Altogether this is an excellent skit on the critics who greet all the efforts of the young with a foolish voice of praise. Self-conscious, aggressive and complacent precocity Punch could not endure; the small American child who treats a bishop, who had endeavoured to repress him, as a back number, is clearly regarded as a nuisance. But in his plea for the unhappy infant prodigy Punch recognized it as a real grievance that child performers were overworked by over-practising and continual travelling. In 1888 it was borne in upon him that, whether from the engrossing nature of modern girls' and boys' occupations, or their preference for contemporary and realistic fiction, the study of Fairy Tales and Nursery Lore was fast falling into neglect if not into positive contempt. To avert what he considered a national calamity, he felt it his duty to suggest to parents that no child should be allowed on any pretext in future to leave the Nursery for School until it had passed an examination in these subjects.
Fairy Tale Test Papers
Punch's test papers are all excellent, but I can only find room for the General and the Pantomime Papers:—
CRITICAL AND GENERAL.
1. What is your opinion of the intelligence of Giants as a race? Of what substance were they in the habit of making their bread? Would you draw any and what distinction between (a) Giants and Giantesses, (b) Ogres and Ogresses, (c) a Mamma Ogress and her daughters?
2. What is a Roc? What do Rocs feed on? If you were on the edge of steep cliffs surrounding an inaccessible valley, strewn with diamonds and visited by Rocs—how would you proceed in order to obtain some of those diamonds? Give the reply of the Slave of the Lamp to Aladdin's request that a Roc's egg should be hung up in his dome.
3. Mention instances when (a) a Wolf, (b) a Bear, (c) a Cat, (d) a Harp, are recorded to have spoken, and give the substance of their remarks, when possible, in each case.
4. Write down the name of any hero you can remember who suffered inconvenience from (a) the imprudence, (b) the disobedience, of his wife.
5. How would you act if you were invited to go to a party on the opposite side of the way, and had nothing to go in but a pair of Seven-Leagued Boots? Compare the drawbacks and advantages of going to a State Ball in glass slippers.
6. State which family you would rather belong to: One in which there was (i.) a Wicked Uncle, (ii.) an Envious Sister, (iii.) a Jealous Brother, or (iv.) a Cruel Stepmother? Give your reasons, and illustrate them by examples. How many Wicked Uncles do you remember to have read of? Are Wicked Uncles ever sorry, and, if so, when?
7. Give any instances that occur to you where it is stated that the chief personages of the story "all lived happily ever afterwards." Are there any exceptions to this rule?
PANTOMIME PAPER.
(Optional, and for those Students only who may decide to "take up" this branch of the subject.)
1. Did the manners, language, and general deportment of the various Kings and Queens you have seen in Pantomimes correspond at all with what you had expected them to be from the books?
2. Mention any fairy tale in which (1) long ballets, (2) allusions to subjects in last year's papers, (3) jokes about "drinks" and "pawn-tickets," (4) comic duets which you didn't quite understand, and (5) men dressed up in women's clothes, occur. Mention (if you can) any Pantomime in which they do not.
3. Were you surprised to hear at Drury Lane that the King who befriended the Marquis of Carabas was originally a Potman? Do you remember this in the original text?
4. Why do you suppose that the Wicked Brothers in this year's Pantomime were frightened by green snakes, pink lizards, and enormous frogs? Did their own explanation that they had "the jumps" convey much to your mind? Did this scene make you laugh?
5. Give as clear and intelligible an account as you are able of the story of any one Pantomime you have been to, mentioning where—if at all—it departed from the version you have studied, and whether or not you considered such departures (if any) to be improvements.
6. Investigate the principal peculiarities of Pantomime Animals. How do they chiefly differ from other animals? Describe the effect of kindness upon a Pantomime Donkey, and account for it.
N.B.—Not more than four questions need be attempted in each of the above papers. Candidates are advised not to leave any question unattempted from a mere inability to answer every part of such question.
The Pantomime Paper conveys some excellent dramatic criticism, which is needed as much to-day as thirty years ago, but it may be permitted to stand in this educational context. As a counterblast to the charge of indifference towards fairy tales on the part of the modern child, it is only right to add that in 1892 Du Maurier's picture, "A Warning," shows a touching belief in the actuality of Bluebeard:—
Archie (to his Sister, who has been reading him Fairy Tales): "Won't there be a lot of Us, if none of us go and get married? Worse than Hop-o'-my-Thumb!"
Sister: "Yes; but you know I mean to be married!"
Archie: "Do you mean to say you'd go and live alone with a Man after reading Bluebeard?"
When we turn to the Public and Preparatory Schools we find that Punch's criticisms resolve themselves into a triple indictment of their costliness, their curriculum and their undue exaltation of athletics. The attack on the athletic craze begins in 1875, when Punch published an imaginary Report of a boy's work for 1895 at St. Paul's, Eastminster, which deals with nothing but his progress at games and sports.
The Fetish of Games
The charge had a good deal to justify it, but the choice of a name was not happy, since Colet's famous foundation has in its recent phase never invited criticism on the score of any slackness in studious industry. Punch renews the attack more than once. In 1880, in a burlesque account of a Prize Day, brain-work is just tolerated; athletic prowess is the only thing really encouraged and rewarded. Yet simultaneously we encounter Master Freddy from Eton, who considers that energy of any sort is "bad form." "Good form," in Punch's view, might easily degenerate into a snobbish fetish, and in one of his "International Comparisons," in the Almanack of 1879, he emphasizes the comprehensiveness of French public schools as contrasted with the class distinctions observed in England. It was in the same year that an inquiry was held into the administration of Wellington College and the alleged departure from the intentions of the founders. Punch took the line that what was meant to be a military orphanage had become a rather costly public school of the common type, and noted that Mr. Gladstone defended the change because Benson, his son-in-law, was head master. This was a partial error. Gladstone's son-in-law was Wickham, who had succeeded Benson as head master. But the sting remained. Punch, it may be added, was thoroughly consistent in his attitude of antagonism to the diversion of old foundations from their original aims.
