NOVELS.
THE CHILD MIND.*
THIS deeply interesting and original little work belongs to that steadily increasing class of books which, while written about children and from the child's standpoint, are manifestly not intended for children's consumption. Briefly put, it is a psychological study of an enfant incompris ; but what lends freshness to the situation is that so far from the child-heroine being harshly or unkindly treated, she is the idol of the parents whom she idolises. The misunderstandings which lend poignancy to this series of episodes in the life of an only child in almost every case grow out of that familiar disparity between the child's reasoning process and its knowledge of life. Children's logic, as it has been observed, is wonderfully accurate, but it is not and cannot be checked and controlled by experience. On the other side, the most affectionate parents are often totally unable to recapture this stand- point. Hence a great deal of the tragi-comedy of these chapters. One of the best chapters, for instance, describes the well-meant but disastrous incursion of Kitty's parents into the mysteries of doll-land. After showing off a number of new and horrifying toys, her father opens the door of he
doll's house :— .
"The top room hinted of a tragedy. A stout lady &Ai lay, • The Child Mind. By Ralph Harold Bretherton. London John lane. rai• limp huddle of muslin and ribbon, on the floor, and a ruddy- cheeked gentleman doll was propping himself up against the bed in poker-backed grief. The child watched with something akin to dismay in her heart the father clear up and set right this tragedy with irreverent haste. He did not understand the solemn reality of these things; he even went so far as to treat them playfully, but she knew that his excuse was that he was not a child, and, being a good daughter and jhaving a loving tolerance for her parents, she said nothing, though his every action set her child-nerves jangling exquisitely and outraged her infant sense of art and romance. In a second he had revived the fallen lady and set her in a healthy attitude in a chair. With one touch he made the grief-stricken gentleman writhe with laughter. The child was aghast at the waste of loving concern which this worldly swiftness of action caused. Left to herself, she would first have raised the prostrate lady into a sitting posture, and have bathed her forehead with real water from the little basin on the wash- stand. Then she would have tenderly put her to bed, and called in a doctor from one of the rooms downstairs. Finally, she would have soothed the weeping gentleman. Possibly she would have made him kneel by the bedside to pray for the lady's recovery. But her father, great, foolish, light-hearted man that he was, had changed the whole aspect of the room in a couple of touches. What was the use of dolls to grown-ups ? she wondered. What- ever pleasure could her father derive from them if he treated them so lightly? It was their seriousness that made them so lovable to her. Sitting on the floor, a little behind her parents, she watched them at their play. Occasionally she received their busy elbows in her face. That she did not mind, but she did resent the many ways in which they upset the arrangement of her dolls. They intruded quite indecently upon the privacy of the inhabitants of the house. They shook respectable matrons, bandied sober husbands from pillar to post, and picked up and carted about sedate children in bundles of three or four at a time. The child's heart sickened with shame when the mother, with a laugh, made Noah—ugly, unjointed Noah from the Ark—pageboy to the haughty and titled family in the right-hand bottom room. She almost cried out at this insult to the doll-family whom she lilted best of all her doll-families, but with whom she had to be very diplomatic, so ready were they to take offence ; she feared the long explanations she would have to make in excuse of her parents, but her distress was so great that her tongue lay silent in her dry mouth. She knew her mother meant no harm ; still, it was a hard thing to forgive her. At length the father looked at his watch. 'By Jove !' he cried, it's all but dinner-time.' He shut the front of the doll's house with a violence that made the child shudder. Then he and the mother got hurriedly up from the floor, and dusted themselves down. Both father and mother kissed the child rapturously, for they were very fond of her, and -without her they would have had no toys to play with. Haven't we had a lovely afternoon, Kitty ?' said the mother. Yes,' answered the child solemnly. 'We have enjoyed ourselves, haven't we ?' cried the father, with outstretched arms. 'Yes,' the child answered, still more solemnly. Then, when left alone in the nursery, she apologised humbly to her dolls for all that had been done to them that afternoon. She had the greatest difficulty in getting the titled family to accept these apologies, and for many days had to be on her very best behaviour with them."
