by Silverpen [Eliza Meteyard].
Originally published in Howitt's Journal (William & Mary Howitt) vol.3 #55 (15 Jan 1848).
They watched till the little ones had done, and then scarcely was a crumb to be seen, or a spot of tea, and the beautiful wreath lay unbroken round the table.
"Such," said Mason to some of his friends, "is the connexion, even with children, between order and
beauty."
"And with your leave," said Terence with a bow, "I'll take Jean's little boquet. It is so perfect in copula and colour, that it will serve for a design."
Mason nodded assent and took Jean's happy little hand. In a few minutes they were beside the distant table. Cups, crumbs, and tea spots all about, and the few children yet sitting were grumbling over the remnants of the middle dish of cake.
"Here," said Mason, "disorder and the absence of the beautiful. These contrasts teach me a lesson."
Again he pressed Jean's hand, and the child looked up into his own with happy face. Gertrude felt humiliated that she had so scornfully repulsed the beautiful offering of the flowers.
Part II.
The existence of the strong connecting link between beauty and refinement, order and elevation of morals, was made more palpable to Richard Mason by the little incident of Jean's nosegay, than by all the disquisitions on art he had ever read. He saw, as it were, for the first time, that the homes which surround children's lives, were of larger consequence to the elevation of the arts of a country, than the teachings in workshop and school and gallery, and that till the artizan was himself dignified and influenced by the product of his hands, limits were set upon the capabilities of nature, and bonds placed upon the sublime prerogative of beauty. He learnt that home was the shrine of the beautiful, and on this conviction he resolved to act!
A Government School of Design was already established in the immediate vicinity of his extensive pottery, but it was rendered comparatively useless by the ignorance and apathy of the class for whose use it had been chiefly instituted. A score or two of youths, and a few of the more ambitious adults, went, it is true, to sketch the casts and attend the classes of geometry and drawing, but with the skilfulness of handicraft acquired, the result seemed to end. The soul grew not in proportion to readiness and delicacy of touch; grossness and vulgarity of moral being were little dissipated by mere formula of beauty however severe or correct the copy. Once, however, convinced of the sublime tendencies of beauty when fostered and made spiritually operative through its material condition, Richard Mason had conceived too just and too advanced a notion of the great relation between employer and employed to stop short at mere conviction. Let this be said too with the most absolute singleness of purpose, for the result had not yet proved to him how the most advanced position of liberality to the employed is precisely the one which proves most advantageous both to the employer and to the state.
Long cherishing opinions such as these, though not till now so absolutely defined, he had looked forward to the period of marriage with much anticipation, and with earnest faith, that in Gertrude he should find a ready and sympathising coadjutor. But he judged more the circumstances that had made her eminently capable than saw the foibles of her character. They had been engaged to one another from childhood, and Gertrude's father, a country gentleman of old family and large inherited property, had been for the greater part of his life the intimate friend and neighbour of the elder Mason. This property he had deeply involved both through the reckless excesses of early life, and by expensive tastes in art related to antiquities, and the capital of the elder Mason had been so often used to cancel or avert these embarrassments, that at the death of Walmsly, Gertrude's inheritance was a mere one of name. But with the same generosity as he might have used towards his own daughter, Gertrude remained mistress of the old hall and its establishment, nor could it be said that Richard's father entered into possession of what had been so long his, till through his son on his day of marriage. Gertrude was the sole offspring of a union her father had effected late in life, and having been left motherless whilst quite an infant, she had been her father's chosen companion in his various antiquarian rambles, especially as she approached womanhood, during a long residence in Italy. In some degree inheriting his tastes, he had himself made her an excellent draughtswoman, and afterwards perfected this accomplishment—by placing her under the care of a celebrated Roman artist.
Richard had visited Walmsly and his daughter more than once during their residence abroad; the last time not many months before Walmsly's unexpected death from an attack of malaria, caught during some researches in the Campania. Fondly attached to the old man, Richard Mason during these visits, enthusiastically joined him in the one great pursuit of his life, and, usually, in absence delegated to him some commission in the way of purchase, especially of that antique cinerary pottery, found so frequently in the excavations made around the decayed cities of Etruria. In his last visit, before the old man's death, Richard had left a commission of this sort; but it was found after Gertrude's return to England, under the care of a friend, that the purchase made, had so far exceeded the commission in costliness and extent, that a great part of the money remained unpaid, and the articles, still retained by the owner, were likely to pass into the hands of a fresh purchaser. Unable to satisfactorily effect the business through the agency of another person, and unwilling to lose so rare an addition to his collection of antique pottery, Richard, after leaving Gertrude in London with some friends, departed for Italy. He remained absent nearly a year; circumstances connected with necessary design for the pottery at home, extending his tour to Germany, and the art-towns of France.
