“It was I,” said Dominie Sampson, “who did educate Miss Lucy in all useful learning—albeit it was the housekeeper who did teach her those unprofitable exercises of hemming and shaping.”

The question that occurs to the professional mind, is whether Lucy Bertram’s skill in plain needlework was really limited to hemming, which is the work allotted to girls of six or seven years of age; or whether the Dominie in his contemptuous ignorance used the term to include all varieties of stitches. By “shaping,” I think he meant what we call “cutting out.” That is high art, and a few years ago it was confined to quite the upper circles of an Elementary School. If Lucy really could not go beyond hemming, I fear she would have had some difficulty with the material when it was “shaped”: unless, indeed, she made only pocket-handkerchiefs and towels. To be easily satisfied with a low standard of attainments was, in the estimation of My Lords, a mark of inefficiency. This is a pity, for Lucy shares with Rose Bradwardine the unenviable distinction of being the most insipid of Scott’s heroines, and she might have won great triumphs in needlework, even in “divers colours of needlework on both sides.”[41] Her back-stitching should have been a model of neatness, and her flannel patches should have drawn tears of admiration from H.M. Inspector in Dumfriesshire.

Alas! the niceties of nomenclature are already fading from my memory: yet there was a time when I could deceive the very elect with my superficial jargon.

Before 1876 the inspection of needlework was very simple. That plain needlework—none of your crochet work—should be taught to all the girls, was a condition precedent of the annual grant. In country schools there was not much fear of neglect, for Mrs. Squire and Mrs. Rector kept vigilant eyes on this branch of education, and the subscribers to the school funds often got back part of the value of their money by sending their household sewing to be done in school. It was no unusual thing to find five afternoons a week entirely devoted to sewing. “They tell me,” said one Lady Bountiful, “that the girls in Standard VI. learn Decimals! Not that I know what decimals are. I think they should learn to sew, don’t you?” But I

“Dallied with my golden chain
And, smiling, put the question by.”

On the day of inspection the work done in the course of the year was submitted to our judgment. As a rule the “garments” were laid out on a long table; alternatively they were dealt out to the makers, or to those who were credited with making something. It was our duty to go on “visiting rounds” among the desks; to pick up the hateful things, to look wise; and, if possible, to make an appropriate remark here and there. This was a terrible ordeal; for each girl regarded her work as the most important output of the year, and very few had any suspicion that we lacked knowledge. It happened one day that, while I was thus engaged, my driver got weary of waiting for me in the road with his dogcart, and hailed a little maid coming out of school: “Be the gentleman a-coming?”

“Yes,” she replied, “he’s just a-lookin’ at our sawin.”

The driver was astonished: “What? dew he knaw about sawin, then?”

“I ’xpact,” said the dear child, “he knaw a little about everythink.”

It was a cruel judgment, though kindly meant: if she had said “a very little,” she would (within limits) have accurately described our pretensions; the duodecimo encyclopædia sort.

After one of these ordeals my assistant and I adjourned, in an unusually exhausted state, to “The Crown” for lunch. It was market day, and extra help had been hired to meet the demands of the farmers; so that we were waited upon by a stranger, who began by asking whether one of us had not been at “our school” that morning. We pleaded guilty, jointly and severally.

“My little gel,” she went on to say, “is wonderful put out: she come back cryin’ till she’s sick. ‘The inspector come,’ she say, ‘and pick up my work, and he look at it, ‘Larks,’ he say, ‘here’s a piller-slip;’ and oh, mother, it was my shimmy, as I’d took such pains with:’ and she did cry ever so.”

My assistant behaved shamefully: he declared I was the culprit, and he laughed till the tears ran down his cheeks. But I was shocked. Not for worlds would I have had it happen: how was I to know that the folded up lump of unbleached calico was a chemise and not a pillow-case? and to this day I repudiate “Lawks” as an expletive. I exhausted myself in apologies, and thereafter I was careful not to betray ignorance.

