raised again, and again about to fall--when
Nicholas Nickleby suddenly starting up, cried: "Stop!" in a voice that
made the rafters ring.

"Who cried stop?" said Squeers, turning savagely round.

"I," said Nicholas, stepping forward. "This must not go on."

"Must not go on!" cried Squeers, almost in a shriek.

"No!" thundered Nicholas.

Aghast and stupefied by the boldness of the interference, Squeers
released his hold of Smike, and, falling back a pace or two, gazed
upon Nicholas with looks that were positively frightful.

"I say must not," repeated Nicholas, nothing daunted; "shall not. I
will prevent it."

Squeers continued to gaze upon him, with his eyes starting out of his
head; but astonishment had actually, for the moment, bereft him of
speech.

"You have disregarded all my quiet interference in the miserable lad's
behalf," said Nicholas; "you have returned no answer to the letter in
which I begged forgiveness for him, and offered to be responsible that
he would remain quietly here. Don't blame me for this public
interference. You have brought it upon yourself, not I."

"Sit down, beggar!" screamed Squeers, almost beside himself with rage,
and seizing Smike as he spoke.

"Wretch!" rejoined Nicholas fiercely, "touch him at your peril! I will
not stand by and see it done. My blood is up, and I have the strength
of ten such men as you. Look to yourself, for, by Heaven, I will not
spare you, if you drive me on!"

"Stand back!" cried Squeers, brandishing his weapon.

"I have a long series of insults to avenge," said Nicholas, flushed
with passion; "and my indignation is aggravated by the dastardly
cruelties practised on helpless infancy in this foul den. Have a care;
for, if you do raise the devil within me, the consequences shall fall
heavily upon your own head!"

He had scarcely spoken, when Squeers, in a violent outbreak of wrath,
and with a cry like the howl of a wild beast, spit upon him, and
struck him a blow across the face with his instrument of torture,
which raised up a bar of livid flesh as it was inflicted. Smarting
with the agony of the blow, and concentrating into that one moment all
his feelings of rage, scorn, and indignation, Nicholas sprang upon
him, wrested the weapon from his hand, and pinning him by the throat,
beat the ruffian till he roared for mercy.

The boys--with the exception of Master Squeers, who, coming to his
father's assistance, harassed the enemy in the rear--moved not hand or
foot; but Mrs. Squeers, with many shrieks for aid, hung on to the tail
of her partner's coat, and endeavoured to drag him from his infuriated
adversary; while Miss Squeers, who had been peeping through the
keyhole in expectation of a very different scene, darted in at the
very beginning of the attack, and after launching a shower of
inkstands at the usher's head, beat Nicholas to her heart's content:
animating herself at every blow with the recollection of his having
refused her proffered love, and thus imparting additional strength to
an arm which (as she took after her mother in this respect) was, at no
time, one of the weakest.

Nicholas, in the full torrent of his violence, felt the blows no more
than if they had been dealt with feathers; but, becoming tired of the
noise and uproar, and feeling that his arm grew weak besides, he threw
all his remaining strength into half a dozen finishing cuts and flung
Squeers from him, with all the force he could muster. The violence of
his fall precipitated Mrs. Squeers completely over an adjacent form;
and Squeers, striking his head against it in his descent, lay at his
full length on the ground, stunned and motionless.

Having brought affairs to this happy termination, and ascertained, to
his thorough satisfaction, that Squeers was only stunned, and not dead
(upon which point he had had some unpleasant doubts at first),
Nicholas left his family to restore him and retired to consider what
course he had better adopt. He looked anxiously round for Smike, as he
left the room, but he was nowhere to be seen.

After a brief consideration, he packed up a few clothes in a small
leathern valise, and, finding that nobody offered to oppose his
progress, marched boldly out by the front door and started to walk to
London.

Near the school he met John Browdie, the honest corn factor.

John saw that Nicholas had received a severe blow, and asked the reason.

"The fact is," said Nicholas, not very well knowing how to make the
avowal, "the fact is, that I have been ill-treated."

