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The Goddess as Excellent Cow: Selling ‘The Education of a Gentleman’ as a Prescription for Success in Late Victorian England
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 July 2014
Extract
Let me begin, in Evangelical fashion, with the dying words of a mid-Victorian entrepreneur to his son:
And I started the six-inch rollers, and it paid me sixty per cent.
Sixty per cent with failures, and more than twice we could do,
And a quarter-million to credit, and I saved it all for you!
I thought — it doesn't matter — you seemed to favour your ma,
But you're nearer forty than thirty, and I know the kind you are.
Harrer an' Trinity College! I ought to ha' sent you to sea —
But I stood you an education, an' what have you done for me?
The things I knew was proper you wouldn't thank me to give,
And the things I knew was rotten you said was the way to live.
For you muddled with books and pictures, an' china an' etchin's an' fans,
And your rooms at college was beastly — more like a whore's than a man's;
Till you married that thin-flanked woman, as white and as stale as a bone.
An' she gave you your social nonsense; but where's that kid o'your own?
I've seen your carriages blocking the half o'the Cromwell Road,
But never the doctor's brougham to help the missus unload,
(So there isn't even a grandchild, an' the Gloster family's done.)
So went the recrimination of Kipling's Sir Anthony Gloster — self-made millionaire Master of Shipping, employer of 10,000 men, possessor of a baronetcy, and one-time luncheon guest of “his Royal ‘Ighness” — an entrepreneur whose fifty year struggles and successes pale as the man and the productivity of the past pass away leaving the son and the sterility of the future.
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- Copyright © North American Conference on British Studies 1970
References
NOTES
1 Kipling, Rudyard, “The ‘Mary Gloster’,” in A Choice of Kipling's Vers' Made by T. S. Eliot (Garden City, 1962), 74.Google Scholar
2 Kipling's, Compare poetic statement with, Editorial. “The Education of Business Men,” Banker's Magazine, LVI (1893), 802Google Scholar: “… in our universities and schools the education is given, not so much in what will be useful in the city or in the business world, but in subjects Society expects that I should know, indeed the ‘education befitting a Gentleman.” See also, De Brath, Stanley, The Foundations of Success: A Plea for Rational Education (London, 1896), 181Google Scholar, where De Brath characterizes products of a gentleman's education as “hopeless, disappointed, and listless.”
3 Quoted by Frankland, Percy, “Our Universities and Science,” New Liberal Review, II (1902), 334.Google Scholar
4 For one extreme statement of the “uselessness” of a gentleman's education see Ready, A. W., “Public School Products,” The New Review, XV (1896), 423Google Scholar. According to Ready, “These facts are becoming well known. Every day they are acknowledged by the victims with increasing frankness… Parents shrug their shoulders, sign the cheques, and await with gloomy resignation the moment when a useless and incompetent encumbrance, with demoralized mental habits and a mental stock-in-trade of shreds and patches, will be thrown upon their hands to be disposed of as best may be.” For an attack on the academic mind see Hobson, J. A., “The Academic Spirit in Education,’ Contemporary Review, XLXIII (1893), 236Google Scholar: Citing the academic treatment of economics, Hobson writes, “The academic mind sniffed at it for some time, as a dog might a hedgehog, touched it gingerly at this point and that, not daring to tackle it, yet unable to leave it alone. It has now reduced it to an academic study.” Finally, for the effect of atmosphere and phyical surroundings see Fotheringham, J. K., “Lazy Oxford,” The New Liberal Review, IV (1902), 44–45Google Scholar: “To me, the City of Oxford has seemed the nearest approach in the world of prose and reality to the fabled land of the lotus-eaters. There is a magic spell in meadows and rivers; but there is a stronger spell in cloister and tower; built in the perfection of a forgotten art. … The air, the traditions, the surroundings are all fatal to any feeling of rush or turmoil. …”
5 See Diamond, Charles, “The Younger Generation,” Magazine of Commerce, I (1902), 85Google Scholar. His article carried the subtitle, “What is the Matter with Youth of England? Our Educational and Social System at Fault.”
