CHAPTER VI
Love and Happiness.
What a happiness it is that in the memories of most people the joys of childhood so far exceed its griefs. Two of the most powerful agents for good in the life of a child are love and happiness, and it may be confidently assumed that where there is an abundance of the former the existence of the latter is assured.
It may happily be asserted that it has been the sad lot of few of those who read these lines to have known an unloved childhood. To this may be ascribed the happy recollections of most who look back upon their earliest years.
But in this chapter some attempt will be made to examine certain specialpleasures rather than to generalise as to the atmosphere of happiness in which alone a child will really thrive.
No Stereotyped Rule.
While happiness is necessary for all children, those who have most closely studied child life will agree that the old saying “Quot homines tot sententiæ” may well be applied to the great variety of ways in which this happiness is sought. It is impossible to treat all children alike, or to lay down any general rule. A little girl will find her chief delight in dogs and horses, while her brother steals away to play with dolls. Two small boys will go out into the garden, and, while one is keen to learn any sort of manly game, the other stands about cold and listless, bored to death by the mere sight of bat or ball.
Failure of Compulsory Pleasures.
Nothing is less likely to produce happiness than to attempt toforcelittle children to amuse themselves in any set way.How many people have been disappointed by their efforts in this direction! A “recreation” ground has perhaps been provided by some charitable person at great expense. Ten to one it will be deserted by the little ones for whom it was primarily intended and given over to the tender mercies of lads and lasses in their “teens.” Thesmallchildren find nothing left to their imagination, and infinitely prefer some dirty, and, to adult eyes, disadvantageous corner.
There was just such a case in a large northern town. The recreation ground was opened with pomp, and was elaborately fitted with swings, parallel bars, etc. For a week or two a few children made efforts to amuse themselves there, but it was quickly deserted. In the immediate neighbourhood were sundry patches of ground where no houses had as yet been built, and on which lay fascinatingheaps of brick bats and refuse. Needless to say these offered far greater attractions than the new and orderly playground. Small children do not care to play “to order.” They have enough of that during school hours. When they get a bit older they will be willing enough to join in games on specified grounds and governed by codes of rules, but while they are little they like to find their own playgrounds and invent their own games.
A Game in a Stackyard.
Memory brings a vision of two children, one a little girl with soft dark hair and big black eyes, who is dressed in a blue and white cotton frock, and a big white straw hat; the other a sturdy, but commonplace boy, in grey knickerbockers, a holland blouse, with a broad black leather belt, and a flannel cap. They are about the same age, neither of them being yet seven, and they are playing in a stack-yard. It is not the stacks that are theattraction, for just now there are none there, but for all that it is a glorious playground. In the first place, it is well out of the way of the grown-up people, and in the next place, though there are no stacks, there are the stone supports on which they once stood. What excellent tables they make, these old grey upright blocks, of which the flat round tops project like real tables, and are practically useful in preventing rats and mice from climbing up. But there is something else which has drawn the children to that spot, for all about in the yard there is to be found a tall plant with a quantity of red seed, which must, I fancy, be some kind of sorrel. It is delicious to draw your hand up the stalk and bring it away full of this seed, and that is what these children are busy doing.
Next they put it in a heap on a slate which they have discovered, and then search for pieces of brick and flat stone,which are piled on the top. In this way a certain quantity of the seed is compressed, and called a cheese, which is deposited with ceremony upon one of the stone tables.
The little girl has been the leader throughout; she has decided which plants were ripe enough to be stripped, how much seed was necessary to form a cheese, and upon which of the stones the feast should be spread. The boy has been her obedient servant, a position of things which reaches its climax when the little lady suddenly states that she doesn’t like cheese, and orders him to eat it all up!
This is a vision that has come from time to time for more than forty years, and few playgrounds have seemed so attractive.
The Old Tree in the Garden.
Then there is the old tree of the garden. Who does not love the memory of the games played beneath it, and the seats it afforded among its boughs? Maybe it was a mulberry, or merely an ancient laurel.Playgrounds may be found in and under both. In another case it was a mighty yew, noted in the annals of the county. A few feet up upon its massive stem, the children had special seats, and woe betide intruders caught trespassing! Beneath it was a long bench, of which the supports were obviously at one time a part of one of the great boughs, while the seat had in the distant ages been green.
Playing at Shop.
What feasts were spread upon this seat—what shops were kept with this for the counter! There is a dust that forms beneath old yews, and consists of the dead and crumbled petals. What splendid stuff it is to play with! It can be sold as snuff, or almost anything, and it pours out of a teapot as easily as water. But there is no need to say more; everyone can remember the invented games, and the best-loved haunts of their childhood.
A Whitby Playground.
One more playground of a thoroughly unconventional character may well be mentioned here. It is just where the base of one of the Whitby piers starts from the end of a narrow street or passage. The huge stones worn and rounded at their edge make a couple of steps down to the water’s edge, but steps so big that, if you are still a small boy, they compel you to sit down and slide and scramble, holding on as best you may, till you have reached the bottom. It is great fun to watch the children descending by their various methods. Big boys (and girls too) manage it easily, laughing and shouting as they bump their way down. But with the little ones it is different. A girl arrives, with a baby wrapped up in a shawl; this requires management: baby is set down on the top step, and told to stay quite still, then away slides the small nurse on to the intermediate resting-place some three or four feet below; then a pair ofarms are stretched up, and baby struggles into them with a chuckle of satisfaction, and is once more deposited, while the elder sister springs down on to the soft wet sand, and next minute baby, too, is safe in the desired corner. This is what it practically is, this desirable playground, just a corner in the harbour laid bare at low tide, and having the pier on its one side, and the walls of the old town on the other. How lovely those old walls were! Looking right up one sees the ends projecting above the gables of red-tiled roofs, while below are the grey walls—no, not grey, though many seem so at first sight, but yellow, blue, red, green—every colour, in fact, that stones will take, when long exposed to sea and weather. Then at the bottom just above the sand runs a long wide course of stones that are covered by every tide, and have in consequence become clothed with a fringe of brown and green and golden seaweed.
There are small windows here and there, high up in the walls, and now and again a sheet or a towel is hung out to dry, a picturesque object enough against a mass of building; and from above the wall of a yard a number of poles, leaning in the corner, project and break the monotony of the surface.
It lies right inside the harbour, and every time the tide goes down it leaves a certain quantity of semi-decomposed objects to scent the atmosphere of this special spot.
Then again, what is far worse, there are small square openings here and there in the wall and from these there trickle continuously the contents of many washtubs and slop-pails. Yet here it is that a group of children come whenever the tide allows, to play their quiet games—quiet, for they never run about or make much noise, but seem happiest crawling on hands and knees, or squatting in acircle and playing with the garbage and refuse which has stranded there.
Treasure Trove.
This is doubtless the attraction; the beauties of the scene evidently never occur to them at all, the evil smells affect them not. But there are new playthings there continually. As the water recedes fresh treasures day by day are left upon the shiny floor—half sand, half mud—of their playground. What opportunities for their invention and imagination! Yesterday there were two small dead crabs, a broken saucer, and an empty sardine box; to-day’s chief items are the wicker end of a worn-out lobster-pot, a bit of rope, and a whole quantity of mussel shells which have been thrown away after the baiting of a long line. What endless games are played with these materials! First of all the shells are pushed into the sand squares, making little gardens, which are duly furnishedwith bits of green seaweed. To them comes a small market woman carrying the fragment of wicker-work in which she places the green stuff she purchases and pays for with pebbles, the bit of rope being used to sling the laden basket on her bent back, as she walks off to market under the heavy load.
Another Game of Shop.
Then the shells are hurriedly gathered up, and baby is established with her back against the wall, and in front of her the total accumulation of odds and ends is arranged in lots, each one marked off by a line drawn in the sand, and then the children come to buy at baby’s shop—a matter of huge delight to the shopkeeper, who distributes her goods rashly and impulsively, and is evidently bored at being made to receive payment!
But an end comes at last: a voice is heard shouting, baby is lifted up on to the first step again, and all the little barelegs and ruddy feet go scampering off to tea!
Playing at Being Grown Up.
It would be easy enough to give many more examples than these two or three, but they will be sufficient to illustrate the preference of little children of all and every class for unconventional playgrounds and games proceeding from their own vivid imaginations. Imagination supplies the keynote to so many of the pleasures of children. How greatly, for instance, they delight in playing at being grown up! Nothing gives them keener pleasure than being treated like their elders. It is partly the importance of it, but largely also the exercise of imagination and an appreciation (duly suppressed) of the fun of the situation.
A few years ago it fell to the lot of the writer to witness the joys of two very small people who came by themselves (oh!the importance of it) upon a regular visit.
A Visit from Two Children.
They were some six and seven years old, and a most reserved and old-fashioned little couple in their ways. The elder, Reggie, was singularly quiet and thoughtful. His face, of considerable beauty of feature, with large grey eyes, wore ordinarily an expression of solemnity, if not of melancholy, and it required an intimacy of some considerable standing to obtain more than monosyllabic replies in his high but very gentle voice.
His companion was a little sister properly called Marjorie, but who had hardly yet outgrown “Baby.” Such an upright, delicate dimpled, flower of a child, with the same big eyes and curling lashes as her brother, but with a reserve far more easily overcome, and a much greater readiness to break into smiles or even indulge in romps. She completely“mothered” Reggie, and her anxiety that he should do the right thing, and her little quick orders to him, were most amusing.
Their hostess met them a few days before their visit, and their excitement about it all was intense.
“What luggage shall you bring?”
“Oh! just a hat-box or two!”
“It’s all arranged about our visit to you. I do so love arranging things. Couldn’t we have some more arrangements?”
This, of course, Baby. So every conceivable thing was “arranged,” and every minute of the two days planned out. Their hostess told them she should expect them to bring lots of things in their luggage.
“Oh!” said Baby, “I shall bring my tea-gown. And what shallyouwear?”
The day arrived, and they were met at the station.
“Well, what luggage have you brought?”
“Twelve hat-boxes,” promptly replied Reggie with a flicker of humour just lighting up his face. One turned up, and was found to contain the entire clothing, etc., of the pair. This vast piece of luggage was put in Baby’s room, and then came the request that they might be allowed to unpack for themselves. Reggie was quickly hurried into his own room with his tiny pile of belongings, and then Baby began to unpack hers. She was shown a large wardrobe, as well as a good-sized chest of drawers, and evidently felt that it would beinfra dig.not to use them both, so, after putting one wee garment in one drawer and one in another till each held something, she gravely took the little bag which held her shoes and hung it up in solitary grandeur in the wardrobe!
The extreme politeness and consideration of these little visitors were continuallycoming out. Baby was asked whether she would like a room to herself or a sofa in her hostess’s room.
“You see, Aunt E., I don’t know what to say,” was the reply. On being pressed further, she said, “Well, I was thinking about the beds! It seems a good deal of trouble just for us. You see, they are big beds.”
Reggie, too, was just as anxious to consider others. “If it isn’t too much trouble,” he said, on being asked whether something should be brought him. “I’m afraid when we are gone you will say ‘bother those troublesome children’!”
He was just as attentive, too, to his sister, buttoning her little petticoat for her and anything she couldn’t manage for herself.
The whole of the proceedings described so far were practically part of a charade or play. The children were for these two days grown-up people, and beingendowed with an extra allowance of imagination, played their part in every detail.
