CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN GEORGE LUCY M.A., AND HIS GODCHILD, HERMIONE RUSSELL, B.A.
My dear Hermione,—I have sent you my little volume of verse translations into English, and you will find appended a few attempts at Latin and Greek renderings of favourite English poems. You must tell me what you think of them, and you must not spare a single blunder or inelegance. I do not expect any reviews, and if there should be none it will not matter, for I proposed to myself nothing more than my own amusement and that of my friends. I would rather have thoroughly good criticism from you than a notice, even if it were laudatory, from a magazine or a newspaper. You have worked hard at your Latin and Greek since we read Homer and Virgil, and you have had better instruction than I had at Winchester. These trifles were published about three months ago, but I purposely did not send you a copy then. You are enjoying your holiday deep in the country, and may be inclined to pardon that incurable old idler, your godfather and former tutor, for a waste of time which perhaps you would not forgive when you are teaching in London. Verse-making is out of fashion now. Goodbye. I should like to spend a week with you wandering through those Devonshire lanes if I could carry my two rooms with me and stick them in a field.
Affectionately,
G. L.
My dear Godfather,—The little Musæ came safely. My love to you for them, and for the pretty inscription. I positively refuse to say a single syllable on your scholarship. I have deserted my Latin and Greek, and they were never good enough to justify me in criticising yours. I have latterly turned my attention to Logic, History, and Moral Philosophy, and with the help of my degree I have obtained a situation as teacher of these sciences. I confess I do not regret the change. They are certainly of supreme importance. There is something to be learned about them from Latin and Greek authors, but this can be obtained more easily from modern writers or translations than by the laborious study of the originals. Do not suppose I am no longer sensible to the charm of classical art. It is wonderful, but I have come to the conclusion that the time spent on the classics, both here and in Germany, is mostly thrown away. Take even Homer. I admit the greatness of the Iliad and the Odyssey, but do tell me, my dear godfather, whether in this nineteenth century, when scores of urgent social problems are pressing for solution, our young people ought to give themselves up to a study of ancient legends? What, however, are Horace, Catullus, and Ovid compared with Homer? Much in them is pernicious, and there is hardly anything in them which helps us to live. Besides, we have surely enough in Chaucer, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, to say nothing of the poets of this century, to satisfy the imagination of anybody. Boys spend years over the Metamorphoses or the story of the wars of Æneas, and enter life with no knowledge of the simplest facts of psychology. I look forward to a time not far distant, I hope, when our whole pædagogic system will be remodelled. Greek and Latin will then occupy the place which Assyrian or Egyptian hieroglyphic occupies now, and children will be directly prepared for the duties which await them.
I have in preparation a book which I expect soon to publish, entitled Positive Education. It will appear anonymously, for society being constituted as it is, I am afraid that my name on the title-page would prevent me from finding employment. My object is to show how the moral fabric can be built up without the aid of theology or metaphysics. I profess no hostility to either, but as educational instruments I believe them to be useless. I begin with Logic as the foundation of all science, and then advance by easy steps (a) to the laws of external nature commencing with number, and (b) to the rules of conduct, reasons being given for them, with History and Biography as illustrations. One modern foreign language, to be learned as thoroughly as it is possible to learn it in this country, will be included. I desire to banish all magic in school training. Everything taught shall be understood. It is easier, and in some respects more advantageous, not to explain, but the mischief of habituating children to bow to the unmeaning is so great that I would face any inconvenience in order to get rid of it. All kinds of objections, some of them of great weight, may be urged against me, but the question is on which side do they preponderate? Is it no objection to our present system that the simple laws most necessary to society should be grounded on something which is unintelligible, that we should be brought up in ignorance of any valid obligation to obey moral precepts, that we should be unable to give any account of the commonest physical phenomena, that we should never even notice them, that we should be unaware, for example, of the nightly change in the position of planets and stars, and that we should nevertheless busy ourselves with niceties of expression in a dead tongue, and with tales about Jupiter and Juno? For what glorious results may we not look when children from their earliest years learn that which is essential, but which now, alas! is picked up unmethodically and by chance? I cannot help saying all this to you, for your Musæ arrived just as my youngest brother came home from Winchester. He was delighted with it, for he is able to write very fair Latin and Greek. That boy is nearly eighteen. He does not know why the tides rise and fall, and has never heard that there has been any controversy as to the basis of ethics.
Your affectionate godchild,
Hermione.
My dear Hermione,—Your letter was something like a knock-down blow. I am sorry you have abandoned your old friends, and I felt that you intended to rebuke me for trifling. A great deal of what you say I am sure is true, but I cannot write about it. Whether Greek and Latin ought to be generally taught I am unable to decide. I am glad I learned them. My apology for my little Musæ must be that it is too late to attempt to alter the habits in which I was brought up. Remember, my dear child, that I am an old bachelor with seventy years behind me last Christmas, and remember also my natural limits. I am not so old, nevertheless, that I cannot wish you God-speed in all your undertakings.