What is a garment? Clearly a “wearment”; that which one wears. Should it include pillow-cases, towels and dusters? Custom said “Yes,” and the output of pillow-slips—which in their simplicity of shape and manufacture called for no special skill—always seemed to me to be in excess of the possible demand.

In a school maintained by a bountiful Earl I noticed that the schoolroom had become the workroom of the Castle. There was a liberal display of household articles, and, while the third class had sufficed to hem and seam them, it had been found necessary to employ the first class to mark them with coronets. This was bad. Tennyson would certainly have ruled that plain sewing was “more than coronets.” But worse remained behind. The Castle clearly had not realised that the whole collection would be exhibited, and there were other things, which, as Miss Griselda Oldbuck would say, “it does not become a leddy to particulareeze”; which Herodotus might have declared it “unlawful to mention”; and the sight of which would have gorgonized the Rector’s wife, if she had been present. All this “underwear” with the coronetted towels was laid on the table for our inspection. It was very embarrassing. Providentially the Ladies Vere de Vere did not attend the inspection.

Allusion to these garments reminds me of a case where grave misunderstanding arose. It was in the year 1876, I suppose: for it was in that year that the system of payment of grant was altered. If a school chose to present itself for examination in certain subjects, whereof needlework was one, there was a grant of 2s. per head—that is, double the former grant—attainable in case of success. But, though the special and extended examination was optional, the teaching of plain sewing and the display of garments were still compulsory. Soon after the change in the Code I was at—let us call it “Layton”—school, the manager of which was a valued friend of mine, and an apostle of education; for many merits esteemed throughout the county.

At the end of the ordinary inspection I asked for the garments. The mistress, with apparent surprise, told me there were none. But, in accordance with the Code, I insisted on seeing some as a condition of the grant: I had to certify something in the formal report. After some delay she produced a shirt, and said that was all that was available. I examined and cross-examined that shirt before lady managers and teachers, and, as I afterwards remembered, covered myself with disgrace by complaining that it had no “gusset” somewhere: it was pointed out to me in the plainest language, that apparently I was not aware that a shirt might have either a “gusset,” or a “yoke,” and this had a yoke. So we patched up a peace and went to lunch, oppressor and oppressed. But in the report I complained of the scanty supply of garments, and some correspondence followed. It was not till some days had gone by that an explanation reached me circuitously. There were garments in abundance, but they were not meet for the male eye, and they were hidden away:

“’Tis better to have sewn and hidden away
Than never to have sewn at all.”

There are instances in the Classical Dictionary of males who were over-curious: I forget the details, but I remember that their end was disastrous. Fortunately on this occasion I was innocent in intention and unsuccessful in action. But I sent the Rector the following lines, and we made friends again:

Chorus of Spinsters.

Have you heard the sad news?
How they’ve dared to abuse
The sewing our girls do at Layton?
The man must be worse than Satan!
What next?
No wonder the Powells are vexed.
There’s the poor dear Rector,
Who fed the Inspector
On his best ’Thirty-four,
Says he’ll give him no more:
And Miss Lucy, his daughter,
Says she’d put him on bread and water:
And Miss Taylor, the mistress,
Overwhelmed with distress:
And pretty Miss Ball,
She’s worse than them all,
And says “Drat him,”
She’d like to get at him,
And she’s strongly inclined
To give him a bit of her mind.

It’s so like a man:
Let him find, if he can,
Any children so good at their needles
They come poking and prying,
Set the teachers all crying,
And bully the poor things like beadles.

He’s worse than a Turk;
Just look at our work:
We have aprons and shirts,
And bodies and skirts,
And dusters for infants to hem;
And sewing-on strings,
And a whole heap of THINGS—
But of course we couldn’t show them.
There were two dozen towels
We made for the Powells,
And ten pairs of stays
To be sent to the Mays;
We darn and we mend,
And make things without end
For the Johnsons that live at the Lodge:
There’s fine work to be seen
That would do for the Queen,
And coarse things more suited for Hodge.

