I really need to stop buying books...

[derien]

I bought a lovely edition of "The Adventures Verdant Green," by Cuthbert Bede, a week or two ago, for only $8, and was happy. Then I came to a part which I really thought I should type out, because it occurred to me that some of you might find it as ... interesting as I did. So I checked to see if the book was on Project Gutenberg, which, in fact, it is. That made it very easy to snip this part (though I'm not sure the code will come out right).



For the first fourteen years of his life, the education of Mr.
Verdant Green was conducted wholly under the shadow of his paternal
roof, upon principles fondly imagined to be the soundest and purest
for the formation of his character. Mrs. Green, who was as good and
motherly a soul as ever lived, was yet (as we have shown) one of the Sappeys of Sapcot, a family
that were not renowned either for common sense or worldly wisdom, and
her notions of a boy's education were of that kind laid down by her
favourite poet, Cowper, in his "Tirocinium" that we are

"Well-tutor'd ~only~ while we share
A mother's lectures and a nurse's care;"

and in her horror of all other kind of instruction (not that she
admitted Mrs. Toosypegs to her counsels), she fondly kept Master
Verdant at her own apron-strings. The task of teaching his young
idea how to shoot was committed chiefly to his sisters' governess,
and he regularly took his place with them in the school-room. These
daily exercises and mental drillings were subject to the inspection
of their maiden-aunt, Miss Virginia Verdant, a first cousin of Mr.
Green's, who had come to visit at the Manor during Master Verdant's
infancy, and had remained there ever since; and this generalship was
crowned with such success, that her nephew grew up the girlish
companion of his sisters, with no knowledge of boyish sports, and no
desire for them.

The motherly and spinsterial views regarding his education were
favoured by the fact that he had no playmates of his own sex and age;
and since his father was an only child, and his mother's brothers had
died in their infancy, there were no cousins to initiate him into the
mysteries of boyish games and feelings. Mr. Green was a man who only
cared to live a quiet, easy-going life, and would have troubled
himself but little about his neighbours, if he had had any; but the
Manor Green lay in an agricultural district, and, saving the Rectory,
there was no other large house for miles around. The rector's wife,
Mrs. Larkyns, had died shortly after the birth of her first child, a
son, who was being educated at a public school; and this was enough,
in Mrs. Green's eyes, to make a too intimate acquaintance between her
boy and Master Larkyns a thing by no means to be desired. With her
favourite poet she would say,

"For public schools, 'tis public folly feeds;"

and, regarding them as the very hotbeds of all that is wrong, she
would turn a deaf, though polite, ear to the rector whenever he said,
"Why don't you let your Verdant go with my Charley? Charley is three
years older than Verdant, and would take him under his wing." Mrs.
Green would as soon think of putting one of her chickens under the
wing of a hawk, as intrusting the innocent Verdant to the care of the
scape-grace Charley; so she still persisted in her own system of
education, despite all that the rector could advise to the contrary.

As for Master Verdant, he was only too glad at his mother's decision,
for he partook of all her alarm about public schools, though from a
different cause. It was not very often that he visited at the
Rectory during Master Charley's holidays; but when he did, that young
gentleman favoured him with such accounts of the peculiar knack the
second master possessed of finding out all your tenderest places when
he "licked a feller" for a false quantity, "that, by Jove! you couldn't
sit down for a fortnight without squeaking;" and of the jolly mills
they used to have with the town cads, who would lie in wait for you,
and half kill you if they caught you alone; and of the fun it was to
make a junior form fag for you, and do all your dirty work; - that
Master Verdant's hair would almost stand on end at such horrors, and
he would gasp for very dread lest such should ever be ~his~ dreadful
doom.

And then Master Charley would take a malicious pleasure in consoling
him, by saying, "Of course, you know, you'll only have to fag for the
first two or three years; then - if you get into the fourth form -
you'll be able to have a fag for yourself. And it's awful fun, I can
tell you, to see the way some of the fags get riled at cricket! You
get a feller to give you a few balls, just for practice, and you hit
the ball into another feller's ground; and then you tell your fag to
go and pick it up. So he goes to do it, when the other feller sings
out, 'Don't touch that ball, or I'll lick you!' So you tell the fag
to come to you, and you say, 'Why don't you do as I tell you?' And he
says, 'Please, sir!' and then the little beggar blubbers. So you say
to him, 'None of that, sir! Touch your toes!' We always make 'em wear
straps on purpose. And then his trousers go tight and beautiful, and
you take out your strap and warm him! And then he goes to get the
ball, and the other feller sings out, 'I told you to let that ball
alone! Come here, sir! Touch your toes!' So he warms him too; and
then we go on all jolly. It's awful fun, I can tell you!"

Master Verdant would think it awful indeed; and, by his own fireside,
would recount the deeds of horror to his trembling mother and
sisters, whose imagination shuddered at the scenes from which they
hoped their darling would be preserved.


I read a bit of that to eor and he just said, "This is how the English conquered the world."

Is it sociopathy if the whole society is like that?

Comments

[daegaer.livejournal.com]

All good clean flaggellistic fun! (There is a reason it was called the English VIce :-)

[derien.livejournal.com]

The first thing that occurred to me, (well, after the sexual implications of his pants coming up all 'tight and beautiful') was "This just happened to you for three years and you're going to do it to the next poor kid? No wonder they treated indigenous people so badly - they treated each other no better!"