The Moral Lesson
It really is very simple
Lord Roden and the Servant Girl; Be Polite to All; A Fairy at Home; and Doing Good
These little tracts teach us something about what some people long ago thought was good behaviour. The first, Lord Roden and the Servant Girl, is about good manners. Good manners, it says, are not about grace and a lack of vulgarity. Instead, good manners are about putting the comfort and contentment of others above yourself. Lord Roden, after all, was taking a carriage journey with his wife in the pouring rain. When the terrible downpour began, he stopped the carriage and insisted that his wife’s maid, who was sitting on the box seat at the front, exposed to the cold air, take his place inside, while he rode the rest of the journey in the terrible storm.
That is politeness, the tract’s author says — even to servants, one can be polite. And don’t think, children, the author writes, that politeness is all stiff formality and fine gestures. Instead, a polite child is a child people love and wish to be around: a child animated by sincere love of others — and thinking less and less about itself — is a child everybody loves.
And one more story about Lord Roden: he was religious, in the way that the pamphlet author believes best — sincerely, permanently, uninterruptedly. One morning, the king arrived to meet with Lord Roden, who was at that time leading the family in their devotions. The Earl went to the door to greet the king, was all politeness, but said he must return to where his family were, because he had another king to do honour to, in addition to the one paying him a morning visit.
The king said not only that he gave Roden leave to do this, but that he would go, too. Thus everyone acted with pure politeness, in the greatest of spirit.
Remember these lessons all your life long, the author says — please do.
The next tract, Be Polite to All, is a very simple story about a rail journey. A man who is waiting for a train is elderly, infirm and limping. He’s not dressed well, either. The menials who work on the trains look at him with contempt; they tell him to hurry up. He eventually climbs aboard a carriage, just as the train leaves. The conductor asks him for his money, and the man says he does not pay.
I shall have to throw you off, then, at the upcoming station, the conductor says.
That would be a bad idea, the old man tells him.
Do you not know, one of the other passengers says to the conductor, who that man is?
No.
He’s the chairman of this railway.
But the chairman does not sack the conductor. He tells him not to judge the people with whom he works by the coats they wear. And according to the author of the tract, a very simple lesson was learnt that day.
A Fairy at Home begins with a little girl being asked by her father, not all that seriously, what she was thinking about after reading a book of fairy stories.
About being a fairy, she can truthfully answer. Because look at what they can accomplish with their powers. I’d make you rich without working, the little girl says, and I’d make my mother well again.
But, her father tells her, we don’t have the capacities of the fairies. Instead, we must do what we can.
Soon, the girl is transformed. Her baby brother threatens to disturb their ailing mother, so she distracts him. Another brother — this one off to school — needs help tying his tie and finding his books, so she finds the books and resolves to learn to tie the tie.
The table is disordered so she straightens it out.
Her father floats in at the end of the working day as if on air. There must have been a fairy at work on this house, he says.
Of a kind, she tells him.
And the last one, Doing Good, is very simple indeed. Alice is a little girl who resolves, upon waking, to do good things. She goes down to breakfast where her infant brother is tired and difficult. He is cutting his teeth and is much agitated. She distracts the baby and takes his mind off it, winning her mother some respite. Then, her aged grandparent appears, looking very old and infirm. He staggers into the room, and Alice leaps up and guides him to his chair.
You must eat something, she says, and he tells her he is not up to it. But Alice brings him some food anyway, and as she talks with simple enthusiasm about this and that, his attitude changes. And soon, her ancient relative is hungry enough to eat. He’s restored and rejuvenated as a nice side-effect of her ministrations.
Alice’s mother thanks her for all the little things she has done; and Alice resolves to do tomorrow what she did today as she heads off to sleep.
Who among my readers, the tract writer asks, will remember to be good like Alice today?
And the modern reader wonders, upon closing this little book, whether it’s of historical and antiquarian interest, whether it teaches us about the history of morals, or whether its sweetness makes him feel just a little sick.