[41] This form of double tapestry must have been difficult of execution. How did they hide the stitches on ‘the wrong side’?
[42] Because to work cleanly counts for merit, and washing pre-supposes dirt.
[43] “But vether it’s worth while goin’ through so much, to learn so little, as the charity-boy said ven he got to the end of the alphabet, is a matter o’ taste. I rayther think it isn’t.”
CHAPTER XXVIII
UPHEAVAL
“Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee, thou art translated.”
Midsummer Night’s Dream.
In 1902 came Mr. Balfour’s great Education Act, putting the whole control of all Public Elementary Schools (exceptis rebus divinis, in Baconian phrase) into the hands of the local authorities. This altered the whole machinery of inspection. Hitherto our districts had been limited by the boundaries of large boroughs, or of poor law unions, though we had nothing to do with corporations, or guardians. Now, if I might borrow the words of Froude in the purplest of his purple patches, “the paths trodden by the footsteps of ages were broken up.” Henceforth our little domains were to be co-extensive with a county, or with one or more large towns. A new Secretary to the Board of Education was appointed, “with fear of change perplexing (our) monarch’s” inspectors. Where is my Ravenshoe?
“When the head of a great family dies, relations are changed entirely between some score or two of persons. The dog of to-day is not the dog of yesterday.... Perhaps even the old hound wonders whether he is to keep his old place by the fire or no; and younger brothers bite their nails, and wonder, too, about many things.”
Towards the end of the year I, among others, was summoned to the Office and had my interview. In a few days came the announcement that I was appointed to the care of Manchester, and at the same time to the Chief Inspectorship of the North-Western Division. The local paper, which reported the change to a disconsolate city, declared in picturesque language that I was to rule from the Mersey to the Solway, and from the Pennine Range to the Calf of Man.
In other words, the Division included Lancashire, Cumberland, Westmorland, and the Isle of Man.
There were advantages and disadvantages, with which I need not trouble the reader. When Bishop Stubbs was moved from Chester to Oxford, he said, with his accustomed humour, that, “like Homer, he suffered from translation.” What should I lose or gain from my translation? I soliloquised for a while, like Hamlet, whether to bear those ills I had, or fly to others that I knew not of; but, unlike Hamlet, I chose the latter, because, in any case, it could not be for more than four years, whereas Hamlet contemplated a considerably longer stay in his undiscovered bourne. I did myself the honour to accept, and assumed charge of the children of 600,000 people in the district, and of about 5,000,000 in the Division. In a few months Cumberland and Westmorland were, to my great regret, taken from me, and Cheshire, more convenient but less beautiful, was substituted.