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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/2012-h.zip b/2012-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..7e907f8 --- /dev/null +++ b/2012-h.zip diff --git a/2012-h/2012-h.htm b/2012-h/2012-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..57edb90 --- /dev/null +++ b/2012-h/2012-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1918 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Children</title> +<style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Children, by Alice Meynell</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Children, by Alice Meynell + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Children + +Author: Alice Meynell + +Release Date: March 16, 2005 [eBook #2012] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHILDREN*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1911 John Lane edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<h1>THE CHILDREN</h1> +<p>Contents</p> +<p>Fellow Travellers with a Bird, I.<br /> +Fellow Travellers with a Bird, II.<br /> +Children in Midwinter<br /> +That Pretty Person<br /> +Out of Town<br /> +Expression<br /> +Under the Early Stars<br /> +The Man with Two Heads<br /> +Children in Burlesque<br /> +Authorship<br /> +Letters<br /> +The Fields<br /> +The Barren Shore<br /> +The Boy<br /> +Illness<br /> +The Young Children<br /> +Fair and Brown<br /> +Real Childhood</p> +<h2>FELLOW TRAVELLERS WITH A BIRD, I.</h2> +<p>To attend to a living child is to be baffled in your humour, disappointed +of your pathos, and set freshly free from all the pre-occupations. +You cannot anticipate him. Blackbirds, overheard year by year, +do not compose the same phrases; never two leitmotifs alike. Not +the tone, but the note alters. So with the uncovenated ways of +a child you keep no tryst. They meet you at another place, after +failing you where you tarried; your former experiences, your documents +are at fault. You are the fellow traveller of a bird. The +bird alights and escapes out of time to your footing.</p> +<p>No man’s fancy could be beforehand, for instance, with a girl +of four years old who dictated a letter to a distant cousin, with the +sweet and unimaginable message: “I hope you enjoy yourself with +your loving dolls.” A boy, still younger, persuading his +mother to come down from the heights and play with him on the floor, +but sensible, perhaps, that there was a dignity to be observed none +the less, entreated her, “Mother, do be a lady frog.” +None ever said their good things before these indeliberate authors. +Even their own kind—children—have not preceded them. +No child in the past ever found the same replies as the girl of five +whose father made that appeal to feeling which is doomed to a different, +perverse, and unforeseen success. He was rather tired with writing, +and had a mind to snare some of the yet uncaptured flock of her sympathies. +“Do you know, I have been working hard, darling? I work +to buy things for you.” “Do you work,” she asked, +“to buy the lovely puddin’s?” Yes, even for +these. The subject must have seemed to her to be worth pursuing. +“And do you work to buy the fat? I don’t like fat.”</p> +<p>The sympathies, nevertheless, are there. The same child was +to be soothed at night after a weeping dream that a skater had been +drowned in the Kensington Round Pond. It was suggested to her +that she should forget it by thinking about the one unfailing and gay +subject—her wishes. “Do you know,” she said, +without loss of time, “what I should like best in all the world? +A thundred dolls and a whistle!” Her mother was so overcome +by this tremendous numeral, that she could make no offer as to the dolls. +But the whistle seemed practicable. “It is for me to whistle +for cabs,” said the child, with a sudden moderation, “when +I go to parties.” Another morning she came down radiant, +“Did you hear a great noise in the miggle of the night? +That was me crying. I cried because I dreamt that Cuckoo [a brother] +had swallowed a bead into his nose.”</p> +<p>The mere errors of children are unforeseen as nothing is—no, +nothing feminine—in this adult world. “I’ve +got a lotter than you,” is the word of a very young egotist. +An older child says, “I’d better go, bettern’t I, +mother?” He calls a little space at the back of a London +house, “the backy-garden.” A little creature proffers +almost daily the reminder at luncheon—at tart-time: “Father, +I hope you will remember that I am the favourite of the crust.” +Moreover, if an author set himself to invent the naïf things that +children might do in their Christmas plays at home, he would hardly +light upon the device of the little <i>troupe</i> who, having no footlights, +arranged upon the floor a long row of—candle-shades!</p> +<p>“It’s <i>jolly</i> dull without you, mother,” says +a little girl who—gentlest of the gentle—has a dramatic +sense of slang, of which she makes no secret. But she drops her +voice somewhat to disguise her feats of metathesis, about which she +has doubts and which are involuntary: the “stand-wash,” +the “sweeping-crosser,” the “sewing chamine.” +Genoese peasants have the same prank when they try to speak Italian.</p> +<p>Children forget last year so well that if they are Londoners they +should by any means have an impression of the country or the sea annually. +A London little girl watches a fly upon the wing, follows it with her +pointing finger, and names it “bird.” Her brother, +who wants to play with a bronze Japanese lobster, ask “Will you +please let me have that tiger?”</p> +<p>At times children give to a word that slight variety which is the +most touching kind of newness. Thus, a child of three asks you +to save him. How moving a word, and how freshly said! He +had heard of the “saving” of other things of interest—especially +chocolate creams taken for safe-keeping—and he asks, “Who +is going to save me to-day? Nurse is going out, will you save +me, mother?” The same little variant upon common use is +in another child’s courteous reply to a summons to help in the +arrangement of some flowers, “I am quite at your ease.”</p> +<p>A child, unconscious little author of things told in this record, +was taken lately to see a fellow author of somewhat different standing +from her own, inasmuch as he is, among other things, a Saturday Reviewer. +As he dwelt in a part of the South-west of the town unknown to her, +she noted with interest the shops of the neighbourhood as she went, +for they might be those of the <i>fournisseurs</i> of her friend. +“That is his bread shop, and that is his book shop. And +that, mother,” she said finally, with even heightened sympathy, +pausing before a blooming <i>parterre</i> of confectionery hard by the +abode of her man of letters, “that, I suppose, is where he buys +his sugar pigs.”</p> +<p>In all her excursions into streets new to her, this same child is +intent upon a certain quest—the quest of a genuine collector. +We have all heard of collecting butterflies, of collecting china-dogs, +of collecting cocked hats, and so forth; but her pursuit gives her a +joy that costs her nothing except a sharp look-out upon the proper names +over all shop-windows. No hoard was ever lighter than hers. +“I began three weeks ago next Monday, mother,” she says +with precision, “and I have got thirty-nine.” “Thirty-nine +what?” “Smiths.”</p> +<h2>FELLOW TRAVELLERS WITH A BIRD, II.</h2> +<p>The mere gathering of children’s language would be much like +collecting together a handful of flowers that should be all unique, +single of their kind. In one thing, however, do children agree, +and that is the rejection of most of the conventions of the authors +who have reported them. They do not, for example, say “me +is;” their natural reply to “are you?” is “I +are.” One child, pronouncing sweetly and neatly, will have +nothing but the nominative pronoun. “Lift I up and let I +see it raining,” she bids; and told that it does not rain, resumes, +“Lift I up and let I see it not raining.”</p> +<p>An elder child had a rooted dislike to a brown corduroy suit ordered +for her by maternal authority. She wore the garments under protest, +and with some resentment. At the same time it was evident that +she took no pleasure in hearing her praises sweetly sung by a poet, +her friend. He had imagined the making of this child in the counsels +of Heaven, and the decreeing of her soft skin, of her brilliant eyes, +and of her hair—“a brown tress.” She had gravely +heard the words as “a brown dress,” and she silently bore +the poet a grudge for having been the accessory of Providence in the +mandate that she should wear the loathed corduroy. The unpractised +ear played another little girl a like turn. She had a phrase for +snubbing any anecdote that sounded improbable. “That,” +she said more or less after Sterne, “is a cotton-wool story.”</p> +<p>The learning of words is, needless to say, continued long after the +years of mere learning to speak. The young child now takes a current +word into use, a little at random, and now makes a new one, so as to +save the interruption of a pause for search. I have certainly +detected, in children old enough to show their motives, a conviction +that a word of their own making is as good a communication as another, +and as intelligible. There is even a general implicit conviction +among them that the grown-up people, too, make words by the wayside +as occasion befalls. How otherwise should words be so numerous +that every day brings forward some hitherto unheard? The child +would be surprised to know how irritably poets are refused the faculty +and authority which he thinks to belong to the common world.</p> +<p>There is something very cheerful and courageous in the setting-out +of a child on a journey of speech with so small baggage and with so +much confidence in the chances of the hedge. He goes free, a simple +adventurer. Nor does he make any officious effort to invent anything +strange or particularly expressive or descriptive. The child trusts +genially to his hearer. A very young boy, excited by his first +sight of sunflowers, was eager to describe them, and called them, without +allowing himself to be checked for the trifle of a name, “summersets.” +This was simple and unexpected; so was the comment of a sister a very +little older. “Why does he call those flowers summersets?” +their mother said; and the girl, with a darkly brilliant look of humour +and penetration, answered, “because they are so big.” +There seemed to be no further question possible after an explanation +that was presented thus charged with meaning.</p> +<p>To a later phase of life, when a little girl’s vocabulary was, +somewhat at random, growing larger, belong a few brave phrases hazarded +to express a meaning well realized—a personal matter. Questioned +as to the eating of an uncertain number of buns just before lunch, the +child averred, “I took them just to appetize my hunger.” +As she betrayed a familiar knowledge of the tariff of an attractive +confectioner, she was asked whether she and her sisters had been frequenting +those little tables on their way from school. “I sometimes +go in there, mother,” she confessed; “but I generally speculate +outside.”</p> +<p>Children sometimes attempt to cap something perfectly funny with +something so flat that you are obliged to turn the conversation. +Dryden does the same thing, not with jokes, but with his sublimer passages. +But sometimes a child’s deliberate banter is quite intelligible +to elders. Take the letter written by a little girl to a mother +who had, it seems, allowed her family to see that she was inclined to +be satisfied with something of her own writing. The child has +a full and gay sense of the sweetest kinds of irony. There was +no need for her to write, she and her mother being both at home, but +the words must have seemed to her worthy of a pen:—“My dear +mother, I really wonder how you can be proud of that article, if it +is worthy to be called a article, which I doubt. Such a unletterary +article. I cannot call it letterature. I hope you will not +write any more such unconventionan trash.”</p> +<p>This is the saying of a little boy who admired his much younger sister, +and thought her forward for her age: “I wish people knew just +how old she is, mother, then they would know she is onward. They +can see she is pretty, but they can’t know she is such a onward +baby.”</p> +<p>Thus speak the naturally unreluctant; but there are other children +who in time betray a little consciousness and a slight <i>méfiance</i> +as to where the adult sense of humour may be lurking in wait for them, +obscure. These children may not be shy enough to suffer any self-checking +in their talk, but they are now and then to be heard slurring a word +of which they do not feel too sure. A little girl whose sensitiveness +was barely enough to cause her to stop to choose between two words, +was wont to bring a cup of tea to the writing-table of her mother, who +had often feigned indignation at the weakness of what her Irish maid +always called “the infusion.” “I’m afraid +it’s bosh again, mother,” said the child; and then, in a +half-whisper, “Is bosh right, or wash, mother?” She +was not told, and decided for herself, with doubts, for bosh. +The afternoon cup left the kitchen an infusion, and reached the library +“bosh” thenceforward.</p> +<h2>CHILDREN IN MIDWINTER</h2> +<p>Children are so flowerlike that it is always a little fresh surprise +to see them blooming in winter. Their tenderness, their down, +their colour, their fulness—which is like that of a thick rose +or of a tight grape—look out of season. Children in the +withering wind are like the soft golden-pink roses that fill the barrows +in Oxford Street, breathing a southern calm on the north wind. +The child has something better than warmth in the cold, something more +subtly out of place and more delicately contrary; and that is coolness. +To be cool in the cold is the sign of a vitality quite exquisitely alien +from the common conditions of the world. It is to have a naturally, +and not an artificially, different and separate climate.</p> +<p>We can all be more or less warm—with fur, with skating, with +tea, with fire, and with sleep—in the winter. But the child +is fresh in the wind, and wakes cool from his dreams, dewy when there +is hoar-frost everywhere else; he is “more lovely and more temperate” +than the summer day and than the winter day alike. He overcomes +both heat and cold by another climate, which is the climate of life; +but that victory of life is more delicate and more surprising in the +tyranny of January. By the sight and the touch of children, we +are, as it were, indulged with something finer than a fruit or a flower +in untimely bloom. The childish bloom is always untimely. +The fruit and flower will be common later on; the strawberries will +be a matter of course anon, and the asparagus dull in its day. +But a child is a perpetual <i>primeur</i>.</p> +<p>Or rather he is not in truth always untimely. Some few days +in the year are his own season—unnoticed days of March or April, +soft, fresh and equal, when the child sleeps and rises with the sun. +Then he looks as though he had his brief season, and ceases for a while +to seem strange.</p> +<p>It is no wonder that we should try to attribute the times of the +year to children; their likeness is so rife among annuals. For +man and woman we are naturally accustomed to a longer rhythm; their +metre is so obviously their own, and of but a single stanza, without +repetition, without renewel, without refrain. But it is by an +intelligible illusion that we look for a quick waxing and waning in +the lives of young children—for a waxing that shall come again +another time, and for a waning that shall not be final, shall not be +fatal. But every winter shows us how human they are, and how they +are little pilgrims and visitants among the things that look like their +kin. For every winter shows them free from the east wind; more +perfectly than their elders, they enclose the climate of life. +And, moreover, with them the climate of life is the climate of the spring +of life; the climate of a human March that is sure to make a constant +progress, and of a human April that never hesitates. The child +“breathes April and May”—an inner April and his own +May.</p> +<p>The winter child looks so much the more beautiful for the season +as his most brilliant uncles and aunts look less well. He is tender +and gay in the east wind. Now more than ever must the lover beware +of making a comparison between the beauty of the admired woman and the +beauty of a child. He is indeed too wary ever to make it. +So is the poet. As comparisons are necessary to him, he will pay +a frankly impossible homage, and compare a woman’s face to something +too fine, to something it never could emulate. The Elizabethan +lyrist is safe among lilies and cherries, roses, pearls, and snow. +He undertakes the beautiful office of flattery, and flatters with courage. +There is no hidden reproach in the praise. Pearls and snow suffer, +in a sham fight, a mimic defeat that does them no harm, and no harm +comes to the lady’s beauty from a competition so impossible. +She never wore a lily or a coral in the colours of her face, and their +beauty is not hers. But here is the secret: she is compared with +a flower because she could not endure to be compared with a child. +That would touch her too nearly. There would be the human texture +and the life like hers, but immeasurably more lovely. No colour, +no surface, no eyes of woman have ever been comparable with the colour, +the surface, and the eyes of childhood. And no poet has ever run +the risk of such a defeat. Why, it is defeat enough for a woman +to have her face, however well-favoured, close to a child’s, even +if there is no one by who should be rash enough to approach them still +nearer by a comparison.</p> +<p>This, needless to say, is true of no other kind of beauty than that +beauty of light, colour, and surface to which the Elizabethans referred, +and which suggested their flatteries in disfavour of the lily. +There are, indeed, other adult beauties, but those are such as make +no allusions to the garden. What is here affirmed is that the +beautiful woman who is widely and wisely likened to the flowers, which +are inaccessibly more beautiful, must not, for her own sake, be likened +to the always accessible child.</p> +<p>Besides light and colour, children have a beauty of finish which +is much beyond that of more finished years. This gratuitous addition, +this completeness, is one of their unexpected advantages. Their +beauty of finish is the peculiarity of their first childhood, and loses, +as years are added, that little extra character and that surprise of +perfection. A bloom disappears, for instance. In some little +children the whole face, and especially all the space between the growth +of the eyebrows and the growth of the hair, is covered with hardly perceptible +down as soft as bloom. Look then at the eyebrows themselves. +Their line is as definite as in later life, but there is in the child +the flush given by the exceeding fineness of the delicate hairs. +Moreover, what becomes, afterwards, of the length and the curl of the +eyelash? What is there in growing up that is destructive of a +finish so charming as this?</p> +<p>Queen Elizabeth forbade any light to visit her face “from the +right or from the left” when her portrait was a-painting. +She was an observant woman, and liked to be lighted from the front. +It is a light from the right or from the left that marks an elderly +face with minute shadows. And you must place a child in such a +light, in order to see the finishing and parting caress that infancy +has given to his face. The down will then be found even on the +thinnest and clearest skin of the middle red of his cheek. His +hair, too, is imponderably fine, and his nails are not much harder than +petals.</p> +<p>To return to the child in January. It is his month for the +laying up of dreams. No one can tell whether it is so with all +children, or even with a majority; but with some children, of passionate +fancy, there occurs now and then a children’s dance, or a party +of any kind, which has a charm and glory mingled with uncertain dreams. +Never forgotten, and yet never certainly remembered as a fact of this +life, is such an evening. When many and many a later pleasure, +about the reality of which there never was any kind of doubt, has been +long forgotten, that evening—as to which all is doubt—is +impossible to forget. In a few years it has become so remote that +the history of Greece derives antiquity from it. In later years +it is still doubtful, still a legend.</p> +<p>The child never asked how much was fact. It was always so immeasurably +long ago that the sweet party happened—if indeed it happened. +It had so long taken its place in that past wherein lurks all the antiquity +of the world. No one would know, no one could tell him, precisely +what occurred. And who can know whether—if it be indeed +a dream—he has dreamt it often, or has dreamt once that he had +dreamt it often? That dubious night is entangled in repeated visions +during the lonely life a child lives in sleep; it is intricate with +illusions. It becomes the most mysterious and the least worldly +of all memories, a spiritual past. The word pleasure is too trivial +for such a remembrance. A midwinter long gone by contained the +suggestion of such dreams; and the midwinter of this year must doubtless +be preparing for the heart of many an ardent young child a like legend +and a like antiquity. For the old it is a mere present.</p> +<h2>THAT PRETTY PERSON</h2> +<p>During the many years in which “evolution” was the favourite +word, one significant lesson—so it seems—was learnt, which +has outlived controversy, and has remained longer than the questions +at issue—an interesting and unnoticed thing cast up by the storm +of thoughts. This is a disposition, a general consent, to find +the use and the value of process, and even to understand a kind of repose +in the very wayfaring of progress. With this is a resignation +to change, and something more than resignation—a delight in those +qualities that could not be but for their transitoriness.</p> +<p>What, then, is this but the admiration, at last confessed by the +world, for childhood? Time was when childhood was but borne with, +and that for the sake of its mere promise of manhood. We do not +now hold, perhaps, that promise so high. Even, nevertheless, if +we held it high, we should acknowledge the approach to be a state adorned +with its own conditions.</p> +<p>But it was not so once. As the primitive lullaby is nothing +but a patient prophecy (the mother’s), so was education, some +two hundred years ago, nothing but an impatient prophecy (the father’s) +of the full stature of body and mind. The Indian woman sings of +the future hunting. If her song is not restless, it is because +she has a sense of the results of time, and has submitted her heart +to experience. Childhood is a time of danger; “Would it +were done.” But, meanwhile, the right thing is to put it +to sleep and guard its slumbers. It will pass. She sings +prophecies to the child of his hunting, as she sings a song about the +robe while she spins, and a song about bread as she grinds corn. +She bids good speed.</p> +<p>John Evelyn was equally eager, and not so submissive. His child—“that +pretty person” in Jeremy Taylor’s letter of condolence—was +chiefly precious to him inasmuch as he was, too soon, a likeness of +the man he never lived to be. The father, writing with tears when +the boy was dead, says of him: “At two and a half years of age +he pronounced English, Latin, and French exactly, and could perfectly +read in these three languages.” As he lived precisely five +years, all he did was done at that little age, and it comprised this: +“He got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French +primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into +Latin, and <i>vice</i> <i>versa</i>, construe and prove what he read, +and did the government and use of relatives, verbs, substantives, ellipses, +and many figures and tropes, and made a considerable progress in Comenius’s +‘Janua,’ and had a strong passion for Greek.”</p> +<p>Grant that this may be a little abated, because a very serious man +is not to be too much believed when he is describing what he admires; +it is the very fact of his admiration that is so curious a sign of those +hasty times. All being favorable, the child of Evelyn’s +studious home would have done all these things in the course of nature +within a few years. It was the fact that he did them out of the +course of nature that was, to Evelyn, so exquisite. The course +of nature had not any beauty in his eyes. It might be borne with +for the sake of the end, but it was not admired for the majesty of its +unhasting process. Jeremy Taylor mourns with him “the strangely +hopeful child,” who—without Comenius’s “Janua” +and without congruous syntax—was fulfilling, had they known it, +an appropriate hope, answering a distinctive prophecy, and crowning +and closing a separate expectation every day of his five years.</p> +<p>Ah! the word “hopeful” seems, to us, in this day, a word +too flattering to the estate of man. They thought their little +boy strangely hopeful because he was so quick on his way to be something +else. They lost the timely perfection the while they were so intent +upon their hopes. And yet it is our own modern age that is charged +with haste!</p> +<p>It would seem rather as though the world, whatever it shall unlearn, +must rightly learn to confess the passing and irrevocable hour; not +slighting it, or bidding it hasten its work, nor yet hailing it, with +Faust, “Stay, thou art so fair!” Childhood is but +change made gay and visible, and the world has lately been converted +to change.</p> +<p>Our fathers valued change for the sake of its results; we value it +in the act. To us the change is revealed as perpetual; every passage +is a goal, and every goal a passage. The hours are equal; but +some of them wear apparent wings.</p> +<p><i>Tout</i> <i>passe</i>. Is the fruit for the flower, or the +flower for the fruit, or the fruit for the seeds which it is formed +to shelter and contain? It seems as though our forefathers had +answered this question most arbitrarily as to the life of man.</p> +<p>All their literature dealing with children is bent upon this haste, +this suppression of the approach to what seemed then the only time of +fulfilment. The way was without rest to them. And this because +they had the illusion of a rest to be gained at some later point of +this unpausing life.</p> +<p>Evelyn and his contemporaries dropped the very word child as soon +as might be, if not sooner. When a poor little boy came to be +eight years old they called him a youth. The diarist himself had +no cause to be proud of his own early years, for he was so far indulged +in idleness by an “honoured grandmother” that he was “not +initiated into any rudiments” till he was four years of age. +He seems even to have been a youth of eight before Latin was seriously +begun; but this fact he is evidently, in after years, with a total lack +of a sense of humour, rather ashamed of, and hardly acknowledges. +It is difficult to imagine what childhood must have been when nobody, +looking on, saw any fun in it; when everything that was proper to five +years old was defect. A strange good conceit of themselves and +of their own ages had those fathers.</p> +<p>They took their children seriously, without relief. Evelyn +has nothing to say about his little ones that has a sign of a smile +in it. Twice are children, not his own, mentioned in his diary. +Once he goes to the wedding of a maid of five years old—a curious +thing, but not, evidently, an occasion of sensibility. Another +time he stands by, in a French hospital, while a youth of less than +nine years of age undergoes a frightful surgical operation “with +extraordinary patience.” “The use I made of it was +to give Almighty God hearty thanks that I had not been subject to this +deplorable infirmitie.” This is what he says.</p> +<p>See, moreover, how the fashion of hurrying childhood prevailed in +literature, and how it abolished little girls. It may be that +there were in all ages—even those—certain few boys who insisted +upon being children; whereas the girls were docile to the adult ideal. +Art, for example, had no little girls. There was always Cupid, +and there were the prosperous urchin-angels of the painters; the one +who is hauling up his little brother by the hand in the “Last +Communion of St. Jerome” might be called Tommy. But there +were no “little radiant girls.” Now and then an “Education +of the Virgin” is the exception, and then it is always a matter +of sewing and reading. As for the little girl saints, even when +they were so young that their hands, like those of St. Agnes, slipped +through their fetters, they are always recorded as refusing importunate +suitors, which seems necessary to make them interesting to the mediaeval +mind, but mars them for ours.</p> +<p>So does the hurrying and ignoring of little-girl-childhood somewhat +hamper the delight with which readers of John Evelyn admire his most +admirable Mrs. Godolphin. She was Maid of Honour to the Queen +in the Court of Charles II. She was, as he prettily says, an Arethusa +“who passed through all those turbulent waters without so much +as the least stain or tincture in her christall.” She held +her state with men and maids for her servants, guided herself by most +exact rules, such as that of never speaking to the King, gave an excellent +example and instruction to the other maids of honour, was “severely +careful how she might give the least countenance to that liberty which +the gallants there did usually assume,” refused the addresses +of the “greatest persons,” and was as famous for her beauty +as for her wit. One would like to forget the age at which she +did these things. When she began her service she was eleven. +When she was making her rule never to speak to the King she was not +thirteen.</p> +<p>Marriage was the business of daughters of fourteen and fifteen, and +heroines, therefore, were of those ages. The poets turned April +into May, and seemed to think that they lent a grace to the year if +they shortened and abridged the spring of their many songs. The +particular year they sang of was to be a particularly fine year, as +who should say a fine child and forward, with congruous syntax at two +years old, and ellipses, figures, and tropes. Even as late as +Keats a poet would not have patience with the process of the seasons, +but boasted of untimely flowers. The “musk-rose” is +never in fact the child of mid-May, as he has it.</p> +<p>The young women of Addison are nearly fourteen years old. His +fear of losing the idea of the bloom of their youth makes him so tamper +with the bloom of their childhood. The young heiress of seventeen +in the <i>Spectator</i> has looked upon herself as marriageable “for +the last six years.” The famous letter describing the figure, +the dance, the wit, the stockings of the charming Mr. Shapely is supposed +to be written by a girl of thirteen, “willing to settle in the +world as soon as she can.” She adds, “I have a good +portion which they cannot hinder me of.” This correspondent +is one of “the women who seldom ask advice before they have bought +their wedding clothes.” There was no sense of childhood +in an age that could think this an opportune pleasantry.</p> +<p>But impatience of the way and the wayfaring was to disappear from +a later century—an age that has found all things to be on a journey, +and all things complete in their day because it is their day, and has +its appointed end. It is the tardy conviction of this, rather +than a sentiment ready made, that has caused the childhood of children +to seem, at last, something else than a defect.</p> +<h2>OUT OF TOWN</h2> +<p>To be on a <i>villeggiatura</i> with the children is to surprise +them in ways and words not always evident in the London house. +The narrow lodgings cause you to hear and overhear. Nothing is +more curious to listen to than a young child’s dramatic voice. +The child, being a boy, assumes a deep, strong, and ultra-masculine +note, and a swagger in his walk, and gives himself the name of the tallest +of his father’s friends. The tone is not only manly; it +is a tone of affairs, and withal careless; it is intended to suggest +business, and also the possession of a top-hat and a pipe, and is known +in the family of the child as his “official voice.” +One day it became more official than ever, and really more masculine +than life; and it alternated with his own tones of three years old. +In these, he asked with humility, “Will you let me go to heaven +if I’m naughty? Will you?” Then he gave the +reply in the tone of affairs, the official voice at its very best: “No, +little boy, I won’t!” It was evident that the infant +was not assuming the character of his father’s tallest friend +this time, but had taken a rôle more exalted. His little +sister of a year older seemed thoroughly to enjoy the humour of the +situation. “Listen to him, mother. He’s trying +to talk like God. He often does.”</p> +<p>Bulls are made by a less imaginative child who likes to find some +reason for things—a girl. Out at the work of picking blackberries, +she explains, “Those rather good ones were all bad, mother, so +I ate them.” Being afraid of dogs, this little girl of four +years old has all kinds of dodges to disguise her fear, which she has +evidently resolved to keep to herself. She will set up a sudden +song to distract attention from the fact that she is placing herself +out of the dog’s way, and she will pretend to turn to gather a +flower, while she watches the creature out of sight. On the other +hand, prudence in regard to carts and bicycles is openly displayed, +and the infants are zealous to warn one another. A rider and his +horse are called briefly “a norseback.”</p> +<p>Children, who see more things than they have names for, show a fine +courage in taking any words that seem likely to serve them, without +wasting time in asking for the word in use. This enterprise is +most active at three and four years, when children have more than they +can say. So a child of those years running to pick up horse-chestnuts, +for him a new species, calls after his mother a full description of +what he has found, naming the things indifferently “dough-nuts” +and “cocoa-nuts.” And another, having an anecdote +to tell concerning the Thames and a little brook that joins it near +the house, calls the first the “front-sea” and the second +the “back-sea.” There is no intention of taking liberties +with the names of things—only a cheerful resolve to go on in spite +of obstacles. It is such a spirit of liberty as most of us have +felt when we have dreamt of improvising a song or improvising a dance. +The child improvises with such means as he has.</p> +<p>This is, of course, at the very early ages. A little later—at +eight or nine—there is a very clear-headed sense of the value +of words. So that a little girl of that age, told that she may +buy some fruit, and wishing to know her limits in spending, asks, “What +mustn’t it be more than?” For a child, who has not +the word “maximum” at hand, nothing could be more precise +and concise. Still later, there is a sweet brevity that looks +almost like conscious expression, as when a boy writes from his first +boarding school: “Whenever I can’t stop laughing I have +only to think of home.”