Margaret Cole, Growing Up Into Revolution:
“His [J.P. Postgate’s] chief collaborator in the ‘direct method’ campaign was W.H.D. Rouse, long headmaster of the Perse School at Cambridge, where all the boys were taught on the direct method. Not being a boy, I never had experience of the direct method in class; but I had plenty of it at home. I began Latin on my fifth birthday, by being sent into my mother’s room to announce the event in the words, ‘hodie quinque annos nata sum’; thereafter I had to learn to talk on common subjects in Latin, and on Sundays, when such of the children as could sit upright and feed tidily dined downstairs, I had to ask for my dinner in Latin under the threat of not getting any. I still remember the awful occasion on which, at the age of six or thereabouts, I asked for ‘the beef’ instead of ‘some of the beef,’ and my father pushed the huge sirloin on its dish over in my direction and I dissolved into tears; and I have been told of another time when, having forgotten the Latin for sausage, I was told that if I could say ‘half’ I might have half a sausage – and squealed out ‘dimidium!’ through sobs. There was also a blackboard on which my father drew objects and persons and required me and my two younger brothers to discourse in Latin upon them – the youngest of us, much to his elders’ annoyance, turned out to have much the best memory for the tiresome words we were supposed to know.”
Ok, at first, this seemed charming. Then I realized that the father in question might be a sociopath.
I do wish, however, for a series of anecdotes from children of classicists. Mostly, I would like future anecdotes told by my children now.
That would make for an interesting project! I could put it together and offer it as a companion to Sandys: A History of Classical Childhood.