"Noa!" interposed John Browdie, in a tone of compassion; for he was a
giant in strength and stature, and Nicholas, very likely, in his
eyes, seemed a mere dwarf; "dean't say thot."

"Yes, I have," replied Nicholas, "by that man Squeers, and I have
beaten him soundly, and am leaving this place in consequence."

"What!" cried John Browdie, with such an ecstatic shout, that the
horse quite shied at it. "Beatten the schoolmeasther! Ho! ho! ho!
Beatten the schoolmeasther! who ever heard o' the loike o' that noo!
Giv' us thee hond agean, yongster. Beatten the schoolmeasther! Dang
it, I loove thee for't."

And the world agreed, and still agrees, with John Browdie.

Squeers and Smike began the real movement against cruelty and corporal punishment not only in schools, but in homes. Dickens described both characters so admirably that the world hated Squeers and pitied Smike to the limit of its power to hate and pity, and unconsciously the world associated cruelty and corporal punishment with Squeers. This was exactly what Dickens desired. The hatred of Squeers led to a strong disapproval of his practices. Corporal punishment was associated with an unpopular man, and it lost its respectable character and never regained it. The dislike for Squeers was accentuated by the long-continued sympathy and hopefulness felt for Smike as he gradually succumbed to the terrible disease, consumption, induced by poor food, neglect, and cruelty.

Squeers and Smike are doing their good work still, and doing it well. They could do it much better if men and women when they have become acquainted with Squeers would candidly ask themselves the question, "In what respects am I like Squeers?" instead of yielding to the feeling of self-satisfaction that they are so very unlike him.

Just before writing about the coercive tyranny of Squeers in his school, Dickens had written Oliver Twist, in which he had made a most vigorous attack upon two classes of characters for their tyrannical treatment of children, and especially on account of their frequent use of corporal punishment. Bumble represented the officials in institutions for children, and "the gentleman in the white waistcoat" was given as a type of the advanced Christian philanthropy of his time. He meant well, gave his time freely to attend the meetings of the board, and supposed he was doing right; but Dickens wished to let philanthropists see that they were terribly cruel to the helpless children, and that their good intentions could not condone their harshness, even though it resulted from ignorance and lack of reverence for childhood, and not from deliberate evil intentions.

Poor, friendless little Oliver! His beautiful face and gentle spirit might have touched the hardest heart, but the institutional heart becomes hard easily, even two generations after the time of Bumble and "the gentleman in the immaculate white waistcoat."

Dickens says:

It must not be supposed that Oliver was denied the benefit of
exercise, the pleasure of society, or the advantages of religious
consolation in the workhouse. As for exercise, it was nice cold
weather, and he was allowed to perform his ablutions every morning
under the pump, in a stone yard, in the presence of Mr. Bumble, who
prevented his catching cold, and caused a tingling sensation to
pervade his frame, by repeated applications of the cane. As for
society, he was carried every other day into the hall, where the boys
dined, and there sociably flogged as a public warning and example. And
so far from being denied the advantage of religious consolation, he
was kicked into the same apartment every evening at prayer time, and
there permitted to listen to, and console his mind with, a general
supplication of the boys, containing a special clause, therein
inserted by authority of the board, in which they entreated to be made
good, virtuous, contented, and obedient, and to be guarded from the
sins and vices of Oliver Twist.

After Oliver had been sent to work for Mr. Sowerberry he was goaded to desperation one evening by the disrespectful remarks of Noah Claypole about his mother, and bravely gave the mean bully the personal chastisement he so richly deserved. Noah was sent to complain to the parish board, and the gentleman in the white waistcoat said:

"Bumble, just step up to Sowerberry's with your cane, and see what's
best to be done. Don't spare him, Bumble."

"No, I will not, sir," replied the beadle, adjusting the wax end which
was twisted round the bottom of his cane, for purposes of parochial
flagellation.

"Tell Sowerberry not to spare him either. They'll never do anything
with him without stripes and bruises," said the gentleman in the white
waistcoat.

