“Harvey,” said Eleanor Bope, handing her brother a cutting from a London
morning paper of the 19th of March, “just read this about children’s
toys, please; it exactly carries out some of our ideas about influence
and upbringing.”
“In the view of the National Peace Council,” ran the extract, “there are
grave objections to presenting our boys with regiments of fighting men,
batteries of guns, and squadrons of ‘Dreadnoughts.’ Boys, the Council
admits, naturally love fighting and all the panoply of war . . . but that
is no reason for encouraging, and perhaps giving permanent form to, their
primitive instincts. At the Children’s Welfare Exhibition, which opens
at Olympia in three weeks’ time, the Peace Council will make an
alternative suggestion to parents in the shape of an exhibition of ‘peace
toys.’ In front of a specially-painted representation of the Peace
Palace at The Hague will be grouped, not miniature soldiers but miniature
civilians, not guns but ploughs and the tools of industry . . . It is
hoped that manufacturers may take a hint from the exhibit, which will
bear fruit in the toy shops.”
“The idea is certainly an interesting and very well-meaning one,” said
Harvey; “whether it would succeed well in practice—”
“We must try,” interrupted his sister; “you are coming down to us at
Easter, and you always bring the boys some toys, so that will be an
excellent opportunity for you to inaugurate the new experiment. Go about
in the shops and buy any little toys and models that have special bearing
on civilian life in its more peaceful aspects. Of course you must
explain the toys to the children and interest them in the new idea. I
regret to say that the ‘Siege of Adrianople’ toy, that their Aunt Susan
sent them, didn’t need any explanation; they knew all the uniforms and
flags, and even the names of the respective commanders, and when I heard
them one day using what seemed to be the most objectionable language they
said it was Bulgarian words of command; of course it _may_ have been, but
at any rate I took the toy away from them. Now I shall expect your
Easter gifts to give quite a new impulse and direction to the children’s
minds; Eric is not eleven yet, and Bertie is only nine-and-a-half, so
they are really at a most impressionable age.”
“There is primitive instinct to be taken into consideration, you know,”
said Harvey doubtfully, “and hereditary tendencies as well. One of their
great-uncles fought in the most intolerant fashion at Inkerman—he was
specially mentioned in dispatches, I believe—and their great-grandfather
smashed all his Whig neighbours’ hot houses when the great Reform Bill
was passed. Still, as you say, they are at an impressionable age. I
will do my best.”
On Easter Saturday Harvey Bope unpacked a large, promising-looking red
cardboard box under the expectant eyes of his nephews. “Your uncle has
brought you the newest thing in toys,” Eleanor had said impressively, and
youthful anticipation had been anxiously divided between Albanian
soldiery and a Somali camel-corps. Eric was hotly in favour of the
latter contingency. “There would be Arabs on horseback,” he whispered;
“the Albanians have got jolly uniforms, and they fight all day long, and
all night, too, when there’s a moon, but the country’s rocky, so they’ve
got no cavalry.”
A quantity of crinkly paper shavings was the first thing that met the
view when the lid was removed; the most exiting toys always began like
that. Harvey pushed back the top layer and drew forth a square, rather
featureless building.
“It’s a fort!” exclaimed Bertie.
“It isn’t, it’s the palace of the Mpret of Albania,” said Eric, immensely
proud of his knowledge of the exotic title; “it’s got no windows, you
see, so that passers-by can’t fire in at the Royal Family.”
“It’s a municipal dust-bin,” said Harvey hurriedly; “you see all the
refuse and litter of a town is collected there, instead of lying about
and injuring the health of the citizens.”
In an awful silence he disinterred a little lead figure of a man in black
clothes.
“That,” he said, “is a distinguished civilian, John Stuart Mill. He was
an authority on political economy.”
“Why?” asked Bertie.
“Well, he wanted to be; he thought it was a useful thing to be.”
Bertie gave an expressive grunt, which conveyed his opinion that there
was no accounting for tastes.
Another square building came out, this time with windows and chimneys.
“A model of the Manchester branch of the Young Women’s Christian
Association,” said Harvey.
“Are there any lions?” asked Eric hopefully. He had been reading Roman
history and thought that where you found Christians you might reasonably
expect to find a few lions.
“There are no lions,” said Harvey. “Here is another civilian, Robert
Raikes, the founder of Sunday schools, and here is a model of a municipal
wash-house. These little round things are loaves baked in a sanitary
bakehouse. That lead figure is a sanitary inspector, this one is a
district councillor, and this one is an official of the Local Government
Board.”
