Rustic Sounds Part 4

I have not attempted to include in the system all the young men who occur in the novels. I leave the completion to those who can devote a life-time to the subject, and who are possessed of the necessary discrimination and patience to marshall and arrange the whole flora of Miss Austen's world.

In connexion with this subject I have found it interesting to read for the first time quite recently Miss Austen's unfinished novels, _Lady Susan_ and _The Watsons_. It is easy to cla.s.sify some of the characters-thus Mrs. Robert Watson is obviously Mrs. Elton, as, indeed, Mr. Austen Leigh points out in his _Memoir_.

In the following scene the character addressed as Jane is Mrs. Robert Watson, who has come to stay at the house of Mr. Watson, her father-in-law. Elizabeth is the eldest of the Watson girls, and keeps house for her father. "I hope you will find things tolerably comfortable, Jane," said Elizabeth, as she opened the door of the spare bed-chamber. {73}

"My good creature," replied Jane, "use no ceremony with me, I entreat you. I am one of those who always take things as they find them. I hope I can put up with a small apartment for two or three nights without making a piece of work. I always wish to be treated quite _en famille_ when I come to see you. And now I do hope you have not been getting a great dinner for us. Remember we never eat suppers." And then: "Mrs.

Robert, exactly as smart as she had been at her own party, came in with apologies for her dress. 'I would not make you wait,' said she, 'so I put on the first thing I met with. I am afraid I am a sad figure. My dear Mr. W. (addressing her husband) you have not put any fresh powder in your hair.'"

This is certainly Mrs. Elton's double, and the resemblance extends to calling her husband Mr. W. It gives one a certain shock of surprise to find an old friend masquerading as a new acquaintance, nor is she the only example in the book. I think the following speech of Mr. Tom Musgrave will recall a well-known character.

"Oh, me," said Tom, "whatever you decide on will be a favourite with me.

I have had some pleasant hours at 'speculation' in my time, but I have not been in the way of it for a long while. 'Vingt-un' is the game at Osborne Castle. {74a} I have played nothing but 'Vingt-un' of late. You would be astonished to hear the noise we make there-the fine old lofty drawing-room rings again. Lady Osborne sometimes declares she cannot hear herself speak. Lord Osborne enjoys it famously, and he makes the best dealer without exception that I ever beheld-such quickness and spirit, he lets n.o.body dream over their cards. I wish you could see him over-draw himself on both his own cards. It is worth anything in the world!"

We may surely recognise the folly and underbred parade of Mr. John Thorpe in Mr. Tom Musgrave's speech. Again, Tom Musgrave plagues Emma just as Thorpe persecuted Catherine by an ill-timed invitation to a _tete-a-tete_ curricle drive.

The heroine, Emma Watson, has no resemblance to Emma Woodhouse. In situation she may be compared to f.a.n.n.y Price, for she has been brought up by a refined aunt, and is suddenly plunged into the very different manners and surroundings of her pus.h.i.+ng jealous sisters; but in character she seems to me to have none of the charm which has given f.a.n.n.y Price such various admirers as the Rev. Sydney Smith and Mr. F. W. H. Myers.

{74b} It is perhaps characteristic of her creator's truth, that her heroine who is made known to us just as she arrives at her new home in uncomfortable surroundings and among unknown sisters, should be reserved and a little prim, and that we should be made to feel that this was not her complete character. Possibly she would have developed into a f.a.n.n.y Price with a strong touch of Eleanor Dashwood, but this is a barren speculation.

Another unfinished novel was begun in January, 1817, and twelve chapters were written by the middle of March. Miss Austen died on July 18 of that same year. This unnamed novel, to judge by extracts published in the _Memoir_ (p. 181), promised to contain at least one admirable character in the person of Lady Denham, who seems an ill-natured and grasping Mrs.

Jennings (if that is not a contradiction in terms), with a strong flavour of Lady Catherine de Burgh.