The innocent, manly child was beaten unmercifully and abused cruelly by Sowerberry and Bumble, yet he bore all their taunts and floggings without a tear until he was alone. Then, "when there was none to see or hear him, he fell upon his knees on the floor, and, hiding his face in his hands, wept such tears as, God send for the credit of our nature, few so young may ever have cause to pour out before him!"

There are not many "gentlemen in white waistcoats" of the type described by Dickens now on charitable boards, and the enlightened sentiment of civilized countries turns the legal processes of nations upon officials who dare to treat children unkindly. Dickens made humane people everywhere sympathize with Mr. Meagles, who said: "Whenever I see a beadle in full fig coming down a street on a Sunday at the head of a charity school, I am obliged to turn and run away, or I should hit him."

Ten years after Squeers began his good work Dickens produced Squeers's associate, Mr. Creakle, the master of Salem House.

David Copperfield was sent to Salem House by his stepfather, Mr. Murdstone, because he bit his hand when he was punishing him unjustly. For this offence he was compelled to wear a placard on his back on which was written: "Take care of him. He bites." This dastardly practice of labelling youthful offenders persisted until very recent times. Children in schools are even yet in some places degraded by inconsiderate teachers by being compelled to wear some indication of their misconduct. Dickens vigorously condemned this outrage in 1849.

David was sent to school during the holidays, and was soon brought before Mr. Creakle by Tungay, his servant with the wooden leg.

"So," said Mr. Creakle, "this is the young gentleman whose teeth are
to be filed! Turn him round."

Mr. Creakle's face was fiery, and his eyes were small and deep in his
head; he had thick veins in his forehead, a little nose, and a large
chin. He was bald on the top of his head; and had some thin,
wet-looking hair that was just turning gray brushed across each
temple, so that the two sides interlaced on his forehead.

"Now," said Mr. Creakle. "What's the report of this boy?"

"There's nothing against him yet," returned the man with the wooden
leg. "There has been no opportunity."

I thought Mr. Creakle was disappointed. I thought Mrs. and Miss
Creakle (at whom I now glanced for the first time, and who were, both,
thin and quiet) were not disappointed.

"Come here, sir!" said Mr. Creakle, beckoning to me.

"Come here!" said the man with the wooden leg, repeating the gesture.

"I have the happiness of knowing your stepfather," whispered Mr.
Creakle, taking me by the ear; "and a worthy man he is, and a man of
strong character. He knows me, and I know him. Do _you_ know me! Hey?"
said Mr. Creakle, pinching my ear with ferocious playfulness.

"Not yet, sir," I said, flinching with the pain.

"Not yet! Hey?" repeated Mr. Creakle. "But you will soon. Hey?"

"You will soon. Hey?" repeated the man with the wooden leg. I
afterward found that he generally acted, with his strong voice, as Mr.
Creakle's interpreter to the boys.

I was very much frightened, and said, I hoped so, if he pleased. I
felt all this while as if my ear were blazing; he pinched it so hard.

"I'll tell you what I am," whispered Mr. Creakle, letting it go at
last, with a screw at parting that brought the water to my eyes, "I'm
a Tartar."

Mr. Creakle proved to be as good as his word. He was a Tartar.

On the first day of school he revealed himself. His opening address was very brief and to the point.

"Now, boys, this is a new half. Take care what you're about in this
new half. Come fresh up to the lessons, I advise you, for I come fresh
up to the punishment. I won't flinch. It will be of no use your
rubbing yourselves; you won't rub the marks out that I shall give you.
Now get to work, every boy!"

When this dreadful exordium was over, Mr. Creakle came to where I sat,
and told me that if I were famous for biting, he was famous for
biting, too. He then showed me the cane, and asked me what I thought
of _that_, for a tooth? Was it a sharp tooth, hey? Was it a double
tooth, hey? Had it a deep prong, hey? Did it bite, hey? Did it bite?
At every question he gave me a fleshy cut with it that made me writhe.

Not that I mean to say these were special marks of distinction, which
only I received. On the contrary, a large majority of the boys
(especially the smaller ones) were visited with similar instances of
notice, as Mr. Creakle made the round of the schoolroom. Half the
establishment was writhing and crying before the day's work began; and
how much of it had writhed and cried before the day's work was over I
am really afraid to recollect, lest I should seem to exaggerate.

