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| author | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 20:11:37 -0700 |
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| committer | Roger Frank <rfrank@pglaf.org> | 2025-10-14 20:11:37 -0700 |
| commit | 021b130d53dc43ff1aa209cb34651c858f3edf79 (patch) | |
| tree | 52a071ea80440a8e47dab47081843fbd1ee72058 /38977-h | |
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diff --git a/38977-h/38977-h.htm b/38977-h/38977-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..aae778e --- /dev/null +++ b/38977-h/38977-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5978 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=iso-8859-1" /> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> + <title> + The Project Gutenberg eBook of Wings and the Child, by E. Nesbit. + </title> + <style type="text/css"> + + p {margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + text-indent: 1.25em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + img {border: 0;} + .tnote {border: dashed 1px; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em;} + ins {text-decoration:none; border-bottom: thin dotted gray;} + h1,h2,h3,h4,h5,h6 { + text-align: center; /* all headings centered */ + clear: both; + } + hr.chap { margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + margin-left: auto; + margin-right: auto; + clear: both; + } + .attrib { font-size: 70%; text-align: left;} + table {margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;} + + body{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + + .pagenum { /* uncomment the next line for invisible page numbers */ + /* visibility: hidden; */ + position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + } /* page numbers */ + .copyright {text-align: center; font-size: 70%;} + .blockquot{margin-left: 5%; margin-right: 10%; text-align: justify;} + + .bbox {border: solid 2px; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; padding-bottom: .5em; padding-top: .5em; + padding-left: .5em; padding-right: .5em;} + .small {font-size: 70%;} + .big {font-size: 110%;} + .adtitle2 {font-size: 150%; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;} + .adtitle {font-size: 200%; font-weight: bold; text-align: center;} + + .author {font-size: 120%; text-align: center;} + .center {text-align: center;} + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + .chaptertitle {text-align: center; font-size: 110%; font-weight: bold; margin-bottom: 1.5em;} + + .caption {font-weight: bold; font-size: 90%;} + + .figcenter {margin: auto; text-align: center;} + + .figleft {float: left; clear: left; margin-left: 0; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-top: + 1em; margin-right: 1em; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .figright {float: right; clear: right; margin-left: 1em; margin-bottom: 1em; + margin-top: 1em; margin-right: 0; padding: 0; text-align: center;} + + .unindent {margin-top: .75em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + .right {text-align: right;} + .poem {margin-left: 30%; text-align: left;} + .poem2 {margin-left: 15%; text-align: left;} + .sig {margin-right: 10%; text-align: right;} + + + .footnotes {border: dashed 1px;} + .footnote {margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-size: 0.9em;} + .fnanchor {vertical-align:baseline; + position: relative; + bottom: 0.33em; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none;} + .hang1 {text-indent: -3em; margin-left: 3em;} + .cap:first-letter {float: left; clear: left; margin: -0.2em 0.1em 0; margin-top: 0%; + padding: 0; line-height: .75em; font-size: 300%; text-align: justify;} + .cap {text-align: justify;} + + </style> + </head> +<body> + + +<pre> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Wings and the Child, by E. [Edith] Nesbit + +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: Wings and the Child + or, the Building of Magic Cities + +Author: E. [Edith] Nesbit + +Illustrator: George Barraud + +Release Date: February 25, 2012 [EBook #38977] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK WINGS AND THE CHILD *** + + + + +Produced by Suzanne Shell, Emmy and the Online Distributed +Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net + + + + + + +</pre> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_i" id="Page_i">[i]</a></span></p> + +<h1>WINGS AND THE CHILD</h1> + + + +<div class='tnote'><b>Transcriber's Note:</b> Larger versions of the +photographs of the houses may be accessed by clicking on the image.</div> + +<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ii" id="Page_ii">[ii]</a></span></p> + + + +<h2>WORKS BY E. NESBIT</h2> + + + +<div class="center"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Nesbit books"> +<tr><td align="center"><br /><b>CHILDREN'S BOOKS</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE MAGIC CITY</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE WONDERFUL GARDEN</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE MAGIC WORLD</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE RAILWAY CHILDREN</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">OSWALD BASTABLE</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">HARDING'S LUCK</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE TREASURE SEEKERS</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE WOULDBEGOODS</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">FIVE CHILDREN AND IT</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE PHŒNIX AND THE CARPET</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE AMULET</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE ENCHANTED CASTLE</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">NINE UNLIKELY TALES</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE HOUSE OF ARDEN</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE BOOK OF DRAGONS</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">WET MAGIC</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><br /><b>FICTION</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE INCOMPLETE AMORIST</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">DAPHNE IN FITZROY STREET</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THESE LITTLE ONES</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">MAN AND MAID</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">SALOME AND THE HEAD</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE RED HOUSE</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">DORMANT</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE LITERARY SENSE</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">IN HOMESPUN</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">FEAR</td></tr> +<tr><td align="center"><br /><b>POETRY</b></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">LAYS AND LEGENDS. 1st Series</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">LAYS AND LEGENDS. 2nd Series</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">LEAVES OF LIFE</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">THE RAINBOW AND THE ROSE</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">A POMANDER OF VERSE</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">BALLADS AND LYRICS</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">JESUS IN LONDON</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">BALLADS AND LYRICS OF THE SPIRITUAL LIFE</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left">NEW POEMS</td></tr> +</table></div> + +<hr class="chap" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_iv" id="Page_iv">[iv]</a></span></p> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 374px;"><a id="frontis"></a> +<img src="images/gs01.jpg" width="374" height="600" alt="frontis" /> +</div> + + +<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_v" id="Page_v">[v]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h1> +WINGS AND THE CHILD</h1> +<div class='center'> +<b><span class='small'>OR</span></b><br /> + +<b><span class='big'>THE BUILDING OF MAGIC CITIES</span></b><br /> +<br /><br /><br /> +<span class='small'>BY</span><br /> +<span class='author'>E. NESBIT</span><br /> +<span class='small'>AUTHOR OF</span><br /> +<span class='small'>"THE MAGIC CITY," "THE WOULDBEGOODS," ETC., ETC.</span><br /> +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> +<span class='small'>WITH PICTURES BY GEORGE BARRAUD AND FROM PHOTOGRAPHS</span><br /> +<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> +HODDER AND STOUGHTON<br /> +<span class='small'>NEW YORK AND LONDON</span><br /> +</div><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vi" id="Page_vi">[vi]</a></span></p> + + + +<div class='copyright'><i>Printed in 1913</i></div> + + + + +<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[vii]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>TO THE READER</h2> + +<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">When</span> this book first came to my mind it came +as a history and theory of the building of +Magic Cities on tables, with bricks and toys and +little things such as a child may find and use. +But as I kept the thought by me it grew and +changed, as thoughts will do, until at last it +took shape as an attempt to contribute something, +however small and unworthy, to the +science of building a magic city in the soul of +a child, a city built of all things pure and fine +and beautiful. As you read, it will, I hope, +seem to you that something of what I say is +true—in much, no doubt, it will seem to you that +I am mistaken; but however you may disagree +with me, you will, I trust, at least have faith +in the honesty of my purpose. If I seem to +you to be too dogmatic, to lay down the law +too much as though I were the teacher and you +the learner, I beg you to believe that it is in +no such spirit that I have written. Rather it +is as though you and I, spending a quiet evening<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[viii]</a></span> + +by your fire, talked together of the things that +matter, and as though I laid before you all the +things that were in my heart—not stopping at +every turn to say "Do you not think so too?" +and "I hope you agree with me?" but telling +you, straight from the heart, what I have felt and +thought and, I humbly say, known about children +and the needs of children. I have talked +to you as to a friend, without the reservations +and apologies which we use with strangers. +And if, in anything, I shall have offended you, +I entreat you to extend to me the forgiveness +and the forbearance which you would exercise +towards a friend who had offended you, not +meaning to offend, and to believe that I have +spoken to you as frankly and plainly as I would +wish you to speak to me, were you the writer +and I the reader.</div> + +<div class='sig'> +<span class="smcap">E. Nesbit.</span><br /> +</div> + + + +<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[ix]</a></span></p> + +<h2>CONTENTS</h2> + + + + +<div class="center"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Contents"> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><i>PART I</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER I</td></tr> +<tr><td align='left'> </td><td align="right"><span class='small'>PAGE</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Of Understanding</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_3">3</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER II</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">New Ways</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_9">9</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER III</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Playthings</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_17">17</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER IV</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[x]</a></span><span class="smcap">Imagination</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_24">24</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER V</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Of Taking Root</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_33">33</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER VI</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Beauty and Knowledge</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_42">42</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER VII</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Of Building and Other Matters</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_54">54</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER VIII</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Moral Code</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_67">67</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER IX</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[xi]</a></span><span class="smcap">Praise and Punishment</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER X</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The One Thing Needful</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_94">94</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br /><i>PART II</i></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER I</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Romance in Games</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_107">107</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER II</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Building Cities</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_118">118</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER III</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Bricks—and Other Things</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_130">130</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER IV</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xii" id="Page_xii">[xii]</a></span><span class="smcap">The Magic City</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_143">143</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER V</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Materials</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_156">156</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER VI</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Collections</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_165">165</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER VII</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Poor Child's City</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_177">177</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="center" colspan='2'><br />CHAPTER VIII</td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The End</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_190">190</a></td></tr> +</table></div> + +<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[xiii]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2>ILLUSTRATIONS</h2> + + + +<div class="center"> +<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="Illustrations"> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Portrait of the Author</span></td><td align="left"><i><a href="#frontis">Frontispiece</a></i></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"> </td><td align="right"><span class='small'>PAGE</span></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The King's Summer-House</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_8">8</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Not much Higher than the Table</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_13">13</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">He has Created the Engine</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Tomb in the Desert</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_18">18</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Stonehenge</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_22">22</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Tree like a Man</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_27">27</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Poppy Doll</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_29">29</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Doves and Dragon</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_30">30</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Astrologer's Tower</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_32">32</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Silver Towers</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_34">34</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Furniture to Live with</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_35">35</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Turquoise Temple</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_40">40</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Hall of Pearl and Red</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_47">47</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">A Chinese Temple</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_52">52</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Square Tower</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_56">56</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Shell Arches</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_57">57</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Handkerchief Tents</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_65">65</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[xiv]</a></span><span class="smcap">One Half of the City</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_72">72</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Tail of Puss</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_78">78</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Other Half of the City</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_82">82</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Hideous Disfigurement</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_96">96</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Of Lovely Hills and Dales</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_97">97</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Palace of Cats</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_120">120</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Guarded Arch</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_123">123</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Boxes</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_135">135</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Arches and Pillars</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_140">140</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Pillared Court</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_141">141</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Materials for the Guard-Room</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_148">148</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Guard-Room</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_149">149</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Domino Door</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_150">150</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Larch Palm</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Magic City</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_152">152</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Honesty Pillars</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_159">159</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Trees</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_166">166</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Thick Arches</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_168">168</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Fan Window</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_169">169</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">The Elephant Temple</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_171">171</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Honesty Roof</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_174">174</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Clothes Pegs</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_181">181</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Towers and Cocoanut Cottage</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_185">185</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Cotton Reels</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_186">186</a></td></tr> +<tr><td align="left"><span class="smcap">Lattice Windows</span></td><td align='right'><a href="#Page_187">187</a></td></tr> +</table></div> + + +<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[1]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2><i>PART I</i></h2> + + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[3]</a></span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>Of Understanding</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap">It</span> is not with any pretension to special knowledge +of my subject that I set out to write down +what I know about children. I have no special +means of knowing anything: I do, in fact, +know nothing that cannot be known by any one +who will go to the only fount of knowledge, +experience. And by experience I do not mean +scientific experience, that is the recorded results +of experiments, the tabulated knowledge wrung +from observation; I mean personal experience, +that is to say, memory. You may observe the +actions of children and chronicle their sayings, +and produce from these, perhaps, a lifelike +sketch of a child, as it appears to the grown-up +observer; but observation is no key to the +inner mysteries of a child's soul. The only key +to those mysteries is in knowledge, the knowledge +of what you yourself felt when you were +good and little and a child. You can remember +how things looked to you, and how things<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[4]</a></span> +looked to the other children who were your +intimates. Our own childhood, besides furnishing +us with an exhaustless store of enlightening +memories, furnishes us with the one opportunity +of our lives for the observation of children—other +children. There is a freemasonry between +children, a spontaneous confidence and give-and-take +which is and must be for ever impossible +between children and grown-ups, no +matter how sympathetic the grown-up, how +confiding the child. Between the child and the +grown-up there is a great gulf fixed—and this +gulf, the gulf between one generation and +another, can never be really bridged. You +may learn to see across it, a little, or sometimes +in rare cases to lean very far across it so that +you can just touch the tips of the little fingers +held out from the other side. But if your +dealings with those on the other side of the gulf +are to be just, generous, noble, and helpful, +they must be motived and coloured by your +memories of the time when you yourself were +on the other side—when you were a child full +of your own hopes, dreams, aims, interests, +instincts, and imaginings, and over against you, +kindly perhaps, tenderly loving, often tenderly +loved, but still in some mysterious way antagonistic +and counting as "Them," were<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[5]</a></span> +the grown-ups. I might say elders, parents, +teachers, spiritual pastors and masters, but the +word which the child himself uses seems to me, +for all reasons, to be the best word for my use, +because it expresses fully and finally the nature +of the gulf between. The grown-ups are the +people who once were children and who have +forgotten what it felt like to be a child. And +Time marks with the same outward brand +those who have forgotten and those who do +not forget. So that even the few who have +managed to slip past the Customs-house with +their bundle of memories intact can never fully +display them. These are a sort of contraband, +and neither the children nor the grown-ups will +ever believe that that which we have brought +with us from the land of childhood is genuine. +The grown-ups accuse us of invention, sometimes +praise us for it, when all we have is +memory; and the children imagine that we +must have been watching them, and thus surprised +a few of their secrets, when all that we +have is the secrets which were our own when +we were children—secrets which were so bound +up with the fibre of our nature that we could +never lose them, and so go through life with +them, our dearest treasures. Such people feel +to the end that they are children in a grown-up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[6]</a></span> +world. For a middle-aged gentleman with a +beard or a stout elderly lady with spectacles to +move among other elderly and spectacled persons +feeling that they are still children, and that the +other elderly and spectacled ones are really +grown-ups, seems thoroughly unreasonable, and +therefore those who have never forgotten do +not, as a rule, say anything about it. They +just mingle with the other people, looking as +grown-up as any one—but in their hearts they +are only pretending to be grown-up: it is like +acting in a charade. Time with his make-up +box of lines and wrinkles, his skilful brush that +paints out the tints and the contours of youth, +his supply of grey wigs and rounded shoulders +and pillows for the waist, disguises the actors +well enough, and they go through life altogether +unsuspected. The tired eyes close on a world +which to them has always been the child's +world, the tired hands loose the earthly possessions +which have, to them, been ever the toys +of the child. And deep in their hearts is the +faith and the hope that in the life to come it +may not be necessary to pretend to be grown-up.</p> + +<p>Such people as these are never pessimists, +though they may be sinners; and they will be +trusting, to the verge of what a real grown-up +would call imbecility. To them the world will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[7]</a></span> +be, from first to last, a beautiful place, and +every unbeautiful thing will be a surprise, +hurting them like a sudden blow. They will +never learn prudence, or parsimony, nor know, +with the unerring instinct of the really grown-up, +the things that are or are not done by the best +people. All their lives they will love, and +expect love—and be sad, wondering helplessly +when they do not get it. They will expect +beautiful quixotic impulsive generosities and +splendours from a grown-up world which has +forgotten what impulse was: and to the very +end they will not leave off expecting. They +will be easily pleased and easily hurt, and the +grown-ups in grain will contemplate their pains +and their pleasures with an uncomprehending +irritation.</p> + +<p>If these children, disguised by grown-up +bodies, are ever recognised for what they are, +it is when they happen to have the use of their +pens—when they write for and about children. +Then grown-up people will call them intelligent +and observant, and children will write to them +and ask the heart-warm, heart-warming question, +"How did you know?" For if they can +become articulate they will speak the language +that children understand, and children will love, +not them, for their identity is cloaked with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[8]</a></span> +grey grown-up-ness, but what they say. There +are some of these in whom the fire of genius +burns up and licks away the trappings under +which Time seeks to disguise them—Andersen, +Stevenson, Juliana Ewing were such as these—and +the world knows them for what they were, +and adores in them what in the uninspired it +would decry and despise.</p> + +<p>To these others who have the memories +of childhood untainted and yet have not the +gift and relief of words, to these I address +myself in the first instance, because they will +understand without any involved explanation +on my part what it is that I am driving at, and +it is these who, alone, can teach the real grown-ups +the things which they have forgotten. For +these things can be taught, these things can be +re-learned. I would have every man and +woman in whom the heart of childhood still +lives, protest, however feebly and haltingly, +yet with all the power of the heart, against +machine-made education—against the instruction +which crams a child with facts and +starves it of dreams, which forces the free foot +into heavy boots and bids it walk on narrow +pavement, which crushes with heavy hand the +wings of the soul, and presses the flower of +imagination flat between the pages of a lexicon.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<a href="images/gs02-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs02.jpg" width="600" height="379" alt="house" /></a> +<span class="caption">THE KING'S SUMMER-HOUSE.</span> +<div class='attrib'>8]</div> +</div> + + + +<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[9]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>New Ways</div> + + +<div class='unindent'>"<span class="smcap">What</span>," we ask with anxious gravity, "what +is the best sort of teaching for children?" One +might as sanely ask what is the best sort of +spectacles for men, or the best size in gloves for +women. And the blind coarse generalisation +which underlies that question is the very heart +and core of the muddled, musty maze we call +education. We talk of the best sort of education +for children, as we might talk of the best +sort of polish for stoves, the best sort of nourishment +for mice. Stoves are all alike, they vary +in ugliness perhaps, but the iron soul of one is +as the iron soul of the other. The polish that +is good for one is good for all. Mice may, and +do, vary in size and colour; their mousehood +does not vary, nor their taste for cheese. In the +inner nature, in the soul and self of it, each +child is different from any other child, and the +education that treats children as a class and not +as individual human beings is the education<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[10]</a></span> +whose failure is bringing our civilisation about +our ears even as we speak.</div> + +<p>Each child is an explorer in a new country—an +explorer with its own special needs and +curiosities. We put up iron railings to keep the +explorers to our own sordidly asphalted paths. +The little free wild creatures would seek their +meat from God: we round them into herds, +pen them in folds, and feed them with artificial +foods—drab flat oil cakes all alike, not considering +that for some brown nuts and red +berries, and for some the new clean green grass, +may be the bread of life.</p> + +<p>Or, if you take the mind of a child to be a +garden wherein flowers grow that might be +trained to beauty, you bring along your steam-roller, +and crush everything to a flat field +where you may grow cabbages. It is so good +for the field, you say—because you like +cabbages.</p> + +<p>Liberty is one of the rights we claim for ourselves, +though God knows we get little enough +of it and use still less; and Liberty is one of +the rights that a child above all needs—every +possible liberty, of thought, of word, of deed. +The old systems of education seem to have +found it good to coerce a child for the simple +sake of coercion—to make it do what the master<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[11]</a></span> +chose, to make it leave undone those things +which it wished to do and to do those things +which it did not wish to do—nay, more, wished +violently and conclusively not to do. To force +the choice of the teacher on the child, to override +the timid natural impulses of the child +with the hard hoofs of the teacher's individuality, +to crush out all initiative, to force the young +supple mind into a mould, to lop the budding +branches, nip off the sensitive seeking tendrils, +to batter down the child's will by the brute +force of the grown-up will, to "break the +child's spirit," as the cursed phrase used to run—this +was, in effect, what education meant. +There was a picture in <i>Punch</i>, I remember—at +least I have forgotten the picture, but I +remember the legend: "Cissy, go and see +what Bobbie's doing, and tell him not to."