Chapter XII: George Sand’s Childhood, 489 (18)

Footnote 321:

Compare above, p. 96 ff.

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Towards the end of the year, it appears, C. developed considerable smartness in logical fencings with his mother and others, warding off unpleasant prohibitions by a specious display of argument. For example, when told that something he wanted would make him poorly, he rejoined: ‘I _am_ poorly,’ evidently thinking that he had convicted his estimable parent of what logicians call irrelevant conclusion.

One cannot say that these first incursions into the domain of logic do Master C. particular credit. Perhaps we may see later on that he came to use his rational faculty with more skill and precision, and to turn it to nobler uses than the invention of subterfuges whereby he might get his wilful way.

The notes on the development of the feelings continue to be rather scanty. I will reproduce one or two of the more note-worthy.

The visit to D—— was attended with a great change in his feeling for animals. He no longer feared them. Jingo, spite of his warlike name, was an amiable creature, and seems to have reconciled him to the canine species. Cats, too, now came in for special affection. He would watch the animals in D——, horses, cows, and especially ducks, with quiet delight for many minutes, imitating their sounds. Strange to say, now that fear had gone he showed himself disposed to take liberties with animals. Thus he would slap Jingo and even his favourite cat in moments of displeasure, just as he and his sister before him used to slap their dolls.

A new emotion showed itself towards the end of the fourth month, _viz._, shyness. If his parents unguardedly spoke about him at table he would hang down his head and put his hands over his face. So far as the father could observe this expression of shyness was unlearned. His sister, it appears, had not been remarkable for the feeling. The father observes that the fact of this new feeling synchronising with the acquisition of the use of ‘I,’ ‘my,’ etc., seems to show that it was connected with the growth of self-consciousness.

His sense of fun continued to develop, though it still had a decidedly rude and primitive character. When just four months on in the year his father amused him by battering in an old hat of his own. He broke into loud laughter at this performance. We know, writes the observer, how the sight of a hat in trouble convulses the grown mind. Can it be that C. was already forming associations of dignity with this completion and crown of human apparel?

Tender emotion, as became a boy, perhaps, was in abeyance. He rarely indulged in manifestations of love, or if he did, it must have been towards his mother secretly in a confidence that was never violated. Here is one of the few instances recorded (beginning of eighth month). He happened to see his own picture in his mother’s eye and said in a highly sentimental tone: “Dear pitty little picture, I do love ’oo,” and then proceeded to kiss his mother’s eyelid. It was little things, as kittens, flowers, and so forth, which seemed to move him to this occasional melting mood.

The sympathetic feelings though still weak may be said to be slowly developing. Thus in the first month of the year it is remarked that he now thinks of his sister when absent, so that if he has the highly-prized enjoyment of a biscuit he will suggest that ‘Tit have bisc too’.

This year witnessed the formation of more definite æsthetic likings in the matter of colours and forms. His dislike for a black cat and black things generally, may perhaps be called in a way a preference of taste. In his animal picture-books, of which he was now growing very fond, he showed a marked dislike for a monkey with an open mouth, also for the rhinoceros, and strong likings, on the other hand, for birds in general, also for horses and zebras.

He began to learn nursery rhymes, and showed a good ear for rhyme. Thus in saying:—

Goosey goosey gander,
Where shall I wander?

he was observed (end of tenth month) to correct the rhyme by first pronouncing the _a_ in “wander” less broadly than is our wont, just as in “gander,” and then substituting the conventional pronunciation.

