“When he is grown up, he does some of them: this is the prime of life.
“When he is very old, he is sorry for what he has done: this is dotage.”
CHAPTER XXVII
NEEDLEWORK
‘Domi mansit: lanam fecit.’—Roman epitaph.
“Domestic Economy and plain needlework.”—Code.
“It was I,” said Dominie Sampson, “who did educate Miss Lucy in all useful learning—albeit it was the housekeeper who did teach her those unprofitable exercises of hemming and shaping.”
The question that occurs to the professional mind, is whether Lucy Bertram’s skill in plain needlework was really limited to hemming, which is the work allotted to girls of six or seven years of age; or whether the Dominie in his contemptuous ignorance used the term to include all varieties of stitches. By “shaping,” I think he meant what we call “cutting out.” That is high art, and a few years ago it was confined to quite the upper circles of an Elementary School. If Lucy really could not go beyond hemming, I fear she would have had some difficulty with the material when it was “shaped”: unless, indeed, she made only pocket-handkerchiefs and towels. To be easily satisfied with a low standard of attainments was, in the estimation of My Lords, a mark of inefficiency. This is a pity, for Lucy shares with Rose Bradwardine the unenviable distinction of being the most insipid of Scott’s heroines, and she might have won great triumphs in needlework, even in “divers colours of needlework on both sides.”[41] Her back-stitching should have been a model of neatness, and her flannel patches should have drawn tears of admiration from H.M. Inspector in Dumfriesshire.
Alas! the niceties of nomenclature are already fading from my memory: yet there was a time when I could deceive the very elect with my superficial jargon.
Before 1876 the inspection of needlework was very simple. That plain needlework—none of your crochet work—should be taught to all the girls, was a condition precedent of the annual grant. In country schools there was not much fear of neglect, for Mrs. Squire and Mrs. Rector kept vigilant eyes on this branch of education, and the subscribers to the school funds often got back part of the value of their money by sending their household sewing to be done in school. It was no unusual thing to find five afternoons a week entirely devoted to sewing. “They tell me,” said one Lady Bountiful, “that the girls in Standard VI. learn Decimals! Not that I know what decimals are. I think they should learn to sew, don’t you?” But I
“Dallied with my golden chain
And, smiling, put the question by.”