Whatever be the general scheme of elementary, secondary, higher, and technical education and training, Marie Corelli would have the people insist, as for life itself, upon the children being taught “the knowledge and love of God.”
She would have that knowledge imparted in the spirit of which Queen Victoria wrote: “I am quite clear,” said the Queen, speaking of her eldest daughter, then a child, “that she should be taught to have great reverence for God and for religion, and that she should have the feeling of devotion and love which our Heavenly Father encourages His earthly children to have for Him, and not one of fear and trembling.” In “The Master Christian” we see incidentally brought out the evil results of the unhappy law of France which excludes religious education from the schools, the consequence of which is the enormous increase of agnostic thought in that country, and, built upon it, the views and practices which are eating into the heart of that great nation like a foul disease, weakening its numerical strength and its moral and intellectual force. For the guidance of parents in this matter we would commend them to those two most interesting books, “The Mighty Atom” and “Boy.” They are volumes which all parents should read and study. They have already given pause to many callous men and women who were neglecting to bestow that thought on the children’s training which the subject demands. There are many Christian parents who for want of thought neglect this matter and sometimes have only themselves to thank for dissolute sons and impure daughters. On the other hand, to their credit it is the fact that many who are not Christians, who are careless and neglectful of religion, or are even agnostics, insist upon their children receiving that religious education which they themselves once received, with the just and broad-minded idea that, though they have become careless, cynical, or entirely agnostic, the children shall start as they did with the same training and have the same opportunity of forming their own judgment on these matters.
Parents will think deeply over “The Mighty Atom” and “Boy.” Different as the two stories are, they deal essentially with this great question. They both teach serious lessons to the fathers and the mothers of English boyhood. The stories, as such, have been already dealt with. Here we will just give a few of those lessons which it is the object of the works in question to teach.
The author would have children’s bodies educated as well as their minds. She regards the former as the more important for the reason that a healthy body is the most suitable habitation for a healthy mind, and that a keen intellect developed by ruining the physical strength is not calculated to benefit either the individual, or the community to which the individual belongs. Lionel Valliscourt, the little hero of “The Mighty Atom,” has a father and also a tutor, one Montrose. The father is an atheist and anxious to educate the son on a system, part of which is the exclusion of religion from the curriculum. Montrose, a level-headed, clear-brained Scotchman,—no “preacher,” but possessing a simple belief in God—is dismissed from his position because he does not approve the father’s system. This he describes as child-murder; and in the remarks he addresses to the father at their last interview Marie Corelli’s opinions about child-training are indicated:
“I will have no part in child-murder” (says Montrose), ... “Child-murder! Take the phrase and think it over! You have only one child,—a boy of a most lovable and intelligent disposition,—quick-brained, too quick-brained by half!—You are killing him with your hard and fast rules, and your pernicious ‘system’ of intellectual training. You deprive him of such pastimes as are necessary to his health and growth,—you surround him with petty tyrannies which make his young life a martyrdom,—you give him no companions of his own age, and you are, as I say, murdering him,—slowly perhaps, but none the less surely.”
Marie Corelli is absolutely opposed to “cram.” That was what was killing little Lionel. At ten he was well advanced in mathematics, Latin and Greek, history, and even science. No wonder he was often “tired,” or that he felt as if, to use his own words, it wouldn’t be a bad thing to belong to the hybernating species and go to sleep all the winter. Miss Corelli detests cram—the regarding of the young human brain as a sort of expanding bag or hold-all, to be filled with various bulky articles of knowledge, useful or otherwise, till it shows signs of bursting. That was the plan of little Lionel’s new coach, who, after the operation of cramming a youngster’s brain, would then lock up the brain-bag and trust to its carrying the owner through life. If the lock broke and the whole bag gave way, so much the worse for the bag, that was all. That was what happened with poor little Lionel, who hanged himself, tired of the “cram,” and worried into insanity by the loss of his mother, the death of his playmate, and the trouble of considering whether, if there be no God, and death is mere negation, it was really worth while living at all.
Healthy physical exercise, reasonable study, and religion as the basis of that study: so Miss Corelli would train the children.
“Boy” teaches equally healthy lessons, though the story and the circumstances are totally different. “Boy” might have been a fine fellow. He had good qualities. That he became a thief and a forger was the fault of the home circumstances and example. The father of “Boy” was a drunkard and a blackguard, though a man of good family. The lad’s mother was a silly-minded slattern. There was too much discipline brought to bear upon Lionel Valliscourt; far too little was ever tried on “Boy.” The latter, in his early childhood left to himself, or to mix only with street lads, and with parents who, for a foolish “pride,” refused him better training at the hands of others, developed by neglect into a young ruffian, though he turned out well in the end.
Again, in conclusion, we commend these books to parents, and, indeed, to all interested in or engaged in the education and upbringing of children.