</p> + +<p>It did not much matter what you made a +child do, so long as it was something against +the grain. He was to learn, not what he with +his wonderful new curiosities and aptitudes +longed to learn, but what you wished to teach; +you with your dulled senses—dulled in the same +bitter school as that in which he was now a +sad learner.</p> + +<div class="figright" style="width: 403px;"> +<img src="images/gs03.png" width="403" height="450" alt="table" /> +<span class="caption">NOT MUCH HIGHER THAN THE TABLE.</span> +</div> + +<p>Generation after generation has gone on, +pounding away at the old silly game, each<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[12]</a></span> +generation anxious and eager to hurt the new +one as it, in its time, was hurt. Each generation +must, one would have thought, have +remembered what things hurt children and how +much these things hurt, and yet this intolerable +cycle of bullying and punishment and repression +went on and on and on. Children were bullied +and broken—and grew up to bully and break +in their turn. It must be that this was because +the grown-ups did not remember. Those who +have the care of children, who work for them, +who teach them, should be those who do +remember: those who have not forgotten what +it feels like to be a child—any sort of child. +For, though children are all different, there is +a common measure among them as there is +among men. A law for men cannot be good +if it be made—as indeed but too often happens—by +those who have forgotten what it used to +feel like to be a man; and what sort of poetry +do you get from one who has forgotten beauty +and sorrow, and the Spring, and how it feels to +be young and a lover? And if the people who +have the care of children have forgotten what +it feels like to be a child, those who do remember +should remind them. They should be reminded +how it feels to be not so very much higher than +the table, how it feels not to be so clever as<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[13]</a></span> +you are now, and so much more interested in +so much more—how it feels to believe in things +and in people as you did when you were new to +the journey of life—to explore every road you +came to, to trust every person you met. It is +a long time ago, but can you not remember the +days when right and wrong were as different as +milk and mud, when you knew that it was<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[14]</a></span> +really wrong to be naughty and really good to +be good, when you felt that your mother +could do no wrong and that your father was the +noblest and bravest of men? Do you remember +the world of small and new and joyous and +delightful things? Try to remember it if you +would know how to help a child instead of +hindering it—try to look at the world with the +clear, clean eyes that once were yours in the +days when you had never read a newspaper or +deceived a friend. You will then be able to see +again certain ideals, unclouded and radiant, +which the dust of the crowded highway and the +smears of getting-on have dimmed and distorted—quite +simple ideals of love, faith, unselfishness, +honour, truth. I know these words +are often enough on the lips of all of us, but +a child's ear will be able to tell whether the +words spring from the lips or the heart. Look +back, and you will see that you yourself were +also able to distinguish these things—once.</p> + +<p>Education as it should be, the unfolding of +a flower, not the distorting of it, is only possible +to those who are willing and able themselves to +become as little children.</p> + +<p>It is because certain great spirits have done +this and have tried to teach others to do it, +that reforms in education have begun to be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[15]</a></span> +at least possible. Froebel, Pestalozzi, Signora +Montessori and many a lesser star has shone +upon a new path. And public interest has +centred more and more on the welfare of the +child. Books are written, societies formed, +newspapers founded in the interests of the child, +and true education becomes a possibility.</p> + +<p>And well indeed it is for us that this is so. +For the education of the last three hundred years +has led, in all things vital and spiritual, downhill +all the way. We have gone on frustrating +natural human intelligences and emotions, inculcating +false doctrines, and choking with +incoherent facts the souls which asked to be +fed with dreams-come-true—till now our civilisation +is a thing we cannot look at without a +mental and moral nausea. We have, in our +countrysides, peasants too broken for rebellion, +in our cities.</p> + +<div class='poem'> +The mortal sickness of a mind<br /> +Too unhappy to be kind.<br /> +</div> + +<p>If ever we are to be able to look ourselves and +each other in the face again it will be because a +new generation has arisen in whose ears the voice +of God and His angels has not ceased to sound. +If only we would see the things that belong to +our peace, and lead the children instead of +driving them, who knows what splendid thoughts<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[16]</a></span> +and actions they in their natural development +might bring to the salvation of the world?</p> + +<p>In the Palace of Education which the great +minds have designed and are designing, many +stones will be needed—and so I bring the little +stone I have hewn out and tried to shape, in +the hope that it may fit into a corner of that +great edifice. For if anything is to be done, it +is necessary that all who have anything to give, +shall give it. As Francis Bacon said:</p> + +<p>"Nothing can so much conduce to the drawing +down, as it were, from heaven a whole shower +of new and profitable Inventions, as this, that +the experiments of many ... may come to the +knowledge of one man, or some few, who by +mutual conference may whet and sharpen one +another, so that by this ... Arts may flourish, and +as it were by a commixture and communication +of Rays, inflame one another.... This sagacity +by literate experience may in the mean project +and scatter for the benefit of man many rudiments +to knowledge which may be had at hand."</p> + +<p>And that is why I have left for a little while +the telling of stories and set myself to write +down something of what I know about children—know +by the grace of memory and by the +dreams of childhood, to me, thank God, persistent +and imperishable.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[17]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>Playthings</div> + + +<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">The</span> prime instinct of a child at play—I do not +mean a child at games—is to create. I use the +word confidently. He will make as well as +create, if you let him, but always he will create: +he will use the whole force of dream and fancy +to create something out of nothing—over and +beyond what he will make out of such materials +as he has to hand. The five-year-old will lay +a dozen wooden bricks and four cotton reels +together, set a broken cup on the top of them, +and tell you it is a steam-engine. And it is. +He has created the engine which he sees, and +you don't see, and the pile of bricks and cotton +reels is the symbol of his creation. He will +silently borrow your best scissors and cut a +serrated band of newspaper, which he will +fasten round his head (with your best brooch, +if he cannot find a pin), hang another newspaper +from his shoulders, and sit in state holding the +hearth-brush. He will tell you that he is a king<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[18]</a></span>—and +he is. He has created crown, robes, +sceptre, and kingship. The paper and the rest +of it are but symbols.</div> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<img src="images/gs04.png" width="600" height="497" alt="train" /> +<span class="caption">HE HAS CREATED THE ENGINE.</span> +</div> + +<p>And you shall observe that the toys which +the child loves best are always those toys which +lend themselves to such symbolic use.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<a href="images/gs05-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs05.jpg" width="600" height="361" alt="tomb" /></a> +<span class="caption">THE TOMB IN THE DESERT.</span><div class='attrib'>18]</div></div> + + +<p>Christmas is at hand. You go to buy gifts +for the child, in memory of that Other Child +whose birthday gifts were gold, frankincense, +and myrrh. You go into the toyshops, elbowing +your way as best you can, looking for such toys +as may aid the child in his work of creative +imagination.</p> + +<p>You find a vast mass and litter and jumble of +incredible futilities—things made to sell, things +made by people who have forgotten what it is +like to be a child. Mechanical toys of all sorts, +stupid toys, toys that will only do one thing, +and that thing vulgar and foolish. And, worst +outrage of all, ugly toys, monstrosities, deformities, +lead devils, grinning humpbacked +clowns, "comic" dogs and cats, hideous mis-shapen +pigs, incredible negroes, intolerable golliwogs. +All such things the natural child, with +a child's decent detestation of deformity, will +thrust from it with screams of fear and hatred, +till the materialistic mother or nurse explains +that the horror is not really, as the child knows +it to be, horrible and unnatural, but "funny." +Thus do we outrage the child's inborn sense of +beauty, which is also the sense of health and +fitness, and teach it that deformity is not +shocking, not pitiable even, but just "funny." +All these ugly toys are impossible as aids to +clean imagination.</p> + +<p>So, almost in as great, though not in so +harmful a degree, is the "character doll." The +old doll was a doll, and not a character. Therefore +she could assume any character at your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[19]</a><br /><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[20]</a></span> +choice. The character doll is Baby Willy, and +can never be anything else, unless imagination, +exasperated and baffled, christens him Silly +Billy in the moment of furious projection across +the nursery floor. But the old doll, with her +good, expressionless face and clear blue eyes, +could be a duchess or a dairymaid, a captive +princess or a greengrocer's wife keeping shop, +a cruel stepmother or Joan of Arc. I beg you +to try Baby Willy in the character of Joan of Arc.</p> + +<p>You cannot hope to understand children by +common-sense, by reason, by logic, nor by any +science whatsoever. You cannot understand +them by imagination—not even by love itself. +There is only one way: to remember what +you thought and felt and liked and hated when +you yourself were a child. Not what you +know now—or think you know—you ought to +have thought and liked, but what you did then, +in stark fact, like and think. There is no other +way.</p> + +<p>Do you remember the toys you liked, the toys +you played with? Do you remember the toys +you hated—after the fading of the first day's +flush of novelty, of possession? The houses +with doors that wouldn't open? The stables +with horses that wouldn't stand up? The +shops whose goods were part of their painted<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[21]</a></span> +shelves, whose shopmen were as fast glued +behind the counter as any live shop-assistant +before the passing of the Shops Act?</p> + +<p>And the mechanical toys—the clockwork +toys. The engine was all right, even after the +clockwork ran down for the last time with that +inexorable whizz which told you all was over; +you could build tunnels with the big brown +books in the library and push the engine through +with your hand—it would run quite a long way +out on the other side. But the other clockwork +things! How can one love and pet a mouse, +no matter how furry its superficial exterior, +when underneath, where its soft waistcoat and +its little feet should be, there is only a hard +surface from which incompetent wheels protrude? +And the ostrich who draws a hansom +cab, and the man who beats the boy with a +stick? When they have whizzed their last, +who cares for the tin relics outliving their +detestable activities?</p> + +<p>Think of the toys you liked: the Noah's Ark—full +of characters. What stirring dramas of the +chase, what sporting incidents, what domestic +and agricultural operations could be carried out +with that most royal of toys. Mr. Noah, I +remember, was equally competent and +convincing as ploughman or carter. But his chief<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[22]</a></span> +rôle was Sitting Bull. His sons were inimitable +as Chingachgook and scalp hunters generally. +You cannot play scalp hunters with the +mechanical ostrich indissolubly welded to a +hansom cab.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/gs06.png" width="500" height="255" alt="another model" /> +<span class="caption">STONEHENGE.</span> +</div> + +<p>You loved your bricks, I think, especially if +you lived in the days when bricks were of well-seasoned +oak, heavy, firm, exactly proportioned, +before the boxes of inexact light deal bricks, +with the one painted glass window, began to +be made in Germany. How finely those great +bricks stood for Stonehenge, and how submissively +Anna, the Dutch doll, whose arms and +legs were gone, played the part of the Sacrifice. +If you remember those bricks you will remember +the polished, white wooden dairy sets in oval +white boxes—churns and tubs and kettles and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[23]</a></span> +pots all neatly and beautifully turned. You +will remember the doll's house furniture, rosewood, +duly mitred and dovetailed, fine cabinet-makers' +work, little beautiful models of beautiful +things. Now the dolls' house furniture is glued +together. You can't trust a light-weight china +doll to sit on the kitchen chairs.... But you +can get your mechanical ostrich and your +golliwog....</p> + +<p>Children in towns are cut off, at least for most +of the year, from the splendid and ever-varying +possibilities of clay and mud and sand, oak-apples +and snow-berries, acorn-cups and seaweed, +shells and sticks and stones which serve +and foster the creative instinct, the thousand +adjuncts to that play which is dream and reality +in one.</p> + +<p>For them, even more than for the happier +country children, it is good to choose toys which +shall possess, above and before all, the one +supreme quality of a good toy. Let it be a toy +that is not merely itself, like the ostrich of whom +I hope you are now as weary as I, but a toy +that can be, at need, other things. A toy, in +fine, that your child can, in the fullest and +most satisfying sense, play with.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[24]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>Imagination</div> + +<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">To</span> the child, from the beginning, life is the +unfolding of one vast mystery; to him our +stalest commonplaces are great news, our dullest +facts prismatic wonders. To the baby who has +never seen a red ball, a red ball is a marvel, new +and magnificent as ever the golden apples were +to Hercules.</div> + +<p>You show the child many things, all strange, +all entrancing; it sees, it hears, it touches; +it learns to co-ordinate sight and touch and +hearing. You tell it tales of the things it +cannot see and hear and touch, of men "that +it may never meet, of lands that it shall never +see"; strange black and brown and yellow +people whose dress is not the dress of mother or +nurse—strange glowing yellow lands where the +sun burns like fire, and flowers grow that are +not like the flowers in the fields at home. You +tell it that the stars, which look like pin-holes +in the floor of heaven, are really great lonely<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[25]</a></span> +worlds, millions of miles away; that the earth, +which the child can see for itself to be flat, is +really round; that nuts fall from the trees +because of the force of gravitation, and not, as +reason would suggest, merely because there is +nothing to hold them up. And the child believes; +it believes all the seeming miracles.</p> + +<p>Then you tell it of other things no more +miraculous and no less; of fairies, and dragons, +and enchantments, of spells and magic, of flying +carpets and invisible swords. The child believes +in these wonders likewise. Why not? If very +big men live in Patagonia, why should not very +little men live in flower-bells? If electricity +can move unseen through the air, why not +carpets? The child's memory becomes a store-house +of beautiful and wonderful things which +are or have been in the visible universe, or in +that greater universe, the mind of man. Life +will teach the child, soon enough, to distinguish +between the two.</p> + +<p>But there are those who are not as you and I. +These say that all the enchanting fairy romances +are lies, that nothing is real that cannot be +measured or weighed, seen or heard or handled. +Such make their idols of stocks and stones, and +are blind and deaf to the things of the spirit. +These hard-fingered materialists crush the beautiful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[26]</a></span> +butterfly wings of imagination, insisting that +pork and pews and public-houses are more real +than poetry; that a looking-glass is more real +than love, a viper than valour. These Gradgrinds +give to the children the stones which +they call facts, and deny to the little ones the +daily bread of dreams.</p> + +<p>Of the immeasurable value of imagination +as a means to the development of the loveliest +virtues, to the uprooting of the ugliest and +meanest sins, there is here no space to speak. +But the gain in sheer happiness is more quickly +set forth. Imagination, duly fostered and +trained, is to the world of visible wonder and +beauty what the inner light is to the Japanese +lantern. It transfigures everything into a glory +that is only not magic to us because we know +Who kindled the inner light, Who set up for +us the splendid lantern of this world.</p> + + + +<p>But Mr. Gradgrind prefers the lantern unlighted. +Material facts are good enough for +him. Until it comes to religion. And then, +suddenly, the child who has been forbidden to +believe in Jack the Giant Killer must believe +in Goliath and David. There are no fairies, +but you must believe that there are angels. +The magic sword and the magic buckler are +nonsense, but the child must not have any<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[27]</a><br /><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[28]</a></span> +doubts about the breastplate of righteousness +and the sword of the Spirit. What spiritual +reaction do you expect when, after denying all +the symbolic stories and legends, you suddenly +confront your poor little Materialist with the +Most Wonderful Story in the world?</p> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 699px;"> +<img src="images/gs07.png" width="699" height="478" alt="tree man" /> +<span class="caption">THE TREE LIKE A MAN.</span> +</div> +<p>If I had my way, children should be taught +no facts unless they asked for them. Heaven +knows they ask questions enough. They should +just be taught the old wonder-stories, and learn +their facts through these. Who wants to know +about pumpkins until he has heard Cinderella? +Why not tell the miracle of Jonah first, and let +the child ask about the natural history of the +whale afterwards, if he cares to hear it?</p> + +<p>And one of the greatest helps to a small, +inexperienced traveller in this sometimes dusty +way is the likeness of things to each other. +Your piece of thick bread and butter is a little +stale, perhaps, and bores you; but, when you +see that your first three bites have shaped it +to the likeness of a bear or a beaver, dull teatime +becomes interesting at once. A cloud that is +like a face, a tree that is like an old man, a hill +that is like an elephant's back, if you have things +like these to look at, and look out for, how short +the long walk becomes.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 371px;"> +<img src="images/gs08.png" width="371" height="500" alt="doll" /> +<span class="caption">POPPY DOLL.</span> +</div> + +<p>And in the garden, when the columbine is a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[29]</a></span> +circle of doves, with spread wings and beaks +that touch, when the foxglove flower is a little +Puck's hat which will fit on your finger, when +the snapdragon is not just a snapdragon, but +a dragon that will snap, and the poppies can +be made into dolls with black woolly hair and +grass sashes—how the enchantment of the +garden grows. The child will be all the more +ready to hear about the seed vessels of the +columbine when he has seen the doves, and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[30]</a></span> +pollen of the poppy will have a double interest +for her who has played with the woolly-haired +dolls. Imagination gives to the child a world +transfigured; let us leave it that radiant +mystery for the little time that is granted.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/gs09.png" width="500" height="241" alt="flowers" /> +<span class="caption">DOVES AND DRAGON.</span> +</div> + +<p>I know a child whose parents are sad because +she does not love arithmetic and history, but +rather the beautiful dreams which the Gradgrinds +call nonsense. Here are the verses I +wrote for that child:</p> + +<div class='center'>FOR DOLLY<br /> + +<span class='small'>WHO DOES NOT LEARN HER LESSONS</span></div> + +<div class='poem'> +You see the fairies dancing in the fountain,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Laughing, leaping, sparkling with the spray.</span><br /> +You see the gnomes, at work beneath the mountain,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Make gold and silver and diamonds every day.</span><br /> +You see the angels, sliding down the moonbeams,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Bring white dreams, like sheaves of lilies fair.</span><br /> +You see the imps scarce seen against the noonbeams,<br /> +<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[31]</a></span><span style="margin-left: 1em;">Rise from the bonfire's blue and liquid air.</span><br /> +<br /> +All the enchantment, all the magic there is<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Hid in trees and blossoms, to you is plain and true.</span><br /> +Dewdrops in lupin leaves are jewels for the fairies;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Every flower that blows is a miracle for you.</span><br /> +Air, earth, water, fire, spread their splendid wares for you.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Millions of magics beseech your little looks;</span><br /> +Every soul your winged soul meets, loves you and cares for you.<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Ah! why must we clip those wings and dim those eyes with books?</span><br /> +<br /> +Soon, soon enough, the magic lights grow dimmer,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Marsh mists arise to veil the radiant sky.</span><br /> +Dust of hard highways will veil the starry glimmer;<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Tired hands will lay the folded magic by.</span><br /> +Storm winds will blow through those enchanted closes,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Fairies be crushed where weed and briar grow strong....</span><br /> +Leave her her crown of magic stars and roses,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Leave her her kingdom—she will not keep it long!</span><br /> +</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[32]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 439px;"> +<img src="images/gs10.png" width="439" height="600" alt="tower" /> +<span class="caption">THE ASTROLOGER'S TOWER.</span> +</div><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[33]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>Of Taking Root</div> + +<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">When</span> the history of our time comes to be +written, it may be that the historian, remarking +our many faults and weaknesses, and seeking +to find a reason for them, speculating on our +civilisation as we now speculate on the civilisations +of Rome and Egypt, will come to see that +the poor blossoms of civic virtue which we put +forth owe their meagreness and deformity to the +fact that our lives are no longer permitted to +take root in material possessions. Material +possessions indeed we have—too much of them +and too many of them—but they are rather a +dust that overlays the leaves of life than a +soil in which the roots of life can grow.</div> + +<p>A certain solidness of character, a certain +quiet force and confidence grow up naturally +in the man who lives all his life in one house, +grows all the flowers of his life in one garden. +To plant a tree and know that if you live and +tend it, you will gather fruit from it; that if<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[34]</a></span> +you set out a thorn-hedge, it will be a fine thing +when your little son has grown to be a man—these +are pleasures which none but the very +rich can now know. (And the rich who might +enjoy these pleasures prefer to run about the +country in motor cars.) That is why, for +ordinary people, the word "neighbour" is +ceasing to have any meaning. The man who +occupies the villa partially detached from your +own is not your neighbour. He only moved in +a month or so ago, and you yourself will probably +not be there next year. A house now is +a thing to live in, not to love; and a neighbour +a person to criticise, but not to befriend.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 731px;"> +<a href="images/gs11-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs11.jpg" width="731" height="500" alt="model" /></a> +<span class="caption">THE SILVER TOWERS.</span><div class='attrib'>54]</div> +</div> + +<p>When people's lives were rooted in their +houses and their gardens they were also rooted +in their other possessions. And these possessions +were thoughtfully chosen and carefully +tended. You bought furniture to live with, +and for your children to live with after you. +You became familiar with it—it was adorned +with memories, brightened with hopes; it, +like your house and your garden, assumed then +a warm friendliness of intimate individuality. +In those days if you wanted to be smart, you +bought a new carpet and curtains: now you +"refurnish the drawing-room." If you have +to move house, as you often do, it seems cheaper +to sell most of your furniture and buy other, +than it is to remove it, especially if the moving +is caused by a rise of fortune.</p> + + + +<p>I do not attempt to explain it, but there is +a certain quality in men who have taken root, +who have lived with the same furniture, the +same house, the same friends for many years,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[35]</a><br /><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[36]</a></span> +which you shall look for in vain in men who +have travelled the world over and met hundreds +of acquaintances. For you do not know a man +by meeting him at an hotel, any more than you +know a house by calling at it, or know a garden +by walking along its paths. The knowledge of +human nature of the man who has taken root +may be narrow, but it will be deep. The unrooted +man who lives in hotels and changes his +familiars with his houses, will have a shallow +familiarity with the veneer of acquaintances; +he will not have learned to weigh and balance +the inner worth of a friend.</p> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 471px;"> +<img src="images/gs12.png" width="471" height="515" alt="furniture" /> +<span class="caption">FURNITURE TO LIVE WITH.</span> +</div> +<p>In the same way I take it that a constant +succession of new clothes is irritating and unsettling, +especially to women. It fritters away +the attention and exacerbates their natural +frivolity. In other days when clothes were +expensive, women bought few clothes, but +those clothes were meant to last, and they did +last. A silk dress often outlived the natural +life of its first wearer. The knowledge that the +question of dress will not be one to be almost +weekly settled tends to calm the nerves and +consolidate the character. Clothes are very +cheap now—therefore women buy many new +dresses, and throw the shoddy things away +when, as they soon do, they grow shabby.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[37]</a></span> +Men are far more sensible. Every man knows +the appeal of an old coat. So long as women +are insensible to the appeal of an old gown, +they need never hope to be considered, in +stability of character, the equals of men.</p> + +<p>The passion for ornaments—not ornament—is +another of the unsettling factors in an unsettling +age. The very existence of the "fancy +shop" is not only a menace to, but an attack +on the quiet dignity in the home. The hundreds +of ugly, twisted, bizarre fancy articles which +replace the old few serious "ornaments" are +all so many tokens of the spirit of unrest which +is born of, and in turn bears, our modern +civilisation.</p> + +<p>It is not, alas! presently possible for us as +a nation to return to that calmer, more dignified +state when the lives of men were rooted in their +individual possessions, possessions adorned with +memories of the past and cherished as legacies +to the future. But I wish I could persuade +women to buy good gowns and grow fond of +them, to buy good chairs and tables, and to +refrain from the orgy of the fancy shop. So +much of life, of thought, of energy, of temper +is taken up with the continual change of dress, +house, furniture, ornaments, such a constant +twittering of nerves goes on about all these<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[38]</a></span> +things which do not matter. And the children, +seeing their mother's gnat-like restlessness, +themselves, in turn, seek change, not of ideas +or of adjustments, but of possessions. Consider +the acres of rubbish specially designed for +children and spread out over the counters of +countless toy-shops. Trivial, unsatisfying +things, the fruit of a perverse and intense commercial +ingenuity: things made to sell, and +not to use.</p> + +<p>When the child's birthday comes, relations +send him presents—give him presents, and his +nursery is littered with a fresh array of undesirable +imbecilities—to make way for which +the last harvest of the same empty husks is +thrust aside in the bottom of the toy cupboard. +And in a couple of days most of the flimsy stuff +is broken, and the child is weary to death of it +all. If he has any real toys, he will leave the +glittering trash for nurse to put away and go +back to those real toys.