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CHILDREN'S WAYS
BY THE SAME AUTHOR.
_THE HUMAN MIND_: a Text-book of Psychology. 2 vols. 8vo, 21s.
_OUTLINES OF PSYCHOLOGY._ Crown 8vo, 9s.
_THE TEACHER'S HANDBOOK OF PSYCHOLOGY._ Crown 8vo, 5s.
_STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD._ 8vo, 10s. 6d.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.,
LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY.
CHILDREN'S WAYS
BEING SELECTIONS FROM THE AUTHOR'S
_STUDIES OF CHILDHOOD_, WITH
SOME ADDITIONAL MATTER
BY
JAMES SULLY, M.A., LL.D.
GROTE PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY OF MIND AND LOGIC, UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE, LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON
AND BOMBAY
1897
ABERDEEN UNIVERSITY PRESS.
PREFACE.
The kindly welcome accorded by the press to my volume _Studies of
Childhood_ has suggested to me that there was much in it which might be
made attractive to a wider class of readers than that addressed in a
psychological work. I have, accordingly, prepared the following
selections, cutting out abstruse discussions, dropping as far as
possible technical language, and adapting the style to the requirements
of the general reader. In order to shorten the work the last two
chapters--"Extracts from a Father's Diary" and "George Sand's
Childhood"--have been omitted. The order of treatment has been altered
somewhat, and a number of stories has been added. I hope that the result
may succeed in recommending what has long been to myself one of the most
delightful of subjects to many who would not be disposed to read a
larger and more difficult work, and to draw on a few of these, at least,
to a closer and more serious inspection of it.
CONTENTS.
PART I.--AT PLAY.
CHAPTER PAGE
I. THE REALM OF FANCY 1
THE TRANSFORMING WAND 2
FANCY'S RESTING-PLACES 6
IN STORYLAND 8
II. THE ENCHANTMENT OF PLAY 13
THE YOUNG PRETENDER 13
MYSTERIES OF DOLLDOM 18
SERIOUS SIDE OF PLAY 25
PART II.--AT WORK.
III. ATTACKING OUR LANGUAGE 29
THE NAMER OF THINGS 30
THE SENTENCE-BUILDER 33
THE INTERPRETER OF WORDS 36
IV. THE SERIOUS SEARCHER 40
THE THOUGHTFUL OBSERVER 40
THE PERTINACIOUS QUESTIONER 44
V. FIRST THOUGHTS: (_a_) THE NATURAL WORLD 54
THE FASHION OF THINGS 54
THE BIGGER WORLD 58
DREAMS 61
BIRTH AND GROWTH 64
VI. FIRST THOUGHTS: (_b_) SELF AND OTHER MYSTERIES 68
THE VISIBLE SELF 68
THE HIDDEN SELF 72
THE UNREACHABLE PAST 73
THE SUPERNATURAL WORLD 76
THE GREAT MAKER 78
VII. THE BATTLE WITH FEARS: (_a_) THE ONSLAUGHT 85
THE BATTERY OF SOUNDS 87
THE ALARMED SENTINEL 90
VIII. THE BATTLE WITH FEARS (_Continued_) 97
THE ASSAULT OF THE BEASTS 97
THE NIGHT ATTACK 100
(_b_) DAMAGE OF THE ONSLAUGHT 104
(_c_) RECOVERY FROM THE ONSLAUGHT 108
IX. GOOD AND BAD IN THE MAKING 112
TRACES OF THE BRUTE 112
THE PROMISE OF HUMANITY 119
THE LAPSE INTO LYING 124
FEALTY TO TRUTH 131
X. REBEL AND SUBJECT 135
(_a_) THE STRUGGLE WITH LAW: FIRST TUSSLE
WITH AUTHORITY 135
EVADING THE LAW 137
THE PLEA FOR LIBERTY 140
(_b_) ON THE SIDE OF LAW 142
THE YOUNG STICKLER FOR THE PROPRIETIES 143
THE ENFORCER OF RULES 145
XI. AT THE GATE OF THE TEMPLE 151
THE GREETING OF BEAUTY 151
FIRST PEEP INTO THE ART-WORLD 156
FIRST VENTURES IN CREATION 161
XII. FIRST PENCILLINGS 171
THE HUMAN FACE DIVINE 174
THE VILE BODY 177
SIDE VIEWS OF THINGS 184
CHILDREN'S WAYS.
PART I.
AT PLAY.
CHAPTER I.
THE REALM OF FANCY.
One of the few things we seemed to be certain of with respect to
child-nature was that it is fancy-full. Childhood, we all know, is the
age for dreaming; for living a life of happy make-believe. Even here,
however, we want more accurate observation. For one thing, the play of
infantile imagination is probably much less uniform than is supposed.
There seem to be very serious children who rarely, if ever, indulge in a
wild fancy. Mr. Ruskin has recently told us that when a child he was
incapable of acting a part or telling a tale, that he never knew a child
"whose thirst for visible fact was at once so eager and so methodic".
