“That’s the way with these people, ma’am; give ’em a apron full of coals today, and they’ll come back for another, the day after tomorrow, as brazen as alabaster.”
The pedagogue learns that parental prejudice sometimes extends to an extravagant pampering of offspring, even carried so far as an absurd opposition to wholesome discipline. Summoned to London on some bothering law business for what was called the neglect of a boy, he explains to the sympathetic Ralph Nickleby that the lad had as good grazing as there was to be had.[197]
“When a boy gets weak and ill and don’t relish his meals, we give him a change of diet—turn him out, for an hour or so every day, into a neighbor’s turnip-field, or sometimes, if it’s a delicate case, a turnip-field and a piece of carrots alternately, and let him eat as many as he likes. There an’t better land in the county than this perwerse lad grazed on, and yet he goes and catches cold and indigestion and what not, and then his friends brings a lawsuit against me!”
The Professor of Deportment, not subject to these sordid contacts, inhales a more rarified atmosphere, and recognizes the value of a succes d’estime, sufficient to compensate for neglect on the part of a stupid public.[198]
“It may not be for me to say that I have been called, for some years now, Gentleman Turveydrop; or that His Royal Highness, the Prince Regent, did me the honour to inquire, on my removing my hat as he drove out of the Pavilion at Brighton (that fine building), ‘Who is he? Who the devil is he? Why don’t I know him? Why hasn’t he thirty thousand a year?’ But these are little matters of anecdote—the general property, ma’am,—still repeated, occasionally, among the upper classes.”
The contributions of the ladies seem to be along psychological rather than social or sociological lines. Mrs. Nickleby is plaintively aware of the thistle-ball nature of the masculine mind, fixed by no friendly star, though the star was not wanting. She discerns on the part of her son a certain inattentiveness to her remarks.[199]
“But that was always the way with your poor dear papa,—just his way—always wandering, never able to fix his thoughts on any one subject for two minutes together. I think I see him now! * * * looking at me while I was talking to him about his affairs, just as if his ideas were in a state of perfect conglomeration! Anybody who had come in upon us suddenly would have supposed I was confusing and distracting him instead of making things plainer; upon my word they would.”
Mrs. Skewton and Mrs. Pardiggle have solved the secret of a happy life, but by different ways. The former perceives it to spring from scholarship vivified by enthusiasm for the fascinating perspectives of history.[200]
“Those darling bygone times, Mr. Carker, * * * with their delicious fortresses, and their dear old dungeons, and their delightful places of torture, and their romantic vengeances, and their picturesque assaults and sieges, and everything that makes life truly charming! How dreadfully we have degenerated. * * * We have no faith in the dear old barons, who were the most delightful creatures—or in the dear old priests, who were the most warlike of men—or even in the days of that inestimable Queen Bess, which were so extremely golden! Dear creature! She was all heart! And that charming father of hers! I hope you dote on Henry the Eighth!”
The latter, on the other hand, lives in the present, is attuned to the carpe diem idea, and realizes the joy of self-expression and the exhilaration of labor.[201]