We stayed with our cousins, the Jerome Lawrences, at Rye, for the week
end. It is on “the Sound.” We motored to the yacht club and lay on
rocks in the sun, getting more and more burned. Dick, after paddling
for some time, demanded to bathe. To my amazement, I was told that not
only must he put on a bathing suit, but he must undress in the bathing
house. Dick asked “why?” He is accustomed every year in England to be
sunkissed, either in the sea or in the woods--whenever there is a warm
enough sun. I have taken many photographs of him and Margaret naked
on the hillside and among the flowers. There is nothing on earth more
beautiful than the body of a child.
I recall my horror when a nun at Margaret’s Convent told her that she
must never look at herself because the human body is “disgusting” (she
used the term), and Margaret asked her, “Who made our bodies? and who
made our clothes?” Such an attitude of mind in a nun is perhaps not
unexpected, but one is surprised at the lack of simplicity in a great
primitive country. But in the United States the Puritan origin has
dominated over all other races with which it has eventually become
amalgamated; stronger than the Latin is the Puritan--stronger than the
German, the Dutch, the Irish, or the Jew. In this amazing country even
the mature foreign element is bent, broken, molded, forced into an
American! And in a very short space of time--it is this standardization
that suppresses individuality. In this particular instance I suppose
it is good that the masses should bathe in suits, it is good for the
masses that the bathers should undress under cover, and so it goes
on from little to larger things, from unimportant details to larger
issues. Some day perhaps, when there is time to stop to take a breath a
few individualities will be allowed to live among the standardized--at
present those few slip off abroad, and live there! But I am not
complaining, I am only wondering why with all its restrictions, I
like living in it better than I like living in the freest country on
earth--England!
On Sunday night I had one of the great surprises of my life. It will
be as memorable as any of the big events that have come to me. We were
sitting on the piazza at dusk, and I asked, pointing to the bushes:
“Am I mad? What is that?” “That is a firefly.” I had heard vaguely of
fire-flies, but no one had ever described to me what a June night in
America could be like. W. B. Yeats has written of Ireland that “the
night was full of the sound of linnets’ wings,” but I have not read
the poet who has sung about the fireflies. As the night became darker,
the world became full of small, twinkling, winking, dancing lights,
from the highest tree-tops down to the grass. I ran upstairs. Dick was
asleep. I hoisted him on to my back and carried him, still sleeping,
out into the wild orchard across the road. Presently Dick lifted a
sleepy head from my shoulder and looked around him. “It’s the Germans
shootin’,” he said. “No,” I corrected, “it’s fairies.” He gave a little
giggle of delight and exclaimed: “Fairies! To guard us?--” And as I
walked towards the dark trees in the distance he clung around my neck.
“Don’t let’s get lost in fairyland.” The crickets were making an unholy
and flippant noise. It was all very merry and happy. There were darting
lights all around us, in the long grass at our feet, in the bushes
overhead, against the darkness of the distance, exactly like the scene
of the treetops in Peter Pan. On our way home Dick said, “I don’t think
they’re fairies, I think it’s the stars have come down to play.”
I looked up at the sky. It was full of stars--stable, serious, solemn
stars. What star would not, if it could, drop down to earth and play
hide and seek with the moon shadows and mischievously rouse all the
crickets on a June night. Yes, I think I agree with Dick, they were
young baby stars, making merry. In two minutes from the time his head
touched the pillow Dick was fast asleep again. I went in search of Mary
Brennan, the Irish maid, who is Dick’s friend. “Mary!” I said, “when
you see Dick in the morning, remember he has been playing to-night with
stars.” “Not with firebugs?” Mary answered with perfect understanding.