demands, which they send by hand and which the child reads on the
way to school. At the end of the first fortnight Mabel Briggs,
one of the most promising girls in the class, brought Dorothy the
following note:
Dear Miss,--Would you please give Mabel a bit more ARITHMETIC? I
feel that what your giving her is not practacle enough. All these
maps and that. She wants practacle work, not all this fancy stuff.
So more ARITHMETIC, please. And remain,
Yours Faithfully,
Geo. Briggs
P.S. Mabel says your talking of starting her on something called
decimals. I don't want her taught decimals, I want her taught
ARITHMETIC.
So Dorothy stopped Mabel's geography and gave her extra arithmetic
instead, whereat Mabel wept. More letters followed. One lady was
disturbed to hear that her child was being given Shakespeare to
read. 'She had heard', she wrote, 'that this Mr Shakespeare was a
writer of stage-plays, and was Miss Millborough quite certain that
he wasn't a very IMMORAL writer? For her own part she had never so
much as been to the pictures in her life, let alone to a stage-
play, and she felt that even in READING stage-plays there was a
very grave danger,' etc., etc. She gave way, however, on being
informed that Mr Shakespeare was dead. This seemed to reassure
her. Another parent wanted more attention to his child's
handwriting, and another thought French was a waste of time; and
so it went on, until Dorothy's carefully arranged time-table was
almost in ruins. Mrs Creevy gave her clearly to understand that
whatever the parents demanded she must do, or pretend to do. In
many cases it was next door to impossible, for it disorganized
everything to have one child studying, for instance, arithmetic
while the rest of the class were doing history or geography. But
in private schools the parents' word is law. Such schools exist,
like shops, by flattering their customers, and if a parent wanted
his child taught nothing but cat's-cradle and the cuneiform
alphabet, the teacher would have to agree rather than lose a pupil.
The fact was that the parents were growing perturbed by the tales
their children brought home about Dorothy's methods. They saw no
sense whatever in these new-fangled ideas of making plasticine maps
and reading poetry, and the old mechanical routine which had so
horrified Dorothy struck them as eminently sensible. They became
more and more restive, and their letters were peppered with the
word 'practical', meaning in effect more handwriting lessons and
more arithmetic. And even their notion of arithmetic was limited
to addition, subtraction, multiplication and 'practice', with long
division thrown in as a spectacular tour de force of no real value.
Very few of them could have worked out a sum in decimals themselves,
and they were not particularly anxious for their children to be able
to do so either.
However, if this had been all, there would probably never have been
any serious trouble. The parents would have nagged at Dorothy, as
all parents do; but Dorothy would finally have learned--as, again,
all teachers finally learn--that if one showed a certain amount of
tact one could safely ignore them. But there was one fact that was
absolutely certain to lead to trouble, and that was the fact that
the parents of all except three children were Nonconformists,
whereas Dorothy was an Anglican. It was true that Dorothy had lost
her faith--indeed, for two months past, in the press of varying
adventures, had hardly thought either of her faith or of its loss.
But that made very little difference; Roman or Anglican, Dissenter,
Jew, Turk or infidel, you retain the habits of thought that you
have been brought up with. Dorothy, born and bred in the precincts
of the Church, had no understanding of the Nonconformist mind.
With the best will in the world, she could not help doing things
that would cause offence to some of the parents.
Almost at the beginning there was a skirmish over the Scripture
lessons--twice a week the children used to read a couple of
chapters from the Bible. Old Testament and New Testament
alternately--several of the parents writing to say, would Miss
Millborough please NOT answer the children when they asked
questions about the Virgin Mary; texts about the Virgin Mary were
to be passed over in silence, or, if possible, missed out
altogether. But it was Shakespeare, that immoral writer, who
brought things to a head. The girls had worked their way through
Macbeth, pining to know how the witches' prophecy was to be
fulfilled. They reached the closing scenes. Birnam Wood had come
to Dunsinane--that part was settled, anyway; now what about the man
who was not of woman born? They came to the fatal passage:
MACBETH: Thou losest labour;
As easy may'st thou the intrenchant air
With thy keen sword impress, as make me bleed:
Let fall thy blade on vulnerable crests,
I bear a charmed life, which must not yield
To one of woman born.
MACDUFF: Despair thy charm,
And let the Angel whom thou still hast served
Tell thee, Macduff was from his mother's womb
Untimely ripp'd.
The girls looked puzzled. There was a momentary silence, and then
a chorus of voices round the room:
'Please, Miss, what does that mean?'
Dorothy explained. She explained haltingly and incompletely, with
a sudden horrid misgiving--a premonition that this was going to
lead to trouble--but still, she did explain. And after that, of
course, the fun began.
About half the children in the class went home and asked their
parents the meaning of the word 'womb'. There was a sudden
commotion, a flying to and fro of messages, an electric thrill of
horror through fifteen decent Nonconformist homes. That night the
parents must have held some kind of conclave, for the following
evening, about the time when school ended, a deputation called upon
Mrs Creevy. Dorothy heard them arriving by ones and twos, and
guessed what was going to happen. As soon as she had dismissed the
children, she heard Mrs Creevy call sharply down the stairs:
'Come up here a minute, Miss Millborough!'