</p> +<p>Infinitely different as children are, they differ in nothing more +than in the degree of generosity. The most sensitive of children +is a little gay girl whose feelings are hurt with the greatest facility, +and who seems, indeed, to have the susceptibilty of other ages as well +as of her own—for instance, she cannot endure without a flush +of pain to hear herself called fat. But she always brings her +little wound to him who has wounded her. The first confidant she +seeks is the offender. If you have laughed at her she will not +hide her tears elsewhere than on your shoulder. She confesses +by her exquisite action at one her poor vanity and her humility.</p> +<p>The worst of children in the country is their inveterate impulse +to use death as their toy. Immediately on their discovery of some +pretty insect, one tender child calls to the other “Dead it.”</p> +<p>Children do not look at the sky unless it is suggested to them to +do so. When the sun dips to the narrow horizon of their stature, +and comes to the level of their eyes, even then they are not greatly +interested. Enormous clouds, erect, with the sun behind, do not +gain their eyes. What is of annual interest is the dark. +Having fallen asleep all the summer by daylight, and having awakened +after sunrise, children find a stimulus of fun and fear in the autumn +darkness outside the windows. There is a frolic with the unknown +blackness, with the reflections, and with the country night.</p> +<h2>EXPRESSION</h2> +<p>Strange to say, the eyes of children, whose minds are so small, express +intelligence better than do the greater number of adult eyes. +David Garrick’s were evidently unpreoccupied, like theirs. +The look of intelligence is outward—frankly directed upon external +things; it is observant, and therefore mobile without inner restlessness. +For restless eyes are the least observant of all—they move by +a kind of distraction. The looks of observant eyes, moving with +the living things they keep in sight, have many pauses as well as flights. +This is the action of intelligence, whereas the eyes of intellect are +detained or darkened.</p> +<p>Rational perception, with all its phases of humour, are best expressed +by a child, who has few second thoughts to divide the image of his momentary +feeling. His simplicity adds much to the manifestation of his +intelligence. The child is the last and lowest of rational creatures, +for in him the “rational soul” closes its long downward +flight with the bright final revelation.</p> +<p>He has also the chief beauty of the irrational soul of the mind, +that is, of the lower animal—which is singleness. The simplicity, +the integrity, the one thing at a time, of a good animal’s eyes +is a great beauty, and is apt to cause us to exaggerate our sense of +their expressiveness. An animal’s eyes, at their best, are +very slightly expressive; languor or alertness, the quick expectation, +even the aloofness of doubt they are able to show, but the showing is +mechanical; the human sentiment of the spectator adds the rest.</p> +<p>All this simplicity the child has, at moments, with the divisions +and delicacies of the rational soul, also. His looks express the +first, the last, and the clearest humanity. He is the first by +his youth and the last by his lowliness. He is the beginning and +the result of the creation of man.</p> +<h2>UNDER THE EARLY STARS</h2> +<p>Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at random. +There is a tide in the affairs of children. Civilization is cruel +in sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of dusk. Summer +dusk, especially, is the frolic moment for children, baffle them how +you may. They may have been in a pottering mood all day, intent +upon all kinds of close industries, breathing hard over choppings and +poundings. But when late twilight comes, there comes also the +punctual wildness. The children will run and pursue, and laugh +for the mere movement—it does so jog their spirits.</p> +<p>What remembrances does this imply of the hunt, what of the predatory +dark? The kitten grows alert at the same hour, and hunts for moths +and crickets in the grass. It comes like an imp, leaping on all +fours. The children lie in ambush and fall upon one another in +the mimicry of hunting.</p> +<p>The sudden outbreak of action is complained of as a defiance and +a rebellion. Their entertainers are tired, and the children are +to go home. But, with more or less of life and fire, they strike +some blow for liberty. It may be the impotent revolt of the ineffectual +child, or the stroke of the conqueror; but something, something is done +for freedom under the early stars.</p> +<p>This is not the only time when the energy of children is in conflict +with the weariness of men. But it is less tolerable that the energy +of men should be at odds with the weariness of children, which happens +at some time of their jaunts together, especially, alas! in the jaunts +of the poor.</p> +<p>Of games for the summer dusk when it rains, cards are most beloved +by children. Three tiny girls were to be taught “old maid” +to beguile the time. One of them, a nut-brown child of five, was +persuading another to play. “Oh come,” she said, “and +play with me at new maid.”</p> +<p>The time of falling asleep is a child’s immemorial and incalculable +hour. It is full of traditions, and beset by antique habits. +The habit of prehistoric races has been cited as the only explanation +of the fixity of some customs in mankind. But if the enquirers +who appeal to that beginning remembered better their own infancy, they +would seek no further. See the habits in falling to sleep which +have children in their thralldom. Try to overcome them in any +child, and his own conviction of their high antiquity weakens your hand.</p> +<p>Childhood is antiquity, and with the sense of time and the sense +of mystery is connected for ever the hearing of a lullaby. The +French sleep-song is the most romantic. There is in it such a +sound of history as must inspire any imaginative child, falling to sleep, +with a sense of the incalculable; and the songs themselves are old. +<i>Le</i> <i>Bon</i> <i>Roi</i> <i>Dagobert</i> has been sung over French +cradles since the legend was fresh. The nurse knows nothing more +sleepy than the tune and the verse that she herself slept to when a +child. The gaiety of the thirteenth century, in <i>Le</i> <i>Pont</i> +<i>a’</i> <i>Avignon</i>, is put mysteriously to sleep, away in +the <i>tête</i> <i>à</i> <i>tête</i> <i>of</i> child +and nurse, in a thousand little sequestered rooms at night. <i>Malbrook</i> +would be comparatively modern, were not all things that are sung to +a drowsing child as distant as the day of Abraham.</p> +<p>If English children are not rocked to many such aged lullabies, some +of them are put to sleep to strange cradle-songs. The affectionate +races that are brought into subjection sing the primitive lullaby to +the white child. Asiatic voices and African persuade him to sleep +in the tropical night. His closing eyes are filled with alien +images.</p> +<h2>THE MAN WITH TWO HEADS</h2> +<p>It is generally understood in the family that the nurse who menaces +a child, whether with the supernatural or with simple sweeps, lions, +or tigers—goes. The rule is a right one, for the appeal +to fear may possibly hurt a child; nevertheless, it oftener fails to +hurt him. If he is prone to fears, he will be helpless under their +grasp, without the help of human tales. The night will threaten +him, the shadow will pursue, the dream will catch him; terror itself +have him by the heart. And terror, having made his pulses leap, +knows how to use any thought, any shape, any image, to account to the +child’s mind for the flight and tempest of his blood. “The +child shall not be frightened,” decrees ineffectual love; but +though no man make him afraid, he is frightened. Fear knows him +well and finds him alone.</p> +<p>Such a child is hardly at the mercy of any human rashness and impatience; +nor is the child whose pulses go steadily, and whose brows are fresh +and cool, at their mercy. This is one of the points upon which +a healthy child resembles the Japanese. Whatever that extreme +Oriental may be in war and diplomacy, whatever he may be at London University, +or whatever his plans of Empire, in relation to the unseen world he +is a child at play. He hides himself, he hides his eyes and pretends +to believe that he is hiding, he runs from the supernatural and laughs +for the fun of running.</p> +<p>So did a child, threatened for his unruliness with the revelation +of the man with two heads. The nurse must have had recourse to +this man under acute provocation. The boy, who had profited well +by every one of his four long years, and was radiant with the light +and colour of health, refused to be left to compose himself to sleep. +That act is an adult act, learnt in the self-conscious and deliberate +years of later life, when man goes on a mental journey in search of +rest, aware of setting forth. But the child is pursued and overtaken +by sleep, caught, surprised, and overcome. He goes no more to +sleep, than he takes a “constitutional” with his hoop and +hoopstick. The child amuses himself up to the last of his waking +moments. Happily, in the search for amusement, he is apt to learn +some habit or to cherish some toy, either of which may betray him and +deliver him up to sleep, the enemy. What wonder, then, if a child +who knows that everyone in the world desires his peace and pleasure, +should clamour for companionship in the first reluctant minutes of bed? +This child, being happy, did not weep for what he wanted; he shouted +for it in the rousing tones of his strength. After many evenings +of this he was told that this was precisely the vociferous kind of wakefulness +that might cause the man with two heads to show himself.</p> +<p>Unable to explain that no child ever goes to sleep, but that sleep, +on the contrary, “goes” for a child, the little boy yet +accepted the penalty, believed in the man, and kept quiet for a time.</p> +<p>There was indignation in the mother’s heart when the child +instructed her as to what might be looked for at his bedside; she used +all her emphasis in assuring him that no man with two heads would ever +trouble those innocent eyes, for there was no such portent anywhere +on earth. There is no such heart-oppressing task as the making +of these assurances to a child, for whom who knows what portents are +actually in wait! She found him, however, cowering with laughter, +not with dread, lest the man with two heads should see or overhear. +The man with two heads had become his play, and so was perhaps bringing +about his sleep by gentler means than the nurse had intended. +The man was employing the vacant minutes of the little creature’s +flight from sleep, called “going to sleep” in the inexact +language of the old.</p> +<p>Nor would the boy give up his faith with its tremor and private laughter. +Because a child has a place for everything, this boy had placed the +monstrous man in the ceiling, in a corner of the room that might be +kept out of sight by the bed curtain. If that corner were left +uncovered, the fear would grow stronger than the fun; “the man +would see me,” said the little boy. But let the curtain +be in position, and the child lay alone, hugging the dear belief that +the monster was near.</p> +<p>He was earnest in controversy with his mother as to the existence +of his man. The man was there, for he had been told so, and he +was there to wait for “naughty boys,” said the child, with +cheerful self-condemnation. The little boy’s voice was somewhat +hushed, because of the four ears of the listener, but it did not falter, +except when his mother’s arguments against the existence of the +man seemed to him cogent and likely to gain the day. Then for +the first time the boy was a little downcast, and the light of mystery +became dimmer in his gay eyes.</p> +<h2>CHILDREN IN BURLESQUE</h2> +<p>Derision, which is so great a part of human comedy, has not spared +the humours of children. Yet they are fitter subjects for any +other kind of jesting. In the first place they are quite defenceless, +but besides and before this, it might have been supposed that nothing +in a child could provoke the equal passion of scorn. Between confessed +unequals scorn is not even suggested. Its derisive proclamation +of inequality has no sting and no meaning where inequality is natural +and manifest.</p> +<p>Children rouse the laughter of men and women; but in all that laughter +the tone of derision is more strange a discord than the tone of anger +would be, or the tone of theological anger and menace. These, +little children have had to bear in their day, but in the grim and serious +moods—not in the play—of their elders. The wonder +is that children should ever have been burlesqued, or held to be fit +subjects for irony.</p> +<p>Whether the thing has been done anywhere out of England, in any form, +might be a point for enquiry. It would seem, at a glance, that +English art and literature are quite alone in this incredible manner +of sport.</p> +<p>And even here, too, the thing that is laughed at in a child is probably +always a mere reflection of the parents’ vulgarity. None +the less it is an unintelligible thing that even the rankest vulgarity +of father or mother should be resented, in the child, with the implacable +resentment of derision.</p> +<p>John Leech used the caricature of a baby for the purposes of a scorn +that was not angry, but familiar. It is true that the poor child +had first been burlesqued by the unchildish aspect imposed upon him +by his dress, which presented him, without the beauties of art or nature, +to all the unnatural ironies. Leech did but finish him in the +same spirit, with dots for the childish eyes, and a certain form of +face which is best described as a fat square containing two circles—the +inordinate cheeks of that ignominious baby. That is the child +as <i>Punch</i> in Leech’s day preserved him, the latest figure +of the then prevailing domestic raillery of the domestic.</p> +<p>In like manner did Thackeray and Dickens, despite all their sentiment. +Children were made to serve both the sentiment and the irony between +which those two writers, alike in this, stood double-minded. Thackeray, +writing of his snobs, wreaks himself upon a child; there is no worse +snob than his snob-child. There are snob-children not only in +the book dedicated to their parents, but in nearly all his novels. +There is a female snob-child in “Lovel the Widower,” who +may be taken as a type, and there are snob-children at frequent intervals +in “Philip.” It is not certain that Thackeray intended +the children of Pendennis himself to be innocent and exempt.</p> +<p>In one of Dickens’s early sketches there is a plot amongst +the humorous <i>dramatis</i> <i>personae</i>, to avenge themselves on +a little boy for the lack of tact whereby his parents have brought him +with them to a party on the river. The principal humorist frightens +the child into convulsions. The incident is the success of the +day, and is obviously intended to have some kind of reflex action in +amusing the reader. In Dickens’s maturer books the burlesque +little girl imitates her mother’s illusory fainting-fits.</p> +<p>Our glimpses of children in the fugitive pages of that day are grotesque. +A little girl in <i>Punch</i> improves on the talk of her dowdy mother +with the maids. An inordinate baby stares; a little boy flies, +hideous, from some hideous terror.</p> +<h2>AUTHORSHIP</h2> +<p>Authorship prevails in nurseries—at least in some nurseries. +In many it is probably a fitful game, and since the days of the Brontës +there has not been a large family without its magazine. The weak +point of all this literature is its commonplace. The child’s +effort is to write something as much like as possible to the tedious +books that are read to him; he is apt to be fluent and foolish. +If a child simple enough to imitate were also simple enough not to imitate +he might write nursery magazines that would not bore us.</p> +<p>As it is, there is sometimes nothing but the fresh and courageous +spelling to make his stories go. “He,” however, is +hardly the pronoun. The girls are the more active authors, and +the more prosaic. What they would write had they never read things +written for them by the dull, it is not possible to know. What +they do write is this—to take a passage: “Poor Mrs. Bald +(that was her name) thought she would never get to the wood where her +aunt lived, she got down and pulled the donky on by the bridal . . . +Alas! her troubles were not over yet, the donky would not go where she +wanted it, instead of turning down Rose Lane it went down another, which +although Mrs. Bald did not know it led to a very deep and dangerous +pond. The donky ran into the pond and Mrs. Bald was dround.”</p> +<p>To give a prosperous look to the magazine containing the serial story +just quoted, a few pages of mixed advertisements are laboriously written +out: “The Imatation of Christ is the best book in all the world.” +“Read Thompson’s poetry and you are in a world of delight.” +“Barrat’s ginger beer is the only ginger beer to drink.” +“The place for a ice.” Under the indefinite heading +“A Article,” readers are told “that they are liable +to read the paper for nothing.”</p> +<p>A still younger hand contributes a short story in which the hero +returns to his home after a report of his death had been believed by +his wife and family. The last sentence is worth quoting: “We +will now,” says the author, “leave Mrs. White and her two +children to enjoy the sudden appearance of Mr. White.”</p> +<p>Here is an editorial announcement: “Ladies and gentlemen, every +week at the end of the paper there will be a little article on the habits +of the paper.”</p> +<p>On the whole, authorship does not seem to foster the quality of imagination. +Convention, during certain early years, may be a very strong motive—not +so much with children brought up strictly within its limits, perhaps, +as with those who have had an exceptional freedom. Against this, +as a kind of childish bohemianism, there is, in one phase of childhood, +a strong reaction. To one child, brought up internationally, and +with somewhat too much liberty amongst peasant play-mates and their +games, in many dialects, eagerness to become like “other people,” +and even like the other people of quite inferior fiction, grew to be +almost a passion. The desire was in time out-grown, but it cost +the girl some years of her simplicity. The style is not always +the child.</p> +<h2>LETTERS</h2> +<p>The letter exacted from a child is usually a letter of thanks; somebody +has sent him a box of chocolates. The thanks tend to stiffen a +child’s style; but in any case a letter is the occasion of a sudden +self-consciousness, newer to a child than his elders know. They +speak prose and know it. But a young child possesses his words +by a different tenure; he is not aware of the spelt and written aspect +of the things he says every day; he does not dwell upon the sound of +them. He is so little taken by the kind and character of any word +that he catches the first that comes at random. A little child +to whom a peach was first revealed, whispered to his mother, “I +like that kind of turnip.” Compelled to write a letter, +the child finds the word of daily life suddenly a stranger.</p> +<p>The fresher the mind the duller the sentence; and the younger the +fingers the older, more wrinkled, and more sidling the handwriting. +Dickens, who used his eyes, remarked the contrast. The hand of +a child and his face are full of rounds; but his written O is tottering +and haggard.</p> +<p>His phrases are ceremonious without the dignity of ceremony. +The child chatters because he wants his companion to hear; but there +is no inspiration in the act of writing to a distant aunt about whom +he probably has some grotesque impression because he cannot think of +anyone, however vague and forgotten, without a mental image. As +like as not he pictures all his relatives at a distance with their eyes +shut. No boy wants to write familiar things to a forgotten aunt +with her eyes shut. His thoughtless elders require him not only +to write to her under these discouragements, but to write to her in +an artless and childlike fashion.</p> +<p>The child is unwieldy of thought, besides. He cannot send the +conventional messages but he loses his way among the few pronouns: “I +send them their love,” “They sent me my love,” “I +kissed their hand to me.” If he is stopped and told to get +the words right, he has to make a long effort. His precedent might +be cited to excuse every politician who cannot remember whether he began +his sentence with “people” in the singular or the plural, +and who finishes it otherwise than as he began it. Points of grammar +that are purely points of logic baffle a child completely. He +is as unready in the thought needed for these as he is in the use of +his senses.</p> +<p>It is not true—though it is generally said—that a young +child’s senses are quick. This is one of the unverified +ideas that commend themselves, one knows not why. We have had +experiments to compare the relative quickness of perception proved by +men and women. The same experiments with children would give curious +results, but they can hardly, perhaps, be made, because the children +would be not only slow to perceive but slow to announce the perception; +so the moment would go by, and the game be lost. Not even amateur +conjuring does so baffle the slow turning of a child’s mind as +does a little intricacy of grammar.</p> +<h2>THE FIELDS</h2> +<p>The pride of rustic life is the child’s form of caste-feeling. +The country child is the aristocrat; he has <i>des</i> <i>relations</i> +<i>suivies</i> with game-keepers, nay, with the most interesting mole-catchers. +He has a perfectly self-conscious joy that he is not in a square or +a suburb. No essayist has so much feeling against terraces and +villas.</p> +<p>As for imitation country—the further suburb—it is worse +than town; it is a place to walk in; and the tedium of a walk to a child’s +mind is hardly measurable by a man, who walks voluntarily, with his +affairs to think about, and his eyes released, by age, from the custom +of perpetual observation. The child, compelled to walk, is the +only unresting observer of the asphalt, the pavement, the garden gates +and railings, and the tedious people. He is bored as he will never +be bored when a man.</p> +<p>He is at his best where, under the welcome stress and pressure of +abundant crops, he is admitted to the labours of men and women, neither +in mere play nor in the earnest of the hop-field for the sake of his +little gains. On the steep farm lands of the Canton de Vaud, where +maize and grapes are carried in the <i>botte</i>, so usually are children +expected in the field that <i>bottes</i> are made to the shape of a +back and arms of five years old. Some, made for harvesters of +those years, can hold no more than a single yellow ear of maize or two +handfuls of beans. You may meet the same little boy with the repetitions +of this load a score of times in the morning. Moreover the Swiss +mother has always a fit sense of what is due to that labourer. +When the plums are gathered, for instance, she bakes in the general +village oven certain round open tarts across which her arm can hardly +reach. No plum tarts elsewhere are anything but dull in comparison +with these. There is, besides, the first loaf from the new flour, +brown from the maize and white from the wheat. Nor can a day of +potato-gathering be more appropriately ended than with a little fire +built afield and the baking of some of the harvest under the wood ashes. +Vintaging needs no praises, nor does apple-gathering; even when the +apples are for cider, they are never acrid enough to baffle a child’s +tooth.</p> +<p>Yet even those children who are so unlucky as never to have worked +in a real field, but have been compelled to vary their education with +nothing but play, are able to comfort themselves with the irregular +harvest of the hedges. They have no little hand in the realities +of cultivation, but wild growths give them blackberries. Pale +are the joys of nutting beside those of haymaking, but at least they +are something.</p> +<p>Harvests apart, Spring, not Autumn, should make a childhood of memories +for the future. In later Autumn, life is speeding away, ebbing, +taking flight, a fugitive, taking disguises, hiding in the dry seed, +retreating into the dark. The daily progress of things in Spring +is for children, who look close. They know the way of moss and +the roots of ivy, they breathe the breath of earth immediately, direct. +They have a sense of place, of persons, and of the past that may be +remembered but cannot be recaptured. Adult accustomed eyes cannot +see what a child’s eye sees of the personality of a person; to +the child the accidents of voice and look are charged with separate +and unique character. Such a sense of place as he got in a day +within some forest, or in a week by some lake, so that a sound or odour +can bring it back in after days, with a shock—even such a sense +of single personality does a little watchful girl get from the accents, +the turns of the head, the habits of the hands, the presence of a woman. +Not all places, nor all persons, are so quick with the expression of +themselves; the child knows the difference. As for places that +are so loaded, and that breathe so, the child discerns them passionately.</p> +<p>A travelled child multiplies these memories and has them in their +variety. His heart has room for many places that have the spirit +of place. The glacier may be forgotten, but some little tract +of pasture that has taken wing to the head of a mountain valley, a field +that has soared up a pass unnamed, will become a memory, in time, sixty +years old. That is a fortunate child who has tasted country life +in places far apart, who has helped, followed the wheat to the threshing-floor +of a Swiss village, stumbled after a plough of Virgil’s shape +in remoter Tuscan hills, and gleaned after a vintage. You cannot +suggest pleasanter memories than those of the vintage, for the day when +the wine will be old.</p> +<h2>THE BARREN SHORE</h2> +<p>It may be a disappointment to the children each year at play upon +so many beaches—even if they are but dimly aware of their lack—to +find their annual plaything to be not a real annual; an annual thing, +indeed, to them, for the arbitrary reason that they go down to it once +a year, but not annual in the vital and natural sense of the seasons, +not waxing and waning, not bearing, not turning that circle of the seasons +whereof no one knows which is the highest point and the secret and the +ultimate purpose, not recreated, not new, and not yielding to the child +anything raw and irregular to eat.</p> +<p>Sand castles are well enough, and they are the very commonplace of +the recollections of elders, of their rhetoric, and of what they think +appropriate for their young ones. Shingle and sand are good playthings, +but absolute play is not necessarily the ideal of a child; he would +rather have a frolic of work. Of all the early autumn things to +be done in holiday time, that game with the beach and the wave is the +least good for holiday-time.</p> +<p>Not that the shore is everywhere so barren. The coast of the +Londoners—all round the southern and eastern borders of England—is +indeed the dullest of all sea-margins. But away in the gentle +bays of Jersey the summer grows a crop of seaweed which the long ocean +wave leaves in noble curves upon the beach; for under sunny water the +storms have gathered the crops. The Channel Island people go gleaning +after the sea, and store the seaweed for their fields. Thus the +beaches of Jersey bays are not altogether barren, and have a kind of +dead and accessory harvest for the farmer. After a night of storm +these crops are stacked and carted and carried, the sea-wind catching +away loose shreds from the summits of the loads.</p> +<p>Further south, if the growth of the sea is not so put to use, the +shore has yet its seasons. You could hardly tell, if you did not +know the month, whether a space of sea or a series of waves, at Aldborough, +say, or at Dover, were summer or winter water; but in those fortunate +regions which are southern, yet not too southern for winter, and have +thus the strongest swing of change and the fullest pulse of the year, +there are a winter sea and a summer sea, brilliantly different, with +a delicate variety between the hastening blue of spring and the lingering +blue of September. There you bathe from the rocks, untroubled +by tides, and unhurried by chills, and with no incongruous sun beating +on your head while your fingers are cold. You bathe when the sun +has set, and the vast sea has not a whisper; you know a rock in the +distance where you can rest; and where you float, there float also by +you opalescent jelly-fish, half transparent in the perfectly transparent +water. An hour in the warm sea is not enough. Rock-bathing +is done on lonely shores. A city may be but a mile away, and the +cultivated vineyards may be close above the seaside pine-trees, but +the place is perfectly remote. You pitch your tent on any little +hollow of beach. A charming Englishwoman who used to bathe with +her children under the great rocks of her Mediterranean villa in the +motionless white evenings of summer put white roses in her hair, and +liked to sit out on a rock at sea where the first rays of the moon would +touch her.</p> +<p>You bathe in the Channel in the very prose of the day. Nothing +in the world is more uninteresting than eleven o’clock. +It is the hour of mediocrity under the best conditions; but eleven o’clock +on a shingly beach, in a half-hearted summer, is a very common thing. +Twelve has a dignity always, and everywhere its name is great. +The noon of every day that ever dawned is in its place heroic; but eleven +is worldly. One o’clock has an honest human interest to +the hungry child, and every hour of the summer afternoon, after three, +has the grace of deepening and lingering life. To bathe at eleven +in the sun, in the wind, to bathe from a machine, in a narrow sea that +is certainly not clear and is only by courtesy clean, to bathe in obedience +to a tyrannical tide and in water that is always much colder than yourself, +to bathe in a hurry and in public—this is to know nothing rightly +of one of the greatest of all the pleasures that humanity takes with +nature.</p> +<p>By the way, the sea of Jersey has more the character of a real sea +than of mere straits. These temperate islands would be better +called the Ocean Islands. When Edouard Pailleron was a boy and +wrote poetry, he composed a letter to Victor Hugo, the address whereof +was a matter of some thought. The final decision was to direct +it, “A Victor Hugo, Océan.” It reached him. +It even received a reply: “I am the Past, you are the Future; +I am, etc.” If an English boy had had the same idea the +name of the Channel Islands would have spoilt it. “A Victor +Hugo, La Manche,” would hardly have interested the postal authorities +so much; but “the Channel” would have had no respect at +all. Indeed, this last is suggestive of nothing but steamers and +of grey skies inland—formless grey skies, undesigned, with their +thin cloud torn to slender rags by a perpetual wind.</p> +<p>As for the children, to whom belongs the margin of the sea, machine-bathing +at eleven o’clock will hardly furnish them with a magical early +memory. Time was when this was made penitential to them, like +the rest of life, upon a principle that no longer prevails. It +was vulgarized for them and made violent. A bathing woman, type +of all ugliness in their sensitive eyes, came striding, shapeless, through +the unfriendly sea, seized them if they were very young, ducked them, +and returned them to the chilly machine, generally in the futile and +superfluous saltness of tears. “Too much of water had they,” +poor infants.</p> +<p>None the less is the barren shore the children’s; and St. Augustine, +Isaac Newton, and Wordsworth had not a vision of sea-beaches without +a child there.</p> +<h2>THE BOY</h2> +<p>After an infancy of more than common docility and a young childhood +of few explicit revolts, the boy of twelve years old enters upon a phase +which the bystander may not well understand but may make shift to note +as an impression.</p> +<p>Like other subtle things, his position is hardly to be described +but by negatives. Above all, he is not demonstrative. The +days are long gone by when he said he wanted a bicycle, a top hat, and +a pipe. One or two of these things he has, and he takes them without +the least swagger. He avoids expression of any kind. Any +satisfaction he may feel with things as they are is rather to be surprised +in his manner than perceived in his action. Mr. Jaggers, when +it befell him to be astonished, showed it by a stop of manner, for an +indivisible moment—not by a pause in the thing he chanced to be +about. In like manner the boy cannot prevent his most innocent +pleasures from arresting him.</p> +<p>He will not endure (albeit he does not confess so much) to be told +to do anything, at least in that citadel of his freedom, his home. +His elders probably give him as few orders as possible. He will +almost ingeniously evade any that are inevitably or thoughtlessly inflicted +upon him, but if he does but succeed in only postponing his obedience, +he has, visibly, done something for his own relief. It is less +convenient that he should hold mere questions, addressed to him in all +good faith, as in some sort an attempt upon his liberty.</p> +<p>Questions about himself one might understand to be an outrage. +But it is against impersonal and indifferent questions also that the +boy sets his face like a rock. He has no ambition to give information +on any point. Older people may not dislike the opportunity, and +there are even those who bring to pass questions of a trivial kind for +the pleasure of answering them with animation. This, the boy perhaps +thinks, is “fuss,” and, if he has any passions, he has a +passionate dislike of fuss.</p> +<p>When a younger child tears the boy’s scrapbook (which is conjectured, +though not known, to be the dearest thing he has) he betrays no emotion; +that was to be expected. But when the stolen pages are rescued +and put by for him, he abstains from taking an interest in the retrieval; +he will do nothing to restore them. To do so would mar the integrity +of his reserve. If he would do much rather than answer questions, +he would suffer something rather than ask them.</p> +<p>He loves his father and a friend of his father’s, and he pushes +them, in order to show it without compromising his temperament.</p> +<p>He is a partisan in silence. It may be guessed that he is often +occupied in comparing other people with his admired men. Of this +too he says little, except some brief word of allusion to what other +men do <i>not</i> do.