7
Miriam sat on in the schoolroom after supper with the newspaper spread out on the brown American cloth table cover under the gas. She found a long column headed “The Royal Commission on Education.” The Queen, then, was interesting herself in education. But in England the sovereign had no power, was only a figurehead. Perhaps the Queen had been advised to interest herself in education by the Privy Council and the Conservatives, people of leisure and cultivation. A commission was a sort of command—it must be important, something the Privy Council had decided and sent out in the Queen’s name.
She read her column, sitting comfortlessly between the window and the open door. As she read the room grew still. The memory of the talking and clinking supper-table faded, and presently even the ticking of the clock was no longer there. She raised her head at last. No wonder people read newspapers. You could read about what was going on in the country, actually what the Government was doing at that very moment. Of course; men seemed to know such a lot because they read the newspapers and talked about what was in them. But anybody could know as much as the men sitting in the armchairs if they chose; read all about everything, written down for everybody to see. That was the freedom of the Press—Areopagitica, that the history books said so much about and was one of those new important things, more important than facts and dates. Like the Independence of Ireland. Yet very few people really talked like newspapers. Only angry men with loud voices. Here was the free Press that Milton had gone to prison for. Certainly it made a great difference. The room was quite changed. There was hardly any pain in the silent cane-seated chairs. There were really people making the world better. Now. At last. Perhaps it was rather a happy fate to be a teacher in the Banbury Park school and read newspapers. There were plenty of people who could neither read nor write. Someone had a servant like that who did all the marketing and never forgot anything or made any mistake over the change—none the worse for it, pater said, people who wanted book-learning could get it, there must always be hewers of wood and drawers of water, laissez faire. But Gladstone did not believe that. At this moment Gladstone was saying that because the people of England as a whole were uneducated their “condition of ignorance” affected the whole of the “body politic.” That was Gladstone. He had found that out ... with large moist silky eyes like a dog and pointed collars seeing things as they were and going to change them.... Miriam stirred uneasily as she felt the beating of her heart.... If only she were at home how she could rush up and down the house and shout about it and shake Mary by the shoulders. She shrank into herself and sat stiffly up, suddenly discovering she was lounging over the table. As she moved she reflected that probably Gladstone’s being so very dark made him determined that things should not go on as they were. In that case Gladstonians would be dark—perhaps not musical. Someone had said musical people were a queer soft lot. Laissez faire. Lazy fair. But perhaps it was possible to be fair and musical and to be a Gladstonian too. You can’t have your cake and eat it. No. It was a good thing, one’s best self knew it was a good thing that someone had found out why people were so awful; like a dentist finding out a bad tooth however much it hurt. Only if education was going to be the principal thing and all teachers were to be ‘qualified’ it was no use going on. Miss Jenny had said private schools were doomed.