Eventually the great man arrived, and pleasantly greeted the roomful of novices. We got our instructions, and were promised further information. In the following week I began work at Carnarvon. There, and in other schools in the district, we spent a few days, partly to teach me the rudiments of school work, partly to arrange a plan of campaign for my special work. It was all new to me, and I could offer no suggestions.
But I thought of the poor briefless ones whom I had left behind me in London: Westminster or Guildhall from 10 to 4; Temple Chambers for an hour or so; smoking-room at the club at night, with some remarks on the Tichborne case, then superseding the Franco-German war as a topic of conversation; and I was more than content with my lot.
CHAPTER II
ANGLESEY
“You do yet taste
Some subtilties of the isle, that will not let you
Believe things certain.”—Tempest.
It next became necessary to find out what an “Inspector of Returns” had to do. What were these “Returns”? There was the Elementary Education Act, 1870, to study, and there were Instructions of the vaguest kind. In after years I became familiar with many dozens of such documents; and I used to associate them with the words which (“with that universal applicability which characterizes the bard of Avon”—to quote Mr. Micawber) Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Macbeth:
But in these cases
We still have judgment here; that we but teach
Bloody instructions, which, being taught, return
To plague the inventor.
It appeared that the Returns were answers to questions sent by the Department to every parish in the country; What was the population? What schools had they in the parish? What schools outside the parish did they use? and so on. When we had verified the answers, we were to recommend recognition of such schools as we found to be efficient, and to state what further provision was required, with detailed suggestions. For Parliament had decreed that every child should have an efficient school within reasonable distance of his home.
This seemed simple. But the word “parish” gave us endless trouble. When we speak of a parish, we think of an ecclesiastical district; and we picture to ourselves a cluster of houses, a long street, and an old church, with the village inn and a butcher’s shop in the background. But Parliament meant, or defined, a civil parish; that is, a finite area in which a separate rate can be collected. In most parts of England the difference is immaterial; but in Anglesey, and sometimes in other places, we were baffled at the outset. The people had long ago left the old centres, and had settled down where four cross-roads met, or near the railway station, or near a quarry, or a mine. There they had put up two chapels, three beer-shops, and a general store: they had called the place after the bigger chapel, Moriah, or Carmel, or Bethesda; and, except for a wedding or a funeral, they ceased to go up to Jerusalem.[1] Now Moriah was nearly always on the edge of two or more civil parishes, and if it wanted a school, the two or three parishes would have to pay for it, though they might have perfectly efficient schools of their own in the old centres. This of course roused protests.
Then there came another stumbling-block. If a school were ordered, it would probably be built and managed by a School Board; and in Anglesey the members of the Board would be five men whose opinion on a pig might be accepted, if the pig belonged to a perfect stranger, but on school matters the pig’s opinion would be equally valuable.
A third trouble. These parishes were often so small that one could not hope to see a competent Board, unless several parishes were united. But the parishes would often rather die single than live united to their next-door neighbours. I cannot forget the fury of the Rector of Llantwyddeldwm, when it was proposed to yoke him unequally with Llantwyddeldy, and to build a joint school for the two parishes.