I should think there never can have been a man who enjoyed his
profession more than Mr. Creakle did. He had a delight in cutting at
the boys, which was like the satisfaction of a craving appetite. I am
confident that he couldn't resist a chubby boy especially; that there
was a fascination in such a subject which made him restless in his
mind until he had scored and marked him for the day. I was chubby
myself, and ought to know. I am sure when I think of the fellow now,
my blood rises against him with the disinterested indignation I should
feel if I could have known all about him without having ever been in
his power; but it rises hotly, because I know him to have been an
incapable brute, who had no more right to be possessed of the great
trust he held than to be Lord High Admiral or Commander-in-chief: in
either of which capacities it is probable that he would have done
infinitely less mischief.

Miserable little propitiators of a remorseless idol, how abject we
were to him! what a launch in life I think it now, on looking-back, to
be so mean and servile to a man of such parts and pretensions!

Twenty years after Dickens described Creakle a new teacher stood before a class in a large American city, and, holding a long rattan cane above his head, said in a fierce, threatening tone: "Do you see that cane? Would you like to feel it? Hey? Well, break any one of my forty-eight rules and you will feel it all right." The tyrant in adulthood dies hard. No wonder. Tyranny has been wrought into our natures by centuries of blind faith in corporal punishment as the supreme agency in saving the race from moral wreck and anarchy in childhood and youth. Men sought no agency for the development of the good in young lives. As they conceived it, their duty was done if they prevented their children from doing wrong, and the quickest, easiest, most effective way they knew to secure coercion was by corporal punishment. The most successful tyrant, he who could most thoroughly terrorize children and keep them down most completely, was regarded as the best disciplinarian. Squeers and Creakle were fair exponents of the almost universally recognised theory of their day, and they had many successors in the real schools of the generation that followed them. No man could remain a week in a school now if he began on the opening day in the way Creakle did.

Dickens was right in revealing the position of the teacher as one of "great trust," and he was right, too, in insisting that Creakle was no more fitted to be a teacher "than to be Lord High Admiral or Commander-in-chief, in either of which capacities it is probable he would have done infinitely less mischief." This was another plea for good normal schools and for state supervision.

Dickens makes a good point in his remark about the degradation of abject submission to a man of such parts and pretensions as Creakle. Subordination always dwarfs the human soul, but when the child is forced to a position of abject subordination to a coarse tyrant the degradation is more complete and more humiliating. It does not mend matters for the child when the tyrant is his father. The tyranny of parenthood is usually the hardest to escape from.

In the same book in which Creakle is described--David Copperfield--Dickens deals with the tyranny of the home. David's widowed mother married Mr. Murdstone, a hard, severe, austere, religious man, with an equally dreadful sister--Jane Murdstone.

Firmness was the grand quality on which both Mr. and Miss Murdstone
took their stand. However I might have expressed my comprehension of
it at that time, if I had been called upon, I nevertheless did clearly
comprehend in my own way that it was another name for tyranny, and for
a certain gloomy, arrogant, devil's humour, that was in them both. The
creed, as I should state it now, was this: Mr. Murdstone was firm;
nobody in his world was to be so firm as Mr. Murdstone; nobody else in
his world was to be firm at all, for everybody was to be bent to his
firmness.

There was no more depressing tyranny in the time of Dickens than the tyranny exercised in the name of a rigid and repressive religion.

The gloomy taint that was in the Murdstone blood darkened the
Murdstone religion, which was austere and wrathful. I have thought,
since, that its assuming that character was a necessary consequence of
Mr. Murdstone's firmness, which wouldn't allow him to let anybody off
from the utmost weight of the severest penalties he could find any
excuse for. Be this as it may, I well remember the tremendous visages
with which we used to go to church, and the changed air of the place.
Again, the dreaded Sunday comes round, and I file into the old pew
first, like a guarded captive brought to a condemned service. Again,
Miss Murdstone, in a black-velvet gown, that looks as if it had been
made out of a pall, follows close upon me; then my mother; then her
husband. Again, I listen to Miss Murdstone mumbling the responses, and
emphasizing all the dread words with a cruel relish. Again, I see her
dark eyes roll round the church when she says "miserable sinners," as
if she were calling all the congregation names. Again, I catch rare
glimpses of my mother, moving her lips timidly between the two, with
one of them muttering at each ear like low thunder. Again, I wonder
with a sudden fear whether it is likely that our good old clergyman
can be wrong, and Mr. and Miss Murdstone right, and that all the
angels in heaven can be destroying angels. Again, if I move a finger
or relax a muscle of my face, Miss Murdstone pokes me with her prayer
book, and makes my side ache.