The moral side of the child’s nature appears during this year to have undergone noticeable changes. The most striking fact which comes out in the picture of the boy as painted in the present chapter is the sudden emergence of self-will. He began now to show himself a veritable rebel against parental authority. Thus we read (about the end of the sixth week) that when corrected for slapping Jingo, or other fault, he would remain silent and half laugh in a cold contemptuous way, which must have been shocking to his worthy parents. A month later we hear of an alarming increase of self-will. He would now strike each of these august persons, and follow up the sacrilege with a profane laugh. As might be expected from his general use of subterfuge about this time, he showed a lamentable want of moral sensibility in trying to shirk responsibility. Thus (middle of seventh month) he was noticed by his mother putting a spill of paper over the fire-guard into the fire so as to light it. His mother at once said: “Ningi mustn’t do that”. Whereupon he impudently retorted: “Ningi not doing that, paper doing it”.[322]

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Footnote 322:

Compare above, p. 273 f.

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All this is dreadful enough, yet it is probable that many children go through a longer or shorter stage of rebellion, who afterwards turn out to be well-behaved, respectable persons. And, as his father is not slow to point out, C., even in these rebellious outbursts, showed the rudiments of moral feeling in the shape of a deep sensitiveness to injury and more definitely to unjust treatment. Thus we are told (middle of seventh month) that when his sister eats the leavings of his pudding or other dainty he shows a well-marked moral indignation. He gets very excited at such moments, his eyes dilating, his voice rising in pitch, and his arms executing a good deal of violent gesticulation. When scolded by his mother for doing a thing which he has only appeared to do, he will turn and exclaim, with all the signs of righteous wrath, “Mamma naughty say dat!” One day (end of seventh month) when, after being very naughty, his mother had to carry him upstairs, he broke out into a more than usually violent fit of crying. His mother asked him what he meant by making such a noise when being carried upstairs; whereupon he replied, “’Cause you carry me up like a pig” (as represented in one of his picture-books).

There is nothing particularly meritorious in all this, yet it is significant as showing how, in this third year, the consciousness of self was developing not only on its intellectual but on its moral side, as a sense of personal dignity and rightful claim, which, after all, is a very essential element in a normal and robust moral sentiment.

_Fourth Year._

The reports of progress during the fourth year are still scantier than their predecessors: perhaps the observer was getting tired of his half-playful work. Nevertheless, there are some interesting observations in this chapter also.

C.’s observation seems to have been decidedly good, to judge by an incident that occurred at the end of the third week of the year. He had been to the Zoological Gardens. His father asked him about the seals, and more particularly as to whether they had legs. He answered at once, “No, papa, they had foot-wings”. The chronicler is evidently proud of this feat, and thinks it would have satisfied Professor Huxley himself. But allowance must here as elsewhere be made for parental pride.

The child’s colour-sense, we are told about the same time, was developing quite satisfactorily. He could now (end of fifth week) discriminate and name intermediate shades of colour. Thus he called a colour between yellow and green quite correctly ‘yellowish green,’ and this way of naming colours was, so far as the father could ascertain, quite spontaneous. Later (three and a half months), on being questioned as to violet, which he first said was blue, he replied correcting his first answer, “and purple”. Later on (beginning of last quarter), he could distinguish a ‘purplish blue’ from a “purplish pink”.

Along with a finer observation we find a more active and inventive imagination. It was during this year that he began to create fictitious persons and animals, and to surround himself with a world, unseen by others, but terribly real to himself.

About the middle of the third month he made his first essay in story-fabrication. Considering that he had a lively and imaginative elder sister, who was constantly regaling him with fairy and other stories, this argues no particular precocity. His first style in fiction was crude enough. He would pile up epithets in a way that makes the most florid of journalistic diction seem tame by comparison. Thus he would begin the description of a dog by laying on a miscellaneous pile of colour-adjectives, blue, red, green, black, white, and so forth. With a similar disregard for verisimilitude and concentration of aim on strong effect, he would pile up the agony in a story, relating, for example, how the dog that had killed a rabbit (“bunny”) had his head beaten off, was then drowned, and so on, through a whole Iliad of canine calamity. Here is another example of his literary sensationalism (middle of ninth month). While he and his father were taking a walk in the country, where the family was staying, they found the feathers and bones of a bird in a tiny cleft in the tree. The father thereupon began to weave for him a little story about the unfortunate bird, how it had taken shelter there one cold winter’s day weary and hungry, and had grown too weak to get away. This did not satisfy the strong palate of our young poet, who proceeded to improve on the tragedy. “P’haps a snake there, p’haps dicky bird flew there one cold winter day and snake ate it up, and then spit it out again,” and so forth. “P’haps (he ended up) he (the bird) thought there was nothing but wind (air) there.”