Dorothy went up, trying to control the trembling of her knees. In
the gaunt drawing-room Mrs Creevy was standing grimly beside the
piano, and six parents were sitting round on horsehair chairs like
a circle of inquisitors. There was the Mr Geo. Briggs who had
written the letter about Mabel's arithmetic--he was an alert-
looking greengrocer with a dried-up, shrewish wife--and there was a
large, buffalo-like man with drooping moustaches and a colourless,
peculiarly FLAT wife who looked as though she had been flattened
out by the pressure of some heavy object--her husband, perhaps.
The names of these two Dorothy did not catch. There was also Mrs
Williams, the mother of the congenital idiot, a small, dark, very
obtuse woman who always agreed wi
th the last speaker, and there was
a Mr Poynder, a commercial traveller. He was a youngish to middle-
aged man with a grey face, mobile lips, and a bald scalp across
which some strips of rather nasty-looking damp hair were carefully
plastered. In honour of the parents' visit, a fire composed of
three large coals was sulking in the grate.
'Sit down there, Miss Millborough,' said Mrs Creevy, pointing to a
hard chair which stood like a stool of repentance in the middle of
the ring of parents.
Dorothy sat down.
'And now,' said Mrs Creevy, 'just you listen to what Mr Poynder's
got to say to you.'
Mr Poynder had a great deal to say. The other parents had
evidently chosen him as their spokesman, and he talked till flecks
of yellowish foam appeared at the corners of his mouth. And what
was remarkable, he managed to do it all--so nice was his regard for
the decencies--without ever once repeating the word that had caused
all the trouble.
'I feel that I'm voicing the opinion of all of us,' he said with
his facile bagman's eloquence, 'in saying that if Miss Millborough
knew that this play--Macduff, or whatever its name is--contained
such words as--well, such words as we're speaking about, she never
ought to have given it to the children to read at all. To my mind
it's a disgrace that schoolbooks can be printed with such words in
them. I'm sure if any of us had ever known that Shakespeare was
that kind of stuff, we'd have put our foot down at the start. It
surprises me, I must say. Only the other morning I was reading a
piece in my News Chronicle about Shakespeare being the father of
English Literature; well, if that's Literature, let's have a bit
LESS Literature, say I! I think everyone'll agree with me there.
And on the other hand, if Miss Millborough didn't know that the
word--well, the word I'm referring to--was coming, she just ought
to have gone straight on and taken no notice when it did come.
There wasn't the slightest need to go explaining it to them. Just
tell them to keep quiet and not get asking questions--that's the
proper way with children.'
'But the children wouldn't have understood the play if I hadn't
explained!' protested Dorothy for the third or fourth time.
'Of course they wouldn't! You don't seem to get my point, Miss
Millborough! We don't want them to understand. Do you think we
want them to go picking up dirty ideas out of books? Quite enough
of that already with all these dirty films and these twopenny
girls' papers that they get hold of--all these filthy, dirty love-
stories with pictures of--well, I won't go into it. We don't send
our children to school to have ideas put into their heads. I'm
speaking for all the parents in saying this. We're all of decent
God-fearing folk--some of us are Baptists and some of us are
Methodists, and there's even one or two Church of England among us;
but we can sink our differences when it comes to a case like this--
and we try to bring our children up decent and save them from
knowing anything about the Facts of Life. If I had my way, no
child--at any rate, no girl--would know anything about the Facts of
Life till she was twenty-one.'
There was a general nod from the parents, and the buffalo-like man
added, 'Yer, yer! I'm with you there, Mr Poynder. Yer, yer!' deep
down in his inside.
After dealing with the subject of Shakespeare, Mr Poynder added
some remarks about Dorothy's new-fangled methods of teaching, which
gave Mr Geo. Briggs the opportunity to rap out from time to time,
'That's it! Practical work--that's what we want--practical work!
Not all this messy stuff like po'try and making maps and sticking
scraps of paper and such like. Give 'em a good bit of figuring and
handwriting and bother the rest. Practical work! You've said it!'
This went on for about twenty minutes. At first Dorothy attempted
to argue, but she saw Mrs Creevy angrily shaking her head at her
over the buffalo-like man's shoulder, which she rightly took as a
signal to be quiet. By the time the parents had finished they had
reduced Dorothy very nearly to tears, and after this they made
ready to go. But Mrs Creevy stopped them.
'JUST a minute, ladies and gentlemen,' she said. 'Now that you've
all had your say--and I'm sure I'm most glad to give you the
opportunity--I'd just like to say a little something on my own
account. Just to make things clear, in case any of you might think
_I_ was to blame for this nasty business that's happened. And YOU
stay here too, Miss Millborough!' she added.
