CHAPTER III
The imagination of the poet, of the novelist, of the advertiser of a patent medicine, is as nothing compared with that of a little child. No one who is unable to realise this will understand children or be really successful in their upbringing.
The Riotous Imagination of Children.
Unimaginative Parents.
Whence come all the marvellous ideas that people the brain of a mere baby of two or three years? Is it that it has descended but a step or two down the staircase and still has a mind to some extent untrammelled by human limitations and the hard dry facts of earth? Or is it that, possessed of a keenly receptive power, it has not learnt to control or arrange the multitudes offacts that present themselves daily to its senses? This wonderful imagination is no doubt closely allied with the early powers of memory of which mention has been made, and may also have something at least to do with the early propensity to untruthfulness. Many a child has suffered at the hands of an unimaginative parent for words which have been ruthlessly called lies though they have been so strongly prompted by a vivid imagination that they have seemed as true to the utterer as much that is unintelligible but has to be accepted.
Arrangement of the Numerals.
The Circle of the Months.
A moment’s thought will show at what an early age imagination came into play with most people. By far the greater number have by its aid clothed certain abstract ideas in definite concrete forms, and have done this when so young that it is impossible for them toremember the time when these things first took shape. For instance, most people have a definite arrangement of the numerals. A common form for this to take is that of the numbers one to twelve appearing to run slightly upwards and towards the right, those from twelve to twenty taking a downward turn in the same direction. At the number twenty a sharp turn is taken to the left, and from that point to one hundred they run uphill with an increasing steepness. Many other directions and shapes are discovered by questioning people on this subject, but it is very rare to find an example of the numerals being nothing but an abstract idea. The same thing occurs with the months. To most people they appear in a circle, winter being in some cases at the top, and summer in others. In one case a person imagines them in a semicircle, and in another (the strangest yetmet with) they are in a zig-zag, three months running up, and three down, and so on, the form being like that of a rather straggling M.
Effects of Colour.
Colour also is occasionally imagined, and there is no doubt that children are specially susceptible to its influence at a very early age. A writer in the eighteenth century to whom allusion has been made in Chapter I makes the following observation: “There are some children so tenderly organised that many kinds of sounds are harsh to their Infant Ears and apt to fright them, and some colours strike them with too great and quick a Glare and have the same Effect till by Custom they are made familiar to their Organs.”
Colour of the Days.
It is certain at all events that colour has played an important part in the imagination of many people from their earliest years. A lady declares that all herlife long the days of the week have appeared to her to be of certain definite colours. Thus, Sunday is brick red, Monday the same, Tuesday lilac, Wednesday white, Thursday dark brown, Friday grey, and Saturday mauve and yellow. All this imagining took place so near the start of her life that the colour, form, etc., of the days appear to this lady to be facts dating from the beginning of time itself. It should be noted that in these and all similar instances the imagination is apparently independent of outside influences such as pictures or descriptions which might be supposed to have affected a little child.
The Imaginary Child-Friend.
It is possible to go further than this and to say that the most vivid imaginings are as a rule those which a child produces absolutely and apart from the suggestion of others. Under this head comes the imaginary child-friend called intoexistence in most cases by one who has no playmate of similar age. The grown-up people in the house know nothing of this imaginary friend until the real child is overheard talking to it and calling it by name. It is remarkable to notice how nothing seems to disturb the commonplace reality of the whole thing in the mind of the child. When the imaginary friend is in the room his or her presence is never for a moment forgotten, and plans are gravely made to suit the convenience not of one only but ofboththe children.
Next in importance to the unsuggested imaginings are those to which a sensitive child gives way on the slightest hint. This is a very practical matter, and one to which those who have to do with children should take heed.
Imaginary Terrors.
It is impossible to say at how early an age a suggestion of any kind may bear fruit. A lady once said that her childhood was one long misery owing to a vividimagination of the terrors that awaited her for having committed a certain fault when a baby in the nursery. It was not, she said, that much had been made of it at the time, but there was some suggestion of an awful unknown punishment, which her childish brain worked upon and developed until she dared not be left alone and became a thoroughly morbid and wretched little being.
