Practical Education. Maria Edgeworth

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      CHAPTER IV.

      SERVANTS

       Table of Contents

      "Now, master,"[33] said a fond nurse to her favourite boy, after having given him sugared bread and butter for supper, "now, master, kiss me; wipe your mouth, dear, and go up to the drawing room to mamma; and when mistress asks you what you have had for supper, you'll say, bread and butter, for you have had bread and butter, you know, master." "And sugar," said the boy; "I must say bread and butter and sugar, you know."

      How few children would have had the courage to have added, "and sugar!" How dangerous it is to expose them to such temptations! The boy must have immediately perceived the object of his nurse's casuistry. He must guess that she would be blamed for the addition of the sugar, else why should she wish to suppress the word? His gratitude is engaged to his nurse for running this risk to indulge him; his mother, by the force of contrast, appears a severe person, who, for no reason that he can comprehend, would deprive him of the innocent pleasure of eating sugar. As to its making him sick, he has eat it, and he is not sick; as to its spoiling his teeth, he does not care about his teeth, and he sees no immediate change in them: therefore he concludes that his mother's orders are capricious, and that his nurse loves him better because she gives him the most pleasure. His honour and affection towards his nurse, are immediately set in opposition to his duty to his mother. What a hopeful beginning in education! What a number of dangerous ideas may be given by a single word!

      The taste for sugared bread and butter is soon over; but servants have it in their power to excite other tastes with premature and factitious enthusiasm. The waiting-maid, a taste for dress; the footman, a taste for gaming; the coachman and groom, for horses and equipage; and the butler, for wine. The simplicity of children is not a defence to them; and though they are totally ignorant of vice, they are exposed to adopt the principles of those with whom they live, even before they can apply them to their own conduct.

      The young son of a lady of quality, a boy of six or seven years old, addressed, with great simplicity, the following speech to a lady who visited his mother.

      Boy. Miss N——, I wish you could find somebody, when you go to London, who would keep you. It's a very good thing to be kept.

      Lady. What do you mean, my dear?

      Boy. Why it's when—you know, when a person's kept, they have every thing found for them; their friend saves them all trouble, you know. They have a carriage and diamonds, and every thing they want. I wish somebody would keep you.

      Lady, laughing. But I'm afraid nobody would. Do you think any body would?

      Boy, after a pause. Why yes, I think Sir——, naming a gentleman whose name had, at this time, been much talked of in a public trial, would be as likely as any body.

      The same boy talked familiarly of phætons and gigs, and wished that he was grown up, that he might drive four horses in hand. It is obvious that these ideas were put into the boy's head by the servants with whom he associated.

      Without supposing them to be profligate, servants, from their situation, from all that they see of the society of their superiors, and from the early prejudices of their own education, learn to admire that wealth and rank to which they are bound to pay homage. The luxuries and follies of fashionable life they mistake for happiness; they measure the respect they pay to strangers by their external appearance; they value their own masters and mistresses by the same standard; and in their attachment there is a necessary mixture of that sympathy which is sacred to prosperity. Setting aside all interested motives, servants love show and prodigality in their masters; they feel that they partake the triumph, and they wish it to be as magnificent as possible. These dispositions break out naturally in the conversation of servants with one another; if children are suffered to hear them, they will quickly catch the same tastes. But if these ideas break out in their unpremeditated gossiping with one another, how much more strongly will they be expressed when servants wish to ingratiate themselves into a child's affections by flattery! Their method of showing their attachment to a family, is usually to exaggerate in their expressions of admiration of its consequence and grandeur; they depreciate all whom they imagine to be competitors in any respect with their masters, and feed and foster the little jealousies which exist between neighbouring families. The children of these families are thus early set at variance; the children in the same family are often taught, by the imprudence or malice of servants, to dislike and envy each other. In houses where each child has an attendant, the attendants regularly quarrel, and, out of a show of zeal, make their young masters and mistresses parties in their animosity. Three or four maids sometimes produce their little dressed pupils for a few minutes to the company in the drawing room, for the express purpose of seeing which shall obtain the greatest share of admiration. This competition, which begins in their nurses' arms, is continued by daily artifices through the whole course of their nursery education. Thus the emulation of children is rendered a torment to them, their ambition is directed to absurd and vile purposes, the understanding is perverted, their temper is spoiled, their simplicity of mind, and their capability of enjoying happiness, materially injured.

      The language and manners, the awkward and vulgar tricks which children learn in the society of servants, are immediately perceived, and disgust and shock well-bred parents. This is an evil which is striking and disgraceful; it is more likely to be remedied than those which are more secret and slow in their operation: the habits of cunning, falsehood, envy, which lurk in the temper, are not instantly visible to strangers; they do not appear the moment children are reviewed by parents; they may remain for years without notice or without cure.

      All these things have been said a hundred times; and, what is more, they are universally acknowledged to be true. It has passed into a common maxim with all who reflect, and even with all who speak upon the subject of education, that "it is the worst thing in the world to leave children with servants." But, notwithstanding this, each person imagines that he has found some lucky exception to the general rule. There is some favourite maid or phœnix of a footman in each family, who is supposed to be unlike all other servants, and, therefore, qualified for the education of children. But, if their qualifications were scrupulously examined, it is to be feared they would not be found competent to the trust that is reposed in them. They may, nevertheless, be excellent servants, much attached to their masters and mistresses, and sincerely desirous to obey their orders in the management of their pupils; but this is not sufficient. In education it is not enough to obey the laws; it is necessary to understand them, to understand the spirit, as well as the letter of the law. The blind application of general maxims will never succeed; and can that nice discrimination which is necessary to the just use of good principles, be expected from those who have never studied the human mind, who have little motive for the study, whose knowledge is technical, and who have never had any liberal education? Give, or attempt to give, the best waiting-maid in London the general maxim, "That pain should be associated with whatever we wish to make children avoid doing; and pleasure should be associated with whatever we wish that children should love to do;" will the waiting-maid understand this, even if you exchange the word associated СКАЧАТЬ