Little Toads
SIR,—It seems doubly a pity that Mr. Nicolson is not the father of daughters: he would have made them a delightful father, and he would have made the acquaintance of little girls. His references to them in
Marginal Comment of April 4th make it apparent that he has never done this; he has merely formed a fantasy about them in his mind. Ho says they simper, and invariably show off. I have the advantage over Mr. Nicolson of having been (however long ago) a little girl, brought up among brothers and sisters, all behaving in much the same way and doing much the same things; I have also known well, and know now, a number of these little toads, and I can assure Mr. Nicolson that he is mistaken. Has he, I wonder, had the endearing experience of being dragged by the grubby hands of bobbed or pig-tailed eight- and ten- year-old young females to visit the rabbits, or feed the pony, or climb to the hiding-place in the tree, or sail boats on the stream ? Has he watched small girls romping and climbing, unselfconscious and given over to the moment, or lying on their stomachs so absorbed in The Heroes or Coral Island that the world goes unheeded by them ? Little girls, like little boys and like adults, differ one from another; but I am partial to most of them (as to most little boys) because I find them eager, interested, adventurous, imaginative, alive. Conventionality has not yet inhibited them, as later, in their school days, it will. They are, Ithink, on the whole more sensitive and imaginative than little boys; kinder and more compassionate; fonder of reading and of writing. Less tough, less courageous, less belligerent, but still adventurous. The lumpish lasses who infest Mr. Nicolson's garden are certainly over age; by fifteen or sixteen the charms of childhood have waned; and a girl of seventeen is usually (pace Mr. Nicolson) much duller than one of ten. The most attractive age for these toads is from
three to fourteen.—Yours, &c., ROSE MACAULAY. 20 Hinde House, Hinde Street, W.I.
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