It is obvious that too great care cannot possibly be taken by those to whom children are entrusted, inasmuch as a chance word may set a child’s imagination working and affect the tendency of its thoughts and actions for years.
Untruthfulness and Imagination.
It was suggested at the beginning of this chapter that there is probably some relation between this power of imagination and the tendency to untruthfulness which is found in so many children. It is one of the most difficult thingspossible to define exactly where the knowledge of untruthfulness comes in. Probably no two children are alike in this, and it requires the utmost tact and a close knowledge of a particular child’s character to determine the point where the one thing ends and the other begins.
Here is an example. A short time ago a little boy still in the nursery was taken out by his father in the carriage for a drive. When they arrived at the farther end of the town the little chap was sent home in the carriage by himself, his father having been deposited at his place of business. When the carriage arrived back at the door of the house the parlourmaid came out and carried the child indoors, being surprised to find him in tears. Struggling out of her arms he set off upstairs to the nursery, sobbing bitterly all the way. “What is the matter,dear?” said the nurse. “I’se had to walk by mine own self all froo the town, and I was dreffly frightened,” was the reply. “How ever did you get across the High Street, my poor darling?” “There was lots of cabs and cawwiages and things, and I knewed I would be runned over!” All this with many sobs and much burying of his head in nurse’s lap. Hearing the wailing in the nursery up came the parlourmaid, to whom the nurse poured out her indignation. “Just fancy! Making this poor lamb walk home all through the town by himself! It’s a mercy he was not killed again and again!” “Walk through the town! Why, whatever do you mean? Why, I lifted him out of the carriage at this very door not ten minutes ago!”
Well, the temptation to punish the little fellow must have been great. One hopes it was resisted. There can be small doubt that a vivid imagination hadmastered him as he drove home alone. It was all “what might have been,” and it became so real to him that it seemed to be “what was.”
Confession of an Imaginary Sin.
Again, a case recurs to the recollection of the writer where a small child was summoned into the presence of an angry parent who listened to no excuses, but insisted so strongly and so often on the guilt of the small boy, that at last he actually seemed convinced by the reiterated accusation and, imagining that his parent must know best, actually confessed to a sin which subsequent events proved the impossibility of his having committed.
Now for an example where it is probable that the imagination of the child is used for ulterior purposes and the borderland between fancy and untruthfulness is likely to be crossed.
Jinks.
There is a little girl who a few years ago was possessed of many dolls, but the supreme favourite was an old monkey-doll by name “Jinks.” He was so much hugged and cuddled from the first that he soon became shabby. He quickly lost all his hair except a tuft on each side of his face, and his clothes were reduced to a pair of dark blue trousers and a sort of shabby white jersey. But the shabbier he became the more she loved him, and in time, being an ingenious little person, she began to make use of him, as is often the case among grown-up people. The first instance on record is of the simplest kind, but showed much insight into human nature. The little girl had been disobedient and was being duly lectured on her fault. She stood there looking very serious with “Jinks” tightly clasped in her arms. All of a sudden the length of the lecture became more than she could bear. Something must be done.Suddenly she held up the ugly old doll and with a pleasant smile upon her face remarked, “Look at Jinks! ’ow ’e’s laughing!” It was an ingenious and effective ruse, but a ruse it was and not mere play of imagination.
On another more recent occasion she made use of “Jinks” in a rather more elaborate fashion. Her everyday gloves were knitted woollen ones and these she disliked intensely. One day she was seen starting out in a pair which were properly kept for Sundays. She was stopped and asked why she had put on her best gloves. “Why,” she answered at once, “You see when I was getting ready I thought p’raps I should meet Jinks on the stairs—and he can’tbearto see me in those woolly gloves!”
Most people who have little children among their friends can remember similar instances, and these are just the cases where firm but sympathetic interferenceis necessary to prevent confusion between imagination and want of truth.