</p> +<p>When he speaks it is with a carefully shortened vocabulary. +As an author shuns monotony, so does the boy shun change. He does +not generally talk slang; his habitual words are the most usual of daily +words made useful and appropriate by certain varieties of voice. +These express for him all that he will consent to communicate. +He reserves more by speaking dull words with zeal than by using zealous +words that might betray him. But his brevity is the chief thing; +he has almost made an art of it.</p> +<p>He is not “merry.” Merry boys have pretty manners, +and it must be owned that this boy’s manners are not pretty. +But if not merry, he is happy; there never was a more untroubled soul. +If he has an almost grotesque reticence, he has no secrets. Nothing +that he thinks is very much hidden. Even if he did not push his +father, it would be evident that the boy loves him; even if he never +laid his hand (and this little thing he does rarely) on his friend’s +shoulder, it would be plain that he loves his friend. His happiness +appears in his moody and charming face, his ambition in his dumbness, +and the hopes of his life to come in ungainly bearing. How does +so much heart, how does so much sweetness, all unexpressed, appear? +For it is not only those who know him well that know the child’s +heart; strangers are aware of it. This, which he would not reveal, +is the only thing that is quite unmistakable and quite conspicuous.</p> +<p>What he thinks that he turns visibly to the world is a sense of humour, +with a measure of criticism and of indifference. What he thinks +the world may divine in him is courage and an intelligence. But +carry himself how he will, he is manifestly a tender, gentle, and even +spiritual creature, masculine and innocent—“a nice boy.” +There is no other way of describing him than that of his own brief language.</p> +<h2>ILLNESS</h2> +<p>The patience of young children in illness is a commonplace of some +little books, but none the less a fresh fact. In spite of the +sentimental, children in illness remain the full sources of perpetual +surprises. Their self-control in real suffering is a wonder. +A little turbulent girl, brilliant and wild, and unaccustomed, it might +be thought, to deal in any way with her own impulses—a child whose +way was to cry out, laugh, complain, and triumph without bating anything +of her own temperament, and without the hesitation of a moment, struck +her face, on a run, against a wall and was cut and in a moment overwhelmed +with pain and covered with blood. “Tell mother it’s +nothing! Tell mother, quick, it’s nothing!” cried +the magnanimous child as soon as she could speak.</p> +<p>The same child fell over the rail of a staircase and was obliged +to lie for some ten days on her back, so that the strained but not broken +little body might recover itself. Every movement was, in a measure, +painful; and there was a long captivity, a helplessness enforced and +guarded by twinges, a constant impossibility to yield to the one thing +that had carried her through all her years—impulse. A condition +of acute consciousness was imposed upon a creature whose first condition +of life had been unconsciousness; and this during the long period of +ten of a child’s days and nights at eight years old.</p> +<p>Yet during every hour of the time the child was not only gay but +patient, not fitfully, but steadily, resigned, sparing of requests, +reluctant to be served, inventive of tender and pious little words that +she had never used before. “You are exquisite to me, mother,” +she said, at receiving some common service.</p> +<p>Even in the altering and harassing conditions of fever, a generous +child assumes the almost incredible attitude of deliberate patience. +Not that illness is to be trusted to work so. There is another +child who in his brief indispositions becomes invincible, armed against +medicine finally. The last appeal to force, as his distracted +elders find, is all but an impossibility; but in any case it would be +a failure. You can bring the spoon to the child, but three nurses +cannot make him drink. This, then, is the occasion of the ultimate +resistance. He raises the standard of revolution, and casts every +tradition and every precept to the wind on which it flies. He +has his elders at a disadvantage; for if they pursue him with a grotesque +spoon their maxims and commands are, at the moment, still more grotesque. +He is committed to the wild novelty of absolute refusal. He not +only refuses, moreover, he disbelieves; he throws everything over. +Told that the medicine is not so bad, this nihilist laughs.</p> +<p>Medicine apart, a minor ailment is an interest and a joy. “Am +I unwell to-day, mother?” asks a child with all his faith and +confidence at the highest point.</p> +<h2>THE YOUNG CHILD</h2> +<p>The infant of literature “wails” and wails feebly, with +the invariability of a thing unproved and taken for granted. Nothing, +nevertheless, could be more unlike a wail than the most distinctive +cry whereon the child of man catches his first breath. It is a +hasty, huddled outcry, sharp and brief, rather deep than shrill in tone. +With all deference to old moralities, man does not weep at beginning +this world; he simply lifts up his new voice much as do the birds in +the Zoological Gardens, and with much the same tone as some of the duck +kind there. He does not weep for some months to come. His +outcry soon becomes the human cry that is better known than loved, but +tears belong to later infancy. And if the infant of days neither +wails nor weeps, the infant of months is still too young to be gay. +A child’s mirth, when at last it begins, is his first secret; +you understand little of it. The first smile (for the convulsive +movement in sleep that is popularly adorned by that name is not a smile) +is an uncertain sketch of a smile, unpractised but unmistakable. +It is accompanied by a single sound—a sound that would be a monosyllable +if it were articulate—which is the utterance, though hardly the +communication, of a private jollity. That and that alone is the +real beginning of human laughter.</p> +<p>From the end of the first fortnight in life, when it appears for +the first time, and as it were flickeringly, the child’s smile +begins to grow definite and, gradually, more frequent. By very +slow degrees the secrecy passes away, and the dryness becomes more genial. +The child now smiles more openly, but he is still very unlike the laughing +creature of so much prose and verse. His laughter takes a long +time to form. The monosyllable grows louder, and then comes to +be repeated with little catches of the breath. The humour upon +which he learns to laugh is that of something which approaches him quickly +and then withdraws. This is the first intelligible jest of jesting +man.</p> +<p>An infant never meets your eyes; he evidently does not remark the +features of faces near him. Whether because of the greater conspicuousness +of dark hair or dark hat, or for some like reason, he addresses his +looks, his laughs, and apparently his criticism, to the heads, not the +faces, of his friends. These are the ways of all infants, various +in character, parentage, race, and colour; they do the same things. +There are turns in a kitten’s play—arched leapings and sidelong +jumps, graceful rearings and grotesque dances—which the sacred +kittens of Egypt used in their time. But not more alike are these +repetitions than the impulses of all young children learning to laugh.</p> +<p>In regard to the child of a somewhat later growth, we are told much +of his effect upon the world; not much of the effect of the world upon +him. Yet he is compelled to endure the reflex results, at least, +of all that pleases, distresses, or oppresses the world. That +he should be obliged to suffer the moods of men is a more important +thing than that men should be amused by his moods. If he is saddened, +that is certainly much more than that his elders should be gladdened. +It is doubtless hardly possible that children should go altogether free +of human affairs. They might, in mere justice, be spared the burden +they bear ignorantly and simply when it is laid upon them, of such events +and ill fortunes as may trouble our peace; but they cannot easily be +spared the hearing of a disturbed voice or the sight of an altered face. +Alas! they are made to feel money-matters, and even this is not the +worst. There are unconfessed worldliness, piques, and rivalries, +of which they do not know the names, but which change the faces where +they look for smiles. To such alterations children are sensitive +even when they seem least accessible to the commands, the warnings, +the threats, or the counsels of elders. Of all these they may +be gaily independent, and yet may droop when their defied tyrants are +dejected.</p> +<p>For though the natural spirit of children is happy, the happiness +is a mere impulse and is easily disconcerted. They are gay without +knowing any very sufficient reason for being so, and when sadness is, +as it were, proposed to them, things fall away from under their feet, +they are helpless and find no stay. For this reason the merriest +of all children are those, much pitied, who are brought up neither in +a family nor in a public home by paid guardians, but in a place of charity, +rightly named, where impartial, unalterable, and impersonal devotion +has them in hand. They endure an immeasurable loss, and are orphans, +but they gain in perpetual gaiety; they live in an unchanging temperature. +The separate nest is nature’s, and the best; but it might be wished +that the separate nest were less subject to moods. The nurse has +her private business, and when it does not prosper, and when the remote +affairs of the governess go wrong, the child receives the ultimate vibration +of the mishap.</p> +<p>The uniformity of infancy passes away long before the age when children +have this indefinite suffering inflicted upon them; and they have become +infinitely various, and feel the consequences of the cares of their +elders in unnumbered degrees. The most charming children feel +them the most sensibly, and not with resentment but with sympathy. +It is assuredly in the absence of resentment that consists the virtue +of childhood. What other thing are we to learn of them? +Not simplicity, for they are intricate enough. Not gratitude; +for their usual sincere thanklessness makes half the pleasure of doing +them good. Not obedience; for the child is born with the love +of liberty. And as for humility, the boast of a child is the frankest +thing in the world. A child’s natural vanity is not merely +the delight in his own possessions, but the triumph over others less +fortunate. If this emotion were not so young it would be exceedingly +unamiable. But the truth must be confessed that having very quickly +learnt the value of comparison and relation, a child rejoices in the +perception that what he has is better than what his brother has; this +comparison is a means of judging his fortune, after all. It is +true that if his brother showed distress, he might make haste to offer +an exchange. But the impulse of joy is candidly egotistic.</p> +<p>It is the sweet and entire forgiveness of children, who ask pity +for their sorrows from those who have caused them, who do not perceive +that they are wronged, who never dream that they are forgiving, and +who make no bargain for apologies—it is this that men and women +are urged to learn of a child. Graces more confessedly childlike +they make shift to teach themselves.</p> +<h2>FAIR AND BROWN</h2> +<p>George Eliot, in one of her novels, has a good-natured mother, who +confesses that when she administers justice she is obliged to spare +the offenders who have fair hair, because they look so much more innocent +than the rest. And if this is the state of maternal feelings where +all are more or less fair, what must be the miscarriage of justice in +countries where a <i>blond</i> angel makes his infrequent visit within +the family circle?</p> +<p>In England he is the rule, and supreme as a matter of course. +He is “English,” and best, as is the early asparagus and +the young potato, according to the happy conviction of the shops. +To say “child” in England is to say “fair-haired child,” +even as in Tuscany to say “young man” is to say “tenor.” +“I have a little party to-night, eight or ten tenors, from neighbouring +palazzi, to meet my English friends.”</p> +<p>But France is a greater enthusiast than our now country. The +fairness and the golden hair are here so much a matter of orthodoxy, +that they are not always mentioned; they are frequently taken for granted. +Not so in France; the French go out of their way to make the exceptional +fairness of their children the rule of their literature. No French +child dare show his face in a book—prose or poetry—without +blue eyes and fair hair. It is a thing about which the French +child of real life can hardly escape a certain sensitiveness. +What, he may ask, is the use of being a dark-haired child of fact, when +all the emotion, all the innocence, all the romance, are absorbed by +the flaxen-haired child of fiction? How deplorable that our mothers, +the French infants may say, should have their unattained ideals in the +nurseries of the imagination; how dismal that they should be perpetually +disillusioned in the nurseries of fact! Is there then no sentiment +for us? they may ask. Will not convention, which has been forced +to restore the advantage to truth on so many other points, be compelled +to yield on this point also, and reconcile our aunts to the family colouring?</p> +<p>All the schools of literature are in a tale. The classic masters, +needless to say, do not stoop to the colouring of boys and girls; but +as soon as the Romantiques arise, the cradle is there, and no soft hair +ever in it that is not of some tone of gold, no eyes that are not blue, +and no cheek that is not white and pink as milk and roses. Victor +Hugo, who discovered the child of modern poetry, never omits the touch +of description; the word <i>blond</i> is as inevitable as any epithet +marshalled to attend its noun in a last-century poet’s dictionary. +One would not have it away; one can hear the caress with which the master +pronounces it, “making his mouth,” as Swift did for his +“little language.” Nor does the customary adjective +fail in later literature. It was dear to the Realist, and it is +dear to the Symbolist. The only difference is that in the French +of the Symbolist it precedes the noun.</p> +<p>And yet it is time that the sweetness of the dark child should have +its day. He is really no less childlike than the other. +There is a pretty antithesis between the strong effect of his colouring +and the softness of his years and of his months. The blond human +being—man, woman or child—has the beauty of harmony; the +hair plays off from the tones of the flesh, only a few degrees brighter +or a few degrees darker. Contrast of colour there is, in the blue +of the eyes, and in the red of cheek and lip, but there is no contrast +of tone. The whole effect is that of much various colour and of +equal tone. In the dark face there is hardly any colour and an +almost complete opposition of tone. The complete opposition, of +course, would be black and white; and a beautiful dark child comes near +to this, but for the lovely modifications, the warmth of his white, +and of his black alike, so that the one tone, as well as the other, +is softened towards brown. It is the beauty of contrast, with +a suggestion of harmony—as it were a beginning of harmony—which +is infinitely lovely.</p> +<p>Nor is the dark child lacking in variety. His radiant eyes +range from a brown so bright that it looks golden in the light, to a +brown so dark that it barely defines the pupil. So is his hair +various, answering the sun with unsuspected touches, not of gold but +of bronze. And his cheek is not invariably pale. A dusky +rose sometimes lurks there with such an effect of vitality as you will +hardly get from the shallower pink of the flaxened haired. And +the suggestion is that of late summer, the colour of wheat almost ready +for the harvest, and darker, redder flowers—poppies and others—than +come in Spring.</p> +<p>The dark eyes, besides, are generally brighter—they shelter +a more liquid light than the blue or grey. Southern eyes have +generally most beautiful whites. And as to the charm of the childish +figure, there is usually an infantine slenderness in the little Southener +that is at least as young and sweet as the round form of the blond child. +And yet the painters of Italy would have none of it. They rejected +the dusky brilliant pale little Italians all about them; they would +have none but flaxen-haired children, and they would have nothing that +was slim, nothing that was thin, nothing that was shadowy. They +rejoiced in much fair flesh, and in all possible freshness. So +it was in fair Flanders as well as in dark Italy. But so it was +not in Spain. The Pyrenees seemed to interrupt the tradition. +And as Murillo saw the charm of dark heads, and the innocence of dark +eyes, so did one English painter. Reynolds painted young dark +hair as tenderly as the youngest gold.</p> +<h2>REAL CHILDHOOD</h2> +<p>The world is old because its history is made up of successive childhoods +and of their impressions. Your hours when you were six were the +enormous hours of the mind that has little experience and constant and +quick forgetfulness. Therefore when your mother’s visitor +held you so long at his knee, while he talked to her the excited gibberish +of the grown-up, he little thought what he forced upon you; what the +things he called minutes really were, measured by a mind unused; what +passive and then what desperate weariness he held you to by his slightly +gesticulating hands that pressed some absent-minded caress, rated by +you at its right value, in the pauses of his anecdotes. You, meanwhile, +were infinitely tired of watching the play of his conversing moustache.</p> +<p>Indeed, the contrast of the length of contemporary time (this pleonasm +is inevitable) is no small mystery, and the world has never had the +wit fully to confess it.</p> +<p>You remembered poignantly the special and singular duration of some +such space as your elders, perhaps, called half-an-hour—so poignantly +that you spoke of it to your sister, not exactly with emotion, but still +as a dreadful fact of life. You had better instinct than to complain +of it to the talkative, easy-living, occupied people, who had the management +of the world in their hands—your seniors. You remembered +the duration of some such separate half-hour so well that you have in +fact remembered it until now, and so now, of course, will never forget +it.</p> +<p>As to the length of Beethoven, experienced by you on duty in the +drawing room, it would be curious to know whether it was really something +greater than Beethoven had any idea of. You sat and listened, +and tried to fix a passage in your mind as a kind of half-way mark, +with the deliberate provident intention of helping yourself through +the time during a future hearing; for you knew too well that you would +have to bear it all again. You could not do the same with sermons, +because, though even more fatiguing, they were more or less different +each time.</p> +<p>While your elders passed over some particularly tedious piece of +road—and a very tedious piece of road existed within short distance +of every house you lived in or stayed in—in their usual state +of partial absence of mind, you, on the contrary, perceived every inch +of it. As to the length of a bad night, or of a mere time of wakefulness +at night, adult words do not measure it; they hardly measure the time +of merely waiting for sleep in childhood. Moreover, you were tired +of other things, apart from the duration of time—the names of +streets, the names of tradesmen, especially the <i>fournisseurs</i> +of the household, who lived in them.</p> +<p>You were bored by people. It did not occur to you to be tired +of those of your own immediate family, for you loved them immemorially. +Nor were you bored by the newer personality of casual visitors, unless +they held you, as aforesaid, and made you so listen to their unintelligible +voices and so look at their mannered faces that they released you an +older child than they took you prisoner. But—it is a reluctant +confession—you were tired of your relations; you were weary of +their bonnets. Measured by adult time, those bonnets were, it +is to be presumed, of no more than reasonable duration; they had no +more than the average or common life. You have no reason, looking +back, to believe that your great-aunts wore bonnets for great and indefinite +spaces of time. But, to your sense as a child, long and changing +and developing days saw the same harassing artificial flowers hoisted +up with the same black lace. You would have had a scruple of conscience +as to really disliking the face, but you deliberately let yourself go +in detesting the bonnet. So with dresses, especially such as had +any little misfit about them. For you it had always existed, and +there was no promise of its ceasing. You seemed to have been aware +of it for years. By the way, there would be less cheap reproving +of little girls for desiring new clothes if the censors knew how immensely +old their old clothes are to them.</p> +<p>The fact is that children have a simple sense of the unnecessary +ugliness of things, and that—apart from the effects of <i>ennui</i>—they +reject that ugliness actively. You have stood and listened to +your mother’s compliments on her friend’s hat, and have +made your mental protest in very definite words. You thought it +hideous, and hideous things offended you then more than they have ever +offended you since. At nine years old you made people, alas! responsible +for their faces, as you do still in a measure, though you think you +do not. You severely made them answer for their clothes, in a +manner which you have seen good reason, in later life, to mitigate. +Upon curls, or too much youthfulness in the aged, you had no mercy. +To sum up the things you hated inordinately, they were friskiness of +manner and of trimmings, and curls combined with rather bygone or frumpish +fashions. Too much childish dislike was wasted so.</p> +<p>But you admired some things without regard to rules of beauty learnt +later. At some seven years old you dwelt with delight upon the +contrast of a white kid glove and a bright red wrist. Well, this +is not the received arrangement, but red and white do go well together, +and their distribution has to be taught with time. Whose were +the wrist and glove? Certainly some one’s who must have +been distressed at the <i>bouquet</i> of colour that you admired. +This, however, was but a local admiration. You did not admire +the girl as a whole. She whom you adored was always a married +woman of a certain age; rather faded, it might be, but always divinely +elegant. She alone was worthy to stand at the side of your mother. +You lay in wait for the border of her train, and dodged for a chance +of holding her bracelet when she played. You composed prose in +honour of her and called the composition (for reasons unknown to yourself) +a “catalogue.” She took singularly little notice of +you.</p> +<p>Wordsworth cannot say too much of your passion for nature. +The light of summer morning before sunrise was to you a spiritual splendour +for which you wanted no name. The Mediterranean under the first +perceptible touch of the moon, the calm southern sea in the full blossom +of summer, the early spring everywhere, in the showery streets, in the +fields, or at sea, left old childish memories with you which you try +to evoke now when you see them again. But the cloudy dusk behind +poplars on the plains of France, the flying landscape from the train, +willows, and the last of the light, were more mournful to you then than +you care to remember now. So were the black crosses on the graves +of the French village; so were cypresses, though greatly beloved.</p> +<p>If you were happy enough to be an internationally educated child, +you had much at heart the heart of every country you knew. You +disliked the English accent of your compatriots abroad with a scorn +to which, needless to say, you are not tempted now. You had shocks +of delight from Swiss woods full of lilies of the valley, and from English +fields full of cowslips. You had disquieting dreams of landscape +and sun, and of many of these you cannot now tell which were visions +of travel and which visions of slumber. Your strong sense of place +made you love some places too keenly for peace.</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHILDREN***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 2012-h.htm or 2012-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/1/2012 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Children + +Author: Alice Meynell + +Release Date: March 16, 2005 [eBook #2012] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHILDREN*** + + + + + +Transcribed from the 1911 John Lane edition by David Price, email +ccx074@coventry.ac.uk + + + + + +THE CHILDREN + + +Contents + +Fellow Travellers with a Bird, I. +Fellow Travellers with a Bird, II. +Children in Midwinter +That Pretty Person +Out of Town +Expression +Under the Early Stars +The Man with Two Heads +Children in Burlesque +Authorship +Letters +The Fields +The Barren Shore +The Boy +Illness +The Young Children +Fair and Brown +Real Childhood + + + + +FELLOW TRAVELLERS WITH A BIRD, I. + + +To attend to a living child is to be baffled in your humour, disappointed +of your pathos, and set freshly free from all the pre-occupations. You +cannot anticipate him. Blackbirds, overheard year by year, do not +compose the same phrases; never two leitmotifs alike. Not the tone, but +the note alters. So with the uncovenated ways of a child you keep no +tryst. They meet you at another place, after failing you where you +tarried; your former experiences, your documents are at fault. You are +the fellow traveller of a bird. The bird alights and escapes out of time +to your footing. + +No man's fancy could be beforehand, for instance, with a girl of four +years old who dictated a letter to a distant cousin, with the sweet and +unimaginable message: "I hope you enjoy yourself with your loving dolls." +A boy, still younger, persuading his mother to come down from the heights +and play with him on the floor, but sensible, perhaps, that there was a +dignity to be observed none the less, entreated her, "Mother, do be a +lady frog." None ever said their good things before these indeliberate +authors. Even their own kind--children--have not preceded them. No +child in the past ever found the same replies as the girl of five whose +father made that appeal to feeling which is doomed to a different, +perverse, and unforeseen success. He was rather tired with writing, and +had a mind to snare some of the yet uncaptured flock of her sympathies. +"Do you know, I have been working hard, darling? I work to buy things +for you." "Do you work," she asked, "to buy the lovely puddin's?" Yes, +even for these. The subject must have seemed to her to be worth +pursuing. "And do you work to buy the fat? I don't like fat." + +The sympathies, nevertheless, are there. The same child was to be +soothed at night after a weeping dream that a skater had been drowned in +the Kensington Round Pond. It was suggested to her that she should +forget it by thinking about the one unfailing and gay subject--her +wishes. "Do you know," she said, without loss of time, "what I should +like best in all the world? A thundred dolls and a whistle!" Her mother +was so overcome by this tremendous numeral, that she could make no offer +as to the dolls. But the whistle seemed practicable. "It is for me to +whistle for cabs," said the child, with a sudden moderation, "when I go +to parties." Another morning she came down radiant, "Did you hear a +great noise in the miggle of the night? That was me crying. I cried +because I dreamt that Cuckoo [a brother] had swallowed a bead into his +nose." + +The mere errors of children are unforeseen as nothing is--no, nothing +feminine--in this adult world. "I've got a lotter than you," is the word +of a very young egotist. An older child says, "I'd better go, bettern't +I, mother?" He calls a little space at the back of a London house, "the +backy-garden." A little creature proffers almost daily the reminder at +luncheon--at tart-time: "Father, I hope you will remember that I am the +favourite of the crust." Moreover, if an author set himself to invent +the naif things that children might do in their Christmas plays at home, +he would hardly light upon the device of the little _troupe_ who, having +no footlights, arranged upon the floor a long row of--candle-shades! + +"It's _jolly_ dull without you, mother," says a little girl who--gentlest +of the gentle--has a dramatic sense of slang, of which she makes no +secret. But she drops her voice somewhat to disguise her feats of +metathesis, about which she has doubts and which are involuntary: the +"stand-wash," the "sweeping-crosser," the "sewing chamine." Genoese +peasants have the same prank when they try to speak Italian. + +Children forget last year so well that if they are Londoners they should +by any means have an impression of the country or the sea annually. A +London little girl watches a fly upon the wing, follows it with her +pointing finger, and names it "bird." Her brother, who wants to play +with a bronze Japanese lobster, ask "Will you please let me have that +tiger?" + +At times children give to a word that slight variety which is the most +touching kind of newness. Thus, a child of three asks you to save him. +How moving a word, and how freshly said! He had heard of the "saving" of +other things of interest--especially chocolate creams taken for +safe-keeping--and he asks, "Who is going to save me to-day? Nurse is +going out, will you save me, mother?" The same little variant upon +common use is in another child's courteous reply to a summons to help in +the arrangement of some flowers, "I am quite at your ease." + +A child, unconscious little author of things told in this record, was +taken lately to see a fellow author of somewhat different standing from +her own, inasmuch as he is, among other things, a Saturday Reviewer. As +he dwelt in a part of the South-west of the town unknown to her, she +noted with interest the shops of the neighbourhood as she went, for they +might be those of the _fournisseurs_ of her friend. "That is his bread +shop, and that is his book shop. And that, mother," she said finally, +with even heightened sympathy, pausing before a blooming _parterre_ of +confectionery hard by the abode of her man of letters, "that, I suppose, +is where he buys his sugar pigs." + +In all her excursions into streets new to her, this same child is intent +upon a certain quest--the quest of a genuine collector. We have all +heard of collecting butterflies, of collecting china-dogs, of collecting +cocked hats, and so forth; but her pursuit gives her a joy that costs her +nothing except a sharp look-out upon the proper names over all +shop-windows. No hoard was ever lighter than hers. "I began three weeks +ago next Monday, mother," she says with precision, "and I have got thirty- +nine." "Thirty-nine what?" "Smiths." + + + + +FELLOW TRAVELLERS WITH A BIRD, II. + + +The mere gathering of children's language would be much like collecting +together a handful of flowers that should be all unique, single of their +kind. In one thing, however, do children agree, and that is the +rejection of most of the conventions of the authors who have reported +them. They do not, for example, say "me is;" their natural reply to "are +you?" is "I are." One child, pronouncing sweetly and neatly, will have +nothing but the nominative pronoun. "Lift I up and let I see it +raining," she bids; and told that it does not rain, resumes, "Lift I up +and let I see it not raining." + +An elder child had a rooted dislike to a brown corduroy suit ordered for +her by maternal authority. She wore the garments under protest, and with +some resentment. At the same time it was evident that she took no +pleasure in hearing her praises sweetly sung by a poet, her friend. He +had imagined the making of this child in the counsels of Heaven, and the +decreeing of her soft skin, of her brilliant eyes, and of her hair--"a +brown tress." She had gravely heard the words as "a brown dress," and +she silently bore the poet a grudge for having been the accessory of +Providence in the mandate that she should wear the loathed corduroy. The +unpractised ear played another little girl a like turn. She had a phrase +for snubbing any anecdote that sounded improbable. "That," she said more +or less after Sterne, "is a cotton-wool story." + +The learning of words is, needless to say, continued long after the years +of mere learning to speak. The young child now takes a current word into +use, a little at random, and now makes a new one, so as to save the +interruption of a pause for search. I have certainly detected, in +children old enough to show their motives, a conviction that a word of +their own making is as good a communication as another, and as +intelligible. There is even a general implicit conviction among them +that the grown-up people, too, make words by the wayside as occasion +befalls. How otherwise should words be so numerous that every day brings +forward some hitherto unheard? The child would be surprised to know how +irritably poets are refused the faculty and authority which he thinks to +belong to the common world. + +There is something very cheerful and courageous in the setting-out of a +child on a journey of speech with so small baggage and with so much +confidence in the chances of the hedge. He goes free, a simple +adventurer. Nor does he make any officious effort to invent anything +strange or particularly expressive or descriptive. The child trusts +genially to his hearer. A very young boy, excited by his first sight of +sunflowers, was eager to describe them, and called them, without allowing +himself to be checked for the trifle of a name, "summersets." This was +simple and unexpected; so was the comment of a sister a very little +older. "Why does he call those flowers summersets?" their mother said; +and the girl, with a darkly brilliant look of humour and penetration, +answered, "because they are so big." There seemed to be no further +question possible after an explanation that was presented thus charged +with meaning. + +To a later phase of life, when a little girl's vocabulary was, somewhat +at random, growing larger, belong a few brave phrases hazarded to express +a meaning well realized--a personal matter. Questioned as to the eating +of an uncertain number of buns just before lunch, the child averred, "I +took them just to appetize my hunger." As she betrayed a familiar +knowledge of the tariff of an attractive confectioner, she was asked +whether she and her sisters had been frequenting those little tables on +their way from school. "I sometimes go in there, mother," she confessed; +"but I generally speculate outside." + +Children sometimes attempt to cap something perfectly funny with +something so flat that you are obliged to turn the conversation. Dryden +does the same thing, not with jokes, but with his sublimer passages. But +sometimes a child's deliberate banter is quite intelligible to elders. +Take the letter written by a little girl to a mother who had, it