Miss Austen's works are not only to be studied from the point of view of genetics, nor merely by a naturalist whose desire is to cla.s.sify without inquiry as to the origin of his species; they also supply material for the geographer. I do not know who first identified the Highbury of _Emma_ with Cobham, as being seven miles from Boxhill and 18 from London ("sixteen miles, nay 18, it must be full 18 to Manchester Street"). The identification is confirmed by a slip on the part of the auth.o.r.ess, who, in a single pa.s.sage, printed Cobham in place of Highbury. By this method of mensuration my friend the Master of Downing has shown Kellynch Hall in _Persuasion_ to be near Buckland St. Mary, and Mansfield Park to coincide roughly with Easton, near Huntingdon.

The geography of Lyme Regis is of interest.

The party from Upper Cross drove in a leisurely way to Lyme, and the afternoon was well advanced as they descended the steep hill into the village. The hill is doubtless much as it was, and nearly at the bottom are the two hotels mentioned; it is, honestly speaking, impossible to say at which of the two the Musgroves put up. I am inclined to believe it was that on the west side, but my reasons, if indeed they exist, are not worth giving.

The house in which Miss Austen is known to have stayed is probably Captain Harville's. It is near the Cobb, and presents that air of not having much room inside, which we gather from the description in _Mansfield Park_.

But these points are of trifling interest in comparison with the really important question-where did Louisa's accident occur? There are three separate flights of steps on the Cobb, and the local photographer, in the interests of trade, had to fix on one of them as the scene of the jump.

I cannot believe that he is right. These steps are too high and too threatening for a girl of that period to choose with such a purpose, even for Louisa, whose determination of character we know to have been one of her charms. Then, again, this particular flight is not (so far as I could make out) in the New Cobb, which is where the accident is described as occurring. It is true that at first sight it hardly looks dangerous enough to bring about the sight which delighted the fishermen of Lyme, namely, a "dead young lady," or rather two, for the sensitive Mary contributed to the situation by fainting. I am, however, confirmed in my belief by what happened to myself, when I went to view the cla.s.sic spot.

I quite suddenly and inexplicably fell down. The same thing happened to a friend on the same spot, and we concluded that in the surprisingly slippery character of the surface lies the explanation of the accident.

It had never seemed comprehensible that an active and capable man should miss so easy a catch as that provided by Louisa. But if Captain Wentworth slipped and fell as she jumped, she would come down with him.

I am told that when Tennyson visited Lyme he repelled the proposals of his friends, who wished him to see something of the beauties of the place, and insisted on going straight to the flight of steps. This is an attractive trait in Tennyson's character, but it may not have been pleasing to his hosts.

VI.

THE EDUCATION OF A MAN OF SCIENCE

An Address to the a.s.sociation of University Women Teachers, January 13, 1911

In the following pages I propose to give my own experience of education, that is to say, not of educating others, but of being educated. It seems to me that the education of one's youth becomes clear to one in middle life and old age; and that what one sees in this retrospect may be worth some rough record and some sort of criticism. One may, of course, be mistaken about what was bad and what was good in one's training. But the experience of the pupil is, at the least, one aspect of the question.

And I think that the memories of how we were taught is something much more definite and vivid, something that can be more easily made interesting to one's readers, than the generalised experience gained as a teacher.

Any record of education which extends fifty years back has a certain value, and my experience may serve as a stepping-stone to that of my father, of which we fortunately have an account in his own words, and these take us back to a period more than one hundred years ago.

Those of us who are inclined to despair over education as an inherent misfortune of youth, may be encouraged by this putting down of milestones, and may almost believe that we have moved in the right direction. Whereas, to those optimists who are cheerfully and unhesitatingly educating their allotted prey of children, it may be as salutary, as a cautionary story, to realise that the same optimism ruled one hundred years ago, when the Eton latin grammar was a symbol to innumerable complacent schoolmasters of what was best in the best of all possible worlds. But the chief part of what I have to say is autobiographical, and I have only an occasional remark to make on the progress and improvement that have occurred in education.

My ignorance of educational methods may probably lead me to repeat what is well known; because what seems to me bad in my training has doubtless been recognised as such by modern teachers, nor can I hope to have anything very new to say about what seems to me to have been good.