Your affectionate godfather,
G. L.
My dear Godfather,—What a blunderer I am! What deplorable want of tact! If I wanted your opinion on classical education or my scheme I surely might have found a better opportunity for requesting it. It is always the way with me. I get a thing into my head, and out it comes at the most unseasonable moment. It is almost as important that what is said should be relevant as that it should be true. Well, the mistake is made, and I cannot unmake it. I will not trouble you with another syllable—directly at any rate—about Latin and Greek, but I do want to know what you think about the exclusion of theology and metaphysics from the education of the young. I must have debate, so that before publication my ideas may become clear and objections may be anticipated. I cannot discuss the matter with my father. You were at college with him, and you will remember his love for Aristotle, who, as I think, has enslaved him. If I may say so without offence, you are not a philosopher. You are more likely, therefore, to give a sound, unprofessional opinion. You have never had much to do with children, but this does not matter; in fact, it is rather an advantage, for actual children would have distorted your judgment. What has theology done? It is only half-believed, and its rewards and punishments are too remote to be of practical service. They are not seen when they are most required. As to metaphysics, its propositions are too loose. They may with equal ease be affirmed or denied. Conduct cannot be controlled by what is shadowy and uncertain. We have been brought up on theology and metaphysics for centuries, and we are still at daggers drawn upon matters of life and death. We are as warlike as ever, and not a single social problem has been settled by bishops or professors. I wish to try a more direct and, as I believe, a more efficient method. I wish to see what the effect will be of teaching children from their infancy the lesson that morality and the enjoyment of life are identical; that if, for example, they lie, they lose. I should urge this on them perpetually, until at last, by association, lying would become impossible. Restraint which is exercised in accordance with rational principles, inasmuch as it proceeds from Nature, must be more efficacious than an external prohibition. So with other virtues. I should deduce most of them in the same way. If I could not, I should let them go, assured that we could do without them. Now, my dear godfather, do open out to me, and don’t put me off.
Your affectionate godchild,
Hermione.
My dear Hermione,—You terrify me. These matters are really not in my way. I have never been able to tackle big questions. Unhappily for me, all questions nowadays are big. I do not see many people, as you know, and potter about in my garden from morning to night, but Mrs. Lindsay occasionally brings down her friends from London, and the subjects of conversation are so immense that I am bewildered. I admit that some people are too rich and others are too poor, and that if I could give you a vote you should have one, and that boys and girls might be better taught, but upon Socialism, Enfranchisement of Women, and Educational Reform, I have not a word to say. Is not this very unsatisfactory? Nobody is more willing to admit it than I am. It is so disappointing in talking to myself or to others to stop short of generalisation and to be obliged to confess that sometimes it is and sometimes it is not. I bless my stars that I am not a politician or a newspaper writer. When I was young these great matters, at least in our village, were not such common property as they are now. A man, even if he was a scholar, thought he had done his duty by living an honest and peaceable life. He was justified if he was kind to his neighbours and amused himself with his bees and flowers. He had no desire to be remembered for any achievement, and was content to be buried with a few tears and then to be forgotten. All Mrs. Lindsay’s folk want to do something outside their own houses or parishes which shall make their names immortal. . . . I was interrupted by a tremendous thunderstorm and hail. That wonderful rose-bush which, you will recollect, stood on the left-hand side of the garden door, has been stripped just as if it had been scourged with whips. If you have done, quite done with the Orelli you borrowed about two years ago, please let me have it. Why could you not bring it? Mrs. Lindsay was saying only the other day how glad she should be if you would stay with her for a fortnight before you return to town.
Your affectionate godfather,
G. L.
My dear Godfather,—I have sent back the Orelli. How I should love to come and to wander about the meadows with you by the river or sit in the boat with you under the willows. But I cannot, for I have promised to speak at a Woman’s Temperance Meeting next week, and in the week following I am going to read a paper called “An Educational Experiment,” before our Ethical Society. This, I think, will be interesting. I have placed my pupils in difficult historical positions, and have made them tell me what they would have done, giving the reasons. I am thus enabled to detect any weakness and to strengthen character on that side. Most of the girls are embarrassed by the conflict of motives, and I have to impress upon them the necessity in life of disregarding those which are of less importance and of prompt action on the stronger. I have classified my results in tables, so that it may be seen at a glance what impulses are most generally operative.
But to go back to your letter. I will not have you shuffle. You can say so much if you like. Talk to me just as you did when we last sat under the cedar-tree. I must know your mind about theology and metaphysics.
Your affectionate godchild,
Hermione.