seems, +allowed her family to see that she was inclined to be satisfied with +something of her own writing. The child has a full and gay sense of the +sweetest kinds of irony. There was no need for her to write, she and her +mother being both at home, but the words must have seemed to her worthy +of a pen:--"My dear mother, I really wonder how you can be proud of that +article, if it is worthy to be called a article, which I doubt. Such a +unletterary article. I cannot call it letterature. I hope you will not +write any more such unconventionan trash." + +This is the saying of a little boy who admired his much younger sister, +and thought her forward for her age: "I wish people knew just how old she +is, mother, then they would know she is onward. They can see she is +pretty, but they can't know she is such a onward baby." + +Thus speak the naturally unreluctant; but there are other children who in +time betray a little consciousness and a slight _mefiance_ as to where +the adult sense of humour may be lurking in wait for them, obscure. These +children may not be shy enough to suffer any self-checking in their talk, +but they are now and then to be heard slurring a word of which they do +not feel too sure. A little girl whose sensitiveness was barely enough +to cause her to stop to choose between two words, was wont to bring a cup +of tea to the writing-table of her mother, who had often feigned +indignation at the weakness of what her Irish maid always called "the +infusion." "I'm afraid it's bosh again, mother," said the child; and +then, in a half-whisper, "Is bosh right, or wash, mother?" She was not +told, and decided for herself, with doubts, for bosh. The afternoon cup +left the kitchen an infusion, and reached the library "bosh" +thenceforward. + + + + +CHILDREN IN MIDWINTER + + +Children are so flowerlike that it is always a little fresh surprise to +see them blooming in winter. Their tenderness, their down, their colour, +their fulness--which is like that of a thick rose or of a tight +grape--look out of season. Children in the withering wind are like the +soft golden-pink roses that fill the barrows in Oxford Street, breathing +a southern calm on the north wind. The child has something better than +warmth in the cold, something more subtly out of place and more +delicately contrary; and that is coolness. To be cool in the cold is the +sign of a vitality quite exquisitely alien from the common conditions of +the world. It is to have a naturally, and not an artificially, different +and separate climate. + +We can all be more or less warm--with fur, with skating, with tea, with +fire, and with sleep--in the winter. But the child is fresh in the wind, +and wakes cool from his dreams, dewy when there is hoar-frost everywhere +else; he is "more lovely and more temperate" than the summer day and than +the winter day alike. He overcomes both heat and cold by another +climate, which is the climate of life; but that victory of life is more +delicate and more surprising in the tyranny of January. By the sight and +the touch of children, we are, as it were, indulged with something finer +than a fruit or a flower in untimely bloom. The childish bloom is always +untimely. The fruit and flower will be common later on; the strawberries +will be a matter of course anon, and the asparagus dull in its day. But +a child is a perpetual _primeur_. + +Or rather he is not in truth always untimely. Some few days in the year +are his own season--unnoticed days of March or April, soft, fresh and +equal, when the child sleeps and rises with the sun. Then he looks as +though he had his brief season, and ceases for a while to seem strange. + +It is no wonder that we should try to attribute the times of the year to +children; their likeness is so rife among annuals. For man and woman we +are naturally accustomed to a longer rhythm; their metre is so obviously +their own, and of but a single stanza, without repetition, without +renewel, without refrain. But it is by an intelligible illusion that we +look for a quick waxing and waning in the lives of young children--for a +waxing that shall come again another time, and for a waning that shall +not be final, shall not be fatal. But every winter shows us how human +they are, and how they are little pilgrims and visitants among the things +that look like their kin. For every winter shows them free from the east +wind; more perfectly than their elders, they enclose the climate of life. +And, moreover, with them the climate of life is the climate of the spring +of life; the climate of a human March that is sure to make a constant +progress, and of a human April that never hesitates. The child "breathes +April and May"--an inner April and his own May. + +The winter child looks so much the more beautiful for the season as his +most brilliant uncles and aunts look less well. He is tender and gay in +the east wind. Now more than ever must the lover beware of making a +comparison between the beauty of the admired woman and the beauty of a +child. He is indeed too wary ever to make it. So is the poet. As +comparisons are necessary to him, he will pay a frankly impossible +homage, and compare a woman's face to something too fine, to something it +never could emulate. The Elizabethan lyrist is safe among lilies and +cherries, roses, pearls, and snow. He undertakes the beautiful office of +flattery, and flatters with courage. There is no hidden reproach in the +praise. Pearls and snow suffer, in a sham fight, a mimic defeat that +does them no harm, and no harm comes to the lady's beauty from a +competition so impossible. She never wore a lily or a coral in the +colours of her face, and their beauty is not hers. But here is the +secret: she is compared with a flower because she could not endure to be +compared with a child. That would touch her too nearly. There would be +the human texture and the life like hers, but immeasurably more lovely. +No colour, no surface, no eyes of woman have ever been comparable with +the colour, the surface, and the eyes of childhood. And no poet has ever +run the risk of such a defeat. Why, it is defeat enough for a woman to +have her face, however well-favoured, close to a child's, even if there +is no one by who should be rash enough to approach them still nearer by a +comparison. + +This, needless to say, is true of no other kind of beauty than that +beauty of light, colour, and surface to which the Elizabethans referred, +and which suggested their flatteries in disfavour of the lily. There +are, indeed, other adult beauties, but those are such as make no +allusions to the garden. What is here affirmed is that the beautiful +woman who is widely and wisely likened to the flowers, which are +inaccessibly more beautiful, must not, for her own sake, be likened to +the always accessible child. + +Besides light and colour, children have a beauty of finish which is much +beyond that of more finished years. This gratuitous addition, this +completeness, is one of their unexpected advantages. Their beauty of +finish is the peculiarity of their first childhood, and loses, as years +are added, that little extra character and that surprise of perfection. A +bloom disappears, for instance. In some little children the whole face, +and especially all the space between the growth of the eyebrows and the +growth of the hair, is covered with hardly perceptible down as soft as +bloom. Look then at the eyebrows themselves. Their line is as definite +as in later life, but there is in the child the flush given by the +exceeding fineness of the delicate hairs. Moreover, what becomes, +afterwards, of the length and the curl of the eyelash? What is there in +growing up that is destructive of a finish so charming as this? + +Queen Elizabeth forbade any light to visit her face "from the right or +from the left" when her portrait was a-painting. She was an observant +woman, and liked to be lighted from the front. It is a light from the +right or from the left that marks an elderly face with minute shadows. +And you must place a child in such a light, in order to see the finishing +and parting caress that infancy has given to his face. The down will +then be found even on the thinnest and clearest skin of the middle red of +his cheek. His hair, too, is imponderably fine, and his nails are not +much harder than petals. + +To return to the child in January. It is his month for the laying up of +dreams. No one can tell whether it is so with all children, or even with +a majority; but with some children, of passionate fancy, there occurs now +and then a children's dance, or a party of any kind, which has a charm +and glory mingled with uncertain dreams. Never forgotten, and yet never +certainly remembered as a fact of this life, is such an evening. When +many and many a later pleasure, about the reality of which there never +was any kind of doubt, has been long forgotten, that evening--as to which +all is doubt--is impossible to forget. In a few years it has become so +remote that the history of Greece derives antiquity from it. In later +years it is still doubtful, still a legend. + +The child never asked how much was fact. It was always so immeasurably +long ago that the sweet party happened--if indeed it happened. It had so +long taken its place in that past wherein lurks all the antiquity of the +world. No one would know, no one could tell him, precisely what +occurred. And who can know whether--if it be indeed a dream--he has +dreamt it often, or has dreamt once that he had dreamt it often? That +dubious night is entangled in repeated visions during the lonely life a +child lives in sleep; it is intricate with illusions. It becomes the +most mysterious and the least worldly of all memories, a spiritual past. +The word pleasure is too trivial for such a remembrance. A midwinter +long gone by contained the suggestion of such dreams; and the midwinter +of this year must doubtless be preparing for the heart of many an ardent +young child a like legend and a like antiquity. For the old it is a mere +present. + + + + +THAT PRETTY PERSON + + +During the many years in which "evolution" was the favourite word, one +significant lesson--so it seems--was learnt, which has outlived +controversy, and has remained longer than the questions at issue--an +interesting and unnoticed thing cast up by the storm of thoughts. This +is a disposition, a general consent, to find the use and the value of +process, and even to understand a kind of repose in the very wayfaring of +progress. With this is a resignation to change, and something more than +resignation--a delight in those qualities that could not be but for their +transitoriness. + +What, then, is this but the admiration, at last confessed by the world, +for childhood? Time was when childhood was but borne with, and that for +the sake of its mere promise of manhood. We do not now hold, perhaps, +that promise so high. Even, nevertheless, if we held it high, we should +acknowledge the approach to be a state adorned with its own conditions. + +But it was not so once. As the primitive lullaby is nothing but a +patient prophecy (the mother's), so was education, some two hundred years +ago, nothing but an impatient prophecy (the father's) of the full stature +of body and mind. The Indian woman sings of the future hunting. If her +song is not restless, it is because she has a sense of the results of +time, and has submitted her heart to experience. Childhood is a time of +danger; "Would it were done." But, meanwhile, the right thing is to put +it to sleep and guard its slumbers. It will pass. She sings prophecies +to the child of his hunting, as she sings a song about the robe while she +spins, and a song about bread as she grinds corn. She bids good speed. + +John Evelyn was equally eager, and not so submissive. His child--"that +pretty person" in Jeremy Taylor's letter of condolence--was chiefly +precious to him inasmuch as he was, too soon, a likeness of the man he +never lived to be. The father, writing with tears when the boy was dead, +says of him: "At two and a half years of age he pronounced English, +Latin, and French exactly, and could perfectly read in these three +languages." As he lived precisely five years, all he did was done at +that little age, and it comprised this: "He got by heart almost the +entire vocabulary of Latin and French primitives and words, could make +congruous syntax, turn English into Latin, and _vice versa_, construe +and prove what he read, and did the government and use of relatives, +verbs, substantives, ellipses, and many figures and tropes, and made a +considerable progress in Comenius's 'Janua,' and had a strong passion for +Greek." + +Grant that this may be a little abated, because a very serious man is not +to be too much believed when he is describing what he admires; it is the +very fact of his admiration that is so curious a sign of those hasty +times. All being favorable, the child of Evelyn's studious home would +have done all these things in the course of nature within a few years. It +was the fact that he did them out of the course of nature that was, to +Evelyn, so exquisite. The course of nature had not any beauty in his +eyes. It might be borne with for the sake of the end, but it was not +admired for the majesty of its unhasting process. Jeremy Taylor mourns +with him "the strangely hopeful child," who--without Comenius's "Janua" +and without congruous syntax--was fulfilling, had they known it, an +appropriate hope, answering a distinctive prophecy, and crowning and +closing a separate expectation every day of his five years. + +Ah! the word "hopeful" seems, to us, in this day, a word too flattering +to the estate of man. They thought their little boy strangely hopeful +because he was so quick on his way to be something else. They lost the +timely perfection the while they were so intent upon their hopes. And +yet it is our own modern age that is charged with haste! + +It would seem rather as though the world, whatever it shall unlearn, must +rightly learn to confess the passing and irrevocable hour; not slighting +it, or bidding it hasten its work, nor yet hailing it, with Faust, "Stay, +thou art so fair!" Childhood is but change made gay and visible, and the +world has lately been converted to change. + +Our fathers valued change for the sake of its results; we value it in the +act. To us the change is revealed as perpetual; every passage is a goal, +and every goal a passage. The hours are equal; but some of them wear +apparent wings. + +_Tout passe_. Is the fruit for the flower, or the flower for the +fruit, or the fruit for the seeds which it is formed to shelter and +contain? It seems as though our forefathers had answered this question +most arbitrarily as to the life of man. + +All their literature dealing with children is bent upon this haste, this +suppression of the approach to what seemed then the only time of +fulfilment. The way was without rest to them. And this because they had +the illusion of a rest to be gained at some later point of this unpausing +life. + +Evelyn and his contemporaries dropped the very word child as soon as +might be, if not sooner. When a poor little boy came to be eight years +old they called him a youth. The diarist himself had no cause to be +proud of his own early years, for he was so far indulged in idleness by +an "honoured grandmother" that he was "not initiated into any rudiments" +till he was four years of age. He seems even to have been a youth of +eight before Latin was seriously begun; but this fact he is evidently, in +after years, with a total lack of a sense of humour, rather ashamed of, +and hardly acknowledges. It is difficult to imagine what childhood must +have been when nobody, looking on, saw any fun in it; when everything +that was proper to five years old was defect. A strange good conceit of +themselves and of their own ages had those fathers. + +They took their children seriously, without relief. Evelyn has nothing +to say about his little ones that has a sign of a smile in it. Twice are +children, not his own, mentioned in his diary. Once he goes to the +wedding of a maid of five years old--a curious thing, but not, evidently, +an occasion of sensibility. Another time he stands by, in a French +hospital, while a youth of less than nine years of age undergoes a +frightful surgical operation "with extraordinary patience." "The use I +made of it was to give Almighty God hearty thanks that I had not been +subject to this deplorable infirmitie." This is what he says. + +See, moreover, how the fashion of hurrying childhood prevailed in +literature, and how it abolished little girls. It may be that there were +in all ages--even those--certain few boys who insisted upon being +children; whereas the girls were docile to the adult ideal. Art, for +example, had no little girls. There was always Cupid, and there were the +prosperous urchin-angels of the painters; the one who is hauling up his +little brother by the hand in the "Last Communion of St. Jerome" might be +called Tommy. But there were no "little radiant girls." Now and then an +"Education of the Virgin" is the exception, and then it is always a +matter of sewing and reading. As for the little girl saints, even when +they were so young that their hands, like those of St. Agnes, slipped +through their fetters, they are always recorded as refusing importunate +suitors, which seems necessary to make them interesting to the mediaeval +mind, but mars them for ours. + +So does the hurrying and ignoring of little-girl-childhood somewhat +hamper the delight with which readers of John Evelyn admire his most +admirable Mrs. Godolphin. She was Maid of Honour to the Queen in the +Court of Charles II. She was, as he prettily says, an Arethusa "who +passed through all those turbulent waters without so much as the least +stain or tincture in her christall." She held her state with men and +maids for her servants, guided herself by most exact rules, such as that +of never speaking to the King, gave an excellent example and instruction +to the other maids of honour, was "severely careful how she might give +the least countenance to that liberty which the gallants there did +usually assume," refused the addresses of the "greatest persons," and was +as famous for her beauty as for her wit. One would like to forget the +age at which she did these things. When she began her service she was +eleven. When she was making her rule never to speak to the King she was +not thirteen. + +Marriage was the business of daughters of fourteen and fifteen, and +heroines, therefore, were of those ages. The poets turned April into +May, and seemed to think that they lent a grace to the year if they +shortened and abridged the spring of their many songs. The particular +year they sang of was to be a particularly fine year, as who should say a +fine child and forward, with congruous syntax at two years old, and +ellipses, figures, and tropes. Even as late as Keats a poet would not +have patience with the process of the seasons, but boasted of untimely +flowers. The "musk-rose" is never in fact the child of mid-May, as he +has it. + +The young women of Addison are nearly fourteen years old. His fear of +losing the idea of the bloom of their youth makes him so tamper with the +bloom of their childhood. The young heiress of seventeen in the +_Spectator_ has looked upon herself as marriageable "for the last six +years." The famous letter describing the figure, the dance, the wit, the +stockings of the charming Mr. Shapely is supposed to be written by a girl +of thirteen, "willing to settle in the world as soon as she can." She +adds, "I have a good portion which they cannot hinder me of." This +correspondent is one of "the women who seldom ask advice before they have +bought their wedding clothes." There was no sense of childhood in an age +that could think this an opportune pleasantry. + +But impatience of the way and the wayfaring was to disappear from a later +century--an age that has found all things to be on a journey, and all +things complete in their day because it is their day, and has its +appointed end. It is the tardy conviction of this, rather than a +sentiment ready made, that has caused the childhood of children to seem, +at last, something else than a defect. + + + + +OUT OF TOWN + + +To be on a _villeggiatura_ with the children is to surprise them in ways +and words not always evident in the London house. The narrow lodgings +cause you to hear and overhear. Nothing is more curious to listen to +than a young child's dramatic voice. The child, being a boy, assumes a +deep, strong, and ultra-masculine note, and a swagger in his walk, and +gives himself the name of the tallest of his father's friends. The tone +is not only manly; it is a tone of affairs, and withal careless; it is +intended to suggest business, and also the possession of a top-hat and a +pipe, and is known in the family of the child as his "official voice." +One day it became more official than ever, and really more masculine than +life; and it alternated with his own tones of three years old. In these, +he asked with humility, "Will you let me go to heaven if I'm naughty? +Will you?" Then he gave the reply in the tone of affairs, the official +voice at its very best: "No, little boy, I won't!" It was evident that +the infant was not assuming the character of his father's tallest friend +this time, but had taken a role more exalted. His little sister of a +year older seemed thoroughly to enjoy the humour of the situation. +"Listen to him, mother. He's trying to talk like God. He often does." + +Bulls are made by a less imaginative child who likes to find some reason +for things--a girl. Out at the work of picking blackberries, she +explains, "Those rather good ones were all bad, mother, so I ate them." +Being afraid of dogs, this little girl of four years old has all kinds of +dodges to disguise her fear, which she has evidently resolved to keep to +herself. She will set up a sudden song to distract attention from the +fact that she is placing herself out of the dog's way, and she will +pretend to turn to gather a flower, while she watches the creature out of +sight. On the other hand, prudence in regard to carts and bicycles is +openly displayed, and the infants are zealous to warn one another. A +rider and his horse are called briefly "a norseback." + +Children, who see more things than they have names for, show a fine +courage in taking any words that seem likely to serve them, without +wasting time in asking for the word in use. This enterprise is most +active at three and four years, when children have more than they can +say. So a child of those years running to pick up horse-chestnuts, for +him a new species, calls after his mother a full description of what he +has found, naming the things indifferently "dough-nuts" and "cocoa-nuts." +And another, having an anecdote to tell concerning the Thames and a +little brook that joins it near the house, calls the first the "front- +sea" and the second the "back-sea." There is no intention of taking +liberties with the names of things--only a cheerful resolve to go on in +spite of obstacles. It is such a spirit of liberty as most of us have +felt when we have dreamt of improvising a song or improvising a dance. +The child improvises with such means as he has. + +This is, of course, at the very early ages. A little later--at eight or +nine--there is a very clear-headed sense of the value of words. So that +a little girl of that age, told that she may buy some fruit, and wishing +to know her limits in spending, asks, "What mustn't it be more than?" For +a child, who has not the word "maximum" at hand, nothing could be more +precise and concise. Still later, there is a sweet brevity that looks +almost like conscious expression, as when a boy writes from his first +boarding school: "Whenever I can't stop laughing I have only to think of +home." + +Infinitely different as children are, they differ in nothing more than in +the degree of generosity. The most sensitive of children is a little gay +girl whose feelings are hurt with the greatest facility, and who seems, +indeed, to have the susceptibilty of other ages as well as of her own--for +instance, she cannot endure without a flush of pain to hear herself +called fat. But she always brings her little wound to him who has +wounded her. The first confidant she seeks is the offender. If you have +laughed at her she will not hide her tears elsewhere than on your +shoulder. She confesses by her exquisite action at one her poor vanity +and her humility. + +The worst of children in the country is their inveterate impulse to use +death as their toy. Immediately on their discovery of some pretty +insect, one tender child calls to the other "Dead it." + +Children do not look at the sky unless it is suggested to them to do so. +When the sun dips to the narrow horizon of their stature, and comes to +the level of their eyes, even then they are not greatly interested. +Enormous clouds, erect, with the sun behind, do not gain their eyes. What +is of annual interest is the dark. Having fallen asleep all the summer +by daylight, and having awakened after sunrise, children find a stimulus +of fun and fear in the autumn darkness outside the windows. There is a +frolic with the unknown blackness, with the reflections, and with the +country night. + + + + +EXPRESSION + + +Strange to say, the eyes of children, whose minds are so small, express +intelligence better than do the greater number of adult eyes. David +Garrick's were evidently unpreoccupied, like theirs. The look of +intelligence is outward--frankly directed upon external things; it is +observant, and therefore mobile without inner restlessness. For restless +eyes are the least observant of all--they move by a kind of distraction. +The looks of observant eyes, moving with the living things they keep in +sight, have many pauses as well as flights. This is the action of +intelligence, whereas the eyes of intellect are detained or darkened. + +Rational perception, with all its phases of humour, are best expressed by +a child, who has few second thoughts to divide the image of his momentary +feeling. His simplicity adds much to the manifestation of his +intelligence. The child is the last and lowest of rational creatures, +for in him the "rational soul" closes its long downward flight with the +bright final revelation. + +He has also the chief beauty of the irrational soul of the mind, that is, +of the lower animal--which is singleness. The simplicity, the integrity, +the one thing at a time, of a good animal's eyes is a great beauty, and +is apt to cause us to exaggerate our sense of their expressiveness. An +animal's eyes, at their best, are very slightly expressive; languor or +alertness, the quick expectation, even the aloofness of doubt they are +able to show, but the showing is mechanical; the human sentiment of the +spectator adds the rest. + +All this simplicity the child has, at moments, with the divisions and +delicacies of the rational soul, also. His looks express the first, the +last, and the clearest humanity. He is the first by his youth and the +last by his lowliness. He is the beginning and the result of the +creation of man. + + + + +UNDER THE EARLY STARS + + +Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at random. +There is a tide in the affairs of children. Civilization is cruel in +sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of dusk. Summer dusk, +especially, is the frolic moment for children, baffle them how you may. +They may have been in a pottering mood all day, intent upon all kinds of +close industries, breathing hard over choppings and poundings. But when +late twilight comes, there comes also the punctual wildness. The +children will run and pursue, and laugh for the mere movement--it does so +jog their spirits. + +What remembrances does this imply of the hunt, what of the predatory +dark? The kitten grows alert at the same hour, and hunts for moths and +crickets in the grass. It comes like an imp, leaping on all fours. The +children lie in ambush and fall upon one another in the mimicry of +hunting. + +The sudden outbreak of action is complained of as a defiance and a +rebellion. Their entertainers are tired, and the children are to go +home. But, with more or less of life and fire, they strike some blow for +liberty. It may be the impotent revolt of the ineffectual child, or the +stroke of the conqueror; but something, something is done for freedom +under the early stars. + +This is not the only time when the energy of children is in conflict with +the weariness of men. But it is less tolerable that the energy of men +should be at odds with the weariness of children, which happens at some +time of their jaunts together, especially, alas! in the jaunts of the +poor. + +Of games for the summer dusk when it rains, cards are most beloved by +children. Three tiny girls were to be taught "old maid" to beguile the +time. One of them, a nut-brown child of five, was persuading another to +play. "Oh come," she said, "and play with me at new maid." + +The time of falling asleep is a child's immemorial and incalculable hour. +It is full of traditions, and beset by antique habits. The habit of +prehistoric races has been cited as the only explanation of the fixity of +some customs in mankind. But if the enquirers who appeal to that +beginning remembered better their own infancy, they would seek no +further. See the habits in falling to sleep which have children in their +thralldom. Try to overcome them in any child, and his own conviction of +their high antiquity weakens your hand. + +Childhood is antiquity, and with the sense of time and the sense of +mystery is connected for ever the hearing of a lullaby. The French sleep- +song is the most romantic. There is in it such a sound of history as +must inspire any imaginative child, falling to sleep, with a sense of the +incalculable; and the songs themselves are old. _Le Bon Roi +Dagobert_ has been sung over French cradles since the legend was fresh. +The nurse knows nothing more sleepy than the tune and the verse that she +herself slept to when a child. The gaiety of the thirteenth century, in +_Le Pont a' Avignon_, is put mysteriously to sleep, away in the +_tete a tete of_ child and nurse, in a thousand little sequestered +rooms at night. _Malbrook_ would be comparatively modern, were not all +things that are sung to a drowsing child as distant as the day of +Abraham. + +If English children are not rocked to many such aged lullabies, some of +them are put to sleep to strange cradle-songs. The affectionate races +that are brought into subjection sing the primitive lullaby to the white +child. Asiatic voices and African persuade him to sleep in the tropical +night. His closing eyes are filled with alien images. + + + + +THE MAN WITH TWO HEADS + + +It is generally understood in the family that the nurse who menaces a +child, whether with the supernatural or with simple sweeps, lions, or +tigers--goes. The rule is a right one, for the appeal to fear may +possibly hurt a child; nevertheless, it oftener fails to hurt him. If he +is prone to fears, he will be helpless under their grasp, without the +help of human tales. The night will threaten him, the shadow will +pursue, the dream will catch him; terror itself have him by the heart. +And terror, having made his pulses leap, knows how to use any thought, +any shape, any image, to account to the child's mind for the flight and +tempest of his blood. "The child shall not be frightened," decrees +ineffectual love; but though no man make him afraid, he is frightened. +Fear knows him well and finds him alone. + +Such a child is hardly at the mercy of any human rashness and impatience; +nor is the child whose pulses go steadily, and whose brows are fresh and +cool, at their mercy. This is one of the points upon which a healthy +child resembles the Japanese. Whatever that extreme Oriental may be in +war and diplomacy, whatever he may be at London University, or whatever +his plans of Empire, in relation to the unseen world he is a child at +play. He hides himself, he hides his eyes and pretends to believe that +he is hiding, he runs from the supernatural and laughs for the fun of +running. + +So did a child, threatened for his unruliness with the revelation of the +man with two heads. The nurse must have had recourse to this man under +acute provocation. The boy, who had profited well by every one of his +four long years, and was radiant with the light and colour of health, +refused to be left to compose himself to sleep. That act is an adult +act, learnt in the self-conscious and deliberate years of later life, +when man goes on a mental journey in search of rest, aware of setting +forth. But the child is pursued and overtaken by sleep, caught, +surprised, and overcome. He goes no more to sleep, than he takes a +"constitutional" with his hoop and hoopstick. The child amuses himself +up to the last of his waking moments. Happily, in the search for +amusement, he is apt to learn some habit or to cherish some toy, either +of which may betray him and deliver him up to sleep, the enemy. What +wonder, then, if a child who knows that everyone in the world desires his +peace and pleasure, should clamour for companionship in the first +reluctant minutes of bed? This child, being happy, did not weep for what +he wanted; he shouted for it in the rousing tones of his strength. After +many evenings of this he was told that this was precisely the vociferous +kind of wakefulness that might cause the man with two heads to show +himself. + +Unable to explain that no child ever goes to sleep, but that sleep, on +the contrary, "goes" for a child, the little boy yet accepted the +penalty, believed in the man, and kept quiet for a time. + +There was indignation in the mother's heart when the child instructed her +as to what might be looked for at his bedside; she used all her emphasis +in assuring him that no man with two heads would ever trouble those +innocent eyes, for there was no such portent anywhere on earth. There is +no such heart-oppressing task as the making of these assurances to a +child, for whom who knows what portents are actually in wait! She found +him, however, cowering with laughter, not with dread, lest the man with +two heads should see or overhear. The man with two heads had become his +play, and so was perhaps bringing about his sleep by gentler means than +the nurse had intended. The man was employing the vacant minutes of the +little creature's flight from sleep, called "going to sleep" in the +inexact language of the old. + +Nor would the boy give up his faith with its tremor and private laughter. +Because a child has a place for everything, this boy had placed the +monstrous man in the ceiling, in a corner of the room that might be kept +out of sight by the bed curtain. If that corner were left uncovered, the +fear would grow stronger than the fun; "the man would see me," said the +little boy. But let the curtain be in position, and the child lay alone, +hugging the dear belief that the monster was near. + +He was earnest in controversy with his mother as to the existence of his +man. The man was there, for he had been told so, and he was there to +wait for "naughty boys," said the child, with cheerful self-condemnation. +The little boy's voice was somewhat hushed, because of the four ears of +the listener, but it did not falter, except when his mother's arguments +against the existence