Mr Booth
The visiting chemistry lecturer at Ringwood House, at two and sixpence a time. Every lecture begins with the ninety-three elements and never gets much further, and the very interesting little experiment promised for next week is never performed.
The book
At a glance
- Visiting chemistry lecturer at Ringwood House Academy, Southbridge
- About fifty
- Two and sixpence a lecture
- A public school master
- Chapter 4
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freeMr Booth comes to Ringwood House Academy, the Southbridge day school where Dorothy Hare teaches for most of the second half of the book, on Thursday afternoons, to deliver what the timetable calls a chemistry lecture. He is paid two and sixpence a time by Mrs Creevy, who owns the school, and the fee is roughly the measure of the thing.
He was a public school master once. Now, George Orwell writes, the lectures make him just enough for a life of chronic sub-drunkenness. He has had his first attack of delirium tremens and lives in daily dread of the second, and whatever chemistry he once knew is deserting him fast.
He matters to the book because of where he falls in the week. By the time he arrives, Dorothy has been ordered to abandon everything the children found interesting and drill them in handwriting and commercial arithmetic instead, and against that the lectures are the brightest spot in the timetable. The girls sit through them in a suety stupor of boredom, and still prefer them to handwriting.
How the book draws them
- How he looksA seedy, tremulous man of about fifty, with long, wet, cowdung-coloured moustaches.
- The lectureHe stands dithering in front of the class, saying the same thing over and over and trying vainly to remember what he is talking about. Every lecture starts from the ninety-three elements and never gets much further.
- The voiceHusky, and would-be fatherly. "Remember, girls," he says, "the number of the elements is ninety-three--ninety-three elements, girls--you all of you know what an element is, don't you?"
- The experimentA very interesting little experiment, promised for next week without fail, and promised again the week after. It is never performed. He owns no chemical apparatus, and his hands are far too shaky to have used any if he had it.
- Why Dorothy has to sit through itMrs Creevy, who runs the school, considers that it does not do to leave the girls alone with a man, so Dorothy Hare stays in the schoolroom for every lecture and is miserable with vicarious shame throughout.
- What he is worth to the pupilsThe high point of the school week, by a wide margin, in a term of handwriting drill and commercial arithmetic.