TOM PIPPIN'S WEDDING.*
EVERYTHING and everybody is fallen foul of in this clever and facetious book, which abounds in passages calculated to rouse the most justifiable indignation or profound contempt in the classes attacked ; and thickly strewn with others which we can only characterize as nasty. To those persons who feel that they gain an elevation of conscious rectitude by dwelling on the wickedness of their fellow-creatures this book will bring a large measure of self-complacent satisfaction, unless it occurs to them that when such deep shadows are necessary to make their own moral nature seem by comparison light, that nature must be of a very shady description indeed. The book calls itself a novel, but has neither proper hero nor heroine. It tells us, by its title, that it is about a wedding, but devotes only twelve pages of the three hundred and ninety-two to the said wedding and all relating thereto ; and it purports in its preface to be a tale of "boy-farm- ing," but alternates impartially between the concerns of the " far- mer " and a certain noble earl. It lays claim, too, to being not sensational, and sketches amusingly, and in terms deservedly satirical, the outline of the modern penny-newspaper novel ; yet • Tom Pippit's Wedding. By the Author of "The Fight at Dame Europe:. SchooL" London: Simpkin, Maraball, and Co. We are forcibly reminded of the glass-houses' proverb, for if this tale is not sensational, its author sails very close to the wind in avoiding sensationalism. Certainly there are pretty fair materials for sensationalism in an earl who disappoints his heir by marrying his cook when he is sixty-five ; in a disappointed heir who— jilting his true love—leads to the altar a duke's deformed daughter,. and there, having muttered an oath to his bishop and an insult to his bride, bolts through the vestry-door rather than ratify his. bargain ; in a duke who obligingly dies and is followed immediately in this excellent example by his deformed daughter and his imbecile- son, so as to leave a very much larger fortune than the earl's to- the disappointed heir; in a lawyer—clerk to the grammar-schoo, trustees—who kidnaps an earl's baby that the disappointed heir may be able to pay him the /50,000 which he has lent him ; in a respected policeman who knocks the curate on the head in a dark lane and walks off with his quarter's salary, and afterwards re- ceives the earl's baby from the lawyer and carries it to the Conti- nent on pretence of going to find it ; with other minor ingredients generally approved as seasoning for such sensational hash.
We are not usually backward in exposing genuine abuses, but we feel justly indignant when whole classes of people are denounced and exceptional cases of wickedness are described and declared to be the rule. Our indignation is, however, tempered in this case, by confidence that the author has painted in such exaggerated and glaring colours, that no one will fancy that he is. looking at a study from nature. For it is not nature simply because such deformities may be met with here and there ; they must be found at every turn, and form whole societies, before any one is justified in writing in the strain which the author of The- Fight at Dame Europa's School has adopted. We took up this book prepared to be pleased, for we had read the little brochure referred to with much sympathy, not agreeing with its, author as to the- cause of the late war, or in the opinion that a Tory ministry would have acted more energetically, but admiring the spirit and ability with which it was written, and feeling most cordially in. harmony with the main drift of the fable,—that England ought. to have prevented, if possible, the disastrous issue, at whatever- temporary sacrifice.
The central figure of this book is an evangelical clergyman, and the central feeling is evidently the most inveterate hate for Evangelicals ; but we do not find that the author believes in any- thing except wickedness and public schools, or in anyone except. open-handed thoughtless youth with generosity and courage, but innocent of principle and brains. The evangelical clergyman's wife fares no better at the author's hands. The two are named. Mr. and Mrs. Goggs, and nicknamed Mr. and Mrs. Deemon_ This clergyman is a beast as well as a brute, and both are mean and selfish to the last degree, and we are told that there are hun- dreds of such schoolmasters and thousands of such schoolmasters'' wives ; that they are as bad respectively as Squeers and Margaret Waters, and as richly deserve to be banged. We are told further that numbers of private grammar- schools (that is, excepting only the great public schools> and academies are no better than establishments for farm- ing boys at the minimum of cost and the maximum of pro- fit, and we are expected to believe that the foundation grammar- school of a cathedral town, with a salary for the head master of /500 a year, (out of which he must board and educate twelve foundationers free) and with leave to 'take boarders, is a den of iniquity such as this. The reverend head master is represented as drinking at a public-house till midnight, and reeling home drunk on another occasion as coming to dinner in clothes in which he had been rolling in pig-wash,—a tub of which he had overturned in. his abject terror of a dog ; and as a gross and filthy feeder, of which we have repeated and sickening accounts ; the wife, as- robbing the boys of their presents, and poisoning a valuable and favourite dog belonging to one of them, and both marl and wife as guilty of every meanness and cruelty. But our- author is not contented with exaggeration, he runs into absurdity, and represents these mercenary wretches as treat- ing with constant insult and special vindictiveness a young relative (who has inherited money that might have been. theirs), though his generous father, grieved for their disappoint- ment, pays 1150 a year for his board and education. There is. too much spirit and appreciation of boy-life in the book to support a theory that it is the work of a soured cynic ; and we incline te the opinion that it is the result of a hatred of abuses and humbug ran completely mad, as it is apt to do with a generous nature whose discretion and sobriety of judgment are scarcely matured. What else can be made of the author's aspersions on her Majesty's inspectors of schools as a set of nervous cowards who dare not refuse -even a Goggs the invariable favourable report, affirming" a marked improvement since my last visit," notwithstanding that Goggs is -a dunce as well as a brute, and as incapable of teaching as he is -skilled in the art of starving ? We are to believe that a body of trustees appoints such a master, that men of rank and -character send their sons to him, and that school inspectors -connive at his cruelty and incapacity ; and that, when these men