Mrs. Chillip said: "Mr. Murdstone sets up an image of himself and calls it the Divine Nature," and "what such people as the Murdstones call their religion is a vent for their bad humours and arrogance." Mild and cautious Mr. Chillip observed, "I don't find authority for Mr. and Miss Murdstone in the New Testament," and his good wife added, "The darker tyrant Mr. Murdstone becomes, the more ferocious is his religious doctrine."

When David first learned that Mr. Murdstone had married his mother he relieved the swelling in his little heart by crying in his bedroom. His mother naturally felt a sympathy for her boy. Mr. Murdstone reproved her for her lack of "firmness," ordered her out of the room, and gave David his first lesson in "obedience."

"David," he said, making his lips thin, by pressing them together, "if
I have an obstinate horse or dog to deal with, what do you think I
do?"

"I don't know."

"I beat him."

I had answered in a kind of breathless whisper, but I felt, in my
silence, that my breath was shorter now.

"I make him wince, and smart. I say to myself, 'I'll conquer that
fellow;' and if it were to cost him all the blood he had, I should do
it."

There are still a few schoolmaster tyrants who boast of their ability "to subdue children." They are barbarians, who understand neither the new education nor the new theology, who have not learned to recognise and reverence the individual selfhood of each child, who themselves fear God's power more than they feel his love.

When David was at home for the holidays he remained in his own room a considerable part of the time reading. This aroused the anger of Mr. Murdstone, and he charged David with being sullen.

"I was sorry, David," said Mr. Murdstone, turning his head and his
eyes stiffly toward me, "to observe that you are of a sullen
disposition. This is not a character that I can suffer to develop
itself beneath my eyes without an effort at improvement. You must
endeavour, sir, to change it. We must endeavour to change it for you."

"I beg your pardon, sir," I faltered. "I have never meant to be sullen
since I came back."

"Don't take refuge in a lie, sir!" he returned so fiercely, that I saw
my mother involuntarily put out her trembling hand as if to interpose
between us. "You have withdrawn yourself in your sullenness to your
own room. You have kept your room when you ought to have been here.
You know now, once for all, that I require you to be here, and not
there. Further, that I require you to bring obedience here. You know
me, David. I will have it done."

Miss Murdstone gave a hoarse chuckle.

"I will have a respectful, prompt, and ready bearing toward myself,"
he continued, "and toward Jane Murdstone, and toward your mother. I
will not have this room shunned as if it were infected, at the
pleasure of a child. Sit down."

He ordered me like a dog, and I obeyed like a dog.

David's lessons, which had been "along a path of roses" when his mother was alone with him, became a path of thorns after the Murdstones came.

The lessons were a grievous daily drudgery and misery. They were very
long, very numerous, very hard--perfectly unintelligible.

Let me remember how it used to be. I come into the parlour after
breakfast with my books, an exercise book and a slate. My mother is
ready for me, but not half so ready as Mr. Murdstone, or as Miss
Murdstone, sitting near my mother stringing steel beads. The very
sight of these two has such an influence over me, that I begin to feel
the words I have been at infinite pains to get into my head all
sliding away, and going I don't know where. I wonder where they _do_
go, by the bye?

I hand the first book to my mother. I take a last drowning look at
the page as I give it into her hand, and start off aloud at a racing
pace while I have got it fresh. I trip over a word. Mr. Murdstone
looks up. I trip over another word. Miss Murdstone looks up. I redden,
tumble over half a dozen words, and stop. I think my mother would show
me the book if she dared, but she does not dare, and she says softly:

"Oh, Davy, Davy!"