As children, we, my brothers and sisters, were treated by our parents in a way the very reverse of the pitiless 18th and early 19th century manner-the spirit of those surprising stories such as the _Purple Jar_, where the child is deceived by her abominable parent. In fact, a chief characteristic of our parents' treatment of us was their respect for our liberty and our personality. We were made to feel that we were "creatures whose opinions and thoughts were valuable to them."

The happy relations with our elders which we enjoyed in the holidays to some extent counteracted the evil effects of going to school. The worst of a boarding-school is that it is a republic of children, where the citizens are saturated in the traditions and conventions peculiar to themselves, and are, for more than half their lives, deprived of the saner ideals of grown-up people. Before we went to school we were taught by governesses. I cannot help wis.h.i.+ng that we had had foreign teachers who would have taught us to speak their language-a thing that can be done so easily in childhood. I have never got over the want of fluent French and German, and I resent the fact that I should be condemned to feel like a child or a boor in the presence of foreigners. We are taught Latin and Greek because, as we are a.s.sured, they introduce us to the finest literature in the world. To most boys they do nothing of the kind, and are an intolerable burden. French and German taught by the oral methods really do introduce us to whole nations of minds that are otherwise cut off from us; and not merely minds mirrored in books, but more especially those of human beings as given in speech.

This is all very familiar, I only mention it because it is a special case of a wider question, namely: How much can be safely poured into a receptive child which he will be thankful for as he gets older? I mean, rather: What is the proportion that ought to be maintained between learning to reason, _e.g._, Euclid; exercising the attentive faculties, _e.g._, in plodding through a Latin book with a dictionary; and the more or less mechanical acquirement, as in learning by heart? Why was I not taught addition by memorising tables as in the case of multiplication?

It could have been built into the structure of my mind equally well, and would have saved much misery. It is, of course, essential that what is learned should be true. I have heard a credibly attested story of a dame-school at the beginning of last century, where cla.s.s and teacher were heard chanting together: Twice 1 is 2, twice 2 is 3, twice 3 is 4, etc.

I certainly believe in learning by heart, and I am grateful for having learned many dates at school; most of them are forgotten, but enough to be of some use are retained. The worst of it is that I am as likely to know the date of the Flood as that of the Fire of London, and of the battle of Arbela as that of Worcester.

I am also grateful for having been made to learn Shakespeare by heart, although we had to do it before breakfast. I do not imagine that I now remember any of it, but it gave me some idea of the beauty of literature, which I hardly gained at all from the cla.s.sics. It also started me reading Shakespeare out of school. I believe this is the easiest way of supplying some modic.u.m of literature to a boy who cannot get it out of Latin and Greek. And a kind of Cowper-Temple Shakespeare, without note or comment, is more effective than regular so-called literary lessons, and the worrying of boys about the metre or the difference between a hawk and a handsaw. A boy does not want to understand everything, and he likes to get his poetry in a book which looks as if it were meant for reading, not for cramming or for holiday tasks.

Personally, I also resent that I was not taught at school to read music by the sol-fa system, which is another of the things that can be poured into most children not only easily but with pleasure to themselves. I have been a.s.sured by a learned musician, that in the 17th century reading music was as much a sign of culture as reading a book. There was recently an excellent letter in the _Times_ {82} on public school music, pleading that boys should be allowed to drop, let us say greek iambics, and devote the time to serious musical study. The writer describes how at a certain school a good professional orchestra gives a concert once in each term, for which the boys are prepared by having the themes of the movements, _e.g._ of a Beethoven symphony, played over to them on the piano and expounded. He describes how an athletic boy, a member of the football team, declared, when the concert was over, that there was nothing to live for during the rest of the half, apparently not even football. No wonder that the writer of this letter should respectfully deride a former Head Master of Eton for his approval of choral singing, on account of its "moral and political value."

I have always felt that the best teaching I received was in two practical matters, viz., how to play the flute, and how to use a microscope. It may be said that these were subjects in which I took a natural and spontaneous interest, and were therefore easily taught. This is no doubt partly true, but I do not think it depended on any special attraction for music or microscopy, but on something wider-on the novelty of being taught to do something physical, something with one's hands and ears and eyes. I am sure boys ought to have more practical teaching-not necessarily in science, but such things as mild carpentering, the tying of knots, and such exercise in rough weighing and measuring as would form a basis for a little elementary physics. The same is true of girls, and in one way they need handiwork more than boys. I found, in my Cambridge cla.s.s of practical plant-physiology, that the girls had not such 'deft fingers' as their brothers; I believe the difference is largely due to the boys having played with string and knives, etc., for many idle hours.

