FOOTNOTES:

[7] Old chestnut.

[8] Old den of thieves.

CHAPTER VI
THE VILLAGE SCHOOL

“You must wake and call me early, call me early, mother dear;
To-morrow’ll be the happiest day of all the glad New Year.”

Conceive, oh ye inhabiters of towns, a condition of existence so devoid of incident that the annual inspection of the village school is the event of the year. “Never comes the trader”; never comes Wombwell or Sanger; the Bishop holds no Confirmation here, and the Eisteddfod keeps afar off. To this people October is the first of months, because of the “Xaminashun.” September is the long Vigil, during which, in spite of late harvest, truants are hunted up, cajoled, threatened, bribed to complete their tale of 250 attendances. Rising early, and so late taking rest, the teachers struggle with their little flock. The third week comes, and the post is watched with keenest anxiety. Has the day been fixed? Surely he won’t come on the First! Surely he won’t keep us in suspense till the last week! Suppose it rains! Suppose they get the measles! “Suppose there is an earthquake,” says the Rector cheerfully.

The children do not look so far ahead, but when the actual day is fixed they catch the infection, and weary their mothers with speculations of probable success, possible failure. The eve of the awful day brings a half-holiday, on which the school floor has its annual wash: but the children hang about the playground and the school gate; for even blackberrying has lost its charm to-day. Do they lie awake at night? I doubt it, but I have no knowledge. Certainly they rise early, and clamour for early breakfast. Do they, like Falkland at Newbury, “put on a clean shirt to be killed in”? There, again, I have no information; but I know that it is a day of best frocks, of ribbons, above all of BOOTS.

And the Inspector? The children, nay, possibly the youngest teachers, think (like Poor Peter Peebles), “I have not been able to sleep for a week for thinking of it, and, I dare to say, neither has the Lord President himsell.” Alas! at Llangastanau the inspector wants yet ten years to teach him the most needful lesson, that what to him is “Wednesday’s job” is the day of the year to them. He sleeps a solid eight hours’ sleep, and dreams that he is playing football with Harry and the Druid.

In 1871 school inspection was, as a science, still in its infancy. The chief function of H.M. Inspector was to assess the amount which the Treasury should pay; and this was done by rapid examination of every child above seven years of age who had attended 250 times in the school year. Those who had made less than the specified number usually came to school to see the stranger; but in most cases they were rewarded for their habitual truancy by being sent home as soon as the great man arrived. Whereby they got a holiday, with the additional relish of thinking that the good children were on the rack.

The children under seven were, and are, called infants. There was a grant of 8s. (or 10s. if the teacher was certificated) for these sucklings, if they were present. If the weather was so bad that they could not come, or if they got measles, whooping cough, chicken-pox, scarlet fever, or any other of the dreadful list, and were unable to appear, the grant for the absentees was lost. The principal function of the Inspector in an Infant School was to call over the names of the children on the Schedule. He might go on to hear them sing; and, if he were an enthusiast, he might carry his enquiries to any length. The instructions issued by the Department advised that “every fourth child in the first class should be called out and strictly examined.” But even in my greenest days I cannot remember that I was so green as to obey that recommendation. A little experience taught me that infants should be left in the hands of their own teachers, and that the inspectors should look on. My Lords had not discovered this in May, 1871, when they issued Circular 11.

It was seldom that the examination of the elder children went beyond the three elementary subjects commonly known as the Three R’s. (What philosopher was it who first found out that reading, writing, and arithmetic all begin with R? Think of him as a time-saver!) But a town school might hunt up a few boys, who in Oxford parlance ambiebant honores in geography, grammar, history, or mathematics. There was an extra grant for a child who “passed” in one of these luxuries, but Circular 18 safeguarded the public purse by requiring that the examination should be on paper. To express themselves intelligibly on paper was far beyond the powers of these mute inglorious Miltons.

As for investigation of methods of teaching, or of causes of weakness in any subject, such refinements were but just beginning to be known. The great aim of inspector, teacher, and children was to finish by 12.30 at the latest.

Our plan of campaign was delightfully simple. Most of the children were in the two lowest standards. These were supplied with slates, pencils, and a reading-book, and were drawn up in two long lines down the middle of the room. They stood back-to-back, to prevent copying, and did dictation, and arithmetic, sometimes dropping their slates, sometimes their pencils, sometimes their books, not infrequently all three, with a crash on the floor. When we had marked the results on the Examination Schedule, all these children were sent home, and the atmosphere was immensely improved. Then we proceeded to examine the rest, the aristocracy, who worked their sums on paper. As a rule, if we began about 10 we finished about 11.45. If the master was a good fellow, and trustworthy, we looked over the few papers in dictation and arithmetic, marked the Examination Schedule, and showed him the whole result before we left. Then he calculated his “percentage of passes,” his grant, and his resulting income; and went to dinner with what appetite he might. But if the man were cross-grained, and likely to complain that the exercises were too hard, the standard of marking too high, and so on, he would be left in merciful ignorance of details. Half an hour in the evening sufficed for making up the Annual Report, and the incident was closed. Think of the simplicity of it!