The Idea of Death.
Desire for a Legacy.
Possessed as they are of such great powers of imagination in many directions it is curious to notice how often children seem unable to realise or picture to themselves matters with which they will be familiar enough in after life. Take, for instance, the subject of death. A child will imagine the death of a doll. This is a fancy that occurs rarely, and the imagination goes as a rule no further. A child does not picture to itself the sorrow and loss commonly caused by the death of a real person. A little girl of three years old was sitting on her godfather’s knee. There was an immense affection between the two, and either would have missed the other sadly. An old man in the village known by sight to the little girl had lately died, and she had just remarked to her godfather quite as a bit of cheerful gossip,“Old John is dead.” The conversation then turned upon a certain gold watch which the little maiden desired more than anything in the world. Once more she was told, “No, I really can’t give it to you; I want it so badly myself.” Then followed these apparently callous words. “Your hair isratherwhite like old John’s. I s’pect you will be dead soon. Then can I have the watch?”
At first sight this sounds heartless and calculating, but as a matter of fact it was certainly not the former. The subject of death was too big for her imagination, that was all.
Small Imagination of Suffering.
In this same connection it is found that pain as affecting others is often very slightly realised by children, and they seem to be unable to imagine suffering such as has not come within their own experience. It is for this reason that littlechildren often inflict tortures on animals, especially on flies and other small creatures which are at their mercy. It is not from a love of cruelty as some people have said, but simply because their imagination falls short in this direction, and they do not realise the effects of their actions.
But, with certain exceptions, a child has invariably an immense capability for imagining. As has been stated, the most vivid fancies seem to spring up unbidden, but it is equally true that it is possible in a large degree to influence thekindof imagination. Happiness is an essential atmosphere for the upbringing of a child, and happiness is to a large extent dependent in childhood upon imagination. By supplying this atmosphere the best kind of imaginings can be ensured.
Parental Sympathy.
A child whose parents are occupied entirely with themselves and their own affairs and have no sympathy with childish fancies will shrink up into itselfand have a stunted mental and spiritual growth: the terrified child will grow up amid horrible imaginings; it is only the child to whom gentleness and sympathy are as the very air it breathes who will imagine happy and beautiful things, and live to enjoy the fulfilment of them here and hereafter.
Poetic Imaginings.
This leads naturally to the poetic imaginings of many children who have outgrown their babyhood, but have not yet had their fancies blurred and obscured by the tasks and troubles of the world. They possess a gift which all may envy—the gift of endowing all manner of things, both those which are beautiful in themselves and those which are not, with a glory not their own. This gift comes from the power of connecting one thought with another, or perhaps of allowing one idea unconsciously to suggest another,which is the root of all imagination. It is a gift that has brought sunshine and happiness to thousands of children, and is preserved by some in after life. All our great poets and painters have kept hold of this power, and many persons share vicariously in its delights as they read the glorious thoughts or gaze on the exquisite pictures that have been thus inspired.
And yet there are some who scoff. They have forgotten their childhood’s gift, and are too self-satisfied to regret it. Not so the old poet Wordsworth. He felt the power leaving him. The brightness of his poetic imagination was on the wane, and he thus lamented it:—
There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,The earth and every common sight,To me did seemApparell’d in celestial light,The glory and the freshness of a dream.It is not now as it hath been of yore;Turn wheresoe’er I mayBy night or day,The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,The earth and every common sight,To me did seemApparell’d in celestial light,The glory and the freshness of a dream.It is not now as it hath been of yore;Turn wheresoe’er I mayBy night or day,The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,The earth and every common sight,To me did seemApparell’d in celestial light,The glory and the freshness of a dream.It is not now as it hath been of yore;Turn wheresoe’er I mayBy night or day,The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell’d in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn wheresoe’er I may
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
There are many people who have never troubled to understand children and who are mightily sceptical as to the powers and the charm that is claimed for them. It is hardly possible to do better here than to ask such persons to read the example given below of a child’s poetical imaginings.