of the man seemed to him cogent and likely to gain +the day. Then for the first time the boy was a little downcast, and the +light of mystery became dimmer in his gay eyes. + + + + +CHILDREN IN BURLESQUE + + +Derision, which is so great a part of human comedy, has not spared the +humours of children. Yet they are fitter subjects for any other kind of +jesting. In the first place they are quite defenceless, but besides and +before this, it might have been supposed that nothing in a child could +provoke the equal passion of scorn. Between confessed unequals scorn is +not even suggested. Its derisive proclamation of inequality has no sting +and no meaning where inequality is natural and manifest. + +Children rouse the laughter of men and women; but in all that laughter +the tone of derision is more strange a discord than the tone of anger +would be, or the tone of theological anger and menace. These, little +children have had to bear in their day, but in the grim and serious +moods--not in the play--of their elders. The wonder is that children +should ever have been burlesqued, or held to be fit subjects for irony. + +Whether the thing has been done anywhere out of England, in any form, +might be a point for enquiry. It would seem, at a glance, that English +art and literature are quite alone in this incredible manner of sport. + +And even here, too, the thing that is laughed at in a child is probably +always a mere reflection of the parents' vulgarity. None the less it is +an unintelligible thing that even the rankest vulgarity of father or +mother should be resented, in the child, with the implacable resentment +of derision. + +John Leech used the caricature of a baby for the purposes of a scorn that +was not angry, but familiar. It is true that the poor child had first +been burlesqued by the unchildish aspect imposed upon him by his dress, +which presented him, without the beauties of art or nature, to all the +unnatural ironies. Leech did but finish him in the same spirit, with +dots for the childish eyes, and a certain form of face which is best +described as a fat square containing two circles--the inordinate cheeks +of that ignominious baby. That is the child as _Punch_ in Leech's day +preserved him, the latest figure of the then prevailing domestic raillery +of the domestic. + +In like manner did Thackeray and Dickens, despite all their sentiment. +Children were made to serve both the sentiment and the irony between +which those two writers, alike in this, stood double-minded. Thackeray, +writing of his snobs, wreaks himself upon a child; there is no worse snob +than his snob-child. There are snob-children not only in the book +dedicated to their parents, but in nearly all his novels. There is a +female snob-child in "Lovel the Widower," who may be taken as a type, and +there are snob-children at frequent intervals in "Philip." It is not +certain that Thackeray intended the children of Pendennis himself to be +innocent and exempt. + +In one of Dickens's early sketches there is a plot amongst the humorous +_dramatis personae_, to avenge themselves on a little boy for the lack +of tact whereby his parents have brought him with them to a party on the +river. The principal humorist frightens the child into convulsions. The +incident is the success of the day, and is obviously intended to have +some kind of reflex action in amusing the reader. In Dickens's maturer +books the burlesque little girl imitates her mother's illusory fainting- +fits. + +Our glimpses of children in the fugitive pages of that day are grotesque. +A little girl in _Punch_ improves on the talk of her dowdy mother with +the maids. An inordinate baby stares; a little boy flies, hideous, from +some hideous terror. + + + + +AUTHORSHIP + + +Authorship prevails in nurseries--at least in some nurseries. In many it +is probably a fitful game, and since the days of the Brontes there has +not been a large family without its magazine. The weak point of all this +literature is its commonplace. The child's effort is to write something +as much like as possible to the tedious books that are read to him; he is +apt to be fluent and foolish. If a child simple enough to imitate were +also simple enough not to imitate he might write nursery magazines that +would not bore us. + +As it is, there is sometimes nothing but the fresh and courageous +spelling to make his stories go. "He," however, is hardly the pronoun. +The girls are the more active authors, and the more prosaic. What they +would write had they never read things written for them by the dull, it +is not possible to know. What they do write is this--to take a passage: +"Poor Mrs. Bald (that was her name) thought she would never get to the +wood where her aunt lived, she got down and pulled the donky on by the +bridal . . . Alas! her troubles were not over yet, the donky would not go +where she wanted it, instead of turning down Rose Lane it went down +another, which although Mrs. Bald did not know it led to a very deep and +dangerous pond. The donky ran into the pond and Mrs. Bald was dround." + +To give a prosperous look to the magazine containing the serial story +just quoted, a few pages of mixed advertisements are laboriously written +out: "The Imatation of Christ is the best book in all the world." "Read +Thompson's poetry and you are in a world of delight." "Barrat's ginger +beer is the only ginger beer to drink." "The place for a ice." Under +the indefinite heading "A Article," readers are told "that they are +liable to read the paper for nothing." + +A still younger hand contributes a short story in which the hero returns +to his home after a report of his death had been believed by his wife and +family. The last sentence is worth quoting: "We will now," says the +author, "leave Mrs. White and her two children to enjoy the sudden +appearance of Mr. White." + +Here is an editorial announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen, every week at +the end of the paper there will be a little article on the habits of the +paper." + +On the whole, authorship does not seem to foster the quality of +imagination. Convention, during certain early years, may be a very +strong motive--not so much with children brought up strictly within its +limits, perhaps, as with those who have had an exceptional freedom. +Against this, as a kind of childish bohemianism, there is, in one phase +of childhood, a strong reaction. To one child, brought up +internationally, and with somewhat too much liberty amongst peasant play- +mates and their games, in many dialects, eagerness to become like "other +people," and even like the other people of quite inferior fiction, grew +to be almost a passion. The desire was in time out-grown, but it cost +the girl some years of her simplicity. The style is not always the +child. + + + + +LETTERS + + +The letter exacted from a child is usually a letter of thanks; somebody +has sent him a box of chocolates. The thanks tend to stiffen a child's +style; but in any case a letter is the occasion of a sudden +self-consciousness, newer to a child than his elders know. They speak +prose and know it. But a young child possesses his words by a different +tenure; he is not aware of the spelt and written aspect of the things he +says every day; he does not dwell upon the sound of them. He is so +little taken by the kind and character of any word that he catches the +first that comes at random. A little child to whom a peach was first +revealed, whispered to his mother, "I like that kind of turnip." +Compelled to write a letter, the child finds the word of daily life +suddenly a stranger. + +The fresher the mind the duller the sentence; and the younger the fingers +the older, more wrinkled, and more sidling the handwriting. Dickens, who +used his eyes, remarked the contrast. The hand of a child and his face +are full of rounds; but his written O is tottering and haggard. + +His phrases are ceremonious without the dignity of ceremony. The child +chatters because he wants his companion to hear; but there is no +inspiration in the act of writing to a distant aunt about whom he +probably has some grotesque impression because he cannot think of anyone, +however vague and forgotten, without a mental image. As like as not he +pictures all his relatives at a distance with their eyes shut. No boy +wants to write familiar things to a forgotten aunt with her eyes shut. +His thoughtless elders require him not only to write to her under these +discouragements, but to write to her in an artless and childlike fashion. + +The child is unwieldy of thought, besides. He cannot send the +conventional messages but he loses his way among the few pronouns: "I +send them their love," "They sent me my love," "I kissed their hand to +me." If he is stopped and told to get the words right, he has to make a +long effort. His precedent might be cited to excuse every politician who +cannot remember whether he began his sentence with "people" in the +singular or the plural, and who finishes it otherwise than as he began +it. Points of grammar that are purely points of logic baffle a child +completely. He is as unready in the thought needed for these as he is in +the use of his senses. + +It is not true--though it is generally said--that a young child's senses +are quick. This is one of the unverified ideas that commend themselves, +one knows not why. We have had experiments to compare the relative +quickness of perception proved by men and women. The same experiments +with children would give curious results, but they can hardly, perhaps, +be made, because the children would be not only slow to perceive but slow +to announce the perception; so the moment would go by, and the game be +lost. Not even amateur conjuring does so baffle the slow turning of a +child's mind as does a little intricacy of grammar. + + + + +THE FIELDS + + +The pride of rustic life is the child's form of caste-feeling. The +country child is the aristocrat; he has _des relations suivies_ with +game-keepers, nay, with the most interesting mole-catchers. He has a +perfectly self-conscious joy that he is not in a square or a suburb. No +essayist has so much feeling against terraces and villas. + +As for imitation country--the further suburb--it is worse than town; it +is a place to walk in; and the tedium of a walk to a child's mind is +hardly measurable by a man, who walks voluntarily, with his affairs to +think about, and his eyes released, by age, from the custom of perpetual +observation. The child, compelled to walk, is the only unresting +observer of the asphalt, the pavement, the garden gates and railings, and +the tedious people. He is bored as he will never be bored when a man. + +He is at his best where, under the welcome stress and pressure of +abundant crops, he is admitted to the labours of men and women, neither +in mere play nor in the earnest of the hop-field for the sake of his +little gains. On the steep farm lands of the Canton de Vaud, where maize +and grapes are carried in the _botte_, so usually are children expected +in the field that _bottes_ are made to the shape of a back and arms of +five years old. Some, made for harvesters of those years, can hold no +more than a single yellow ear of maize or two handfuls of beans. You may +meet the same little boy with the repetitions of this load a score of +times in the morning. Moreover the Swiss mother has always a fit sense +of what is due to that labourer. When the plums are gathered, for +instance, she bakes in the general village oven certain round open tarts +across which her arm can hardly reach. No plum tarts elsewhere are +anything but dull in comparison with these. There is, besides, the first +loaf from the new flour, brown from the maize and white from the wheat. +Nor can a day of potato-gathering be more appropriately ended than with a +little fire built afield and the baking of some of the harvest under the +wood ashes. Vintaging needs no praises, nor does apple-gathering; even +when the apples are for cider, they are never acrid enough to baffle a +child's tooth. + +Yet even those children who are so unlucky as never to have worked in a +real field, but have been compelled to vary their education with nothing +but play, are able to comfort themselves with the irregular harvest of +the hedges. They have no little hand in the realities of cultivation, +but wild growths give them blackberries. Pale are the joys of nutting +beside those of haymaking, but at least they are something. + +Harvests apart, Spring, not Autumn, should make a childhood of memories +for the future. In later Autumn, life is speeding away, ebbing, taking +flight, a fugitive, taking disguises, hiding in the dry seed, retreating +into the dark. The daily progress of things in Spring is for children, +who look close. They know the way of moss and the roots of ivy, they +breathe the breath of earth immediately, direct. They have a sense of +place, of persons, and of the past that may be remembered but cannot be +recaptured. Adult accustomed eyes cannot see what a child's eye sees of +the personality of a person; to the child the accidents of voice and look +are charged with separate and unique character. Such a sense of place as +he got in a day within some forest, or in a week by some lake, so that a +sound or odour can bring it back in after days, with a shock--even such a +sense of single personality does a little watchful girl get from the +accents, the turns of the head, the habits of the hands, the presence of +a woman. Not all places, nor all persons, are so quick with the +expression of themselves; the child knows the difference. As for places +that are so loaded, and that breathe so, the child discerns them +passionately. + +A travelled child multiplies these memories and has them in their +variety. His heart has room for many places that have the spirit of +place. The glacier may be forgotten, but some little tract of pasture +that has taken wing to the head of a mountain valley, a field that has +soared up a pass unnamed, will become a memory, in time, sixty years old. +That is a fortunate child who has tasted country life in places far +apart, who has helped, followed the wheat to the threshing-floor of a +Swiss village, stumbled after a plough of Virgil's shape in remoter +Tuscan hills, and gleaned after a vintage. You cannot suggest pleasanter +memories than those of the vintage, for the day when the wine will be +old. + + + + +THE BARREN SHORE + + +It may be a disappointment to the children each year at play upon so many +beaches--even if they are but dimly aware of their lack--to find their +annual plaything to be not a real annual; an annual thing, indeed, to +them, for the arbitrary reason that they go down to it once a year, but +not annual in the vital and natural sense of the seasons, not waxing and +waning, not bearing, not turning that circle of the seasons whereof no +one knows which is the highest point and the secret and the ultimate +purpose, not recreated, not new, and not yielding to the child anything +raw and irregular to eat. + +Sand castles are well enough, and they are the very commonplace of the +recollections of elders, of their rhetoric, and of what they think +appropriate for their young ones. Shingle and sand are good playthings, +but absolute play is not necessarily the ideal of a child; he would +rather have a frolic of work. Of all the early autumn things to be done +in holiday time, that game with the beach and the wave is the least good +for holiday-time. + +Not that the shore is everywhere so barren. The coast of the +Londoners--all round the southern and eastern borders of England--is +indeed the dullest of all sea-margins. But away in the gentle bays of +Jersey the summer grows a crop of seaweed which the long ocean wave +leaves in noble curves upon the beach; for under sunny water the storms +have gathered the crops. The Channel Island people go gleaning after the +sea, and store the seaweed for their fields. Thus the beaches of Jersey +bays are not altogether barren, and have a kind of dead and accessory +harvest for the farmer. After a night of storm these crops are stacked +and carted and carried, the sea-wind catching away loose shreds from the +summits of the loads. + +Further south, if the growth of the sea is not so put to use, the shore +has yet its seasons. You could hardly tell, if you did not know the +month, whether a space of sea or a series of waves, at Aldborough, say, +or at Dover, were summer or winter water; but in those fortunate regions +which are southern, yet not too southern for winter, and have thus the +strongest swing of change and the fullest pulse of the year, there are a +winter sea and a summer sea, brilliantly different, with a delicate +variety between the hastening blue of spring and the lingering blue of +September. There you bathe from the rocks, untroubled by tides, and +unhurried by chills, and with no incongruous sun beating on your head +while your fingers are cold. You bathe when the sun has set, and the +vast sea has not a whisper; you know a rock in the distance where you can +rest; and where you float, there float also by you opalescent jelly-fish, +half transparent in the perfectly transparent water. An hour in the warm +sea is not enough. Rock-bathing is done on lonely shores. A city may be +but a mile away, and the cultivated vineyards may be close above the +seaside pine-trees, but the place is perfectly remote. You pitch your +tent on any little hollow of beach. A charming Englishwoman who used to +bathe with her children under the great rocks of her Mediterranean villa +in the motionless white evenings of summer put white roses in her hair, +and liked to sit out on a rock at sea where the first rays of the moon +would touch her. + +You bathe in the Channel in the very prose of the day. Nothing in the +world is more uninteresting than eleven o'clock. It is the hour of +mediocrity under the best conditions; but eleven o'clock on a shingly +beach, in a half-hearted summer, is a very common thing. Twelve has a +dignity always, and everywhere its name is great. The noon of every day +that ever dawned is in its place heroic; but eleven is worldly. One +o'clock has an honest human interest to the hungry child, and every hour +of the summer afternoon, after three, has the grace of deepening and +lingering life. To bathe at eleven in the sun, in the wind, to bathe +from a machine, in a narrow sea that is certainly not clear and is only +by courtesy clean, to bathe in obedience to a tyrannical tide and in +water that is always much colder than yourself, to bathe in a hurry and +in public--this is to know nothing rightly of one of the greatest of all +the pleasures that humanity takes with nature. + +By the way, the sea of Jersey has more the character of a real sea than +of mere straits. These temperate islands would be better called the +Ocean Islands. When Edouard Pailleron was a boy and wrote poetry, he +composed a letter to Victor Hugo, the address whereof was a matter of +some thought. The final decision was to direct it, "A Victor Hugo, +Ocean." It reached him. It even received a reply: "I am the Past, you +are the Future; I am, etc." If an English boy had had the same idea the +name of the Channel Islands would have spoilt it. "A Victor Hugo, La +Manche," would hardly have interested the postal authorities so much; but +"the Channel" would have had no respect at all. Indeed, this last is +suggestive of nothing but steamers and of grey skies inland--formless +grey skies, undesigned, with their thin cloud torn to slender rags by a +perpetual wind. + +As for the children, to whom belongs the margin of the sea, +machine-bathing at eleven o'clock will hardly furnish them with a magical +early memory. Time was when this was made penitential to them, like the +rest of life, upon a principle that no longer prevails. It was +vulgarized for them and made violent. A bathing woman, type of all +ugliness in their sensitive eyes, came striding, shapeless, through the +unfriendly sea, seized them if they were very young, ducked them, and +returned them to the chilly machine, generally in the futile and +superfluous saltness of tears. "Too much of water had they," poor +infants. + +None the less is the barren shore the children's; and St. Augustine, +Isaac Newton, and Wordsworth had not a vision of sea-beaches without a +child there. + + + + +THE BOY + + +After an infancy of more than common docility and a young childhood of +few explicit revolts, the boy of twelve years old enters upon a phase +which the bystander may not well understand but may make shift to note as +an impression. + +Like other subtle things, his position is hardly to be described but by +negatives. Above all, he is not demonstrative. The days are long gone +by when he said he wanted a bicycle, a top hat, and a pipe. One or two +of these things he has, and he takes them without the least swagger. He +avoids expression of any kind. Any satisfaction he may feel with things +as they are is rather to be surprised in his manner than perceived in his +action. Mr. Jaggers, when it befell him to be astonished, showed it by a +stop of manner, for an indivisible moment--not by a pause in the thing he +chanced to be about. In like manner the boy cannot prevent his most +innocent pleasures from arresting him. + +He will not endure (albeit he does not confess so much) to be told to do +anything, at least in that citadel of his freedom, his home. His elders +probably give him as few orders as possible. He will almost ingeniously +evade any that are inevitably or thoughtlessly inflicted upon him, but if +he does but succeed in only postponing his obedience, he has, visibly, +done something for his own relief. It is less convenient that he should +hold mere questions, addressed to him in all good faith, as in some sort +an attempt upon his liberty. + +Questions about himself one might understand to be an outrage. But it is +against impersonal and indifferent questions also that the boy sets his +face like a rock. He has no ambition to give information on any point. +Older people may not dislike the opportunity, and there are even those +who bring to pass questions of a trivial kind for the pleasure of +answering them with animation. This, the boy perhaps thinks, is "fuss," +and, if he has any passions, he has a passionate dislike of fuss. + +When a younger child tears the boy's scrapbook (which is conjectured, +though not known, to be the dearest thing he has) he betrays no emotion; +that was to be expected. But when the stolen pages are rescued and put +by for him, he abstains from taking an interest in the retrieval; he will +do nothing to restore them. To do so would mar the integrity of his +reserve. If he would do much rather than answer questions, he would +suffer something rather than ask them. + +He loves his father and a friend of his father's, and he pushes them, in +order to show it without compromising his temperament. + +He is a partisan in silence. It may be guessed that he is often occupied +in comparing other people with his admired men. Of this too he says +little, except some brief word of allusion to what other men do _not_ do. + +When he speaks it is with a carefully shortened vocabulary. As an author +shuns monotony, so does the boy shun change. He does not generally talk +slang; his habitual words are the most usual of daily words made useful +and appropriate by certain varieties of voice. These express for him all +that he will consent to communicate. He reserves more by speaking dull +words with zeal than by using zealous words that might betray him. But +his brevity is the chief thing; he has almost made an art of it. + +He is not "merry." Merry boys have pretty manners, and it must be owned +that this boy's manners are not pretty. But if not merry, he is happy; +there never was a more untroubled soul. If he has an almost grotesque +reticence, he has no secrets. Nothing that he thinks is very much +hidden. Even if he did not push his father, it would be evident that the +boy loves him; even if he never laid his hand (and this little thing he +does rarely) on his friend's shoulder, it would be plain that he loves +his friend. His happiness appears in his moody and charming face, his +ambition in his dumbness, and the hopes of his life to come in ungainly +bearing. How does so much heart, how does so much sweetness, all +unexpressed, appear? For it is not only those who know him well that +know the child's heart; strangers are aware of it. This, which he would +not reveal, is the only thing that is quite unmistakable and quite +conspicuous. + +What he thinks that he turns visibly to the world is a sense of humour, +with a measure of criticism and of indifference. What he thinks the +world may divine in him is courage and an intelligence. But carry +himself how he will, he is manifestly a tender, gentle, and even +spiritual creature, masculine and innocent--"a nice boy." There is no +other way of describing him than that of his own brief language. + + + + +ILLNESS + + +The patience of young children in illness is a commonplace of some little +books, but none the less a fresh fact. In spite of the sentimental, +children in illness remain the full sources of perpetual surprises. Their +self-control in real suffering is a wonder. A little turbulent girl, +brilliant and wild, and unaccustomed, it might be thought, to deal in any +way with her own impulses--a child whose way was to cry out, laugh, +complain, and triumph without bating anything of her own temperament, and +without the hesitation of a moment, struck her face, on a run, against a +wall and was cut and in a moment overwhelmed with pain and covered with +blood. "Tell mother it's nothing! Tell mother, quick, it's nothing!" +cried the magnanimous child as soon as she could speak. + +The same child fell over the rail of a staircase and was obliged to lie +for some ten days on her back, so that the strained but not broken little +body might recover itself. Every movement was, in a measure, painful; +and there was a long captivity, a helplessness enforced and guarded by +twinges, a constant impossibility to yield to the one thing that had +carried her through all her years--impulse. A condition of acute +consciousness was imposed upon a creature whose first condition of life +had been unconsciousness; and this during the long period of ten of a +child's days and nights at eight years old. + +Yet during every hour of the time the child was not only gay but patient, +not fitfully, but steadily, resigned, sparing of requests, reluctant to +be served, inventive of tender and pious little words that she had never +used before. "You are exquisite to me, mother," she said, at receiving +some common service. + +Even in the altering and harassing conditions of fever, a generous child +assumes the almost incredible attitude of deliberate patience. Not that +illness is to be trusted to work so. There is another child who in his +brief indispositions becomes invincible, armed against medicine finally. +The last appeal to force, as his distracted elders find, is all but an +impossibility; but in any case it would be a failure. You can bring the +spoon to the child, but three nurses cannot make him drink. This, then, +is the occasion of the ultimate resistance. He raises the standard of +revolution, and casts every tradition and every precept to the wind on +which it flies. He has his elders at a disadvantage; for if they pursue +him with a grotesque spoon their maxims and commands are, at the moment, +still more grotesque. He is committed to the wild novelty of absolute +refusal. He not only refuses, moreover, he disbelieves; he throws +everything over. Told that the medicine is not so bad, this nihilist +laughs. + +Medicine apart, a minor ailment is an interest and a joy. "Am I unwell +to-day, mother?" asks a child with all his faith and confidence at the +highest point. + + + + +THE YOUNG CHILD + + +The infant of literature "wails" and wails feebly, with the invariability +of a thing unproved and taken for granted. Nothing, nevertheless, could +be more unlike a wail than the most distinctive cry whereon the child of +man catches his first breath. It is a hasty, huddled outcry, sharp and +brief, rather deep than shrill in tone. With all deference to old +moralities, man does not weep at beginning this world; he simply lifts up +his new voice much as do the birds in the Zoological Gardens, and with +much the same tone as some of the duck kind there. He does not weep for +some months to come. His outcry soon becomes the human cry that is +better known than loved, but tears belong to later infancy. And if the +infant of days neither wails nor weeps, the infant of months is still too +young to be gay. A child's mirth, when at last it begins, is his first +secret; you understand little of it. The first smile (for the convulsive +movement in sleep that is popularly adorned by that name is not a smile) +is an uncertain sketch of a smile, unpractised but unmistakable. It is +accompanied by a single sound--a sound that would be a monosyllable if it +were articulate--which is the utterance, though hardly the communication, +of a private jollity. That and that alone is the real beginning of human +laughter. + +From the end of the first fortnight in life, when it appears for the +first time, and as it were flickeringly, the child's smile begins to grow +definite and, gradually, more frequent. By very slow degrees the secrecy +passes away, and the dryness becomes more genial. The child now smiles +more openly, but he is still very unlike the laughing creature of so much +prose and verse. His laughter takes a long time to form. The +monosyllable grows louder, and then comes to be repeated with little +catches of the breath. The humour upon which he learns to laugh is that +of something which approaches him quickly and then withdraws. This is +the first intelligible jest of jesting man. + +An infant never meets your eyes; he evidently does not remark the +features of faces near him. Whether because of the greater +conspicuousness of dark hair or dark hat, or for some like reason, he +addresses his looks, his laughs, and apparently his criticism, to the +heads, not the faces, of his friends. These are the ways of all infants, +various in character, parentage, race, and colour; they do the same +things. There are turns in a kitten's play--arched leapings and sidelong +jumps, graceful rearings and grotesque dances--which the sacred kittens +of Egypt used in their time. But not more alike are these repetitions +than the impulses of all young children learning to laugh. + +In regard to the child of a somewhat later growth, we are told much of +his effect upon the world; not much of the effect of the world upon him. +Yet he is compelled to endure the reflex results, at least, of all that +pleases, distresses, or oppresses the world. That he should be obliged +to suffer the moods of men is a more important thing than that men should +be amused by his moods. If he is saddened, that is certainly much more +than that his elders should be gladdened. It is doubtless hardly +possible that children should go altogether free of human affairs. They +might, in mere justice, be spared the burden they bear ignorantly and +simply when it is laid upon them, of such events and ill fortunes as may +trouble our peace; but they cannot easily be spared the hearing of a +disturbed voice or the sight of an altered face. Alas! they are made to +feel money-matters, and even this is not the worst. There are +unconfessed worldliness, piques, and rivalries, of which they do not know +the names, but which change the faces where they look for smiles. To +such alterations children are sensitive even when they seem least +accessible to the commands, the warnings, the threats, or the counsels of +elders. Of all these they may be gaily independent, and yet may droop +when their defied tyrants are dejected. + +For though the natural spirit of children is happy, the happiness is a +mere impulse and is easily disconcerted. They are gay without knowing +any very sufficient reason for being so, and when sadness is, as it were, +proposed to them, things fall away from under their feet, they are +helpless and find no stay. For this reason the merriest of all children +are those, much pitied, who are brought up neither in a family nor in a +public home by paid guardians, but in a place of charity, rightly named, +where impartial, unalterable, and impersonal devotion has them in hand. +They endure an immeasurable loss, and are orphans, but they gain in +perpetual gaiety; they live in an unchanging temperature. The separate +nest is nature's, and the best; but it might be wished that the separate +nest were less subject to moods. The nurse has her private business, and +when it does not prosper, and when the remote affairs of the governess go +wrong, the child receives the ultimate vibration of the mishap. + +The uniformity of infancy passes away long before the age when children +have this indefinite suffering inflicted upon them; and they have become +infinitely various, and feel the consequences of the cares of their +elders in unnumbered degrees. The most charming children feel them the +most sensibly, and not with resentment but with sympathy. It is +assuredly in the absence of resentment that consists the virtue of +childhood. What other thing are we to learn of them? Not simplicity, +for they are intricate enough. Not gratitude; for their usual sincere +thanklessness makes half the pleasure of doing them good. Not obedience; +for the child is born with the love of liberty. And as for humility, the +boast of a child is the frankest thing in the world. A child's natural +vanity is not merely the delight in his own possessions, but the triumph +over others less fortunate. If this emotion were not so young it would +be exceedingly unamiable. But the truth must be confessed that having +very quickly learnt the value of comparison and relation, a child +rejoices in the perception that what he has is better than what his +brother has; this comparison is a means of judging his fortune, after +all. It is true that if his brother showed distress, he might make haste +to offer an exchange. But the impulse of joy is candidly egotistic. + +It is the sweet and entire forgiveness of children, who ask pity for +their sorrows from those who have caused them, who do not perceive that +they are wronged, who never dream that they are forgiving, and who make +no bargain for apologies--it is this that men and women are urged to +learn of a child. Graces more confessedly childlike they make shift to +teach themselves. + + + + +FAIR AND BROWN + + +George Eliot, in one of her novels, has a good-natured mother, who +confesses that when she administers justice she is obliged to spare the +offenders who have fair hair, because they look so much more innocent +than the rest. And if this is the state of maternal feelings where all +are more or less fair, what must be the miscarriage of justice in +countries where a _blond_ angel makes his infrequent visit within the +family circle? + +In England he is the rule, and supreme as a matter of course. He is +"English," and best, as is the early asparagus and the young potato, +according to the happy conviction of the shops. To say "child" in +England is to say "fair-haired child," even as in Tuscany to say "young +man" is to say "tenor." "I have a little party to-night, eight or ten +tenors, from neighbouring palazzi, to