</p> + +<p>When I was a child in the nursery we had—there +were three of us—a large rocking horse, +a large doll's house (with a wooden box as +annexe), a Noah's Ark, dinner and tea things, +a great chest of oak bricks, and a pestle and +mortar. I cannot remember any other toys +that pleased us. Dolls came and went, but<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[39]</a></span> +they were not toys, they were characters, and +now and then something of a clockwork nature +strayed our way—to be broken up and disembowelled +to meet the mechanical needs of +the moment. I remember a desperate hour +when I found that the walking doll from Paris +had clockwork under her crinoline, and could +not be comfortably taken to bed. I had a +black-and-white china rabbit who was hard +enough, in all conscience, but then he never +pretended to be anything but a china rabbit, +and I bought him with my own penny at Sandhurst +Fair. He slept with me for seven or +eight years, and when he was lost, with my play-box +and the rest of its loved contents, on the +journey from France to England, all the dignity +of my thirteen years could not uphold me in +that tragedy.</p> + +<p>It is a mistake to suppose that children are +naturally fond of change. They love what +they know. In strange places they suffer +violently from home-sickness, even when their +loved nurse or mother is with them. They +want to get back to the house they know, the +toys they know, the books they know. And +the loves of children for their toys, especially +the ones they take to bed with them, should be +scrupulously respected. Children nowadays<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[40]</a></span> +have insanitary, dusty Teddy Bears. I had a +"rag doll," but she was stuffed with hair, and +was washed once a fortnight, after which +nurse put in her features again with a quill pen, +and consoled me for any change in her expression +by explaining that she was "growing up." +My little son had a soap-stone mouse, and has +it still.</p> + +<p>The fewer toys a child has the more he will +value them; and it is important that a child +should value his toys if he is to begin to get out +of them their <i>full</i> value. If his choice of objects +be limited, he will use his imagination and +ingenuity in making the objects available serve +the purposes of such plays as he has in hand. +Also it is well to remember that the supplementing +of a child's own toys by other things, <i>lent +for a time</i>, has considerable educational value. +The child will learn quite easily that the difference +between his and yours is not a difference +between the attainable and the unattainable, +but between the constant possession and the +occasional possession. He will also learn to +take care of the things which are lent to him, +and, if he sees that you respect his possessions, +will respect yours all the more in that some of +them are, now and then, for a time and in a +sense, his.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<a href="images/gs13-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs13.jpg" width="600" height="384" alt="model" /></a> +<span class="caption">THE TURQUOISE TEMPLE.</span><div class='attrib'>40]</div> +</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[41]</a></span></p> + +<p>The generosity of aunts, uncles, and relations +generally should be kindly but firmly turned +into useful channels. The purchase of "fancy" +things should be sternly discouraged.</p> + +<p>With the rocking horse, the bricks, the doll's +house, the cart or wheel-barrow, the tea and +dinner set, the Noah's Ark and the puzzle maps, +the nursery will be rudimentarily equipped. +The supplementary equipment can be added +as it is needed, not by the sporadic outbursts +of unclish extravagance, but by well-considered +and slow degrees, and by means in which the +child participates. For we must never forget +that the child loves, both in imagination and +in fact, to create. All his dreams, his innocent +pretendings and make-believes, will help his +nature to unfold, and his hands in their clumsy +efforts will help the dreams, which in turn will +help the little hands.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[42]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>Beauty and Knowledge</div> + +<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">Clever</span> young people find it amusing to sneer +at the old-fashioned ideal of combining instruction +with amusement—a stupid Victorian ideal, +we are told, which a progressive generation has +cast aside. Too hastily, perhaps—too inconsiderately. +"Work while you work and play +while you play" is a motto dealing with a big +question, and one to which there are at least +two sides. Entirely to divorce amusement +and instruction—may not this tend to make +the one dull and the other silly? In this, as +in some other matters, our generation might well +learn a little from its ancestors. In many ways +no doubt we have far surpassed the simple +ideals of our forefathers, but in the matter of +amusements, in the matter of beauty, in the +matter of teaching children things without +boring them, or giving powders really and +truly concealed in jam—have we advanced so +much?</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[43]</a></span></p> + +<p>To begin with, the world is much uglier than +it was. At least England is, and France, and +Belgium, and Italy, and I do not suppose that +Germany, so far ahead of us with airships, is +far behind in the ugliness which seems to be, +with the airship, the hall-mark of a really advanced +nation.</p> + +<p>We are proud, and justly, of the enormous +advances made in the last sixty years in education, +sanitation, and all the complicated and +heavy machinery of the other 'ations, the +'ologies, and the 'isms; but in these other matters +how is it with us? We have grown uglier, and +the things which amuse no longer teach.</p> + +<p>For a good many years now—more than +three hundred—old men have said "Such things +and such were better in our time." And always +the young have disbelieved the saying, which +in due course came from their own lips. Has +it ever occurred to any one that the reason +why old people say this is quite the simplest of +all reasons? They say it because it is <i>true</i>, +and true in our land in quite a special manner. +The chariot wheels of advancing civilisation +must always furrow some green fields, grind +some fair flowers in the dust. But the chariot +wheels in which civilisation to-day advances +grows less and less like a chariot and more and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[44]</a></span> +more like a steam-roller, and unless we steer +better there will very soon be few flowers left +to us.</p> + +<p>Those of us who have reached middle age +already see that the old men spoke truly. +Things are not what they were. Without dealing +with frauds and adulterations and shoddy +of all sorts we can see that things are not so +good as they were, nor yet so beautiful.</p> + +<p>And I do not think that this means just that +we are growing old, and that the fingers of Time +have rubbed the bloom from the fruit of Life. +Because those things which must be now as they +used to be, trees, leaves, rivers, and the laughter +of little children, flowers, the sea at those points +where piers are impracticable, and mountains—the +ones stony and steep enough to resist the +jerry-builder and the funicular railway—still +hold all, and more than all, their old magic +and delight.</p> + +<p>It seems that it is not only that the ugly and +unmeaning things have grown, like a filthy +fungus, over the sheer beauty of the world, +but that the things that people mean to be +beautiful are not beautiful, and the things they +mean to be interesting lack interest.</p> + +<p>And the disease is universal: it attacks new +things as well as old. The cinematographs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[45]</a></span> +even, newest of the new, as things went in the +old world; already the canker has eaten them +up. In the first year of Picture Palaces we all +crowded to see beautiful pictures of beautiful +places: Niagara, the Zambesi Falls, the Grand +Cañon. The comic pieces were perhaps French, +but they were certainly funny. Also we saw +the way the world lived, when it was the other +side of the world: "Elephants a-piling teak," +naked savages, or as near naked as don't matter, +moving in ceremonial dance before the idols that +were the gods of their deep dangerous faith. +Dramas of love and death and pity and poverty. +Quite often in the early days the cinematograph +tale was of some workman driven by want to +the theft of a loaf. It is true that the story +generally ended in his conviction and the +adoption of his charming baby girl by the wife +of the <i>Juge d'Instruction</i>, but all the same +people saw some one poor and sad and tempted, +and were sorry and sad for his sake. Also we +had tales of Indians with men that rode amain, +and horses that one longed to bestride, such +beauties they were, all fire and delicate strong +temperament. War dramas too there were, +where the hero left his sweetheart, and turned +coward perhaps, redeeming himself with magnificent +completeness in the splendid <i>débâcle</i><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[46]</a></span> +of a forlorn hope. That is all over. Already +the sordid, heavy hand that smears commercial +commonplace on all the bright facets of romance +has obscured the vivid possibilities of the +cinematograph. We have now for fun the +elaborate hurting of one American person by +another American person; for scenery, American +flat-iron buildings; for romance the incredibly +unimportant emotions of fleshy American actresses +and actors. There are two girls, good +and bad; two men, bad and good. In the end +the good man gets the good girl, which is, of +course, as it should be, or would be if we could +believe in any moral quality in these fat-faced +impersonators. You don't care a bit who wins, +but none the less, the four of them mouth and +mop and mow and make faces at you through +five interminable acts, and when the good young +man marries the good young woman in a parlour +grossly furnished according to American ideals, +you feel that both of them are well punished +for their unpardonable existence. All real and +delicate romance has, we observe, been wiped +out by the cinematograph.</p> + +<div class="figleft" style="width: 431px;"> +<a href="images/gs14-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs14.jpg" width="431" height="600" alt="model" /></a> +<span class="caption">THE HALL OF PEARL AND RED</span> +</div> + +<p>It has long been the fashion to sneer at the +Crystal Palace, and indeed the poor dear has +gone from bad to worse. There are exhibitions +there all exactly like all other exhibitions: +Switch-backs, <i>Montagnes Russes</i>, Silhouettes, +Tumble-scumbles, Weary waves, Threepenny +thrills (where you hustle against strangers and +shriek at the impact). But once the Crystal +Palace was otherwise. In the Victorian days +we sneer at, when our fathers could not see that +there was any quarrel between knowledge and +beauty, both of whom they loved, they built +the Crystal Palace as a Temple vowed to these +twin Deities of their worship. Think what the +Crystal Palace was then. Think what its +authors intended it to be. Think what, for a +little time, it was. A place of beauty, a place +where beauty and knowledge went hand in +hand. It is quite true that a Brobdingnagian +Conservatory does not seem so beautiful to us +as it did to the Prince Consort and Sir Joseph +Paxton. It is true that even in the palmiest +days of the Crystal Palace you barked your +shins over iron girders—painted a light blue, +my memory assures me—and that the boards of +the flooring were so far apart that you could +lose, down the cracks of them, not only your +weekly sixpence or your birthday shilling, but +even the sudden unexpected cartwheel (do +they still call a crown that?) contributed by +an uncle almost more than human. It is true +that the gravel of the paths in the "grounds"<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[47]</a><br /><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[48]</a></span> +tired your feet and tried your temper, and +that the adventure ended in a clinging to bony +fingers and admonitions from nurse "not to +drag so." But on the other hand....</p> + +<p>Think of the imagination, the feeling for +romance that went to the furnishing of the old +Crystal Palace. There was a lake in the +grounds of Penge Park. How would our +twentieth century <i>entrepreneurs</i> deal with a +lake? We need not pause to invent an answer. +We know it would be something new and +nasty. How did these despised mid-Victorians +deal with it? They set up, amid the rocks +and reeds and trees of the island in that lake, +life-sized images of the wonders of a dead world. +On a great stone crouched a Pterodactyl, his +vast wings spread for flight. A mammoth sloth +embraced a tree, and I give you my word that +when you came on him from behind, you, in +your six years, could hardly believe that he +was not real, that he would not presently leave +the tree and turn his attention to your bloused +and belted self. (Little boys wore caps with +peaks then, and blouses with embroidered +collars.) Convinced, at last, by the cold feel of +his flank to your fat little hand, that he was +but stone, you kept, none the less, a memory +of him that would last your life, and make his<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[49]</a></span> +name, when you met it in a book, as thrilling +as the name of a friend in the list of birthday +honours. There was an Ichthyosaurus too, +and another chap whose name I forget, but he +had a scalloped crest all down his back to the +end of his tail. And the Dinosaurus ... he had +a round hole in his antediluvian stomach: and, +with a brother—his own turn to come next, +as in honour bound—to give you a leg-up, you +could explore the roomy interior of the Dinosaur +with feelings hardly to be surpassed by those +of bandits in a cave. It is almost impossible +to over-estimate the Dinosaurus as an educational +influence. On your way back to the +Palace itself you passed Water Temples surrounded +by pools where water-lilies grew. +Afterwards, when you read of tanks and lotuses +and India, you knew what to think.</p> + +<p>There were Sphinxes—the correct plural was +told you by aunts, and you rejected it on the +terrace—and, within, more smooth water with +marble at the edge and more lilies, and goldfish, +palms, and ferns, and humming pervasive music +from the organ. There were groves or shrubberies; +you entered them a-tremble with a +fearful joy. You knew that round the next +corner or the next would be black and brown +and yellow men; savages, with their huts and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[50]</a></span> +their wives and their weapons, their looking-glass-pools +and their reed tunics, so near you +that it was only a step across a little barrier +and you could pretend that you also were a +black, a brown, or a yellow person, and not a +little English child in a tunic, belt, and peaked +cap. You never took the step, but none the +less those savages were your foes and your +friends, and when you met them in your geography +you thrilled to the encounter.</p> + +<p>Further, there were Courts; I first met +Venus, the armless wonder of Milo, and Hermes, +embodied vision of Praxiteles, and the Discobolus, +whom we all love, and who is exactly +like Mr. Graham Wallas in youth, in the Grecian +Court. In the Egyptian Court there were +pictured pillars, and the very word Egypt is +to me for their sake a Word of Power to this +day. And the Spanish Court, the court of the +Alhambra, the lovely mosaic, the gold and the +blue and the red, the fountain, the marble, the +strange unnatural beauty of the horseshoe +arches....</p> + +<p>I shall never see the Alhambra now, but it is +because of the Spanish Court at the Crystal +Palace that there will always be an empty ache +in my thought, an ache of the heart, a longing +that is not all pain, at its name, a feeling like<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[51]</a></span> +a beautiful dwarf despair, in that I never shall +see that blue and red and golden glory, and the +mystery of its strange mis-shapen arches that +open to the whole world of dreams.</p> + +<p>Say of the Mid-Victorians what you will; +they did at least know, when they set them, the +seeds of Romance. Think of Euston Station: +those glorious pillars, the magnificent dream +of an Egyptian building to loom through the +Egyptian darkness of London's fogs. And +the architecture of Egypt was too expensive, and +Euston remains, a magnificent memorial—the +child of genius stunted by finance.</p> + +<p>There was Madame Tussaud's too, a close +link with the French Revolution: the waxen +heads of kings and democrats, the very guillotine +itself. And Madame Tussaud's daughter, with +the breathing breast that seemed alive, and the +little old woman in the black bonnet, Madame +herself, who had seen the rise of Republics and +the deaths of kings. These things, last time I +trod those halls, were put in the shade, their +place usurped by vulgar tableaux, explaining +to the bored spectators what happens to a vulgar +young man with a wife whose skirt is much too +short in front and her hair very badly done, if +he leaves his home for the society of sirens +and cardsharpers. The tableaux were cheap<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[52]</a></span> +and nasty, and taught one nothing that one +could not learn from the <i>Police News</i>.</p> +<div class="figright" style="width: 600px;"> +<a href="images/gs15-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs15.jpg" width="600" height="432" alt="model" /></a> +<span class="caption">A CHINESE TEMPLE</span> +</div> +<p>Once there were nightingales that sang in +the gardens on Loampit Hill. Now it is all +villas. Once the Hilly Fields were hilly fields +where the children played, and there were +primroses. Once the road from Eltham to +Woolwich was a grassy lane with hedges and +big trees in the hedges, and wild pinks and +Bethlehem stars, and ragged robin and campion. +Now the trees are cut down and there are no +more flowers. It is asphalt all the way, and +here and there seats divided by iron rods so +that tired tramps should not sleep on them. +And the green fields by Mottingham where the +kingcups used to grow, and the willows by the +little stream, they are eaten up by yellow +caterpillars of streets all alike, all horrible; +while in London old handsome houses are +tenements, and children play on the dirty +doorsteps of them with dead mice and mutton +bones for toys. In the country women wear +men's tweed caps instead of sunbonnets, and +Hinde's curlers by day instead of curl papers +(which if you were pretty, looked like wreaths +of white roses) by night. And everything is +getting uglier and uglier. And no one seems +to care. And only the old people remember<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[53]</a></span> +that things were not always ugly, remember +how different things were—once.</p> + +<p>Therefore I would plead with all those who +have to do with children to resist and to denounce +uglification wherever they may meet +with it, and to remember that there is knowledge +which goes hand in hand with beauty. To show +a child beautiful things, and to answer as well +all the questions he will ask about them, to +charm and thrill his imagination with pictures +and statues and models of the wonders of the +world, to familiarise the child with beauty, so +that he knows ugliness when he meets it, and +hates it for the outrage it is to the beauty he +has known and loved ever since he was very +little—this is worth doing. If we would make +beauty the dear rule of a man's life, and ugliness +the hated exception, we should make beauty as +familiar to the child as the air he breathes, and +if we associate knowledge with beauty the child +will love them both.</p> + + +<hr class='chap' /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[54]</a></span></p> + + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>Of Building and Other Matters</div> + +<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">A moment</span> of rapturous anticipation lights life +when the kind aunt or uncle has given the +bricks, when the flat, sliding lid has been +slipped back, and the smooth wooden cubes +and oblongs have tumbled resoundingly on +table or floor.</div> + +<p>"I am going to build a palace," says the +child. Or a tower or a church. And, the +highest hopes inspiring him, he sets out on +the new adventure. But he does not build a +palace or a church, or even a railway station. +What he builds is a factory, or a wall, or, in +the case of the terra-cotta bricks, a portion of +a French gentleman's country villa—the kind +you see dozens of along the railway between +Paris and Versailles. And however strong the +child's desire that what he shall build shall +be a palace or a church, that is, something +beautiful and romantic, what he does build +will always be the last thing he does, or ought<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[55]</a></span> +to, admire. The fault is in the materials. They +are lacking both in quality and quantity. No +box of bricks that can at present be bought for +money will build anything that can satisfy an +imaginative child. An ordinary box of bricks—a +really handsome one—measures, say, 12 +by 8 by 2 in. If anything admirable is to +be built from this amount of material the +material ought to be presented in very small +cubes, oblongs and arches—say 1 in. by ½ in. +for the largest bricks, and going down to ¼ by +¼ by ¼ in. Given these proportions a really +pretty though undistinguished building might +result. But in the box of bricks 12 by 8 by +2 in. the smallest cube measures ¾ in. and the +largest brick 9 by ¾ by ¾ in. These long slabs +of surface cannot be broken and disguised in +such small buildings as the only ones which +the materials are enough to build. Hence, +the deadly monotony of façade, broken only +by the three or, in the case of the really handsome +box, five arches, and suggesting nothing +so much as a "works" or a workhouse.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 550px;"> +<img src="images/gs16.png" width="550" height="549" alt="tower" /> +<span class="caption">THE SQUARE TOWER.</span> +</div> + + +<p>In the bricks themselves there is not enough +variety. The stone bricks, it is true, have +broken out into a variety of ugly shapes and a +blue colour with which you can, if you like, +build a Mansard roof. But a Mansard roof in<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[56]</a></span> +a coarse ugly blue tint, is no thing of beauty. +Besides, it needs a solid substructure to support +it, and if you make your building solid, every +brick in your box will be used up, and all you +will have to show for it will be a partially built +wing of a peculiarly undesirable villa residence, +replete with every modern inconvenience. Nor +must it be supposed that the difficulty can be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[57]</a></span> +met by adding more and more boxes of bricks. +Add them, by all means; and the result will +be a larger and probably an uglier factory, +or a completed, and therefore more completely +hideous, villa. Unless you are a millionaire, +and have a toy cupboard as big as a pantechnicon, +you will never have enough bricks to +build up the solid masses which rest the eye, +and give solidity and dignity to architecture. +Among such solid masses <i>steps</i> are not the least +important. Every child knows that a really +good flight of steps will take half the bricks in +his box and leave insufficient material for the +edifice to which the steps were intended to lead +up. The tall broad smooth wall, its quiet surface +disturbed only by one or two windows, a +flight of steps and a doorway, is for ever out of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[58]</a></span> +reach of the child who has only bricks wherewith +to build.</p> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/gs17.png" width="500" height="268" alt="arches" /> +<span class="caption">SHELL ARCHES</span> +</div> + +<p>The arches supplied with boxes of bricks are +usually few and badly proportioned. There is +seldom any provision for setting them up in +a colonnade.</p> + +<p>The pillars which will support the ends of +two arches are too wide for the <i>end</i> arch, which +is single. This difficulty is dealt with in stone +bricks, but not in wooden ones; at any rate +so far as my experience goes.</p> + +<p>There never was a time, one supposes, when +so much money was spent on children and +their toys. It is impossible to believe that, +should some toy maker design and put on the +market really desirable bricks for children, +there would not be a ready sale for them. I +suggest, then, that bricks are too large, and too +small—and that what is needed is much smaller +bricks, and much larger ones. The bricks in +the old chest in our nursery started with 2-in. +cubes, and went on in gradations of 2-in. to the +largest brick—12 by 2 by 2 in. The chest +itself must have been at least 4 by 2 by 1½ ft. +Another detestable quality in our modern +bricks is their inexactness—a sixteenth or +even a quarter of an inch, more or less, is no +more to the maker of bricks nowadays than it<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[59]</a></span> +is to a bad dressmaker. Our bricks were well +and truly cut: they were of seasoned oak, +smooth and pleasant to touch—none of the +rough-sawn edges which vex the hand and +render the building unstable; they were heavy—a +very important quality in bricks. They +"stayed put." I suggest that such bricks as +these, supplemented by arches of varied curves, +but unvarying thicknesses, and slabs of board +varying in breadth but not in length, would +not be a toy beyond the purse of kind uncles +and aunts, and certainly not beyond the means +of our Council schools. The slabs of boards +are to build steps with and to make roofs with. +Every child who has ever built with bricks feels +the reckless wastefulness of using for steps the +bricks so much needed for walls and towers. +And who has not experienced the aggravation +of finding when his tower is built that he has +used up all the long bricks near its foundation +and has now none left which are long enough +to lay across its summit and form its roof? +The slabs of board should be, like the bricks, of +seasoned oak, and should be an inch thick. +There should be plenty of arches—so as to +render possible some sort of resemblance to +Norman and classical architecture.</p> + +<p>But bricks alone, however beautiful and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[60]</a></span> +varied, cannot as building material have the +value which material freely chosen would have. +Children love to make mud pies, and to build +sand castles, because the material is plastic +and responds with more or less of docility to +their demands upon it. Also there is always +enough of it, which there never is of bricks, or +for the matter of that, of plasticine. I can +imagine a splendid happiness for a child in +a bushel of plasticine—but the sticks of plasticine +are too small to be made into anything +architecturally satisfying; and much too expensive +for ordinary children to have in any +but such quantities as encourage niggling. +You will notice that children never tire of +building sand castles on the sea-shore—but +they would soon tire of building with a quart +of damp sand on a table. It is true that the +sea washes away your sand castle, usually +before it is finished, but its end is finely catastrophic +and full of damp delightful incident. +Also the climax has the great essential of drama—it +is inevitable. How different the demolition +of the brick-built house by mamma, who wants +space for cutting out, or by Mary, who desires +to lay the table. The most promising of +palaces, the most beautiful of bridges, are, +at the urgence of these grown-up needs, swept<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[61]</a></span> +away, and so, never being able to finish anything, +the builder becomes discouraged. Perhaps +he takes to the floor as an eligible building +site, only to find his buildings exposed to the +tempestuous petticoat of Mary, or the carelessly +stepping high-heeled shoes of mamma. The same +thing happens with a dolls' school, or a dolls' +dinner-party, or any game requiring pageantry +of any sort—so that little girls who would like +their dolls to be actors in some scene of magnificence +find no safe place for the actors save +in their arms—and nurse with enforced premature +maternal fussings the doll who, in happier +circumstances, might be a Druid or a martyr, +or Francis the First at the Field of the Cloth of +Gold. It is better to the child's mind that the +cherished doll should safely be baby for ever, +than that it should be Francis the First and get +walked on.</p> + +<p>In any house where space makes such a thing +possible, a table might be set aside for children, +to be their very own—a table on which neither +food nor millinery should ever trespass. Of +course it is needful that toys and pseudo-toys +should be "put away" daily, but it is not +necessary that they should all be put away. +Those which are being used in some splendid +half-developed scheme might surely be allowed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[62]</a></span> +to stay where they are, so that it may be possible +to go on with the game next day. A truce might +be called of that ruthless tidying up which, every +day, destroys the new idea, and compels the +child each day to produce a new scheme instead +of allowing it to work on yesterday's and bring +it to something a little nearer the perfection +which it touched when the child's mind first +conceived it. But, it may be urged, children +leave everything half-finished, and go off to +something else. Of course they do—but clear +away the half-finished thing, and you will find +when they come back from the butterfly flight +after some other interest, that they will not be +pleased with you.</p> + +<p>"I've put all your bricks nicely away," you +say proudly; and Tommy will say "Bother!" +in his heart, even if his lips are sufficiently +trained to avoid that expletive and to substitute: +"I do wish you hadn't: I wanted to +finish building my tower."</p> + +<p>You see one thing leads to another. It isn't +that children are any more bird-witted than +we are: it is that they have not yet learned +to restrain the thousand curiosities, desires, and +creative impulses proper to their age. You, +of course, if you desired to set up a tableau of +the Field of the Cloth of Gold, would sit down<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[63]</a></span> +with a bit of pencil and the back of an envelope +and jot down all the properties required for +staging the scene. But the child who has +"had" the Field "in History," and whose +imagination has been stirred by the name of +it—a thing that will happen under the stupidest +of teachers—sets up Henry and Francis in paper +crowns and only then begins to see that tents +and banners and cloth of gold are lacking. +Perhaps he goes off to the village shop to get +flags, perhaps to your handkerchief case for +tent-cloth, perhaps to the meadow beyond the +orchard to gather buttercups. While on any +of these quests some supremely important +event may strike across his plans, and overshadow +them—a new kitten, a gift from the +gardener of plants for his little garden, or +the fact that some one is going fishing. Then +Francis and Henry are forgotten, the buttercups +left dying on the doorstep, and the +tent-cloth crammed into the pockets among +string, stamps, acid drops, and pieces of the +watch he took to pieces last holidays and never +put together again, and he will follow the new +trail. But he will come back to the Field of +the Cloth of Gold, and if you have "tidied up" +the kings and put their crowns in the wastepaper +basket the child will be disappointed +and worried, his imagination checked and his +scheme baffled.