6 To cite only three examples: Cotgrove, S. F., Technical Education and Social Change (London, 1958), 28Google Scholar; Wilkinson, Rupert, The Prefects (London, 1964), 17–19, and 117–122Google Scholar; Ward, David, “The Public Schools and Industry in Britain After 1870,” in Education and Social Structure in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1967), 47 ff.Google Scholar
7 Rev.Lyttelton, E., “Compulsory Greek,” in Thirteen Essays on Education (London, 1891), 291Google Scholar. See also: Stephen, J. K., The Living Languages, (Cambridge, 1891), 7Google Scholar, and Letter to Powell, Thomas Baden, The Oxford Magazine, XI (Nov. 16, 1892).Google Scholar
8 For discussion of these changes by contemporaries see Arnold, W. Channing, “Modern Oxford,” The Twentieth Century, I (1895), 220Google Scholar; and Kebbel, T. E, “Old and New Oxford,” in Couch, Lilian M. Quiller, ed., Reminiscences of Oxford by Oxford Men, 1159-1850, (Oxford, 1892), 370Google Scholar. For a recent treatment see Rothblatt, Sheldon, The Revolution of the Dons: Cambridge and Society in Victorian England (New York, 1968).Google Scholar
9 Proctor, Mortimer R., The English University Novel (Berkeley, 1957)Google ScholarPubMed. Probably the best example of this point of view may be seen in Proctors quotation from Gerard Hopkins' A City in the Foreground: “Look at Oxford down there, how beautiful she is. Listen to her bells, the very towers and roofs are talking … It doesn't matter what the professors teach, it's what the place teaches … I lose all patience with people who talk of Oxford and systems of education as though the two had anything to do with one another. It's just because Oxford teaches nothing in particular that she is such a priceless posssession.…” For non-fictional examples see Collins, J. Churton, “The Ideal University,” Nineteenth Century, XXXI (1892), 253Google Scholar, and Godley, A. D., Aspects of Modern Oxford (London, 1894), 313.Google Scholar
10 Mahaffy, J. P., “Sham Education,” Nineteenth Century, XXXIII (1893), 23Google Scholar; Gaye, Arthur, “German or Greek?”, National Review, XVII (1891), 542Google Scholar. Gaye contended that a classical education conferred a “sort of hall-mark,” the absence of which could be noted at once by a practised observer. On the social importance of a residential college see Gibson, John and Chuckerbutty, H. G., Modern Education: Its Defects and Remedies (London, 1902), 75Google Scholar, where the University of London is likened to “a huge Examining Octopus, which spreads out its elongated and far-reaching tentacles, and gathers within its maw all stray wayfaring students.”
11 Perhaps one of the earliest critics of Oxbridge to make that concession was Daniel Defoe. See McLachlan, H., English Education Under the Test Acts (Manchester, 1913), 78.Google Scholar
12 See Abbott, Evelyn and Campbell, Lewis, eds., The Life and Letters of Benjamin Jowett, M.A., (London, 1897), II, 347Google Scholar; Cornish, F. W., “Eton Reform,” Nineteenth Century, XVIII (1895), 579Google Scholar; Almond, H. H., “The Public School Product,” The New Review, XVI (1897), 98Google Scholar; and Gow, James, “Public Schools Products: A Symposium,” The New Review, XI (1896), 641Google Scholar. Compare specific character traits which the headmasters claim they produce with the Opinions of H. M. Diplomatic and Consular Officers on British Trade Methods, published by the Board of Trade in 1898, which lament the lack of those traits among British businessmen overseas.
13 Rev.Field, T., “In Behalf of Greek,” Thirteen Essays on Education, (London, 1891), 242Google Scholar; Leighton, Robert L., “A Commercial Education,” Mac-Millan's Magazine LXXVII (1898), 476Google Scholar; Sadler, Michael E., In What Sense Ought Schools to Prepare Boys and Girls for Life (London, 1900), 9Google Scholar; and Stephen, J. K., Living Languages (Cambridge, 1891), 35.Google Scholar
14 Marshall, Alfred, Industry and Trade (London, 1919), 805–806Google Scholar. These remarks are to be found in Appendix K, entitled “On Education with Special Reference to a Business Career,” taken from his 1903 papers.
15 I am presently preparing a paper on the attitudes of late Victorian businessmen and industrialists toward formal technical and scientific training. The most interesting indications of their attitudes are to be found in evidence gathered by two Royal Commissions: one on Technical Instruction (1884) and one on the Depression of Trade and Industry (1886). Also helpful are the early issues of the Magazine of Commerce, a journal founded early in the 20th century for the purpose of presenting the most advanced views of the business community.
16 There is abundant evidence that the 20th century business and industrial community accepted both the products of a gentleman's education and the rationale offered by the ancient educational institutions. To cite only the most useful of several studies made of the highest leadership levels of commerce and industry in England: The Action Society Trust, Management Succession (London, 1956)Google ScholarPubMed; Cambridge University Appointments Board, University Education and Business (Cambridge, 1945)Google Scholar; Clements, R. V., Managers: A Study of their Careers in Industry (London, 1962)Google Scholar. For signs of early acceptance of this rationale by the business community see: SirSutherland, Thomas, “Educational Equipment for Business,” in The King's Weight House Lectures to Business Men (London, 1901), 8Google Scholar; and SirNoble, Andrew, “The Need of Technical Education,” Cassier's Magazine, XVII (1899), 153–154Google Scholar. Sheldon Rothblatt cites a good example in the speech of Sir George Gibb before a meeting of the Congress of Universities of the British Empire in 1912 (Rothblatt, , Revolution of the Dons, 268–269Google Scholar). Professor Rothblatt believes that the Gibb speech placed the argument for the employment of university graduates in “a new form and in a new context.” If the thesis of this paper is correct, Gibb is merely accepting the defense of the education of a gentleman advanced from within the universities at least twenty years prior to his speech.
17 The particular phrase is from Rothblatt, , The Revolution of the Dons, 273Google Scholar, but the point of view it represents is typical of recent scholarship on the universities and business in late Victorian England. For further examples see the works cited in footnote 6 above, and Aldcroft, D. H., “The Entrepreneur and the British Economy, 1870-1914,” Economic History Review, 2nd ser., XVII (1964), 120.Google Scholar