meet my English friends." + +But France is a greater enthusiast than our now country. The fairness +and the golden hair are here so much a matter of orthodoxy, that they are +not always mentioned; they are frequently taken for granted. Not so in +France; the French go out of their way to make the exceptional fairness +of their children the rule of their literature. No French child dare +show his face in a book--prose or poetry--without blue eyes and fair +hair. It is a thing about which the French child of real life can hardly +escape a certain sensitiveness. What, he may ask, is the use of being a +dark-haired child of fact, when all the emotion, all the innocence, all +the romance, are absorbed by the flaxen-haired child of fiction? How +deplorable that our mothers, the French infants may say, should have +their unattained ideals in the nurseries of the imagination; how dismal +that they should be perpetually disillusioned in the nurseries of fact! +Is there then no sentiment for us? they may ask. Will not convention, +which has been forced to restore the advantage to truth on so many other +points, be compelled to yield on this point also, and reconcile our aunts +to the family colouring? + +All the schools of literature are in a tale. The classic masters, +needless to say, do not stoop to the colouring of boys and girls; but as +soon as the Romantiques arise, the cradle is there, and no soft hair ever +in it that is not of some tone of gold, no eyes that are not blue, and no +cheek that is not white and pink as milk and roses. Victor Hugo, who +discovered the child of modern poetry, never omits the touch of +description; the word _blond_ is as inevitable as any epithet marshalled +to attend its noun in a last-century poet's dictionary. One would not +have it away; one can hear the caress with which the master pronounces +it, "making his mouth," as Swift did for his "little language." Nor does +the customary adjective fail in later literature. It was dear to the +Realist, and it is dear to the Symbolist. The only difference is that in +the French of the Symbolist it precedes the noun. + +And yet it is time that the sweetness of the dark child should have its +day. He is really no less childlike than the other. There is a pretty +antithesis between the strong effect of his colouring and the softness of +his years and of his months. The blond human being--man, woman or +child--has the beauty of harmony; the hair plays off from the tones of +the flesh, only a few degrees brighter or a few degrees darker. Contrast +of colour there is, in the blue of the eyes, and in the red of cheek and +lip, but there is no contrast of tone. The whole effect is that of much +various colour and of equal tone. In the dark face there is hardly any +colour and an almost complete opposition of tone. The complete +opposition, of course, would be black and white; and a beautiful dark +child comes near to this, but for the lovely modifications, the warmth of +his white, and of his black alike, so that the one tone, as well as the +other, is softened towards brown. It is the beauty of contrast, with a +suggestion of harmony--as it were a beginning of harmony--which is +infinitely lovely. + +Nor is the dark child lacking in variety. His radiant eyes range from a +brown so bright that it looks golden in the light, to a brown so dark +that it barely defines the pupil. So is his hair various, answering the +sun with unsuspected touches, not of gold but of bronze. And his cheek +is not invariably pale. A dusky rose sometimes lurks there with such an +effect of vitality as you will hardly get from the shallower pink of the +flaxened haired. And the suggestion is that of late summer, the colour +of wheat almost ready for the harvest, and darker, redder flowers--poppies +and others--than come in Spring. + +The dark eyes, besides, are generally brighter--they shelter a more +liquid light than the blue or grey. Southern eyes have generally most +beautiful whites. And as to the charm of the childish figure, there is +usually an infantine slenderness in the little Southener that is at least +as young and sweet as the round form of the blond child. And yet the +painters of Italy would have none of it. They rejected the dusky +brilliant pale little Italians all about them; they would have none but +flaxen-haired children, and they would have nothing that was slim, +nothing that was thin, nothing that was shadowy. They rejoiced in much +fair flesh, and in all possible freshness. So it was in fair Flanders as +well as in dark Italy. But so it was not in Spain. The Pyrenees seemed +to interrupt the tradition. And as Murillo saw the charm of dark heads, +and the innocence of dark eyes, so did one English painter. Reynolds +painted young dark hair as tenderly as the youngest gold. + + + + +REAL CHILDHOOD + + +The world is old because its history is made up of successive childhoods +and of their impressions. Your hours when you were six were the enormous +hours of the mind that has little experience and constant and quick +forgetfulness. Therefore when your mother's visitor held you so long at +his knee, while he talked to her the excited gibberish of the grown-up, +he little thought what he forced upon you; what the things he called +minutes really were, measured by a mind unused; what passive and then +what desperate weariness he held you to by his slightly gesticulating +hands that pressed some absent-minded caress, rated by you at its right +value, in the pauses of his anecdotes. You, meanwhile, were infinitely +tired of watching the play of his conversing moustache. + +Indeed, the contrast of the length of contemporary time (this pleonasm is +inevitable) is no small mystery, and the world has never had the wit +fully to confess it. + +You remembered poignantly the special and singular duration of some such +space as your elders, perhaps, called half-an-hour--so poignantly that +you spoke of it to your sister, not exactly with emotion, but still as a +dreadful fact of life. You had better instinct than to complain of it to +the talkative, easy-living, occupied people, who had the management of +the world in their hands--your seniors. You remembered the duration of +some such separate half-hour so well that you have in fact remembered it +until now, and so now, of course, will never forget it. + +As to the length of Beethoven, experienced by you on duty in the drawing +room, it would be curious to know whether it was really something greater +than Beethoven had any idea of. You sat and listened, and tried to fix a +passage in your mind as a kind of half-way mark, with the deliberate +provident intention of helping yourself through the time during a future +hearing; for you knew too well that you would have to bear it all again. +You could not do the same with sermons, because, though even more +fatiguing, they were more or less different each time. + +While your elders passed over some particularly tedious piece of road--and +a very tedious piece of road existed within short distance of every house +you lived in or stayed in--in their usual state of partial absence of +mind, you, on the contrary, perceived every inch of it. As to the length +of a bad night, or of a mere time of wakefulness at night, adult words do +not measure it; they hardly measure the time of merely waiting for sleep +in childhood. Moreover, you were tired of other things, apart from the +duration of time--the names of streets, the names of tradesmen, +especially the _fournisseurs_ of the household, who lived in them. + +You were bored by people. It did not occur to you to be tired of those +of your own immediate family, for you loved them immemorially. Nor were +you bored by the newer personality of casual visitors, unless they held +you, as aforesaid, and made you so listen to their unintelligible voices +and so look at their mannered faces that they released you an older child +than they took you prisoner. But--it is a reluctant confession--you were +tired of your relations; you were weary of their bonnets. Measured by +adult time, those bonnets were, it is to be presumed, of no more than +reasonable duration; they had no more than the average or common life. +You have no reason, looking back, to believe that your great-aunts wore +bonnets for great and indefinite spaces of time. But, to your sense as a +child, long and changing and developing days saw the same harassing +artificial flowers hoisted up with the same black lace. You would have +had a scruple of conscience as to really disliking the face, but you +deliberately let yourself go in detesting the bonnet. So with dresses, +especially such as had any little misfit about them. For you it had +always existed, and there was no promise of its ceasing. You seemed to +have been aware of it for years. By the way, there would be less cheap +reproving of little girls for desiring new clothes if the censors knew +how immensely old their old clothes are to them. + +The fact is that children have a simple sense of the unnecessary ugliness +of things, and that--apart from the effects of _ennui_--they reject that +ugliness actively. You have stood and listened to your mother's +compliments on her friend's hat, and have made your mental protest in +very definite words. You thought it hideous, and hideous things offended +you then more than they have ever offended you since. At nine years old +you made people, alas! responsible for their faces, as you do still in a +measure, though you think you do not. You severely made them answer for +their clothes, in a manner which you have seen good reason, in later +life, to mitigate. Upon curls, or too much youthfulness in the aged, you +had no mercy. To sum up the things you hated inordinately, they were +friskiness of manner and of trimmings, and curls combined with rather +bygone or frumpish fashions. Too much childish dislike was wasted so. + +But you admired some things without regard to rules of beauty learnt +later. At some seven years old you dwelt with delight upon the contrast +of a white kid glove and a bright red wrist. Well, this is not the +received arrangement, but red and white do go well together, and their +distribution has to be taught with time. Whose were the wrist and glove? +Certainly some one's who must have been distressed at the _bouquet_ of +colour that you admired. This, however, was but a local admiration. You +did not admire the girl as a whole. She whom you adored was always a +married woman of a certain age; rather faded, it might be, but always +divinely elegant. She alone was worthy to stand at the side of your +mother. You lay in wait for the border of her train, and dodged for a +chance of holding her bracelet when she played. You composed prose in +honour of her and called the composition (for reasons unknown to +yourself) a "catalogue." She took singularly little notice of you. + +Wordsworth cannot say too much of your passion for nature. The light of +summer morning before sunrise was to you a spiritual splendour for which +you wanted no name. The Mediterranean under the first perceptible touch +of the moon, the calm southern sea in the full blossom of summer, the +early spring everywhere, in the showery streets, in the fields, or at +sea, left old childish memories with you which you try to evoke now when +you see them again. But the cloudy dusk behind poplars on the plains of +France, the flying landscape from the train, willows, and the last of the +light, were more mournful to you then than you care to remember now. So +were the black crosses on the graves of the French village; so were +cypresses, though greatly beloved. + +If you were happy enough to be an internationally educated child, you had +much at heart the heart of every country you knew. You disliked the +English accent of your compatriots abroad with a scorn to which, needless +to say, you are not tempted now. You had shocks of delight from Swiss +woods full of lilies of the valley, and from English fields full of +cowslips. You had disquieting dreams of landscape and sun, and of many +of these you cannot now tell which were visions of travel and which +visions of slumber. Your strong sense of place made you love some places +too keenly for peace. + + + +***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CHILDREN*** + + +******* This file should be named 2012.txt or 2012.zip ******* + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +https://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/2/0/1/2012 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk +from the 1911 John Lane edition. + + + + + +THE CHILDREN + + + + +Contents + +Fellow Travellers with a Bird, I. +Fellow Travellers with a Bird, II. +Children in Midwinter +That Pretty Person +Out of Town +Expression +Under the Early Stars +The Man with Two Heads +Children in Burlesque +Authorship +Letters +The Fields +The Barren Shore +The Boy +Illness +The Young Children +Fair and Brown +Real Childhood + + + +FELLOW TRAVELLERS WITH A BIRD, I. + + + +To attend to a living child is to be baffled in your humour, +disappointed of your pathos, and set freshly free from all the pre- +occupations. You cannot anticipate him. Blackbirds, overheard year +by year, do not compose the same phrases; never two leitmotifs +alike. Not the tone, but the note alters. So with the uncovenated +ways of a child you keep no tryst. They meet you at another place, +after failing you where you tarried; your former experiences, your +documents are at fault. You are the fellow traveller of a bird. +The bird alights and escapes out of time to your footing. + +No man's fancy could be beforehand, for instance, with a girl of +four years old who dictated a letter to a distant cousin, with the +sweet and unimaginable message: "I hope you enjoy yourself with +your loving dolls." A boy, still younger, persuading his mother to +come down from the heights and play with him on the floor, but +sensible, perhaps, that there was a dignity to be observed none the +less, entreated her, "Mother, do be a lady frog." None ever said +their good things before these indeliberate authors. Even their own +kind--children--have not preceded them. No child in the past ever +found the same replies as the girl of five whose father made that +appeal to feeling which is doomed to a different, perverse, and +unforeseen success. He was rather tired with writing, and had a +mind to snare some of the yet uncaptured flock of her sympathies. +"Do you know, I have been working hard, darling? I work to buy +things for you." "Do you work," she asked, "to buy the lovely +puddin's?" Yes, even for these. The subject must have seemed to +her to be worth pursuing. "And do you work to buy the fat? I don't +like fat." + +The sympathies, nevertheless, are there. The same child was to be +soothed at night after a weeping dream that a skater had been +drowned in the Kensington Round Pond. It was suggested to her that +she should forget it by thinking about the one unfailing and gay +subject--her wishes. "Do you know," she said, without loss of time, +"what I should like best in all the world? A thundred dolls and a +whistle!" Her mother was so overcome by this tremendous numeral, +that she could make no offer as to the dolls. But the whistle +seemed practicable. "It is for me to whistle for cabs," said the +child, with a sudden moderation, "when I go to parties." Another +morning she came down radiant, "Did you hear a great noise in the +miggle of the night? That was me crying. I cried because I dreamt +that Cuckoo [a brother] had swallowed a bead into his nose." + +The mere errors of children are unforeseen as nothing is--no, +nothing feminine--in this adult world. "I've got a lotter than +you," is the word of a very young egotist. An older child says, +"I'd better go, bettern't I, mother?" He calls a little space at +the back of a London house, "the backy-garden." A little creature +proffers almost daily the reminder at luncheon--at tart-time: +"Father, I hope you will remember that I am the favourite of the +crust." Moreover, if an author set himself to invent the naif +things that children might do in their Christmas plays at home, he +would hardly light upon the device of the little troupe who, having +no footlights, arranged upon the floor a long row of--candle-shades! + +"It's JOLLY dull without you, mother," says a little girl who-- +gentlest of the gentle--has a dramatic sense of slang, of which she +makes no secret. But she drops her voice somewhat to disguise her +feats of metathesis, about which she has doubts and which are +involuntary: the "stand-wash," the "sweeping-crosser," the "sewing +chamine." Genoese peasants have the same prank when they try to +speak Italian. + +Children forget last year so well that if they are Londoners they +should by any means have an impression of the country or the sea +annually. A London little girl watches a fly upon the wing, follows +it with her pointing finger, and names it "bird." Her brother, who +wants to play with a bronze Japanese lobster, ask "Will you please +let me have that tiger?" + +At times children give to a word that slight variety which is the +most touching kind of newness. Thus, a child of three asks you to +save him. How moving a word, and how freshly said! He had heard of +the "saving" of other things of interest--especially chocolate +creams taken for safe-keeping--and he asks, "Who is going to save me +to-day? Nurse is going out, will you save me, mother?" The same +little variant upon common use is in another child's courteous reply +to a summons to help in the arrangement of some flowers, "I am quite +at your ease." + +A child, unconscious little author of things told in this record, +was taken lately to see a fellow author of somewhat different +standing from her own, inasmuch as he is, among other things, a +Saturday Reviewer. As he dwelt in a part of the South-west of the +town unknown to her, she noted with interest the shops of the +neighbourhood as she went, for they might be those of the +fournisseurs of her friend. "That is his bread shop, and that is +his book shop. And that, mother," she said finally, with even +heightened sympathy, pausing before a blooming parterre of +confectionery hard by the abode of her man of letters, "that, I +suppose, is where he buys his sugar pigs." + +In all her excursions into streets new to her, this same child is +intent upon a certain quest--the quest of a genuine collector. We +have all heard of collecting butterflies, of collecting china-dogs, +of collecting cocked hats, and so forth; but her pursuit gives her a +joy that costs her nothing except a sharp look-out upon the proper +names over all shop-windows. No hoard was ever lighter than hers. +"I began three weeks ago next Monday, mother," she says with +precision, "and I have got thirty-nine." "Thirty-nine what?" +"Smiths." + + + +FELLOW TRAVELLERS WITH A BIRD. II. + + + +The mere gathering of children's language would be much like +collecting together a handful of flowers that should be all unique, +single of their kind. In one thing, however, do children agree, and +that is the rejection of most of the conventions of the authors who +have reported them. They do not, for example, say "me is;" their +natural reply to "are you?" is "I are." One child, pronouncing +sweetly and neatly, will have nothing but the nominative pronoun. +"Lift I up and let I see it raining," she bids; and told that it +does not rain, resumes, "Lift I up and let I see it not raining." + +An elder child had a rooted dislike to a brown corduroy suit ordered +for her by maternal authority. She wore the garments under protest, +and with some resentment. At the same time it was evident that she +took no pleasure in hearing her praises sweetly sung by a poet, her +friend. He had imagined the making of this child in the counsels of +Heaven, and the decreeing of her soft skin, of her brilliant eyes, +and of her hair--"a brown tress." She had gravely heard the words +as "a brown dress," and she silently bore the poet a grudge for +having been the accessory of Providence in the mandate that she +should wear the loathed corduroy. The unpractised ear played +another little girl a like turn. She had a phrase for snubbing any +anecdote that sounded improbable. "That," she said more or less +after Sterne, "is a cotton-wool story." + +The learning of words is, needless to say, continued long after the +years of mere learning to speak. The young child now takes a +current word into use, a little at random, and now makes a new one, +so as to save the interruption of a pause for search. I have +certainly detected, in children old enough to show their motives, a +conviction that a word of their own making is as good a +communication as another, and as intelligible. There is even a +general implicit conviction among them that the grown-up people, +too, make words by the wayside as occasion befalls. How otherwise +should words be so numerous that every day brings forward some +hitherto unheard? The child would be surprised to know how +irritably poets are refused the faculty and authority which he +thinks to belong to the common world. + +There is something very cheerful and courageous in the setting-out +of a child on a journey of speech with so small baggage and with so +much confidence in the chances of the hedge. He goes free, a simple +adventurer. Nor does he make any officious effort to invent +anything strange or particularly expressive or descriptive. The +child trusts genially to his hearer. A very young boy, excited by +his first sight of sunflowers, was eager to describe them, and +called them, without allowing himself to be checked for the trifle +of a name, "summersets." This was simple and unexpected; so was the +comment of a sister a very little older. "Why does he call those +flowers summersets?" their mother said; and the girl, with a darkly +brilliant look of humour and penetration, answered, "because they +are so big." There seemed to be no further question possible after +an explanation that was presented thus charged with meaning. + +To a later phase of life, when a little girl's vocabulary was, +somewhat at random, growing larger, belong a few brave phrases +hazarded to express a meaning well realized--a personal matter. +Questioned as to the eating of an uncertain number of buns just +before lunch, the child averred, "I took them just to appetize my +hunger." As she betrayed a familiar knowledge of the tariff of an +attractive confectioner, she was asked whether she and her sisters +had been frequenting those little tables on their way from school. +"I sometimes go in there, mother," she confessed; "but I generally +speculate outside." + +Children sometimes attempt to cap something perfectly funny with +something so flat that you are obliged to turn the conversation. +Dryden does the same thing, not with jokes, but with his sublimer +passages. But sometimes a child's deliberate banter is quite +intelligible to elders. Take the letter written by a little girl to +a mother who had, it seems, allowed her family to see that she was +inclined to be satisfied with something of her own writing. The +child has a full and gay sense of the sweetest kinds of irony. +There was no need for her to write, she and her mother being both at +home, but the words must have seemed to her worthy of a pen: --"My +dear mother, I really wonder how you can be proud of that article, +if it is worthy to be called a article, which I doubt. Such a +unletterary article. I cannot call it letterature. I hope you will +not write any more such unconventionan trash." + +This is the saying of a little boy who admired his much younger +sister, and thought her forward for her age: "I wish people knew +just how old she is, mother, then they would know she is onward. +They can see she is pretty, but they can't know she is such a onward +baby." + +Thus speak the naturally unreluctant; but there are other children +who in time betray a little consciousness and a slight mefiance as +to where the adult sense of humour may be lurking in wait for them, +obscure. These children may not be shy enough to suffer any self- +checking in their talk, but they are now and then to be heard +slurring a word of which they do not feel too sure. A little girl +whose sensitiveness was barely enough to cause her to stop to choose +between two words, was wont to bring a cup of tea to the writing- +table of her mother, who had often feigned indignation at the +weakness of what her Irish maid always called "the infusion." "I'm +afraid it's bosh again, mother," said the child; and then, in a +half-whisper, "Is bosh right, or wash, mother?" She was not told, +and decided for herself, with doubts, for bosh. The afternoon cup +left the kitchen an infusion, and reached the library "bosh" +thenceforward. + + + +CHILDREN IN MIDWINTER + + + +Children are so flowerlike that it is always a little fresh surprise +to see them blooming in winter. Their tenderness, their down, their +colour, their fulness--which is like that of a thick rose or of a +tight grape--look out of season. Children in the withering wind are +like the soft golden-pink roses that fill the barrows in Oxford +Street, breathing a southern calm on the north wind. The child has +something better than warmth in the cold, something more subtly out +of place and more delicately contrary; and that is coolness. To be +cool in the cold is the sign of a vitality quite exquisitely alien +from the common conditions of the world. It is to have a naturally, +and not an artificially, different and separate climate. + +We can all be more or less warm--with fur, with skating, with tea, +with fire, and with sleep--in the winter. But the child is fresh in +the wind, and wakes cool from his dreams, dewy when there is hoar- +frost everywhere else; he is "more lovely and more temperate" than +the summer day and than the winter day alike. He overcomes both +heat and cold by another climate, which is the climate of life; but +that victory of life is more delicate and more surprising in the +tyranny of January. By the sight and the touch of children, we are, +as it were, indulged with something finer than a fruit or a flower +in untimely bloom. The childish bloom is always untimely. The +fruit and flower will be common later on; the strawberries will be a +matter of course anon, and the asparagus dull in its day. But a +child is a perpetual primeur. + +Or rather he is not in truth always untimely. Some few days in the +year are his own season--unnoticed days of March or April, soft, +fresh and equal, when the child sleeps and rises with the sun. Then +he looks as though he had his brief season, and ceases for a while +to seem strange. + +It is no wonder that we should try to attribute the times of the +year to children; their likeness is so rife among annuals. For man +and woman we are naturally accustomed to a longer rhythm; their +metre is so obviously their own, and of but a single stanza, without +repetition, without renewel, without refrain. But it is by an +intelligible illusion that we look for a quick waxing and waning in +the lives of young children--for a waxing that shall come again +another time, and for a waning that shall not be final, shall not be +fatal. But every winter shows us how human they are, and how they +are little pilgrims and visitants among the things that look like +their kin. For every winter shows them free from the east wind; +more perfectly than their elders, they enclose the climate of life. +And, moreover, with them the climate of life is the climate of the +spring of life; the climate of a human March that is sure to make a +constant progress, and of a human April that never hesitates. The +child "breathes April and May"--an inner April and his own May. + +The winter child looks so much the more beautiful for the season as +his most brilliant uncles and aunts look less well. He is tender +and gay in the east wind. Now more than ever must the lover beware +of making a comparison between the beauty of the admired woman and +the beauty of a child. He is indeed too wary ever to make it. So +is the poet. As comparisons are necessary to him, he will pay a +frankly impossible homage, and compare a woman's face to something +too fine, to something it never could emulate. The Elizabethan +lyrist is safe among lilies and cherries, roses, pearls, and snow. +He undertakes the beautiful office of flattery, and flatters with +courage. There is no hidden reproach in the praise. Pearls and +snow suffer, in a sham fight, a mimic defeat that does them no harm, +and no harm comes to the lady's beauty from a competition so +impossible. She never wore a lily or a coral in the colours of her +face, and their beauty is not hers. But here is the secret: she is +compared with a flower because she could not endure to be compared +with a child. That would touch her too nearly. There would be the +human texture and the life like hers, but immeasurably more lovely. +No colour, no surface, no eyes of woman have ever been comparable +with the colour, the surface, and the eyes of childhood. And no +poet has ever run the risk of such a defeat. Why, it is defeat +enough for a woman to have her face, however well-favoured, close to +a child's, even if there is no one by who should be rash enough to +approach them still nearer by a comparison. + +This, needless to say, is true of no other kind of beauty than that +beauty of light, colour, and surface to which the Elizabethans +referred, and which suggested their flatteries in disfavour of the +lily. There are, indeed, other adult beauties, but those are such +as make no allusions to the garden. What is here affirmed is that +the beautiful woman who is widely and wisely likened to the flowers, +which are inaccessibly more beautiful, must not, for her own sake, +be likened to the always accessible child. + +Besides light and colour, children have a beauty of finish which is +much beyond that of more finished years. This gratuitous addition, +this completeness, is one of their unexpected advantages. Their +beauty of finish is the peculiarity of their first childhood, and +loses, as years are added, that little extra character and that +surprise of perfection. A bloom disappears, for instance. In some +little children the whole face, and especially all the space between +the growth of the eyebrows and the growth of the hair, is covered +with hardly perceptible down as soft as bloom. Look then at the +eyebrows themselves. Their line is as definite as in later life, +but there is in the child the flush given by the exceeding fineness +of the delicate hairs. Moreover, what becomes, afterwards, of the +length and the curl of the eyelash? What is there in growing up +that is destructive of a finish so charming as this? + +Queen Elizabeth forbade any light to visit her face "from the right +or from the left" when her portrait was a-painting. She was an +observant woman, and liked to be lighted from the front. It is a +light from the right or from the left that marks an elderly face +with minute shadows. And you must place a child in such a light, in +order to see the finishing and parting caress that infancy has given +to his face. The down will then be found even on the thinnest and +clearest skin of the middle red of his cheek. His hair, too, is +imponderably fine, and his nails are not much harder than petals. + +To return to the child in January. It is his month for the laying +up of dreams. No one can tell whether it is so with all children, +or even with a majority; but with some children, of passionate +fancy, there occurs now and then a children's dance, or a party of +any kind, which has a charm and glory mingled with uncertain dreams. +Never forgotten, and yet never certainly remembered as a fact of +this life, is such an evening. When many and many a later pleasure, +about the reality of which there never was any kind of doubt, has +been long forgotten, that evening--as to which all is doubt--is +impossible to forget. In a few years it has become so remote that +the history of Greece derives antiquity from it. In later years it +is still doubtful, still a legend. + +The child never asked how much was fact. It was always so +immeasurably long ago that the sweet party happened--if indeed it +happened. It had so long taken its place in that past wherein lurks +all the antiquity of the world. No one would know, no one could +tell him, precisely what occurred. And who can know whether--if it +be indeed a dream--he has dreamt it often, or has dreamt once that +he had dreamt it often? That dubious night is entangled in repeated +visions during the lonely life a child lives in sleep; it is +intricate with illusions. It becomes the most mysterious and the +least worldly of all memories, a spiritual past. The word pleasure +is too trivial for such a remembrance. A midwinter long gone by +contained the suggestion of such dreams; and the midwinter of this +year must doubtless be preparing for the heart of many an ardent +young child a like legend and a like antiquity. For the old it is a +mere present. + + + +THAT PRETTY PERSON + + + +During the many years in which "evolution" was the favourite word, +one significant lesson--so it seems--was learnt, which has outlived +controversy, and has remained longer than the questions at issue--an +interesting and unnoticed thing cast up by the storm of thoughts. +This is a disposition, a general consent, to find the use and the +value of process, and even to understand a kind of repose in the +very wayfaring of progress. With this is a resignation to change, +and something more than resignation--a delight in those qualities +that could not be but for their transitoriness. + +What, then, is this but the admiration, at last confessed by the +world, for childhood? Time was when childhood was but borne with, +and that for the sake of its mere promise of manhood. We do not now +hold, perhaps, that promise so high. Even, nevertheless, if we held +it high, we should acknowledge the approach to be a state adorned +with its own conditions. + +But it was not so once. As the primitive lullaby is nothing but a +patient prophecy (the mother's), so was education, some two hundred +years ago, nothing but an impatient prophecy (the father's) of the +full stature of body and mind. The Indian woman sings of the future +hunting. If her song is not restless, it is because she has a sense +of the results of time, and has submitted her heart to experience. +Childhood is a time of danger; "Would it were done." But, +meanwhile, the right thing is to put it to sleep and guard its +slumbers. It will pass. She sings prophecies to the child of his +hunting, as she sings a song about the robe while she spins, and a +song about bread as she grinds corn. She bids good speed. + +John Evelyn was equally eager, and not so submissive. His child-- +"that pretty person" in Jeremy Taylor's letter of condolence--was +chiefly precious to him inasmuch as he was, too soon, a likeness of +the man he never lived to be. The father, writing with tears when +the boy was dead, says of him: "At two and a half years of age he +pronounced English, Latin, and French exactly, and could perfectly +read in these three languages." As he lived precisely five years, +all he did was done at that little age, and it comprised this: "He +got by heart almost the entire vocabulary of Latin and French +primitives and words, could make congruous syntax, turn English into +Latin, and vice versa, construe and prove what he read, and did the +government