One may, nevertheless, safely say that a large majority of the little
people are, for a time at least, fancy-bound. A child that did not want
to play and cared nothing for the marvels of storyland would surely be
regarded as queer and not just what a child ought to be.
Supposing that this is the correct view, there still remains the
question whether children's imagination always plays in the same
fashion. Now science is beginning to bring to light differences of
childish fancy. For one thing it suggests that children have their
favourite type of mental imagery, that one child's fancy may habitually
move in a coloured world, another in a world of sounds, and so forth.
The fascination of _Robinson Crusoe_ to many a boy lies in the wealth of
images of movement and adventure which it supplies.
With this difference in the material with which a child's fancy plays,
there are other differences which turn on his temperament and
predominant feelings. Hence, the familiar fact that in some children
imagination broods by preference on gloomy and alarming objects, whereas
in others it selects what is bright and gladsome.
Perhaps I have said enough to justify my plea for new observations and
for a reconsideration of hasty theories in the light of these. Nor need
we object to a fresh survey of what is perhaps the most delightful side
of child-life.
(_a_) _The Transforming Wand._
The play of young fancy meets us in the very domain of the senses: it is
active, often bewilderingly active, when the small person seems busily
engaged in looking at things and moving among them.
We see this fanciful "reading" of things when a child calls the star an
"eye," I suppose because of its brightness and its twinkling movement,
or says that a dripping plant is "crying".
This transforming touch of the magic wand of young fancy has something
of crude nature-poetry in it. This is abundantly illustrated in what may
be called childish metaphors, by which they try to describe what is new
and strange. For example, a little boy of nineteen months looking at his
mother's spectacles said: "Little windows". Another boy two years and
five months, on looking at the hammers of a piano which his mother was
playing, called out: "There is owlegie" (diminutive of owl). His eye had
instantly caught the similarity between the round felt disc of the
hammer divided by a piece of wood, and the owl's face divided by its
beak. In like manner another little boy called a small oscillating
compass-needle a "bird" probably on the ground of its fluttering
movement. Pretty conceits are often resorted to in this effort to get at
home with strange objects, as when stars were described by one child as
"cinders from God's stove," and butterflies as "pansies flying".
This play of imagination upon the world of sense has a strong vitalising
or personifying element. A child is apt to attribute life and sensation
to what we serious people regard as lifeless. Thus he gives not only a
body but a soul to the wind when it whistles or howls at night. The most
unpromising things come in for this warming, life-giving touch of a
child's fancy. Thus one little fellow, aged one year eight months,
conceived a special fondness for the letter W, addressing it thus: "Dear
old boy W". Miss Ingelow tells us that when a child she used to feel
sorry for the pebbles in the causeway for having to lie always in one
place, and would carry them to another place for a change.
It is hard for us elders to get back to this childish way of looking at
things. One may however hazard the guess that there is in it a measure
of dreamy illusion. This means that only a part of what is present is
seen, the part which makes the new object like the old and familiar one.
And so it gets transformed into a semblance of the old one; just as a
rock gets transformed for our older eyes into the semblance of a human
face.
There is another way in which children's fancy may transmute the objects
of sense. Mr. Ruskin tells us that when young he got to connect or
"associate" the name "crocodile" so closely with the creature that when
he saw it printed it would take on something of the look of the beast's
lanky body.
How far, one wonders, does this process of transformation of external
objects go in the case of imaginative children? It is not improbable
that before the qualities of things and their connections one with
another are sufficiently known for them to be interesting in themselves
they often acquire interest through the interpretative touch of childish
fancy.
There is one new field of investigation which is illustrating in a
curious way the wizard influence wielded by childish imagination over
the things of sense. It is well known that a certain number of people
habitually "colour" the sounds they hear, imagining, for example, the
sound of a particular vowel or musical tone to have its characteristic
tint, which they are able to describe accurately. This "coloured
hearing," as it is called, is always traced back to the dimly recalled
age of childhood. Children are now beginning to be tested as to their
possession of this trick of fancy. It was found in the case of a number
of school-children that nearly 40 per cent. described the tones of
certain instruments as coloured. There was, however, no agreement among
these children as to the particular tint belonging to a given sound:
thus whereas one child mentally "saw" the tone of a fife as pale or
bright, another saw it as dark.
I have confined myself here to what I have called the _play_ of
imagination, the magical transmuting of things through the sheer
liveliness of childish fancy. The degree of transmutation will of course
vary with the intensity of the imagination. Sometimes when a child
dwells on the fancy it may grow into a momentary illusion. A little girl
of four, sitting by the side of her mother in the garden, picked up a
small pink worm and said: "Ah! you do look nice; how a thrush would like
you!" and thereupon, realising the part of the fortunate thrush,
proceeded, to her mother's horror, to eat up the worm quite composedly.