-of rank and respectable citizens—parents of scholars—find the master out, they continue to send their sons to him. We know
-something of grammar-schools and head masters, and dare affirm that no such school exists. Where boys are boarded, lodged, and taught for £20 a year, starvation, brutality, and ignorance may Teign supreme ; but we venture to question the existence of more than a few such places, and it is simply ridiculous to class founda-
tion grammar-schools, under boards of trustees and visited by her Majesty's inspectors, with such institutions as Dotheboys Hall. In the same random way the author spares no class or order, from
bishops to beadles, from countesses to cooks; from dukes and earls, five-sixths of whom are so ugly or common-place that you would .4' scarcely suppose them to be gentlemen," to pretty young
-ladies, any number of whom would at " ten minutes' notice" trot along to church with an old earl to marry him, though he were "a little man, and a hideously ugly little man, with a pug nose, and great thick lips, and red eyes, one of which did not point quite true." Bishops and parsons, High-Church, Low- -Church, and Dissenters, missionaries and authors, lawyers and -doctors, schoolmasters and inspectors, matrons and goverriesses, -special correspondents and Alpine Club members, smokers and policemen, cooks and beadles, all in turn, as they come upon the stage, are cuffed, abused, and maligned without stint and without -discretion. And even poor inanimate things like harmoniums and 'hymn-books are not spared.
We have said that the book is nasty, and we feel bound to sub- .stantiate this charge. Take, then, the account of the ugly old earl kissing his cook, with "the nice fat soft arm," and "the neck .which was fatter and softer still." And then, "as she had nice red iips, and made no fuss, he kissed her again," and then, as be had begun, "he did not like leaving off," so he "kissed her again," -and finally, before dismissing her from his noble presence, "the old
'rascal kissed her once more." And the next morning the earl was -found with the cook sitting on his knee, "his ugly little pug-nose
buried in her dainty neck, and his hand pinching her chubby -cheeks as if they were all his own." And the detail of Mr. Goggs's filthy habits,—his feeding, and his indigestions, and his generous transference of his bad eggs to his hungry boys, are too disgusting to quote.
One chapter is devoted to a charade in verse, which is vulgar, silly, pointless, and without a grain of fun. The chapters are -divided by songs, in which the author is nervous lest the rhyme -should be spoiled by a mispronunciation of the word "wind," over the i in which he is careful to place the short accent. Most of these songs are about boys or young people, of whom the author is undeniably fond, and to his passionate affection for whom we think we trace his romantic belief in boys' truthfulness, and his injustice to their teachers and guardians, for whose care, anxiety, and toil, in the service of boys almost invariably -more or less troublesome and thoughtless, rewarded, as it too 'frequently is, by the discontent of exacting parents, he has appa- zently no feeling whatever. Some of these songs are tender and pretty, such as "Going to Sea " and "Easter," but they -seem grotesquely out of place in the midst of chapters of -coarse abuse, and have some such effect upon us as would be produced by the remarks of a grave artist who should interrupt an after-dinner political discussion by a sudden -and irrelevant remark, every five minutes, on the beauties -of lake scenery. We will conclude with an extract from the -opening of the story, which, we fear, fairly represents much nursery training, but which ends with a passage that shows that our author is already warming to his work. Mrs. Goggs hears a noise in the nursery on Saturday, and aware that her husband has been 'flogging the boys, goes to inquire the cause :—
"' It was Johnny, mamma,' said Freddy, who, when be did tell a fib, -made it a point of conscience to tell a good ono. He was saying his prayers out loud. He is always doing it.'—'But there was some one else talking, besides Johnny. I heard your voice, Freddy, I am sure:— ' Oh yes ! mamma, I was telling him to be quiet, because Matthew vi. Si tells us we ought to say our prayers to ourselves. Doesn't it, mamma 2" You are all very naughty, wicked, sinful children, to tell -such dreadful stories. Be silent, air,' she continued, seeing that Freddy was about to draw still further on hie powers of invention. 'I will not hear another word from you ; and I will never never never believe you again. I know perfectly well what you were talking about, for I heard it on the atairs ; and I shall tell your papa everything when I go down.'—'Please
not this time, mamma.'—' Yes, I shall, Bobby ; the very first thing on Monday morning—not to night, lost the thought of your wickedness should disturb his mind through the blessed Sabbath Day.' After which cautious determination, and having satisfied herself that none of Bobby's bones were broken by his father's violence, Mrs. Goggs left the Boys to themselves.—' Come and kiss me, mamma,' said Freddy.—' No Freddy, you are far too naughty to be kissed. I must see some decided change of heart in you before I can love you any more.' Perhaps, on the whole, Freddy did not lose much. An embrace from such a woman might have given the poor child the nightmare. But though his mother would not salute him, he would on no account omit to salute his mother ; and this he did, as soon as her back was turned, after a fashion equally elegant and expressive. If any one thinks this picture over- drawn, I suspect that it has not been his lot to meet many Evangelical parsons, with invalid wives, large families, and somewhere about £100 a year."
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