My dear Hermione,—I am sorry you could not come. I am sorry that what people call a “cause” should have kept you away. If any of your friends had been ill; if it had been a dog or a cat, I should not have cared so much. You are dreadful! Theology and metaphysics! I do not understand what they are as formal sciences. Everything seems to me theological and metaphysical. What Shakespeare says now and then carries me further than anything I have read in the system-books into which I have looked. I cannot take up a few propositions, bind them into faggots, and say, “This is theology, and that is metaphysics.” There is much “discourse of God” in a May blossom, and my admiration of it is “beyond nature,” but I am not sure upon this latter point, for I do not know in the least what φυσις or Nature is. We love justice and generosity, and hate injustice and meanness, but the origin of virtue, the life of the soul, is as much beyond me as the origin of life in a plant or animal, and I do not bother myself with trying to find it out. I do feel, however, that justice and generosity have somehow a higher authority than I or any human being can give them, and if I had children of my own this is what I should try, not exactly to teach them, but to breathe into them. I really, my dear child, dare not attempt an essay on the influence which priests and professors have had upon the world, nor am I quite clear that “shadowy” and “uncertain” mean the same thing. All ultimate facts in a sense are shadowy, but they are not uncertain. When you try to pinch them between your fingers they seem unsubstantial, but they are very real. Are you sure that you yourself stand on solid granite?
Your affectionate godfather,
G. L.
My dear Godfather,—You are most disappointing and evasive. I gave up the discussion on Latin and Greek, but I did and do want your reply to a most simple question. If you had to teach children—you surely can imagine yourself in such a position—would you teach them what are generally known as theology and metaphysics?—excuse the emphasis. You have an answer, I am certain, and you may just as well give it me. I know that you had rather, or affect you had rather, talk about Catullus, but I also know that you think upon serious subjects sometimes. These matters cannot now be put aside. We live in a world in which certain problems are forced upon us and we are compelled to come to some conclusion upon them. I cannot shut myself up and determine that I will have no opinion upon Education or Socialism or Women’s Rights. The fact that these questions are here is plain proof that it is my duty not to ignore them. You hate large generalisations, but how can we exist without them? They may never be entirely true, but they are indispensable, and, if you never commit yourself to any, you are much more likely to be practically wrong than if you use them.
Take, for example, the Local Veto. I admitted in my speech that there is much to be urged against it. It might act harshly, and it is quite true that poor men in large towns cannot spend their evenings in their filthy homes; but I must be for it or against it, and I am enthusiastically for it, because on the whole it will do good. So with Socialism. The evils of Capitalism are so monstrous that any remedy is better than none. Socialism may not be the direct course: it may be a tremendously awkward tack, but it is only by tacking that we get along. So with positive education, but I have enlarged upon this already. What a sermon to my dear godfather! Forgive me, but you will have to take sides, and do, please, be a little more definite about my book.
Your affectionate godchild,
Hermione.
My dear Hermione,—I haven’t written for some time, for I was unwell for nearly a month. The doctor has given me physic, but my age is really the mischief, and it is incurable. I caught cold through sitting out of doors after dinner with the rector, a good fellow if he would not smoke on my port. To smoke on good port is a sin. He knows my infirmity, that I cannot sit still long, and he excuses my attendance at church. Would you believe it? When I was very bad, and thought I might die, I read Horace again, whom you detest. I often wonder what he really thought upon many things when he looked out on the
“taciturna noctis
signa.”
Justice is not often done to him. He saw a long way, but he did not make believe he saw beyond his limit, and was content with it. A rare virtue is intellectual content!
“Tu ne quæsieris, scire nefas, quem mihi, quem tibi
Finem dî dederint, Leuconoe, nec Babylonios
Tentaris numeros.”
The rector was telling me about Tom Pavenham’s wedding. He has married Margaret Loxley, as you may perhaps have seen in the paper I sent you. Mrs. Loxley, her mother, was a Barfield, and old Pavenham, when he was a youth, fell in love with her. She was also in love with him. He was well-to-do, and farmed about seven hundred acres, but he was not thought good enough by the elder Barfields, who lived in what was called a park. They would not hear of the match. She was sent to France, and he went to Buenos Ayres. After some years had passed he married out there, and she married. His wife died when her first child, a boy, was born. Loxley also died, leaving his wife with an only daughter. Pavenham retired from business in South America, and came back with his son to his native village, where he meant to spend the rest of his days. Tom and Margaret were at once desperately smitten with one another. The father and mother have kept their own flame alive, and I believe it is as bright as it ever was. It is delightful to see them together. They called on me with the children after the betrothal. He was so courteous and attentive to her, and she seemed to bask in his obvious affection. I noticed how they looked at one another and smiled happily as the boy and girl wandered off together towards the filbert walk. The rector told me that he was talking to old Pavenham one evening, and said to him: “Jem, aren’t you sometimes sad when you think of what ought to have happened?” His voice shook a bit as he replied gently: “God be thanked for what we have! Besides, it has all come to pass in Tom and Margaret.”
You must not be angry with me if I say nothing more about Positive Education. It is a great strain on me to talk upon such matters, and when I do I always feel afterwards that I have said much which is mere words. That is a sure test; I must obey my dæmon. I wish I could give you what you want for what you have given me; but when do we get what we want in exchange for what we give? Our trafficking is a clumsy barter. A man sells me a sheep, and I pay him in return with my grandfather’s old sextant. This is not quite true for you and me. Love is given and love is returned. À Dieu—not adieu. Remember that the world is very big, and that there may be room in it for a few creatures like
Your affectionate godfather,
G. L.
