School began in earnest the next day. A profound impression was made upon me, I remember, by the roar of voices in the schoolroom suddenly becoming hushed as death when Mr. Creakle entered after breakfast, and stood in the doorway looking round upon us like a giant in a story-book surveying his captives.
Tungay stood at Mr. Creakle’s elbow.
He had no occasion, I thought, to cry out ‘Silence!’ so ferociously, for
the boys were all struck speechless and motionless.
Mr.
Creakle was seen to speak, and Tungay was heard, to this effect.
‘Now, boys, this is a new half. Take care what you’re about, in this new
half. Come fresh up with the lessons, I advise you, for I come fresh up to the
punishment. I won’t flinch. It will be of no use your rubbing yourselves;
you won’t rub the marks out that I shall give you. Now get to work, every boy!’
When
this dreadful exordium was over, and Tungay had stumped out again, Mr. Creakle
came to where I sat, and told me that that if I was famous for biting, he was
famous for biting, too. He then showed
me the cane, and asked me what I thought of that, for a tooth? Was it a sharp tooth, hey? Did it bite, hey? Did it bite?
At every question he gave me a fleshy cut with it that made me writhe;
so I was very soon made free of Salem House (as Steerforth said), and was very
soon in tears also.
Not
that I mean to say these were special marks of distinction, which only I
received. On the contrary, a large
majority of boys (especially the smaller ones) were visited with similar
instances of notice, as Mr. Creakle made the round of the schoolroom. Half the establishment was writhing and
crying, before the day’s work began; and how much of I had writhed and cried
before the day’s work was over I am afraid to recollect, let I seem to
exaggerate.
I
should think there never can have been a man who enjoyed his profession more
than Mr. Creakle did. He had a delight
in cutting at the boys, which was like the satisfaction of a craving appetite. I am confident that he couldn’t resist a
chubby boy, especially; that there was a fascination in such a subject, which
made him restless in his mind, until he had scored and marked him for the
day. I was chubby myself, and ought to
know. I am sure when I think of the
fellow now, my blood rises against him with the disinterested indignation I
should feel if I could have known all about him without having ever been in his
power; but it rises hotly, because I know him to have been an incapable brute,
who had no more right to be possessed of the great trust he held, than to be
Lord High Admiral, or Commander-in-Chief –in either of which capacity it is
probable that he would have done infinitely less mischief.
Miserable
little propitiators of a remorseless Idol, how abject were we to him! What a launch in life I think it now, on
looking back, to be so mean and servile to a man of such parts and pretensions!
Here
I sit at the desk again, watching his eye – humbly watching his eye, as he
rules a ciphering book for another victim whose hands have just been flattened
by that identical ruler, and who is trying to wipe the sting out with a
pocket-handkerchief. I have plenty to
do. I don’t watch his eye in idleness,
but because I am morbidly attracted to it, in a dread desire to know what he
will do next, and whether it will be my turn to suffer, or somebody
else’s. A lane of small boys beyond me,
with the same interest in his eye, watch it too. I think he knows it, though he pretends he
don’t. He makes dreadful mouths as he
rules the ciphering book; and now he throws his eye sideways down our lane, and
we all droop over our books and tremble.
A moment afterwards were are again eying him. An unhappy culprit, found guilty of imperfect
exercise, and professes a determination to do better tomorrow. Mr. Creakle cuts a joke before he beats him,
and we laugh at it, -- miserable little dogs, we laugh, with our visages as
white as ashes, and our hearts sinking into our boots.[1]
Charles
Dickens, David Copperfield (1850)
[1] Charles Dickens, The Personal History of David Copperfield (Toronto: Oxford University Press, 1962), pp.89-90. (See Chapter VII). David Copperfield was Charles Dickens’ most autobiographical novel.
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