Part 40
As implied in the account of his much questioning, the feeling which was most strongly marked and dominant during this year was wonder. His father would surprise him sometimes standing on the sofa and looking at an engraving of Guido’s “Aurora” hanging on the wall above. The woman’s figure in front, perfectly buoyant on the air, the horses and chariot firmly planted on the cloud, all this fascinated his attention and filled him with delightful astonishment.
With wonder there often went in these days sore perplexity of spirit. The order of things was not only intricate and difficult to take apart, it seemed positively wrong. That animals should be beaten, slaughtered, eaten by his own kith and kin, this, as already hinted, filled him with dismay. In odd contrast to this, he would protest with equal warmth against any ordinance which affected his own comfort. Thus, having on one occasion (middle of seventh month) taken a lively interest in the manufacture of jellies, custards, and other dainties, and having learned the next day that they had been disposed of by a company of guests, he asked his mother querulously why she had “wisitors,” and then added in a comical tone of self-compassion, “Didn’t the ‘wisitors’ know you had a little boy?” “It is odd to note,” writes the father, “how a humane concern for the lower creation coexisted with utter indifference to the duties of hospitality. Perhaps, however,” he adds, succumbing to paternal weakness, and saying the best he can for his boy, “there was no real contradiction here. The compassionateness of childhood goes forth to weak, defenceless things, and to C.’s mind the ‘wisitors’ may very likely have appeared as over-fed, greedy monsters who robbed poor children of their small perquisites.”
The wondering impulse of the child assumed now and again a quasi-religious form in speculations about death and heaven. Early in the year he had lost his grandpapa by sudden death, and the event set his thoughts in this direction. In the ninth month his mother read him Wordsworth’s well-known story, “Lucy Gray”. He was much saddened by the account of Lucy’s death. On hearing the line “In heaven we all shall meet,” he began questioning his mother about heaven. She gave him the popular description of heaven, but apparently in a way that left him uncertain as to whether she believed what she said. Whereupon he exclaimed: ‘We _shall_ meet,’ and then after a moment’s pause, as though not quite certain, added, ‘shan’t we?’ Five weeks later, when driving in the country with his mother on a lovely May day, he was in his happiest mood, looking at the flowers in the fields and hedgerows, and suddenly exclaimed: “I shall never die!” The question of immortality (observes the father) had thus early begun to wring the child’s soul.
There are, I regret to say, in this chapter, hardly any remarks about the development of the child’s will and moral character. The father appears to have been disproportionately interested in the boy’s intellectual advancement. The reader is left to hope that Master C. was growing a more orderly and law-abiding child than the incident of the biting would suggest. The one remark which can be brought under this head refers to the growth of practical intelligence in applying rules to action. C. had been told it was well to keep nice things to the end, and he proceeded to work out the consequences of the rule in an amusing fashion. Thus we read (end of eleventh month) that he would take all the currants out of his cake and stick them round the corner of his plate so as to eat them last. A still more amusing instance of the same thing occurred about the same date. On putting him to bed one evening his mother noticed that he carefully sought out the middle of the bed, saying to himself, “I’ll keep these last”. Questioned by her as to what he meant by ‘these,’ he explained, “These nice cool places at the edge of the bed”. “Children,” remarks the chronicler, “do not drop their originality even when they make a show of following our lead. Obedience would be far more tedious than it is but for the occasional opportunities of a play of inventive fancy in the application of a rule to new and out-of-the-way cases.”
_Fifth Year._
With the fifth year we enter upon a new phase of the diary. The father appears now to have finally abandoned the transparent pretence of a methodical record of progress, and he limits himself to a fuller account of a few selected incidents. Very noticeable is the introduction of something like prolonged dialogue between the child and one of his parents.
The boy continued to take a lively interest in objects and to note them with care. Here is an illustration of his attention to natural phenomena. He was walking out (end of fifth month) with his father on their favourite Heath towards sunset, when he asked: “What are these pretty things I see after looking at the sun? When I move my eyes they begin to move about.” The father said he might call them fairy suns. He then wanted to know whether they were real. He said: “When they seem to be on the path they disappear when I go up to them”. Later on he began to romance about the spectral discs that he saw after looking at a red sun, calling them fire balloons and saying that there was a fairy in each one of them.[326]
Footnote 326:
Compare above, p. 102 f.
A quaint example of his attention to the form of objects, as well as of his odd childish mode of thought, comes out in a talk with his mother (end of seventh month). She had been reading to him from _Alice in Wonderland_, where the caterpillar tells Alice that one side of a mushroom would make her grow taller, and one side shorter, which set Alice wondering what the side of a mushroom could be. C. could not sympathise with Alice’s perplexity, and said to his mother: “Why, a mushroom is all ends and sides. Wherever you stand it’s an end or a side.” The father thinks he sees here a dim apprehension of the idea that a circle is formed by an infinite number of straight lines, but he is possibly reading too much into the boy’s thought.
