Part 3

France is the only other country in which the pillow is a necessary complement of the baby. But the attachment of the two is nowadays characteristically French. It is a compromise between the old and the new, between tradition and fashion, and consequently it is not universal. The French baby (especially on gala days) is laid upon the pillow, and his fine frocks and gay ribbons, instead of enveloping his tender body, are spread upon him as he lies, so that he is no more than a kind of _bas-relief_. In France, however, it must be noted there came earlier than elsewhere in Europe--(one of the results of the Revolution)--the revolt against mere tradition and usage in the treatment of babies. Among well-to-do and aristocratic French folk, in particular, a change in that regard has long been in progress. The French child used to have always its pillow or cradle; now it begins to lie upon a fresh, wholesome bed, neither of wool nor of feathers, but of hair or straw, or among country or sea-faring folk of sweet dried fern or bracken or pungent-smelling sea-weed; and Government bureaux circulate among the peasants such directions as these:--"Lay the infant to sleep on its right side; avoid putting it to sleep in the lap before putting it in bed." The French baby used to wear a multiplicity of caps--a small close cap of fine linen, over which was a second of light flannel, and over that a third of some light and ornamental stuff; now the caps are being discarded, and baby goes openly and baldly bareheaded. There is, however, one infantile institution to which well-to-do French folk cling obstinately, and that is the foster-mother or wet-nurse. The institution had its origin ages ago, and was popular with other than fine ladies who feared to spoil their shape with nursing. It was under the early Bourbon kings that the practice first became established of sending infants into the country, to some well-known dependant of the house, to be nursed and fed and brought up. That is why one reads so much in French literature of foster-brothers and foster-sisters, who were the peasant children brought up in the same lap, and at the same breast as the young lords and ladies. The wet-nurse who lived in the family was--and is still--commonly a Burgundian, an ample, handsome, and good-natured type of woman, something like our own woman of Devonshire. The fine Burgundian nurse is still a feature of Parisian life, with her black eyes, her rich colour, and her opulent form, her red cloak, her full-bordered cap, and her long, floating ribbons. It is evident that this large and productive type is very old, for there is a curious statute in ancient French law, called the "_droit de douze enfants_:" it obtained only in Burgundy, and it enacted that all parents of a dozen children should be exempt from the payment of any taxes whatever.

Before we finally turn, whither we have all this while been tending, to the completest and wholesomest treatment of babies, let us note one or two remarkable curiosities in that way. There is, first of all, the well-worn, and now almost out-worn, tradition that Chinese female babies have their feet tortured by tight bandaging to make and keep them small. That practice, let us say at once, was never prevalent, except in very high society--like really tight-lacing in England--and even there it is now gradually becoming obsolete. But, among the sweltering millions of China there is a practice which seems to have a curious result. The mother carries her infant in a kind of bag or pannier on her back, and not--as in other countries where the dorsal carriage is affected--with the face turned outwards, but--as, probably, we ought to expect in China, where everything seems to go and come by the rule of contraries--with the face turned inwards. The result of that is that the baby's nose is of necessity pressed against its mother's back, whence, no doubt, say the learned in these matters, has been evolved, in the course of ages, the peculiarly flattened or blunted nose, characteristic of the Chinaman. Furthermore, Chinese girls, even when allowed to live, are little thought of. In the family generally they bear no names: they are known as Number One or Number Two, like convicts, and they are no more reckoned members of the family than the cat or the dog. So when a Chinaman is asked what family he has, he counts only his boys. And a boy is treated with great honour and ceremony by the women. When he is four months old, he is set for the first time in a chair, and his mother's mother sends or brings him many presents, notably among which is sugar-candy. The candy is emblematic of the sweet things of life, and it is stuck to the chair to signify the hope that he may never lack such things. His first birthday is the second great day of rejoicing. He is then set upon a table in front of many things, such as ink, books, tools, &c., and whichever he first lays his hand on decides his future occupation.

It is an odd thing that by no people on earth are children--both girls and boys--treated with more affection and indulgence than by the island neighbours of the Chinese--the Japanese, namely; and no children have a greater abundance of toys and amusements. It must, however, be said that the fondness and patience of Japanese parents are reciprocated by the love and obedience of their children. Both father and mother are equally devoted to their offspring. The mother commonly carries her baby slung in front of her, and when she is tired the father cheerfully accepts the burden; but fathers and mothers, and elder sisters and brothers may often be seen in the gay, sunny streets of Tokio or Yokohama giving pick-a-backs to delighted, crowing babies. The Japanese baby, moreover, is not only indulged, he is also treated with the greatest care and intelligence. He is judiciously fed; he is regularly bathed either at home or in the public bath-houses; and his skin is stimulated and his health hardened by his being frequently plunged in a cold stream, or even in the snow. A Japanese baby would appear to us a very droll creature. If you would know how he looks you have only to examine a well-made Japanese doll. He has his head shaved, with the exception of four tufts of hair--one in front, one behind, and one over either ear. He wears bright and gaudy clothes (or did wear; for children, like their parents, sad to say, are gradually being arrayed in European fashion), and his loose jacket has very long and very wide sleeves. Very poor children go barefoot; others wear stockings and clogs, the stockings having a separate pocket for the big toe.

