“You are like my father, I sometimes think. You are hard enough and cold enough so to have brought up an acknowledged son. I see your scanty figure, your close brown suit, and your tight brown wig; but you, too, wear a wax mask to your death. You never by a chance remove it; it never by a chance falls off; and I know no more of you.”
CHAPTER X.
CHILD STUDY AND CHILD NATURE.
Dickens was a profound student of children, and he revealed his consciousness of the need of a general study of childhood in all he wrote about the importance of a free childhood, individuality, the imagination, coercion, cramming, and wrong methods of training children.
He criticised the blindness of those who saw boys as a class or in a limited number of classes, distinguished by external and comparatively unimportant characteristics, in Mr. Grimwig, “who never saw any difference in boys, and only knew two sorts of boys, mealy boys and beef-faced boys.”
He exposed the ignorance—the wilful ignorance—of vast numbers of parents and teachers who indignantly resent the suggestion that they need to study children, in Jane Murdstone. When Jane was interfering in the management of David, and with her brother totally misunderstanding him and misrepresenting him, his timid mother ventured to say:
“I beg your pardon, my dear Jane, but are you quite sure—I am certain you’ll excuse me, my dear Jane—that you quite understand Davy?”
“I should be somewhat ashamed of myself, Clara,” returned Miss Murdstone, “if I could not understand the boy, or any boy. I don’t profess to be profound, but I do lay claim to common sense.”