and use of relatives, verbs, substantives, ellipses, and +many figures and tropes, and made a considerable progress in +Comenius's 'Janua,' and had a strong passion for Greek." + +Grant that this may be a little abated, because a very serious man +is not to be too much believed when he is describing what he +admires; it is the very fact of his admiration that is so curious a +sign of those hasty times. All being favorable, the child of +Evelyn's studious home would have done all these things in the +course of nature within a few years. It was the fact that he did +them out of the course of nature that was, to Evelyn, so exquisite. +The course of nature had not any beauty in his eyes. It might be +borne with for the sake of the end, but it was not admired for the +majesty of its unhasting process. Jeremy Taylor mourns with him +"the strangely hopeful child," who--without Comenius's "Janua" and +without congruous syntax--was fulfilling, had they known it, an +appropriate hope, answering a distinctive prophecy, and crowning and +closing a separate expectation every day of his five years. + +Ah! the word "hopeful" seems, to us, in this day, a word too +flattering to the estate of man. They thought their little boy +strangely hopeful because he was so quick on his way to be something +else. They lost the timely perfection the while they were so intent +upon their hopes. And yet it is our own modern age that is charged +with haste! + +It would seem rather as though the world, whatever it shall unlearn, +must rightly learn to confess the passing and irrevocable hour; not +slighting it, or bidding it hasten its work, nor yet hailing it, +with Faust, "Stay, thou art so fair!" Childhood is but change made +gay and visible, and the world has lately been converted to change. + +Our fathers valued change for the sake of its results; we value it +in the act. To us the change is revealed as perpetual; every +passage is a goal, and every goal a passage. The hours are equal; +but some of them wear apparent wings. + +Tout passe. Is the fruit for the flower, or the flower for the +fruit, or the fruit for the seeds which it is formed to shelter and +contain? It seems as though our forefathers had answered this +question most arbitrarily as to the life of man. + +All their literature dealing with children is bent upon this haste, +this suppression of the approach to what seemed then the only time +of fulfilment. The way was without rest to them. And this because +they had the illusion of a rest to be gained at some later point of +this unpausing life. + +Evelyn and his contemporaries dropped the very word child as soon as +might be, if not sooner. When a poor little boy came to be eight +years old they called him a youth. The diarist himself had no cause +to be proud of his own early years, for he was so far indulged in +idleness by an "honoured grandmother" that he was "not initiated +into any rudiments" till he was four years of age. He seems even to +have been a youth of eight before Latin was seriously begun; but +this fact he is evidently, in after years, with a total lack of a +sense of humour, rather ashamed of, and hardly acknowledges. It is +difficult to imagine what childhood must have been when nobody, +looking on, saw any fun in it; when everything that was proper to +five years old was defect. A strange good conceit of themselves and +of their own ages had those fathers. + +They took their children seriously, without relief. Evelyn has +nothing to say about his little ones that has a sign of a smile in +it. Twice are children, not his own, mentioned in his diary. Once +he goes to the wedding of a maid of five years old--a curious thing, +but not, evidently, an occasion of sensibility. Another time he +stands by, in a French hospital, while a youth of less than nine +years of age undergoes a frightful surgical operation "with +extraordinary patience." "The use I made of it was to give Almighty +God hearty thanks that I had not been subject to this deplorable +infirmitie." This is what he says. + +See, moreover, how the fashion of hurrying childhood prevailed in +literature, and how it abolished little girls. It may be that there +were in all ages--even those--certain few boys who insisted upon +being children; whereas the girls were docile to the adult ideal. +Art, for example, had no little girls. There was always Cupid, and +there were the prosperous urchin-angels of the painters; the one who +is hauling up his little brother by the hand in the "Last Communion +of St. Jerome" might be called Tommy. But there were no "little +radiant girls." Now and then an "Education of the Virgin" is the +exception, and then it is always a matter of sewing and reading. As +for the little girl saints, even when they were so young that their +hands, like those of St. Agnes, slipped through their fetters, they +are always recorded as refusing importunate suitors, which seems +necessary to make them interesting to the mediaeval mind, but mars +them for ours. + +So does the hurrying and ignoring of little-girl-childhood somewhat +hamper the delight with which readers of John Evelyn admire his most +admirable Mrs. Godolphin. She was Maid of Honour to the Queen in +the Court of Charles II. She was, as he prettily says, an Arethusa +"who passed through all those turbulent waters without so much as +the least stain or tincture in her christall." She held her state +with men and maids for her servants, guided herself by most exact +rules, such as that of never speaking to the King, gave an excellent +example and instruction to the other maids of honour, was "severely +careful how she might give the least countenance to that liberty +which the gallants there did usually assume," refused the addresses +of the "greatest persons," and was as famous for her beauty as for +her wit. One would like to forget the age at which she did these +things. When she began her service she was eleven. When she was +making her rule never to speak to the King she was not thirteen. + +Marriage was the business of daughters of fourteen and fifteen, and +heroines, therefore, were of those ages. The poets turned April +into May, and seemed to think that they lent a grace to the year if +they shortened and abridged the spring of their many songs. The +particular year they sang of was to be a particularly fine year, as +who should say a fine child and forward, with congruous syntax at +two years old, and ellipses, figures, and tropes. Even as late as +Keats a poet would not have patience with the process of the +seasons, but boasted of untimely flowers. The "musk-rose" is never +in fact the child of mid-May, as he has it. + +The young women of Addison are nearly fourteen years old. His fear +of losing the idea of the bloom of their youth makes him so tamper +with the bloom of their childhood. The young heiress of seventeen +in the Spectator has looked upon herself as marriageable "for the +last six years." The famous letter describing the figure, the +dance, the wit, the stockings of the charming Mr. Shapely is +supposed to be written by a girl of thirteen, "willing to settle in +the world as soon as she can." She adds, "I have a good portion +which they cannot hinder me of." This correspondent is one of "the +women who seldom ask advice before they have bought their wedding +clothes." There was no sense of childhood in an age that could +think this an opportune pleasantry. + +But impatience of the way and the wayfaring was to disappear from a +later century--an age that has found all things to be on a journey, +and all things complete in their day because it is their day, and +has its appointed end. It is the tardy conviction of this, rather +than a sentiment ready made, that has caused the childhood of +children to seem, at last, something else than a defect. + + + +OUT OF TOWN + + + +To be on a villeggiatura with the children is to surprise them in +ways and words not always evident in the London house. The narrow +lodgings cause you to hear and overhear. Nothing is more curious to +listen to than a young child's dramatic voice. The child, being a +boy, assumes a deep, strong, and ultra-masculine note, and a swagger +in his walk, and gives himself the name of the tallest of his +father's friends. The tone is not only manly; it is a tone of +affairs, and withal careless; it is intended to suggest business, +and also the possession of a top-hat and a pipe, and is known in the +family of the child as his "official voice." One day it became more +official than ever, and really more masculine than life; and it +alternated with his own tones of three years old. In these, he +asked with humility, "Will you let me go to heaven if I'm naughty? +Will you?" Then he gave the reply in the tone of affairs, the +official voice at its very best: "No, little boy, I won't!" It was +evident that the infant was not assuming the character of his +father's tallest friend this time, but had taken a role more +exalted. His little sister of a year older seemed thoroughly to +enjoy the humour of the situation. "Listen to him, mother. He's +trying to talk like God. He often does." + +Bulls are made by a less imaginative child who likes to find some +reason for things--a girl. Out at the work of picking blackberries, +she explains, "Those rather good ones were all bad, mother, so I ate +them." Being afraid of dogs, this little girl of four years old has +all kinds of dodges to disguise her fear, which she has evidently +resolved to keep to herself. She will set up a sudden song to +distract attention from the fact that she is placing herself out of +the dog's way, and she will pretend to turn to gather a flower, +while she watches the creature out of sight. On the other hand, +prudence in regard to carts and bicycles is openly displayed, and +the infants are zealous to warn one another. A rider and his horse +are called briefly "a norseback." + +Children, who see more things than they have names for, show a fine +courage in taking any words that seem likely to serve them, without +wasting time in asking for the word in use. This enterprise is most +active at three and four years, when children have more than they +can say. So a child of those years running to pick up horse- +chestnuts, for him a new species, calls after his mother a full +description of what he has found, naming the things indifferently +"dough-nuts" and "cocoa-nuts." And another, having an anecdote to +tell concerning the Thames and a little brook that joins it near the +house, calls the first the "front-sea" and the second the "back- +sea." There is no intention of taking liberties with the names of +things--only a cheerful resolve to go on in spite of obstacles. It +is such a spirit of liberty as most of us have felt when we have +dreamt of improvising a song or improvising a dance. The child +improvises with such means as he has. + +This is, of course, at the very early ages. A little later--at +eight or nine--there is a very clear-headed sense of the value of +words. So that a little girl of that age, told that she may buy +some fruit, and wishing to know her limits in spending, asks, "What +mustn't it be more than?" For a child, who has not the word +"maximum" at hand, nothing could be more precise and concise. Still +later, there is a sweet brevity that looks almost like conscious +expression, as when a boy writes from his first boarding school: +"Whenever I can't stop laughing I have only to think of home." + +Infinitely different as children are, they differ in nothing more +than in the degree of generosity. The most sensitive of children is +a little gay girl whose feelings are hurt with the greatest +facility, and who seems, indeed, to have the susceptibilty of other +ages as well as of her own--for instance, she cannot endure without +a flush of pain to hear herself called fat. But she always brings +her little wound to him who has wounded her. The first confidant +she seeks is the offender. If you have laughed at her she will not +hide her tears elsewhere than on your shoulder. She confesses by +her exquisite action at one her poor vanity and her humility + +The worst of children in the country is their inveterate impulse to +use death as their toy. Immediately on their discovery of some +pretty insect, one tender child calls to the other "Dead it." + +Children do not look at the sky unless it is suggested to them to do +so. When the sun dips to the narrow horizon of their stature, and +comes to the level of their eyes, even then they are not greatly +interested. Enormous clouds, erect, with the sun behind, do not +gain their eyes. What is of annual interest is the dark. Having +fallen asleep all the summer by daylight, and having awakened after +sunrise, children find a stimulus of fun and fear in the autumn +darkness outside the windows. There is a frolic with the unknown +blackness, with the reflections, and with the country night. + + + +EXPRESSION + + + +Strange to say, the eyes of children, whose minds are so small, +express intelligence better than do the greater number of adult +eyes. David Garrick's were evidently unpreoccupied, like theirs. +The look of intelligence is outward--frankly directed upon external +things; it is observant, and therefore mobile without inner +restlessness. For restless eyes are the least observant of all-- +they move by a kind of distraction. The looks of observant eyes, +moving with the living things they keep in sight, have many pauses +as well as flights. This is the action of intelligence, whereas the +eyes of intellect are detained or darkened. + +Rational perception, with all its phases of humour, are best +expressed by a child, who has few second thoughts to divide the +image of his momentary feeling. His simplicity adds much to the +manifestation of his intelligence. The child is the last and lowest +of rational creatures, for in him the "rational soul" closes its +long downward flight with the bright final revelation. + +He has also the chief beauty of the irrational soul of the mind, +that is, of the lower animal--which is singleness. The simplicity, +the integrity, the one thing at a time, of a good animal's eyes is a +great beauty, and is apt to cause us to exaggerate our sense of +their expressiveness. An animal's eyes, at their best, are very +slightly expressive; languor or alertness, the quick expectation, +even the aloofness of doubt they are able to show, but the showing +is mechanical; the human sentiment of the spectator adds the rest. + +All this simplicity the child has, at moments, with the divisions +and delicacies of the rational soul, also. His looks express the +first, the last, and the clearest humanity. He is the first by his +youth and the last by his lowliness. He is the beginning and the +result of the creation of man. + + + +UNDER THE EARLY STARS + + + +Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at +random. There is a tide in the affairs of children. Civilization +is cruel in sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of +dusk. Summer dusk, especially, is the frolic moment for children, +baffle them how you may. They may have been in a pottering mood all +day, intent upon all kinds of close industries, breathing hard over +choppings and poundings. But when late twilight comes, there comes +also the punctual wildness. The children will run and pursue, and +laugh for the mere movement--it does so jog their spirits. + +What remembrances does this imply of the hunt, what of the predatory +dark? The kitten grows alert at the same hour, and hunts for moths +and crickets in the grass. It comes like an imp, leaping on all +fours. The children lie in ambush and fall upon one another in the +mimicry of hunting. + +The sudden outbreak of action is complained of as a defiance and a +rebellion. Their entertainers are tired, and the children are to go +home. But, with more or less of life and fire, they strike some +blow for liberty. It may be the impotent revolt of the ineffectual +child, or the stroke of the conqueror; but something, something is +done for freedom under the early stars. + +This is not the only time when the energy of children is in conflict +with the weariness of men. But it is less tolerable that the energy +of men should be at odds with the weariness of children, which +happens at some time of their jaunts together, especially, alas! in +the jaunts of the poor. + +Of games for the summer dusk when it rains, cards are most beloved +by children. Three tiny girls were to be taught "old maid" to +beguile the time. One of them, a nut-brown child of five, was +persuading another to play. "Oh come," she said, "and play with me +at new maid." + +The time of falling asleep is a child's immemorial and incalculable +hour. It is full of traditions, and beset by antique habits. The +habit of prehistoric races has been cited as the only explanation of +the fixity of some customs in mankind. But if the enquirers who +appeal to that beginning remembered better their own infancy, they +would seek no further. See the habits in falling to sleep which +have children in their thralldom. Try to overcome them in any +child, and his own conviction of their high antiquity weakens your +hand. + +Childhood is antiquity, and with the sense of time and the sense of +mystery is connected for ever the hearing of a lullaby. The French +sleep-song is the most romantic. There is in it such a sound of +history as must inspire any imaginative child, falling to sleep, +with a sense of the incalculable; and the songs themselves are old. +Le Bon Roi Dagobert has been sung over French cradles since the +legend was fresh. The nurse knows nothing more sleepy than the tune +and the verse that she herself slept to when a child. The gaiety of +the thirteenth century, in Le Pont a' Avignon, is put mysteriously +to sleep, away in the tete a tete of child and nurse, in a thousand +little sequestered rooms at night. Malbrook would be comparatively +modern, were not all things that are sung to a drowsing child as +distant as the day of Abraham. + +If English children are not rocked to many such aged lullabies, some +of them are put to sleep to strange cradle-songs. The affectionate +races that are brought into subjection sing the primitive lullaby to +the white child. Asiatic voices and African persuade him to sleep +in the tropical night. His closing eyes are filled with alien +images. + + + +THE MAN WITH TWO HEADS + + + +It is generally understood in the family that the nurse who menaces +a child, whether with the supernatural or with simple sweeps, lions, +or tigers--goes. The rule is a right one, for the appeal to fear +may possibly hurt a child; nevertheless, it oftener fails to hurt +him. If he is prone to fears, he will be helpless under their +grasp, without the help of human tales. The night will threaten +him, the shadow will pursue, the dream will catch him; terror itself +have him by the heart. And terror, having made his pulses leap, +knows how to use any thought, any shape, any image, to account to +the child's mind for the flight and tempest of his blood. "The +child shall not be frightened," decrees ineffectual love; but though +no man make him afraid, he is frightened. Fear knows him well and +finds him alone. + +Such a child is hardly at the mercy of any human rashness and +impatience; nor is the child whose pulses go steadily, and whose +brows are fresh and cool, at their mercy. This is one of the points +upon which a healthy child resembles the Japanese. Whatever that +extreme Oriental may be in war and diplomacy, whatever he may be at +London University, or whatever his plans of Empire, in relation to +the unseen world he is a child at play. He hides himself, he hides +his eyes and pretends to believe that he is hiding, he runs from the +supernatural and laughs for the fun of running. + +So did a child, threatened for his unruliness with the revelation of +the man with two heads. The nurse must have had recourse to this +man under acute provocation. The boy, who had profited well by +every one of his four long years, and was radiant with the light and +colour of health, refused to be left to compose himself to sleep. +That act is an adult act, learnt in the self-conscious and +deliberate years of later life, when man goes on a mental journey in +search of rest, aware of setting forth. But the child is pursued +and overtaken by sleep, caught, surprised, and overcome. He goes no +more to sleep, than he takes a "constitutional" with his hoop and +hoopstick. The child amuses himself up to the last of his waking +moments. Happily, in the search for amusement, he is apt to learn +some habit or to cherish some toy, either of which may betray him +and deliver him up to sleep, the enemy. What wonder, then, if a +child who knows that everyone in the world desires his peace and +pleasure, should clamour for companionship in the first reluctant +minutes of bed? This child, being happy, did not weep for what he +wanted; he shouted for it in the rousing tones of his strength. +After many evenings of this he was told that this was precisely the +vociferous kind of wakefulness that might cause the man with two +heads to show himself. + +Unable to explain that no child ever goes to sleep, but that sleep, +on the contrary, "goes" for a child, the little boy yet accepted the +penalty, believed in the man, and kept quiet for a time. + +There was indignation in the mother's heart when the child +instructed her as to what might be looked for at his bedside; she +used all her emphasis in assuring him that no man with two heads +would ever trouble those innocent eyes, for there was no such +portent anywhere on earth. There is no such heart-oppressing task +as the making of these assurances to a child, for whom who knows +what portents are actually in wait! She found him, however, +cowering with laughter, not with dread, lest the man with two heads +should see or overhear. The man with two heads had become his play, +and so was perhaps bringing about his sleep by gentler means than +the nurse had intended. The man was employing the vacant minutes of +the little creature's flight from sleep, called "going to sleep" in +the inexact language of the old. + +Nor would the boy give up his faith with its tremor and private +laughter. Because a child has a place for everything, this boy had +placed the monstrous man in the ceiling, in a corner of the room +that might be kept out of sight by the bed curtain. If that corner +were left uncovered, the fear would grow stronger than the fun; "the +man would see me," said the little boy. But let the curtain be in +position, and the child lay alone, hugging the dear belief that the +monster was near. + +He was earnest in controversy with his mother as to the existence of +his man. The man was there, for he had been told so, and he was +there to wait for "naughty boys," said the child, with cheerful +self-condemnation. The little boy's voice was somewhat hushed, +because of the four ears of the listener, but it did not falter, +except when his mother's arguments against the existence of the man +seemed to him cogent and likely to gain the day. Then for the first +time the boy was a little downcast, and the light of mystery became +dimmer in his gay eyes. + + + +CHILDREN IN BURLESQUE + + + +Derision, which is so great a part of human comedy, has not spared +the humours of children. Yet they are fitter subjects for any other +kind of jesting. In the first place they are quite defenceless, but +besides and before this, it might have been supposed that nothing in +a child could provoke the equal passion of scorn. Between confessed +unequals scorn is not even suggested. Its derisive proclamation of +inequality has no sting and no meaning where inequality is natural +and manifest. + +Children rouse the laughter of men and women; but in all that +laughter the tone of derision is more strange a discord than the +tone of anger would be, or the tone of theological anger and menace. +These, little children have had to bear in their day, but in the +grim and serious moods--not in the play--of their elders. The +wonder is that children should ever have been burlesqued, or held to +be fit subjects for irony. + +Whether the thing has been done anywhere out of England, in any +form, might be a point for enquiry. It would seem, at a glance, +that English art and literature are quite alone in this incredible +manner of sport. + +And even here, too, the thing that is laughed at in a child is +probably always a mere reflection of the parents' vulgarity. None +the less it is an unintelligible thing that even the rankest +vulgarity of father or mother should be resented, in the child, with +the implacable resentment of derision. + +John Leech used the caricature of a baby for the purposes of a scorn +that was not angry, but familiar. It is true that the poor child +had first been burlesqued by the unchildish aspect imposed upon him +by his dress, which presented him, without the beauties of art or +nature, to all the unnatural ironies. Leech did but finish him in +the same spirit, with dots for the childish eyes, and a certain form +of face which is best described as a fat square containing two +circles--the inordinate cheeks of that ignominious baby. That is +the child as Punch in Leech's day preserved him, the latest figure +of the then prevailing domestic raillery of the domestic. + +In like manner did Thackeray and Dickens, despite all their +sentiment. Children were made to serve both the sentiment and the +irony between which those two writers, alike in this, stood double- +minded. Thackeray, writing of his snobs, wreaks himself upon a +child; there is no worse snob than his snob-child. There are snob- +children not only in the book dedicated to their parents, but in +nearly all his novels. There is a female snob-child in "Lovel the +Widower," who may be taken as a type, and there are snob-children at +frequent intervals in "Philip." It is not certain that Thackeray +intended the children of Pendennis himself to be innocent and +exempt. + +In one of Dickens's early sketches there is a plot amongst the +humorous dramatis personae, to avenge themselves on a little boy for +the lack of tact whereby his parents have brought him with them to a +party on the river. The principal humorist frightens the child into +convulsions. The incident is the success of the day, and is +obviously intended to have some kind of reflex action in amusing the +reader. In Dickens's maturer books the burlesque little girl +imitates her mother's illusory fainting-fits. + +Our glimpses of children in the fugitive pages of that day are +grotesque. A little girl in Punch improves on the talk of her dowdy +mother with the maids. An inordinate baby stares; a little boy +flies, hideous, from some hideous terror. + + + +AUTHORSHIP + + + +Authorship prevails in nurseries--at least in some nurseries. In +many it is probably a fitful game, and since the days of the Brontes +there has not been a large family without its magazine. The weak +point of all this literature is its commonplace. The child's effort +is to write something as much like as possible to the tedious books +that are read to him; he is apt to be fluent and foolish. If a +child simple enough to imitate were also simple enough not to +imitate he might write nursery magazines that would not bore us. + +As it is, there is sometimes nothing but the fresh and courageous +spelling to make his stories go. "He," however, is hardly the +pronoun. The girls are the more active authors, and the more +prosaic. What they would write had they never read things written +for them by the dull, it is not possible to know. What they do +write is this--to take a passage: "Poor Mrs. Bald (that was her +name) thought she would never get to the wood where her aunt lived, +she got down and pulled the donky on by the bridal . . . Alas! her +troubles were not over yet, the donky would not go where she wanted +it, instead of turning down Rose Lane it went down another, which +although Mrs. Bald did not know it led to a very deep and dangerous +pond. The donky ran into the pond and Mrs. Bald was dround." + +To give a prosperous look to the magazine containing the serial +story just quoted, a few pages of mixed advertisements are +laboriously written out: "The Imatation of Christ is the best book +in all the world." "Read Thompson's poetry and you are in a world +of delight." "Barrat's ginger beer is the only ginger beer to +drink." "The place for a ice." Under the indefinite heading "A +Article," readers are told "that they are liable to read the paper +for nothing." + +A still younger hand contributes a short story in which the hero +returns to his home after a report of his death had been believed by +his wife and family. The last sentence is worth quoting: "We will +now," says the author, "leave Mrs. White and her two children to +enjoy the sudden appearance of Mr. White." + +Here is an editorial announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen, every +week at the end of the paper there will be a little article on the +habits of the paper." + +On the whole, authorship does not seem to foster the quality of +imagination. Convention, during certain early years, may be a very +strong motive--not so much with children brought up strictly within +its limits, perhaps, as with those who have had an exceptional +freedom. Against this, as a kind of childish bohemianism, there is, +in one phase of childhood, a strong reaction. To one child, brought +up internationally, and with somewhat too much liberty amongst +peasant play-mates and their games, in many dialects, eagerness to +become like "other people," and even like the other people of quite +inferior fiction, grew to be almost a passion. The desire was in +time out-grown, but it cost the girl some years of her simplicity. +The style is not always the child. + + + +LETTERS + + + +The letter exacted from a child is usually a letter of thanks; +somebody has sent him a box of chocolates. The thanks tend to +stiffen a child's style; but in any case a letter is the occasion of +a sudden self-consciousness, newer to a child than his elders know. +They speak prose and know it. But a young child possesses his words +by a different tenure; he is not aware of the spelt and written +aspect of the things he says every day; he does not dwell upon the +sound of them. He is so little taken by the kind and character of +any word that he catches the first that comes at random. A little +child to whom a peach was first revealed, whispered to his mother, +"I like that kind of turnip." Compelled to write a letter, the +child finds the word of daily life suddenly a stranger. + +The fresher the mind the duller the sentence; and the younger the +fingers the older, more wrinkled, and more sidling the handwriting. +Dickens, who used his eyes, remarked the contrast. The hand of a +child and his face are full of rounds; but his written O is +tottering and haggard. + +His phrases are ceremonious without the dignity of ceremony. The +child chatters because he wants his companion to hear; but there is +no inspiration in the act of writing to a distant aunt about whom he +probably has some grotesque impression because he cannot think of +anyone, however vague and forgotten, without a mental image. As +like as not he pictures all his relatives at a distance with their +eyes shut. No boy wants to write familiar things to a forgotten +aunt with her eyes shut. His thoughtless elders require him not +only to write to her under these discouragements, but to write to +her in an artless and childlike fashion. + +The child is unwieldy of thought, besides. He cannot send the +conventional messages but he loses his way among the few pronouns: +"I send them their love," "They sent me my love," "I kissed their +hand to me." If he is stopped and told to get the words right, he +has to make a long effort. His precedent might be cited to excuse +every politician who cannot remember whether he began his sentence +with "people" in the singular or the plural, and who finishes it +otherwise than as he began it. Points of grammar that are purely +points of logic baffle a child completely. He is as unready in the +thought needed for these as he is in the use of his senses. + +It is not true--though it is generally said--that a young child's +senses are quick. This is one of the unverified ideas that commend +themselves, one knows not why. We have had experiments to compare +the relative quickness of perception proved by men and women. The +same experiments with children would give curious results, but they +can hardly, perhaps, be made, because the children would be not only +slow to perceive but slow to announce the perception; so the moment +would go by, and the game be lost. Not even amateur conjuring does +so baffle the slow turning of a child's mind as does a little +intricacy of grammar. + + + +THE FIELDS + + + +The pride of rustic life is the child's form of caste-feeling. The +country child is the aristocrat; he has des relations suivies with +game-keepers, nay, with the most interesting mole-catchers. He has +a perfectly self-conscious joy that he is not in a square or a +suburb. No essayist has so much feeling against terraces and +villas. + +As for imitation country--the further suburb--it is worse than town; +it is a place to walk in; and the tedium of a walk to a child's mind +is hardly measurable by a man, who walks voluntarily, with his +affairs to think about, and his eyes released, by age, from the +custom of perpetual observation. The child, compelled to walk, is +the only unresting observer of the asphalt, the pavement, the garden +gates and railings, and the tedious people. He is bored as he will +never be bored when a man. + +He is at his best where, under the welcome stress and pressure of +abundant crops, he is admitted to the labours of men and women, +neither in mere play nor in the earnest of the hop-field for the +sake of his little gains. On the steep farm lands of the Canton de +Vaud, where maize and grapes are carried in the botte, so usually +are children expected in the field that bottes are made to the shape +of a back and arms of five years old. Some, made for harvesters of +those years, can hold no more than a single yellow ear of maize or +two handfuls of beans. You may meet the same little boy with the +repetitions of this load a score of times in the morning. Moreover +the Swiss mother has always a fit sense of what is due to that +labourer. When the plums are gathered, for instance, she bakes in +the general village oven certain round open tarts across which her +arm can hardly reach. No plum tarts elsewhere are anything but dull +in comparison with these. There is, besides, the first loaf from +the new flour, brown from the maize and white from the wheat. Nor +can a day of potato-gathering be more appropriately ended than with +a little fire built afield and the baking of some of the harvest +under the wood ashes. Vintaging needs no praises, nor does apple- +gathering; even when the apples are for cider, they are never acrid +enough to baffle a child's tooth. + +Yet even those children who are so unlucky as never to have worked +in a real field, but have been compelled to vary their education +with nothing but play, are able to comfort themselves with the +irregular harvest of the hedges. They have no little hand in the +realities of cultivation, but wild growths give them blackberries. +Pale are the joys of nutting beside those of haymaking, but at least +they are something. + +Harvests