The momentary illusion of something nice to eat, here produced by a
lively realisation of a part, may arise in other cases from strong
feeling, more especially fear, which, as we shall see, has so large a
dominion over the young mind.
This witchcraft of the young fancy in veiling and transforming the
actual surroundings is a good deal restrained by the practical needs of
every-day life and by intercourse with older and graver folk. There are,
however, regions of child-life where it knows no check. One of these is
child's play, to be spoken of presently: another is the filling up of
the blank spaces in the visible world with the products of fancy. We
will call these regions on which the young wing of fancy is wont to
alight and rest, fancy's resting-places.
_Fancy's Resting-places._
Most people, perhaps, can recall from their childhood the pleasure of
cloud-gazing. The clouds are such strange-looking things, they change
their forms so quickly, they seem to be doing so many things, now
slumbering lazily, now rushing wildly on. Cloud-land is safe away from
the scrutiny of fingers, so we never can be sure what they would be if
we got to them. Some children take fright at their big, strange forms
and their weird transformations: but a happy child that loves
day-dreaming will spend many delightful hours in fashioning these forms
into wondrous and delightful things, such as kings and queens, giants
and dwarfs, beautiful castles, armies marching to battle, or driven in
flight, pirates sailing over fair isle-dotted seas. There is a delicious
satisfaction to young minds in thus finding a habitation for their
cherished images. To project them in this way into the visible world, to
know that they are located in that spot before the eye, is to "realise"
them, in the sense of giving them the fullest possible reality.
Next to the cloud-world come distant parts of the terrestrial scene. The
chain of hills, perhaps, faintly visible from the home, has been again
and again endowed by a child's fancy with all manner of wondrous scenery
and peopled by all manner of strange creatures. At times when they have
shown a soft blue, he has made fairy-land of them; at other times when
standing out black and fierce-looking against the western sky at
eventide, he has half shuddered at them, peopling them with horrid
monsters.
Best of all, I think, for this locating of images, are the hidden spaces
of the visible world. One child used to wonder what was hidden behind a
long stretch of wood which closed in a good part of his horizon. Many a
child has had his day-dreams about the country lying beyond the hills on
the horizon. One little girl who lived on a cattle-station in Australia
used to locate beyond a low range of hills a family of children whom she
called her little girls, and about whom she related endless stories.
With timid children this tendency to project images into unseen places
becomes a fearful kind of wonder, not altogether unpleasant when
confined to a moderate intensity. I remember the look of awe on the face
of a small boy whose hand I held as we passed one summer evening a dark
wood, and he whispered to me that the wolves lived in that wood.
This impulse of timid children to project their dark fancies into
obscure and hidden places often stops short at vague undefinable
conjecture. "When (writes a German author) I was a child and we played
hide and seek in the barn, I always felt that there must or might be
something unheard of hidden away behind every bundle of straw, and in
the corners." Here we can hardly speak of a housing of images: at such a
moment perhaps the little brain has such a rush of weird images that no
one grows distinct.
The exact opposite of this is where a child has a very definite image
in his mind, and wants to find a home for it in the external world. This
wish seems to be particularly active in relation to the images derived
from stories. This housing instinct is strong in the case of the poor
houseless fairies. One little boy put his fairies in the wall of his
bedroom, where, I suppose, he found it convenient to reach them by his
prayers. His sister located a fairy in a hole in a smallish stone.
As with the fancies born of fairy-tales, so with the images of humbler
human personages known by way of books. Charles Dickens, when a child,
had a strong impulse to locate the characters of his stories in the
immediate surroundings. He tells us that "every barn in the
neighbourhood, every stone of the church, every foot of the churchyard
had some association of its own in my mind connected with these books
(_Roderic Random_, _Tom Jones_, _Gil Blas_, etc.), and stood for some
locality made famous in them. I have seen Tom Pipes go climbing up the
church steeple; I have watched Strap with the knapsack on his back
stopping to rest himself on the wicket-gate."
_In Storyland._
The reference to stories naturally brings us to another domain of
children's imagination: the new world opened up by their story-books,
which is all strange and far away from the nursery where they sit and
listen, and in which, nevertheless, they manage in a sense to live and
make a new home.
How is it, one is disposed to ask, that most children, at any rate, have
their imagination laid hold of, and fired to a white heat, by mere
words? To watch the small listener in its low chair, with head raised,
eyes fixed, and hands clasped, drinking in every word of your story,
giving sign by occasional self-cuddling and other spasmodic movements of
the almost overpowering delight which fills its breast, is to be face to
face with what is a mystery to most "grown-ups". Perhaps we elders, who
are apt to think that we have acquired all the knowledge and to forget
how much we have lost, will never understand the spell of a story for
the lively impressionable brain of a child. One thing, however, is
pretty certain: our words have a way of calling up in children's minds
very vivid and very real images of things, images quite unlike those
which are called up in the minds of most older people. This magic power
of a word to summon the corresponding image, has, I suspect, a good deal
to do with a child's intense way of realising his stories.