Not that they could keep it up quite all the time! There were games at hide-and-seek that entirely dispelled illusion for a while. Then there were visits to the poultry yard and animals, when it was impossible to put such restraint upon one’s feelings of surprise and delight as to appear properly blasé and grown up. For instance, when Baby suddenly discovered a large field-spider, there was a scream of astonishment as she exclaimed, “Oh, Aunt E., here’s a thing with a lot of legs and a dot in the miggle!” And again, in the poultry yard, it was scarcely in keeping with the part of a lady who had arrived at years of discretion to say, “How I should like to lay in those nice lickle nests!”
The Children Leave.
But on the whole these two little people carried out their intention of paying areal grown-up visit with perfect success up to the very moment when they were once more in the train by themselves on their return journey of some six miles, each one grasping firmly their half-ticket, and the last glimpse we had was of Reggie gravely lifting his little straw hat, as the train steamed out of the station. There is all the difference in the world between this sort of playing at being grown up, and the assumption of airs and graces which some children display. The one is real pleasure, the other the merest mockery. Children who are no sooner out of the nursery than they ape their elders in an insatiable desire for a succession of smart clothes and evening parties are seldom happy children. Those who care for their little ones and want to fill their early years with real pleasures will take care to avoid the causes which produce children such as these.
It may perhaps be said that the main factors are two.
Modern Defiance of Authority.
If children be allowed to absorb the spirit that is pervading the world at the present day—the spirit of revolt against all authority, the notion, that is, that everyone is to do exactly as he or she chooses—that will of itself bring about a state of mind which is destructive of real happiness. Notions such as these are quickly picked up, and parents who themselves set all rules and authority at defiance cannot expect their children to submit to control.
Self-Conscious Jealous Children.
Then there is a second cause which is too often at work, and which does a great deal towards turning some children into disagreeable and discontented young folk. When people are continually trying to emulate if not excel their neighbours in appearance and in theentertainments they provide, children are quick enough to take their cue from what they see and overhear, with the result that they are miserable if they think their frocks are less fashionable than their neighbours’, and are rude and discontented if at one party they do not get as handsome presents as at some other.
This is all wrong, and distinctly diminishes the pleasure that these children might otherwise enjoy.
Desirability of Simpler Children’s Parties.
It would without doubt add enormously to the real happiness of children if a league could be formed of all parents who should be bound to limit children’s parties within certain specified bounds of simplicity and within certain reasonably early hours.
But this is by the way. It is pleasanter to turn for another minute or two to speak of the pleasures childlike children find in the simple joys that lie around their path.
Natural Pleasures the Most Enjoyed.
There can be no doubt that the more natural the employment or amusement the greater the pleasure. A little girl is given a tiny dustpan and allowed to sweep the carpet, or she has a drawer full of odds and ends and is asked to sort and arrange them. She will spend an entire morning in such an occupation with the keenest pleasure, and if anyone who has watched her should also see her when dressed up at some “smart” party that same evening there would be no doubt in the mind of the onlooker as to which brought most real happiness to the child.
Story-telling.
One of the greatest delights that can be afforded to children must come in for a word of mention. Who does not remember the story-teller of his or her childhood? Perhaps it was “father,” who when he came in at tea time would let the wholefamily swarm on and about his arm-chair, and would tell another bit of the thrilling tale which he always broke off each evening at the very most exciting point. Or sometimes it would be one of the bigger children, gifted with an extraordinary power of calling up robbers and demons, who enthralled an audience by the narration of horrors which stimulated their imagination and made them feel deliciously “creepy.” No such things as “chestnuts” exist for children. The oftener the story has been told the better they like it, and never hesitate to choose an old favourite before a brand new tale.
But this chapter is already becoming too long. It would be easy to enumerate numberless simple amusements which bring real pleasure to children. But the same moral can be drawn in every case. The simpler and more natural the occupation the greater the pleasure. Do not all children revel in playing with the earthand water that lie about their feet? Whether they are the lucky ones who can build sand castles and let the sea-water fill the moats, or whether they can only play in the gutter by their door, they are ten times happier in such pleasures as these than in any grander or more elaborate amusements. To the recognition of this fact those who plan children’s pleasures will owe their chief success.