apart, Spring, not Autumn, should make a childhood of +memories for the future. In later Autumn, life is speeding away, +ebbing, taking flight, a fugitive, taking disguises, hiding in the +dry seed, retreating into the dark. The daily progress of things in +Spring is for children, who look close. They know the way of moss +and the roots of ivy, they breathe the breath of earth immediately, +direct. They have a sense of place, of persons, and of the past +that may be remembered but cannot be recaptured. Adult accustomed +eyes cannot see what a child's eye sees of the personality of a +person; to the child the accidents of voice and look are charged +with separate and unique character. Such a sense of place as he got +in a day within some forest, or in a week by some lake, so that a +sound or odour can bring it back in after days, with a shock--even +such a sense of single personality does a little watchful girl get +from the accents, the turns of the head, the habits of the hands, +the presence of a woman. Not all places, nor all persons, are so +quick with the expression of themselves; the child knows the +difference. As for places that are so loaded, and that breathe so, +the child discerns them passionately. + +A travelled child multiplies these memories and has them in their +variety. His heart has room for many places that have the spirit of +place. The glacier may be forgotten, but some little tract of +pasture that has taken wing to the head of a mountain valley, a +field that has soared up a pass unnamed, will become a memory, in +time, sixty years old. That is a fortunate child who has tasted +country life in places far apart, who has helped, followed the wheat +to the threshing-floor of a Swiss village, stumbled after a plough +of Virgil's shape in remoter Tuscan hills, and gleaned after a +vintage. You cannot suggest pleasanter memories than those of the +vintage, for the day when the wine will be old. + + + +THE BARREN SHORE + + + +It may be a disappointment to the children each year at play upon so +many beaches--even if they are but dimly aware of their lack--to +find their annual plaything to be not a real annual; an annual +thing, indeed, to them, for the arbitrary reason that they go down +to it once a year, but not annual in the vital and natural sense of +the seasons, not waxing and waning, not bearing, not turning that +circle of the seasons whereof no one knows which is the highest +point and the secret and the ultimate purpose, not recreated, not +new, and not yielding to the child anything raw and irregular to +eat. + +Sand castles are well enough, and they are the very commonplace of +the recollections of elders, of their rhetoric, and of what they +think appropriate for their young ones. Shingle and sand are good +playthings, but absolute play is not necessarily the ideal of a +child; he would rather have a frolic of work. Of all the early +autumn things to be done in holiday time, that game with the beach +and the wave is the least good for holiday-time. + +Not that the shore is everywhere so barren. The coast of the +Londoners--all round the southern and eastern borders of England--is +indeed the dullest of all sea-margins. But away in the gentle bays +of Jersey the summer grows a crop of seaweed which the long ocean +wave leaves in noble curves upon the beach; for under sunny water +the storms have gathered the crops. The Channel Island people go +gleaning after the sea, and store the seaweed for their fields. +Thus the beaches of Jersey bays are not altogether barren, and have +a kind of dead and accessory harvest for the farmer. After a night +of storm these crops are stacked and carted and carried, the sea- +wind catching away loose shreds from the summits of the loads. + +Further south, if the growth of the sea is not so put to use, the +shore has yet its seasons. You could hardly tell, if you did not +know the month, whether a space of sea or a series of waves, at +Aldborough, say, or at Dover, were summer or winter water; but in +those fortunate regions which are southern, yet not too southern for +winter, and have thus the strongest swing of change and the fullest +pulse of the year, there are a winter sea and a summer sea, +brilliantly different, with a delicate variety between the hastening +blue of spring and the lingering blue of September. There you bathe +from the rocks, untroubled by tides, and unhurried by chills, and +with no incongruous sun beating on your head while your fingers are +cold. You bathe when the sun has set, and the vast sea has not a +whisper; you know a rock in the distance where you can rest; and +where you float, there float also by you opalescent jelly-fish, half +transparent in the perfectly transparent water. An hour in the warm +sea is not enough. Rock-bathing is done on lonely shores. A city +may be but a mile away, and the cultivated vineyards may be close +above the seaside pine-trees, but the place is perfectly remote. +You pitch your tent on any little hollow of beach. A charming +Englishwoman who used to bathe with her children under the great +rocks of her Mediterranean villa in the motionless white evenings of +summer put white roses in her hair, and liked to sit out on a rock +at sea where the first rays of the moon would touch her. + +You bathe in the Channel in the very prose of the day. Nothing in +the world is more uninteresting than eleven o'clock. It is the hour +of mediocrity under the best conditions; but eleven o'clock on a +shingly beach, in a half-hearted summer, is a very common thing. +Twelve has a dignity always, and everywhere its name is great. The +noon of every day that ever dawned is in its place heroic; but +eleven is worldly. One o'clock has an honest human interest to the +hungry child, and every hour of the summer afternoon, after three, +has the grace of deepening and lingering life. To bathe at eleven +in the sun, in the wind, to bathe from a machine, in a narrow sea +that is certainly not clear and is only by courtesy clean, to bathe +in obedience to a tyrannical tide and in water that is always much +colder than yourself, to bathe in a hurry and in public--this is to +know nothing rightly of one of the greatest of all the pleasures +that humanity takes with nature. + +By the way, the sea of Jersey has more the character of a real sea +than of mere straits. These temperate islands would be better +called the Ocean Islands. When Edouard Pailleron was a boy and +wrote poetry, he composed a letter to Victor Hugo, the address +whereof was a matter of some thought. The final decision was to +direct it, "A Victor Hugo, Ocean." It reached him. It even +received a reply: "I am the Past, you are the Future; I am, etc." +If an English boy had had the same idea the name of the Channel +Islands would have spoilt it. "A Victor Hugo, La Manche," would +hardly have interested the postal authorities so much; but "the +Channel" would have had no respect at all. Indeed, this last is +suggestive of nothing but steamers and of grey skies inland-- +formless grey skies, undesigned, with their thin cloud torn to +slender rags by a perpetual wind. + +As for the children, to whom belongs the margin of the sea, machine- +bathing at eleven o'clock will hardly furnish them with a magical +early memory. Time was when this was made penitential to them, like +the rest of life, upon a principle that no longer prevails. It was +vulgarized for them and made violent. A bathing woman, type of all +ugliness in their sensitive eyes, came striding, shapeless, through +the unfriendly sea, seized them if they were very young, ducked +them, and returned them to the chilly machine, generally in the +futile and superfluous saltness of tears. "Too much of water had +they," poor infants. + +None the less is the barren shore the children's; and St. Augustine, +Isaac Newton, and Wordsworth had not a vision of sea-beaches without +a child there. + + + +THE BOY + + + +After an infancy of more than common docility and a young childhood +of few explicit revolts, the boy of twelve years old enters upon a +phase which the bystander may not well understand but may make shift +to note as an impression. + +Like other subtle things, his position is hardly to be described but +by negatives. Above all, he is not demonstrative. The days are +long gone by when he said he wanted a bicycle, a top hat, and a +pipe. One or two of these things he has, and he takes them without +the least swagger. He avoids expression of any kind. Any +satisfaction he may feel with things as they are is rather to be +surprised in his manner than perceived in his action. Mr. Jaggers, +when it befell him to be astonished, showed it by a stop of manner, +for an indivisible moment--not by a pause in the thing he chanced to +be about. In like manner the boy cannot prevent his most innocent +pleasures from arresting him. + +He will not endure (albeit he does not confess so much) to be told +to do anything, at least in that citadel of his freedom, his home. +His elders probably give him as few orders as possible. He will +almost ingeniously evade any that are inevitably or thoughtlessly +inflicted upon him, but if he does but succeed in only postponing +his obedience, he has, visibly, done something for his own relief. +It is less convenient that he should hold mere questions, addressed +to him in all good faith, as in some sort an attempt upon his +liberty. + +Questions about himself one might understand to be an outrage. But +it is against impersonal and indifferent questions also that the boy +sets his face like a rock. He has no ambition to give information +on any point. Older people may not dislike the opportunity, and +there are even those who bring to pass questions of a trivial kind +for the pleasure of answering them with animation. This, the boy +perhaps thinks, is "fuss," and, if he has any passions, he has a +passionate dislike of fuss. + +When a younger child tears the boy's scrapbook (which is +conjectured, though not known, to be the dearest thing he has) he +betrays no emotion; that was to be expected. But when the stolen +pages are rescued and put by for him, he abstains from taking an +interest in the retrieval; he will do nothing to restore them. To +do so would mar the integrity of his reserve. If he would do much +rather than answer questions, he would suffer something rather than +ask them. + +He loves his father and a friend of his father's, and he pushes +them, in order to show it without compromising his temperament. + +He is a partisan in silence. It may be guessed that he is often +occupied in comparing other people with his admired men. Of this +too he says little, except some brief word of allusion to what other +men do NOT do. + +When he speaks it is with a carefully shortened vocabulary. As an +author shuns monotony, so does the boy shun change. He does not +generally talk slang; his habitual words are the most usual of daily +words made useful and appropriate by certain varieties of voice. +These express for him all that he will consent to communicate. He +reserves more by speaking dull words with zeal than by using zealous +words that might betray him. But his brevity is the chief thing; he +has almost made an art of it. + +He is not "merry." Merry boys have pretty manners, and it must be +owned that this boy's manners are not pretty. But if not merry, he +is happy; there never was a more untroubled soul. If he has an +almost grotesque reticence, he has no secrets. Nothing that he +thinks is very much hidden. Even if he did not push his father, it +would be evident that the boy loves him; even if he never laid his +hand (and this little thing he does rarely) on his friend's +shoulder, it would be plain that he loves his friend. His happiness +appears in his moody and charming face, his ambition in his +dumbness, and the hopes of his life to come in ungainly bearing. +How does so much heart, how does so much sweetness, all unexpressed, +appear? For it is not only those who know him well that know the +child's heart; strangers are aware of it. This, which he would not +reveal, is the only thing that is quite unmistakable and quite +conspicuous. + +What he thinks that he turns visibly to the world is a sense of +humour, with a measure of criticism and of indifference. What he +thinks the world may divine in him is courage and an intelligence. +But carry himself how he will, he is manifestly a tender, gentle, +and even spiritual creature, masculine and innocent--"a nice boy." +There is no other way of describing him than that of his own brief +language. + + + +ILLNESS + + + +The patience of young children in illness is a commonplace of some +little books, but none the less a fresh fact. In spite of the +sentimental, children in illness remain the full sources of +perpetual surprises. Their self-control in real suffering is a +wonder. A little turbulent girl, brilliant and wild, and +unaccustomed, it might be thought, to deal in any way with her own +impulses--a child whose way was to cry out, laugh, complain, and +triumph without bating anything of her own temperament, and without +the hesitation of a moment, struck her face, on a run, against a +wall and was cut and in a moment overwhelmed with pain and covered +with blood. "Tell mother it's nothing! Tell mother, quick, it's +nothing!" cried the magnanimous child as soon as she could speak. + +The same child fell over the rail of a staircase and was obliged to +lie for some ten days on her back, so that the strained but not +broken little body might recover itself. Every movement was, in a +measure, painful; and there was a long captivity, a helplessness +enforced and guarded by twinges, a constant impossibility to yield +to the one thing that had carried her through all her years-- +impulse. A condition of acute consciousness was imposed upon a +creature whose first condition of life had been unconsciousness; and +this during the long period of ten of a child's days and nights at +eight years old. + +Yet during every hour of the time the child was not only gay but +patient, not fitfully, but steadily, resigned, sparing of requests, +reluctant to be served, inventive of tender and pious little words +that she had never used before. "You are exquisite to me, mother," +she said, at receiving some common service. + +Even in the altering and harassing conditions of fever, a generous +child assumes the almost incredible attitude of deliberate patience. +Not that illness is to be trusted to work so. There is another +child who in his brief indispositions becomes invincible, armed +against medicine finally. The last appeal to force, as his +distracted elders find, is all but an impossibility; but in any case +it would be a failure. You can bring the spoon to the child, but +three nurses cannot make him drink. This, then, is the occasion of +the ultimate resistance. He raises the standard of revolution, and +casts every tradition and every precept to the wind on which it +flies. He has his elders at a disadvantage; for if they pursue him +with a grotesque spoon their maxims and commands are, at the moment, +still more grotesque. He is committed to the wild novelty of +absolute refusal. He not only refuses, moreover, he disbelieves; he +throws everything over. Told that the medicine is not so bad, this +nihilist laughs. + +Medicine apart, a minor ailment is an interest and a joy. "Am I +unwell to-day, mother?" asks a child with all his faith and +confidence at the highest point. + + + +THE YOUNG CHILD + + + +The infant of literature "wails" and wails feebly, with the +invariability of a thing unproved and taken for granted. Nothing, +nevertheless, could be more unlike a wail than the most distinctive +cry whereon the child of man catches his first breath. It is a +hasty, huddled outcry, sharp and brief, rather deep than shrill in +tone. With all deference to old moralities, man does not weep at +beginning this world; he simply lifts up his new voice much as do +the birds in the Zoological Gardens, and with much the same tone as +some of the duck kind there. He does not weep for some months to +come. His outcry soon becomes the human cry that is better known +than loved, but tears belong to later infancy. And if the infant of +days neither wails nor weeps, the infant of months is still too +young to be gay. A child's mirth, when at last it begins, is his +first secret; you understand little of it. The first smile (for the +convulsive movement in sleep that is popularly adorned by that name +is not a smile) is an uncertain sketch of a smile, unpractised but +unmistakable. It is accompanied by a single sound--a sound that +would be a monosyllable if it were articulate--which is the +utterance, though hardly the communication, of a private jollity. +That and that alone is the real beginning of human laughter. + +From the end of the first fortnight in life, when it appears for the +first time, and as it were flickeringly, the child's smile begins to +grow definite and, gradually, more frequent. By very slow degrees +the secrecy passes away, and the dryness becomes more genial. The +child now smiles more openly, but he is still very unlike the +laughing creature of so much prose and verse. His laughter takes a +long time to form. The monosyllable grows louder, and then comes to +be repeated with little catches of the breath. The humour upon +which he learns to laugh is that of something which approaches him +quickly and then withdraws. This is the first intelligible jest of +jesting man. + +An infant never meets your eyes; he evidently does not remark the +features of faces near him. Whether because of the greater +conspicuousness of dark hair or dark hat, or for some like reason, +he addresses his looks, his laughs, and apparently his criticism, to +the heads, not the faces, of his friends. These are the ways of all +infants, various in character, parentage, race, and colour; they do +the same things. There are turns in a kitten's play--arched +leapings and sidelong jumps, graceful rearings and grotesque dances- +-which the sacred kittens of Egypt used in their time. But not more +alike are these repetitions than the impulses of all young children +learning to laugh. + +In regard to the child of a somewhat later growth, we are told much +of his effect upon the world; not much of the effect of the world +upon him. Yet he is compelled to endure the reflex results, at +least, of all that pleases, distresses, or oppresses the world. +That he should be obliged to suffer the moods of men is a more +important thing than that men should be amused by his moods. If he +is saddened, that is certainly much more than that his elders should +be gladdened. It is doubtless hardly possible that children should +go altogether free of human affairs. They might, in mere justice, +be spared the burden they bear ignorantly and simply when it is laid +upon them, of such events and ill fortunes as may trouble our peace; +but they cannot easily be spared the hearing of a disturbed voice or +the sight of an altered face. Alas! they are made to feel money- +matters, and even this is not the worst. There are unconfessed +worldliness, piques, and rivalries, of which they do not know the +names, but which change the faces where they look for smiles. To +such alterations children are sensitive even when they seem least +accessible to the commands, the warnings, the threats, or the +counsels of elders. Of all these they may be gaily independent, and +yet may droop when their defied tyrants are dejected. + +For though the natural spirit of children is happy, the happiness is +a mere impulse and is easily disconcerted. They are gay without +knowing any very sufficient reason for being so, and when sadness +is, as it were, proposed to them, things fall away from under their +feet, they are helpless and find no stay. For this reason the +merriest of all children are those, much pitied, who are brought up +neither in a family nor in a public home by paid guardians, but in a +place of charity, rightly named, where impartial, unalterable, and +impersonal devotion has them in hand. They endure an immeasurable +loss, and are orphans, but they gain in perpetual gaiety; they live +in an unchanging temperature. The separate nest is nature's, and +the best; but it might be wished that the separate nest were less +subject to moods. The nurse has her private business, and when it +does not prosper, and when the remote affairs of the governess go +wrong, the child receives the ultimate vibration of the mishap. + +The uniformity of infancy passes away long before the age when +children have this indefinite suffering inflicted upon them; and +they have become infinitely various, and feel the consequences of +the cares of their elders in unnumbered degrees. The most charming +children feel them the most sensibly, and not with resentment but +with sympathy. It is assuredly in the absence of resentment that +consists the virtue of childhood. What other thing are we to learn +of them? Not simplicity, for they are intricate enough. Not +gratitude; for their usual sincere thanklessness makes half the +pleasure of doing them good. Not obedience; for the child is born +with the love of liberty. And as for humility, the boast of a child +is the frankest thing in the world. A child's natural vanity is not +merely the delight in his own possessions, but the triumph over +others less fortunate. If this emotion were not so young it would +be exceedingly unamiable. But the truth must be confessed that +having very quickly learnt the value of comparison and relation, a +child rejoices in the perception that what he has is better than +what his brother has; this comparison is a means of judging his +fortune, after all. It is true that if his brother showed distress, +he might make haste to offer an exchange. But the impulse of joy is +candidly egotistic. + +It is the sweet and entire forgiveness of children, who ask pity for +their sorrows from those who have caused them, who do not perceive +that they are wronged, who never dream that they are forgiving, and +who make no bargain for apologies--it is this that men and women are +urged to learn of a child. Graces more confessedly childlike they +make shift to teach themselves. + + + +FAIR AND BROWN + + + +George Eliot, in one of her novels, has a good-natured mother, who +confesses that when she administers justice she is obliged to spare +the offenders who have fair hair, because they look so much more +innocent than the rest. And if this is the state of maternal +feelings where all are more or less fair, what must be the +miscarriage of justice in countries where a BLOND angel makes his +infrequent visit within the family circle? + +In England he is the rule, and supreme as a matter of course. He is +"English," and best, as is the early asparagus and the young potato, +according to the happy conviction of the shops. To say "child" in +England is to say "fair-haired child," even as in Tuscany to say +"young man" is to say "tenor." "I have a little party to-night, +eight or ten tenors, from neighbouring palazzi, to meet my English +friends." + +But France is a greater enthusiast than our now country. The +fairness and the golden hair are here so much a matter of orthodoxy, +that they are not always mentioned; they are frequently taken for +granted. Not so in France; the French go out of their way to make +the exceptional fairness of their children the rule of their +literature. No French child dare show his face in a book--prose or +poetry--without blue eyes and fair hair. It is a thing about which +the French child of real life can hardly escape a certain +sensitiveness. What, he may ask, is the use of being a dark-haired +child of fact, when all the emotion, all the innocence, all the +romance, are absorbed by the flaxen-haired child of fiction? How +deplorable that our mothers, the French infants may say, should have +their unattained ideals in the nurseries of the imagination; how +dismal that they should be perpetually disillusioned in the +nurseries of fact! Is there then no sentiment for us? they may ask. +Will not convention, which has been forced to restore the advantage +to truth on so many other points, be compelled to yield on this +point also, and reconcile our aunts to the family colouring? + +All the schools of literature are in a tale. The classic masters, +needless to say, do not stoop to the colouring of boys and girls; +but as soon as the Romantiques arise, the cradle is there, and no +soft hair ever in it that is not of some tone of gold, no eyes that +are not blue, and no cheek that is not white and pink as milk and +roses. Victor Hugo, who discovered the child of modern poetry, +never omits the touch of description; the word BLOND is as +inevitable as any epithet marshalled to attend its noun in a last- +century poet's dictionary. One would not have it away; one can hear +the caress with which the master pronounces it, "making his mouth," +as Swift did for his "little language." Nor does the customary +adjective fail in later literature. It was dear to the Realist, and +it is dear to the Symbolist. The only difference is that in the +French of the Symbolist it precedes the noun. + +And yet it is time that the sweetness of the dark child should have +its day. He is really no less childlike than the other. There is a +pretty antithesis between the strong effect of his colouring and the +softness of his years and of his months. The blond human being-- +man, woman or child--has the beauty of harmony; the hair plays off +from the tones of the flesh, only a few degrees brighter or a few +degrees darker. Contrast of colour there is, in the blue of the +eyes, and in the red of cheek and lip, but there is no contrast of +tone. The whole effect is that of much various colour and of equal +tone. In the dark face there is hardly any colour and an almost +complete opposition of tone. The complete opposition, of course, +would be black and white; and a beautiful dark child comes near to +this, but for the lovely modifications, the warmth of his white, and +of his black alike, so that the one tone, as well as the other, is +softened towards brown. It is the beauty of contrast, with a +suggestion of harmony--as it were a beginning of harmony--which is +infinitely lovely. + +Nor is the dark child lacking in variety. His radiant eyes range +from a brown so bright that it looks golden in the light, to a brown +so dark that it barely defines the pupil. So is his hair various, +answering the sun with unsuspected touches, not of gold but of +bronze. And his cheek is not invariably pale. A dusky rose +sometimes lurks there with such an effect of vitality as you will +hardly get from the shallower pink of the flaxened haired. And the +suggestion is that of late summer, the colour of wheat almost ready +for the harvest, and darker, redder flowers--poppies and others-- +than come in Spring. + +The dark eyes, besides, are generally brighter--they shelter a more +liquid light than the blue or grey. Southern eyes have generally +most beautiful whites. And as to the charm of the childish figure, +there is usually an infantine slenderness in the little Southener +that is at least as young and sweet as the round form of the blond +child. And yet the painters of Italy would have none of it. They +rejected the dusky brilliant pale little Italians all about them; +they would have none but flaxen-haired children, and they would have +nothing that was slim, nothing that was thin, nothing that was +shadowy. They rejoiced in much fair flesh, and in all possible +freshness. So it was in fair Flanders as well as in dark Italy. +But so it was not in Spain. The Pyrenees seemed to interrupt the +tradition. And as Murillo saw the charm of dark heads, and the +innocence of dark eyes, so did one English painter. Reynolds +painted young dark hair as tenderly as the youngest gold. + + + +REAL CHILDHOOD + + + +The world is old because its history is made up of successive +childhoods and of their impressions. Your hours when you were six +were the enormous hours of the mind that has little experience and +constant and quick forgetfulness. Therefore when your mother's +visitor held you so long at his knee, while he talked to her the +excited gibberish of the grown-up, he little thought what he forced +upon you; what the things he called minutes really were, measured by +a mind unused; what passive and then what desperate weariness he +held you to by his slightly gesticulating hands that pressed some +absent-minded caress, rated by you at its right value, in the pauses +of his anecdotes. You, meanwhile, were infinitely tired of watching +the play of his conversing moustache. + +Indeed, the contrast of the length of contemporary time (this +pleonasm is inevitable) is no small mystery, and the world has never +had the wit fully to confess it. + +You remembered poignantly the special and singular duration of some +such space as your elders, perhaps, called half-an-hour--so +poignantly that you spoke of it to your sister, not exactly with +emotion, but still as a dreadful fact of life. You had better +instinct than to complain of it to the talkative, easy-living, +occupied people, who had the management of the world in their hands- +-your seniors. You remembered the duration of some such separate +half-hour so well that you have in fact remembered it until now, and +so now, of course, will never forget it. + +As to the length of Beethoven, experienced by you on duty in the +drawing room, it would be curious to know whether it was really +something greater than Beethoven had any idea of. You sat and +listened, and tried to fix a passage in your mind as a kind of half- +way mark, with the deliberate provident intention of helping +yourself through the time during a future hearing; for you knew too +well that you would have to bear it all again. You could not do the +same with sermons, because, though even more fatiguing, they were +more or less different each time. + +While your elders passed over some particularly tedious piece of +road--and a very tedious piece of road existed within short distance +of every house you lived in or stayed in--in their usual state of +partial absence of mind, you, on the contrary, perceived every inch +of it. As to the length of a bad night, or of a mere time of +wakefulness at night, adult words do not measure it; they hardly +measure the time of merely waiting for sleep in childhood. +Moreover, you were tired of other things, apart from the duration of +time--the names of streets, the names of tradesmen, especially the +fournisseurs of the household, who lived in them. + +You were bored by people. It did not occur to you to be tired of +those of your own immediate family, for you loved them immemorially. +Nor were you bored by the newer personality of casual visitors, +unless they held you, as aforesaid, and made you so listen to their +unintelligible voices and so look at their mannered faces that they +released you an older child than they took you prisoner. But--it is +a reluctant confession--you were tired of your relations; you were +weary of their bonnets. Measured by adult time, those bonnets were, +it is to be presumed, of no more than reasonable duration; they had +no more than the average or common life. You have no reason, +looking back, to believe that your great-aunts wore bonnets for +great and indefinite spaces of time. But, to your sense as a child, +long and changing and developing days saw the same harassing +artificial flowers hoisted up with the same black lace. You would +have had a scruple of conscience as to really disliking the face, +but you deliberately let yourself go in detesting the bonnet. So +with dresses, especially such as had any little misfit about them. +For you it had always existed, and there was no promise of its +ceasing. You seemed to have been aware of it for years. By the +way, there would be less cheap reproving of little girls for +desiring new clothes if the censors knew how immensely old their old +clothes are to them. + +The fact is that children have a simple sense of the unnecessary +ugliness of things, and that--apart from the effects of ennui--they +reject that ugliness actively. You have stood and listened to your +mother's compliments on her friend's hat, and have made your mental +protest in very definite words. You thought it hideous, and hideous +things offended you then more than they have ever offended you +since. At nine years old you made people, alas! responsible for +their faces, as you do still in a measure, though you think you do +not. You severely made them answer for their clothes, in a manner +which you have seen good reason, in later life, to mitigate. Upon +curls, or too much youthfulness in the aged, you had no mercy. To +sum up the things you hated inordinately, they were friskiness of +manner and of trimmings, and curls combined with rather bygone or +frumpish fashions. Too much childish dislike was wasted so. + +But you admired some things without regard to rules of beauty learnt +later. At some seven years old you dwelt with delight upon the +contrast of a white kid glove and a bright red wrist. Well, this is +not the received arrangement, but red and white do go well together, +and their distribution has to be taught with time. Whose were the +wrist and glove? Certainly some one's who must have been distressed +at the bouquet of colour that you admired. This, however, was but a +local admiration. You did not admire the girl as a whole. She whom +you adored was always a married woman of a certain age; rather +faded, it might be, but always divinely elegant. She alone was +worthy to stand at the side of your mother. You lay in wait for the +border of her train, and dodged for a chance of holding her bracelet +when she played. You composed prose in honour of her and called the +composition (for reasons unknown to yourself) a "catalogue." She +took singularly little notice of you. + +Wordsworth cannot say too much of your passion for nature. The +light of summer morning before sunrise was to you a spiritual +splendour for which you wanted no name. The Mediterranean under the +first perceptible touch of the moon, the calm southern sea in the +full blossom of summer, the early spring everywhere, in the showery +streets, in the fields, or at sea, left old childish memories with +you which you try to evoke now when you see them again. But the +cloudy dusk behind poplars on the plains of France, the flying +landscape from the train, willows, and the last of the light, were +more mournful to you then than you care to remember now. So were +the black crosses on the graves of the French village; so were +cypresses, though greatly beloved. + +If you were happy enough to be an internationally educated child, +you had much at heart the heart of every country you knew. You +disliked the English accent of your compatriots abroad with a scorn +to which, needless to say, you are not tempted now. You had shocks +of delight from Swiss woods full of lilies of the valley, and from +English fields full of cowslips. You had disquieting dreams of +landscape and sun, and of many of these you cannot now tell which +were visions of travel and which visions of slumber. Your strong +sense of place made you love some places too keenly for peace. + + + + + +End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Children, by Alice Meynell + diff --git a/old/chldn10.zip b/old/chldn10.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..f9df1fc --- /dev/null +++ b/old/chldn10.zip |