There was need of some washing. The Secretary of the Department told me, some time after Bluffer’s death, a story of H.M.I.’s behaviour in school. The master was an elderly man of the village pedagogue type, and his fumbling ways were a little irritating to an official in a hurry. The first class wanted reading books, and the old man went off to fetch them; searched in one cupboard unavailingly; found them in another; collected them; piled them up in his arms, and limped back.
“Look alive, man!” shouted Bluffer, with a vigorous slap on his fat thigh. The master jumped: down went the books, and the children roared.
The manager, who told the story to the Secretary, was a peer of the realm, and a wealthy one. I think if he had kicked Bluffer out of the room—say 40s. and costs—and had let the Government grant go hang, he would have enjoyed himself more on his death-bed—and thereafter.
But yet, as I said, there was a human element in Bluffer. From another country school after the inspection the mistress wrote to her former headmaster:
“Her Majesty’s Inspector has been here. He was in a lovely temper. When he had done, he kissed all the boys, and all the girls: then he kissed the pupil-teachers; and last, but not least, he did not omit your humble servant.”
“On ne s’arrête pas dans un si beau chemin,” said Mr. Pleydell, when he saluted Julia Mannering after Lucy Bertram. It reminds one also of the old cottager who learned for the first time that Solomon had had all those wives: “Lor, sir, what blessed privileges them early Christians had.”
Bluffer’s last district was in a large town, and a friend of mine was a manager of a school therein. When the day of inspection arrived, the rector was away, and my friend, being senior curate, was left to receive the great man. He knew Bluffer by reputation, and with commendable prudence enquired at the Inspector’s London club what, as Mr. Weller would put it, “was his partickler wanity.” It was oysters, and oysters accordingly were laid in. On the appointed day the curate approached the official, explained his position as vicegerent, and proffered hospitality. The inspector hesitated: to lunch with a curate was hazardous, and, indeed, pessimi exempli: but this curate was a Fellow of his college, and had “sat at good men’s feasts, and from his eyelid wiped a tear” when the cook fell short of excellence; it was a long way to the hotel: on the whole he thought he would venture.
“And when he came to my lodgings,” the curate reported, “and saw the oysters laid out on the table, and the brown bread and butter, his face lit up with a heavenly smile, and the report was excellent.”
No such mitigating features were noted in Snarler’s reputation. Perhaps it was malice that attributed to him the appalling statement, “I never feel that I have done my duty in school unless I have left the mistress in tears.” It is not likely that he made the statement, or that, if he did, he meant it. But such stories are not told of amiable men. “Men must work, and women must weep,” but the actions, if concurrent, must not be causal. “It is better that women should greet than bearded men,” was Ruthven’s theory; but his methods were considered rough, even in Edinburgh, even in the sixteenth century.
Let it not be supposed that the modern type of inspector is wholly free from folly and vice. I could unfold several tales, but de viventibus nil nisi bonum is a safe motto. Whether ancient or modern, in my somewhat lengthy experience, H.M.I. is not generally beloved. At one time I used to attend an annual dinner, where the great majority of guests were clerical. They would come to me, one after another, with the same story: