Victorian: Poet's day job was school inspector

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Many will know of Matthew Arnold as the popular Victorian poet. Vivienne Smith reveals the more mundane side to his life which brought him to Derby.

The British School at Milford was singled out for praise in one of Matthew Arnold’s annual reports because of the high standards reached by the pupils despite their part-time work at the local mills

Thomas Arnold, famous Rugby School headmaster and also father of poet Matthew Arnold

A photograph from 1850 showing a typical Victorian classroom scene

Victorian poet Matthew Arnold took up the post of schools' inspector so that he could marry his sweetheart Fanny Lucy pictured here

Matthew Arnold, Victorian poet, who also worked as a Schools' Inspector and was often based in Derby

THE popular Victorian poet Matthew Arnold may have written about the “dreaming spires” of Oxford in his verse, but he did not have his head in the clouds thanks to a rather more mundane day job.

His entire working life was spent in the classroom as an overworked, underpaid schools’ inspector.

Early on in his career, while working in the Midlands, Derby became like a second home to him.

Born on Christmas Eve 1822, Matthew was the eldest son of Dr Thomas Arnold, the famous headmaster of Rugby School who revolutionised public school education.

Indeed, Dr Arnold was immortalised in 1857 by one of his pupils, Thomas Hughes, in the classic novel Tom Brown’s Schooldays.

Matthew himself became a pupil at Rugby at the age of 14. In rebellion against being an Arnold, he sometimes played up in class.

Once, while being reprimanded by his father for misbehaving, he amused his classmates by making faces behind the headmaster’s back.

When not being the classroom clown, the teenager was writing poetry. This interest was pursued further at Oxford University, where he won the Newdigate Prize for poetry.

But, being a typical student, he also drank too much and neglected his studies, ending up with a mediocre degree.

Faced with the need to make a living, the young man finally settled on a post as Her Majesty’s Inspector of Schools.

However, a career in education was not something he craved.

As Matthew remarked in later life: “Though I am a schoolmaster’s son, I confess that school teaching or school inspecting is not the line of work I should have naturally chosen. I adopted it in order to marry.”

The object of his affections was Miss Fanny Lucy Wightman, a judge’s daughter. As a married man, he needed a job which would provide financial security.

The couple duly tied the knot in June 1851, and their marriage proved a happy one. They had four sons and two daughters.

Fanny Lucy, who was known as Flu, took an interest in her husband’s work and often travelled with him in the early days.

As Matthew reminisced years later: “My wife and I had a wandering life of it at first. There were but three lay inspectors for all England.

“My district went right across from Pembroke Dock to Great Yarmouth.”

The area was vast indeed, encompassing not only a large chunk of Wales but also the English counties of Lincoln, Nottingham, Derby, Stafford, Shropshire, Hereford, Worcester, Warwick, Leicester, Rutland, Northampton, Gloucester and Monmouth.

Matthew officially took up his appointment in October 1851, a couple of months before his 29th birthday.

Being central to his district, Derby seemed a good base to operate from.

On arrival in the town that autumn, he took up lodgings at Babington Hall, on the corner of St Peter’s Street and Babington Lane.

Flu probably stayed behind in London with her family, as she was pregnant with their first child.

Over the next few months, Matthew became a familiar sight at Derby station as he travelled all over the Midlands by train.

Among the very first schools he inspected were those in Derby, Belper and Buton-on-Trent.

All the Church of England and Catholic schools were monitored by the appropriate clergymen, so Matthew had responsibility for the British, Wesleyan and other Nonconformist institutions.

The British Schools had been established by the British & Foreign School Society at the dawn of the 19th century to educate the children of the poor.

Youngsters attended these elementary schools up to the age of 13 or 14, the ablest students being appointed pupil-teachers to help the teacher.

Education was not compulsory in those days, but schools could apply for financial support from the government, so long as they submitted to regular inspections.

During an average year, Matthew Arnold made as many as 300 school visits, and examined around 20,000 students.

