Part 37
These first tentatives in verbal assertion, we are told, sounded very odd owing to the slowness of the delivery and the stress impartially laid on each word. C. had as yet no inkling of the subtleties of rhetoric, and was too much taken up with the weighty business of expressing thought somehow to trouble about such niceties as relative emphasis, and variation of pitch and pace.
As a rule, remarks the father, it was surprising how suddenly, as it seemed, the boy hit on the right succession of verbal sounds. Only very rarely would he stumble, as when after having seen a fly taken out of his milk, and on being subsequently asked whether he would not be glad to see his sister on her return from a visit, he said, ‘(Y)es, tell Ningi ’bout fy’ (Yes, Ningi will tell her about the fly).[306]
Footnote 306:
See above, p. 173.
The impulse to express himself, to communicate his experiences and observations to others, seemed to be all-possessing just now, and odd enough it was to note the make-shifts to which he was now and again driven. One day, when just twenty and a half months old, he sat in a chair with a heavyish book which he found it hard to hold up. He turned to his mother and said solemnly, “Boo go dow” (the book is going down or falling). Then, as if remarking a look of unintelligence in his audience, he threw it down and exclaimed, “Dat!” by which vigorous proceeding he gave a vivid illustration of his meaning.
It was noticeable that he would at this time play at sentence-making in a varied imitation of others’ assertions, thereby hitting out some quaint fancy which appeared to amuse him. Thus when told that there is a man on the horse he would say, ‘Ningi on horse,’ ‘Tit on horse,’ and so forth. Such playful practice in utterance probably furthers the growth of readiness and precision in the use of sentences.
The point in the intellectual growth of a child at which he acquires such a mastery of language as to carry on a sustained conversation is a proud and happy one for the fond parent. In the case of C. this date, twenty-three months and ten days, is, of course, marked with red letters. He made a great noise running about and shouting in his bedroom. His mother came in and rebuked him in the usual form (‘Naughty! naughty!’). He thereupon replied, “Tit mak noi” (Sister makes the noise). Mother (seriously): “Sister is at school”. C., with a still bolder look: “Mamma make noi”. Mother (with convulsive effort to suppress laughing, still more emphatically): “No, mamma was in the other room”. C. (looking archly at his doll, known as May): “May make noi”. This sally was followed by a good peal of boyish laughter.
The father evidently feels that this incident is highly suggestive of a lack of moral sense. So he thinks it well to add to the observation that the child had all the normal moral sensibility. But of this more presently.
We may now pass to the comparatively few observations (other than those already dealt with under verbal utterance) which refer to the child’s feelings. As already remarked, he was, like most other children, peevish and cross in the first year, and I regret to say that the diary refers more than once to violent outbursts of infantile rage in the second year also. Here is one sample entry (_æt._ nineteen months): Feelings of greediness, covetousness and spite begin to manifest themselves with alarming distinctness. When asked to give up a bit of pudding he says, “No,” in a coy, shy sort of manner, turning away. When further pressed he grows angry. On the other hand, he clamours for his sister’s dolls, and bears refusal with very ill grace. When, given up as hopelessly naughty, he is handed over to the nurse, and carried out of the room by this long-suffering person, he ferociously slaps her on the face. This slap appears not to be a pure invention, his sister having been driven more than once to visit him with this chastisement. He will also go up and slap his sister when she cries. He probably puts the nurse who carries him out and the sister who cries in the same category of naughty people. Sometimes he seems quite overpowered by vexation of spirit, and will lie down on the floor on his face and have a good, long, satisfying cry.
The child’s timidity has already been touched on. At the age of sixteen months, we are told, the sight of the drawing of a lion accompanied by roaring noises imitated by the father would greatly terrify him, driving him to his mother, in whose bosom he would hide his face, drawing down his under lip in an ominous way. Two months later the diary tells us that the child has had a fright. One day a lady called with a dog, which secreted itself under the table, and later on suddenly rushed out and made for Master C. The shock was such that since that time whenever he hears a strange noise he runs to his mother, exclaiming, ‘Bow-wow!’ in a terrified manner.
Before the close of the year, however, he began to show a manlier temper. The sight of a dog still made him run towards his mother and cling to her, but as soon as the animal moved off he would look up into her face laughingly and repeat the consolatory saying which she herself had taught him: “Ni (nice) bow-wow! bow-wow like Ningi”. In this humble fashion did he make beginning at the big task of manning himself to face the terrors of things.
As pointed out above, he extended his dislike to sudden and loud noises to inanimate objects. Thus in the last week of the year he was evidently put out, if not actually frightened, by hearing distant thunder; and about the same date, as we have seen, he showed a similar dislike to the sea when first taken near it. He would not approach it for some days, and he cried when he saw his father swimming in it.
