Long may it remain in this mixed world a point not easy of decision, which is the more beautiful evidence of the Almighty’s goodness: the delicate fingers that are formed for sensitiveness and sympathy of touch, and made to minister to pain and grief, or the rough, hard Captain Cuttle hand, that the heart teaches, guides, and softens in a moment!
In the model school of Dickens Doctor Strong is said to have been “the idol of the whole school”; and David adds, “it must have been a badly composed school if he had been anything else, for he was the kindest of men.” Doctor Strong’s wife, who had been his pupil in early life, said:
“When I was very young, quite a little child, my first associations with knowledge of any kind were inseparable from a patient friend and teacher—the friend of my dead father—who was always dear to me. I can remember nothing that I know without remembering him. He stored my mind with its first treasures, and stamped his character upon them all. They never could have been, I think, as good as they have been to me, if I had taken them from any other hands.”
David said, when telling the story of his first introduction to Mr. Murdstone:
“God help me, I might have been improved for my whole life, I might have been made another creature, perhaps, for life, by a kind word at that season. A word of encouragement and explanation, of pity for my childish ignorance, of welcome home, of reassurance to me that it was home, might have made me dutiful to him in my heart henceforth, instead of in my hypocritical outside, and might have made me respect instead of hate him.”
In Bleak House Dickens gave in Esther the most perfect type of human sympathy, and by his pathetic pictures of poor Jo, Phil, the Jellyby children, the Pardiggle children, and others, stirred a great wave of feeling, which led to a recognition of the duty of adulthood to childhood, and taught the value of sympathy in the training of children.
Esther laid down a new law, revealed by Froebel, but given to the English world by Dickens in the weighty sentence, “My comprehension is quickened when my affection is.”
The lack of sympathy in adulthood is revealed for the condemnation of his readers in Mrs. Rachael’s parting from Esther.
Mrs. Rachael was too good to feel any emotion at parting, but I was not so good, and wept bitterly. I thought that I ought to have known her better after so many years, and ought to have made myself enough of a favourite with her to make her sorry then. When she gave me one cold parting kiss upon my forehead, like a thaw drop from the stone porch—it was a very frosty day—I felt so miserable and self-reproachful that I clung to her and told her it was my fault, I knew, that she could say good-bye so easily.
“No, Esther!” she returned. “It is your misfortune!”