The passionate interest in stories means more than this however. It
means that the little brain is wondrously deft at disentangling our
rather hard language and reducing the underlying ideas to an
intelligible simplicity. A mother when reading a poem to her boy of six,
ventured to remark, "I'm afraid you can't understand it, dear," for
which she got rather roughly snubbed by her little master in this
fashion: "Oh, yes, I can very well, if only you would not explain". The
"explaining" is resented because it interrupts the child's own secret
art of "making something" out of our words.
And what glorious inner visions the skilful little interpreter often
manages to get from these troublesome words of ours. Scene after scene
of the dissolving view unfolds itself in definite outline and magical
colouring. At each stage the anticipation of the next undiscernible
stage is a thrilling mystery. Perhaps no one has given us a better
account of the state of dream-like absorption in storyland than
Thackeray. In one of his delightful "Roundabout Papers," he thus writes
of the experiences of early boyhood: "Hush! I never read quite to the
end of my first _Scottish Chiefs_. I couldn't. I peeped in an alarmed
furtive manner at some of the closing pages.... Oh, novels, sweet and
delicious as the raspberry open tarts of budding boyhood! Do I forget
one night after prayers (when we under-boys were sent to bed) lingering
at my cupboard to read one little half-page more of my dear Walter
Scott--and down came the monitor's dictionary on my head!"
The intensity of the delight is seen in the greed it generates. Who can
resist a child's hungry demand for a story? and after you have satisfied
his first request, he will ask for more, and if then you are weak enough
to say you know no more stories he will catch you by answering: "Tell me
the same again".
As a result of the intensity with which a child's imagination seizes on
a narrative it tends to become afterwards a record of fact, a true
history. That children look at their stories in this way till they get
undeceived seems to be shown by the respect which they pay to the
details and even to the words. Woe to the unfortunate mother who in
repeating one of the good stock nursery tales varies a detail. One such,
a friend of mine, when relating "Puss in Boots" inadvertently made the
hero sit on a chair instead of on a box to pull on his boots. She was
greeted by a sharp volley of "Noes!"
As the demand for faithful repetition of story shows, the imaginative
realisation continues when the story is no longer heard or read. It has
added to the child's self-created world new territory, in which he may
wander and live blissful moments. This permanent occupation of storyland
is shown in the child's impulse to bring the figures of story-books into
the actual surroundings. It is shown, too, in his fondness for
introducing them into his play, of which I shall speak presently.
To this lively imaginative reception of what is told him the child is
apt very soon to join his own free inventions of fairy and other tales.
These at first, and for some time, have in them more of play than of
serious art, and so can be touched on here where we are dealing with the
play of young fancy.
We see the beginning of such fanciful invention in childish "romancing"
which is often started by the sight of some real object. For example, a
little boy aged three and a half years seeing a tramp limping along with
a bad leg exclaimed: "Look at that poor ole man, mamma; he has dot (got)
a bad leg". Then romancing, as he was now wont to do: "He dot on a very
big 'orse, and he fell off on some great big stone, and he hurt his poor
leg and he had to get a big stick. We must make it well." Then after a
thoughtful pause: "Mamma, go and kiss the place and put some powdey
(powder) on it and make it well like you do to I". Later on children of
an imaginative turn wax bolder and spin longer stories and create scenes
and persons with whom they live in a prolonged companionship. But of
this more presently.
Partly by taking in and fully realising the wonders of story, partly by
a more spontaneous play of creative fancy, children's minds often pass
under the dominion of more or less enduring myths. The princes and
princesses and dwarfs and gnomes of fairy-tale, the generous but
discriminating old gentleman who brings Christmas presents, as well as
the beings fashioned by the more original sort of child for himself,
these live on just like the people of the every-day world, are apt to
appear in dreams, in the dark, at odd dreamy moments during the day,
bringing into the child's life golden sunlight or black awful shadows,
and making in many cases, for a time at least, the most real of all
realities.
I am far from saying that _all_ children make a fancy world for
themselves in this way. As I said at the beginning of the chapter the
differences among children in this respect are great. Yet I think it is
safe to say that most children, and especially lonely children who have
not a full active life provided for them by companions and opportunities
of adventure, do live a good fraction of their life in dreamland.
Where the active life is provided a child is apt to play rather than
lose himself passively in fancy dreams. But play, too, is to a large
extent a product of the liveliness of the young imagination. We will now
glance at it in this light.
CHAPTER II.
THE ENCHANTMENT OF PLAY.
Children's "play," as the expression is commonly understood, differs
from the sportive movements of fancy considered in the last chapter by
its essentially active character. We do not speak of a child playing
save when he does something, however slight, by way of expressing or
acting out a fancy. This outer expression of fancy in some active form
is commonly called by children themselves "pretending" to be or to do
something, by older people when looking back on the pretence
"making-believe". In order to understand what childish fancy is like,
and how it works, we must carefully watch it as it moves among the toys
and creates a new play-world.