He had, of course, his super-sensible world, made up of mysterious beings of fairy-like nature, who, like the spirits of primitive folk-lore, were turned to account in various ways. The following incident (seven months one week) may illustrate the _modus operandi_ of the child’s myth-making impulse. He was eagerly looking forward to going to a circus. His father told him that if it rained he would not be able to go, for nobody could drive away the rain. Whereupon he instantly remarked: “The Rainer can”. His father asked him who this wonderful person was, and he replied: "A man who lives in the forest—_my_ forest—and has to drive rain away". The expression “drive away” used by the father had been enough to give this curious turn to his fancy.

His fairy-world was concocted from a medley of materials drawn from his observations of animals, his experiences at the circus, including the ladies in beautifully tinted short dresses, whom, with childish awe, he named ‘fairies,’ and the book-lore that his sister was imparting to him from _Stories of Uncle Remus_, and other favourites. In the ninth month he got into the way of talking of his fairy-world, of the invisible fairies, horses, rabbits, and so forth, to which he gave a local habitation in the wall of his bedroom. When in a difficulty he thinks his fairies can help him out. Nothing is too wonderful for their powers: they can even solace his pitiful heart by making a dead dog alive again. For the rest, like other imaginative children, he peoples the places he knows, especially dark and mysterious ones, with imaginary beings. Thus one day, on walking in a wood with his mother, he was overheard by her talking to himself dreamily in this wise: “Here there used to be wolves, but long, long time ago”.

It is noticeable that at this same period of his myth-making activity he began to speak of his dreams. He evidently takes these dream-pictures for sensible realities, and when relating a dream insists that he has actually seen the circus-horses and fairies which appear to him when asleep. Possibly, writes the father, this dreaming, as in the case of the primitive race, had much to do in developing his intense belief in a supernatural world. It may be added that during this same period he was in the habit of seeing the forms of his animals, as lions, “gee-gees,” in such irregular and apparently unsuggestive groupings of line as those made by the cracks in the ceiling of his nursery.[323]

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Footnote 323:

Compare above, p. 28 ff.

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There is little to note in the way of verbal invention. Here is one amusing specimen (third week of third month). His father asked him whether his toy-horse was tired, whereupon he answered: ‘No, I make him untired’. This leads off the writer to an abstruse logical discussion of “negative terms,” and how it comes about that we do not all of us talk in C.’s fashion and say ‘untired,’ ‘unfatigued’. Another quaint invention was the use of ‘think’ as a noun. It was funny, writes the father, to hear him rejecting his sister’s statements by the contemptuous formula: “That’s only your thinks”.

His understanding was slowly ripening in spite of his free indulgence in the intoxicating pleasures of the imagination. He could understand much that was said to him by the aid of a liberal application of metaphor. Thus one day (end of the year) his father when walking with him late in the evening in a park where sheep were grazing told him that animals did not want bed-clothes, but could lie on the grass wet with dew and afterwards be dried with the sun. He said: “Yes, the sun is their towel to make them dry”.

The subtleties of time were still too much for him. In the fourth month of the year when his sister was narrating an incident of the evening before and used the term ‘yesterday,’ he corrected her saying: “No, E., last night”. Yet he was now beginning to penetrate into the mysteries of the subject. His father happened one day (end of seventh month) to speak of to-morrow. C. then asked: “When is to-morrow? To-morrow morning?” He then noticed that his hearers were remarking on his question, and proceeded to expound his own view of these wonderful things. “There are two kinds of to-morrow, to-morrow morning and this morning;” and then added with the sagest of looks: “To-morrow morning is to-morrow _now_”.

