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Like a golden thread woven through dull gray cloth, or a shaft of sunlight in a gray sky--such is the intermittent appearance of young Crossjay Patterne in the rather depressing book in which a selfish English gentleman is displayed, resting upon himself fold upon fold, every sudden, stealthy snakelike movement confirming the deceit and doings of the Egoist. But Crossjay Patterne isn't included in the book only as a comparison to Sir Willoughby Patterne. With his sincere, outgoing boyish nature, he does present a sharp contrast to the unhappy, self-focused and self-loving Willoughby Patterne. But the author, George Meredith, is a serious student of the mystery we call education. He's studied children and how to handle them, and he has written a very clear, easy-to-read manual in more than one book, about how not to handle them.
But we don't listen. We discuss the plot of one novel, or the symbolism of another, or label the author as a master of some specific style, or quote him as evidence against people who claim that we don't have any great novelists anymore, and make comments about the characters. But we totally miss the fact that philosophy as found in today's philosophy texts
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has become purely academic. Philosophy no longer 'cries at the gates, and the city entrance, and the doors, crying out, I'm calling out to you, people, and my message is for all of you.'
Instead, philosophy has become a school matter. People meet with her there--not so much for the good of their souls, but more for the enjoyment of academic gymnastics.
But philosophy still has two or three hidden havens where we can still hear her saying, 'I'm crying out to you, oh people!' The poets still invite her to visit, and she still appeals to people through them, but her message is often implied, and only someone who's paying attention will catch her meaning. Those few who do strain to hear her coming to the door get valuable oracles, glowing words that have specific meaning for the age they live in.
But in novels, Philosophy speaks more clearly and directly. She takes on all of the aspects that Plutarch attributed to her, reveals human nature for the impoverished thing it really is, and shines a floodlight on our seemingly innocent little ways and moods we try to justify and excuse. And, because philosophy is what teaches us about life, and because our most important task is to raise the next generation, novelists offer us a key to the troubling issue of education.
Young Crossjay is a great example of this. We read that 'real, joyful pleasure came upon Letitia' when young Crossjay Patterne came to live with her. The phrase is perfectly justified, especially considering who it came from. The fact is, a real, joyful pleasure shines from every page on which Crossjay appears. We smile as we read even a mention of him, just like we do when we come across a charming child. Here's how it happened. As we know, Sir Willoughby is like a great sun with a multitude of satellites orbiting around him because of his gift of
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attracting anyone who came into contact with him and causing them to revolve around him. His cousin, Marine Lieutenant Patterne, is one of these orbiting bodies. The fact that he wasn't a part of the regular military services was simply considered a typical English eccentricity. It made interesting conversation after he distinguished the Patterne family name by doing some heroic military action. So, he's dutifully invited to Patterne Hall. One day when Sir Willoughby was proudly strutting in the yard in front of many admirers, most particularly the lady he loves, he spies someone in the distance. It's a rather ordinary, stocky man [Crossjay's father] carrying a suitcase. His quick intuition tells him that this must be his Marine cousin. When the servant produces the Lieutenant's card, he's told that 'nobody's home.' And this answer sets off the fiery trial between cousin Crossjay's higher and lower nature, and the story largely hangs on this struggle.
'Charming' isn't a word most people would use when describing Crossjay. 'He was a twelve-year-old boy, with enough boyish spirit in him for twelve boys.' And, 'He was a rosy-cheeked, chubby rogue of a boy who loved meats and casseroles, and devoured them with the charming confession, stated in innocent simplicity, that he'd never had enough to eat in his whole life.' He said that his four sisters and three brothers were 'all hungry.' I need to relate how he came to live with Letitia. She was one of the many persons who had been drained of vitality by that all-absorbing egoist, Willoughby. He drew his strength from the life force of the people around him. Vernon Whitford was Willoughby's cousin, one of the few who wouldn't allow himself to be absorbed. He
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got a meager salary from Willoughby for helping to manage his estates. Vernon was as outgoing as young Crossjay. He'd heard about cousin Crossjay's large family, and knew that he'd been told, 'nobody's home,' and decided that such a response was shameful and he would obliterate it himself. So he went to Davenport and brought the Lieutenant's oldest son, young Crossjay, home with him, because, we read, 'Vernon Whitford was one of those people who didn't know what to do with their money, didn't have any home repair bills, yet had an uncontrollable desire to spend!' He thought he'd keep Crossjay at the Hall in order to prepare him for the Navy, but he hadn't consulted his host, Willoughby. Sir Willoughby refused to take such a risk. The boy's hair was too red, and his skin was 'too eruptive.' So, instead, Vernon arranged for Crossjay to live at the Dales' cottage. And that's how the 'sunny pleasure' named Crossjay ended up with Letitia. 'The child's pranks, his pure delight in country living, and his muddy wildness amused her from morning til night.' She taught him lessons in the morning if she could catch him, and she taught Vernon in the afternoons if he could catch him--but it was a big 'if.' The child wasn't only lazy. He hated the kind of knowledge that was found in books, and, 'But I don't want to!' was his response to all attempts at persuading him to learn. He had to be dug out of the ground, usually caked with dirt, when it was time for lessons.