Both boys and girls must be taught to use, not only their hands, but their eyes. It seems to me piteous that when I was at school there was absolutely nothing done to keep alive the natural sharp-eyedness of children. I remember vividly the intense pleasure which my father gave me (a very small boy) by showing surprise at my knowledge of common trees and shrubs in a winter coppice. I am sure that school did much to kill the power of observation in me.

It may be that observation is an essentially transitory quality, a fleeting ancestral reminiscence, a trail of glory, like other savage traits in children. But more than now survives might be preserved to us by training at school. It ought not to be possible for a boy to come up to a University so blind and helpless as to describe a wall-flower (which has six obvious stamens arranged in a striking pattern) as having "about five stamens." Yet this I experienced in an examination of medical students. Describing an object placed before him is excellent training in observation for a boy. And the capacity of describing an object by memory should also be cultivated. Remember what Dr. Noel says in Stevenson's story of the Saratoga Trunk, and how we may fail in a question of life and death because we cannot describe the mysterious stranger who dogs our footsteps.

To return for a moment to the description of an object. It not only practises the power of observation, but is also excellent exercise in writing English, far better as it seems to me than the usual essay on the usual subjects. In describing a given object the pupil has not to seek for material-it is there before him. He need not recall his feelings during a country walk, or the way he spent his time in the Christmas holidays, or vainly search for facts on the character of Oliver Cromwell.

He can concentrate on arrangement, on directness and clearness. My experience of the essays set to candidates in the Natural Science Tripos was most depressing. A man who could write a good plain answer to an ordinary examination question becomes ornate and tiresome when he is told to write an essay. Such candidates have clearly never heard the admirable statement by Canon Ainger of the style expected in writers in the Dictionary of Natural Biography, "No flowers by request." Nor can they have known that other bit of advice, "You have no idea what strength it gives to your style to leave out every other word." I have heard suggested another method of checking the natural diffuseness of the youthful essayist, namely, to make him confine himself to a definite number of words, I have even heard an essay on a post card recommended.

For myself, I believe the best exercise in English I ever had was the correction of my father's proof-sheets. What I found so educational was the necessity of having to explain clearly and exactly why I objected to a given sentence, since I naturally could not baldly express my disapproval. It was not only good training, but as has been well said by my sister (who also helped in this way), "It was inexpressibly exhilarating to work for him"-and she continues-referring to the generous way in which he took our suggestions, "I think I felt the singular modesty and graciousness of his nature through thus working for him in a way I should never otherwise have done."

How far every boy ought to be made to do mathematics (beyond simple arithmetic) I cannot say. I know that I am extremely grateful for the small amount of mathematics forced into me. I am even thankful for a very mechanical side of the subject, namely, the use of mathematical tables in general, and for being compelled to work out innumerable sums by logarithms, which we had to do in a "neat tabular form" to quote our precise master's words.

Certainly my opportunities were strikingly better than my father's, who records that at Shrewsbury School nothing {85} was taught but cla.s.sics, ancient history and ancient geography. Euclid, which he liked and felt to be educational, was taught by a private tutor who had the attractive characteristic of wearing top boots.

I now pa.s.s from general education to the teaching of science. When I went to Cambridge in 1866, the teaching, as far as the biological sciences went, was in a somewhat dead condition. Indeed, I hardly think it had advanced much from the state of things which existed in 1828, when my father entered Christ's College. Cambridge was a turning point in his scientific life, chiefly through Professor Henslow's discovery that the youth, whom his father Dr. R. W. Darwin thought likely to be a mere sporting man and a disgrace to his family, was really a remarkable person, possessed by a burning zeal for science. Henslow made a friend of my father (he was known as the "man who walks with Henslow"), and recommended him as naturalist to the "Beagle," where he was made into a man of science.