His observation of colour continued. One day (end of seventh month) he was overheard by his father saying to himself (without any suggestion from another) that a particular colour “came next” to another. His father thereupon questioned him and elicited that orange came next to red. Asked ‘What else?’ he answered yellow. Dark brown came next to black, a lighter brown to red, purple next to blue, pink to red, and so forth. Asked what green came next to, he answered: “I don’t know”; from which it would appear that he had pretty clearly observed the affinities of colours.
He showed himself observant of people’s ways too. Here is a funny example of his attention to his sister’s habits of speech. One evening (end of sixth month) when his sister was out at a party he had a cracker which he wished to give her “as a surprise”. So he told his mother to put it under the table, and added: “When E. comes in, and after she says, ‘Well! how’ve you been getting on?’ then you must say: ‘Look under the table’”.
His memory, as the foregoing incident may show, was growing tenacious and exact. This exactitude showed itself in almost a pedantic fashion with respect to words. Here is a funny example (end of sixth month). He had a new story-book, _The Princess Nobody_, illustrated by R. Doyle. His mother had read it to him about four or five times during the three weeks he had possessed it. One Sunday evening his father read it to him as a treat. In one place the story runs: “One day when the king had been counting out his money all day,” which the father carelessly read as “counting out all his money”. The child at once pulled up and corrected his sire, saying, “No, papa, ’tis ‘counting out all the day his money’”. He had remembered the ideas and the words though not the precise order. The jealous regard of the child for the text of his sacred books in the face of would-be mutilators is one of those traits which, while perfectly childish, have a quaint old-fashioned look.
The dreamy worship of fairies passed into a new and even more blissful phase this year. Before the close of the third month C. was actually brought into contact with one of these dainty white-clad beings. The memorable occasion was a girl’s costume ball, to which he was taken as a spectator. Among the younger girls present was one dressed as a fairy, in short white gauze, golden crown, and the rest. C. was at first dazed by the magnificence of the assembly and shrank back shyly to his mother’s side; but after this white sylph had been pointed out to him as a fairy, and when she came up to him and spoke to him, he was transported with delight. Hitherto the fairy had never been nearer to him than on a circus stage: now he had one close to him and actually talked with her! He firmly believed in the supernatural character of this small person, and on his return home proceeded to tell cook with radiant face how he had seen a live fairy and spoken to her. He added that his sister had never spoken to one. This last might easily look like a touch of malicious ‘crowing’: yet the father appears to think that the boy meant only to deepen the mystery of the revelation by pointing out that it was without precedent.
The weaving of fairy legend now went on vigorously. Sometimes when out on a walk and observing a scene he would suddenly drop into his dream-mood and spin a pretty romance. This happened one Sunday in winter (beginning of seventh month), as he stood and watched the skaters on a pond. He said his fairies could skate, and he talked more particularly of his favourite Pinkbill, whom, he said, he now saw skating, though nobody else was privileged to see her, and who loved to skate at night on tiny pools which were quite big for her. “Delightful days (writes the father, who is rather apt to gush in these later chapters), when one holds a wondrous world of beauty in one’s own breast, safe from all prying eyes, to be whispered of perhaps to one’s dearest, but never to be shown.”
The full enjoyment of this supernal world was during sleep. C. often spoke of his lovely dreams. One morning (middle of fourth month) when still in bed, he engaged his mother in the following talk: C. “Do you have beautiful dreams, mamma?” Mother. “No, dear, I don’t dream much.” C. “Oh, if you want to dream you must hide your head in the pillow and shut your eyes tight.” Mother. “Is dreaming as good as hearing stories?” C. “Oh, yes, I should think so. One gets to know about all sorts of things one didn’t know anything about before.” Dreams (writes the father) came to him like his fire-balloons by shutting his eyes tight, and perhaps his story-books were the real suns of which his dreams were the ‘after-images’.
As the use of the grown-up and high-bred vocable "one"—the first instance observed, by-the-bye,—suggests, C. was making rapid strides in the use of language. By the middle of the year, we are told, he could articulate all sounds including the initial _y_ and _th_ when he tried to do so. He gave to the _a_ sound an unusual degree of broadness, a fact which lent to his speech a comical air of learned superiority. This was of course especially the case when, as still happened, he would slip into such solecisms as ‘I were’ and ‘Weren’t I?’ He would still use some quaint original expressions. It may interest the philologist to know that he quite spontaneously got into the way of using ‘spend’ for ‘cost,’ as in asking one day (beginning of third month), on seeing a frill in a shop window: ‘How much does this frill spend?’ and also of making ‘learn’ do duty for ‘teach,’ as when (end of tenth month) he asked his mother, pointing to a globe: “When are you going to learn me that ball?”
