A VERY REVEREND COMMITTEE.
I think we might here observe a silent pause whilst we appropriately meditate upon the reverend chairman’s logic and the Managing Committee’s generosity. In fact, the names of the members of the committee should be handed down to posterity. Here they are:
Burston Council School.
The School Managing Committee.
The Right Reverend Rector, Charles Tucker Eland.
The Right Reverend Reverend Rector’s good lady.
(County Council, two votes by appointment.)
The Right Reverend Rector’s friend, the Right Reverend Rector of Shimpling, Reverend Charles Millard.
The Right Reverend Charles Tucker Eland’s glebe tenant, Farmer Fisher.
The Right Reverend Rector’s friend’s friend, the Rector of Shimpling’s churchwarden, Farmer Stearn, and lastly, beloved, Mr. Harry Witherly.
A fitting finale to this family party—I mean Council School Managing Committee—was provided by the Right Reverend Charles Tucker Eland’s loyal glebe tenant, Farmer Fisher, who remarked upon “the harm which had been done to the parish by closing the school.”
Had Farmer Fisher been a medico one might have sympathised with him in his sorrow at “whooping cough” not being allowed to attend school whilst the rector was in Switzerland, but as Mr. Fisher is not a medical gentleman by profession one is forced to the sad conclusion that though he may put money in his purse he really ought to have more furniture in his attic.
His theory for the elimination of disease is certainly original.
Children who may suffer in the future from mumps, whooping cough, scarlet fever, managers, or any other disease liable to be captured by juveniles, may say to their parents, “Please don’t keep me at home. Please mother, Mr. Fisher recommends Council School treatment, so that I may share it with the others.”
“Yes, Bor. Whoop, whoop, whooping cough.”
Yes! I can safely recommend a little attic salt. I must not be too hard, however, on our friend; it is not quite safe for glebe tenants to differ from rectors as a rule. Three are already on notice for differing.
Mrs. Higdon, having faced the alternatives of being reprimanded for not closing the school or for allowing the reverend gentleman from Shimpling to close it—you takes your choice—went back to attend to her bairns considerably chastened, and Burston breathed again as of yore.
Unfortunately, the only two Englishmen who could have done justice to this theme are both dead.
Set to appropriate poetry by Gilbert, composed and orchestrated with a slight Mozartean sprinkling of consecutive fifths by Sir A. Sullivan, it might have brought down the house at the Savoy, likewise the National Union of Teachers’ Executive, had the N.U.T.S. not been suffering from sleeping sickness.
However, the reverently-composed committee had not given up all hopes, although the case was against them this time.
The next act opens with the appearance of Mr. Ikin, assistant-secretary to the Norfolk Education Committee. He paid what is known as a surprise visit.
A surprise visit is the most modern form of torture.
In the olden days they always brought you something. To-day they try to take everything you’ve got. In the olden days you sometimes received a goose, to-day they send you a picture postcard.
His surprise words to Mrs. Higdon were: “What is wrong between you and the managers?”
Mrs. Higdon replied that she was not aware that there was anything wrong.
Mr. Ikin went on to say that the local managers had written to the Norfolk Education Committee, complaining that she had lighted the schoolroom fire against their instructions, and that “as she had so many faults to find with the place, would the committee kindly remove her to a sphere more genial?”
That a good, healthy, religious enemy is not to be despised the lives of Bruno, Galileo, Kepler, Wycliffe, Wesley, or a study of the Thirty Years’ War will prove.
Here is a copy of the letter sent to Mrs. Higdon:
Norfolk Education Committee,
Shirehall, Norfolk,November 29th, 1913.
Burston and Shimpling School.
Dear Madam,—In a communication received from the managers on the 13th of November, the committee were asked “if they will kindly remove Mrs. Higdon to a sphere more genial.”
I may remind you that this is the second place in which you have come into conflict with the managers.
The committee have decided that the managers’ instructions are to be obeyed, and as they have instructed you that the fire is not to be lit, I am to give you directions to obey these instructions. I trust there will be no further friction.
Yours faithfully,
Thos. A. Cox, Secretary.Mrs. A. K. Higdon, Burston School, Diss.
It seems the old method of fire-lighting still prevails. That is by friction.
In reading this parochial letter of complaint one cannot help but admire the warm interest which the Reverend Managers’ Committee display in Mrs. Higdon.
They are so solicitous about her welfare that they desire the Norfolk Education Committee to “kindly remove her to a sphere more genial.”
One is here tempted to quote Ingersoll’s advice to his wife. Once upon a day, when the lady was suffering from heat in the head—vulgarly termed temper—he turned to her, and mildly remarked:
“Darling, I am afraid that you have not yet shed all your Christian virtues.”
Unfortunately, the reverend chairman, with Machiavellian subtlety, omits to mention whether the “genial sphere” to which he recommends Mrs. Higdon’s removal is on this planet or the other one.
The many readers of Pickwick will have vivid recollections of the memorable part played by a warming pan, but who would believe that a similar amount of indignation could be aroused in the breasts of the Reverend Managers’ Committee at the lighting of a schoolroom fire to dry the wet clothes of the agricultural labourers’ children. The great difficulty one is confronted with in placing these items before the general public is to convince folks that these complaints were made against Council School teachers and not High Church ones. These backstairs, intriguing, silly, childish complaints might well be laughed out of court if they were not being launched with a definite object in view. That object was to strike at Higdon through his wife.
This is a very ancient pastime. Satan, by all accounts, was an early exponent of it. He had a similar object in view, viz., to assist emigration and check sympathetic vibration.
Readers may have noted the paragraph: “This is the second place in which you have come into conflict with the managers.”
To understand this sentence is to possess the key to all the petty persecution and to gain a grip upon the problems of the countryside.
Mr. Higdon has constantly, at Wood Dalling, his previous place, and at Burston, tried to secure brighter conditions of life and better housing for the tillers and toilers.