Dr. Wortle's School

Notes

Quotes

[ A good footnote ] Virgil, Aeneid, I, 199; the speaker Aeneas is comforting his sailors during a storm. The meaning is, 'God will put an end even to this.'

Quoted on July 28, 2026

The Doctor, instigated by the Bishop, had determined to ask some questions of Mr Peacocke as to his American life. The promise had been given at the Palace, and the Doctor, as he returned home, repented himself in that he had made it. His lordship was a gossip, as bad as an old woman, as bad as Mrs Stantiloup, and wanted to know things in which a man should feel no interest.

Quoted on July 28, 2026

And now, O kind-hearted reader, I feel myself constrained, in the telling of this little story, to depart altogether from those principles of story telling to which you probably have become accustomed, and to put the horse of my romance before the cart. There is a mystery respecting Mr and Mrs Peacocke which, according to all laws recognised in such matters, ought not to be elucidated till, let us say, the last chapter but two, so that your interest should be maintained almost to the end, - so near the end that there should be left only space for those little arrangements which are necessary for the well-being or perhaps for the evil-being, of our personages. It is my purpose to disclose the mystery at once, and to ask you to look for your interest - should you choose to go on with my chronicle, - simply in the conduct of my persons, during this disclosure, to others. You are to know it all before the Doctor or the Bishop, - before Mrs Wortle or the Hon Mrs Stantiloup, or Lady De Lawle. You are to know it all before the Peacockes become aware that it must necessarily be disclosed to any one. It may be that when I shall have once told the mystery there will no longer be any room for interest in the tale to you. That there are many such readers of novels I know. I doubt whether the greater number be not such. I am far from saying that the kind of interest of which I am speaking, - and of which I intend to deprive myself, - is not the most natural and the most eficacious. What would the Black Dwarf be if every one knew from the beginning that he was a rich man and a baronet? - or The Pirate, if all the truth abour Noma of the Fitful-head had been told in the first chapter? Therefors pur the book down if the revelation of some future secret be necessary for your enjoyment. Our mystery is going to be revealed in the next paragraph-in the next half-dozen words. [ SPOILERS ]

Quoted on July 28, 2026

By dint of charging high prices and giving good food, - perhaps in part, also, by the quality of the education which he imparted, - his establishment had become popular and had outgrown the capacity of the parsonage. He had been enabled to purchase a field or two close abutting on the glebe' gardens, and had there built convenient premises. He now limited his number to thirty boys, for each of which he charged £200 a-year.* It was said of him by his friends that if he would only raise his price to £25o, he might double the number, and really make a fortune. In answer to this, he told his friends that he knew his own business best; - he declared that his charge was the only sum that was compatible both with regard to himself and honesty to his customers, and asserted that the labours he endured were already quite heavy enough. In fact, he recommended all those who gave him advice to mind their own business.

Quoted on July 28, 2026