At this the father tells us both he and the mother were sorely puzzled, and if one may be allowed to read between the lines, it is not improbable that the latter must have indulged in some such exclamation as this: “There! this comes of your stimulating the child’s brains too much”. However this be, it is certain that the observer’s mind was greatly exercised about this dark and oracular deliverance of the child. What could he have meant? At length he bethought him that the child was unable as yet to think of pure abstract time. To-morrow had to be filled in with some concrete experience, wherefore his wishing to define it as “to-morrow _morning_” with the interesting experiences of the early hours of the day. And if “to-morrow” means for his mind to-morrow’s experience, he is quite logical in saying that it becomes to-day’s _experience_. Whether the father has here caught the subtle thread of childish thought may be doubted.[324] Who among the wisest of men could be sure of seizing the precise point which the child makes such praiseworthy effort to render intelligible to us?

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Footnote 324:

Compare what was said above, p. 119.

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It would appear as if C. were still rather muddled about numbers. One day (end of third month) he was looking at some big coloured beads on a necklace, and touching the biggest he said to his mother: “These are six,” then some smaller ones: “these five,” then some still smaller ones: “these four,” and so on. He was apparently failing as yet to distinguish number from that other mode of quantity which we call magnitude.

The use of the word “self” at this time showed that it had reference mainly to the body, and apparently to the central trunk. Thus one evening towards the end of the eleventh month, after being put to bed, he was heard by his mother crying out peevishly. Asked by her what was the matter he answered, “I can’t get my hands out of the way of myself”; which, being interpreted by his mother, was his way of saying that he could not wriggle about and get into cool places (the evening was a warm one) as he would like to do.

As might be inferred from his essays in fictitious narrative, he was getting quite an expert in the matter of assertion. It was odd sometimes, observes the journal, to hear the guarded manner in which he would proffer a statement. Thus, on one occasion (beginning of twelfth month), he reported to his father, who had been from home for some days, that he had been behaving quite satisfactorily during his absence, and then added cautiously, “I did not see mamma punish me, anyhow”.

During this year he followed up his questioning relentlessly, often demanding the reasons of things, as children are wont to do, in a sorely perplexing fashion. His interrogatory embraced all manner of objects, both of sense-perception and of thought. Thus he once asked his mother (seventh month) how it was that he could put his hand through water and not through the soap. A matter that came to puzzle him especially just now was growth. Thus, when told by his father (tenth month) that a little tree would grow big by-and-by, he asked, "How is it that everything grows—flowers, trees, horses, and people?" or, as he worded it a few days later, “How can trees and sheep grow without anybody making them?” He seems now (notes the father) to have given up his belief in the growth of lifeless things. The inequalities of size among fully grown things were also a puzzle to him. Thus, when just four years old, he was much concerned to know why ponies did not grow big like other horses.[325]

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Footnote 325:

Compare what was said above, pp. 88, 104.

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The father must doubtless at this time have had his hands full in satisfying the intellectual cravings of the child. But, happily, the small inquirer would sometimes come forward to help out the explanation. One day (end of the year) his father, when walking out with him, pointed to a big dray-horse and said: “That is a strong horse”. On which the child observed: “Ah! that horse can gallop fast”. He was then told that heavy horses did not go fast. He looked puzzled for a moment and then asked: “Do you mean can’t lift themselves up?” “Had he,” asks the father, “noticed that when weighted with thick clothes or other _impedimenta_ he was less springy, and so found his way, as is the manner of children, from his own experience to explaining the apparent contradiction of the strong and slow horse?”