_The Young Pretender._
Child's play is a kind of creation of a make-believe but half-real
world. As such, it has its primal source in the impulse to act out and
embody in sensible form some interesting idea; in which respect, as we
shall see by-and-by, it has a close kinship to what we call art. The
image, say of the wood, of the chivalrous highwayman, or what not, holds
the child's brain, and everything has to accommodate itself to the
mastering force.
Now since play is the acting out of some interesting and exciting fancy,
it comes at once into collision with the child's actual surroundings.
Here, however, he finds his opportunity. The floor of the room is
magically transformed into a prairie, a sea, or other locality, the
hidden space under the table becomes a robber's cave, a chair serves as
horse, ship, or other vehicle, to suit the exigencies of the particular
play.
The passion for play is essentially active; it is the wild longing to
act a part; it is thus in a way dramatic. The child-adventurer as he
personates Robinson Crusoe or other hero becomes another being. And in
stepping, so to say, out of his every-day self he has to step out of his
every-day world. Hence the transformation of his surroundings by what
has been called the "alchemy of imagination". Even a sick child confined
to his bed will, as Mr. Stevenson tells us in his pretty child's song,
"The Land of Counterpane," make these transformations of his
surroundings:--
And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bed-clothes through the hills;
And sometimes sent my ships in fleets,
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.
The impulse to act a part, which is the very life-breath of play, meets
us in a crude form very early. Even an infant will, if there is a cup at
hand, seem to go through something like a pretence of drinking. A
little boy of about eighteen months who was digging in the garden began
suddenly to play at having a bath. He got into the big bucket he was
using for digging, took a handful of earth and dribbled it over him,
saying, "'Ponge, 'ponge," and then stepped out and asked for "Tow'l,
tow'l". Another boy less than two would spend a whole wet afternoon
enjoying his make-believe "painting" of the furniture with the dry end
of a bit of rope.
There is no need to suppose that in this simple kind of imitative
make-believe children _know_ that they are acting a part. It is surely
to misunderstand the essence of play to speak of it as a kind of
conscious performance, like that of the stage-actor. A child is one
creature when he is truly at play, another when he is bent on
astonishing or amusing you. When absorbed in play the last thing he is
thinking of is a spectator. As we know, the intrusion of a grown-up is
very apt to mar children's play, by calling them back to the dull world
of every-day.
This impulse to get away from his common and tiresome self into a new
part will often carry a child rather far. Not only does he want to be a
prince, or a fairy, he will even make an attempt to become an animal. He
will greatly enjoy going on all fours and making dreadful noises if only
he has a play-companion to be frightened; and possibly he does get some
way towards feeling like the bloodthirsty lion whom he fancies himself.
It is worth noting that such passing out of one's ordinary self and
assuming a foreign existence is confined to the child-player. A cat or a
dog will be quite ready to go through a kind of make-believe game, yet
even in its play the cat remains the cat, and the dog the dog.
Such play-like transmutation of the self is sometimes carried over
longer periods. A child will play at being something for a whole day.
For example, a boy of three and a half years would one day lead the life
of a coal-heaver, another day that of a soldier, and so forth, and was
rather particular in expecting his mother to remember which of his
favourite characters he was adopting on this or that day.
In a good deal of this play-action there is scarcely any adjustment of
scene: the child of vigorous fancy plays out his part with imaginary
surroundings. Children in their second year will act out a scene purely
by means of pantomimic movements. Thus one little fellow not quite two
years old would, when taken out in his perambulator, amuse himself by
putting out his hand and pretending to catch "little micies" (mice),
which make-believe little rodents he proceeded to cuddle and to stroke,
winding up his play by throwing them away, or handing them over to his
mother. In like manner he would pretend to feed chickens, taking
imaginary food with one hand out of the other, and scattering it with an
accompaniment of "Chuck! chuck! chuck!"
This tendency of the little player to conjure up new surroundings, and
to bring to his side desirable companions, is, I suspect, common among
lonely children. One little fellow of four passed much of his time in
journeyings to Edinburgh, "London town," China and so forth in quest of
his two little boys who roved about with their "mamsey," a "Mrs. Cock".
They paid him visits when he was alone, always contriving to depart
"just two tiny minutes" before any one came in.[1] Mr. Canton's little
heroine took to nursing an invisible "iccle gaal" (little girl), of
whose presence she seemed perfectly assured.[2]
[1] From a paper by Mrs. Robert Jardine.
[2] _The Invisible Playmate_, p. 33 ff.
If only the young imagination is strong enough there may be more of
sweet illusion, of a warm grasp of living reality in this solitary play,
where fictitious companions, perfectly obedient to the little player's
will, take the place of less controllable ones. Yet this kind of play,
which derives no support from the surroundings, makes heavy demands on
the imagination, and would not, one suspects, satisfy most children.
