“Panky was the greater humbug of the two, for he would humbug even himself—a thing, by the way, not very hard to do; and yet he was the less successful humbug; * * * Hanky was the mere common, superficial, perfunctory Professor, who, being a Professor, would of course profess, but would not lie more than was in the bond. * * * Panky, on the other hand, was hardly human; he had thrown himself so earnestly into his work, that he had become a living lie. If he had had to play the part of Othello he would have blacked himself all over, and very likely have smothered his Desdemona in good earnest. Hanky would hardly have blacked himself behind the ears, and his Desdemona would have been quite safe.”
The School is another favorite satirical topic. The only novelists who refrain from depicting the shortcomings of the educational system are Disraeli, Reade, Mrs. Gaskell, and George Eliot. On the public side, Meredith might be added, as the theme of Richard Feverel, though educational, is made an individual matter.
The adverse opinion handed down on the methods and results of the prevailing system is more unanimous than is the case with other subjects. On the main indictments, inefficiency and cruelty in the lower schools, and inefficiency and carelessness in the higher, there is no minority report. On the whole, the Victorians were innocent of the partisanship that arose later over the great question of Culture versus Efficiency as an educational ideal. The primary stages might be allowed a modicum of the practical, though Gradgrind’s “facts” are failures, and Squeers stands in solitary glory as an advocate of applied arts and manual training. Mr. Tulliver is in line with his Zeitgeist in fondly supposing the best thing he can do for Tom is to send him to an expensive private school, to learn Latin along with the son of Lawyer Wakem. An education was tacitly defined as that which makes a gentleman of you. And though no one would dissent from Thackeray’s dictum that “all the world is improving except the gentlemen,” neither would any one suppose that the definition might be modified or expanded.
A number realize that education begins at home. The close father and son relationship satirized in the case of Sir Austin and Richard because it was too close and inflexible, is presented as a beautiful ideal in those of Pisistratus and Mr. Caxton, Kenelm and Squire Chillingly, Clive and Colonel Newcome, and the Duke of Omnium and his sons.[336]
In David Copperfield’s recollections of the metallic Murdstone, Arthur Clennam’s of his childhood’s Sabbath and Alton Locke’s of his mother’s fearful bigotry, we get glimpses into the pathos of the old Puritan discipline. These are too sad for satire. Butler, no less sad, is also angry enough to brand it with his caustic wit. Theobald and Christina Pontifex are texts for a satiric sermon on parental incompetence, no less disastrous although “All was done in love, anxiety, timidity, stupidity, and impatience.” After the scene in which Theobald, having punished little Ernest severely and quite wantonly, rang the bell for prayers, “red-handed as he was,” his visitor reflects that perhaps it was fortunate for his host—[337]
“* * * that our prayers were seldom marked by any very encouraging degree of response, for if I had thought there was the slightest chance of my being heard I should have prayed that some one might ere long treat him as he had treated Ernest.”
The keynote of this most Christian system is unconsciously hit upon by the bewildered little lad himself, who later concludes,—[338]
“* * * that he had duties towards everybody, lying in wait for him upon every side, but that nobody had any duties towards him.”
Formal education naturally falls into the school and college divisions. We have the former presented dramatically by Brontë in Jane Eyre (and more impressionistically in Villette), by Thackeray in The Fatal Boots and Vanity Fair, by Butler in The Way of All Flesh, and by the zealous specialist in that field. It has been counted up that Dickens deals with twenty-eight schools and mentions a dozen others.[339] The most important are in Nicholas Nickleby, Dombey and Son, David Copperfield, and Hard Times.