He continued quite seriously and with no thought of producing an effect to frame new words more or less after the analogy of those in use. Thus one day (middle of third month) he surprised his parents by bringing out the verb ‘fireworking’ in reference to the coming festivities of the fifth of November. Sometimes, too, he would amuse them by trotting out some ‘grown-up’ phrase which he generally used with clear insight, though now and again he would miss the precise shade of meaning. Thus it happened (about middle of fifth month) that he had been taking tea at the house of some girl friends, and on his return his mother questioned him about his doings, and in particular what his host had said to him. C. pondered for a moment and then said: “Oh! nothing surprising”.
This progress in the use of language indicated a higher power of mental abstraction. This was seen among other ways in the attainment of much clearer ideas about number. In the second month of the year he was able, we are told, to define the relations of the simpler numbers, saying that four was one less than five, and so on. That he had his own way of counting is evident from the following story, which dates from the middle of the same month. When walking with his mother on the Heath he found four crab apples. He observed to her: “How nice it would be, mamma, if I could find two more!” His mother replied: “Yes. How many would you have then, C.?” To this C. responded in his grave business-like tone: “Wait a minute,” then got down on his knees, put the four apples in a row, and then proceeded to the mysterious ceremony of counting. He began by saying ‘one, two’ to himself, then on reaching the “three” he pointed to the first of the row, using the apples to help him in adding the four last digits. He appears, says the father, to have imagined or ‘visualised’ the first two units, and then used the visible objects for the rest of the operation—not a bad way, one would say, of turning the apples to this simple arithmetical use.
That he visualised distinctly when counting is illustrated by another incident dating three weeks later. His mother, as was her wont, was seeing him into bed. Before climbing on to the bed he put on the coverlid a number of small toy treasures. When tucked up he opened up the following dialogue. C. “Put my toys in the drawer, mamma.” M. “I have done it, dear.” C. “How many were there?” M. ‘Three.’ C. “Oh no, there were four.” M. “Are you sure, dear? What were they?” C., after sitting up and pointing successively to imaginary objects on the coverlid: "One, two, three, four,—two dollies, a tin soldier, and a shell".
His interest in physical phenomena continued to manifest itself in questionings. He would spring his problems in physics on his patient parents at the most unexpected moments. For instance, when sitting at table one day (end of first month) he observed quite suddenly, and in no discoverable connexion with what had been happening before: “There’s one thing I _can’t_ imagine. How is it, papa, that when we put our hand into the water we don’t make a hole in it?” It would be curious to know how the father dealt with this hydrostatic problem.
The other inquiries recorded about this time have, oddly enough, to do with water. It looks as if water were dividing with number just now the activity of his brain. Thus he asked one day when staying at the sea-side (middle of second month): “How does all the water come into the world?” His mind was also greatly exercised about the hydrostatic puzzle of things sinking and swimming (floating).
There are hardly any examples of a reasoning process this year. One of these, however, is perhaps characteristic enough to deserve reproduction. One day (middle of fourth month) when his mind was running on the great problems of counting, his sister happened to speak about a large number of chestnuts (over 200). This excited C.’s imagination, and he exclaimed: “Why, even Goliath couldn’t count them”. The idea that mere bulk should measure intellectual capacity was delicious, and C.’s remark was no doubt received with a peal of laughter to which the bewildered little inquirer into the mysteries of things must by this time have been getting hardened. And yet, writes the apologetic father, C.’s reasoning was not so utterly silly as it looks, for in his daily measurement of his own faculties with those of others what had impressed him most deeply was that knowledge is the prerogative of big folk.
With respect to C.’s emotional development during this year, I am pleased to be able to record a diminution in the outbursts of angry passion. There seems to have been no more biting, and altogether he was growing less homicidal and more human. It is only to be expected that the father should set down these paroxysms of rage to temporary physical conditions.
Among feelings which were still strong and frequently manifested was fear. He had no fear of the dark, and did not in the least mind being left alone when put to bed. But he was weakly timid in relation to other things, _e.g._, the tepid morning bath, from which he shrank as from a horror. His bravery was as yet an infinitesimal quantity, as we may see from the following anecdote. His mother was one day (end of fourth month) talking to him about the self-denying bravery of captains of ships when shipwrecked. She asked him whether he would not like to be brave too, adding for his encouragement that many timid little boys like him had grown up to be brave men. Upon this I regret to say that C. asked sceptically, “Do they?” and then added, with a little impatient wriggle of his body, “I am going to be a painter, and painters don’t need to be brave”. The mother pursued the subject saying: “But if when you are big we all go to sea and get shipwrecked, wouldn’t you wish mamma and E. to get into the boat before you?” C. managed to parry even this home-drive, answering: “Oh, yes, but I should get in the very minute after you”.