The story is told in the first person, and is in the main literally true. It is called
“I Wonders”
“I Wonders”
“It was a lovely September day. I had any number of duties to fulfil at home. There was a pile of letters waiting to be answered, there was a magazine article hardly begun for which I had received an urgent demand from the publishers only that morning, and there was a meeting of school managers which my conscience told me I ought on no account to miss. But, as I said before, it was a simply lovely day and nature (humanand the other) cried shame on staying indoors. Whether I should have had sufficient strength of mind to have resisted the temptation had I been left to fight it out with nature I shall never know, for the enemy received a sudden reinforcement before which I yielded ignominiously and at once. I had gone so far as to clear my blotting-pad of loose letters and to open my ink bottle when there came a tiny tap at the study door. ‘Come in!’ I called, and there ensued a curious twisting at the handle of the door, productive of no result. ‘Come in!’ I called again, and this time there was no further delay.
“With a little burst the door flew open and revealed that my visitor was no less and no greater a person than Helen.
Helen.
“Now Helen needs some description, and no better time for giving it could be found than as she stood there at the topof the three or four steps which lead up to my sanctum, her face flushed with her struggle with the door handle.
“Helen was a town-bred child of five years old, and the colour gave her usually pale face an added charm. Charm is the right word to use, for, though she did not possess any very great beauty (excepting her large dark eyes and lashes), it was impossible not to fall under her charm. She fascinated by her various moods, often serious almost to melancholy, but suddenly bursting out into utter and abandoned joyousness. She fascinated again by her vivid imagination, by the sensitiveness with which she shrank from an unresponsive look or word, and by the gradual unfolding of her nature to anyone whounderstood. She had come to stay with us in our completely country house, and was entranced with the mystery and delight of all she saw.
“On that particular morning she had come to demand that I should fulfil a promise to go out and pick blackberries, for had not I said that I had passed quantities of big ones, all ripe and ready, only the day before? There she stood in her white sun bonnet and her short red flannel jacket, beneath which came the bottom of her white frock and a little pair of legs which country sun and air were already beginning to assimilate to those of our village bairns in colour though not in thickness.
“‘Well?’ I said, to which her only reply was to hold up and shake at me an empty basket with which she had provided herself. ‘What’s that for?’ said I. ‘I wonders!’ she answered, using an expression with which we had already become familiar. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you had better tell me.’ ‘Can’t you guess?’—with some scorn—and then triumphantly, ‘Backberwies, o’ course!’
“There was very little more to be said. Nature might have been resisted alone, but natureandHelen would have proved too much for a stronger and more reluctant man than I. And so it was arranged. Helen was to meet me in the hall in a quarter of an hour, which would give me time to scribble a couple of notes, one (by the way) to the publishers to say that great pressure prevented my finishing the article that day, which was true—in a sense!
“I have been many walks with many people, but none that I can compare with the one upon which Helen and I started that sunny September morning. I have walked as an undergraduate with learned dons who discoursed of matters beyond my ken. I have walked with ladies of sentiment, who vainly appealed to my sympathy and imagination. But never till that morning did I walk with a companion who carried me with her intoanother world and who obtained complete sway over my every thought and action. This did not begin all at once.
Through the Village.
“There was a little bit of the village through which we must pass, and here there were sundry dangers. Old Sawyer’s black and white sow had got loose and certainly looked formidably large and fierce as she shoved her snout with deep grunts into the ditch beside the road. Then a farmer’s collie-dog—a particular friend of mine, but a stranger and therefore a possible foe to my companion—came prancing up. These and other sources of terror, such as the village flock of geese, made it essential that we should proceed with caution and with such strength as a union of hands might afford. However, it did not take long to bring us to the end of the cottages and out on to the road beside which I had seen the blackberries hanging all ready to bepicked. It was a good wide road with a broad strip of grass on either side, along one of which was a row of telegraph posts which brought the single wire by which we were connected with the busy world. The hedges were high and bushy—full of honeysuckle, now out of bloom, wild roses by this time showing only their scarlet fruit, wild hops climbing everywhere with rapid eager growth, clematis giving promise of a hoary show of old man’s beard, and in and out and over and through it all the long thorny brambles with their many-coloured leaves and their shiny black and red and green berries.