</p> + +<div class="figright" style="width: 345px;"> +<img src="images/gs18.png" width="345" height="550" alt="tents" /> +<span class="caption">HANDKERCHIEF TENTS.</span> +</div> + +<p>His annexation of your handkerchiefs will +not occur if you have accustomed him to come +to you or to his nurse for the means to his small +ends; but if there is no one to whom he can +apply for help, you will find that he will not +stick at the sacred threshold of your handkerchief +case. The tents of the Field of the Cloth +of Gold will be far more important to him than +the inviolability of that scented treasure-house—unless, +of course, you happen to have explained +to him exactly how much you dislike that your +handkerchiefs should keep the sort of company +they meet with in his pockets. Then, if he +loves you, and has found you reasonable, he +will refrain, while wondering at your prejudices. +But he will—or ought to—find some other +material for tents—letter paper perhaps. Letter +paper makes quite good tents, though not nearly +so good, of course, as handkerchiefs folded +diagonally—supported by a central pole, say +a penholder, and fastened down at the tucked-in +corners with pins or rose thorns. You can +explain to him that rose-thorns hurt handkerchiefs, +but you will not punish him if this +has not occurred to him. And this brings one +to the question of crime and punishment, of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[65]</a><br /><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[66]</a></span> +which perhaps I had better say what I have to +say before I go on talking about bricks and +how to supplement them. As I was saying, +one thing leads to another.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[67]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>The Moral Code</div> + +<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">In</span> attempting to explain and enforce a moral +code, the first and most essential need is to +formulate definitely to oneself the code which +one proposes to enforce and to explain. There +is nothing from which children, and subject +human beings generally, suffer so much as the +incoherence of the thought of those in authority +over them. Before you can begin to lay down +the law you must know what that law is, and +your heart, soul, and spirit must not only know +it, but approve it, before you can gain a willing +obedience to it from those on whom you wish +to impose it. By this I do not mean only that +we ought to make up our minds whether this, +that, or the other isolated act is right or wrong, +as it occurs, but that we ought to have a clear +perception and knowledge of the things that +are right and the things that are wrong, and +have a standard which we can apply to any +new action brought under our notice, so that,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[68]</a></span> +measuring the new act by our old standard, we +shall be able to say, with some sort of rough +accuracy, "This is wrong," or "This is right."</div> + +<p>And the standard of expediency is not a good +one for this purpose, nor is the standard of +custom, nor yet the standard of gentility or +the standard of success in life. Children are +not good judges of expediency. The law of +mere custom will not be strong enough to bind +them when desire calls with enchanting voice +to forbidden things. Gentility and the gospel +of getting on will leave them cold. You may +at first deal merely with a succession of unrelated +particulars, saying, "This is right," "This +is wrong," beating down the children's questionings +by your mere <i>Ipse dixit;</i> but a time will +come when it will not be enough, in answer to +their "Why is it wrong?" "Why is it right?" +to answer "Because I say so." The child will +want some other standard which he himself +can apply. The standard of what you say may +be a shifting one, and anyhow, he cannot be +at all sure what you will say unless he knows +what is your standard, the standard by which +you will decide whether to say, in any given +case, that a thing is wrong or right. And in +order that you may clearly set before the child +your own moral standard you must first have<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[69]</a></span> +set it very clearly before yourself. It is not +enough to say, "Stealing is wrong," "Lying +is wrong," "Greediness is wrong." If you +feel that these things are wrong because they +are contrary to the will of God, you will not +find that that explanation is sufficient for a +child unless he knows very much more about +God than His name and certain miraculous +and incomprehensible attributes of His. He +will want to know what is the will of God, to +which these wrong things are contrary. And +he will want very much to know the definite +right as well as the definite wrong. You will +have to give the child a standard that can be +applied to positives as well as negatives.</p> + +<p>There is a very simple standard by which to +measure the actions of children—and, much more +severely, our own actions. It is set up in the +words of Christ: "Do unto others as you would +they should do unto you"—a standard so simple +that quite little children can understand and +apply it, a standard so severe that were it +understood and applied by us who are no longer +children, the warped, tangled, rotten web we +call civilisation could not endure for a day. +There is no other standard by which a child +can judge its own actions, and yours, and +judge them justly.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[70]</a></span></p> + +<p>Having fixed your standard it will be necessary +to try your own actions by it as well as the +child's. And this standard will give you the +only vital code of morality, because it compels +the continual exercise of imagination, the +continual preening and flight of the wings of +the soul. You cannot order your life by that +Divine precept without a hundred times a day +asking yourself, "How should <i>I</i> like that, if +I were not myself?" without continually +putting yourself, imaginatively, in some one +else's place. And when the child asks, "Why +is it wrong to steal?" you can lead him to see +how little he would like to have his own possessions +stolen. When he asks, "Why is it wrong +to lie?" you may teach him to imagine his +own bitterness if others should deceive him. +It is, of course, much easier to say, "It is wrong +because I say so," or even "because God says +so"; but if you want to mark it right or +wrong, to grave it deeply and ineffaceably on +the tables of the heart and the soul, teach the +child to see for himself <i>how</i> things are right +and wrong—and to judge of them by that +one Divine and unfailing rule.</p> + +<p>Of course even when the child knows what +is right he will not always do it, any more than +you do: and one of the questions to be considered<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[71]</a></span> +is how you shall deal with those lapses +from moral rectitude of which he, no less than +you, will often be guilty. Punishments, the +old savage punishments, were revenge, and +nothing but revenge, a desire to "pay out" +the offender, to take an eye for an eye, a tooth +for a tooth. More humane and reasonable +legislators have sought to prove that punishment +is curative—that the fear of punishment +will deter people from doing wrong. A distinguished +official of the Home Office gave it +as his opinion only the other day that punishment, +no matter how severe, will not act as a +deterrent, if there is ever so slight a chance of +the criminal's escaping it. What would deter +would be the <i>certainty</i> of punishment, however +slight. Now since you are not omniscient you +cannot pretend to your child that if he does +wrong you are certain to know and to punish +him: if you are silly enough to pretend it, he +will find you out immediately, and estimate +your lie at its true blackness. You can, however, +without any pretence, assure him that +if he does wrong he himself will know it, that +it will make him feel unclean and nasty, and +miserable till he is able to wash himself in the +waters of repentance and forgiveness. That +if he acts meanly and dirtily he will feel dirty<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[72]</a></span> +and mean, and if he acts bravely and cleanly +he will feel clean and brave. And he will find +that what you say is true. But not unless you +shall have succeeded in convincing him that +your standard is a true standard, and that the +things which that standard shows to be wrong +are wrong indeed. Here is the highest work of +the imagination: to teach the child so to put +himself in the place of the one he has wronged +that the knowledge of that wrong shall be its +own punishment.</p> + +<p>No one desires, of course, that a child should +be always feeling his own moral pulse: if he +has learned that there is a right and a wrong +way he will not be always bothering about which +way he may be living—it will be only when +something goes amiss that he will stop and +consider. Just as one does not stop to think +whether one is breathing properly, only when +one chokes one knows that one isn't.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<a href="images/gs19-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs19.jpg" width="600" height="360" alt="model" /></a> +<span class="caption">ONE HALF OF THE CITY.</span></div> + +<p>Punishment, however, should not be confused +with the consequences of action, and +while children are yet too small to understand +all that God may be to them, it is possible to +show them the <i>consequences</i> of their misdeeds, +magnifying these beyond the consequences of +the act to be reprobated and thus pointing the +general moral. I mean that one may honourably +apply, to the small wrong-doings of childhood, +the <i>sort</i> of consequences—proportioned, +of course, to the wrong-doing—which would +result from such wrong-doing on a larger scale +by a grown-up person. It will be exceedingly +troublesome and painful for you, but perhaps +its painfulness to you may be the measure of +its value to the child. For instance, Tommy +steals a penny, knowing that to steal pennies +is wrong. He is very little, and a penny is +very little, and your impulse, if not to slap him, +might be to tell him that he is a very naughty +boy and have done with it. It will go to your +heart to bring home to him the consequences +of theft, especially as you cannot do it at once; +but if, next time you are about to send him to +the shop for something, you say, "No: I can't +send you because you might steal my pennies +as you did the other day"—this will be hateful +for you to do—but it will show him more plainly +than anything else what happens to people who +steal. They are not trusted. And the same +with lies. Show him that those who tell lies +are not believed.</p> + +<p>But, remembering how it felt to be a child, +have pity, and do not teach him these lessons +when any one else is there. Let the humiliation +of them be a secret between you two alone.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[73]</a><br /><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[74]</a></span> +Only when a wrong has been done which +demands a restitution or an amend should the +soul of the child, shamed with wrong-doing, be +exposed to alien eyes.</p> + +<p>When we sit in judgment on the aggressions +and on the shortcomings of others the first +need is neither justice nor mercy, but imagination +with self-knowledge. The judge should +be able to put himself in the place of the accused, +to perceive, by sympathetic vision, the +point of view of the one who stands before the +judgment-seat. The judge is an adult human +being, and therefore has some knowledge of the +mental and moral processes of human beings. +He should use this knowledge; and when it +comes to a grown-up judging a child, it is no +less necessary for the judge to place himself +imaginatively in the place of the small offender. +And this cannot be done by imagination and +self-consideration alone. Memory is needed. +Let me say it again: there is only one way +of understanding children; they cannot be +understood by imagination, by observation, +nor even by love. They can only be understood +by memory. Only by remembering how +you felt and thought when you yourself were +a child can you arrive at any understanding of +the thoughts and feelings of children. When<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[75]</a></span> +you were a child you suffered intensely from +injustice, from want of understanding, in your +grown-up censors. You were punished when +you had not meant to do wrong: you escaped +punishment when you had not meant to do +right. The whole scheme of grown-up law +seemed to you, and very likely was, arbitrary +and incomprehensible. And you suffered from +it desperately. So much that, even if you have +now forgotten all that you suffered, the mark +of that suffering none the less remains on your +soul to this day.</p> + +<p>It would seem that the humiliations, the +mortifications endured in childhood leave an +ineffaceable brand on the spirit. How then +can we not remember, and, remembering, refrain +from hurting other children as we were +hurt?</p> + +<p>The spirit of the child is sensitive to the +slightest change in the atmosphere about him. +You can convey disapproval quite easily—and +approval also. But while most parents and +guardians are constantly alive to the necessity +for expressing disapproval and inflicting punishment, +the other side of the medal seems to be +hidden from them.</p> + +<p>The most prevalent idea of training children +is the idea of prohibition and punishment.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[76]</a></span> +"You are not to do it! You will? Then take +that!" the blow or punishment following, +expresses simply and exactly the whole theory +of moral education held by the mass of modern +mothers. The vast mistake, both in the education +of children and government of nations, is +the heavy stress laid on the negative virtues. +Also the fact that punishment follows on the +failure <i>not</i> to do certain things—whereas no +commensurate reward is offered even for success +in <i>not</i> doing, let alone for success in active and +honourable well-doing. The reward of negative +virtue is negative also, and consists simply in +non-punishment. The rewards of active virtue +are, in the world of men, money and praise. +But there are deeds for which money cannot +pay, and sometimes these are rewarded by +medals and paragraphs in the newspapers—not +at all the same thing as being rewarded by the +praise of your fellow-men. Now children, like +all sane human beings, love praise. They love it +more keenly perhaps than other human beings +because their natural craving for it has not +been overlaid with false modesties and shames. +They have not learned that</p> + +<div class='poem'> +Praise to the face<br /> +Is open disgrace.<br /> +</div> + +<div class='unindent'>On the contrary, praise to the face seems to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[77]</a></span> +them natural, right, and altogether desirable. +See that they get it.</div> + +<p>Do you remember when you were little how +you struggled to exercise some tiresome negative +virtue, such as not biting your nails, not teasing +the cat, not executing, with your school-boots, +that heavy shuffling movement, so simply +relieving to you, so mysteriously annoying to +the grown-ups? Can you have forgotten how +for ages and ages—three or four days, even—you +refrained from drinking water with your +mouth full of food, from leaving your handkerchief +about in obvious spots natural and convenient, +how you sternly denied yourself the +pleasure of drawing your hoop stick along the +front railings—because, though you enjoyed +this musical exercise, others did not? And +how, all through the interminable period of +self-denial, you heartened yourself to these +dismal refrainings by the warm comfortable +thought, "<i>Won't</i> they be pleased?"—and +how they never were. They took it all as a +matter of course. To them, because they had +forgotten how it felt to be a child, all your +heroic sacrifices and renunciations counted as +nothing. To them it was natural that a child +should keep his fingers out of his mouth, and +off the tail of Puss, should keep his feet still<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[78]</a></span> +and his handkerchief in his pocket, should do +the suitable things with meat, drink, and hoop-sticks. +They never noticed, and so they never +praised. But when, worn out by long abstinence +from natural joys, natural relaxations, you +broke one of those rules which seemed to you +so useless and so arbitrary, then they noticed +fast enough.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/gs20.png" width="500" height="233" alt="poor cat" /> +<span class="caption">THE TAIL OF PUSS.</span> +</div> + +<p>"Can you <i>never</i> remember," they said, "just +a simple thing like not biting your nails?" +Bitter aloes following, no doubt. Or, "I really +should have thought," they would say, "that +considering the number of times I've spoken +about it you would remember not to make that +frightful noise," with boots or hoop sticks or +a blade of wet grass or what not. They did +not pause to think, in their earnest grown-up<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[79]</a></span> +business of "bringing the boy up," how many, +how very many, and how seemingly silly, were +the "don'ts" which you had to remember. +But you will not be like that: you will notice +and approve, and most needful of all, reward +with praise the earnest, difficult refrainings of +the child who is trying to please you: who is +trying to learn the long table of your commandments +all beginning with "Thou shalt +not," and to practise them, not because these +commandments appeal to him as reasonable or +just or useful, but just because he loves you, +wants to please you, and, deepest need of love, +wants you to be pleased with him.</p> + +<p>A hasty yet determined effort at putting +yourself in his place is the thing needed every +time you have to sit in judgment on the actions +of another human being—most of all when that +human being is a little child. If we cultivated +this habit we should not hurt other people as +we do. I have seen cruel things.</p> + +<p>A little girl, suffering from a slight affection +of the eye, was given by a sympathetic aunt +the run of a box of that aunt's old ball-dresses. +She spent a whole hour in arranging a costume +which seemed to her to be of royal beauty. +A crushed pink tulle dress, a many-coloured +striped Roman sash, white satin slippers, put on<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[80]</a></span> +over the black strapped shoes, and turning up +very much at the toes. White gloves, very +dirty and wrinkled like a tortoise's legs over the +plump dimpled arms. Hair dressed high on the +head over a pad of folded stockings, secured by +hairpins borrowed from the housemaid. A +wreath, of crushed red calico roses from somebody's +last summer's hat, some pearl beads, +the property of cook, and a blue heart out of a +cracker—saved since Christmas.</p> + +<p>"I am a beautiful Princess," said the child, +and the housemaid responded heartily: "That +you are, ducky, and no mistake. Go and show +mother."</p> + +<p>But mother, when she was told that this +stumbling, long-tailed bundle of crushed finery +was a beautiful Princess, laughed and said, +"Princess Rag-Bag, I should say."</p> + +<p>"It's only pretending, you know," the child +explained, wondering why explanations should +be needed by mother and not by Eliza.</p> + +<p>The mother laughed again. "I shouldn't +pretend to be a Princess with that great stye +in my eye," she said, and thought no more +about it.</p> + +<p>But the child remembers to this day how +she slunk away and tore off the beautiful +Princess-clothes, and cried and cried and cried,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[81]</a></span> +and wished that she was dead. Children really +do wish that, sometimes.</p> + +<p>Another form of cruelty is mere carelessness. +A child spends hours in preparing some surprise +for you—decorates your room with flowers, not +in the best taste perhaps, and fading maybe +before your impatiently awaited arrival—or +ties scarves and handkerchiefs to the banisters +to represent flags at your home-coming.</p> + +<p>"Very pretty, dear," you say carelessly, +hardly looking—and the child sees that you +hardly look, "and now clear it all away, there's +a dear!"</p> + +<p>The child clears it all away, and with the +dying flowers something else is cleared away, +something that will no more live again than will +the faded flowers.</p> + +<p>Be generous of praise—it is the dew that +waters the budding flowers of kindness and +love and unselfishness: it is to all that is best +in the child the true Elixir of Life.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[82]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER IX</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>Praise and Punishment</div> + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<a href="images/gs21-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs21.jpg" width="600" height="409" alt="model" /></a> +<span class="caption">THE OTHER HALF OF THE CITY.</span> +</div> + +<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">While</span> admitting that no pains can be too +great, no labours too arduous to spend upon the +education of the child, we must not shut our +eyes to the fact that the sacrifice of the grown-up +may often be better for him—or much more +often her—than it is for the child for whom +that sacrifice is made. There is a certain +danger that the enthusiastic educator, passionately +desiring to sacrifice her whole life, may +incidentally, and quite without meaning it, +sacrifice something very vital in the child. +For the child whose every want is anticipated, +whose every thought is considered, who is +surrounded by the softness of love and the +sweetness of sympathy, is not unlikely to disappoint +and dismay the fond parent or guardian, +pastor or master, by growing up selfish, +cowardly, heartless and ungrateful; with +no capacity for obedience, no power of endurance,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[83]</a></span> +no hardihood, no resource—whining +in adversity and intolerable in success. The +object of education is to fit the child for the +life of the man. Once it was held that a +rigorous discipline, enforced by violence, was +the best preparation for the life which is never +too easy or too soft. Now we have changed all +that, and there is some danger that the pendulum +may swing too far, and that the aim of +education may come to mean only the ensuring +of a happy childhood, without arming the +child for the battle of life. It is right that +to the educator the child should be the prime +object, the centre of the universe, the prime +consideration to which every other consideration +must give way. But there is the +danger that the child may become his own +prime object, not only the centre of his own +universe, but its circumference, and cherish, +deeply rooted in his inmost soul, the conviction +that all other considerations should and will +give way to his desires.</div> + +<p>Life, we know, will teach him, in her rough, +hard school, that he is only the centre of his +own universe in that sense in which the same +is true of us all—that far from being the prime +object of the world which surrounds him, he +himself counts for little or nothing, except to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[84]</a></span> +those who love him—and that the consideration +he receives will not be, as was the consideration +lavished on him in his childhood, free, ungrudging, +and invariable, but will be conditioned +by the services he renders to others and the +extent to which he can be to them pleasant or +useful. Life, it is true, will teach him all this, +but if her teaching be a course of lessons in a +wholly new subject, they will be very difficult +to learn, and the learning will hurt. Whereas +if, from the very beginning, the child is taught +to understand the interdependence of human +beings, the fact that rights involve duties and +that duties confer rights, he will be able to +apply and to use for his own help the +lessons which later life will teach him. More, +he will have at the outset of life the advantage +which one with a clear conception of rights +and duties has over one who only sees life as a +muddle and maze of things that are "jolly +hard lines." They suffer as without hope who +see that the world needs mending, and have +never made up their minds what sort of world +they would like. Whereas the child to whom, +quite early, the lesson of human solidarity has +been taught will, when he shall be a man, +know very well what he wants, and will be able, +however humbly, to help, in his day and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[85]</a></span> +generation, to re-mould the world to the fashion +of his desire.</p> + +<p>It is not difficult to teach children the duties +of kindness and helpfulness to others, and +the duty of public spirit and loyalty to their +fellow-men. A healthy child is active, energetic, +and deeply desirous of using his senses and his +faculties. It is possible to assign to quite a +small child certain duties, but the wise educator +will manage to make such duties privileges and +not tasks. The system of sentencing children +to the performance of useful offices by way of +punishment is abominable. It gives them for +ever a distaste for that particular form of social +service.</p> + +<p>If we must punish, let us not permit the +punishments to trench on the province of useful +and, in good conditions, pleasant tasks. Give +the boy an imposition rather than an order to +weed the shrubbery walk; set the girl to learn +a French verb rather than to hem dusters. +The consciousness of being useful is very dear +to children—it is worth while to feel and to +show gratitude to them for all services rendered, +and though it may be, as they say, more trouble +than it is worth to teach the children to help +effectually, that only means that it is more +trouble than the help they give is worth. What<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[86]</a></span> +is really valuable is the cultivation of the sense +that it is a good and pleasant thing to help +mother to wash up, to help father to water the +geraniums, and, further, a thing which will +make father and mother pleased and grateful. +Children, like the rest of us, love to feel themselves +important. Is it not well that they should +feel themselves important as givers, and not +as claimants only?</p> + +<p>The tale of their public obligations may well +begin with the lesson that it is part of the duty +of a citizen to help to keep his city, his country, +clean and beautiful. Therefore, we must not +leave nasty traces of our presence in street or +meadow—such traces as orange-peel, banana-skins, +and the greasy bag that once held the +bun or the bull's-eye. And it is quite as important +to learn what we should as what we +should not do. The idea and organisation of the +Boy Scouts is a fine object-lesson in the way of +training children to be good citizens. The +duties of a citizen should be taught in all schools: +they are more important than the latitude of +Cathay and the industries of Kamskatka. Even +the smallest children could learn something of +this branch of education. I should like to +write a little book of Moral Songs for Young +Citizens, only I wouldn't call it that. The songs<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[87]</a></span> +in it might take the place of "Mary had a little +lamb" or whatever it is that they make the +infants learn by heart. One of them might go +something like this:</p> + +<div class='poem'> +I must not steal, and I must learn<br /> +Nothing is mine that I do not earn.<br /> +I must try in work and play<br /> +To make things beautiful every day.<br /> +I must be kind to every one<br /> +And never let cruel things be done.<br /> +I must be brave, and I must try<br /> +When I am hurt never to cry,<br /> +And always laugh as much as I can<br /> +And be glad that I'm going to be a man,<br /> +To work for my living and help the rest,<br /> +And never do less than my very best.<br /> +</div> + +<div class='poem'>Another might begin:</div> + +<div class='poem'> +I must not litter the park or the street<br /> +With bits of paper or things to eat:<br /> +I must not pick the public flowers<br /> +They are not <i>mine</i>, but they are <i>ours</i>. . . .<br /> +</div> + +<div class='unindent'>And so on. Simple rhymes learned when you +are very young stay with you all your life. The +duties and refrainings just touched on here +might be elaborated in different poems. There +might be one on being brave, and another on +prompt obedience to the word of command. +There is no position in life where the habit of +obedience to your superior officer is not of value. +To teach obedience without bullying would be +quite easy: with very little children it could<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[88]</a></span> +take the form of a game, in which a series of +orders were given—for the performance of such +actions as occur in the mulberry bush; and the +competition among the children to be the first +to obey the new order would quicken the child's +mind and body, while the habit of obedience to +the word of command would be firmly planted, +so that it would grow with the child's growth +and adapt itself to the needs of life. I would +write more than one poem, I think, about the +green country and the shame it is that those +who should love and protect it desecrate it as +they do. Let it be the pride of the child that +he is not of the sort of people who leave greasy +papers lying about in woods, broken bottles in +meadows, and old sardine tins among the +rushes at the margin of cool streams. Such +people touch no foot of land that they do not +desecrate and defile. Wherever they are +suffered to be, there they leave behind them +the vilest leavings. Filthy papers, the rinds +and skins of fruit, crusts and parings, jagged +tins, smashed bottles, straw and shavings and +empty stained cardboard boxes. They leave +it all, openly and shamelessly, making the +magic meadows sordid as a suburb, and carrying +into the very heart of the country the vulgarities +of the street corner. It is time, indeed, that<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[89]</a></span> +certain of the finer duties of citizenship were +taught in all schools, Harrow as well as Houndsditch, +Eton as well as Borstal. And one of +the first of these is the keeping of the beauty of +beautiful places unsmirched, the duty of preserving +for others the beauty which we ourselves +admire, the duty of burning bits of paper +and burying pieces of orange-peel. If there is +not time to teach geography as well as the +duties and decencies of a citizen, the geography +should go, and the duties and decencies be +taught. For what is the use of knowing the +names of places if you do not know that places +should be beautiful, and what is the use of +knowing how many counties there are in England +unless you know also that every field and +every tree and every stream in every one of +those counties is a precious gift of God not to be +desecrated by shameless refuse and garbage, +but to be cared for as one cares for one's garden, +and loved, as one should love every inch of +our England, this garden-land more beautiful +than any garden in the world?