The character of the little player's actual surroundings is, for the
most part, a matter of small concern to him. If only he has a dark
corner and a piece of furniture or two he can build his play-scene.
What he does want is some semblance of a living companion. Whatever his
play he needs somebody, if only as listener to his make-believe; and
when his imagination cannot rise to an invisible auditor, he will talk
to such unpromising things as a sponge in the bath, a fire-shovel, or a
clothes-prop in the garden. In more active sorts of play, where
something has to be done, he will commonly want a living companion.
In this making of play-companions we see again the transforming power of
a child's fancy. Mr. Ruskin speaks somewhere of "the perfection of
child-like imagination, the power of making everything out of nothing".
This delightful secret of childhood is illustrated in its fondness for
toys and its way of behaving towards them.
Later on, I think, children are apt to grow more sophisticated, to pay
more attention to their surroundings, and to require more realistic
accessories for their play actions. This, at least Dr. Stanley Hall
tells us, is true of doll-plays.
_Mysteries of Dolldom._
The fact that children make living things out of their toy horses, dogs
and the rest is known to every observer of their ways. To the natural
unsceptical eye the boy on his rudely carved "gee-gee" slashing the dull
flank with all a boy's glee, looks as if he were possessed with the
fancy that the rigid inert-looking block which he bestraddles is a very
horse.
This breathing of life into playthings is seen in all its magic force in
play with dolls. A doll, broadly conceived, is anything which a child
carries about and makes a pet of. The toy horse, dog or what not that a
little boy nurses, feeds and takes to bed with him has much of the
dignity of a true doll. But adopting conventional distinctions we shall
confine the word to those things which are more or less endowed by
childish fancy with human form and character.
I read somewhere recently that the doll is a plaything for girls only:
but young boys, though they often prefer india-rubber horses and other
animals, not infrequently go through a stage of doll-love also, and are
hardly less devoted than girls.
Endless is the variety of _role_ assigned to the doll. It is the
all-important comrade in that _solitude a deux_ of which the child, like
the adult, is so fond. Mrs. Burnett tells us that when nursing her doll
in the armchair of the parlour she would sail across enchanted seas to
enchanted islands having all sorts of thrilling adventures.
Very tenderly, on the whole, is the little doll-lover wont to use her
pet, doing her best to keep it clean and tidy, feeding it, putting it to
bed, amusing it, for example, by showing it her pictures, tending it
with fidelity during bouts of sickness, and giving it the honours of a
funeral when, from the attack of a dog set on by an unfeeling brother or
other cause, it comes to "die";[3] or when, as in the case of little
Jane Welsh (afterwards Mrs. Carlyle), the time has come for the young
lady to cast aside her dolls.
[3] I owe this and other observations on the treatment of dolls
to Dr. Stanley Hall's curious researches.
The doll-interest implies a deep mysterious sympathy. Children wish
their dolls to share in their things, to be kissed when they are kissed,
and so to come close to them in experience and feeling. Not only so,
they look for sympathy from their doll-companions, taking to them all
their childish troubles. So far is this feeling of oneness carried in
some cases that the passion for dolls has actually rendered the child
indifferent to child-companions. It is not every little girl who like
little Maggie Tulliver has only "occasional fits of fondness" for her
nursling when the brother is absent.
Not only in this lavishing of tenderness and of sympathy on the doll,
but in the occasional discharge on it of a fit of anger, children show
how near it comes to a human companion. The punishment of the doll is
an important element in nursery-life. It is apt to be carried out with
formal solemnity and often with something of brutal emphasis. Yet
tenderness being the strongest part of the doll-attachment, the little
disciplinarians are apt to suffer afterwards for their cruelty, one
little girl showing remorse after such a chastisement of her pet for
several days.
I have talked here of "dolls," but I must not be supposed to be speaking
merely of the lovely creatures with blue eyes and yellow hair with which
the well-to-do child is wont to be supplied. Nothing is more strange and
curious in child-life than its art of manufacturing dolls out of the
most unpromising materials. The creative child can find something to
nurse and fondle and take to bed with it in a bundle of hay tied round
with a string, in a shawl, a pillow, a stick, a clothes-pin, or a
clay-pipe. Victor Hugo, with a true touch, makes the little outcast
Cosette, who has never had a "real doll," fashion one out of a tiny
leaden sword and a rag or two, putting it to sleep in her arms with a
soft lullaby.
Do any of us really understand the child's attitude of mind towards its
doll? Although gifted writers like George Sand have tried to take us
back to the feeling of childhood, it may be doubted whether they have
made it intelligible to us. And certainly the answers to questions
collected in America have done little, if anything, towards making it
clear. The truth is that the perfect child's faith in dolldom passes
away early, in most cases it would appear about the age of thirteen or
fourteen. It is then that the young people begin clearly to realise the
shocking fact that dolls have no "inner life". Occasionally girls will
go on playing with dolls much later than this, but not surely with the
old sincerity.