A noticeable change occurred during this period in what the Germans call “self-feeling”. A consciousness of growing power gave a certain feeling of dignity and even of superiority which often betrayed itself in his words and actions. Although, so far as I can gather, a pretty boy, and a good deal admired for his golden hair, he does not seem to have set much store by his good looks. One day (towards end of sixth month) a grown-up cousin remarked at table that he had had his hair cut: whereupon ensued this talk. Mother (to cousin). “It looks better now that it is cut.” C. “Oh, no, it was prettier before.” Cousin. “Oh, you think you’ve got pretty hair.” C. (unhesitatingly). “Oh, yes.” Cousin. “Who told you your hair was pretty?” C. “Mamma.” “All this,” writes the father, “was said very quietly, and without the least appearance of vanity. He might have been talking about the hair of another person, or of a head in one of his pictures. His interest here seemed to be much more in correcting his mother and bringing her into consistency with former statements than in laying claim to prettiness.”
On the other hand, the child does certainly appear to have plumed himself a good deal on his intellectual possessions. It is to be noted that about this time he grew unpleasantly assertive and controversial. He would even sometimes stick to his own view of things when contradicted by his parents. He prided himself more particularly on being “sensible,” as he called it. His eagerness to be thought so may be illustrated by the following incident. He and his mother had been reading a story in which a little girl speaks of her mother as the best mother in the world. Whereupon in a weak moment his mother asked him, “Do you think your mother the best in the world, dear?” To this C. replied, “Well, I think you are good, but not _the best in the world_. That would not be sensible, would it, mamma?” We are not told how this Cordelia-like moderation was received.
To many people, mothers especially, there might well seem to be a touch of the prig in this exact weighing of words when it was a question only of the exaggeration of love. I regret to say that about this same time a tendency to priggishness did certainly show itself in a critical air of superiority towards girls of his own age. When about four years eight months he was sent to stay for a few days at the house of a lady friend where there was a girl about his own age, who seems to have been a lively mischievous young person, delighting in ‘drawing’ her grave boy comrade. On his return home he entertained his mother by expressing his feeling respecting his new companion. He said: “I don’t like E.’s looks. She looks naughty. Her cheeks look naughty” (and he puffed out his own cheeks by way of illustration). He added: “She looks naughty about here,” pointing to his forehead just above the eyes. He then proceeded to describe the measures he had taken for correcting her naughtiness.
“One day,” he said, “when she was naughty, I told her about dynamite men, and she was naughty after that. And then I told her about the dynamite men being put in prison, and she was naughty even then.” On this his mother interposed: “Why ever did you talk about dynamite men, dear?” C. “Because I thought it would make her better. Perhaps if I could have told her what sort of a place a prison was that would have made her better. But I didn’t know.” Then after a pause: “What do they put people in prison for, mamma?”
M. “For stealing, hurting other people, and telling stories.”
C. (abruptly). “Oh, E. tells a lot of stories.”
M. “Oh no, E. doesn’t tell stories.”
C. “Yes, she does. When I say yes she says no, and I know that I am right.”
He talked of this same experience of feminine frailty to others, remarking to one of his lady friends that E. had not said a sensible thing all the week he was staying with her. He also attacked his father on the subject, and after illustrating her odd way of contradicting others, he observed: “She’s are never as sensible as he’s, I suppose, are they, papa? especially if a boy is older”.
The father asked him if he had shown his displeasure to his girl playmate, to which he replied: “I didn’t show my angriness;” and after a pause: “I’d better not show how angry I can be, I’m too strong and too big, ain’t I?” As a matter of fact he had once, at least, been so ungallant as to strike his companion on her nose with one of his toys, selecting this objective for his attack apparently for no other reason than that it was already disfigured by a scratch. He wound up this disquisition on E.’s shortcomings by an attempt at a magnanimous allowance for her weakness: “I b’lieve she tries not to say these things because she knows they will tease me, but I think she can’t help it;” and he repeated this as if to emphasise the point.
Even our much-biassed chronicler is obliged to own that all this is a lamentable exhibition of boyish swagger, and particularly out of place in one born in these enlightened days, when, as we all know, ‘she’s’ are as good as ‘he’s,’ if not a great deal better. The only palliation of the unpleasant picture of coxcombry which he offers is the information that a year or too later C.’s views about girls were profoundly modified when he found himself in a school where a girl of his own age could beat him at certain things of the mind.
The growing vigour of his self-consciousness was shown in other ways too. He was much hurt by anything which seemed to him an invasion of his liberty. About the end of the sixth month, we read, he had got into ‘finicking’ ways of taking his food. Thus he conceived a strong dislike for the ‘cream’ on his boiled milk. If anybody attempted to cross him in these faddish ways he would be greatly offended. It looks as if he were at this time getting a keen sense of private rights, any interference with which he regarded as an offence.