Other questionings were less amenable to purposes of instruction. He would often get particularly thoughtful immediately after going to bed, and put posers to his mother. For example, one evening (tenth month) he asked in his slow, earnest way, “Where was I a hundred years ago?” and then more precisely, “Where was I before I was born?” These are, as everybody knows, stock questions of childhood, and, perhaps, are hardly worth recording. It is otherwise with a curious poser which he set his father about the middle of the last month: “When are all the days going to end, papa?” It is a pity that the diary does not record the answer given to the question. In lieu of this we have the customary pedantic style of speculation about the “concept” of infinity with references to Sir W. Hamilton and I don’t know what other profound metaphysicians. The answer, if any was attempted, does not appear to have been very satisfactory to Master C., for we read further on that more than three months after this date he put the same question about all the days ending to his mother.

With this questioning about the causes of things there went much assigning of reasons. By the end of the fourth month, it is remarked, he was getting more accurate in his thinking, substituting limited generalisations such as, “Some people do this,” for the first hasty and sweeping ones. He appears, further, to have grown much more ready in finding reasons, bringing out “’cause” (because) on all manner of occasions, much to his own satisfaction and hardly less to that of his observant father. He continued, it is added, to display the greatest ingenuity in finding reasons for his own often capricious-looking behaviour, and especially in discovering excuses whereby a veil of propriety might be thrown over actions which he knew full well would, if left naked, have a naughty look.

The tendency to give life to things observable in the last year was less marked, but broke out now and again, as when sitting one day (beginning of tenth month) on his chair on a loose cushion and wriggling about as his manner was, he felt the cushion slipping from under him and exclaimed: “Hullo! I do b’lieve this cushion is alive. It moves itself.” About a month after this the father set about testing the state of his mind by asking him whether trees did not feel pain when they were cut. This “leading question” was not to entrap Master C., who answered with something of contempt in his tone: “No, they only made of wood”. He was not so sure about dead rabbits, however, saying first “yes” and then “no”.

The intricate relations of things continued to trouble his mind. His father chanced one day (end of eleventh month) to remark at table that C. did not take his milk so nicely as he used to do. C. pondered this awhile and then said: “It’s funny that little babies behave better than big boys. They don’t know so much as boys.” From which the father appears to have inferred that children, like certain Greek philosophers, are wont to identify virtue with cognition.

There are not many brilliant strokes of childish rationality to record during this year. It is worth noting, perhaps, that when just seven months and one week of the year had passed, he showed that he had found his own way to an axiomatic truth familiar to students of geometry. He had been to the circus the day before, where a gorgeous pantomimic spectacle had greatly delighted him. He talked to his father of the beautiful things, and among others, of “the fairies going up in the air”. His father asked him how they were able to fly. Whereupon with that good-natured readiness to enlighten the darkness of grown-up people which makes the child the most charming of instructors, he proceeded to explain in this wise: “They had wings, you know. Angels have wings like birds, and fairies are like angels, and so you see fairies are like birds.”

The first development of reason in the child is apt to be trying to parents and others, on account not only of the thick hail-like pelting of questions to which it gives rise, but still more, perhaps, of the circumstance that the young reasoner will so readily turn his new instrument to a confusing criticism of his elders. The daring interference of childish dialectic with moral discipline in C.’s case has already been touched on. Sometimes he would follow up a series of questions so as to put his logical antagonist into a corner, very much after the manner of the astute Socrates. Here is an example of this highly inconvenient mode of dialectical attack (middle of seventh month). He was at this time like other children, much troubled about the killing of animals for food. Again and again he would ask with something of fierce impatience in his voice: “_Why_ do people kill them?” On one occasion he had plied his mother with these questionings. He then contended that people who eat meat must like animals to be killed. Finally, to clench the matter, he turned on his mother and asked: “Do _you_ like them to be killed?” Here is another example of his persistent dialectical attack (end of eleventh month). A small caterpillar happening to drop on the shoulder of the father, the mother expressed the common dislike for these creatures. C. was just now championing the whole dumb creation against hard-hearted man, and he at once saw his opportunity. ‘Why,’ he demanded in his peremptory catechising tone, ‘don’t you like caterpillars?’ To which the mother, amused perhaps with his grave argumentative manner, thought to escape the attack by answering playfully: “Because they make the butterflies”. But there was no room for jocosity in C.’s mind when it was a matter of liking or disliking a living creature. So he followed up his questioning with the true Socratic irony, asking: “Why don’t you like butterflies?” On this both the parents appear to have laughed; but he was not to be upset, and ignoring the patent subterfuge of the butterfly returned to the caterpillar. “Caterpillars,” he observed thoughtfully, “don’t make a noise.” He had doubtless generalised that the pet aversions of his parents, more especially his father, were dogs, cocks and other noise-producing animals. Whether he returned to the subject of the caterpillar is not stated. Perhaps his mother’s dislike for the wee soft noiseless thing was to be added to the stock of unexplained childish mysteries.