To find other children as well, wisely, and wholesomely treated as children are in Japan, we must come to an English home, with a look in by the way at an American home, where, it is said by many, the child is made somewhat too much of, and therefore spoiled. But it must be sorrowfully admitted that it is only the child of well-to-do or cultured parents in Great Britain that is as well and wisely cared for, and that is as happy as the child of Japan: there is no doubt that the average of childish comfort and happiness is very much greater in Japan than in England. Yet a well-ordered English home is baby's paradise. There he is not swathed in bandages and rolled in a pillow and crowned with a nightcap; he is kept always clean and sweet, he is lightly but sufficiently clothed, and he is allowed to kick, and crow, and grow strong as much as ever he likes. He is no longer put to bed in a deep wooden cradle set on wooden rockers, but in a light and airy bassinette, which either is stationary or swings lightly upon hooks. That question of stationary or moving bassinette has become somewhat vexed among mothers, many doctors favouring the opinion that it is neither necessary nor desirable that infants should be sent to sleep with rocking or swinging. The old rocking cradle had a much more fearsome motion than the swinging bassinette. Rocked by a careless or energetic person it would often make the baby ill; indeed, there used to be a tradition among humble mothers (a tradition which still obtains in Scotland) that if the cradle was rocked when empty the baby would certainly be ill when next put into it. The rocking cradle with its great wooden hood has had its day (and how magnificent the height of its day was may be guessed from the cradle of James I. that was shown in the Stuart Exhibition)--it has had its day, and is now departing into the limbo of things obsolete and forgotten, and thither probably in the course of years the swinging bassinette will follow it.

We have in this article treated of babies only when they are inarticulate, when none but the mother or the constant nurse can understand them. That is commonly reckoned by the stranger or the mere male person the least interesting age of all, but to the mother--and, indeed, to all women and grown girls--it is the most interesting. Then the baby's clinging helplessness, its wide stare of wonder, and its bright, human smile and crow of response to a kind look or tone, suffuse the female heart with an unimaginable delight. What pride is felt in the health and beauty and weight of the baby! ("Here's a leg for a babe of a week!" says the doctor in Tennyson's "Grandmother.") How his active crawling is admired!--and sometimes his singular taste for buttons, and marbles, and cinders! With what wonder and gratulation is the appearance of his first tooth hailed! With what expressions of joy is attention called to his first attempts at walking, and how "dear" he is when he first goes "pattering over the boards!" But beyond and beneath all these common phenomena the earliest infancy has ravishing mysteries which only the mother can patiently watch, and pore over, and understand. Every day, every hour brings to her a new joy, of which she can speak to no one; for that which no else one sees--the waking attention, the dawning reason--the mother sees, and that which no one else hears the mother hears.

"_On the Stump for the Pump._"

+By Sir Wilfrid Lawson.+

"The Editor of +The Strand+ asks Sir W. Lawson to send him an article with some such title as 'Thirty Years of Temperance Advocacy,' or 'On the Stump for the Pump.'"

You ask me to write "On the Stump for the Pump," Don't you think 'twould be better, "The Pump on the Stump?" Sure that "pump" should be able a tale to unfold, For you hint in your letter it's thirty years old! Just think of one pumping for thirty long years, And the water scarce yet has got up to their ears. Yet while water's so hard to the right pitch to rise, The full tide of beer mounts quite up to our eyes. There is Goschen, and Randolph, and Booth, and old Smith, Men of fame and renown, and great vigour and pith, They come with their brooms, and they come with their mops, And they labour and sweep, but the tide never stops. Away in the torrent go virtue and wealth, Peace, plenty, and happiness, order and health, And "Bung" with a chuckle cries, "Pump as you may, But beer and the brewer still carry the day." Now you kindly have asked me to say what I think On this troublesome, terrible question of drink. So the "Pump" will endeavour to pour something out, A "pump" at the least should be able to "spout!" Well, well, I must hope that I shall not quite fail, So the "Pump," as you've asked him, will pour out his tale.