That many children have a genuine delusion about their dolls seems
evident. That is to say when they talk to them and otherwise treat them
as human they imaginatively realise that they can understand and feel.
The force of the illusion, blotting out from the child's view the naked
reality before its eyes, is a striking illustration of the vividness of
early fancy. Perhaps, too, this intensity of faith comes in part of the
strength of the impulses which commonly sustain the doll-passion. Of
these the instinct of companionship, of sympathy, is the strongest. A
lady tells me she remembers that when a child she had a passionate
longing for a big, big doll, which would give her the full sweetness of
cuddling. The imitative impulse, too, prompting the child to carry out
on the doll actions similar to those carried out on itself by mother and
nurse, is a strong support of the delusion. A doll, as the odd varieties
selected show, seems to be, more than anything else, something to be
dressed. Children's reasons for preferring one doll to another, as that
it can have its face washed, or that it has real hair which can be
combed, show how the impulse to carry out nursery operations sustains
the feeling of attachment. A girl (the same that wanted the big doll to
fondle) had dolls of the proper sort; yet she preferred to make one out
of a little wooden stool, because she could more realistically act out
with this odd substitute the experience of taking her pet out for a
walk, making it stand, for example, when she met a friend.
Of course, the child's faith, like other faith, is not always up to the
height of perfect ardour. A child of six or seven, when the passion for
dolls is apt to be strong, will have moments of coolness, leaving "poor
dolly" lying in the most humiliating posture on the floor, or throwing
it away in a sudden fit of disenchantment and disgust. Scepticism will
intrude, especially when the hidden "inside" comes to view as mere
emptiness, or at best as nothing but sawdust.
Children seem, as George Sand says, to oscillate between the real and
the impossible. Yet the intrusion of doubt does not, in many cases at
least, interfere with an enduring trust. Dr. Stanley Hall tells us that
"long after it is _known_ that they are wood, wax, etc., it is _felt_
that they are of skin, flesh, etc.". Yes, that is it; the child, seized
with the genuine play-mood, _dreams_ its doll into a living child, or
living adult. How oddly the player's faith goes on living side by side
with a measure of doubt is illustrated in the following story. A little
girl begged her mother not to make remarks about her doll in her (the
doll's) presence, as she had been trying all her life to keep that doll
from knowing that she was not alive.[4]
[4] From an article on "The Philosophy of Dolls," _Chambers'
Journal_, 1881.
The treating of the doll and images of animals, such as the wooden or
india-rubber horse, as living things is the outcome of the play-impulse.
All the imaginative play of children seems, so far as we can understand
it, to have about it something of illusion. This fact of the full
sincere acceptance of the play-world as for the moment the real one, is
illustrated in the child's jealous insistence that everything shall for
the time pass over from the every-day world into the new one. "About
the age of four," writes M. Egger of his boys, "Felix is playing at
being coachman; Emile happens to return home at the moment. In
announcing his brother, Felix does not say, 'Emile is come;' he says,
'The brother of the coachman is come'." It is illustrated further in the
keen resentment of any act on the part of the mother or other person
which seems to contradict the facts of the new world. A boy of two who
was playing one morning in his mother's bed at drinking up pussy's milk
from an imaginary saucer on the pillow, said a little crossly to his
mother, who was getting into bed after fetching his toys: "Don't lie on
de saucer, mammy!" The pain inflicted on the little player by such a
contradictory action is sometimes intense. A little girl of four was
playing "shops" with her younger sister. "The elder one (writes the
mother) was shopman at the time I came into her room and kissed her. She
broke out into piteous sobs, I could not understand why. At last she
sobbed out: 'Mother, you never kiss the man in the shop'. I had with my
kiss quite spoilt her illusion."
But there is still another, and some will think a more conclusive way of
satisfying ourselves of the reality of the play-illusion. The child
finds himself confronted by the unbeliever who questions what he says
about the doll's crying and so forth, and in this case he will often
stoutly defend his creed. "Discussions with sceptical brothers (writes
Dr. Stanley Hall), who assert that the doll is nothing but wood, rubber,
wax, etc., are often met with a resentment as keen as that vented upon
missionaries who declare that idols are but stocks and stones." It is
the same with the toy-horse. "When (writes a mother of her boy) he was
just over two years old L. began to speak of a favourite wooden horse
(Dobbin) as if it were a real living creature. 'No tarpenter (carpenter)
made Dobbin,' he would say, 'he is not wooden but kin (skin) and bones
and Dod (God) made him.' If any one said 'it' in speaking of the horse
his wrath was instantly aroused, and he would shout indignantly: 'It!
You mut'ent tay _it_, you mut tay _he_.'"
