In the eighth book of his autobiography (_Dichtung_, etc.), Goethe
moralises that "with the infinite idiosyncrasy of human nature on the
one side, and the infinite variety in the modes of life and pleasure
on the other, it is a wonder that the human race has not worn itself
out long ago." He explains the mystery by a toughness which, it is now
safe to say, must have been inherited from our arboreal ancestors, for
Charlie had it in full measure.
The fact was that, when she grew up, she suffered from _ennui_, and no
wonder! She had food without seeking it, and was safe from the
continual dangers that kept her lively and busy in the woods. Without
a husband "to make her uneasy," as the old song says, and no children
to work for, she was in the same painful quandary as so many good
maiden ladies I know, whose "only labour is to kill the time, and
labour dire it is, and weary woe." Often enough it is not their fault,
as it was not Charlie's.
"Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark, unfathomed caves of ocean bear;
Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,
And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
To do her justice, Charlie set to work to amuse herself, unhasting,
unresting, in a way worthy of Goethe's disciple, and not only found
agreeable sensations for herself, but provided them for her admirers.
As a child of Nature, she tolerated drawing-room monotonies chiefly
for the sake of cake and shortbread; but she dearly loved to see men
coming to call, especially if, as generally happened, they wore high
headgear. Our house had much open woodwork aloft, which suited her as
if it had been designed for her convenience. After very little
practice she was able to send flying far the hat or turban of any man
coming up the front stairs. It added to the joke that they had been
duly warned against her. She would show herself and move away when
looked at--the shy, innocent creature--but it was only to another
beam, where she was unobserved, whence she could stoop upon the
passer-by, and with a dexterous touch uncover him. The variety of
expressions on the faces of the men, as they looked up at the sweet
little cherub who was grinning aloft, was perhaps as amusing to her as
to anybody else.
There was a proud Mohammedan who swore his turban should escape, and,
flinging dignity to the winds, desirous at any cost of scoring over
those whose headgears had descended, he kept his hand on his. So
Charlie's usual side-blow merely shook it. The man cried out
triumphant--too soon. With the quickness of thought Charlie changed
her tactics. Instead of repeating the ineffectual side-stroke, she
caught the turban in the middle and pulled it up. The man whirled
round indignant, and she dropped it at his feet with a grin. He told
her she was a heathen. She answered, "Oo-oo-oo!"
To drop things from a height seemed a perennial pleasure to her. That
is a characteristic of many monkeys, and, in many forms, is visible in
men and women. To keep to monkeys, I recollect a playmate in the
seventies who wept with laughing as he told me how his pet monkey,
being driven in spite of his protests out of the drawing-room, had
taken refuge, poor exile, in the kitchen. My friend was not allowed to
go into exile with him, and was bidden hold his tongue when he called
attention to alarming noises. The monkey was meanwhile sitting on the
highest shelf in the kitchen, solacing his solitude by pitching the
best china of the household upon the brick floor.
Among the most agreeable of the sensations which Charlie was addicted
to seeking was that of sliding in a sitting posture--the "sitting
glissade" they call it in the Alps. She had no snows, but contented
herself with the boards, upon the ridges and dips in our shingle roof.
From the highest apex of the roof to near the eaves she came sliding
down, pretty quick, partly by force of gravity, partly by pushing
herself with her hands. Her hands clattered and rattled on the shingle
roof with a great noise, which added to her joy. Once down to near the
eaves, she would stop and run to the top again, with looks and cries
like those of boys sliding on the ice.
It is surely needless to multiply references to show how human this
spontaneous performance was. As the Cimbrians came down the valley of
the Adige, about a hundred years before Christ, the Romans saw with
amazement the barbarians, "almost naked among the ice," says the
historian, as if reporting an eye-witness, sit upon their shields and
slide down the Alpine slopes. There is no detail of these old wars
that sticks better in the memory than this, and one is reminded of it
by our new fashions of adult sliding, so wonderfully like the sport of
the brave invading savages, two thousand years ago.
As for her love of noise, nobody can call for proof of the humanity of
that. It is self-evident.
Even if the idealists are right who claim that the only cure for
_ennui_, and the only way to peace of heart and mind, is the "love of
God," or the "love of beauty," or the "love of knowledge and wisdom,"
or "art," which is not always trumpery, or "music," which is not
always noise, or whatever other name we give to the harmony and the
visions vouchsafed to the pure and good and wise, not even the
idealists, indeed they least of all, can claim to be different in kind
from little Charlie. The difference is only in degree. In her humble
way, like an inquisitive child, she was for ever investigating things,
stroking a tiger's skin, for example, comparing it with other
materials on the floor, turning back the cat's outer ear and gazing
into it like a surgeon; touching, tasting, handling, whatever was
within her reach; for ever on the outlook for anything fresh, like the
idle Athenians, who crowded round the first preacher of salvation, in
search of something new. This universal craving of mankind is a
natural inheritance from busy forefathers who lived aloft, and had to
be continually on the look-out. And as Charlie sometimes sat and
dreamily gazed upon the world in general, with a puzzled look, and
beheld with mingled joy and bewilderment the glorious sun, she seemed
to me to be better qualified than any sophisticated Athenian to pay
real homage to the "Unknown God."