We breakfast early at the Rectory, and during the meal we chew the cud of last night’s mirth. Harry and I are full of reminiscences: the Druid’s stories; David’s flashes of humour; the surpassing merits of the Squire. The Rector is a little uneasy and rather silent: at 7.30 the weather was rather bad, and if the children are kept away by rain—some of them having long distances to walk over the bleak country—not only will the grant suffer, but the teachers will be grievously disappointed. Happily the clouds lift and hope returns.

Soon after nine we visit the stables to arrange about sending me to the station in the afternoon, and the groom touches his cap to me, gazing with a wistful eye. He expresses an ardent wish that it may be a fine day for the school children, and as we make our way to the school the Rector informs me that there is a young person teaching there, to whom the groom is much attached; in fact he believes there is an engagement.

We find a long, rather low building with a thatched roof: the windows are somewhat low and narrow, and filled with diamond panes; and inside the light is scanty. There is a tiled floor; there are desks for the upper standards only; the other children sit on benches with no back-rails: both desks and benches are evidently the work of the carpenter on the estate. There is no cloak-room, and the damp clothes of the children are hung round the walls, sending out a gentle steam, as if it were washing-day next door, and the water were not very clean. About a quarter of the room at one end is occupied by a platform, which is found convenient for village entertainments; and a narrow passage by its side leads to a small class-room, “contrived a double debt to pay”: it holds the small Infant Class and it serves as a Green Room for the performers at the aforesaid entertainments.

The children greet us with effusion, and I am introduced to the teachers. Mr. Evans receives me with a smile that remembers Capel Zion, but does not presume unduly. There is Mrs. Evans, who takes the Infant Class, and also teaches the girls to sew for four afternoons a week, during which time a big girl “minds” the infants: an admirable woman, Mrs. Evans, but getting rather middle-aged for the little ones; always motherly, but not always fresh and gamesome. And there is pretty Myfanwy Roberts, formerly a Pupil Teacher here, now Assistant Mistress, “till she can save a bit.” Clearly this is “the young person,” and I admire the groom’s taste. Myfanwy is trembling with excitement in her Celtic manner, and Evans himself is uneasy, for he does not know my ways, and I may frighten the children. If I insist on giving out the Dictation, my deplorable English accent will be fatal; and if I laugh at the children’s efforts to talk English, they will close up like tulips in a shower.

The children are for the most part either black-haired and dark eyed, or red-haired, freckled, and snub-nosed: but some are pure Saxon:

“Blue-eyed, white-bosomed, with long golden hair.”

All wear their best clothes, and ribbons, and the maidens know it. They too are uneasy, and they discuss my appearance in their own tongue, which leaves me neither elated nor depressed: as when a Venetian gondolier scathingly delineates his passenger in local patois to another boatman: but the passenger’s withers are unwrung. Only when I venture into the Infants’ room I hear a murmur from a four-year-old, which the Rector intercepts and translates to me. It was, if I remember rightly, “Welwch-’i-farf-o,” “look at his beard.” I admit that in those days I had a beard which reached to the third button of my waistcoat: it had an extraordinary fascination for infants.

I call over the names of the fifteen infants, and find great difficulty in distinguishing between Mary Jones, Ty-gwyn; Mary Jones, Hendre; and Mary Jones, The Red Lion. One of them is absent, and her name must be struck off: Mrs. Evans will not admit that it is immaterial which name is cancelled, so long as she gets sixteen shillings for the two survivors: if John Jones, The Red Lion, heard that his Mary was wrongfully marked absent, there would be letters in the paper, and a meeting at Capel Carmel. Yes, sure! Mary Ty-gwyn is sacrificed on the altar of expediency.

Then I lose my heart to Gwen, aged four, and thereby win Mrs. Evans’ heart. It was Gwen, I find, who commented on my beard, and she is still so wholly absorbed in contemplation of it, that my addresses are unheeded. As I stoop down to press my suit in a language that she does not in the least understand—but the language of Love is universal—she makes a sudden grab at the object of her admiration, to see whether it is real. The other babes hold their breath in terror; but finding that Gwen does not swell up and die, that no she-bears appear, and that I am laughing, they break into a long ripple of choking mirth, in the midst of which I escape.

I return to the main-room, where the fifty “elder scholars” await me. “Will I hear a song?” Certainly I will. Is it the “Men of Harlech”? It is; and it is rendered with a vigour that leaves nothing to be desired. Mr. Evans volunteers another of a more plaintive character, and we have a native lament in a minor key, which leads me hastily to assure him that the grant is now secure.

