It is confidently asserted in England, and by those who really think they know whereof they speak, that although such torture-houses as Dotheboys Hall certainly did exist, even so lately as Dickens wrote, the publication of "Nicholas Nickleby," by turning attention upon the abuse, effectually swept it out of English civilization. We "smile bitterly," as romance people do, whenever we hear this assertion. For were we not ourselves inmates of Dothegirls Hall not very long ago, and do we not positively know, without perhaps or peradventure, that it lives and thrives and tortures yet, at the very instant of this writing?
Miss Sally kept a boarding-school and Miss Betsy took lodgers in the wide chambers of St. John's. We were among the lodgers, and our dining-room overlooked the gorse-golden meadows and the Avon, one side-window, however, commanding the court-yard of the house. Our way out of doors from our rooms led past the "dormitory" of the school and down-stairs through the "refectory." Thus we had ample opportunity for observation and to embitter our souls with knowledge of the interior life of English Dothegirls Halls.
The "school" occupied four rooms,—dining-room, school-room, and two bedrooms, the boys' dormitory and the girls'. The interior of the boys' room we never saw, but the girls' we have surreptitiously stolen into, and a more wretched, dingy, comfortless place it would be difficult to imagine. All the girls—and there were ten or twelve of them—slept in this limited space; they made their toilets, with one single towel for the whole school, at the groaning pump beneath our window, and they looked miserable and forlorn wherever we saw them, whether waiting upon us as servants at our table or staring up anxiously from the court below waiting the shaking of our table-cloth and the possible crusts that might fall therefrom.
The school-room also chanced to be just beneath, and all through school-hours of the long summer days we heard the shrill scoldings and vicious threats with which Miss Sally fulfilled her mission.
"What ever is a noun?" came floating into our ivied windows a dozen times a day.
"A noun's a-a-a—a noun's a-a-a—"
"Go to the dormitory, you good-for-nothing, and find out on dry bread that a noun's a name of anything, like helefunt, hantelope, heagle, 'and, 'eart, ighway."
Miss Sally, with furtive eyes and sly movements, always reminded us by her speech of the ci-devant butcher we once saw in London, who assured us he was "heducated at Hoxford."
The refectory had a sunken stone floor, and bare walls enclosing space enough to feed a hundred monks. It was principally used for drying clothes in wet weather and for storage of trunks and rough objects. At one end, where were fewest signs of volcanic upheaval or the passing of centuries of busy feet, stood always the table at which the pupils took their scanty fare. No white cloth ever covered this banqueting-board. In the daytime it was draped in a coarse green baize spotted with ink and grease. The pupils feasted upon this cloth, each with coarse mug and plate; at night it was removed to serve as cover for one of the beds! Once upon a time came an unexpected cold snap in the very heart of the soft Warwickshire summer. The sheets and blankets upon our beds, as also the silver and linen of our private table, were all marked with the pupils' names,—the school prospectus announcing that both linen and silver must come with each pupil. The supply of blankets, however, proved insufficient for such unseasonable weather, and, like Oliver Twist, we asked for "more."
"More" came.