This determined hatred for books sounds like a fault in young Crossjay, but we get a clue about why later. When Clara Middleton, the 'dainty rogue made of porcelain,' arrives on the scene, she and Crossjay become good friends. She was concerned about his idleness, and, like a wise teacher, she made an effort to find out what he might enjoy. After running a race with him and winning without even getting out of breath, which
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surprised him, she earned his respect and the right to question him. She makes him admit that girls are better than boys, that they can run faster, and learn their lessons better. 'But,' he says, 'they can't become sailors and soldiers.' She mentions Mary Ambree, Mistress Hannah Snell of Pondicherry, and other obscure heroines, as well as Joan of Arc and Boadicea, and they end up having a serious talk. She says, 'Someone is spoiling you; it's either Miss Dale or Mr. Whitford.' 'They do?' 'Then maybe it's Sir Willoughby.' 'I wouldn't say he spoils me, although I know I can get by him.' This is a secret that many children discover about Mom or Dad, or the babysitter, and make them wonder, 'How is it that those little rascals are able to get by me?'
And then we pat ourselves on the back and think, 'It's just that I'm so good-natured. I'm too kind-hearted to be hard on those little monkeys.' It seems to me that George Meredith included the character of Crossjay to prevent us from deceiving ourselves this way. It's not our wonderful kindheartedness that enables children to get by us--it's because we share some of the same traits as the most wearisome, unbearable character in literature--Sir Willoughby Patterne. It would be a worthwhile and rather sobering exercise for those of us who deal with children to memorize all of the scenes involving Willoughby and Crossjay from The Egoist. Perhaps the best of us will find himself wondering, 'Lord, is it I?' before he's halfway finished. With light touches, such as the conversation between Clara and Crossjay, the serious problems of education are brought up for consideration and, most important of all, some solutions are offered.
A few pages back, we read that Crossjay was very much opposed to acquiring knowledge
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'via books.' But after a few questions about Lord Nelson, he promptly responds with some knowledge he got from books. His answers are as ready as the cannons on a good ship. Nobody ever explained or taught him the kind of naval knowledge that he displays. 'Uncle Vernon bought me the books,' is the only account he offers of his knowledge. Apparently, then, there must be two different kinds of knowledge to be gotten from books--the kind he's opposed to, and the kind he doesn't mind. Here, in this charmingly-told incident, we see the rock that our ship, HMS National Education, crashes into. We keep offering children books about the kind of knowledge they're opposed to instead of the kind they don't mind.
'But it wouldn't be right to make education too interesting,' we say. 'They need to learn the discipline of drudgery, and work that requires effort.' We forget that you can't make a horse drink. In the same way, a child won't assimilate any knowledge if, like Crossjay, he doesn't want to. The information might get into the part of the mind that we call the verbal memory, where it can be retrieved on call without the mind making any change to it, without any ideas touching it, without the imagination warming it. It's just dry information, dead matter that the mind excretes. And that's all the return we get for our hard work when we get knowledge into a child that he doesn't want to learn. No wonder he vomits it all up as soon as he can, and retains a disgusted dislike for more of that kind of knowledge.
But isn't there any knowledge that he does want to know? It's clear that Crossjay, anyway, found some knowledge of that kind in books, and he knew it solidly enough to talk about it as pointedly as if he were at target practice. He was being prepared for the Naval entrance examination, so he probably had textbooks about naval subjects as well as the ones Uncle Vernon gave him. So it can't be the
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subject itself that a child dislikes. He wants to know about foreign lands and far off times, great persons, and, in fact, about all of the very things that we want to teach him. He'd rather get his knowledge from books than to have it poured into him via lectures. Books are more brief, graphic, and satisfying to the mind than listening to someone, unless it's an unusually interesting person. A child actually has a huge hunger to know. If he doesn't want to learn, it's because he isn't getting the right books.