It is sad in going through the pages of the diary to note that there is scarcely any observation during this second year on the development of kindly feelings. One would have supposed that with all the affection and care lavished on him C. might have manifested a little tenderness in response. The only incident put down under the head of social feeling in this year is the following (_æt._ twenty months): “When he eats porridge in the morning at the family breakfast he takes a look round and says: ‘Mamma, Tit, papa, Ningi,’ appearing to be pleased at finding himself sharing in a common enjoyment. This (continues the narrator) is a step onward from the anti-social attitude which he took up not long since when some of his mother’s egg was given to his sister and he shouted prohibitively: ‘No! no!’”
The worthy parent appears to be making the most of very small mercies here. Yet in justice to this child it must be said that he seems to have shown even at this tender age the rudiment of a conscience. The father is satisfied, indeed, that he displayed an instinctive respect for command or law. “Thus,” he says, “when sixteen months old the child hung down his head or hid it in his mother’s breast when for the first time I scolded him.” He goes on to say that after having been forbidden to do a thing, as to touch the coal scuttle or to take up his food with his fingers, he will stop just as he is going to do it, and take on a curious look of timidity or shamefacedness.
He seemed, too, before the end of the second year, to be getting to understand something of the meaning of that recurrent nursery-word ‘naughty,’ and the less frequent ‘good’. When seventeen months old his father tried him, on what looked like the approach of an outburst of temper, with a ‘Cliffy, be good!’ uttered in a firm peremptory manner. The child’s noise was at once arrested, and on the father’s asking: ‘Is Cliffy good?’ he answered, ‘Ea,’ his sign for ‘yes’. A little later he showed that he strongly disliked being called naughty,—vigorously remonstrating when so described with an emphatic, ‘No, no! good!’ He seems to have followed the usual childish order in beginning to apply “naughty” to others, his sister more particularly, much sooner than “good”. It was not till the middle of the twenty-first month that he recognised moral desert in this long-suffering sister. After a little upset of temper on her part, when the crying was over, he remarked in a quiet approving tone, ‘Goo!’ and on being asked by his mother who was good he answered, ‘Tit’.
As our example of his dawning powers of conversation may suggest, C. early developed the childish sense of fun. Most if not all children love pretence or make-believe. Here is an example of this childish tendency. When about eighteen months old during a short visit to his father’s room C. happened to be walking in the direction of the door. His father at once said, ‘Ta ta,’ just as if the child were really going away. C. instantly entered into the joke, repeating the ‘ta ta,’ moving towards the door, then returning, and so renewing the pretty little fraud.
Sometimes, as parents know, this impish love of make-believe comes very inconveniently into conflict with discipline and authority. One day, about the same date, he got hold of a photograph portrait of an uncle of his. His mother bade him give it up to her. He walked towards her looking serious enough, nearly put it into her hand, and then suddenly drew his hands back laughing.
In other examples of laughter given in this chapter we see something very like contempt. When two years and eight months old he was observed to laugh out loudly on surveying his small india-rubber horse, the head of which had somehow got twisted back and caught between the hind legs and the tail. He then waxed tender and said pityingly, “Poor gee-gee!” “Here,” writes the father in his most ponderous manner, “we see an excellent example of the capricious and variable attitude of the childish mind towards its toys, an attitude closely paralleled by that of the savage towards his fetich.”
The two or three notes on the development of the active powers have to do with the application of intelligence to manual and other performances. Here is one. At the age of seventeen months he was sitting at table with the family when he found himself in want of some bread and butter. He tried his customary petition, ‘Bup,’ but to no purpose. He then stretched out his hand towards the bread knife, repeating the request. A day or two after this the father put his inventive powers to a severer proof. He placed the knife out of his reach. When the desire for more recurred he grew very impatient, looking towards his father and saying ‘Bup’ with much vehemence of manner. At length, getting more excited, he bethought him of a new expedient and pointed authoritatively to his empty plate.
Some of these practical tentatives were rather amusing. One day, just a month after the date of the last incident, he had two keys, one in each hand. With one of these he proceeded to try the keyhole of the door, oddly enough, however, holding it by the wrong end and inserting the handle. Now came the difficulty of turning it. Two hands at the very least were needed, but unhappily the other hand was engaged with the second key, which was not to be relinquished for an instant. So the little fellow, with the inventive resource of a monkey (the father naturally says of an ‘engineer’), proceeded to use his teeth as pincers, clutching the obstinate key between these and trying to turn it with the head. At this date he had acquired considerable skill in the manipulation of door handles and keys. A certain cupboard was a peculiarly fascinating mystery, appealing at once to the desires of the flesh and to a disinterested curiosity, and he was soon master of the ‘open sesame’ to its spacious and obscure recesses.
