4
And now they were going to be Julia’s children.
Julia would teach them—alone there in the room with them, filling the room for them—in her own way....
There would be no more talk about general ideas....
She would have to keep on the “object” lessons, because the Pernes had been so pleased with the idea and the children had liked them. There would still be those moments, with balls for the solar system and a candle for the sun, and the blinds down. But there would not be anything like that instant when all the eyes round the table did nothing but watch the movement of a shadow on a ball ... the relief afterwards, the happiness and the moment of intense love in the room—never to be forgotten, all of them knowing each other, all their differences gone away, even the clever watchful eyes of the cheating little Jewess, real and unconscious for a moment. Julia would be watching the children as much as the shadow, and the children would never quite forget Julia. She would get to know a great deal about the children, but there would be no reverence for big cold outside things. She would teach them to be kind. “Little dorlings.” She thought all children were darlings and talked to them all in her wheedling, coaxing, adoring way. If one or two were not, it was the fault of the way they were treated, something in the ‘English’ way of dealing with them. Nearly all the elder girls she disapproved of, they were no longer children—they were English. She was full of contempt and indignant laughter for them, and of pity for the ‘wee things’ who were growing up. Yet she got on with them all and had the secret of managing them without letting them see her feelings.
There was something specially bad in the English way of bringing up children. Not the ‘education’ exactly, but something else, something in the way they were treated. Something in the way they were brought up made English women so awful—with their smiles. Julia did not smile or smirk. She laughed a great deal, often to tears. And she would often suddenly beam. It was like a light coming from under her thick white skin. Was Julia the answer to the awfulness of Englishwomen? If, as Julia said, the children were all right and only the girls and grown-ups awful, it must be something in the way the children were treated.