We give children a diet of dry facts that are either condensed or diluted. We don't realize that the mind can't use facts that the brain's intelligence hasn't acknowledged. It takes ideas to stimulate new ideas, and it takes intelligence to awaken more intelligence. The heavily abridged texts that schools use are worthless in education. An encyclopedia is another matter because once our intelligence has been stimulated and our curiosity excited, that's when we consult it. Every school or family library should have a good encyclopedia that every student is allowed to use. If only we could awaken to understand how important the rights books are in education, then we'd find that Goethe was right--'a day is infinitely long,' and we'd no longer hear complaints of over-scheduled curriculums. We've become our own worst enemy--we've brought up students on a diet of dry facts for so long that even we adults are starting to believe what we teach. We travel with Baedeker's travel guides instead of the old, red Murray handbooks [by John Murray; view a sample here] and, as a result, we're becoming informed yet bored instead of intelligent and alert travelers. Our concept of history consists of lists of facts. Yet if three people see the same event down the street and tell about it, we'll discover that circumstantial evidence is unreliable, whether it's historical or something else. Books
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bore us, and no wonder, when you see the kinds of books we choose.
But Crossjay's experience is encouraging. He would have done great if he'd taken today's Naval entrance examination. He liked the kind of knowledge that the world is just now discovering the value of, and he knew how to get it. He knew the habits of birds and where to look for their eggs. He knew all about fish and how to catch them. He knew how to manage rabbits. Before longed, he had wandered over hundreds of miles of the country. Someone had shown him a collection of all kinds of birds that are native to England, and after seeing them just once, he could describe 'fern owls, which had more mouth than they had head, and dusky wings with dark spots like a moth, all very detailed.' We're finally recognizing the use of nature-knowledge, but we ruin everything by the way we teach it! We're not content for children to know the things of nature in the same way they know a friend, by the way they look and act. That's an unconscious comprehensive kind of knowledge that sinks in as a result of a lot of observation. Instead, we assign them fragmentary scraps of scientific research. So they set out to investigate, and lose the joy of seeing. Their attention is focused on this or that detail, and they lose the all-around awareness which is the most important tool of a student of nature. Some day we'll wake up and realize that our method of nature study doesn't add a thing to the joy of living. Children in the future won't feel any thrill of spying the little spot of red under the tail feathers of a little brown bird. Yet every small boy likes to know these kinds of things, and it will be a sad day when our method of 'nature study' has driven that kind of knowledge out of existence.
Like any other boy, Crossjay has his loyalties. He has a passion for the British Navy, and can
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even be persuaded to get through the routine of daily lessons for its sake. He thinks of his father as the kind of man who was 'good enough to lead an army,' and that presents a problem that he pondered in his childish way, bringing it up again and again, to the dismay of friends. He always came to the same climax ('he walked ten miles in the rain'), but never actually came to a conclusion. He just kept turning it over and over in his mind, hoping that eventually a conclusion would arrive. That's the way young people work. They observe, remember and keep moral questions in suspended animation until some crisis or slight event triggers a conclusion that becomes part their moral being for the rest of their lives, for better or worse. This is Crossjay's moral problem: 'My father's the kind of man who's good enough to lead an army. But, Mr. Whitford, Sir Willoughby is so kind to me and gives me silver dollars. Why did he refuse to see my father? My father walked ten miles in the rain to see him, and he had to walk all ten miles back, and sleep at a hotel.'
But we won't consider Sir Willoughby just now. For the moment, it's enough to understand why he wasn't one of Crossjay's loyalties. But Vernon Whitford was, in spite of cousin Willoughby's attempts to make him out to be a stern slave-driver.
Crossjay tells Clara Middleton that he would go to the bottom of the river for Vernon Whitford. Crossjay is shrewd, too--he believes that Whitford is supporting him as a way to make up for the grievous abuse of his father being sent back in the rain. That offense pricked his anger, and filled him with righteous indignation. And how did he feel about Clara? He was her knight, chivalrous in obeying her will (even when it meant losing his dinner!), full of unbounded love, admiration, respect, and
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a pleasant friendship that she encouraged. They both loved wildflowers, games, sincere openness, birds, and all living things. That was plenty of basis for friendship!
In connection with this friendship, we get a peek into boy nature that will benefit us to observe. Clara was reclining on the grass with half-closed eyes as she talked to him. We read that if she'd been sitting up, he would have sprang forward and kissed her!
This shows us a decent, moral boy's unconscious reverence for the holy mystery of sex. There's not much that's more offensive and more likely to result in disaster than the way we deliberately undermine a child's divinely-given reverence in our hurry to provide knowledge about matters that aren't meant for the mind. Chivalry, honor, tact, obedience, and passionate obedience to God's law--these are the chords within the child that we need to play on if we want our youths to be pure. But we have to believe that chivalry and purity are already there within them, rather than foreign concepts that we need to introduce with lectures. This is where parents often fail. They're aware that there's evil within their child, so they make allowance for it, and this proves to be a deadly mistake. And then their suspicions create the very evils they dread! We've seen how Helen Pendennis believed the worst about her son when it wasn't the case. One would think that she believed the worst in order to create an opportunity to make sacrifices for him. It's good for us to recognize that suspicion is also a sin. It results in mistrust and offense.
