Culture & Anarchy. Arnold Matthew
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this country the Middle Class has no naturally defined limits, and that it is difficult to say who properly belong to it and who do not, he adopts an educational test. The Middle Class means the people who are brought up at a particular kind of school, and to illustrate that kind of school he has recourse to his newly-discovered treasure. "Much as I have published, I do not think it has ever yet happened to me to comment in print upon any production of Charles Dickens. What a pleasure to have the opportunity of praising a work so sound, a work so rich in merit, as David Copperfield!... Of the contemporary rubbish which is shot so plentifully all round us, we can, indeed, hardly read too little. But to contemporary work so good as David Copperfield we are in danger of perhaps not paying respect enough, of reading it (for who could help reading it?) too hastily, and then putting it aside for something else and forgetting it. What treasures of gaiety, invention, life, are in that book! what alertness and resource! what a soul of good nature and kindness governing the whole! Such is the admirable work which I am now going to call in evidence. Intimately, indeed, did Dickens know the Middle Class; he was bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh. Intimately he knew its bringing-up. With the hand of a master he has drawn for us a type of the teachers and trainers of its youth, a type of its places of education. Mr. Creakle and Salem House are immortal. The type itself, it is to be hoped, will perish; but the drawing of it which Dickens has given cannot die. Mr. Creakle, the stout gentleman with a bunch of watch-chain and seals, in an armchair, with the fiery face and the thick veins in his forehead; Mr. Creakle sitting at his breakfast with the cane, and a newspaper, and the buttered toast before him, will sit on, like Theseus, for ever. For ever will last the recollection of Salem House, and of the 'daily strife and struggle' there; the recollection 'of the frosty mornings when we were rung out of bed, and the cold, cold smell of the dark nights when we were rung into bed again; of the evening schoolroom dimly lighted and indifferently warmed, and the morning schoolroom which was nothing but a great shivering-machine; of the alternation of boiled beef with roast beef, and boiled mutton with roast mutton; of clods of bread and butter, dog's-eared lesson-books, cracked slates, tear-blotted copy-books, canings, rulerings, hair-cuttings, rainy Sundays, suet puddings, and a dirty atmosphere of ink surrounding all.' By the Middle Class I understand those who are brought up at establishments more or less like Salem House, and by educators more or less like Mr. Creakle. And the great mass of the Middle part of our community, the part which comes between those who labour with their hands, on the one side, and people of fortune on the other, is brought up at establishments of this kind, although there is a certain portion broken off at the top which is educated at better. But the great mass are both badly taught, and are also brought up on a lower plane than is right, brought up ignobly. And this deteriorates their standard of life, their civilization."
It surely must have been Salem House, or an institution very like it, that produced the delicious letter quoted by Arnold in his General Report for 1867. Even Mr. Anstey Guthrie never excelled it in the letter dictated by Dr. Grimstone to his pupils at Crichton House.
"My dear Parents.—The anticipation of our Christmas vacation abounds in peculiar delights. Not only that its 'festivities,' its social gatherings and its lively amusements crown the old year with happiness and mirth, but that I come a guest commended to your hospitable love by the performance of all you bade me remember when I left you in the glad season of sun and flowers. And time has sped fleetly since reluctant my departing step crossed the threshold of that home whose indulgences and endearments their temporary loss has taught me to value more and more. Yet that restraint is salutary, and that self-reliance is as easily learnt as it is laudable, the propriety of my conduct and the readiness of my services shall ere long aptly illustrate. It is with confidence I promise that the close of every year shall find me advancing in your regard by constantly observing the precepts of my excellent tutors and the example of my excellent parents.
"We break up on Thursday, the 11th of December instant, and my impatience of the short delay will assure my dear parents of the filial sentiments of
"Theirs very sincerely,
"N.
"P.S. We shall reassemble on the 19th of January. Mr. and Mrs. P. present their respectful compliments."
The present writer lately asked a close observer of educational matters if Arnold had produced any practical effect on Secondary Education, and the answer was—"He pulled down the strongholds of such as Mr. Creakle." If he did that, he did much; and it is a eulogy which he would have greatly appreciated. Let us see how far it was deserved. Let us admit at the outset that Mr. Squeers is dead; but then he was dead before Arnold took in hand to reform our system of Education. Mr. Creakle, it is to be feared, still exists, though his former assistant, the more benign Mr. Mell, has to some extent supplanted him. Dr. Blimber is, perhaps, a little superannuated, but still holds his own. Dr. Grimstone is going strong and well. In a word, the Private School for bigger boys—(we are not thinking of Preparatory Schools for little boys)—still exists and even flourishes. Now, if Arnold could have had his way, the Private School for bigger boys would long since have disappeared. "Mr. Creakle's stronghold" would have been pulled down, and Salem House and Crichton House and Lycurgus House Academy would have crumbled into ruins.
And what would he have raised in their place? He wrote so often and so variously about Education—now in official reports, now in popular essays, now again in private letters, that it is not difficult to detect some inconsistencies, some contradictions, some changes of view. Indeed, it needs but the alteration of a single word to justify, at least to some extent, the "damning sentence," which, according to Arnold, Mr. Frederic Harrison "launched" against him in 1867. "We seek vainly in Mr. A. a system of philosophy with principles coherent, interdependent, subordinate, and derivative." For "Philosophy" read "Education," and the reproach holds good. For in Education, as in everything else that he touched, he proceeded rather by criticism than by dogma—by showing faults in existing things rather than by theoretically constructing perfection. Yet, after all said and done, his general view of the subject is quite plain. He had in his mind an idea or scheme of what National Education ought to be; and, though from time to time he changed his view about details and methods, the general outline of his scheme is clear enough.
One of the most characteristic passages which he ever wrote is that in which he describes his interview in 1865 with Cardinal Antonelli, then Secretary of State at Rome. "When he asked me what I thought of the Roman schools, I said that, for the first time since I came on the Continent, I was reminded of England. I meant, in real truth, that there was the same easy-going and absence of system on all sides, the same powerlessness and indifference of the State, the same independence in single institutions, the same free course for abuses, the same confusion, the same lack of all idea of co-ordering things, as the French say—that is, of making them work fitly together to a fit end; the same waste of power, therefore the same extravagance, and the same poverty of result."
Enlarging on this congenial theme, and applying it to England and English requirements, he promulged in 1868 a very revolutionary scheme for Public Education. At the apex of the pyramid there should be a Minister of Education. "Merely for administrative convenience he is, indeed, indispensable. But it is even more important to have a centre in which to fix responsibility." In 1886 he said to the teachers at Westminster, "I know the Duke of Richmond told the House of Lords that, as Lord President, he was Minister of Education—(laughter)—but really the Duke of Richmond's sense of humour must have been slumbering when he told the House of Lords that. A man is not Minister of Education by taking the name, but by doing the functions. (Cheers.) To do the functions he must put his mind to the subject of education; and so long as Lord Presidents are what they are, and education is what it is, a Lord President will not be a man who puts his mind to the subject of education. A Vice-President is not, on the Lord President's own showing, and cannot be, Minister for Education. He cannot be made responsible for faults and neglects. Now what we want in a Minister for Education is this—a centre where we can fix the responsibility." This great and responsible officer, who presumably was to be a Cabinet Minister and change with the changes of administration, was to preside over the whole education of the country. The Universities, the Public Schools, the Middle-Class Schools, and the Elementary Schools were all to be, in greater or less degree, subject to his sway. The Minister was to be assisted by a Council of Education, "comprising, without regard to politics, the personages most proper to be heard on questions