"Now, Clara," says Mr. Murdstone, "be firm with the boy. Don't say
'Oh, Davy, Davy!' That's childish. He knows his lesson, or he does not
know it."

"He does _not_ know it," Miss Murdstone interposed awfully.

"I am really afraid he does not," says my mother.

"Then you see, Clara," returns Miss Murdstone, "you should just give
him the book back, and make him know it."

"Yes, certainly," says my mother; "that's what I intended to do, my
dear Jane. Now, Davy, try once more, and don't be stupid."

I obey the first clause of the injunction by trying once more, but am
not so successful with the second, for I am very stupid. I tumble down
before I get to the old place, at a point where I was all right
before, and stop to think. But I can't think about the lesson. I think
of the number of yards of net in Miss Murdstone's cap, or of the price
of Mr. Murdstone's dressing-gown, or any such ridiculous problem that
I have no business with, and don't want to have anything at all to do
with. Mr. Murdstone makes a movement of impatience which I have been
expecting for a long time. Miss Murdstone does the same. My mother
glances submissively at them, shuts the book, and lays it by as an
arrear to be worked out when my other tasks are done.

There is a pile of these arrears very soon, and it swells like a
rolling snowball. The bigger it gets the more stupid I get. The case
is so hopeless, and I feel that I am wallowing in such a bog of
nonsense, that I give up all idea of getting out, and abandon myself
to my fate. The despairing way in which my mother and I look at each
other, as I blunder on, is truly melancholy. But the greatest effect
in these miserable lessons is when my mother (thinking nobody is
observing her) tries to give me the cue by the motion of her lips. At
that instant, Miss Murdstone, who has been lying in wait for nothing
else all along, says in a deep warning voice:

"Clara!"

My mother starts, colours, and smiles faintly. Mr. Murdstone comes out
of his chair, takes the book, throws it at me or boxes my ears with
it, and turns me out of the room by the shoulders.

It seems to me, at this distance of time, as if my unfortunate studies
generally took this course. I could have done very well if I had been
without the Murdstones; but the influence of the Murdstones upon me
was like the fascination of two snakes on a wretched young bird. Even
when I did get through the morning with tolerable credit, there was
not much gained but dinner; for Miss Murdstone never could endure to
see me untasked, and if I rashly made any show of being unemployed,
called her brother's attention to me by saying, "Clara, my dear,
there's nothing like work--give your boy an exercise."

One morning when I went into the parlour with my books, I found my
mother looking anxious, Miss Murdstone looking firm, and Mr. Murdstone
binding something round the bottom of a cane--a lithe and limber cane,
which he left off binding when I came in, and poised and switched in
the air.

"I tell you, Clara," said Mr. Murdstone, "I have been often flogged
myself."

"To be sure; of course," said Miss Murdstone.

"Certainly, my dear Jane," faltered my mother meekly. "But--but do you
think it did Edward good?"

"Do you think it did Edward harm, Clara?" asked Mr. Murdstone,
gravely.

"That's the point!" said his sister.

To this my mother returned "Certainly, my dear Jane," and said no
more.

I felt apprehensive that I was personally interested in this dialogue,
and sought Mr. Murdstone's eye as it lighted on mine.

"Now, David," he said--and I saw that cast again, as he said it--"you
must be far more careful to-day than usual." He gave the cane another
poise, and another switch; and having finished his preparation of it,
laid it down beside him, with an expressive look, and took up his
book.

This was a good freshener to my presence of mind, as a beginning. I
felt the words of my lesson slipping off, not one by one, or line by
line, but by the entire page. I tried to lay hold of them; but they
seemed, if I may so express it, to have put skates on, and to skim
away from me with a smoothness there was no checking.

We began badly, and went on worse. I had come in, with an idea of
distinguishing myself rather, conceiving that I was very well
prepared; but it turned out to be quite a mistake. Book after book was
added to the heap of failures, Miss Murdstone being firmly watchful of
us all the time. And when we came at last to the five thousand cheeses
(canes he made it that day, I remember), my mother burst out crying.