Passing to manifestations of feeling, we have a curious note on a new emotional expression. It seems that when a suckling the child had got into the way of accompanying the bliss of an ambrosial meal by soft caressing movements of the fore-finger along the mother’s eyebrows. When three years and ten months old he was sitting on his father’s lap in one of his softer moods when he touched this parent’s eyebrows in the same dainty caressing manner. The observer suspects that we have here an example of a movement becoming an emotional sign by association and analogy. At first associated with the _ne plus ultra_ of infantile happiness it came to indicate the oncoming of any analogous state of feeling, and especially of the luxurious mood of tenderness.

Two or three curious examples of fear are recorded in this chapter. In the second week of the fourth month he went with his mother to the photographer’s to have his likeness taken. When he reached the house he strongly objected, clung to his mother and showed all the signs of a true fear. On entering the room he told the photographer in his quiet authoritative manner that he was not going to have his likeness taken. The process, an instantaneous one, was accomplished, however, without his knowing it. Next morning when asked by his sister how he liked having his likeness taken, he answered snappishly: “Haven’t had my likeness taken. Don’t you see I can talk?” The father suspects that the child feared he would be transformed by the black art of the camera into a speechless photograph. It is curious that savages appear to show a similar dread of the photographic camera. Thus, in a recent number of the _Graphic_ (November, 1893) there was a drawing of Europeans and natives having their likeness taken in a camp in South Africa. One native, terror-struck, is hiding behind a tree so as not to be taken. The text explains that the drawing represents a real incident, and that the fear of the native came from his belief that there is an evil spirit in the camera, and adds that, on finding out that after all he was in the group, the poor fellow instantly disappeared from the camp. Is there not for all of us something uncanny in that black box turned towards us bent on snatching from us the film or image of our very self?

The other instances of C.’s fear point to a like superstitious frame of mind at this time. Thus in the last month he happened one day to see some white linen swaying in the breeze on a hill not far off. He took it for a light and was afraid, saying it was a wolf. This was, we are told, his first experience of ghosts. At the same date he showed fear when passing through a wood with his father about nine o’clock on a summer evening. Though his father was carrying him he said he could not help being afraid of the dark. He fancied there must be wolves in the dark. He afterwards informed his father that his sister had told him so. The wolf appears at this time (by a quaint confusion of zoology) to have been the descendant of his old _bête noire_, the “bow-wow”. “Have we,” writes the father, “a sort of parallel here to the superstition of the were-wolf so familiar in folk-lore?”

A new development of angry outburst is recorded. In the third month, to the horror of his parents and the disgust of his sister, he positively took to biting others, an action, it is needless to say, which he could not have picked up from his highly respectable human environment. Was this, asks the father, with praiseworthy detachment of mind, an instinct, a survival of primitive brute-like habit, and happily destined in the case of a child born into a civilised society, like other instincts, as pilfering, to be rudimentary and transient?

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]

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Footnote 326:

Compare above, p. 102 f.

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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”.