The Upton Letters by Arthur Christopher Benson (fiction book recommendations TXT) 📖

our results. We think, to take the same instance, that classics are a very hard subject, and that a great many boys are not adapted to profit by them; we believe that the consequence of boys being kept at a hard subject, which they cannot penetrate or master, leads to a certain cynicism about intellectual things, and that the results of a classical education on many boys are so negative that at all events some experiments ought to be tried.

Well, if all discussions could be conducted patiently, good-humouredly, and philosophically, no harm would be done; but they can't! Men will lose their temper, indulge in personalities, and import bitterness into the question. Moreover, a number of my fiercest opponents are among my best friends here, and that is naturally very painful. Indeed, I feel how entirely unfitted I am for these kinds of controversy. This disgusting business deprives me of sleep, makes me unable to concentrate my mind upon my work, destroys both my tranquillity and my philosophy.

It is a relief to write to you on the subject. Yet I don't see my way out. One must have an opinion about one's life-work. My business is education, and I have tried to use my eyes and see things as they are. I am quite prepared to admit that I may be wrong; but if everybody who formed opinions abstained from expressing them out of deference to the people who were not prepared to admit that they themselves could be mistaken, there would be an end of all progress. Minds of the sturdy, unconvinced order are generally found to range themselves on the side of things as they are; and that is at all events a good guarantee that things won't move too fast, and against the trying of rash experiments.

But I don't want to be rash; I think that for a great many boys our type of education is a failure, and I want to see if something cannot be devised to meet their needs. But my opponents won't admit any failure. They say that the boys who, I think, end by being hopelessly uneducated would be worse off if they had not been grounded in the classics. They say that my theory is only to make things easier for boys; and they add that, if any boy's education is an entire failure (they admit a few incapables are to be found), it is the boy's own fault; he has been idle and listless; if he had worked properly it would have been all right; he would have been fortified; and anyhow, they say, it doesn't matter what you teach such boys--they would have been hopeless anyhow.

Of course the difficulty of proving my case is great. You can't, in education, get two exactly parallel boys and try the effect of different types of education on the two. A chemist can put exactly the same quantity of some salt in two vessels, and, by treating them in different ways, produce a demonstration which is irrefragable. But no two boys are exactly alike, and, while classics are demanded at the university, boys of ability will tend to keep on the classical side; so that the admitted failure of modern sides in many places to produce boys of high intellectual ability results from the fact that boys of ability do not tend to join the modern sides.

So one hammers on, and, as it is always easier to leave an object at rest than to set it moving, we remain very much where we were.

The cynical solution is to say, let us have peace at any cost; let the thing alone; let us teach what we have to teach, and not bother about results. But that appears to me to be a cowardly attitude. If one expresses dissatisfaction to one of the cheerful stationary party, they reply, "Oh, take our word for it, it is all right; do your best; you don't teach at all badly, though you lack conviction; leave it to us, and never mind the discontent expressed by parents, and the cynical contempt felt by boys for intellectual things."


"Meanwhile, regardless of their doom,
The little victims play."


They do indeed! they find work so dispiriting a business that they put it out of their thoughts as much as they can. And when they grow up, conscious of intellectual feebleness, they have no idea of expressing their resentment at the way they have been used--if they are modest, they think that it is their own fault; if they are complacent, they think that intellectual things don't matter.

While I write there comes in one of my cheerful opponents to discuss the situation. We plunge into the subject of classics. I say that, to boys without aptitude, they are dreary and hopelessly difficult. "There you go again," he says, "always wanting to make things EASIER: the thing to do is to keep boys at hard, solid work; it is an advantage that they can't understand what they are working at; it is a better gymnastic." The subject of mathematics is mentioned, and my friend incidentally confesses that he never had the least idea what higher Algebra was all about.

I refrain from saying what comes into my mind. Supposing that he, without any taste for Mathematics, had been kept year after year at them, surely that would have been acting on his principle, viz. to find out what boys can't do and make them do it. No doubt he would say that his mind had been fortified, as it was, by classics. But, if a rigid mathematical training had been employed, his mind might have been fortified into an enviable condition of inaccessibility. But I don't say this; he would only think I was making fun of the whole thing.