While play in its absorbing moments, and even afterwards, may thus
produce a genuine illusion, the state of perfect realisation is of
course apt to be broken by intervals of scepticism. This has already
been illustrated in the case of the doll. The same little boy that
played with the imaginary mice was sitting on his stool pretending to
smoke like his grandpapa out of a bit of bent cardboard. Suddenly his
face clouded over; he stroked his chin, and remarked in a disappointed
tone, "I have not got any whiskers". The dream of full manhood was here
rudely dispelled by a recall to reality.
A measure of the same fanciful transformation of things that has been
illustrated in make-believe play, a measure, too, of the illusion which
frequently accompanies it, enters, I believe, into all children's
pastimes. Whence comes the perennial charm, the undying popularity, of
the hoop? Is not the interest here due to the circumstance that the
child controls a thing which in the freedom of its movements suggests
that it has a will of its own? This seems borne out by the following
story. A little girl of five once stopped trundling her hoop and said to
her mother she thought that her hoop must be alive, because "it is so
sensible; it goes where I want it to". Perhaps the same thing may be
said of other toys, as the kite and the sailing boat.
_Serious Side of Play._
I have here treated the whole realm of childish fancy as one of play, as
one in which happy childhood finds its own sunny world. Yet it is clear
that this is after all only one side of children's dream-world. Like our
own world it has its climates, and if fancy is often frolicsome and
games deliciously sweet, they sometimes become serious to the point of a
quite dreadful solemnity.
That children's imagination is wont to hover, with something of the
fascination of the moth, on the confines of the fearful, is known to us
all. Some children, no doubt, have much more of the passion for the
gruesome and blood-curdling than others, since temperament counts for
much here; yet it is pretty safe to say that most know something of this
horrible fascination. Dreams, whether of the night or of the day, are
not always of beautiful fairies and the like. Weird, awful-looking
figures have a way of pushing themselves into the front of the scene.
Especially when the "tone" of the frail young nerves runs down from poor
health do these alarming shapes appear, and acquire a mighty hold on the
child's imagination. Of the timidity of the early years of life I shall
have more to say by-and-by. Here I want to bring out how the very
vividness of children's images exposes them to what is sometimes at
least their worst form of suffering.
A child, at once sensitive and imaginative, frequently passes into a
state of half hallucination in which the products of fancy take on
visible reality. George Sand, in her delightful reminiscences of
childhood, relates more than one of these terrible prostrating
hallucinations of the early years.[5]
[5] See my account of George Sand's childhood, in _Studies of
Childhood_, chap. xii.
We see the same gloomy turn of the young imagination in the readiness
with which children accept superstitions about ghosts, witches, and so
forth. Those who are brought up in the country in contact with the
superstitious beliefs of the peasant appear to imbibe them with great
energy. This is true of George Sand, who gives us an interesting account
of the legends of the French peasants, with whom when a little girl she
was allowed to associate. American children, especially those who come
under the influence of the beliefs of the negro and of the Indian, may,
as that delightful book, _Tom Sawyer_, tells us, become quite experts in
folk-lore. Even in England and among well-to-do people children will
show an alarming facility in adopting the superstitious ideas of the
servants.
Much the same thing shows itself in children's romancings and in their
preferences in the matter of stories. So far from these being always
bright and amusing, they frequently show a very decided tinge of
blackness. The young imagination seems to be especially plastic under
the touch of the gruesome. It loves to be roused to its highest pitch of
activity by the presentation of something fearsome, something which
sends a wild tremor through the nerves. And even when the story is free
from this touch of the dreadful it takes on seriousness by reason of
the earnestness which the child's mind brings to it.
Coming now to active play, we find here, too, in the region which seems
to owe its very existence to the childish instinct of enjoyment, traces
of the same seriousness. For most children, one suspects, play would
become a tame thing were there not the fearful to conjure with. The
favourite play-haunts, the dark corners under the table, behind the
curtains, and so forth, show what a vital element of play is supplied by
the excitement of the state of half-dread. It is in the games which set
the young nerves gently shaking, when a robber has to be met or a giant
attacked in his cave, that one sees best, I think, how terribly earnest
children's play may become.
Even where play has in it nothing alarming it is apt to take on a
serious aspect. This has been illustrated in what has been said about
the doll and other play-illusions. Most of children's play is imitative
of the serious actions of grown-up folk. In nursing her doll the little
girl is taking to her domestic duties in the most serious of moods;
similarly when the little boy assumes the responsibilities of coachman
or other useful functionary. The imitative impulse of childhood is wont
in these cases to follow out the correct and prescribed order with
punctilious exactness. The doll must be dressed, fed, put to bed, and so
forth, with the regularity that obtains in the child's own life; the
coachman must hold the whip, urge on the horses, or stop them in the
proper orthodox manner. And the same fidelity to model and prescription
shows itself in those games which reproduce the page of fiction. Here
again Tom Sawyer is an excellent example. The way in which that leader
of boys lays down the law to Huckleberry Finn when they play at pirates
or at Robin Hood and his merry men illustrates forcibly this serious
aspect of play.
PART II.
AT WORK.