By far the most respectable exhibition of will about this time was in the way of self-restraint. I have already remarked how he would try to pull himself together when prostrated by fear of the dog. A similarly quaint attempt at self-mastery would occur during his outbreaks of temper. The father says he had got into the way, when the child was inclined to be impatient and teasing, of putting up his finger, lowering his brow, and saying with emphasis: ‘Cliffy, be good!’ After this when inclined to be naughty he would suddenly and quite spontaneously pull himself up, hold up his finger and lower his brow as if reprimanding himself. “The observation is curious,” writes the father, in his graver manner, “as suggesting that self-restraint may begin by an imitation of the action of extraneous authority.”[307]
Footnote 307:
Compare the similar instances given above, p. 287.
_Third Year._
One cannot help regretting on entering upon the third chapter of C.’s biography that the father gives us no account of his physical development. This is a desideratum not only from a scientific but from a literary point of view. Biographers rightly describe the look of their hero, and, if possible, they aid the imagination of their reader by a portrait. The reader of this child’s history has nothing, not even a bare reference to height, by which he can form an image of the concrete personality whose sayings and doings are here recorded; and these sayings and doings begin now to grow really interesting.
There is very little in the notes of this year respecting the growth of observation. When the child was two years five months old the father appears to have made a rather lame attempt to determine the order in which he learnt the colours. He says that he placed the several colours before him and taught him the names, and found as a result that the order of acquisition was the following: red, blue, yellow, and green. It is added that blue was distinguished some time before green. His observations, taken along with those of Preyer and others, are interesting as seeming to suggest that the order in which the colours are learnt differs considerably in the case of individual children.[308] In the eighth month of this year we find a note to the effect that the boy discriminates and recognises colour well. This is illustrated by the fact that he at once calls grey with a slightly greenish tinge ‘green’. The connexion between the possession of suitable vocables and explicit discrimination is seen in the fact that whereas he applies the name blue not only to the several varieties of that colour but also to violet, he uses “red” as the name for certain reds only, excepting pink, which is called “pink,” and deep purple red, which is called “brown”.
Footnote 308:
See above, p. 19 f.
The third year is epoch-making in the history of memory. It is now that impressions begin to work themselves into the young consciousness so deeply and firmly that they become a part of the permanent stock-in-trade of the mind. The earliest recollections of most of us do not reach back beyond this date, if indeed so far. In C.’s case the father was able to observe this fixing and consolidating of impressions. For instance, when two years and two months old he had been staying for a month or so at a farmhouse in a little sea-side village, D——, where there was a sheep dog yclept Bob. Some three and a half months later he happened, during one of his walks in his London suburb, to see a sheep dog, whereupon he remarked, ‘Dat old Bob, I dink’. A week or two after this, on seeing the picture of a wind-mill, he remarked, "Dat like down at D——". Later on, six months after this visit, on being asked what honey was, he remarked that he had had some at D——. Nine months after this visit his father was talking to him about the game of cricket. He then said, "_Oh_, yes (his favourite expression just now when he understands), I ’member, Jingo ran after ball down at D——". As a matter of fact his father and friends used to play tennis at D——, and Jingo, the sheep dog, did pretend to ‘field’ the balls, often in a highly inconvenient fashion.
It is evident from these quotations that the experiences at D——, just at the beginning of the third year, had woven themselves into the tissue of his permanent memory. The father remarks in a footnote that C. retains a certain recollection of D—— at present, that is to say, in his fourteenth year.
These lively recallings show a growth of imaginative power, and this was seen in other ways too. Thus it is remarked by the father in the fourth month of the year that he was getting much comfort from anticipation. If there are apples or other things on the table which he likes but must not have, he will philosophically remark, “Ningi have apples by-and-by when he big boy”. He says this with much emphasis, rising at the end to a shouting tone, and half breaking out into jubilant laughter.
The childish power of vivid imaginative realisation was abundantly illustrated in his play. Here is a sample (end of fourth month). His sister went to the end of the room and said (with a reference to their recent visit to the sea-side): ‘I’m going far away on the beach’. He then began to whisper something, and went under the table and said distinctly: ‘Ningi go away from Tit, far away on beach’. He repeated this with tremulous voice, and at length burst out crying. He wept also when his sister pretended to do the same, so that these little tragic representations had to be stopped as dangerously exciting.
It has often been said that ‘fibbing’ in young children is the outcome of a vivid imagination. C. illustrated this. As the example given under the second year shows, his daring in inventing untruth and passing it off as truth was pure play, and frankly shown to be so by the accompaniment of a hearty laugh. This tendency to invent continued to assert itself. Thus when (in the eighth month) he is asked a question, as, “Who told you so?” and has no suitable answer ready he will say, ‘Dolly,’ showing his sense of the fun of the thing by a merry laugh. The father remarks that it is a little difficult to bring heavy moral artillery to bear on this playful fibbing which is evidently intended much more to astonish than to deceive.[309]
Footnote 309:
Compare above, p. 254.