Almost everyone who proposes a toast at a public dinner commences his speech by saying that he feels himself to be the most unfit person who could have been selected to perform the duty.

In this matter I am neither the most fit, nor the most unfit person to give such a narrative as the Editor desires. There are many advocates of temperance still living who have addressed far more audiences on the subject than I have done, and whose account of their experience would be far more interesting and instructive than mine can be.

On the other hand--

"I've been about a bit in my time, And troubles I've seen a few; But I always found it the best of plans To paddle my own canoe."

And I have sometimes had to paddle that canoe through tolerably stormy waters. For generations a "Temperance lecturer" has usually been viewed by the "respectable" classes with a mixture of pity and contempt. Drink was blended with all our ideas of real happiness and enjoyment. Doctors ordered drink as a potent medicine, and, at the same time, as a valuable article of daily diet. Clergymen, certainly at times, mildly hinted that their flocks might peradventure be more moderate in its consumption, but rarely indeed condemned the thing itself.

Elections were won to the inspiriting cry of the "National Church and the National Beverage," while all those who had enriched themselves by the making and selling of strong drink were held in the highest esteem and veneration by the rest of the community.

For anyone to enter on a crusade against drink was held to be audacious, vulgar, disreputable, and unconstitutional, and a man who took such a course was considered to be, if not a fool, certainly a hypocritical knave. I have always thought that Dickens' portrait of "Stiggins, the Temperance lecturer," did much to maintain this idea. Any way, it was in full force at the time when I ventured to launch the above-mentioned cause.

But I did not start as a Temperance lecturer. The field was already well occupied. Father Mathew, Joseph Livesey, Samuel Bowling, and many other devoted men had said pretty well all that could be said in favour of abstinence from intoxicating liquor, and, where their teaching had been followed, had done a world of good. What struck me as very hard was, that these noble men should expend time, money, and labour at their own charges in promoting the Temperance reformation which Richard Cobden says "lies at the foundation of every social and political reform," and that all the time the Government of the country should appoint thousands and thousands of agents to promote the sale and consumption of the very article which causes all the drunkenness and misery.

Be it remembered that the philanthropic Temperance advocates got no monetary premium on any success which they might attain among the people, while the Government agents who sold the drink were pecuniarily interested in every glass which they could get their customers to consume--their system being one of "payment by results." For anyone to raise his voice against this most lucrative and powerful monopoly was looked upon as an audacious impertinence. Our meetings were occasionally broken up by the friends and supporters of the liquor power. I remember a big meeting at Exeter with the present Bishop of London in the chair. A disorderly force of men well primed for the business invaded and pervaded the hall, yelling, singing, and jostling the audience. They broke up the chairs and used them as weapons of offence. The Bishop kept his seat, perfectly calm and collected, but, as the police declined to interfere for our protection, the enemy succeeded in their object and broke up the meeting, after breaking the ribs of our unlucky men and covering the Bishop and Sir G. Trevelyan and myself with flour, so that we looked as though we had just returned from the "Derby."

At Sandwich, also, we once had a great row. The publicans' friends pretty well packed the meeting, and with songs, coees, horns, &c., prevented our speaking. But we got a speech out of one of the rioters, and although short, it was the best speech I had ever heard in favour of prohibition.

The man was tolerably drunk, but able to stand. Close to the platform was sitting the great brewer of the place, looking most demure and respectable, but who had probably directly or indirectly organised the riot. Steadying himself as well as he could, the man pointed with his hand towards the great brewer, and simply said, "I want to know what's to become of this gentleman?" If anyone will ponder on this speech for a moment or two the nature and object of the licensing system will be clear enough.

As a rule, I think it was generally in the places where the brewers--our British Ale Kings--were exceptionally strong that these violent scenes occurred. But generally when there had been a pretty good rowdy meeting, we used to come again soon after, when our friends, taught by the experience, used to take precautions for ensuring "law and order," so that the rows probably eventually did us more good than harm.

One thing which struck me much in perambulating the country was, that wherever I went the friends who kindly entertained me were almost always pessimists, who asserted that the place we were then in was one of the very worst places for drunkenness which could possibly be found.

Of course they could always be the worst, but this testimony leads one to think that things must be bad enough all round.

I suppose the Editor, when asking for reminiscences of "Thirty Years' Temperance Advocacy" includes advocacy in the House of Commons. No one would think that it was personally needed in that assembly, but only for the check of intemperance outside.

