A Fluttered Dovecote

by George Manville Fenn

Now pray why is it that people engaged in teaching must always be sour and disappointed-looking, and ready to treat those who are their pupils as if they were so many enemies? I suppose that it is caused by the great pressure of knowledge leaving room for nothing mild and amiable. Of course Patty Smith was very stupid; but it was enough to make the poor, fat, pudgy thing ten times more stupid to hear how they scolded her for not doing her exercises. I declare it was quite a charity to do them for her, as it was not in her nature to have done them herself. There she would sit, with her forehead all wrinkled up, and her thick brows quarrelling, while her poor eyes were nearly shut; and I’m sure her understanding was quite shut up, so that nothing could go either in or out.

Oh! I used to be so vexed, and could at any time have pulled off that horrid Mrs Blunt’s best cap when she used to bring in her visitors, and then parade them through the place, displaying us all, and calling up first one and then another, as if to show off what papa would call our points.

The vicar of Allsham used to be the principal and most constant visitor; and he always made a point of taking great interest in everything, and talking to us, asking us Scripture questions; coming on a Monday—a dreadful old creature—so as to ask us about the sermon which he preached on the previous morning. They were all such terrible sermons that no one could understand—all about heresies, and ites, and saints with hard names; and he had a bad habit of seeing how many parentheses he could put inside one another, like the lemons from the bazaars, till you were really quite lost, and did not know which was the original, or what it all meant; and I’m sure sometimes he did not know where he had got to, and that was why he stopped for quite two minutes blowing his nose so loudly. I’m afraid I told him very, very wicked stories sometimes when he questioned me; while if he asked me once whether I had been confirmed, he asked me twenty times.

I’m sure I was not so very wicked before I went down to Allsham; but I quite shudder now when I think of what a wretch I grew, nicknaming people and making fun of serious subjects; and oh, dear! I’m afraid to talk about them almost.

The vicar sat in his pew in the nave in the afternoon, and let the curate do all the service; and I used to feel as if I could box his ears, for he would stand at the end of his seat, half facing round, and then, in his little, fat, round, important way, go on gabbling through the service, as if he wasn’t satisfied with the way the curate was reading it, and must take it all out of his mouth. He upset the poor young man terribly, and the clerk too; so that the three of them used to tie the service up in a knot, or make a clumsy trio of it, with the school children tripping up their heels by way of chorus.

Then, too, the old gentleman would be so loud, and would not mind his points, and would read the responses in the same fierce, defiant way in which he said the Creed in the morning, just as if he was determined that everybody should hear how he believed. And when the curate was preaching, he has folded his arms and stared at the poor young fellow, now shaking his head, and now blowing his nose; while the curate would turn hot, and keep looking down at him as much as to say, “May I advance that?” or “Won’t that do, sir?” till it was quite pitiful.

The vicar used to bring his two daughters with him to the Cedars, to pat, and condescend, and patronise, and advise: two dreadful creatures that Clara called the giraffes, they were so tall and thin, and hook-nosed, and quite a pair in appearance. They dressed exactly alike, in white crape long shawls and lace bonnets in summer; and hooked on to their father, one on each arm, as the fat, red-faced, little old gentleman used to come up the gravel walk, he was just like a chubby old angel, with a pair of tall, scraggy, half-open wings.

But though the two old frights were so much alike in appearance, they never agreed upon any point; and the parishioners had a sad time of it with first one and then the other. They were always leaving books for the poor people’s reading, and both had their peculiar ideas upon the subject of what was suitable. They considered that they knew exactly what every one ought to read, and what every one else ought to read was just the very reverse of what they ought to read themselves. But there, they do not stand alone in that way, as publishers well know when they bring out so many works of a kind that they are sure customers will buy—not to read, but to give away—very good books, of course.