When Kitty was ill she was miserable, because "to be ill was a grave fault in her eyes. She judged between the rightness and wrongness of things by their effect upon her mother. Those things were right and good which pleased her mother; those things were wrong and wicked which vexed her mother and made her unhappy. And the child knew that the least ache in her little body made her mother most unhappy. So her sense of guilt and shame grew and grew as she became more and more aware of her physical distress." Given such a child, deprived of the constant com- panionship of other children, endowed with the conscience of a saint and more than an ordinary child's terror of the dark, and the recital of her miseries might be made well-nigh un- endurable to a tender-hearted reader. Luckily—and this is the saving grace of a book which often trembles on the verge of morbidity—there is always a happy ending to these childish tragedies. The divine inspiration of motherly affection, though it works slowly, at length discovers the clue, and each successive misunderstanding, once cleared up, instead of estranging Kitty and her parents, only tightens the bond of mutual love. Kitty, it must be admitted, belongs to the tribe of the self-tormentors, but it is easy enough to see how in an imaginative, sensitive child this tendency is fostered by the traditional methods of nursery reproof. Most of us can remember the bogey of "the other child "—the good child who never does anything wrong—and can appreciate Kitty's anxiety when, on hearing that a little cousin was coming to see her, she jumps to the conclusion that she is about to meet this paragon of virtue in the flesh at last :— '" Is she pretty ? ' Kitty asked.—' Anne ? yes ; that's why I want you to look your best.'—` Is she nice?'—' Oh! yes. She's very nice and good, I believe.' Kitty grew very sad. This was certainly the other child, and Bitty did not want to meet her.
'Tell nurse to put you on your blue frock,' said her mother. The child shook her head, and her crisp brown hair bobbed up and down. Oh, Kitty, look like that all the afternoon. It's just
sweet.' Kitty burst into tears. don't want to meet her,' she cried.—' Whoa Anne ? ' She gulped and nodded. 'Why not ? ' = She's the other child,' Kitty sobbed.—' What other child ? The good child. The child they all talk about. The child who's so much gooder than me.'—'I have yet to hear of that child Kitty,' said her mother.—' No, you don't know her, but everybody' else does. They say I oug,ht to be like her, but I can't be; I'se so
wicked.'—`But who is she? Anne. Her name's Anne. I'm sure it's Anne, and I don't want to meet her.'—' Not meet Anne! But I believe she's very Oh, muvvie, you won't like her better than me,' Kitty cried in alarm.—' Kitty, you're very 'wicked. As if I could!'—' Yes, I'm very wicked, and shes so good.'—'Anne ? I don't know—the other
You've been dreaming bad dreams again, Kitty. Who and what is the other child ?'—' The child I ought to be like.'—' I never said you ought to be like anybody but yourself.'—' No, but they all do. They're angry 'cos I'm not like her. She's never naughty, and I'm just howwid. They all say so. They're very sorry 'bout me, but they like her.'—'But you haven't told me who she
Her name's Anne.'—' Well, I've seen this Anne. She's all right, but I wouldn't have you like her for anything.'—' Isn't she the other child? She's another child, but certainly not the one you're talking about.'—' Who's the other child My dear
Kitty, I don't know unless she's a bogey nasty people have been trying to frighten you with.' Kitty sighed relief, and opened her eyes. Isn't there any other child then ?' she asked. Her mother laughed, and caught her, and kissed her. No, Kitty,' her mother cried, 'there's only one child in the world, and she's got to get into her blue frock at once.'—' I'm gooder than Anne?'—' Of course,' said her mother ; but don't despise her because of that. Be kind to her. She tries to be good, even if she can't be as good as you.' Kitty was kind to Anne, for Kitty was happy all that afternoon in her relief at finding that the other child did not exist. But people still talked to her of the other child. Kitty wondered why. If it were a fairy story, she was getting rather tired of it, and it frightened her. As a rule she liked to think that her mother believed in fairy stories, but was glad that her mother did not believe in this one."
We have quoted enough to indicate the engrossing quality of the book. That the author in his endeavour to show how the deeper problems of life are apprehended by the child mind has occasionally credited his little heroine with a subtlety of analysis that would be remarkable in a " grown-up " we are not prepared to deny. Nor can we confidently recommend its perusal to parents who are visited by that bitterest form of remorse,—the consciousness of having offended, though un- wittingly, against their little ones now beyond -the reach of human affection. Otherwise, and quite apart from the mere mental luxury of contemplating this elaborate delineation of an exceptionally interesting temperament, all who wish to understand and help their own children, or those of others, cannot fail to rise from its pages with a sharpened insight into the mystery and poetry of the child mind.
Previous page