Yet I once heard a member, who was known not to be a teetotaler, say that he could not believe something which the Government had stated, although he could swallow a great deal--a statement which was received with great acquiescent cheering from all parts of the House. But my advocacy in the House was of prohibition of the liquor traffic, and not of total abstinence. I proposed that there should be prohibitory districts wherever the inhabitants clearly and distinctly expressed a desire for freedom from liquor shops. This was thought to be a most shocking proposition. Was it to be supposed that the magistrates, who were the licensing authorities, did not know the requirements of the neighbourhood far better than the inhabitants of that neighbourhood knew it themselves! The very idea was looked upon as a species of blasphemy.

A Bill must have two names endorsing it before it can be introduced into the House of Commons. At that time I hardly knew where I should get the second name which was required. I at last got it in this way. Mr. Bazley (afterwards Sir Thomas Bazley) then represented Manchester. Some working men who were either his neighbours or constituents, and who were very keen about the Bill, interviewed him and talked over the Bill. I fancy he made some objection to it, when the men said, "Mr. Bazley, is there not a village which belongs to you, and where you prohibit all sale of drink?"

"Yes," said Mr. Bazley, "and with the best effect."

"And will you not give us the same power of protecting ourselves which you enjoy?"

"I will," said Mr. Bazley, and he put his name on the back of my Bill.

But few indeed would vote for such a measure in those days. Lord Randolph Churchill said that in that very year, 1890, two-thirds of the members of the House of Commons were terrorised by the liquor trade. And many must have been in that abject condition in 1865, when the first Bill was introduced. At all events, whether through terror of publicans, or contempt for Temperance advocates, or ignorance of the enormity of the evil arising from drinking, the great majority of the House of Commons were dead against any legislation tending to cripple the "liquor traffic." We had all the old arguments trotted out--"Liberty of the Subject"--"Making men sober by Act of Parliament," and so forth. I have sometimes wondered why they thought it absolutely necessary to iterate and reiterate all this unmeaning jargon. They had made up their minds that it would not be safe to vote against the publicans, and the preliminary talk was a superfluous expenditure of energy. On the first division I only got about forty votes, and that was a larger number than most persons expected. But I must not commence a long story of how we slowly but steadily gained ground in the House. The history of all reforms is in its general features pretty much the same. Someone has roughly summed up the progress of reforms by saying, First, they are laughed at; then they are said to be contrary to Scripture; then it is said that everybody knew them before. We have long left for ever the days of divisions of forty, and now almost everyone admits that the public are entitled to _some_ powers of self-protection from the liquor trade. It is still thought the proper thing to call everyone who is in earnest in trying to get that protection for the people, an extreme man; but everyone knows that this is only the orthodox political slang which must be employed when argument is wanting.

Lord Rosebery has declared that the Temperance men are the backbone of the Liberal Party. The Conservative Party also now announce themselves to be warm advocates of Temperance. We cannot say that they have been at it for "thirty years," since they only took, as a party, any overt legislative action two years ago by their Compensation to Brewers' Bill, which they again attempted to pass last year.

Many persons thought that endowing publichouses would not tend to reduce drinking, but, be that as it may, it was pleasant to see the intense zeal with which the leaders of the Conservative Party devoted themselves to what they considered the interests of Temperance. All the other business of the Session was set aside. The Government Press urged no surrender. Diminishing majorities did not damp their ardour. The forces were summoned to be present at all costs when this Temperance measure was on hand. One memorable day many legislators were absolutely compelled to hurry back from Ascot to take part in an early division. Lord Hartington was among the number, and it is said that, being only just in time, he was seen to _run_ through the lobby, a fact unprecedented in modern political history.

All this proves that there never were so many Temperance advocates as there are at this instant. At the same time, I am inclined to think that there has seldom been more drinking than there is in the season of good trade and high wages. Whether it will require an additional thirty years of Temperance advocacy before we deal an effectual blow at what has been termed the "intoxicating interests," who can say? The good sign, as noted above, is, that everybody is calling out that something must be done. Englishmen generally say this for a long time before they really do anything, but the recent prolific response to General Booth's appeal for funds to rescue the perishing, seems to indicate that the public are really and keenly touched by all the misery around them.

The General says "Nine-tenths of England's misery is Drink." That is just what the Temperance advocates have been saying for nearly twice thirty years. Their hour of triumph is growing appreciably nearer. It will come so soon as the good, noble, and self-denying men who now deal with the misery which General Booth tells us is the effect of drink, will strike at the drink which is the _cause_ of that misery. When we have done that, we may confidently look forward to an England which shall be as different from the England of to-day, as light is from darkness.

"Then shall Misery's sons and daughters In their lowly dwelling sing, Bounteous as the Nile's dark waters, Undiscovered as their spring; We shall scatter through the land Blessing with a secret hand."

_The King's Stratagem._

+By Stanley G. Weyman.+