Lady Angleby had to give and hear opinions on a variety of subjects while they were at table. Middle-class female education Mr. Jones had not gone into. He listened and was instructed, and supposed that it might easily be made better; nevertheless, he had observed that the best taught amongst his candidates for confirmation came from the shopkeeping class, where the parents still gave their children religious lessons at home. Then ladies of refined habits and delicate feelings as mistresses of elementary schools—that was a new idea to him. A certain robustness seemed, perhaps, more desirable; teaching a crowd of imperfectly washed little boys and girls was not fancy-work; also he believed that essential propriety existed to the full as much amongst the young women now engaged as amongst young ladies. If the object was to create a class of rural school-mistresses who would take social rank with the curate, he thought it a mistake; a school-mistress ought not to be above drinking her cup of tea in a tidy cottage with the parents of her pupils: he should prefer a capable young woman in a clean holland apron with pockets, and no gloves, to any poor young lady of genteel tastes who would expect to associate on equal terms with his wife and daughters. Then, cookery for the poor. Here Mr. Jones fell inadvertently into a trap. He said that the chief want amongst the poor was something to cook: there was very little spending in twelve shillings a week, or even in fifteen and eighteen, with a family to house, clothe, and feed. Lady Angleby held a quite opposite view. She said that a helpless thriftlessness was at the root of the matter. She had printed and largely distributed a little book of receipts, for which many people had thanked her. Mr. Jones knew the little book, and had heard his wife say that Lady Angleby's receipt for stewed rabbits was well enough, but that her receipt for hares stewed with onions was hares spoilt; and where were poor people to get hares unless they went out poaching?
"I assure your ladyship that agrimony tea is still drunk amongst our widows, and an ounce of shop-tea is kept for home-coming sons and daughters grown proud in service. They gather the herb in the autumn, and dry it in bunches for the winter's use. And many is the laborer who lets his children swallow the lion's share of his Sunday bit of meat because the wife says it makes them strong, and children have not the sense not to want all they see. Any economical reform amongst the extravagant classes that would leave more and better food within reach of the hard-working classes would be highly beneficial to both. Sometimes I wish we could return to that sumptuary law of Queen Elizabeth which commanded the rich to eat fish and fast from flesh-meat certain days of the week." Here Mr. Jones too abruptly paused. Lady Angleby had grown exceedingly red in the face; Bessie Fairfax had grown rosy too, with suppressed reflections on the prize-stature to which her hostess had attained in sixty years of high feeding. Queen Elizabeth's pious fast might have been kept by her with much advantage to her figure.
Poor Mr. Jones had confused himself as well as Lady Angleby, but the return to the drawing-room created an opportune diversion. He took up an illustrated paper with a scene from a new play, and after studying it for a few minutes began to denounce the amusements of the gay world in the tone of a man who has known nothing of them, but has let his imagination run into very queer illusions. This passed harmless. Nobody was concerned to defend the actor's vocation where nobody followed it; but Mr. Jones was next so ill-advised as to turn to Miss Hague, and say with a supercilious air that since they last met he had been trying to read a novel, which he mentioned by name—a masterpiece of modern fiction—and really he could not see the good of such works. Miss Hague and he had disagreed on this subject before. She was an inveterate novel-reader, and claimed kindred with a star of chief magnitude in the profession, and to speak lightly of light literature in her presence always brought her out warmly and vigorously in defence and praise of it.
"No good in such works, Mr. Jones!" cried she. "My hair is gray, and this is a solemn fact: for the conduct of life I have found far more counsel and comfort in novels than in sermons, in week-day books than in Sunday preachers!"
There was a startled silence. Miss Burleigh extended a gentle hand to stop the impetuous old lady, but the words were spoken, and she could only intervene as moderator: "Novels show us ourselves at a distance, as it were. I think they are good both for instruction and reproof. The best of them are but the Scripture parables in modern masquerade. Here is one—the Prodigal Son of the nineteenth century, going out into the world, wasting his substance with riotous living, suffering, repenting, returning, and rejoiced over."
"Our Lord made people think: I am not aware that novels make people think," said Mr. Jones with cool contempt.
"Apply your mind to the study of either of these books—Mr. Thackeray's or George Eliot's—and you will not find all its powers too much for their appreciation," said Miss Hague.
Mr. Jones made a slight grimace: "Pray excuse the comparison, Miss Hague, but you remind me of a groom of mine whom I sent up to the Great Exhibition. When he came home again all he had to say was, 'Oh, sir, the saddlery was beautiful!'"
"Nothing like leather!" laughed Lady Angleby.
"He showed his wit—he spoke of what he understood," said Miss Hague. "You undertake to despise light literature, of which avowedly you know nothing. Tell me: of the little books and tracts that you circulate, which are the most popular?"