In my time there were two ways of acquiring knowledge: attending the lectures of University professors, and going to a _coach_. Lectures, as my father has said, have "no advantages and many disadvantages . . .

compared with reading." And the same view (or heresy as he confesses it to be) has been well given by the late Henry Sidgwick in his _Miscellaneous Essays_ (1904). He holds that a purely expository lecture, without experiments or specimens, is something very like a barbarism, an echo of the days before printing was invented. He points out too how there is every temptation to the teacher not to publish his lectures. Thus the students who live elsewhere, and therefore cannot attend his course, "are deprived of useful instruction," and the students who do attend them have to receive it in an inconvenient form, in order that the Professor may be enabled to fulfil with _eclat_ the traditional conception of his function (_op. cit._, p. 347). One set of lectures, which as a medical student I was compelled to attend, were so dull that I literally could not listen to them, but I got into a quiet corner and read Swift's _Journal to Stella_, and for that opportunity I am certainly grateful.

A course I thoroughly liked was that given by the late Sir George Humphry, the Professor of Anatomy. He used to sit balancing himself on a stool, with his great hungry eyes fixed on us, talking in plain direct terms of anatomy enlivened by physiology. The one point that remains with me is the way in which he would stop and wonder over the facts he brought before us: "This is a wonderful thing, one of the most wonderful things in the world, I know nothing about it-no one knows-you had better try and find out, some of you"; simple words enough, but they struck a chord of romance in some of his hearers. I remember another teacher of anatomy in London who stirred our wonder in quite another way, for he made us marvel how any man could repeat by heart Gray's book on Anatomy for an hour, and wonder too, why we should be compelled to listen.

The private tutors or coaches to whom most Cambridge students of natural history went were, as far as my experience went, hopelessly bad. My coach tried to ensure that I knew certain inferior books well enough to be examined in them, but he never showed me a specimen, and never attempted to ensure that I should have any sort of first-hand knowledge.

We were also taught by the Curator of the Botanic Garden, a completely uneducated man, and in all ways as different from the present learned and cultivated Curator as it is possible to imagine. He, like my other coach, simply insisted that we should know by heart a very bad text-book, on which he cross-examined us as we walked round the Botanic Garden. As far as my recollection goes he never stopped to show us a flower or a leaf, and we had n.o.body to help us to a sight of the minute structure of plants as seen with a microscope, about which, however, we could talk eloquently from the book.

I sometimes wonder that fire did not descend from heaven and destroy a University which so sinned against the first elements of knowing, in neglecting the distinction between what we learn by our own personal experience and what we acquire from books.

Of course there are some sciences which have their origin in practical matters, _e.g._, chemistry, which originated partly in alchemy and partly in what is now the work of the druggist; such a science was fortunate, in that no one objected to its claim for practical teaching. Nevertheless, the student of chemistry in my day easily fell into a lamentable dulness of different coloured precipitates. I should have liked to do something quant.i.tative, however rough, to get away from the everlasting test-tube, and to make, for instance, some of the historic experiments with gases.

Human anatomy again was always taught practically, _i.e._, by work in the dissecting-room. But owing to the manner in which medical students were examined, the subject failed to have the value it might have had; minute questions were asked which no amount of dissecting would enable us to answer. The book had to be learned by heart, and I shudder as I remember the futile labour entailed. And the examination was so arranged, that whilst we were "cramming" anatomy we had also to suffer over another subject, materia medica, which was almost entirely useless, and wearisome beyond belief. Much of it was about as rational a subject to a physician as to a surgeon would be a minute knowledge of how his knives were made and how steel is manufactured. I remember how, after getting through this double ordeal of cram on drugs and on the structure of the body, I heard a surgeon say in lecture: "This is one of the very few occasions on which you must know your anatomy." I recall the anger and contempt I then felt for the educational authorities, as I remembered the drudgery I had gone through.

The want of organised practical work in zoology was perhaps a blessing in disguise. For it led me to struggle with the subject by myself. I used to get snails and slugs and dissect their dead bodies, comparing my results with books hunted up in the University Library, and this was a real bit of education. I remember too that a thoughtful brother sent me a dead porpoise, which (to the best of my belief) I dissected, to the horror of the bedmaker, in my College rooms.