One thing I must own,
We can’t herringbone,
But they say it’s no longer the mode;
We’ve no flannel to show,
And such garments, you know,
As petticoats aren’t in his Code.

But we can make chemises;
We can knit muffeteeses,
Or the top of a stocking—
(they weep)
Oh, it’s shocking, quite shocking:

And he comes to our school,
And looks perfectly cool,
While we’re fretting and fussing,
And secretly cussing,
And he says, “Now, Miss T.,
I should just like to see
WHERE’S YOUR SEWING?”

There’s no knowing
The spite of those terrible men:
So like him to ask it:
And Miss T. brings the basket,
And takes off the cover, and then—
Much hurt,
Shows one shirt.

And he says, “Is that all?
And no gusset at all?
There should be one here:”
(Oh, the CREATURE, my dear.)
Then he takes it up shamefully,
Handles it blamefully;
Pulls it about,
Outside in, inside out;
Sticks his thumbs through the cracks,
Puts Miss T. in a wax;
Holds it up to the light
(As if he knew what’s right),
And treats it so badly;
Then shakes his head sadly—
(they weep again)

And the Things, dear, you know,
That we really can’t show,
He pretends not to see,
And says, “Really, de-ah me!”
And flops out of school in a huff.

As if one shirt wasn’t enough!

Oh, what will become of the Grant?
He surely won’t dare—no, he can’t—
To fine us: it wouldn’t be fair:
But if he should try, I declare,
We have made up our minds, and we mean,
To take all those THINGS to the QUEEN,
And ask her opinion,
And whether her MINION
Is to trample on women like this:
And if she’ll be pleased to dismiss
Her bold-faced Inspector,
Who bearded our Rector,
And says we can’t sew,
When we only can’t shew!

It was said that the simple inspection of garments was not always so simple as the inspector. A lady manager of a country school told me how in primitive times the dame who taught sewing in her parish had annually beguiled my remote predecessor. Every year at the end of the examination he called for the garments, and every year she handed him a shirt: every year he examined it with care, and every year he praised it in the report on the school. “And, Mr. Kynnersley,” she added, “it was always the same shirt, and, to begin with, it was not made in the school at all, but by a woman in the village.”

There are some who “through faith have obtained a good report,” but in this case the faith was on the reporter’s side. Conceive the greatness of the fraud, and the depth of H.M.I.’s ignorance! for either the shirt must have grown yellow with age, or it must have been washed annually: and washed garments were forbidden exhibits.[42]

As years went on, one grew more skilful in criticism. By painful experience one learnt to avoid certain pitfalls; for the old-fashioned dames who taught sewing were very outspoken in their comments. “Yew gentlemen don’t knaw nawthin about it: thet ain’t the right way far tew try it,” said one of these beldames to me, when I tested the strength of a darned stocking by putting my fingers through the darned places. She turned on my assistant, who was gazing with an air of profound wisdom at some masterpiece, “Thet’s the wrong side far tew luke at,” and she turned it round, in spite of his prompt assertion that he always liked to see both sides.

At another school, where Mrs. Squire was deeply interested in the sewing, I had basely retreated into the class-room, while my excellent assistant of that period was commenting freely on the work. To my dismay the dear old lady came to me in a state midway between choking mirth and gnawing indignation. “Really, it is too ridiculous,” she said at last, “to see you gentlemen pretending to judge of needlework: there is Mr. Pluckham, doesn’t know the difference between feather-stitch and herring-bone.” I had never heard of feather-stitch, but I took the earliest opportunity of making its acquaintance.