</div> + +<p>A child should be taught to read almost as +soon as it has learned to speak. I can remember +my fourth birthday, but I cannot remember a +time when I could not read. Without going +into details as to the merits of different methods<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[90]</a></span> +of teaching, I may say that a good many words +may be taught before it is necessary to teach +the letters—that reading should precede spelling—that +CAT should be presented whole, as the +symbol of Cat—and that the dissection of it into +C.A.T. should come later. I believe that children +taught in this way, and taught young, will not +in after life be tortured by the difficulties of spelling. +They will spell naturally, as they speak +or walk. Of the value of the accomplishment of +reading, as a let-off to parents and guardians, +it would be impossible to speak too highly. +It keeps the child busy, amused, still and quiet. +The value to the child himself is not less. Nor +is it only that the matter of his reading stores +his mind with new material. To him also it +is a good thing that he should sometimes be +still and quiet, and at the same time interested +and occupied. Of books for little children +there are plenty—not fine literature, it is true—but +harmless. As the child grows older he will +want more books, and different books—and if +you insist on personally conducting him on his +grand tour through literature he will probably +miss a good many places that he would like to +go to. For a child from ten onwards it is no +bad thing to give the run of a good general +library. When he has exhausted the story<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[91]</a></span> +books he will read the ballads, the histories +and the travels, and may even nibble at science, +poetry, or philosophy. I myself, at the age of +thirteen, browsed contentedly in such a library—where +Percy's anecdotes in thirty-nine volumes +or so divided my attention with Hume, Locke +and Berkeley. I even read Burton's <i>Anatomy of +Melancholy</i>, and was none the worse for it. It is +astonishing how little harm comes to children +through books. Unless they have been taught +by servants' chatter how to look for the "harm," +they do not find it. I do not mean that absolutely +every book is fit for a child's reading, +but if you allow the reading of the Old Testament +it is mere imbecility to insist that all the +rest of your child's reading shall ignore the +facts of life. You can always have a locked +book-case if you choose: only see to it that +the doors are not of glass, for the forbidden is +always the desired.</p> + +<p>As regards the facts of life, by which I mean +the physiological facts about which there is so +much needless and vain concealment, there is, +it seems to me, only one rule. If your child has +learned to love and trust you it will come to +you with its questions, instead of going to the +housemaid or the groom. Answer all its questions +truthfully, even at the cost of a little<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[92]</a></span> +trouble in formulating your answers. Do not +leave the child to learn the truth about its body +and its birth from vulgar and tainted sources. +There is absolutely nothing that you cannot +decently tell a child when it has reached the +age when it understands that certain things are +not fit subjects for public conversation—and +until it has reached that age it will not ask that +sort of questions. There is no difficulty in +making children understand that their digestive +processes are not to be discussed in general +society, and it is quite easy to explain to them +that other physiological processes are also to +be avoided as subjects for general conversation. +The Cat and her family will help you to explain +all that the child wants to know. The child +should be taught that its body is the Temple +of the Holy Ghost, and that it is our duty to +keep our bodies healthy, clean, and well-exercised, +just as we should try to keep our minds +strong and active, and our hearts tender and +pure. And one need not always "talk down" +to children: they understand far better than +you think. They are always flattered by talk +that rises now and then above the level of their +understanding. And if they do not understand +they will tell you so, and you can simplify. In +talking of the subjects which interest them,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[93]</a></span> +you need not be afraid of being too clever. +For even if they do not ask, your instinct and +the child's eyes will, if there be love and trust +between you, tell you when you are getting out +of its depth. But there must be love and trust: +without that all education outside book-learning +is for ever impossible.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[94]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER X</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>The One Thing Needful</div> + +<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">The</span> most ardent advocate of our present +civilisation, the blindest worshipper of what +we call progress, can hardly fail to be aware +of the steadily increasing and brutal ugliness +of life. Civilisation, whatever else it is, is a +state in which a few people have the chance of +living beautifully—those who take that chance +are fewer still—and the enormous majority +live, by no choice or will of their own, lives +which at the best are uncomfortable, anxious, +and lacking in beauty, and at the worst are so +ugly, diseased, desperate, and wretched that +those who feel their condition most can hardly +bear to think of them, and those who have not +imagination enough to feel it fully yet cannot bear +it unless they succeed in persuading themselves +that the poor of this world are the heirs of the +next, while hoping, at the same time, that a +portion of Lazarus's heavenly legacy may, +after all, be reserved for Dives.</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[95]</a></span></p> + +<p>The hideous disfigurement of lovely hills +and dales with factories and mines and pot +banks—coal, cinder, and slag; the defilement +of bright rivers with the refuse of oil and dye +works; the eating up of the green country +by greedy, long, creeping yellow caterpillars of +streets; the smoke and fog that veil the sun in +heaven; the sordid enamelled iron advertisements +that scar the fields of earth—all the torn +paper and straw and dirt and disorder spring +from one root. And from the same root spring +pride, anger, cruelty, and sycophancy, the +mean subservience of the poor and the mean +arrogance of the rich. As the fair face of the +green country is disfigured by all this machinery +which ministers to the hope of getting rich, so +is the face of man marred by the fear of getting +poor. Look at the faces you see in the street—old +and young, gay and sad—on all there is the +brand of anxiety, a terrible anxiety that never +rests, a fear that never sleeps, the anxiety for +the future: the fear of poverty for the rich, +the fear of starvation for the poor. Think of +the miles and miles of sordid squalor and suffering +in the East of London—not in comfortable +Whitechapel, but out Canning Town way; +think of Barking and Plaistow and Plashet +and Bow—then think of Park Lane and Bond<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[96]</a></span> +Street. And if your eyes are not blinded, the +West is no less terrible than the East. If you +want to be sure of this, bring a hungry, ragged +child from that Eastern land and set it outside +a West End restaurant; let it press its dirty +little face against the plate glass and gaze +at the well-to-do people gorging and guzzling +round the bright tables inside. The diners may +be smart, the ragged child may be picturesque—but +bring the two together, and consider the +conjunction.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/gs22.png" width="500" height="355" alt="" /> +<span class="caption">THE HIDEOUS DISFIGUREMENT.</span> +</div> + +<p>And all this ugliness springs from the same<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[97]</a></span> +cause. As Ruskin says: "We have forgotten +God." We have therefore forgotten His attributes, +mercy, loving-kindness, justice, truth, +and beauty. Their names are still on our lips, +but the great, stupid, crashing, blundering +machine which we call civilisation knows them +not. The Devil's gospel of <i>laissez-faire</i> still +inspires the calloused heart of man. Each for +himself, and Mammon for the foremost. We +no longer care that life should be beautiful for +all God's children—we wish it to be beautiful +for us and forget who, as we wish that wish,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[98]</a></span> +becomes our foster-father. There can be no +healing of the great wound in the body of +mankind till each one of us would die rather +than see the ugliness of a wound on the body +of the least of these our brethren. But so +dulled and stupefied is our sense of beauty, our +sense of brotherhood, that our brother's wounds +do not hurt us. We have not imagination +enough to know how it feels to be wounded. +Just as we have not imagination enough to see +the green fields that lie crushed where Manchester +sprawls in the smoke—the fair hills and +streams on which has grown the loathsome +fungus of Stockport.</p> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/gs23.png" width="500" height="387" alt="" /> +<span class="caption">OF LOVELY HILLS AND DALES</span> +</div> +<p>Now I do believe that this insensitiveness to +ugliness and misery, this blindness to wanton +befouling of human life and the green world, +comes less from the corruption of man's heart +than from the emptiness of the teaching which +man receives when he is good and little and a +child. The teaching in our schools is almost +wholly materialistic. The child is taught the +botanical name of the orange—dissects it and +its flower and perhaps learns the Latin names +of the flower and fruit; but it is not taught +that oranges are things you will be pleased with +yourself for giving up to some one who is thirstier +than you are—or that to throw orange-peel<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[99]</a></span> +on the pavement where some one may slip on +it, fall and hurt himself, is as mean a trick as +stealing a penny from a blind man. We teach +the children about the wonders of gases and +ethers, but we do not explain to them that +furnaces ought to consume their own smoke, +or why. The children learn of acids and +starches, but not that it is a disgraceful thing +to adulterate beer and bread. The rules of +multiplication and subtraction are taught in +schools, but not the old rule, "If any will not +work, neither shall he eat."</p> + +<p>There is no dogmatical teaching. That means +a diet of dry bones. It means that the child is +never shown how to look for happiness in the +performance of acts which do not, on the face +of them, look as though they would make him +happy. It is not explained to him that man's +life and the will of God are like a poem—God +writes a line and man must make the next line +rhyme to it. When it does rhyme, then you +get that happiness which can only come from +harmony. And when you do your best to make +your line rhyme and cannot—well, the Author +of the first line knows that it was your best +that you did. God is shown, when He is shown +at all, to our modern children, as a sort of +glorified head master, who will be tremendously<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[100]</a></span> +down on you if you break the rules: alternatively +as a sort of rich uncle who will give +you things if you ask properly. He is not +shown as the Father to whom you can tell +everything.</p> + +<p>If you are successful in your work you win +a prize and go home to your people, and tell +them that you are first in history, receiving +their applause without shame.</p> + +<p>If you are good at games or athletics you +can tell your mates that you made two goals +or eighty-three runs or whatever it is, and +delight in their admiration. If you are an +athlete the applause of the bystanders is your +right and your reward.</p> + +<p>But whom can you tell of the little intimate +triumphs, the secret successes, the temptations +resisted, the kind things done, the gentle refrainings, +the noble darings of that struggling, +bewildered, storm-tossed little thing you call +your soul?</p> + +<p>God, your Father, is the only person to whom +you can talk of these. To him you can say: +"Father, I wanted to pay Smith Minor out +to-day for something he did last week, and I +didn't because I thought You wouldn't like it. +Are You pleased with Your boy?" Do they +teach you this in schools or give you any hint<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[101]</a></span> +or hope of what you will feel when your Father +answers: "Yes, My son, I am pleased." Or +do they teach you to say: "Father, I am sorry +I was a beast to-day, and I'll try not to do it +again"—and tell you that a Voice will answer, +"I am sorry too, My son—but I am glad you +told Me. Try again, dear lad. And let Me +help you"?</p> + +<p>As you show your Latin exes. to your master, +so you should be taught to show the leaves of +your life to the only One who can read and +understand that blotted record. And if you +learn to show that book every day there +will be less and less in it that you mind +showing, and more and more that will give +you the glow and glory of the heart that +comes to him who hears "Faithful and good, +well done."</p> + +<p>You cannot suppose that your life is rhyming +with the will of God when you destroy the +beauty of the country and of the lives of men +so that you may get rich and you and your +children may live without working.</p> + +<p>Can you imagine a company promoter who +should say: "Father, I have made a lot of +money out of a company which has gone to +pieces, and a lot of other people are ruined, +but I know that there must always be rich and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[102]</a></span> +poor, and if I didn't do it some one else +would"?</p> + +<p>Or—"Father, I spoiled the green fields where +children used to play and I have built a lot of +streets of hideous and uncomfortable houses, +but they are quite good enough for the working +people. As long as they have such low wages +they can't live like human beings. And Thou +knowest, O Father, that wages are and must +be regulated by the divine law of supply and +demand."</p> + +<p>Or—"Father, I have put sand in the sugar and +poison in the beer, alum in the bread and water +in the milk, all these being, as Thou knowest, +Father, long-established trade customs."</p> + +<p>Men can say these things to themselves and +to each other, but there is One to whom they +cannot say them. It is of Him and not only of +the wonders of His Universe that I would have +the children taught. But they are only taught +of the wonders, not of the Wonder-worker.</p> + +<p>It is not that there are none who could teach, +no initiates of the great and simple mysteries, +no keepers of the faith. There are such, but +they are muzzled, and the detestable horrors of +civilisation go on in a community which calls +itself after the name of Christ. And so long as +we have in our schools this materialistic teaching,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[103]</a></span> +so long shall we raise up generation after +generation to support that civilisation and to +keep it the damnable thing we know.</p> + +<p>Talk goes on and goes on and goes on. +There is talk now of a Great Measure for the +Reform of National Education, much talk—there +will be more. There will be much ink +spilt, much breath wasted; we shall hear +of Montessori and Froebel and Pestalozzi, of +Science and the Classics, of opportunities of +ladders of scholarships and prizes and endowments.</p> + +<p>We shall hear how hard it is that the sons of the +plumber should not be able to go to Oxford and +how desirable it is that daughters of the dustman +should sometimes take the Prix de Rome.</p> + +<p>We shall be told how important are the +telescope and the microscope, and how right it +is that children should know all about their +little insides. The one thing we shall not hear +about will be the one thing needful.</p> + +<p>A tottering Government may keep itself in +power by such a measure, a defeated party +may, by it, bring itself back to office, but such +a measure will not keep the nation from perdition, +nor bring back the soul of a man into +the true way.</p> + +<p>We may build up as we will schemes of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[104]</a></span> +Education and Instruction, add science to +science, learning to learning, and facts to +facts; but what we shall build will be only a +dead body unless it be informed by the breath +of the Spirit which maketh alive. For Education +which teaches a man everything but how +to live to the glory of God and the service of +man is not Education, but only instruction; +and it is the fruit of the tree, not of Life, but of +Death.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[105]</a></span></p> + + + +<h2><i>PART II</i></h2> + + +<hr class="chap" /> +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[107]</a></span></p> + + +<h2>CHAPTER I</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>Romance in Games</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap">A sharp</span> distinction can be drawn between +games with toys and games without them. In +the latter the child's imagination has to supply +everything, in the former it supplements or +corrects the suggestion of the toy. But in both, +as in every movement and desire of the natural +child, it is imagination which tints the picture +and makes the whole enterprise worth while.</p> + +<p>In hide-and-seek, that oldest of games, and +still more in its sister "I spy," a little live +streak of fear brought down from who knows +what wild ancestry lends to the game an excitement +not to be found in games with bats +and balls and nets and bails and straightforward +trappings bought at shops. When you lurk in +the shrubbery ready to spring out on the one +who is hunting you, and to become in your turn +the hunter, you are no longer a child, you are +a red Indian or a Canadian settler, or a tiger +or a black-fellow, according to the measure of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[108]</a></span> +your dreams and the nature of the latest book +of your reading.</p> + +<p>At this point it occurs to me that perhaps +you who read may have forgotten the difference +between "Hide-and-seek" and "I spy." +Hide-and-seek is just what it says it is; half +the players hide, and the others seek them and +there's an end of it. It is an interesting game, +but flat compared with "I spy." It has, +however, this merit, that it can be played without +those screams to which grown-ups are, +usually, so averse. Whereas I defy any one to +play "I spy" without screaming. Hide-and-seek +is a calm game; the thing sought for +might almost as well be an inanimate object: +it is the game of stoats looking for pheasants' +eggs, of bears looking for honey. But "I spy" +is the game of enemy looking for enemy: it +calls for the virtues of fortitude, endurance, +courage—for the splendours of physical fitness, +for aptness, for speed. In "I spy" half the +players hide and the others seek; but they seek +not an unresisting stationary object, but a keen, +watchful retaliatory terror. They seek, in +shrubbery and garden, behind summer-house +and conservatory, in the shelter of tree, hedge, +and arbour, for the enemy, and when that +enemy is found the seeker does not just say,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[109]</a></span> +"Oh, here you are"—that ending the game. +Far otherwise; the seeker in "I spy" goes +warily, his heart in his mouth—for, the moment +he sees a hider, he must shout "I spy," adding +the hider's name. "I spy Jimmy!" he cries, +and turning, flees at his best speed. The hidden +one follows after—the hunted becoming in one +swift terrible transition the hunter, and he +who was the seeker flies with all the speed he +may, across country, to the appointed "home." +The quarry unearthed has become the pursuer +and follows with yells. Grown-ups would +always rather that you played hide-and-seek—and +can you wonder? But sometimes they will +concede to you "I spy" rights, and even join +in the sport. It is always well, in playing any +game where anything may be trampled, such as +asparagus beds, or broken, such as windows, to +have a grown-up or two on your side. And by +"your," here, of course I mean children. The habit +of years is not easily broken, and I am so much +more used to writing <i>for</i> children than <i>of</i> them.</p> + +<p>Chevy Chase is a good old-fashioned game of +courage and adventure. Does any one play it +now? No child can play it <i>con amore</i> who +does not know who it was who</p> + +<div class='poem'> +When his legs were smitten off<br /> +He fought upon his stumps,<br /><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[110]</a></span> +</div> + +<div class='unindent'>and to what bold heart the bitterest drop in +the cup of defeat was "Earl Percy sees my +face——"</div> + +<p>All wreathed with romance are the song-games, +"Nuts in May," "There came Three Knights," +and the rest, where the up-and-down dancing +movement and the song of marriage-by-capture +ends in a hard jolly tug-of-war, and woe to the +vanquished! This is a very old game—and +there are many words to it. One set I know, +but I never have known the end. Little boys +in light trousers and short jackets and little girls +in narrow frilled gowns used to play it on the +village green a hundred years ago. This is +how it began:</p> + +<div class='poem'> +Up and down the green grass<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">This and that and thus,</span><br /> +Come along, my pretty maid,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And take a walk with us;</span><br /> +You shall have a duck, my dear,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">And you shall have a drake,</span><br /> +And you shall have a handsome man,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">For your father's sake.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class='unindent'>My mother told me all of that song-game, and +that is all of it that I can remember. She always +said she would write it down, and I always +thought there was plenty of time, and somehow +there was not, and so I do not know the end. +Perhaps Mr. Charles Marson, who first found out<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[111]</a></span> +the Somerset folk-songs of which Mr. Somebody +Else now so mysteriously gets all the credit, may +know the end of these verses. If he does, and +if he sees this, perhaps he will write and tell me.</div> + +<p>This game of come and go and give and take +is alive in France; witness the old song:</p> + +<div class='poem'> +Qu'est-ce qui passe ici si tard,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Compagnons de la Marjolaine?</span><br /> +Qu'est-ce qui passe ici si tard<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Toujours si gai?</span><br /> +<br /> +Ce sont les cavaliers du Roi,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Compagnons de la Marjolaine.</span><br /> +Ce sont les cavaliers du Roi<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Toujours si gais.</span><br /> +<br /> +Et que veulent ces cavaliers,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Compagnons de la Marjolaine?</span><br /> +Et que veulent ces cavaliers<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Toujours si gais?</span><br /> +<br /> +Des jeunes filles à marier,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 1em;">Compagnons de la Marjolaine;</span><br /> +Des jeunes filles à marier,<br /> +<span style="margin-left: 2em;">Toujours si gais.</span><br /> +</div> + +<div class='unindent'>And I have no doubt that stout Dutch children +and German children with flaxen plaits, and +small contadine, and Spanish and Swedish and +Russian and Lithuanian babes all move rhythmically +back and forth on their native greensward +and rehearse the old story of the fair +maid and the Knight "out to marry."</div> + +<p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[112]</a></span> +The Mulberry Bush is another of the old song-games, +where play-acting is the soul of the +adventure, and this too is everywhere. "A +la claire fontaine," I remember as the French +version, danced on wet days in the cloisters of +the convent of my youth. Le Pont d'Avignon, +a glorious game, with its impersonations of +animals, has, as far as I know, no counterpart +in this country.</p> + +<p>All these games are active games: they can, +of course, be played by sheer imitation, a sort +of parrot-and-monkey aptitude will do it; but +if they are to be enjoyed to the full, the imagination +must have full play. To <i>be</i> a knight +a-riding to fetch a fair lady is quite simple, and +quite thrilling—just as to be a bear demands +nothing but growls and a plantigrade activity +in the performer to be a fearful joy to the +non-bear.</p> + +<p>Cricket and football, fives and racquets, the +games that are played with things out of shops, +do not need imagination to help them out. +The games without bought accessories should +perhaps rather be termed "plays" than games. +And the more highly cultivated the imagination +the more intensely joyous are the games. +All sorts of acting, dressing-up, and pretending +games depend entirely on the imagination, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[113]</a></span> +it is well to encourage children to act scenes +which they have observed, or heard about or +read about. The smallest child will experience +a real joy in putting its pinafore on wrong way +round, call it a coat, and announce with pride +that it is "Daddy going a tata."</p> + +<p>In the dolls' tea-parties you will observe a +careful copy or travesty of your own "company +manners," and as the small minds are filled +with tales of wonder and adventure, you will +find them re-enacted, the nursery rocking chair +serving as charger for the gallant knight, and +nurse's hassock taking quite adequately the +part of the dragon. A small sister can generally +be relied on to be the captive princess, especially +if handsome trappings go with the part—and +a cobweb brush is an admirable spear. The +princess will be released from her bonds in time +to act as chief mourner at the funeral of the +slain hassock, which can be carried down the +river in a barge made of the nursery table +wrong way up—with the nursery tablecloth +for a sail—an admirable tableau certain to +occur if any one has told the children the story +of Elaine. That the dragon should have as +sumptuous a funeral as Enoch Arden himself, +need not surprise you: a funeral is a funeral, be +the corpse canary, guinea pig, or hassock, and to a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[114]</a></span> +dead dragon are due all the honours we pay +to a gallant if unfortunate antagonist. Not +only fairy tales, but history will be acted. +You will have Jane as Queen Eleanor sucking +the poison from Jack's grubby paws, and +Alice as an Arab physician curing the plague, +represented by blobs of paint-water on the +rigid arms of Robert. How beloved will be +the grown-up who, passing by the scene, shall +refrain from commenting on the deafening +groans of the patient, and shall, instead, offer +the physician a ribbon for his girdle or a plume +from the dusting brush for his turban.</p> + +<p>Exploring plays and all the plays which +include wigwams and war paint are such as +an intelligent grown-up will be able to intensify +and add backbone to—for a child's +fancy will naturally outrun his performance, +and though he may imagine a feather head-dress +or moccasins, he will be only too pleased that +a grown-up should make the things for him +with that strong, unerring touch to which his +small experimenting hands cannot yet attain. +All such games require numbers; your only +lonely child cannot play Indians to the full. +Two is better than one and more than two is +better than two, up to the number of six or +eight. People don't seem to see how important +numbers are for play. They see it fast enough +when it comes to schools, but a regular association +of children for the purposes of play is not +encouraged. In a large family of boys and +girls it just happens happily, but an association +of children from various homes generally means +a predatory horde of boys: girls don't associate +with unrelated girls in joyous play-adventures, +and boys are apt to think that little girls who +are not their sisters are either angels or muffs, +and neither a muff nor an angel is what you +want to play games with. Parents and guardians +might do a great deal to render play-association +possible: I suggest that house +parties of children, where the utmost possible +liberty should be given, would stimulate enormously +the plays which encourage daring and +initiative, and would teach boys that girls are +not necessarily muffs or angels, and teach girls +that boys are not all brutes.</p> + +<p>Fathers and mothers sacrifice themselves +every year in August; you see them doing it, +heavily, definitely, with clenched teeth and a +grim determination not to be selfish, and to +spend a month with the children at the seaside, +however much it may cost in time, temper, and +money. The Browns go to Scarborough, their +friends the Robinsons go to Wales, the Smiths<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[115]</a></span> +are in Devonshire and the Joneses at Littlehampton. +They all go to the same sort of +lodgings, do the same sort of things, and lucky +is the mother whose nerves are not worn very +thin indeed before the holiday ends. Now +suppose all these worthy and self-sacrificing +parents agreed to pool their families and let +Mr. and Mrs. Brown take charge of them all—in +some jolly big house suited to the needs of +so swollen a household. Sixteen children are +really, in many ways, four times easier to manage +than four—and at least forty times as easy to +amuse. In fact, you don't need to amuse +them—they will amuse themselves and each +other: Mr. and Mrs. Brown will only have to +adjust ebullitions.</p> + +<p>Meanwhile the Smiths, Robinsons, and Joneses +are having their holiday where they will. Their +turn of having the children will come another +year, when the Browns will be free to range the +world in August, knowing that their children are +safe and happy and are, thank you, having a +much better time than they could have in small +seaside lodgings, even with the undivided +attention of their fathers and mothers. Besides, +if I may for once take the part of the +mothers instead of that of the children, what +sort of holiday do you think the mother has,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[117]</a></span> +when to the ordinary routine of housekeeping +at home are added the difficulties of housekeeping +in unfamiliar surroundings, in a house +of whose capabilities she has no experience, +and with a landlady whose temper, as often as +not, is as short as her tale of extras is long? +The woman who works all the year round at +the incredibly arduous task of making a home, +answering week in and week out the constant, +varying demands on all her complex mental +and physical activities, does really deserve a +real holiday. What is more, she needs it. She +will be a better mother the rest of the year if +she be allowed for that one month to be just +a wife, and a wife on a holiday. The wife +whose turn it is to take charge of the amalgamated +families will find so great a change +from the exclusive care of her own chickens +that the change in itself will be a sort of holiday. +And the children themselves, perhaps, will learn +a little from the enforced separation from the +fount of unselfish devotion, and appreciate their +mother all the more if they have, be it only +half-consciously, missed her a little even through +the varied and joyous experiences of their +month's house-party.