Newton Forster

by Frederick Marryat

It must be recollected that, during our narrative, "Time has rolled his ceaseless course," and season has succeeded season, until the infant, in its utter helplessness to lift its little hands for succour, has sprung up into a fair blue-eyed little maiden of nearly eight years old, light as a fairy in her proportions, bounding as a fawn in her gait; her eyes beaming with joy, and her cheeks suffused with the blush of health, when tripping over the sea-girt hills; meek and attentive when listening to the precepts of her fond and adopted parent.

"Faithful," the Newfoundland dog, is no more, but his portrait hangs over the mantel-piece in the little parlour. Mrs Beazely, the housekeeper, has become inert and querulous from rheumatism and the burden of added years. A little girl, daughter of Robertson, the fisherman, has been called in to perform her duties, while she basks in the summer's sun or hangs over the winter's fire. Edward Forster's whole employment and whole delight has long been centred in his darling child, whose beauty of person, quickness of intellect, generous disposition, and affectionate heart, amply repay him for his kind protection.

Of all chapters which can be ventured upon, one upon education is perhaps the most tiresome. Most willingly would I pass it over, not only for the reader's sake, but for mine own; for his—because it cannot well be otherwise than dry and uninteresting; for mine—because I do not exactly know how to write it.

But this cannot be. Amber was not brought up according to the prescribed maxims of Mesdames Appleton and Hamilton; and as effects cannot be satisfactorily comprehended without the causes are made known, so it becomes necessary, not only that the chapter should be written, but, what is still more vexatious, absolutely necessary that it should be read.

Before I enter upon this most unpleasant theme—unpleasant to all parties, for no one likes to teach, and no one likes to learn,—I cannot help remarking how excessively au fait we find most elderly maiden ladies upon every point connected with the rearing of our unprofitable species. They are erudite upon every point ab ovo, and it would appear that their peculiar knowledge of the theory can but arise from their attentions having never been diverted by the practice.

Let it be the teeming mother or the new-born babe—the teething infant or the fractious child—the dirty, pinafored urchin or sampler-spoiling girl—school-boy lout or sapling Miss—voice-broken, self-admiring hobby-de-hoy, or expanding conscious and blushing maiden, the whole arcana of nature and of art has been revealed to them alone.

Let it be the scarlet fever or a fit of passion, the measles or a shocking fib—whooping-cough or apple-stealing—learning too slow or eating too fast—slapping a sister or clawing a brother—let the disease be bodily or mental, they alone possess the panacea; and blooming matrons, spreading out in their pride, like the anxious clucking hen, over their numerous encircling offspring, who have borne them with a mother's throes, watched over them with a mother's anxious mind, and reared them with a mother's ardent love, are considered to be wholly incompetent, in the opinion of these dessicated and barren branches of Nature's stupendous, ever-bearing tree.

Mrs Beazely, who had lost her husband soon after marriage, was not fond of children, as they interfered with her habits of extreme neatness. As far as Amber's education was concerned, all we can say is, that if the old housekeeper did no good, she certainly did her no harm. As Amber increased in years and intelligence, so did her thirst for knowledge on topics upon which Mrs Beazely was unable to give her any correct information. Under these circumstances, when applied to, Mrs Beazely, who was too conscientious to mislead the child, was accustomed to place her hand upon her back, and complain of the rheumatiz—"Such a stitch, my dear love, can't talk now—ask your pa when he comes home."

Edward Forster had maturely weighed the difficulties of the charge imposed upon him, that of educating a female. The peculiarity of her situation, without a friend in the wide world except himself; and his days, in all probability, numbered to that period at which she would most require an adviser—that period, when the heart rebels against the head and too often overthrows the legitimate dynasty of reason, determined him to give a masculine character to her education, as most likely to prove the surest safeguard through a deceitful world.

Aware that more knowledge is to be imparted to a child by conversation than by any other means (for by this system education is divested of its drudgery), during the first six years of her life Amber knew little more than the letters of the alphabet. It was not until her desire of information was excited to such a degree as to render her anxious to obtain her own means of acquiring it that Amber was taught to read; and then it was at her own request. Edward Forster was aware that a child of six years old, willing to learn, would soon pass by another who had been drilled to it at an earlier age and against its will, and whose mind had been checked in its expansive powers by the weight which constantly oppressed its infant memory. Until the above age, the mind of Amber had been permitted to run as unconfined through its own little regions of fancy, as her active body had been allowed to spring up the adjacent hills—and both were equally beautified and strengthened by the healthy exercise.