Chapter 2 Docility and Authority in the Home and the School
Part II.––How Authority Behaves
Mistakes made on Principle.––Mr. Augustus Hare has, apparently, what somebody calls a bad memory, i.e. one which keeps a faithful record of every slight and offence that had been done to him since the day he was born! For this reason The Story of My Life (by Augustus Hare––George Allen.) is not quite pleasant reading, though it is full of interesting details. But all is fish that comes to our net. We have seldom had a more instructive record of childhood, even if we must allow that the instruction comes to us on the lines of what not to do. The fine character and beautiful nature of Mrs. Augustus Hare have been known to the world since the Memorials of a Quiet Life were published by this very son; and when we find how this lady misinterpreted the part of mother to her adopted and dearly beloved son, we know that we are not reading of the mistakes of an unworthy or even of a commonplace woman. Mrs. Hare always acted upon principle, and when she erred, the principle was in fault. She confounded the two principles of authority and autocracy. She believed that there was some occult virtue in arbitrary action on the part of a parent, and that a child must be the better in proportion as he does as he is bidden––the more outrageous the bidding the better the training. Here is an example of what a loving mother may force herself to do:––”Hitherto, I had never been allowed anything but roast mutton and rice pudding for dinner. Now all was changed. The most delicious puddings were talked of––dilated on––until I became, not greedy, but exceedingly curious about them. At length le grand moment arrived. They were put on the table just before me, and then, just as I was going to eat some of them, they were snatched away, and I was told to get up and carry them off to some poor person in the village. I remember that, though I did not really in the least care about the dainties, I cared excessively about Lea’s wrath at the fate of her nice puddings, of which, after all, I was most innocent.” Here is another arbitrary ruling:––”Even the pleasures of this home-Sunday, however, were marred in the summer, when my mother gave in to a suggestion of Aunt Esther that I should be locked in the vestry of the church between the services. Miserable, indeed, were the three hours which––provided with a sandwich for dinner––I had weekly to spend there; and, though I did not expect to see ghosts, the utter isolation of Hurstmonceaux church, far away from all haunts of men, gave my imprisonment an unusual eeriness. Sometimes I used to clamber over the tomb of the Lords Dacre, which rises like a screen against one side of the vestry, and be stricken with vague terrors by the two grim white figures lying upon it in the silent desolation, in which the scamper of a rat across the floor seemed to make a noise like a whirlwind. . . . It was a sort of comfort to me, in the real church-time, to repeat vigorously all the worst curses in the Psalms, those in which David showed his most appalling degree of malice, and apply them to Aunt Esther & Co. As all the Psalms were extolled as beatific, and the Church of England used them constantly for edification, their sentiments were all right, I supposed.”
And yet how wise this good mother is when she trusts to her own instinct and insight rather than to a fallacious principle:––”I find in giving any order to a child, it is always better not to look to see if he obeys, but to take it for granted that it will be done. If one appears to doubt the obedience, there is given for the child to hesitate, ‘Shall I do it or no?’ If you seem not to question the possibility of non-compliance, he feels a trust committed to him to keep and fulfils it. It is best never to repeat a command, never to answer the oft-asked question ‘Why?”‘