We may now see what progress C. was making in thinking power during this year. It is during the third year that children may be expected to get a much better hold on the slippery forms of language, and at the same time to show in connexion with a freer and more extensive use of language a finer and deeper insight into the manifold relations of things.
In C.’s case, to judge by the journal, the progress of speech advanced at a normal pace, neither hurrying nor yet greatly loitering. Articulation, the father remarks early in the year, has got much more precise, only a few sounds seeming to occasion difficulty, as for example the initial _s_, which he transforms into an aspirate, saying, for example, ‘huga’ for sugar.
A noticeable linguistic advance is registered in the fourth month of the year, _viz._, a kind of sudden and energetic raid on the names of objects and persons. “He is always asking the names of things now (writes our chronicler). Thus, after calling a common object, as a brush, by its name he will ask me, ‘What is the _name_ of this?’ Perhaps he thinks that everything has its own exclusive or ‘proper’ name as he has. He is beginning to note, too, that some things have more than one proper name, that his mother, for example, though called ‘ma’ by himself, is addressed by her Christian name by me, and so forth. When asked, ‘What is Ningi’s name?’ he now answers, ‘Kifford’.”
What is far more significant, he now (_æt._ two years three months) began to use ‘you’ in addressing his father or mother, also ‘me’ and ‘I’. But these changes are so momentous and epoch-making in the history of the young intelligence that they will have to be specially considered later on.
Like other children he showed a fine contempt for the grammatical distinctions of pronominal forms. Thus ‘me’ was used for ‘mine,’ ‘her’ for ‘she,’ ‘she’s’ for ‘hers,’ ‘him’ for ‘he’ and for ‘his,’ ‘us’ for ‘our,’ and so forth.[310] It is pretty clear that none of these solecisms was due to an imitation of others’ incorrect speech, and they appear to show the action of the principle of biological economy, a few word-sounds being made to do duty for a number of relations (_e.g._, in the use of ‘me’ for ‘my’), and familiar word-sounds being modified according to analogy of other modifications where older people use a quite new form (‘she’s’ for ‘hers’). A similar disposition to simplify and rationalise the tongue of his ancestors showed itself in the use of verbs. Thus, if his mother said, ‘Cliffy, you are not good,’ he would reply in a perfectly rational manner, “Yes, I are”. “It was odd,” writes the father, “to hear him bring out in solemn judge-like tones such terrible solecisms as ‘Him haven’t,’ yet there was a certain logical method in his lawlessness.” Another simplification on which he hit in common with other children was the use of ‘did’ as a sign of past tense, thus saving himself all the trouble of understanding the irregular behaviour of our verbs.[311]
Footnote 310:
Later on towards the end of the year he oddly enough seemed disposed to reverse his early practice, using for example ‘she’ for ‘her,’ and even going to the length of correcting his sister for saying ‘Somebody gave her,’ by remarking with all the dogmatism of the most pedantic of grammarians, “No, E., you must say ‘Gave she’”.
Footnote 311:
Compare above, p. 176 f. C.’s father probably makes too much of the principle of economy here. Thus, like other children, the boy was wont to use double negatives, _e.g._, “Dare isn’t no water in dat cup,” where there is clearly a redundance.
One or two quaint applications of words are noted. Thus towards the end of the third month of this year he took to using ‘cover’ in a somewhat puzzling fashion. Thus he once pointed to the back of his hand and remarked, ‘No milk on this cover’. The father suspects that the term connoted for his consciousness an outside part or the outer surface of an object.
A very noticeable improvement took place in the forming of sentences. All sorts of questions (writes the chronicler) are now put correctly and neatly, as, ‘Where are you going to?’ ‘Where did that come from?’ He is now striking out most ambitiously in new and difficult directions, not fighting shy even of such school-horrors as conditional clauses (as they used to be called, at least). Very funny it must have been to watch these efforts, and the ingenuities of construction to which the little learner found himself driven. For example, he happened one morning (end of fourth month) when in his father’s bedroom to hear a knocking in the adjoining room. He walked about the room remarking to himself, ‘I can’t make out somebody,’ which seemed his own original fashion of avoiding the awkwardness of our elaborate form, “I can’t make out who the person is (that is knocking)”. A still quainter illustration of the skill with which he found his way out of linguistic difficulties is the following. His sister once said to him (first week of fifth month), ‘You had better not do that,’ whereupon he replied, “I think me better will”. Here is a sample of his mode of dealing with conditionals (end of sixteenth month), “If him (a tree) would be small, I would climb up”.
His highly individualised language, remarks the father, was rendered more picturesque by the recurrence of certain odd expressions which he picked up and applied in his own royal fashion. One of these was, “Well, it might be different,” which he often used when corrected for a fault, and on other occasions as a sort of formula of protestation against what he thought to be an exaggerated statement.