I have already alluded to the change in the Code, which made the full grant for sewing depend chiefly on the merit of the work done before our eyes. There was a list of appropriate exercises, and to each girl was allotted one of these, to be completed in a given time. This was the death knell of the old sewing mistresses. They could not teach a class, though they were often very successful with individuals, and now grants were in danger. The exigency of the hour required new tricks to impose on the unsuspecting inspector. It happened one day that I had taken away with me the worked specimens—fragments of linen, calico, and flannel about three or four inches square, showing various stitches—and asked a skilled needlewoman to give me her opinion. She laughed me to scorn: it was machine work. I laughed her to scorn: I was not so easily taken in: I had seen the work done before my eyes in the Board School; there was no machine in the room. The reply was, that what I saw worked in school was not what I brought away. We differed, and the full grant was paid.

Some years afterwards my eyes were opened. A lady who took much interest in the girls’ sewing, and with whom I had annual and delightful encounters, taunted me and the male sex generally with our incapacity to judge of needlework, and also with our hopeless gullibility. There was a school, she said—but nothing should induce her to reveal the name—where the mistress did all the specimens which I thought were worked by the girls, and these were cleverly palmed off on me in substitution for the patches, &c., on which I had seen the children engaged. I asked no questions, but my colleague and I, as we went home, ran over in our minds the schools within a convenient radius. There was only one of doubtful character, and thither my colleague went next month in the ordinary course. The girls had their sewing given out, and the work was going on in the usual way, when suddenly he noticed that each girl had a work-bag tied round her waist, and his suspicions were aroused. “What is in the bags?” “Oh, nothing: just the usual sewing materials.” He examined several: Mary’s bag contained a flannel patch complete: Jane had a neat piece of back-stitching: Susan had a button-hole complete: Harriet had so many rows of knitting. He reported to me.

Then I saw it all. That old story of the Board School came back to mind: the work was machined, and the girls, or the teachers—let us hope that the teachers did not make the girls parties to the fraud—had “palmed it” with a little sleight of hand, and perhaps a little appropriate “patter.”

But such cases must have been rare; whereas in the days of exhibited garments, detection being almost impossible, anything may have been done. In one large town it was rumoured that there was a depôt which lent out on hire garments for the day of inspection. This may be regarded as evidence not so much of what was done, as of what was possible. It is certain that in some other schools the best girls made all the garments, and the work of the inefficient was suppressed.

When the Code made fraud too easy, I blamed the Code. In those days every pupil-teacher, and every woman sitting for a certificate, had to present to the Inspector a garment as evidence of her skill as a needlewoman: and on this she got marks which counted for the examination. There was nothing on earth to show that the presenter of the garment had made it, and of course one could not ask questions. “I am surprised that Mary Jane has failed,” said a schoolmistress of my acquaintance, “she wasn’t that bad at sums, and it wasn’t for her needlework, for I did that myself.”

Oh, Adam! When we remember that he had no one to associate with but Eve, we cease to wonder that his moral sense weakened. “She gave me of the tree.”

One more reminiscence. Lady managers often would say to me, “Why don’t the girls learn to sew? They come here as servants, after having been in the school for years, and they can’t do a thing?” I heard this repeated for years, and could not reply. Nor indeed did I pay much heed: lady managers were always on the warpath. But one day I mentioned the gravamen to a colleague, and asked how he explained this failure of our system of education.

“Pooh, pooh,” he replied, “did you ever hear of the monkeys on the West Coast of Africa, or somewhere, who, according to the natives, could talk if they liked, but they won’t, because, if they did, they would have to work? That is what is the matter with our girls. They go out to service, and if they confess that they can sew, they are put on to do all the household sewing, besides their regular work: so they pretend they are useless and the ‘missus’ gets a machine.”

It may be so: it is only married men who are in a position to reveal the secret workings of domestic life. “When you’re a married man,” said Mr. Weller, “you’ll understand a good many things as you don’t understand now”—I commend the rest of his profound utterance to the attention of the reader. It occurs in Chapter XXVII. of Pickwick.[43]