Gertrude had come home only a few weeks before Richard's return, and his first glimpse of the foibles of her character, her haughty manners, her suddenly acquired love for gaiety and fashionable company, much surprised him, as both were so strongly in opposition to the quiet tastes and gentleness of her girlhood. His love, however, persuaded him that this change would pass away after marriage; and accordingly, without any loss of time after the incident of Jean's nosegay, he laid the plan of a children's school, that might combine rudimental letters with the rudiments of art, and cultivate the sequences of moral order, through the presence of the simplest forms of the beautiful. He next raised the scale of wages through every class of his workmen, so as to leave the barest profit on his own capital, and set to work a certain number of his best modellers to fabricate a quantity of domestic utensils, such as cups and saucers, basins, plates, dishes, jugs, tea-pots, and larger vessels, for holding milk, water, or broth, in the common clay and biscuit used for such purposes, but of the choicest and most advanced forms that combined modern usefulness with the matchless grace of the antique in vase and drinking vessel. For the present he told no one what these were to serve. The whole body of his workmen, bettered in circumstances by this unexpected rise in their wages, which they appreciated the more as it was not the result of higher prices or a greater demand in the market for goods, but, solely owing to the liberality of a good master, willingly, with few exceptions, co-operated in the formation of Richard's school, by taking their children from various small employments connected with their own trade and permitting their attendance. The scholars of both sexes were taught together. Experience teaches us that to separate children at this early age is to prevent the growth of those pure affections on which rests the true advance of the beautiful in our social culture. The children were of the average ages of from four to twelve, and to these were taught, as soon as something like order was obtained, the simple figures of geometry, as much side by side with the alphabet, as the reading-book. The round, thesquare, the plane, were accurately taught before written letters, for as Stothard once beautifully said, nature was her own evidence in these things. The eye perceives, the hand moves, long before comes capability of speech, or ideas are formed, why should not then form become the basis of letters, rather than letters the basis of form.
Richard was most indefatigable in the organization of this little school. That it might be near his usual place of business he devoted to its use some spare and extensive warerooms, opening immediately into the large building used for finished goods and for his more general collection of specimens of antique pottery. It was conducted by a woman who had been previously employed in an infant school. Terence and the other foreign modeller prepared the simple drawing lessons, and twice a week after working hours, assembled each little class. Still, for all this, and his own enthusiastic labours, its success did not in any degree answer his previous expectations; it failed as he was convinced, from lacking a cultivated woman's care in a thousand details of immense importance in the moral, and consequently mental, culture of children. However, the little drawing and reading lessons went on; winter flowers were sent from the hall for the children to lay upon paper and decorate the room, and picture-books, and simple wood engravings were allowed to lie about, and pass from eager hand to hand if the lessons had been attended to. One day in entering the school-room somewhat unexpectedly before his usual time, Mason saw that the table round which the writing class were seated, was not merely sprayed with ink from top to bottom, but almost every copy-book, pinafore, and hand was as dirty. The mistress's reply to his remark was, that she could not help it, children would do so, it was their nature, she supposed. "Till we teach them better," replied Mason, gravely. Hearing this, every little eye was cast down, and every blackened thumb and finger thrust into pockets or beneath pinafores.
"Now children, what makes you all so dirty, eh?" he asked. Every little eye was still more down-cast and not a voicereplied. "Come tell me" and Richard spoke sternly. One lad had at last courage to look furtively up and speak, though his fingers were thrust further into his pockets. "It is the inkstands, please sir, father's a brown 'un at home, just like it, and he don't think nothing of spattering it, 'cause it's only a brown 'un, sir."
"That, however, should not make either your hands or copy-books dirty, should it?"
There was a hanging of small heads again, till the question was repeated, "Please, sir," at last replied a little girl, the brightest and quickest in the school, "we don't think it signifies dipping our pens deep into such as them."