She turned on Dorothy, and, in front of the parents, gave her a
venomous 'talking to' which lasted upwards of ten minutes. The
burden of it all was that Dorothy had brought these dirty books
into the house behind her back; that it was monstrous treachery and
ingratitude; and that if anything like it happened again, out
Dorothy would go with a week's wages in her pocket. She rubbed it
in and in and in. Phrases like 'girl that I've taken into my
house', 'eating my bread', and even 'living on my charity',
recurred over and over again. The parents sat round watching, and
in their crass faces--faces not harsh or evil, only blunted by
ignorance and mean virtues--you could see a solemn approval, a
solemn pleasure in the spectacle of sin rebuked. Dorothy
understood this; she understood that it was necessary that Mrs
Creevy should give her her 'talking to' in front of the parents, so
that they might feel that they were getting their money's worth and
be satisfied. But still, as the stream of mean, cruel reprimand
went on and on, such anger rose in her heart that she could with
pleasure have stood up and struck Mrs Creevy across the face.
Again and again she thought, 'I won't stand it, I won't stand it
any longer! I'll tell her what I think of her and then walk
straight out of the house!' But she did nothing of the kind. She
saw with dreadful clarity the helplessness of her position.
Whatever happened, whatever insults it meant swallowing, she had
got to keep her job. So she sat still, with pink humiliated face,
amid the circle of parents, and presently her anger turned to
misery, and she realized that she was going to begin crying if she
did not struggle to prevent it. But she realized, too, that if she
began crying it would be the last straw and the parents would
demand her dismissal. To stop herself, she dug her nails so hard
into the palms that afterwards she found that she had drawn a few
drops of blood.
Presently the 'talking to' wore itself out in assurances from Mrs
Creevy that this should never happen again and that the offending
Shakespeares should be burnt immediately. The parents were now
satisfied. Dorothy had had her lesson and would doubtless profit
by it; they did not bear her any malice and were not conscious of
having humiliated her. They said good-bye to Mrs Creevy, said
good-bye rather m
ore coldly to Dorothy, and departed. Dorothy also
rose to go, but Mrs Creevy signed to her to stay where she was.
'Just you wait a minute,' she said ominously as the parents left
the room. 'I haven't finished yet, not by a long way I haven't.'
Dorothy sat down again. She felt very weak at the knees, and
nearer to tears than ever. Mrs Creevy, having shown the parents
out by the front door, came back with a bowl of water and threw it
over the fire--for where was the sense of burning good coals after
the parents had gone? Dorothy supposed that the 'talking to' was
going to begin afresh. However, Mrs Creevy's wrath seemed to have
cooled--at any rate, she had laid aside the air of outraged virtue
that it had been necessary to put on in front of the parents.
'I just want to have a bit of a talk with you, Miss Millborough,'
she said. 'It's about time we got it settled once and for all how
this school's going to be run and how it's not going to be run.'
'Yes,' said Dorothy.
'Well, I'll be straight with you. When you came here I could see
with half an eye that you didn't know the first thing about school-
teaching; but I wouldn't have minded that if you'd just had a bit
of common sense like any other girl would have had. Only it seems
you hadn't. I let you have your own way for a week or two, and the
first thing you do is to go and get all the parents' backs up.
Well, I'm not going to have THAT over again. From now on I'm going
to have things done MY way, not YOUR way. Do you understand that?'
'Yes,' said Dorothy again.
'You're not to think as I can't do without you, mind,' proceeded
Mrs Creevy. 'I can pick up teachers at two a penny any day of the
week, M.A.s and B.A.s and all. Only the M.A.s and B.A.s mostly
take to drink, or else they--well, no matter what--and I will say
for you you don't seem to be given to the drink or anything of that
kind. I dare say you and me can get on all right if you'll drop
these new-fangled ideas of yours and understand what's meant by
practical school-teaching. So just you listen to me.'
Dorothy listened. With admirable clarity, and with a cynicism that
was all the more disgusting because it was utterly unconscious, Mrs
Creevy explained the technique of the dirty swindle that she called
practical school-teaching.
'What you've got to get hold of once and for all,' she began, 'is
that there's only one thing that matters in a school, and that's
the fees. As for all this stuff about "developing the children's
minds", as you call it, it's neither here nor there. It's the fees
I'm after, not DEVELOPING THE CHILDREN'S MINDS. After all, it's no
more than common sense. It's not to be supposed as anyone'd go to
all the trouble of keeping school and having the house turned
upside down by a pack of brats, if it wasn't that there's a bit of
money to be made out of it. The fees come first, and everything
else comes afterwards. Didn't I tell you that the very first day
you came here?'
'Yes,' admitted Dorothy humbly.
'Well, then, it's the parents that pay the fees, and it's the
parents you've got to think about. Do what the parents want--
that's our rule here. I dare say all this messing about with
plasticine and paper-scraps that you go in for doesn't do the
children any particular harm; but the parents don't want it, and
there's an end of it. Well, there's just two subjects that they DO
want their children taught, and that's handwriting and arithmetic.
Especially handwriting. That's something they CAN see the sense
of. And so handwriting's the thing you've got to keep on and on
at. Plenty of nice neat copies that the girls can take home, and
that the parents'll show off to the neighbours and give us a bit of
a free advert. I want you to give the children two hours a day
just at handwriting and nothing else.'
'Two hours a day just at handwriting,' repeated Dorothy obediently.