Fun, indeed! There is very little amusement to be derived from the situation. My opponents have a strong sense of what they call liberty--which means that every one should have a vote, and that every one should register it in their favour. Or they are like the old-fashioned Whigs, who had a strong belief in popular liberty, and an equally unshaken belief in their own personal superiority.--Ever yours,

T. B.


UPTON, Nov. 22, 1904.


DEAR HERBERT,--"Be partner of my dreams as of my fishing," says the old fisherman to his mate, in that delicious idyll of Theocritus--do read it again. It is one of the little masterpieces that hang for ever in one of the inner secret rooms of the great halls of poetry. The two old men lie awake in their wattled cabin, listening to the soft beating of the sea, and beguiling the dark hour before the dawn, when they must fare forth, in simple talk about their dreams. It is a genre picture, full of simple detail, but with a vein of high poetry about it; all remote from history and civic life, in that eternal region of perfect and quiet art, into which, thank God, one can always turn to rest awhile.

But to-day I don't want to talk of fishermen, or Theocritus, or even art; I want you to share one of my dreams.

I must preface it by saying that I have just experienced a severe humiliation; I have been deeply wounded. I won't trouble you with the sordid details, but it has been one of those severe checks one sometimes experiences, when a mirror is held up to one's character, and one sees an ugly sight. Never mind that now! But you can imagine my frame of mind.

I bicycled off alone in the afternoon, feeling very sore and miserable in spirit. It was one of those cool, fresh, dark November days, not so much gloomy as half-lit and colourless. There was not a breath stirring. The long fields, the fallows, with hedges and coverts, melted into a light mist, which hid all the distant view. I moved in a narrow twilight circle, myself the centre; the road was familiar enough to me; at a certain point there is a little lodge, with a road turning off to a farm. It is many years since I visited the place, but I remembered dimly that there was some interest of antiquity about the house, and I determined to explore it. The road curved away among quiet fields, with here and there a belt of woodland, then entered a little park; there I saw a cluster of buildings on the edge of a pool, all grown up with little elms and ashes, now bare of leaves. Here I found a friendly, gaitered farmer, who, in reply to my question whether I could see the place, gave me a cordial invitation to come in; he took me to a garden door, opened it, and beckoned me to go through. I found myself in a place of incomparable beauty. It was a long terrace, rather wild and neglected; below there were the traces of a great, derelict garden, with thick clumps of box, the whole surrounded by a large earthwork, covered with elms. To the left lay another pool; to the right, at the end of the terrace, stood a small red-brick chapel, with a big Perpendicular window. The house was to the left of us, in the centre of the terrace, of old red brick, with tall chimneys and mullioned windows. My friend the farmer chatted pleasantly about the house, but was evidently prouder of his rose-trees and his chrysanthemums. The day grew darker as we wandered, and a pleasant plodding and clinking of horses coming home made itself heard in the yard. Then he asked me to enter the house. What was my surprise when he led me into a large hall, with painted panels and a painted ceiling, occupying all the centre of the house. He told me a little of the history of the place, of a visit paid by Charles the First, and other simple traditions, showing me all the time a quiet, serious kindness, which reminded one of the entertainment given to the wayfarers of the Pilgrim's Progress.

Once more we went out on the little terrace and looked round; the night began to fall, and lights began to twinkle in the house, while the fire glowed and darted in the hall.

But what I cannot, I am afraid, impart to you is the strange tranquillity that came softly down into my mind; everything took its part in this atmosphere of peace. The overgrown terrace, the mellow brickwork, the bare trees, the tall house, the gentle kindliness of my host. And then I seemed so far away from the world; there was nothing in sight but the fallows and the woods, rounded with mist; it seemed at once the only place in the world, and yet out of it. The old house stood patiently waiting, serving its quiet ends, growing in beauty every year, seemingly so unconscious of its grace and charm, and yet, as it were, glad to be loved. It seemed to give me just the calm, the tenderness I wanted. To assure me that, whatever pain and humiliation there were in the world, there was a strong and loving Heart behind. My host said good-bye to me very kindly, begging me to come again and bring any one to see the place. "We are very lonely here, and it does us good to see a stranger."

I rode away, and stopped at a corner where a last view of the house was possible; it stood regarding me, it seemed, mournfully, and yet with a solemn welcome from its dark windows. And here was another beautiful vignette; close to me, by a hedge, stood an old labourer, a fork in one hand, the other