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[118]</a></span></p> + + + +<h2>CHAPTER II</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>Building Cities</div> + + +<p><span class="smcap">The</span> devotion of aunts has often stirred my +admiration. The heroism of aunts deserves +an epic. But this is, as you say, not the place +to write that epic. Give me leave, however, to +say that of all the heroic acts of the devoted +aunt, none seems to me more magnificent than +the self-sacrifice which nerves those delightful +ladies to settle themselves down to play, in +cold blood, with their nephews and nieces games +bought at a shop, games in boxes. I am not +talking of croquet, or even badminton, though +these may be, and are, bought in boxes at +shops. Nor do I wish to depreciate chess and +draughts, nor even halma, the poor relation of +draughts and chess, nor dominoes, which we +all love. These games, so precious on wet days, +or when other people have headaches, cannot +be too highly prized, too assiduously cultivated.</p> + +<p>The rigours of the seaside holiday, too often +in wet weather a time of trial and temper,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[119]</a></span> +would be considerably mitigated if chess and +chess-board, draughts, dominoes, and halma +were packed in the trunks along with the serge +suits, the sandshoes, and the sun-bonnets. The +games which I do so 'wonder and admire' to +see aunts playing are the meaningless games +with counters and dice: ill-balanced dice and +roughly turned counters and boards that look like +folding chequer-boards till you open them, and +then you find all the ugliest colours divided into +squares and circles or slabs, with snakes or motors +or some other unpleasing devices on them. These +games are all exactly the same in their primary +qualities: the first of them that was invented +had all the faults of all its successors. Yet +dozens of new ones are invented every year, +just to sell, and helpless children try to play +them, knowing no better, and angel aunts abet +them, knowing all.</p> + +<p>Grown-ups suffer a great deal in playing with +children: it is not the least charm of a magic +city that a grown-up can play it and suffer +nothing worse than the fatigue incidental to +the bricklayer's calling. Of course, most grown-ups +will say that they would rather be burnt +at a slow fire, or play halma, than be bothered +with magic cities. But that is only because +they do not understand. Try the experiment<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[120]</a></span> +the next time you are spending a wet week-end +in a country house where there are children. +Get the children to yourself and ask your +hostess whether you may borrow what you +want for a game. The library is the best place +for building: there is almost certainly a large +and steady table: also there are the books. I +need not urge you to spare the elegantly bound +volumes, and the prized first editions, and the +priceless folios and duodecimos in their original +calf and vellum. You will find plenty of books +that nobody will mind your using—the old +<i>Whitakers</i>, bound volumes of the <i>Cornhill</i> and +<i>Temple Bar</i>—good solid blocks for the foundations +of your city. If there be a pair of candlesticks +or an inkstand which match, you may +make a magnificent archway by setting up the +candlesticks as pillars and laying the inkstand +on the top. You can see how this is done in the +picture of the Elephant Temple. Get the children +to bring down the bricks and enlist a friendly +parlour-maid to let you have the run of the china +cupboard, or a footman, if you are in that sort +of house, to bring you the things you want on +a tray.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<a href="images/gs24-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs24.jpg" width="600" height="377" alt="model" /></a> +<span class="caption">THE PALACE OF CATS.</span> +</div> + + + +<p>But it is much better if you can go alone +over the house and choose what you really want. +You invite the children to help you build, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[121]</a></span> +to build themselves. If they have never built +a magic city you will find that they will presently +desert their plain brick edifices to watch the +development of your palace or temple. They +will offer suggestions, and quite soon they will +offer objects. They will begin to look about +the room with their sharp eyes—and about the +house with their keen memory and imagination, +and produce the sort of things that look like +the sort of things they think you might like +for your building. They will wander off, returning +with needle-cases, little boxes, shells—and +"Would this do for something?" is the +word on every lip. They are soon as much +absorbed in the building as you are—and I +take it you are an enthusiast—and your magic +city grows apace. Then after a little while +a grown-up, bored and out of employment, will +stray into the library with "Hullo! what are +you kids up to with all this rubbish?" and +stand with his hands in his pockets contemplating +the building industry. If you answer him +simply and kindly, and don't resent his choice +of epithet, it is almost certain he will quite soon +withdraw a hand from his pocket and reach +out to touch your magic walls with "Wouldn't +it be better like that?" Admit it, and in +hardly any time at all you have him building<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[122]</a></span> +on his own account. Another grown-up will +stray in presently with the same question on +his lips. He too will come to be bored and will +remain to build, and by tea-time you will have +collected every grown-up of the house-party—every +grown-up, that is to say, with the right +feeling for cities. It will surprise you to find +how keen you will yourself become as the work +goes on, and how it will call into play all your +invention and your latent craftsmanship.</p> +<div class="figright" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/gs25.png" width="500" height="505" alt="arch with cats" /> +<span class="caption">GUARDED ARCH.</span> +</div> +<p>You will be amazed at the results you can +achieve with quite dull-looking materials, and +still more will you be surprised at the increasing +interest and skill of the grown-ups. When it +is time to dress for dinner you will feel a pang +of positive despair at the thought that your +beautiful city, the child of your dreams and +skill, must be taken down. It is like the end +of the magic of Cinderella when her coach +became a pumpkin, her horses mice and her +coachman a fat rat. Now your domes are once +more mere basins, your fountain basins are ash-trays, +your fountains are but silver pen-cases +and their gleaming waters only strips of the +tin-foil that comes off chocolate or cigarettes. +The walls of your palaces go back into the +book-cases, and their façades return to the +dull obscurity of the brick-boxes. The doors<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[123]</a></span> +and the animals who stood on guard at the +door-ways and terraces, on plinths or pillars, +share in the dark rattling seclusion where +many a wooden tail has been broken, many a +painted ear lost for ever, but the tidying up +has to be done: unless your hostess is one of +those rare and delightful people who see what +their guests like and lets them do it. In that +case she may say "Oh! what a pity to disturb<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[124]</a></span> +the pretty thing! Why not let your city stay +for a day or two, so that the children can build +some more to it to-morrow. No, of course it +won't be in the way—and wouldn't it be pretty +if we lighted it up with fairy lights after dark?"</p> + +<p>Then your city really has a chance. The children +will think of it till bed-time and fall asleep in +the happy throes of their first town-planning.</p> + +<p>You may think that I exaggerate the charms +of magic cities, because I happened to invent +them, and you may be afraid that my swan, +if you ever make up your mind to adopt it, may +turn out to be an ugly and dispiriting duckling. +I assure you this is not so. I have never met +a child who did not like building magic cities, +and not many grown-ups. Of course the love +of them grows, like other loves, and the longer +you can keep the city standing, the fonder you +and your playmates will get of it. It will grow +more and more finished in detail, and the ugly +make-shifts will be reorganised and made neat +with an irreproachable neatness. If the magic +city game were played in schools, as I think +it ought to be, a long table—or series of +tables—could easily be kept for it, and the city +kept standing and be added to from day to +day. But it will not be the same sort of city +as the one you build in the house where the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[125]</a></span> +parlour-maid lives and still less the sort that +happens in the house where there is a butler and +many silver boxes and cups and candlesticks.</p> + +<p>Now I come to write all this down it seems +very trivial, and it will perhaps seem even more +so when I come to tell you about the different +things we made and used for magic cities. But +it is not really trivial. I do not think I +claim for the magic city game more than it +justifies, and I will tell you, presently, why I +think this. Of course, when you have finished +your city, if you ever do finish it, you make up +stories about it, and always, even when you are +building it, you imagine how splendid it would +be if you were small enough to walk through +the arches of your city gates, to run along the +little corridors of your city palaces. Of course, +it would do quite as well if your city became big +enough for you to run about in while still keeping +your natural size—but it is somehow not +really so cosy to think of.</p> + +<p>When I had built my first three or four +magic cities this idea of getting into the city—being, +of course, correct citizen-size—lived with +me so much that I wrote a story-book about it +called <i>The Magic City</i>,<a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> in which a boy and girl +do really become the right size and enter into the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[126]</a></span> +city they have built. They have there all the +adventures whose wraiths danced before me +when I was building courts and making palm +trees and finding out the many fine and fair +uses of cowries and fir-cones.</p> + + +<p>This book, <i>The Magic City</i>, produced a curious +effect. I hope I shall not look conceited +(because really I am only proud) when I say +that about my books I have had the dearest +letters from children, saying pretty things about +the stories in the prettiest way. It is one of +the most heart-warming things in the world to +get these letters and to answer them. And if +I had letters like these I should have been +only pleased and not disturbed. But the letters +about the Magic City, though they were full of +the pretty, awkward, delicious things that +children write to the author of the books they +like, held something else—a demand, severe +and almost unanimous, to know how magic +cities were built, and whether "children like +us" could build one, and, if so, how? I got +so many of these letters that I decided to build +a magic city where any child, in London at any +rate, could come and see it. And I built it at +the Children's Welfare Exhibition which the +<i>Daily News</i> arranged last year at Olympia. +The history of that building would make a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[127]</a></span> +largish and intimate volume. The difficulties +that beset a home-dweller when she goes out +into the world, the anguish of misunderstandings +which arise between the builder of magic +cities and the people who lay linoleum and put +up electric lights, the confusion which results +from having packed in boxes and all mixed up +the building materials which you are accustomed +to look for as you need them in your own home, +the extraordinary mass of people, the extraordinary +kindness of people; for after all, it is +the kindness which stands out. It is true that +the gentleman who, very much isolated, fixed +the electric lights, behaved exactly like an +earthquake, upsetting two temples, a palace, +and a tank with an educated seal in it. But +then how more than a brother was the man +who did the whitewash! It is true that the +dictator with the linoleum—but I will not +remember these things. Let me remember +how many good friends I found among the +keepers of the stalls, how a great personage of +the <i>Daily News</i> came with his wife at the last +despairing moment, and lent me the golden and +ruby lamps from their dining-table, how the +Boy Scouts "put themselves in four" to get +me some cocoa-nuts for roofs of cottages, how +their Scout Master gave me fourteen beautiful<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[128]</a></span> +little ivory fishes with black eyes, to put in +my silver paper ponds, how the basket-makers +on the one side and the home hobbies on the +other were to me as brothers, how the Cherry +Blossom Boot Polish lady gave me hairpins +and the wardens of Messrs. W. H. Smith's +bookstall gave me friendship, how the gifted +boy-sculptor for the Plasticine stall, moved by +sheer loving-kindness, rushed over one day and +dumped a gorgeous prehistoric beast, modelled +by his own hands, in the sands about my +Siberian tomb, how the Queen of Portugal came +and talked to me for half an hour in the most +flattering French, while the Deity from the +<i>Daily News</i> looked on benign.</p> + +<p>These are things I can never forget. When +the show opened I was feeling like a snail who +has inadvertently come out without his shell. +Think how all this kindness comforted and +protected me. And then came the long stream +of visitors—crowds of them—I don't know how +many thousands, who came and looked at +my magic city and asked questions, and looked +and looked at it, looked and said things. It is +because of what they said that I am writing +about that show at all. They all liked the city +except two, and I cannot think that those two +were, in other respects, really nice people.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[129]</a></span> +And more than half of them asked whether I +would not write a book about the magic city +which I had built there, and which lay looking +so real and romantic under the soft glow of +the tinted lamps: not a story-book, but a +book to tell other people how to make such +cities. And I said I would tell all I knew in +a book. And when I came to write I found that +there were many other things that I wanted to +write about children, and other things than magic +cities, and I wrote them, and this is the book.</p> + +<p>And the reason I am telling you all this is +that my big magic city at Olympia showed me, +more than anything else could have done, that +the building of magic cities interests practically +every one, young or old.</p> + +<p>It is very difficult to say all this and yet +not to feel that you will think that I am boasting +about my magic city. But I want you to +believe that it was very beautiful, and that +you can build one just as beautiful or much +more beautiful if you care to try it. It is such +an easy game. Every one can play it. And +every one likes it—even quite old people. By +the way, I have been asked to build another city +at Olympia in April, and I hope that it will +be a prettier one even than the other which I +loved so.</p> + +<div class='FOOTNOTES'><div class='author'><b>FOOTNOTE:</b></div><br /> +<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Macmillans.</p></div> +</div> +<hr class='chap' /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[130]</a></span></p> + +<h2>CHAPTER III</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>Bricks—and Other Things</div> + +<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">It</span> is a mistake when you are going to build a +city to make too large a collection of building +materials before you begin to build. If it is +natural to you to express yourself by pencil +lines on paper you might perhaps draw an +outline of the masses of your city as you see +them in the architect's vision or illumination +which should precede all building, either of +magic cities or municipal cab-shelters. Having +roughly indicated on paper the general shape of +your city as you look at it from the front—the +shape it would have against the western +sky at dusk (I think architects call this the +elevation, don't they?)—you proceed to collect +such material as will roughly indicate that shape +on the table or other building-place. And here +let me once more warn the builder new to his +business not to be trapped by the splendid +obvious bait of floor's wide space. To build +palaces while prone on the stomach may be<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[131]</a></span> +natural and easy to extreme youth. To grown-up +people it is agonising and impossible. The +floor has only two qualifications as a building +site. It is large—larger at least than any of +the pieces of furniture which stand on it—and +it is flat. And when you have said that you +have said all. Whereas the inconveniences of +the floor as a place for building are innumerable. +The floor is draughty, it is inaccessible, +except from the attitude of the serpent, and +the serpent's attitude, even if rich in a certain +lax comfort, is most unfavourable for the steady +use of both hands. If you want to see how +unfavourable assume that attitude and try to +build a card-house on the floor. You cannot do +it. If you kneel—well, you know how hard the +floor gets if you kneel on it for quite a little +time; if you sit or squat your dress or your +coat-tails insist on playing at earthquakes with +your building. Also the city on the floor is +liable to hostile invasion by cats or dogs or +servants: to the crushing and scattering by +short-sighted outsiders or people who rush +into the room to look for something in a hurry. +Think of a playful elephant in some Eastern +court of carved pearl and ivory lattice; an +elephant co-inciding with one of the more +fanciful volcanic eruptions, and your conception<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[132]</a></span> +will pale into placidity in the face of the spectacle +of a normal puppy in a floor-built city. And +on the floor things not only get broken, they +get lost. Cotton reels roll under sofas, draughts +bowl away into obscurity and are only found +next day by the housemaid when she moves +the fender, and not then, as often as not; +chess kings are walked on and get their crowns +chipped; card counters disappear for ever, and +it is quite impossible for you to keep an eye on +your materials when you are grovelling among +them. Therefore build on a table—or tables. +Tables of different shapes, heights, and sizes make +beautiful sites for cities. And bureaux are good, +if you may take the drawers out and empty +the pigeon-holes. I remember a wonderful city +we made once: it was called the "City of the +Thousand Lights," and it was built on a bureau, +two large tables and three other smaller ones, +all connected by bridges in the handsomest +way. (The lids of the brick boxes make +excellent bridges and you can adorn them to +your fancy, and make impressive gate-houses +at each end.) The bureau was the Temple of +Mung, and we sacrificed a pale pink animal from +the Noah's Ark at the shrine of this, the most +mysterious of the Gods of Pegana. The thousand +lights—there were not a thousand, really,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[133]</a></span> +but there were many luminous towers, with +windows of a still brighter glow. You make +them by putting a night-light in a tumbler—a +little water first by way of fire insurance—and +surrounding the tumbler by a sheet of paper +with windows and battlements and fixed to a +cylindrical shape by pins. The paper cylinders +are, of course, fitted on outside the tumblers so +that there is no danger of fire. All the same it is +better to let a grown-up do the luminous towers.</div> + +<p>Having chosen your site and blocked out the +mass of your buildings, you begin to collect +the building material. For my own part I +see the city I am going to build in the eye of +the mind—or of the heart—so vividly and +consistently that I never need to make notes +of it on paper. I know when what I am building +is not in accord with the vision, and then +I pull it down. Truly in accord it never really +is, but it approximates.</p> + +<p>Now when you have seen the silhouette of +your city and begin to look for stuff to build +with, you will instantly find that everything +you can lay your hands on is too small. The +bricks, even the boxes which contained them, +are suited for the detailed building which is +to come later, but now you want something +at once bigger and less conventionally proportioned.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[134]</a></span> +Now is the time to look for boxes—not +the carved sandal-wood boxes in which +aunts keep their pins, nor the smooth cedarwood +boxes in which uncles buy their cigars, +though both these are excellent when you +come to the details of your work, but for +the mass you want real big boxes; if you +have a large table, or tables, Tate's sugar +boxes are not too large. Also there are the +boxes in which starch is packed, and cocoa, +and the flatter boxes which the lady at the +sweet-shop will give you if she likes you, and +sell to you for a penny anyhow. The boxes +in which your father gets his collars, and the +boxes in which your mother gets her chocolates, +though not really large, should be collected at +the same time, because they need the same +treatment. I am assuming now that you are +not building a city for an afternoon's amusement, +but one for which you have found a safe +resting place—a city that may take days to +build and will not be disturbed for days. If +you can once found your city in a safe place, +and you are working at it day after day, you +will go on thinking of more and more things to +be added to it, and it will grow in beauty under +your hands as naturally as a flower under the +hand of summer.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[135]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figleft" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/gs26.png" width="500" height="294" alt="boxes" /> +<span class="caption">BOXES.</span> +</div> + +<p>You have now your collection of boxes—but +they are of plain, rough wood, and probably +disfigured by coarse coloured printed papers +telling what the boxes once held. These papers +you wash off, and when the boxes are clean +and dry, you paint or colour-wash them to suit +your requirements. Now your requirements are +large blocks of colours to match your bricks, +and bricks are of three colours—white, terra-cotta, +and stone colour.</p> + +<p>The stone bricks are stone colour and terra-cotta—oak +bricks are very nearly stone colour—and +there are white-wood bricks. To these +three I would add a dark brown; and as this +dark brown is not sold in boxes at the shops, +you had better colour some of your bricks with<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[136]</a></span> +it for yourself. Dark wood in a city gives a +wonderful richness and helps the lighter colours +more than you would think possible. A city +in which some buildings are of dark wood will +have an air of reality never achieved by a city +where all is red or white or stone colour. By +the way, among the stone bricks there are some +blue ones, but you will always have enough of +them, for they are the last things you will ever +want to use.</p> + +<p>Your boxes then must be coloured either +white, red, stone colour, or dark brown. In +the white use either white paint—flat, not +shining, or if that cost too much trouble and +money, whitewash made of whitening, size, hot +water and a pinch of yellow ochre or chrome +powder to give it a pleasant ivory creaminess. +There should be a good deal of size so that +the whitewash does not come off on every +thing.</p> + +<p>The red boxes can be painted to match the +red bricks, or colour-washed (whitewash as +before, but red ochre for colour).</p> + +<p>Stone colour is not a very satisfactory tint +and too much of it makes for gloom. The lids +and bottoms of the brick boxes will generally +give you as much of it as you want. But if +you desire stone colour you can make it by<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[137]</a></span> +putting a pinch of raw umber in the whitewash. +Or you can paint your boxes with this uninteresting +tint—resembling the doors of back +kitchens. With these paints or colour-washes +you can make your odd many-shaped boxes +into smooth-surfaced blocks to match your +bricks: and not only wooden, but cardboard +boxes can be treated in this way. All these +colours can be bought in gigantic penn'orths +at the oil-shops. But when I come to the +dark brown, which I confess is my favourite +colour, no cardboard box will serve your turn. +You must choose clean, smooth wood, because +the brown colouring is transparent, and the +grain will show through. Your bricks will be +smooth enough, and if the boxes are not smooth +a little sand-paper will soon subdue their rough +exterior. I suppose you know how to use +sand-paper? If you just rub with your fingers +you hurt your fingers and don't make much +progress; the best way is to wrap the sand-paper +round a flat piece of wood—a wooden +brick will do—and rub with that.</p> + +<p>When your wood is all smooth you mix your +stain. And here I make a present to all housewives +of the best floor stain in the world. Get +a tin of Brunswick black—the kind you put on +stoves—and some turpentine. Mix a little of<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[138]</a></span> +the black and a little of the turpentine in a pot +and try it on the wood with a smooth brush—a +flat brush is the best—till you have the colour +you want, always remembering that it will be +a little lighter when it is dry. When you have +decided on the colour, paint your bricks and +boxes on five out of their six sides lightly and +smoothly, keeping to the grain of the wood, +and not going over the same surface twice if +you can help it. This is why a flat brush is +the best: it will go right down the side of a +brick and colour it at one sweep. Then stand +each brick up on end to dry. When it is dry +you can paint the under bit on which it has +been standing. While you have stains and +colours going it is well to colour some of your +arches, and also such things as cotton-reels, +and the little wooden pill-boxes that you get +at the chemist's. Before colouring these boxes +fill them with sand or stones and stick the lids +on with glue. Otherwise they will not be +heavy enough to build with happily.</p> + +<p>This painting or colouring should be done +out of doors, or in an out-house, if possible. +If you have to do it in the house spread several +thicknesses of newspaper before you begin, and +make a calm resting place for your painted +things where they can dry at leisure and not<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[139]</a></span> +be scarred with the finger-marks of her who +"clears away."</p> + +<p>The earnest builder will keep a watchful eye +on any carpentering that may go on in the +house, and annex the smaller blocks of wood +cut off the end of things, which, to an alien +eye, are so much rubbish, but which are to the +builder stores of price.</p> + +<p>If there are a few shillings to spare, the +carpenter will, for those few shillings, cut you +certain shapes which you cannot buy in shops—arches +of a comfortable thickness and of +satisfying curves, and slabs of board for building +steps. These should be of varying lengths and +thicknesses and made in sets of twelve steps, +with two boards to each step, twenty-four slabs +to a set. The biggest might be 1 in. thick +and the bottom and largest slabs 12 by 6 in., +lessening to 6 by 1 in. The next set might be +¾ in., and of corresponding proportions, then +½ in., then ¼ in. The two basic slabs of the +¾ in. would be 9 by 4½ in., and those of the ½ in. +would be 6 by 3 in. A set with ¼ in. steps +(the basic slabs 3 by 1½ in.) would complete the +set. Flights of steps of many varying heights +and sizes could be built with these slabs. Ask +the carpenter—if the shillings are forthcoming—to +save for you the curved pieces of wood<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[140]</a></span> +which come out of the arches. They are very +useful for the bases of pillars, for towers and +for the pedestals of statues or vases. Some +of the arches, steps, and blocks should be +coloured to match the red, white, and brown +bricks.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 510px;"> +<img src="images/gs27.png" width="510" height="345" alt="more arches" /> +<span class="caption">ARCHES AND PILLARS.</span> +</div> + +<p>Some of the boxes, particularly the larger +ones, should have doorways sawn in them on +opposite sides—it is pleasant to look <i>through</i> +a building and see the light beyond; and if you +are a thorough builder you can make a pillared +interior which will delight the eyes of those who +stoop down and peer through the doorway. +A few narrow, oblong windows, high up, will<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[141]</a></span> +also be useful. You need not show them unless +you wish: you can always conceal them by +a façade of bricks.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/gs28.png" width="500" height="329" alt="court" /> +<span class="caption">PILLARED COURT.</span> +</div> + +<p>Another pleasant use of a big box is to cut +out the top and sides and make a columned +court of it, which, when cream-washed, dignifies +your city with almost all the glory that was +Greece and the grandeur that was Rome. +The columns are cut from broom-handles—twopence +each at the oil-shop, or, in the case +of smaller boxes, from those nice round smooth +wooden sticks which cost a penny and are used +in ordinary life to thread window-blinds on.</p> + +<p>If you are going to make a city which is<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[142]</a></span> +to stand for some time, a little thin glue is a +good help to stability. If it is only a here-to-day-and-gone-to-morrow +city, Plasticine is +good—the least touch of it seeming to make +things safe which otherwise might totter to +their ruin. But except as mortar Plasticine +should be shunned. It is not good as a building +material.