I think we'd have the Utopia we dream of if we realized what kinds of wellsprings of goodness are within our children just waiting for the right touch to make them burst to life. Crossjay is nothing more than an ordinary nice boy, but we see that he has everything he needs for living a noble life, except
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for knowledge, and a few specific physical and mental habits. He behaves like a man of honor when he overhears some talk after he wakes up under the sofa-rug. Although he has a burning sense that his lady has been wronged, he has all the wit and delicacy of a gentleman. He knew that the offer made to another lady was something that shouldn't be talked about, but needed to have something proactive done about it, only it was beyond his power to do anything about it. And this suggests one reason why boarding school is so good for boys. They have more opportunity to practice common sense, perception, discrimination, and gentlemanly sensitivity in a school where the students operate more like a democracy, than they ever get at home, where the parents have all the authority, even if it's a kindly authority.
And this is how Crossjay is presented to us, with skillful writing. He's a very 'human boy,' to quote the immoral Mr. Chadband. This 'human boy' is delightful to us. We recognize everything he already is as a person. We also see where he needs safeguards in order to give him room to develop as he should.
It seems like we barely get to know Crossjay before he comes to a crossroad in his life. He encounters a moral crisis, which we watch anxiously. Because Meredith is a master writer, we're totally unprepared and surprised by the temptation that Crossjay is faced with. Yet it's a very common temptation, and more promising children are ruined by this than by any other cause. This is the situation: We know that Willoughby refused to let Crossjay live in his home. All the same, he took on the attitude of a patron. It was only natural, maybe even inevitable. It's good to see him with young Crossjay. A casual observer would think that he's perfect with the boy--he's 'amused, indulgent, almost playful.' He always has a joke or game for him, catches him by the elbows and tosses him into
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the air, laughs at his idleness and mischief, and is a delightful contrast with Vernon Whitford's 'scholarly sternness.' 'He had the attitude of a British father who's permissive about the kinds of things kids like and boyish pranks, and he was good about providing pocket money.' Here's another way he was different from Vernon Whitford. 'He didn't act like the kind of teacher who gets poor little children in their grips like hookworms.' Willoughby poses as the kind of person he's not, and the kind of person he's impersonating is admirable. In fact, it's just the kind of person that everyone who works with children is tempted to be like, especially people, including fathers and teachers, who neglect the responsibility of their task and try to win popularity by adopting good-natured ways with their charges. It's surprising that Crossjay wasn't fooled. He enjoyed it, since it's human nature to take to that kind of personality. He would run up to his patron Willoughby, accept his pocket money--'usually half a crown, but one time it was a whole sovereign'-- and he genuinely enjoyed his jokes and antics. And yet, was it the memory of his father being sent back to walk ten miles in the rain, or was it the constant reminder of that cruel treatment every time he saw other circumstances that were so trivial, he was hardly aware of noticing them? That seems to be how we're reminded of the faults and failings of people around us. We think they're forgiven and forgotten until we remember them because of some new evidence about the same defect. But Willoughby would have been too much for Crossjay if it hadn't been for the help of his friends. Crossjay wanted to be an official 'gentleman,' the kind that doesn't work, but plays, rides, and generally takes it easy through life. But he couldn't do these things and get into the Navy. Willoughby, for no other reason than enjoying another person hanging on to him, deliberately decided that Crossjay shouldn't work. Instead,
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he should depend on Willoughby for whatever he wanted and liked to do. The title of the novel tells us why. After all, wasn't he The Egoist, whose every action and motivation was designed to magnify himself? Crossjay finally did cram and take the Naval entrance exam, so he was finally saved, but it practically causes an earthquake at Patterne Hall, a complete overthrow of the perspectives of all the people whose lives revolved around the Patterne gentleman. But the lesson is there for all of to learn from.
There are lots of ways that we act like 'egoists' with the children in our sphere, but 'the attitude of a British father who's permissive about the kinds of things kids like and boyish pranks, and he was good about providing pocket money' is without doubt the most fatal. We appeal to a child's lower nature to make him like us, and, since all humans have a lower nature, it almost always works. If we think of him as a creature who can be won with money and candy, then we'll turn him into just that sort of person, and then we'll have to live with the results. Egotism is a subtle trap, and it's hard to be aware of it, but keeping our goals narrowly in focus will help us. If we respect children for themselves just the way they are instead of only thinking about the things we do for them, or their opinion of us, or how our relationship looks to spectators, and other self-involved motives; and if we focus outwardly on the children themselves, instead of always focusing on ourselves, then we'll be able to see them as they really are. We'll be able to recognize all the great possibilities that they have as children, and all the fearful dangers that we need to guide them through.
All of us need instruction about the art of raising children. For that reason, we're grateful to the philosopher who gave us the character of 'young Crossjay.'