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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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