The Rector is a keen Shakespearean scholar, and he mutters to me:

“This passion and the death of a near friend would go near to make a man look sad.”

I cap his quotation:

“An he had been a dog that should have howled thus, they would have hanged him: I had as lief have heard the night raven.”

The Rector is so much pleased to have his trump returned, that he beams, and pats me gently on the sleeve. Think what it must be for a man to live in a parish where you may lead trumps from January to December without a chance of getting them back!

We proceed with the examination. I begin with Standards I. and II. They find the sums a little trying, though they count most carefully on their fingers. When you have a slate in your arms, it is hard to carry the reckoning across from one hand to the other without dropping the slate. I suggest to Mr. Evans that counting on fingers is not practised in the best circles of mathematicians. He is so much surprised by this novel theory, that he gasps: then, recovering himself, he says, “Well, indeed, why did Providence give them ten fingers for whatever?”

Angharad Davis, a charming maid of seven, to whom I transfer the affection which Gwen scorned, gets one sum right (out of three), and one that is not without merit. She has “borrowed” and omitted to “pay back.” I have known grown-ups to do the same thing. I ask her what she makes of four fours: she looks at me with tearful eyes and mutters something in Welsh. “What does she say, Myfanwy?”

“She says ‘nid wn i ddim,’ and that is, ‘I don’t know.’”

I think Angharad may pass for her frankness, combined with good looks.

The Squire arrives with the school accounts; and brings Mrs. Trevor, who announces that she is particularly interested in the sewing, and wants to have my opinion as an expert. Horror! Meanwhile Standards III., IV., and V. are struggling with sums, and, at intervals, with Dictation, given out by the master in a convincing accent. Then they read with a fluency that in those early days used to amaze me, knowing, as I did, that they knew very little English; till I found by greater experience that they knew the two books by heart, and could go on equally well if the book fell on the ground.

All the work is done—Geography, Grammar, History, Needlework—done before the Inspector’s eyes—all these must wait till October, 1875:[9] the children go home with undisguised joy, and I proceed to mark the papers. Evans has passed 92 per cent.; great rejoicings follow, and I am classed above the last inspector, who drew the line at 88. I fear the Consolidated Fund loses by my inexperience, but I hold my tongue.

Mrs. Trevor insists that I shall report on the sewing. There is a table covered with female garments in unbleached calico (which smells like hot glue), linen, and flannel; and I am expected to look as if I knew one stitch from another. By great good luck I drive away both Mrs. Squire and Mrs. Evans by picking up, in my ignorance, a garment so shocking to the modest eye that my critics turn hastily away, and are speechless. I hold it up to the light; comment on the backstitching (which I now have reason to believe was hemming); pull at the seams; and find that my lay assessors have fled. Rather abashed I also go, and find the Druid at the door. He has had a wedding, and he has left the loud bassoon and its moaning that he may explain to me about those hamlets with the cacophonous names.

“Good-bye, Mr. Evans: 92 per cent. is excellent. Good-bye, Mrs. Evans: love to Gwen. Ffarwel, Myfanwy.”

“Beg pardon, sir,” interposes Evans, nervously; “but you haven’t signed the Log Book, or seen the Accounts; and you have left Form IX. and the Schedule behind, and here they are.” This dims the glory of my departure, and I return to sign the Log Book, a custom of those days. The Squire comes with me, and as I open the cash-book, and wonder which is Income and which Expenditure, he remarks quite casually to the master: “By-the-bye, Mr. Evans, I have arranged with the architect and the builder to carry out the improvements in the premises recommended by H.M. Inspector last year, if this gentleman approves.”

I, of course, intimate that I should not presume to have an opinion contrary to my chief’s: and the Squire continues:

“The windows will be enlarged; the diamond panes will be taken out; the floor will be boarded; and I have ordered some new desks. If we can manage to get three weeks’ holiday without frost at Christmas, we can do all the work then.”

Evans was radiant with joy, and we started for the street. Just by the gate I again hear a soft murmur from infant lips; this time as a soliloquy: “welwch-’i-farf-o!” It is Gwen. Ffarwel, Gwen bach.

“Now, Mr. Inspector,” says the pertinacious Druid, “from here you can see my parish. On the hill-side is Llanfair-castanwydd-uwch-y-mynydd-uchaf....”

“Look here, Mr. Morgan,” the Squire says hurriedly, “come up to the Hall with the Inspector; the Rector is coming, and we will settle Moriah after lunch. Give him a rest now. Hang Moriah.”

“But it isn’t all Moriah,” the Druid was beginning.

The Rector saw his chance:

“Non omnis Moriah: multaque pars mei
Vitabit Libitinam.”

“Ye-es, sure,” said the Druid vaguely: and so it was settled.