The Backberwy People.
“With just one look round to assure herself that nobody and nothing was about, Helen let go my hand and rushed off like a mad thing along the grass, just recovering herself with a gasp from a bad stumble over a dried and hidden heap of road scrapings. All of asudden she stopped. She had caught sight of the ‘backberwies’ and of the numberless other brilliant and tempting objects in the hedge. In a moment her imagination had caught fire. ‘I wonders!’ she said as I came up. Then, when her breath was quite recovered, she added very earnestly, ‘Can us get them backberwy people? It’s vewy dangewous, isn’t it? Look at them nettles and fistles! Is them the backberwies’ policemen—I wonders?’
“If they were, they proved very useful as far as warding off attacks on the part of a little bare-legged maiden went. However, by dint ofverycareful steering she managed to get close up to a splendid cluster of fruit and had picked some four or five when one of the sharp hooky thorns tore her finger and brought tears into her eyes. Even so, the play went on. ‘Oh! the backberwies’ dog has bit me!’ she cried, as she held up the poor littlefinger for me to see. It was really a nasty prick, and I could see that it hurt her a good deal, so I tied her handkerchief round it, and said we would try to find a place further on where the dogs were not so savage.
The Backberwy Ball.
“We went on a yard or two and passed close to one of the telegraph posts through which a light breeze was humming. Helen stopped short with eyes dilated and open mouth. ‘Oh! Iwonders!’ she cried. ‘What is it?’ I asked her. She whispered to me to keep quite still while she went to see, and proceeded to put her ear against the post, holding up one finger of the injured hand in warning to me not to stir. ‘There’s beautiful music,’ she said at last very softly, ‘there’s a ball, and all the little backberwies is dancing!’ I said that if the old blackberries let the young ones go to a ball without them it served themright if they got picked themselves. I then suggested that we should go on to the next post and see what was going on there. As we went Helen noticed that near each one there was a heap of stones and a bare gravelly patch of ground. ‘Them is the backberwy houses,’ she said, ‘and all the backberwies are out, and the children are gone to a dancing class, so the old backberwies send them by theirselves.’ So the little difficulty which I had mentioned was explained away, though to the vividness of her imagination it had evidently presented a real difficulty and had not been forgotten.
“Presently, after listening to the music in several telegraph posts, saying that there was an organ in one and fiddles in another, while in a third she declared that the blackberries were singing, she returned to the hedge and the more serious duty of filling her little basket. All the time, however, she kept up acomment upon what she saw. The red hips and haws were ‘the backberwies’ soldiers,’ the elderberries were their clergymen, and the sloes were guards. Every few minutes she stopped in a sort of ecstasy at all that was around her, and gazing in one direction and another would softly say, ‘Oh! I wonders!’ It was evidently a revelation of beauty to her, and at the same time a scene of mystery, a sort of fairyland where everything thought and lived and breathed.
The Wicked Soldiers.
“At last the basket was getting nearly full, and in stretching up for some specially fine berries a dog-rose thorn tore the back of my hand, leaving a long scratch. Helen’s anger knew no bounds.
“‘The wicked, wicked soldiers,’ she said, and then taking several of the bright red hips she tore them into fragments and threw them away. And now we had wandered backwards and forwards alongthat special bit of hedge until all the blackberries within reach were picked, and only the baby green ones were left. ‘Will they die if we leaves them all alone?’ she said, and then she gathered as many as possible, and carrying them in her two hands placed them in little heaps near each telegraph post that they might be noticed when the balls and concerts were over.
“I said that I wondered what the young blackberries would do when they came out and found all their fathers and mothers gone, and only the little babies left. And Helen said ‘I wonders.’”