</p> + +<p>Having now your bricks, boxes, arches, +steps, and rounds, you may begin to block out +your building. Quite soon you will begin to +find that everything is too rectilinear. Even +the arches and the rounds and the pillars and +the pill-boxes cannot satisfy your desire for +curves. This is the moment when you will +begin to look about you for domes. And the +domes, on the instant of their imposition in +your building, will call out for minarets. It is +then that you will wander about the house +seeking eagerly for things that are like other +things. Your search will be magnificently successful, +if only the lady of the house has given +you a free hand, and you have been so fortunate +as to secure the sympathies of the kitchen +queen.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[143]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER IV</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>The Magic City</div> + +<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">The</span> only magic in the city is the magic of +imagination, which is, after all, the best magic +in the world. The idea of it came to me when +I was dissatisfied with the materials provided +for children to build with, and I think it must +be a really true idea, because wherever I have +applied it, it has worked, and that, I am told, is +in accordance with the philosophy of pragmatism +and a characteristic of all great discoveries. +You may build magic cities in homes of modest +comfort, using all the pretty things you can lay +your hands on. You may build them in the +mansions of the rich, if the rich are nice people +and love cities, and if the butler will let you +have the silver candlesticks for pillars, and the +silver-gilt rose-bowls for domes; and you could +build one in the houses of the very poor, if the +very poor had any space for building—build +them there and not use a single thing that +could not be begged or borrowed by an intelligent +child, no matter how poor.</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[144]</a></span></p> + +<p>Children love to build. I still think with +fond affection, and I am afraid speak with +tiresome repetition, of those big oak bricks +which we had when we were children. They +disappeared when we left the old London house +where I was born. It was in Kennington, that +house—and it had a big garden and a meadow +and a cottage and a laundry, stables and cow-house +and pig-styes, elm-trees and vines, tiger +lilies and flags in the garden, and chrysanthemums +that smelt like earth and hyacinths +that smelt like heaven. Our nursery was at +the top of the house, a big room with a pillar +in the middle to support the roof. "The +post," we called it: it was excellent for playing +mulberry bush, or for being martyrs at. The +skipping rope did to bind the martyrs to the +stake. When we left that house we went to +Brighton, where there was a small and gritty +garden, where nothing grew but geraniums and +calceolarias. And we did not have our bricks +any more. Perhaps they were too heavy to +move. Perhaps the Brighton house was too +small for the chest. I think I must have +clamoured for the old bricks, for I remember +very well the advent of a small box of deal bricks +made in Germany, which had indeed two arches +and four pillars, and a square of glass framed<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[145]</a></span> +in wood daubed with heavy, ugly body colour, +and called a window. But you could not build +with those bricks. So there was no building +at Brighton except on the beach. Sand is as +good as anything in the world to build with—but +there is no sand on the beach at Brighton, +only sandiness. There are stones—pebbles you +call them, but they are too round to be piled +up into buildings. The only thing you can +play with them is dolls' dinner parties. There +are plenty of oyster shells and flat bits of slate +and tile for dishes and plates—and it is quite +easy to find stones the proper shape and colour +for boiled fowls and hams and roast legs of +mutton, German sausages, ribs of beef, mince +pies, pork pies, roast hare or calf's head. But +building is impossible.</p> + +<p>In the courtyard of our house in France +there was an out-house with a sloping roof +and a flat parapet about four feet high. We +used to build little clay huts along this, and +roof them with slates, leaving a hole for a +chimney. The huts had holes for windows +and doors, and we used to collect bits of candle +and put them in our huts after dark and enjoy +the lovely spectacle of our illuminated buildings +till some one remembered us and caught us, and +sent us to bed. That was the curse of our<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[146]</a></span> +hut-building—the very splendour of the result +attracted the attention one most wished to +avoid. But clay was our only building material, +and after the big bricks were lost I never had +any more bricks till I had children of my own +who had bricks of their own. And then I played +with them and theirs. And even then I never +thought of building magic cities till the Indian +soldiers came.</p> + +<p>They were very fine soldiers with turbans +and swords and eyes that gleamed in quite a +lifelike way, riding on horses of a violently +active appearance: they came to my little +son when he was getting well after measles or +some such sorrow, and he wanted a fort built +for them. So we rattled all the bricks out of +their boxes on to the long cutting-out table +in the work-room and began to build. But +do what we would our fort would not look like +a fort—at any rate not like an Eastern fort. +We pulled it down and tried again, and then +again, but no: regardless of our patient energy +our fort quietly but persistently refused to look +like anything but a factory—a building wholly +unworthy of those military heroes with the +prancing steeds and the coloured turbans, and +the eyes with so much white in them. So +then I wondered what was needed to give a<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[147]</a></span> +hint of the gorgeous East to the fort, and I +perceived that what was wanted was a dome—domes.</p> + +<p>So I fetched some brass finger-bowls and lustre +basins off the dresser in the dining-room and +inverted one on the chief tower of our fort, and +behold! the East began to sparkle and beckon. +Domes called for minarets, and chessmen on +pillars supplied the need. One thing led to +another, and before the day was over the Indian +horsemen were in full charge across a sanded +plain where palm trees grew—a sanded plain +bounded only by the edges of the table, along +three sides of which were buildings that never +rose beside the banks of Thames, but seemed +quite suitable piles to reflect their fair proportions +in the Ganges or the Sutlej, especially +when viewed by eyes which had not had the +privilege of gazing on those fair and distant +streams.</p> + +<p>I learned a great deal in that my first day of +what I may term romantic building, but what +I learned was the merest shadow-sketch of the +possibilities of my discovery. My little son, +for his part, learned that a bowl one way up is +a bowl, a thing for a little boy to eat bread and +milk out of; the other way up it is a dome for +a king's palace. That books are not only<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[148]</a></span> +things to read, but that they will make marble +slabs for the building of temples. That chessmen +are not only useful for playing that difficult +and tedious game on which grown-ups are so +slowly and silently intent, or even for playing +all those other games, of soldiers, which will +naturally occur to any one with command of +the pleasant turned pieces. Chessmen, he +learned, had other and less simple uses. As +minarets of delicate carved work they lightened +the mass of buildings and conferred elegance +and distinction, converting what had been a +block of bricks into a pavilion for a sultan or +a tomb for a sultan's bride.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 510px;"> +<img src="images/gs29.png" width="510" height="224" alt="" /> +<span class="caption">MATERIALS FOR THE GUARD-ROOM.</span> +</div> + +<p>There was a little guard-room, I remember, +at the corner of our first city, and there has +been a little guard-room at the corner of every +city we have built since. In simple beauty,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[149]</a></span> +that little guard-room seemed to us then to +touch perfection. And really, you know, I +have not yet been able to improve on it. The +material was simplicity itself: six books, five +chessmen, and a basin; and you see here how +the guard-room looked when it was done.</p> + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 389px;"> +<img src="images/gs30.png" width="389" height="525" alt="" /> +<span class="caption">THE GUARD ROOM.</span> +</div><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[150]</a></span></p> + + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 492px;"> +<img src="images/gs31.png" width="492" height="525" alt="" /> +<span class="caption">THE DOMINO DOOR.</span> +</div> + +<div class="figleft" style="width: 463px;"> +<img src="images/gs32.png" width="463" height="575" alt="" /> +<span class="caption">LARGE PALM.</span> +</div> +<p>There was a black box, I remember, standing +on another box, with domino steps. It needed +a door, and we made it a door of ivory with +the double blank of the dominoes, and a portico +of three cigarettes—two for pillars and one to +lie on the top of the pillars and complete the +portico. You have no idea how fine the whole<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[151]</a></span> +thing looked—like a strong little house of ebony +and ivory—a little sombre in appearance perhaps, +and like a house that has a secret to keep, +but quite fine. The palm trees we made out of +pieces of larch and yew fastened by Plasticine +to the tops of elder twigs—and elder twigs have +a graceful carriage, not too upright and yet +not drooping. They look very like the trunks +of tropical trees. But if you have not elders +and larches and yew trees to command, you can +make trees for your city in other ways. For +little trees in tubs we had southernwood stuck +in cotton reels—these make enchanting tubs, +and there are a good many different shapes, so +that your flower tubs are pleasantly varied. +Fir cones we found useful, too; they made +magnificent <i>chevaux de frise</i>.</p> + + + + + +<p>On the first day of building what we soon +came to call magic cities we trusted to inspiration; +there was no time for thought. And this +day was perhaps the most interesting day of +all—for we had everything to learn. One of the +things which I learned was that this magic city +game was an excellent training for eye and hand, +as well as for the imagination and the more +soothing of the domestic virtues. The eye is +trained to perceive likenesses and differences in +the shapes and colours of things—to notice, as I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[152]</a></span> +said, that a bowl is a dome wrong way up, and +that cigarettes are like white pillars. A beautiful +yet sinister temple might be built with +cigars for pillars and cigar-boxes for pediments, +if cigars were the sort of things you were ever +allowed to play with. You see that yew and +larch and elder can be made to look like palm +trees, and that shrubs in tubs are really like +sprigs of southernwood in cotton reels. You go +about with eyes newly opened to form and +colour: you look at every object in a new light, +trying to see whether it is or is not like something +else—something that can be used in your +magic city. You notice that a door is much +the same shape as auntie's mother-of-pearl card-case, +and your architectural instinct, already +beginning to develop, assures you that a pearly +door would be a beautiful thing for a temple, +if only auntie sees things in the same light as +you do. You perceive that a cribbage board is +straight and narrow, as a path leading to such +a door might be, and that if you stick tiny tufts +of southernwood or veronica into the holes +along the ivory sides of your path, your path +will run between two little green hedges. You +will notice that books make colonnades darkly +mysterious if the lids of the brick boxes are +laid along the back and along the top, and +that based on these solidly built colonnades +your bricks and arches will rise in galleries of +unexpected dignity and charm. The building<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[153]</a><br /><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[154]</a></span> +itself, the placing of bricks and dominoes, and +books and chessmen and bowls, with exactness +and neatness, is in itself a lesson in firm and +delicate handling, such a lesson as is impossible +if you are building with bricks alone. The call +on the imagination is strong and clear. A house—the +meanest hut—cannot be built without a +plan or without an architect, though the architect +may be only a little child and the plan +may be only a little child's dream. To build +without a plan is to heap bricks one on another, +to make a cairn, not a house. The plan for +the magic city, then, gets itself dreamed—the +child's imagination learns to know what the +bowl will look like when it is upside down, and, +presently, what sort of bowls and books and +bricks are needed to give to the cloud-capped +palace of its desire some shadow in solid fact +perceptible to the senses. To create in the image +of his dream is the hope and the despair of +every artist. And even though the image be +distorted—as in all works of art, even the +greatest, it always must be—yet it is joy even to +have created the poorest image of a dream.</p> +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 600px;"> +<a href="images/gs33-big.jpg"><img src="images/gs33.jpg" width="600" height="407" alt="MODEL" /></a> +<span class="caption">THE MAGIC CITY.</span> +</div> +<p>And in the labour of creation will blossom +those domestic virtues which best adorn the +home; patience—for it is not often that for +the young architect dream and image even<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[155]</a></span> +vaguely coincide at the first effort, or the second +or the third; good temper, for no one can build +anything in a rage. The spirit of anger is the +enemy of the spirit of architecture. And +besides, being angry may make your hand +shake, and then nothing is any good. Perseverance +too, without which patience is a mere +passive endurance. All these grow strong while +you build your cities and try to make visible +your dream.</p> + +<p>I do not mean that a child building a city +sees all of it at once—in every detail; I don't +suppose even the heaviest of architects does +that. But I mean that he sees the masses of +it with the eye of the mind and arrives by +experiment at the details that best suit those +masses. If the glass ash-tray will not do, the tea-cup +without a handle will—or perhaps the flower-pot +saucer, or the lid of a cocoa-tin.... One +must look about, and find something that <i>will</i> +do, something which when it is put in its place +will seem the only possible thing. I don't know +how real architects work, but this is how you +work with magic cities.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[156]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER V</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>Materials</div> + +<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">You</span> wander round the house seeking beautiful +things which look like other beautiful things. +Let us suppose that you have the run of a house +where beautiful things are. I will tell you +afterwards what to do in the house where +beautiful—or at any rate costly—things are +not. It is best when the owner of the house +is an enthusiastic member of the building party; +then she will grudge nothing.</div> + +<p>In the drawing-room you will find silver +candlesticks and a silver inkstand. The candlesticks +are like pillars. Put the inkstand across +the pillars and you have a gateway of unexampled +splendour. If there be a silver-backed +blotting-book, take it. It will make the great +door of your greatest temple. Silver bowls +should not be passed by, nor bronzes. A vase +of Japanese bronze set up between two ebony +elephants crowns a flat pillared building with +splendour. There may be Chinese dragons or<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[157]</a></span> +Egyptian gods that have lain a thousand years +safe in their bronze amid the sands of the desert, +cast aside by the foot of the camel, unseen in +the shadow of the tent, and now decking the +mantelpiece of the room you are looting. Little +silver figures of knights in armour and what not—take +them if you get the chance. Chessmen, +too, as many as you can get, the carved ivory +ones, of red and white, and the black and brown +kind where the heads of the kings and queens +are so like marbles and those of the pawns like +boot-buttons; draughts too, and spillikins, and +those little metal animals, heavy and coloured +life-like, which you see on glass shelves in the +fancy shop: take them too. They will serve +other uses than those to which you will dedicate +your Noah's Ark animals. Card counters, especially +the golden and mother-of-pearl kinds, and +dominoes, and the willow-pattern pots and a +blue cup or so from the glass-fronted cupboard. +Take all these, always giving preference to the +things that you will not be asked to put back +the same day. Little Japanese cabinets, tea-caddies +of tortoiseshell or wood or silver, silver +boxes—and boxes of all beautiful kinds. Do +not take the playing cards that people play +bridge with: these are never quite the same +after they have been used in magic cities, and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[158]</a></span> +the Queen of Hearts always gets lost. You can +usually acquire odd packs of cards that nobody +wants. Those with black and gold backs are +the best. They make gorgeous pagodas, and +a touch of Plasticine keeps each card where it +should be.</p> + +<p>In the dining-room you may acquire perhaps, +at least you can in mine, brass finger-bowls, and +the lids of urns and kettles from the dresser—egg-cups +and mugs and basins of lustre and of +blue. Also those very little pewter liqueur-cups +from Liberty's, and the tumblers for your towers +of light, if you are going to have any. The +library will yield you books and atlases—very +useful for roofs these last, if they do not slope +too much from back to edge; if they do, you +can get even with them by wedges of paper laid +in on the thin side.</p> + +<p>But the kitchen will be your happiest hunting-ground, +and here you will make a good bag +even in those houses where you are not +allowed any of the treasures from the drawing-room +or the dining-room.</p> + +<p>Tins—tins of all kinds and shapes, from the +tin that once held Bath Olivers and its lesser +brother where coffee once lived to the square +smaller tins designed for cocoa, mustard, +pepper, and so forth.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[159]</a></span></p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/gs34.png" width="500" height="365" alt="" /> +<span class="caption">HONESTY PILLARS.</span> +</div> + +<p>A flour-dredger and a pepper-pot, a potato-cutter, +patty pans, and those little tall tins that +you bake castle puddings in, the round wooden +moulds with which dairy-maids imprint cows and +swans upon pats of butter, the kitchen mortar, +especially the big marble one, so heavy that +cook does not care to use it, brown earthenware +bowls and stewing-pots, the lids of tea-pots, +clothes-pegs, jars that have held ginger, and +jars that have held jam—especially the brownish +corrugated kind of jar—all these things and +many more you may glean in a kitchen whose +Queen is kind.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[160]</a></span></p> + +<p>One of the most beautiful buildings I have +ever made was built of kitchen things, and bricks +and the boxes of bricks, a few shells, and a few +chessmen.</p> + +<p>The three tall towers are two cocoa tins and +a Bath Oliver tin, very brightly polished; the +windows and doors and crenellations are of black +<i>passe-partout</i>, that nice gummed paper which you +buy in reels for binding pictures and glass together +when you don't want to have picture-frames. +On the tops of the tins are the lids of a silver +urn, a silver butter dish, and a silver jam-jar. +A salt-cellar (wrong way up, with a white +chess knight on it) and a pepper-pot with <i>passe-partout</i> +doors and windows stand at the base of +the tower, and turrets are made of round bricks +and draughts, with the chess castles on the top. +The porch is a big potato-cutter, with a white +chess king on it, and on each side two books +with a binding of white and pale gold. Along +the top of the porch run the lids of two domino-boxes; +on these are two rounds that happened +when the arches were being cut out. On these +little pearl shells are glued, and little roofs of +blue tiles complete the porch. Behind these +more books, white and pale gold with marbled +sides, lead up to the platform on which the +great tin towers rise up against the snowy<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[161]</a></span> +background (linen sheets over the backs of +chairs). The lower building is of the boxes of +bricks faced with bricks and bearing a large +blue jar crowned with a silver egg-cup, a +flour-dredger, and a pepper-pot, and some blue +and white tiles. An Egyptian god stands at +the corner of the upper and the lower building, +and two green trees with white roses grow +out of a tomb at the left. The pathway +is of tiles edged with fir cones, and two rose-trees +within tubs (cotton reels) stand at its +beginning; the whole thing was blue and silver +and black, and I wish I could show you a coloured +picture of it, or, better still, build the thing up +for you to see.</p> + +<p>The lower platform on the right is a box faced +with silver seed-vessels of honesty, and the +arches and court are red. The steps are made +of blocks of sugar. The tank is edged with red +bricks and the water where the seal swims is +silver paper. In front is a pavement made of +mother-of-pearl card counters, and the inside +of the court is made of one large red tile with +a pattern of white on it. (You can do this with +a square board painted red, and counters laid +on it.) The fountain in the middle is a brass +match-box and the waters that rise from it +are silver paper; but in the picture the water<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[162]</a></span> +of the fountain seems to have been blown aside +by the wind, which no doubt is severe in "those +desolate regions of snow." You can build just +such another tower and castle with the things +you have, but when once you start building you +will most likely think of some other way, quite +different from mine, and just as good.</p> + +<p>Tiles, by the way, are most useful, and if you +have an uncle who is an architect he will have +any number sent to him as samples, and he will +be rather glad to get rid of them. If your uncles +are all eminent in other walks of life it is a pity, +but you are probably friends with the man who +papers and paints your house, or the man who +comes when the pipes burst at Christmas, or +the man who comes about the gas, or the man +who knows all the sullen secrets of the kitchen +range. It will be strange if none of these can +get you a few coloured tiles when once they know +you want them. It is well, if you are a child +with a taste for building, to take pains to become +acquainted with all the men who come to your +house to do interesting things with tools and +wood and iron and lead. Quite apart from the +joy of watching their slow and mysterious processes, +and thinking how easy it would be to +be a plumber or a paperhanger yourself, there +are all sorts of things left over from their work<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[163]</a></span> +which are of no use to them, but may be of +much use to you. All sorts of screws and nails, +for instance, these generous men will now and +then bestow—little screws of dry colour, little +pieces of brass, door-knobs and finger-plates, +thick red earthenware pipe, good for towers, +lengths of pleasantly coloured wall-paper—the +wrong side of which, being plain, can be used +for all sorts of purposes. Lead piping is useful +too, especially if you get it cut into 2-in. lengths—and +cut <i>straight</i>. The sections make excellent +and stable flower-pots for cities. Bits of +brass tubing are useful too—in fact, brass objects +of all sorts deserve your careful consideration. +Because, if a city is to look handsome, it must +have a good deal of metal about it, as the +cities in Atlantis did.</p> + +<p>As I write I see more and more clearly that +a sharp distinction must be drawn between +cities built and demolished in an afternoon, and +cities that can be kept going and added to day +by day for weeks. You may often be fortunate +enough to raid drawing-room and dining-room +and to use the spoils for a building that only lasts +a day, but no one will strip her rooms of all +the pretty things you want and let you keep them +for weeks. Therefore if you are going to build +a city that is to go on, you must collect the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[164]</a></span> +materials of your own, and the odds and ends +that amiable workmen will readily give you +will take a useful place in your collection. If +you let it be known that you want odds and +ends of pretty and simple shapes, your friends +will save them for you, and you will gradually +amass the things you need. I know well +enough that there will have to be a place to +keep them, but the toy-cupboard, if you clear +out all the toys you never play with, will hold +a good deal, and many of the things you collect +will do for other purposes as well as for the +building of cities.</p> + +<hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[165]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER VI</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>Collections</div> + + +<div class="figright" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/gs35.png" width="500" height="399" alt="" /> +<span class="caption">TREES.</span> +</div> + +<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">First</span> in your building collection will be the +boxes, arches, and steps of which I have spoken. +Dominoes and draughts and chessmen you +probably have. Odd chessmen—quite beautiful +ones can often be bought for a few pence—are +very valuable for our purpose. The black +and red halma men are very useful too, but +the yellow and green always look cheap and +nasty. Card counters are useful, and so is +silver paper. Glass drops off old chandeliers +are good for fountains, and pieces of green +cloth for grass plots. The back of green wall-paper +does for this, too; and very realistic grass +lawns can be made by chopping up the long green +grass that people sell for fire screens. It is +really sedge finely split up, and dyed. You +cut it up as finely as you can with scissors, and +when you have about a teacupful you take +a square of stiff cardboard and cover it all over +with glue; then quickly, before the glue has time<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[166]</a></span> +to cool, you sprinkle your chopped grass thickly +all over it and leave it to dry. Next day, <i>not +before</i>, spread a newspaper and turn the cardboard +over so that the loose grass falls away on to +the paper. Fasten down your grass plot in a +suitable place in your city and build a little +red brick wall round it with a little arched +gateway, and you will have a neat and charming +enclosed garden. For garden beds dark-coloured +tobacco makes good mould, and shows +up your little rose-trees. You can make standard +rose-trees of loofah—dyed green, and the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[167]</a></span> +stalks of long matches painted brown. The +roses, which are stuck on with glue, are red or +white immortelles, and the whole effect is +just what you are trying for. Large trees can +be made of sprigs of box or veronica, with immortelles +glued on, and they will last fresh and +pretty about a week. Palm trees can be made +of elder stems and larch or of the sedge grass.</div> + +<p>Lay the grass evenly and, beginning about +half-way down, wind brown wool or silk thread +round and round closely and, very like splicing +a cricket bat, work downwards towards the +thick part of the grass stalk. Fasten the end +very strongly. Then stick the stem in a cotton +reel or a lead piping pot, cut off, evenly, the +loose ends of the grass, fold them back level, cut +the stem.</p> + +<p>For the city of a day sprigs of southernwood, +lavender, thyme, or marjoram make charming +little trees.</p> + +<p>Shells are extremely useful for decoration and +produce the effect of carving. Almost all shells +will be useful in one way or another, but I have +found the most satisfaction in the gray and +pearly shells which you find among the thick +seaweed ridges on the beach below the grey cliffs +of Cornwall, and the little yellow periwinkly +shells that lie on the rocks below the white<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[168]</a></span> +cliffs of Kent. If you glue these shells strongly +on arches and pillars you will find them +very handsome adornments.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/gs36.png" width="500" height="250" alt="" /> +<span class="caption">THICK ARCHES.</span> +</div> + +<p>Keep your shells in boxes. There are always +plenty of boxes in the world, and if not boxes, +little bags will do to hold the different kinds +of shells. It is well worth while to keep the +different kinds separate. The work of sorting +out the shells is very damping to the eager +enthusiast anxious to execute a decorative +design. Indeed, it is well to keep all your +building materials sorted each according to its +kind, the wooden things together and the metal +things and, above all, the crockery things. +Keep the Noah's Ark animals in their Ark, and +the bricks in their boxes, and when you are +going to build don't get everything out at<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[169]</a></span> +once and make a rubbish heap of it on the +floor.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/gs37.png" width="500" height="490" alt="" /> +<span class="caption">FAN WINDOW.</span> +</div> + +<p>As you grow more accustomed to building, +you will find that sometimes you build a +temple or palace that charms you so much that +you wish to build it again; and you will soon +learn what are the materials needed, and just +take out those and a few more from your store. +I say a few more, because you will never build +your temple or your palace twice <i>exactly</i> the<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[170]</a></span> +same: you are sure to think of some improvement, +however small.</p> + +<p>I have made beautiful windows with the +sticks of an old ivory fan, framed in dark wood +bricks, and ornamented the dark wall above +with elephant tusk shells and others, and below +with carved ivory card counters.</p> + +<div class="figright" style="width: 449px;"> +<img src="images/gs38.png" width="449" height="600" alt="" /> +<span class="caption">THE ELEPHANT TEMPLE.</span> +</div> + +<p>There is a certain Elephant Temple which I +have built many times. Its floor is a red and +white chessboard, and its roof is supported on +a double row of white pillars. White pillars +surround the altar—a wooden box—on which +the ebony elephant stands. On each side of +him are red fairy lights, hidden by buttresses +from the human eye which peeps through the +brazen gates into that shadowy interior, and +falling full on the elephant on his pillared shrine. +The walls are of big red books—<i>Sheridan's Plays</i>, +<i>Tom Jones</i>, and Boswell's <i>Life of Johnson</i>. The +roof is a flat square lid, once the lid of a packing +case, stained a dark brown like the bricks. +On the side are the windows made of the +ivory fan, and the dark bricks and the elephant +tusk shells. There is a door, too, a mother-of-pearl +one; in a former life it was the card-case +of a much-loved aunt, who nobly contributed +it to the Temple. Above this door is a white +animal from the Noah's Ark.