The bell for Mass sounds from the Parish Church a little bit down the river, and you follow your host and Margaret to the door to find Dame Alice (more stately than ever in her blue cloak and white head-dress), waiting to take Master More’s arm, and head the family procession, by the path they have made for themselves by the end of the meadows to the little church. What an appetite you carry home with you, and how the sweetness of that morning hour in the quaint old English church lingers with the band that seats itself for breakfast in the long hall, afterwards, making the meal a veritable “agape,” a feast of love! What merry jests and quips are bandied round, and how heartily your host makes you feel yourself of the company when you prove yourself not inapt to catch and throw back the light and shining ball of words aimed at you by Henry Pattieson, the official jester to the household. And so the morning hours pass.
And now it is time for Master More to make himself ready for the day’s business in the Law Courts. It appears, however, that you need not terminate your pleasant visit so quickly. It is proposed by the master of the house himself, seconded most cordially by Dame Alice, and passed with acclamation by the whole band of youngsters, that you spend yet another day in this hospitable household, and strengthen your acquaintance with its inmates. It is not to be expected, as you perfectly agree when the fact is pointed out to you by Dame Alice, that that good lady should spend much time with you, having heavy household duties to attend to, but the girls will be free presently, and as for the boys, having nothing more important to do than lessons, they and Master Gunnel are ready to devote themselves to you immediately.
But first Master More has to be seen off, and kerchiefs and sashes have to be waved at him from the water-stairs, until his barge grows smaller and smaller, and finally the speck it has become has been caught into the distance. Then off go the girls, under the bustling and energetic directions of Dame Alice, to help in the dairy or kitchen, or attend to the wants of the poor, whose meals are as regular a part of the household machinery as those of the family themselves. In the meantime you go to the schoolroom with Master Gunnel and the boys—young John Clement, and Jack Dancey, and Will Roper, wards or protégés of Master More, and the son of the house, young John More. A word or two puts you in possession of the present position and future prospects of the lads. Young Clement has a marked taste for medicine, and is already a distinguished botanist. He has been taken into the household at the recommendation of Dean Colet, at whose School of St. Paul’s he has already distinguished himself, and while pursuing his own Greek and Latin studies under Master Gunnel, preparatory to entering Oxford, he acts as assistant tutor and directs the botanical researches of the others. Will Roper is a ward of Master More, and Jack Dancey is the son of a legal client, whom the good man has taken into his house until his affairs can be settled. Otherwise it were ill for young Dancey, of whose estates the lawyers alone draw the profits. To balance matters, Dancey, very wisely, proposes to became a lawyer himself. As for Jack More, you know a little of his abilities already—but it needs no Master Gunnel to tell you presently when you shall be alone with him—the boys being given a task to do, and sent into the garden with it—that in the matter of brains, poor Jack can never hope to compete with his sisters.
You venture to remark that it is a pity, but you do not find Master Gunnel over ready to agree with you.
“For my part,” he says, “I hold with Master More that the harvest will not be much affected whether it is a man or a woman who sows the field. In truth, it is a matter on which he hath done me the honour to put his views in writing, at some length—if you care to see his letter, I have it at hand.”
Indeed, you care very much, and presently you are seated in a comfortable window seat, with the treasured letter spread out on your knees.
To your shame, be it spoken, you read the Latin with less ease than Cecy or Jack would show; noting which, Master Gunnel unostentatiously begins to read in English some of the more important passages.
“Listen to this,” he counsels you, pointing to a marked passage, and thereupon begins:—
“Nor do I think that the harvest will be much affected whether it is a man or a woman who sows the field. They both have the same human nature, which reason differentiates from that of beasts; both, therefore, are equally suited for those studies by which reason is perfectioned, and becomes fruitful like a ploughed land, on which the seed of good lessons has been sown. If it be true that the soil of woman’s brain be bad, and apter to bear bracken than corn, by which saying many keep women from study, I think, on the contrary, that a woman’s wit is, on that account, all the more diligently to be cultivated, that nature’s defect may be redressed by industry. This was the opinion of the ancients, of those who were most prudent as well as most holy. Not to speak of the rest, St. Jerome and St. Augustine not only exhorted excellent matrons and most noble virgins to study, but also, in order to assist them, diligently explained the abstruse meanings of Holy Scripture, and wrote for tender girls letters replete with so much erudition, that now-a-days old men, who call themselves professors of sacred science, can scarcely read them correctly, much less understand them. Do you, my learned Gunnel, have the kindness to see that my daughters thoroughly learn these works of those holy men....”
“So that is the explanation of the Saint Augustine we found on Margaret’s desk yesterevening?”