"Clara!" said Miss Murdstone, in her warning voice.

"I am not quite well, my dear Jane, I think," said my mother.

I saw him wink, solemnly, at his sister, as he rose and said, taking
up the cane.

"Why, Jane, we can hardly expect Clara to bear, with perfect firmness,
the worry and torment that David has occasioned her to-day. That would
be stoical. Clara is greatly strengthened and improved, but we can
hardly expect so much from her. David, you and I will go upstairs,
boy."

They went upstairs. David was beaten unmercifully, notwithstanding his piteous cries, and in his desperation he bit the hand of Murdstone. For this it seemed as if Murdstone would have beaten him to death but for the interference of the women. "Then he was gone, and the door locked outside; and I was lying, fevered and hot, and torn, and sore, and raging in my puny way, upon the floor."

Oh! Blind, self-satisfied "child-quellers," who so ignorantly boast of your ability to conquer children! Dickens described Murdstone for you. Think of that awful picture of the beautiful boy, created in the image of God, lying on the floor, "fevered and hot, and torn, and sore, and raging," with every element of sweetness and strength in his life turned to darkness and fury, and next time you propose to "conquer a child" who has been rendered partially insane, possibly by your treatment, and with whom you have unnecessarily forced a crisis, remember the Murdstone tragedy--a real tragedy, notwithstanding the fact that the boy's life was spared.

Remember, too, that your very presence and manner may blight the young lives that you are supposed to develop.

When Mr. Murdstone was sending David away to work he gave him his philosophy of coercion as his parting advice:

"David," said Mr. Murdstone, "to the young, this is a world for
action; not for moping and droning in."

--"As you do," added his sister.

"Jane Murdstone, leave it to me, if you please. I say, David, to the
young, this is a world for action, and not for moping and droning in.
It is especially so for a young boy of your disposition, which
requires a great deal of correcting; and to which no greater service
can be done than to force it to conform to the ways of the working
world, and to bend it and break it."

"For stubbornness won't do here," said his sister. "What it wants is
to be crushed. And crushed it must be. Shall be, too!"

First he fills the boy as full as possible of self-depreciation, and then trains him to expect that his leading experiences in life will consist of being forced into submission, conforming to the plans of others, bending to authority, the breaking of his will, and the crushing of his interests and purposes. What a depressing outlook to give a child!

John Willet, in Barnaby Rudge, is used as a means of convincing parents that they should respect the feelings and opinions of children. No two maxims relating to child training are more utterly wrong in principle, more devoid of the simplest elements of child sympathy and child reverence, than the time-honoured nonsense that "children should be seen and not heard," and "children should speak only when they are spoken to."

Dickens exposes these maxims to deserved ridicule in John Willet's treatment of his son Joe. John kept the Maypole Inn. Joe was a fine, sturdy young man, but his father still ruled him with an unbending stubbornness that he believed to be a necessary exercise of authority. John was encouraged in his tyranny over his son by some of his old cronies, who were in the habit of sitting in the Maypole in the evenings and praising John for his firmness in training his son. One evening a stranger made a remark about a gentleman, to which Joe replied.

"Silence, sir!" cried his father.

"What a chap you are, Joe!" said Long Parkes.

"Such a inconsiderate lad!" murmured Tom Cobb.

"Putting himself forward and wringing the very nose off his own
father's face!" exclaimed the parish clerk metaphorically.

"What _have_ I done?" reasoned poor Joe.

"Silence, sir!" returned his father; "what do you mean by talking,
when you see people that are more than two or three times your age
sitting still and silent and not dreaming of saying a word?"

"Why that's the proper time for me to talk, isn't it?" said Joe
rebelliously.

"The proper time, sir!" retorted his father, "the proper time's no
time."

"Ah, to be sure!" muttered Parkes, nodding gravely to the other two
who nodded likewise, observing under their breaths that that was the
point.

"The proper time's no time, sir," repeated John Willet; "when I was
your age I never talked, I never wanted to talk. I listened and
improved myself, that's what I did."