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[171]</a></span></p> + +<p>And all the rest of that wall is built up of dark-stained +brown wooden bricks. The other side<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[172]</a></span> +shows between dark buttresses the red of the +books, and towards the back of this side are +small square buildings—wooden boxes stained +brown—with brass domes and mysterious doorways. +I think the priests and attendants of +the Temple live here.</p> + +<p>The front of the Temple shows a little of the +red between dark buttresses, which, here, are +ornamented with delicate dark carved chessmen. +The gate is of pierced brass—two finger-plates +for a door, and the brazen pillars of the +portico are two candlesticks, which support a +brass inkstand, on which stand two yellowish +wooden chessmen. On the middle of the roof +is a big lacquered wooden bowl—the kind that +nice grocers put in their windows full of prunes +or coffee. Above is a brass rose-bowl, on that +a finger-bowl of inlaid brass, crowned with a +black chess king. There are two dark arches +with bed-knobs on them, and round the roof +are various towers and turrets, and tall minarets +made of dark bricks with chessmen on the +top.</p> + +<p>In front of the pillars at the gate two black +elephants stand on wooden plinths, and the fore-court +of the Temple and the space at the side +are paved with mother-of-pearl.</p> + +<p>I know the main things that are needed for<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[173]</a></span> +this Temple, but its details are changed a little +every time I build it.</p> + +<p>If you cannot get mother-of-pearl card +counters you can make a beautiful pavement +by pasting the shining pods of honesty in a +pattern on a piece of dark brown cardboard, or +dark brown paper pasted on cardboard; but if +you do this you must build a little dark-wood +brick wall all round to hide the brown paper +edges. Build gatehouses in your wall, little +ones, to show off, by contrast, the massive +splendour of your Temple. These honesty pods +are a most useful substitute for mother-of-pearl. +You can paste them on square pillars or on the +fronts of boxes (houses I mean) or make sloping +roofs of them by sticking them on folded cardboard +fastened at the proper angle by tapes +glued about a third of the way up. But as a +rule sloping roofs are not good in Eastern cities. +A grass garden with paths of honesty, or a +shell-built fountain basin in the middle, will +add a charm to any city square. And by the way, +don't be afraid of open spaces. Have as many +buildings as you like, and mass them together +as you choose, but let there be open spaces. +They will be to your building as mounts are +to pictures or margins to books. And for frame +or binding, let there be a wall all round your<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[174]</a></span> +city. It gives a neatness and a completeness +which enhance a hundred-fold all the qualities +your city may possess.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/gs39.png" width="500" height="181" alt="" /> +<span class="caption">HONESTY ROOF.</span> +</div> + +<p>There are cardboard models of St. Paul's +Cathedral, the Tower Bridge, and the Temple at +Jerusalem. These are interesting in themselves +and it is good to put them together. The +Temple, which is sold by the Religious Tract +Society, is really beautiful, and when you have +set it up it looks like a model in ivory. The bridge +and the Cathedral are of dull brown pasteboard—but +they are interesting for all that. But +when you are tired of these things as models, +parts of them can be used with great effect in +your building, especially if you paint the brown +ones with aluminium paint, or even whitewash +them.</p> + +<p>In the foreground of the picture of the Astrologer's +tower you will see a little house which<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[175]</a></span> +doesn't look as if it belonged where it is. And +no more it does. It was put in just to show you +what these little cardboard buildings are like—it +is one of the gate-houses of the Tower Bridge, +and the little white house on the parapet above +the steps in the picture of the silver towers is a +little gate-house out of another model.</p> + +<p>When you are collecting shells, you will find +smooth flat stones of pleasing colours. Collect +them—the thinner the better—you can make +mosaic floors of them, fastening them in their +place with glue or a very thin layer of Plasticine. +Fir-cones of all shapes and sizes are useful, from +the delicate cones of the larch to the great +varnished-looking cones that fall from the big +pine trees on the Riviera; they call them pineapples +there—<i>pommes-de-pin</i>—and they use +them for lighting fires. But you can use them +for the tops of towers.</p> + +<p>A little, and only a very little, red tinsel +paper is good to use, for the backs of shrines. +It gives a suggestion of the glow of hidden +lamps—or, put as windows near the tops of +towers, it suggests the glow of sunset falling on +jewelled casements. You can get it, and also +bundles of stamped strips of gold paper, which +should be used very sparingly indeed, from Mr. +Bousquet, of the Barbican, in London City.<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[176]</a></span> +There are other things which could serve for +part of your collection, but I have told about +these in the chapter on poor children's cities, +because the poorest child can get them. But +they are desirable in any collection, such things +as tobacco-tins, jam-jars, clothes-pegs, and the +different kinds of common things that you can +use for decorating the fronts and backs and sides +of houses, if you have not enough bricks to +build façades to them all. And remember +always to make the backs of your houses as +beautiful as the fronts. They may—and should—be +plainer but not less beautiful. Do not be +like the jerry-builders who spend all their +decoration, such as it is, on the flat fronts of +their villas, and leave the sides and back flat +and ugly, and so that when you see the row of +them from the railway they look miserable +and dejected, as though they knew how ugly +they were and were sorry.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[177]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER VII</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>The Poor Child's City</div> + +<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">When</span> my city was built at Olympia a great +many school-teachers who came to see it told +me that they would like to help the children in +their schools to build such cities, but that it +would not be possible because the children came +from poor homes, where there were none of +the pretty things—candlesticks, brass bowls, +silver ash-trays, chessmen, draughts, well-bound +books, and all the rest of it—which I +had used to build my city. So then I said I +would build a city out of the sort of things that +poor children could collect and bring to school. +And I did. My friends Mr. Annis and Mr. +Taylor, who were helping me to explain the +city and show it to visitors, helped me with the +building. We did it in a day, and it was very +pretty—so pretty that the school-teachers who +came to see it asked me to write a book to say +how <i>that</i> was done. And so I did.</div> + +<p>There are no words to express half what I<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[178]</a></span> +feel about the teachers in our Council Schools, +their enthusiasm, their patience, their energy, +their devotion. When we think of what the +lives of poor children are, of the little they have +of the good things of this world, the little chance +they have of growing up to any better fate +than that of their fathers and mothers, who +do the hardest work of all and get the least +pay of all those who work for money—when +we think how rich people have money to throw +away, how their dogs have velvet coats and silver +collars, and eat chicken off china, while the little +children of the poor live on bread and tea, and +wear what they can get—often enough, too little—when +we think of all these things, if we can +bear to think of them at all, there is not one of +us, I suppose, who would not willingly die if +by our death we could secure for these children +a fairer share of the wealth of England, the +richest country in the world. For wealth, by +which I mean money, can buy all those things +which children ought to have, and which these +children do not have—good food, warm clothes, +fresh country air, playthings and books, and +pictures. Remembering that by far the greater +number of children of England have none of +these things, you would, I know, gladly die if +dying would help. To die for a cause is easy—you<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[179]</a></span> +leap into the gulf like Curtius, or fall on +the spears like Winkelried, or go down with +your ship for the honour of your country. To +lead a forlorn hope, to try to save one child +from fire or water, and die in the attempt—that +is easy and glorious. The hard thing to do is +to live for your country—to live for its children. +And it is this that the teachers in the Council +Schools do, year in and year out, with the most +unselfish nobility and perseverance. And nobody +applauds or makes as much fuss as is +made over a boy who saves a drowning kitten. +In the face of enormous difficulties and obstacles, +exposed to the constant pin-pricks of little +worries, kept short of space, short of materials +and short of money, yet these teachers go on +bravely, not just doing what they are paid to do, +but a thousand times more, devoting heart, mind, +and soul to their splendid ambition and counting +themselves well paid if they can make the +world a better and a brighter place for +the children they serve. If these children when +they grow up shall prove better citizens, kinder +fathers, and better, wiser, and nobler than their +fathers were, we shall owe all the change and +progress to the teachers who are spending their +lives to this end.</p> + +<p>And this I had to say before I could begin to<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[180]</a></span> +write about how cities may be built of such +materials as poor children can collect and bring +to school.</p> + +<p>For I have to own that poor children live in +such little crowded houses that there is no room +for the building of cities, and in the courts +and streets where they play they cannot build, +for the passers-by would tumble over their +cities, and the policemen would call it an obstruction. +So if they have a city at all it must +be where they have most of their pleasant plays—at +school. Besides, the children I have in +mind are so very poor, that no one child could +possibly collect enough materials for a city. +But a number of children could each of them +bring a few things, and thus make up enough +for the building. And in most schools there +will be some children not quite so poor who can +afford a penny or so for tinsel paper and the +few things—colours, paints, and so on—that do +not occur naturally in a house, even a well-to-do +house. These, let us hope, will be able to furnish +a few old chessmen, for there is nothing like +chessmen for giving an air of elegance to domes +and minarets. If you cannot get chessmen, +small clothes-pegs are good. You can cut them +in halves and then you have two kinds of +minaret. They can be coloured red or dark<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[181]</a></span> +brown, or, if your city seems likely to lack +metal, you can paint them with gold or aluminium +paint. They look well when cut shorter as the +battlements of buildings, rather like halma +men, but of handsomer and more rotund proportions. +Your halma man as you buy him in a +box is ever a bit of a starveling. If you cut +your peg into three, the middle section will +make short round pillars to support little +galleries, the roof being a strip of mill-board +or the lid of a narrow box.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/gs40.png" width="500" height="285" alt="" /> +<span class="caption">CLOTHES PEGS.</span> +</div> + +<p>Cardboard and wooden boxes of all sizes and +shapes are always easy to get. These can be +coloured as explained in another chapter, and +little doors and windows cut in them. But be +sparing of windows; too many windows detract<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[182]</a></span> +from the dignity of your tower, and make it +look like a factory. In poor schools there will +not be many bricks, and something must be +done to add variety to the façades of buildings +when there are not enough bricks to cover or +decorate your boxes. A good deal can be done +with haricot beans, tapioca, and sago. Fasten +the beans round the doorways and the windows +with glue or seccotine or Plasticine. If you use +glue let the bean-work be quite cold before you +do anything else with it. "Next day" is an +excellent rule. When the beans are quite firmly +fixed, glue the surface all over and sprinkle <i>thickly</i> +with tapioca so that not a bit of the box shows. +Leave the tapioca lying on the surface till <i>next +day</i>, then turn it up; the loose tapioca will fall off +and leave a pleasant rough-cast-looking surface. +Round cardboard boxes, such as muff-boxes or +biscuit-boxes make splendid towers treated in +this way. If you cannot get the little round +yellow periwinkly shells, maize is very good if +you cut each grain flat with a sharp knife, and +fix the grains with glue as pillars and arches. +Tin boxes or round tins polished to silvery +brightness, with doors and windows and crenellations +of black <i>passe-partout</i>, can be built into palaces of +astonishing splendour, as you can see +in the picture of the silver towers. But always<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[183]</a></span> +beware of too many windows. Other excellent +towers are jam-pots: you can paint them any +colour you like, but I advise you to stick to +terra-cotta, cream colour, and dark brown. +Very pretty towers can be made of white jam-pots +with windows and doors and crenellation +of gold paper. Only you should outline the +gold with ink or dark stain to make it show up +against the white. Basins that are cracked +make good domes, and you can almost always +get a cracked basin, however poor you are; +tea-cups that have lost their handles, or had +a piece bitten out of them, are also not hard +to get, and the lids of teapots that are broken, +and of saucepans that have been burnt through, +come readily enough to the hand of the collector. +Honey pots and the little brown jugs that cream +is sold in are easy to come by, and make Moorish-looking +domes for buildings.</p> + +<p>When once you begin to build, you will find +that all sorts of things that before looked neither +useful nor beautiful become both, when they +are built into your city. Look at the bedstead-knobs +in the Elephant Temple, and the pepper-pots +and the tea-cups on the top of the tower +of pearl and red.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> +<img src="images/gs41.png" width="500" height="335" alt="" /> +<span class="caption">TOWERS AND COCOANUT COTTAGE.</span> +</div> + +<p>Those children who are lucky enough to go +into the country for a holiday can collect fir-cones<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[184]</a></span> +and acorns; nicely shaped bits of wood are +more easily come by in a country village than +in a London slum. Acorns are most useful, both +the acorn and the cup. A brown building with +doors and windows outlined in acorn cups with +their flat side set on with glue looks like a +precious work of carved wood. If you can't +get acorn cups, the shells of Barcelona nuts are +good, but they are difficult to cut into the +needed cup shape. The shells of pea-nuts on a +stone-coloured building look like carved stones, +but always the nutshell must fit its edges tightly +and neatly to the surface and show as a little +round neat boss. Your own observation will +supply you with other little and valueless things, +which will become valuable as soon as you stick +them evenly and closely on a foundation of +their own colour. The periwinkly shells and +the maize grains look best on white wood. The +shells of the cocoanut have a value all their +own. The larger ones, sawn neatly in halves, +make impressive domes for brown buildings, +and half a small cocoanut shell will roof a +cardboard box that has held elastic bands, and +you can call it a thatched cottage or the hut of +a savage chief. I called mine Cocoanut Cottage, +and the Curator of my Botanical Museum lived +there. The Chief Astrologer, of course, lived<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[185]</a></span> +at the top of his tower, which was a photographic +enlarging apparatus. Ponds and rivers can be +made with the silver paper that comes off +cigarettes, and I have made a very impressive +tower with match boxes, painted black and +piled one on another so that the blue side shows +in front, with a touch of red at each side. +Black windows if you like. If you cannot +get any chessmen the pinnacles of your buildings +must be clothes-pegs, acorns, and fir-cones, +with a very occasional piece of lead pencil or +short piece of brass tubing with an acorn or a +fir-cone on the top. Fir-cones, too, look quite +baronial stuck upright on the posts of gates—and<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[186]</a></span> +they are good edging for paths and roads. +Pill-boxes make nice little turrets, and cotton +reels, coloured to match the bricks and the +boxes, are the finest flower tubs in the world. +With sprigs of evergreen stuck in them, or a little +made rose-tree, they look quite life-like and +convincing, especially if you paste a circle of +brown paper on the top of the reel, to look like +mould, before you stick your shrub in the hole +so conveniently placed in the reel, apparently +on purpose to have shrubs planted in it. Cotton +reels with acorns or fir-cones on them are good +on the top of gate-posts.</p> + +<div class="figcenter" style="width: 475px;"> +<img src="images/gs42.png" width="475" height="291" alt="" /> +<span class="caption">COTTON REELS.</span> +</div> + +<div class="figleft" style="width: 388px;"><a id="Page_187"></a> +<img src="images/gs43.png" width="388" height="600" alt="" /> +<span class="caption">LATTICE WINDOW.</span> +</div> + +<p>These are just a few of the things that poor +children can get and the way they can use +them. The moment you begin to build you +will think of a hundred things that I have not +thought of, and a hundred ways of using them +that I should not have thought of trying.</p> + +<p>If you can so arrange the site of your city +that it need not be disturbed, it will grow in +beauty day by day, and you will presently +have to name a day to satisfy the children who +will want to bring their parents to see it. If +you give a school party no other attraction will +be needed, and you will find that neither children +nor parents will tire of examining your city as +a whole and in detail, exclaiming at its beauty +and marvelling at its ingenuity. And the +children will love it. And so will you.</p> + +<p>If you are disposed to take a little more trouble +with your towers, you can cover them with +cement, and mould the crenellations and windows +with your fingers. The cement is made +of newspaper, size, and whitening. Tear up +two newspapers and boil them in four quarts of +water for three hours. Then pound the paper +in a large mortar, or squeeze it in your hands +till it is all pulp. It will have an unpleasing +grey colour at this stage, but in the end it will +be creamy white. Then add equal quantities +of size and whitening and a pinch of yellow +ochre, mix thoroughly and let the mixture get +cold, when it is ready for use. If it is too thin<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[188]</a><br /><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[189]</a></span> +warm it again, and add more whitening, but do +not let the mixture <i>boil</i> after the size has been +added. When the mixture with which you have +covered your tower is dry,—it takes some days—it +will be as hard as stone. A cocoa tin set +on a treacle tin makes a very neat tower, as you +will see by the picture. Square towers can +also be made in this way, by covering square tins +with the cement. In fact, with a little trouble +and some tins of different sizes and shapes +you could build a whole palace in this way. +Doors can be made of black paper, and lattices +of paper cut and folded, with black paper +behind it, as you can see for yourself by the +picture.</p><hr class="chap" /><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[190]</a></span></p> + + + + +<h2>CHAPTER VIII</h2> + +<div class='chaptertitle'>The End</div> + +<div class='unindent'><span class="smcap">You</span> will have noticed that though I began by +pointing out that children differ as much as +grown-up people do, and that the individual +character and temperament of one child are not +the character and temperament of another, +yet I have throughout spoken of the needs of +the child as though the needs of all children +were the same. That is because, in the body of +this work, I have been dealing with the needs +of children as a genus, and not with those of +the individual or species. There are certain needs +common to all children, needs as universal as +the need for food, raiment, warmth, and light. +Such are the needs for sympathy and justice, +leisure and liberty. These things are admitted +by all but the driest economists to be +the rights of adults, but not, alas! always +admitted as the rights of children. And I +have tried to show a little what it is that is +essential to the true well-being of all children. +The hungers and thirsts of the individual spirit<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[191]</a></span> +cannot be dealt with by any but those in close +relation to the individual child. I have tried +to lay down broad outlines—to make suggestions, +to point out pleasant ways leading to +pleasant places. Parents, teachers, pastors and +masters will make the application—or the +variation—in every individual case.</div> + +<p>One of the things that is the matter with +modern education is the absence of the conception +of personal idiosyncrasies, tastes, character +and temperament. For the matter of that +it is this indifference to personality which makes +the whole of our civilisation vulgar and vain. +Our education treats children as though they +were all cast in one mould; it treats men and +women as though they, in their sphere, differed +not at all one from another. You will say that +it is impossible, in a great country and a great +school, to find out the personal tastes and wishes, +hopes, dreams, powers, and possibilities of +individuals, and you are quite right. That is +why large schools and large communities fail +so detestably in the very objects of their existence. +Schools are intended to educate, and +they merely instruct. Communities are, at least +I suppose they are, intended to enable their +members to live happy and useful lives as +free citizens, and they only succeed in making<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[192]</a></span> +slaves of the many and tyrants of the few. +The machinery of government and the machinery +of so-called education is too big—what it has +to deal with is too big—for any fine result to +be possible. If we are ever to get out of children, +and men and women, anything like the +best of which they are capable, we shall have +to have much smaller schools and much smaller +communities. Some sort of beautiful and useful +corporate life is possible in a place the size of +Bedford; it is not possible in a place the size +of London. Ten or twenty children in a class +can be treated as individual human beings, and +the best that is in them drawn out by a sympathetic +understanding of personal traits and +characteristics. But a class of seventy or eighty +must be treated as a machine of which the little +live units are but wheels and cogs. It can, as +a machine, be made to do certain things; +the component parts of it can be made to +contribute their share to the general result, +even as the bright and helpless parts of a +machine contribute to its activity. But you +can never get out of the children composing +such a class anything approaching the fine +result which can be achieved by an education +based on the broad lines of what is good for +<i>children</i>, with a superstructure of delicate perception<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[193]</a></span> +of what is good for the <i>individual child</i>. +Dick, Tom, and Harry can join in certain lessons +and certain games, but there will always be some +matters in which Dick is not in the least like +Tom, and Harry is quite different from both the +others.</p> + +<p>The people who govern us talk about education—they +talk greatly, and a little they do. +But they will not do the one simple, straightforward +thing which is as essential to the growth +of the mind as vital religion is to the growth of +the soul. Any teacher in any elementary school +knows what is needed, but those in power do not +know it. They will make scholarships as plentiful +as blackberries, they will do all sorts of fine +things for secondary education. The one thing +they will not do is to <i>reduce the size of the classes</i> +in elementary schools. And so long as this is not +done the millions we spend yearly on education +are, to a pitiably great extent, millions wasted. +We might almost as well take at least half the +money, put it in bags, tie it up with red tape, +and drop it over London Bridge, or, still better, +spend the money in monthly exhibitions of +free fireworks, which would at least give the +children and the grown-ups one jolly evening in +thirty.</p> + +<p>A small class can be taught, and taught well,<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[194]</a></span> +by a teacher of as average ability as ever +tumbled head over heels from London to +York, but a large class your average teacher +will never get at at all. It takes a genius and +an orator to speak intelligibly to more than +fifteen people. I sometimes wonder if teachers +know how much of their teaching their scholars +miss altogether—fail to see, fail to grasp, do +not know is there. Between the careless or +overworked teacher and the timid and rather +stupid child there is a great gulf fixed. To +such a child the voice of the teacher is the voice +of one crying in the wilderness, crying quite +aimlessly, in a wilderness of unintelligible +jargon. Many boys—in public as well as elementary +schools by the way—go through +their whole school life "scraping through somehow," +and never once having a clear idea of +anything that they are doing, hardly ever a +glimpse of what anything is about or that anything +has any reasonable relation to anything +else. It is rather like a miracle, whichever way +you take it, but there it is, and a miracle which +might be made impossible and unnecessary by +a little sensible commonplace legislation. We +want smaller classes, and we want those classes +better taught. That is to say, we want more +teachers, and better-paid teachers; we want<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[195]</a></span> +our teachers to be placed in a position of certain +comfort, that they shall not be living in the +House of Poverty with the wolf of Worry always +nosing round the door, distracting their attention +from what should be their chief thought—for +most of the months of the year. We +want longer holidays, and a better provision +for happiness in those holidays, both for teachers +and children. We want every teacher and +every child to have a real holiday, not merely +an absence from school. In a word, we want +more money spent on schools and less on gaols +and reformatories. It cannot be put too plainly +that the nation which will not pay for her +schools must pay for her prisons and asylums. +People don't seem to mind so much paying for +prisons and workhouses. What they really hate +seems to be paying for schools. And yet how +well, in the end, such spending would pay us! +"There is no darkness but ignorance," and we +have now such a chance as has never been the +lot of men since Time began, a chance to light +enough lamps to dispel that darkness. If only +we would take that chance! Even from the +meanest point of view we ought to take it. +It would be cheaper in the end. Schools are +cheaper than prisons.</p> + +<p>Now that I have written the words I don't<span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[196]</a></span> +like the look of them; and looking back through +this book, I see that most of what I have written +applies to the kind of children who are in little +danger of going to prison, children in comfortable +homes, with enough of, at any rate, material +well-being. Most of my book refers to the class +that is not taught in Council Schools, and that +will not be sent to a reformatory if the eighth +commandment is not learnt in one lesson. This +class is called the upper middle-class, and it +does not go to the Council Schools because it +has money to go elsewhere. The children of +this class are, in brain and heart, not superior +to the children of what are called the working +classes. Place the middle-class children in the +surroundings of the slum child, and thereupon +the middle-class child would grow as the slum +child grows, as the plant debarred from light +grows—<i>not straight</i>. What we want is that +there should be a distribution of wealth so +changed from the one that now destroys the +nation's balance as to put every parent in a +position to pay for his child's education, and +that the nation's schools should be so superlatively +better than all other schools that no +parent would dream of sending his child to +any school but that provided by the nation for +the nation's children.</p><p><span class="pagenum"><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[197]</a></span></p> + +<p>And now that it comes to good-bye, I am +sorry to say it. I feel that I have only been +touching the fringe of the greatest problem +in the world: that there is very much which +I have left unsaid, or which I might have said +differently, and better. One might go on for +all one's life thinking and writing about children +and their needs, and always there would be +more unsaid than said, less thought than food +for thought. If the thoughts which I have +striven to set forth give food for thought in +others, if my little candle may help to kindle +a great torch, I shall look back on the writing +of this book as a great privilege and the +memory of the hours spent on it I shall treasure +with a glad and grateful heart.</p> + + +<div class='copyright'><i>Printed by Hazell, Watson & Viney, Ld., London and Aylesbury.</i></div> + + +<hr class="tb" /> +<div class='tnote'> +<p><b>Transcriber's Notes:</b> Varried hyphenation retained. Obvious punctuation errors repaired.</p> +</div> + + + + + + + + +<pre> + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Wings and the Child, by E. 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