With the long hours and endless travelling, it is hardly surprising he often claimed to be “worked to death”.

His days were spent quizzing pupils and assessing the performance of teachers. There were also reports to write on everything from school equipment to the heating and ventilation of the building.

Pupil-teachers also came under scrutiny.

In a letter, he recorded a visit to the British School on Orchard Street, Derby, “where I am holding an examination of pupil-teacher apprentices, surrounded by an innumberable company of youths and maidens”.

His inspections were not generally rigorous. According to a colleague: “If he saw little children looking good and happy, and under the care of a kindly and sympathetic teacher, he would give a favourable report without inquiring too curiously about the percentage of scholars who could pass the standard examination.”

It was the ragged factory children, often barefoot and filthy, who affected the young man most.

But Matthew also empathised with the teachers who, like him, were overworked yet even less well paid.

At some schools, he developed lasting friendships with members of staff.

Following the birth of his first child, Thomas, in the summer of 1852, the inspector returned to Derby.

He took rooms at the lodging house of a Mr Sansom, where a fellow boarder proved rather rowdy.

Matthew remarked in a letter to a friend that October: “I write this very late at night, with S**, a young Derby banker, très sport, completing an orgy in the next room. When that good young man is calm, these lodgings are pleasant enough.”

He added: “S** is in a state of collapse. He will be very miserable tomorrow.”

Despite the pressures of work, he still found time for poetry. In fact, a collection of his works entitled Empedocles on Etna & Other Poems had just been published and commended by the Times.

By the end of November, wife Flu and baby Thomas had joined him in Derby and the family took rooms at the Midland Hotel.

A sickly, crying infant may not have been welcomed by every landlord, but Matthew had nothing but praise for the Midland.

He reported to his mother that it was “the best of all possible hotels where the people know us and show the greatest possible kindness to Baby”.

A year later, on October 15, the town became birthplace of the couple’s second child, Trevenen, affectionately known as Budge.

It is not clear exactly where they were staying at the time.

But, as the schools’ inspector recalled more than 30 years later when making his retirement speech: “One of our children was born in a lodging at Derby, with a workhouse, if I recollect, right behind and a penitentiary in the front.”

In the autumn of 1853, Matthew and Flu celebrated the birth of their second son and the publication of his book Poems: a New Edition.

The collection, which included one of his most popular works The Scholar-Gipsy, was set to make his name as a poet.

Nevertheless, the young man had reservations and wrote to a friend: “I still, however, think it very doubtful whether the book will succeed...The great hope is that the Times may trumpet it once more.

“Just imagine the effect of the last notice in that paper: it has brought Empedocles to the railway bookstall at Derby.”

Little did local commuters realise that the book’s author was actually living in their midst.

However, it was not as a poet but as an HMI that Matthew Arnold made his living.

With the year drawing to a close, he had an annual report to prepare on the general state of education in his area.

Individual schools were rarely given a mention by name. But, on this occasion, the British School in Milford was singled out for praise.

Most people in the village worked at the Strutts’ cotton mills, and even the children were employed there half the week.

Matthew knew from experience that the school work of such half-timers was generally less tidy and accurate than that of other pupils, simply because they had less time to study.

But the pupils at Milford impressed him greatly.

As the inspector wrote in his report for 1853: “In the British School at Milford, in Derbyshire, I found a school of half-timers where the school work is eminent for these very qualities of neatness and finish, and may vie in these respects with that of the best schools, of whatever class, under my inspection.”

The vast area Matthew had to cover gradually diminished over the years, and so did the number of visits he paid to Derby.

Although some of his poetry proved hugely popular, he never committed his experiences as a schools’ inspector to verse.

Nevertheless, the extensive knowledge he accumulated was put to good use.

Matthew Arnold believed passionately that every child in the country should have access to education, and that schools were not just places to learn the three Rs, but also to broaden the mind.

His visits to schools in Derbyshire, and elsewhere, provided the famous poet with the ammunition he need to champion these causes.