“What does he do?” asked Eric wearily.
“He sees to things connected with his Department,” said Harvey. “This
box with a slit in it is a ballot-box. Votes are put into it at election
times.”
“What is put into it at other times?” asked Bertie.
“Nothing. And here are some tools of industry, a wheelbarrow and a hoe,
and I think these are meant for hop-poles. This is a model beehive, and
that is a ventilator, for ventilating sewers. This seems to be another
municipal dust-bin—no, it is a model of a school of art and public
library. This little lead figure is Mrs. Hemans, a poetess, and this is
Rowland Hill, who introduced the system of penny postage. This is Sir
John Herschel, the eminent astrologer.”
“Are we to play with these civilian figures?” asked Eric.
“Of course,” said Harvey, “these are toys; they are meant to be played
with.”
“But how?”
It was rather a poser. “You might make two of them contest a seat in
Parliament,” said Harvey, “an have an election—”
“With rotten eggs, and free fights, and ever so many broken heads!”
exclaimed Eric.
“And noses all bleeding and everybody drunk as can be,” echoed Bertie,
who had carefully studied one of Hogarth’s pictures.
“Nothing of the kind,” said Harvey, “nothing in the least like that.
Votes will be put in the ballot-box, and the Mayor will count them—and he
will say which has received the most votes, and then the two candidates
will thank him for presiding, and each will say that the contest has been
conducted throughout in the pleasantest and most straightforward fashion,
and they part with expressions of mutual esteem. There’s a jolly game
for you boys to play. I never had such toys when I was young.”
“I don’t think we’ll play with them just now,” said Eric, with an entire
absence of the enthusiasm that his uncle had shown; “I think perhaps we
ought to do a little of our holiday task. It’s history this time; we’ve
got to learn up something about the Bourbon period in France.”
“The Bourbon period,” said Harvey, with some disapproval in his voice.
“We’ve got to know something about Louis the Fourteenth,” continued Eric;
“I’ve learnt the names of all the principal battles already.”
This would never do. “There were, of course, some battles fought during
his reign,” said Harvey, “but I fancy the accounts of them were much
exaggerated; news was very unreliable in those days, and there were
practically no war correspondents, so generals and commanders could
magnify every little skirmish they engaged in till they reached the
proportions of decisive battles. Louis was really famous, now, as a
landscape gardener; the way he laid out Versailles was so much admired
that it was copied all over Europe.”
“Do you know anything about Madame Du Barry?” asked Eric; “didn’t she
have her head chopped off?”
“She was another great lover of gardening,” said Harvey, evasively; “in
fact, I believe the well known rose Du Barry was named after her, and now
I think you had better play for a little and leave your lessons till
later.”
Harvey retreated to the library and spent some thirty or forty minutes in
wondering whether it would be possible to compile a history, for use in
elementary schools, in which there should be no prominent mention of
battles, massacres, murderous intrigues, and violent deaths. The York
and Lancaster period and the Napoleonic era would, he admitted to
himself, present considerable difficulties, and the Thirty Years’ War
would entail something of a gap if you left it out altogether. Still, it
would be something gained if, at a highly impressionable age, children
could be got to fix their attention on the invention of calico printing
instead of the Spanish Armada or the Battle of Waterloo.
It was time, he thought, to go back to the boys’ room, and see how they
were getting on with their peace toys. As he stood outside the door he
could hear Eric’s voice raised in command; Bertie chimed in now and again
with a helpful suggestion.
“That is Louis the Fourteenth,” Eric was saying, “that one in
knee-breeches, that Uncle said invented Sunday schools. It isn’t a bit
like him, but it’ll have to do.”
“We’ll give him a purple coat from my paintbox by and by,” said Bertie.
“Yes, an’ red heels. That is Madame de Maintenon, that one he called
Mrs. Hemans. She begs Louis not to go on this expedition, but he turns a
deaf ear. He takes Marshal Saxe with him, and we must pretend that they
have thousands of men with them. The watchword is _Qui vive_? and the
answer is _L’état c’est moi_—that was one of his favourite remarks, you
know. They land at Manchester in the dead of the night, and a Jacobite
conspirator gives them the keys of the fortress.”
Peeping in through the doorway Harvey observed that the municipal
dust-bin had been pierced with holes to accommodate the muzzles of
imaginary cannon, and now represented the principal fortified position in
Manchester; John Stuart Mill had been dipped in red ink, and apparently
stood for Marshal Saxe.
“Louis orders his troops to surround the Young Women’s Christian
Association and seize the lot of them. ‘Once back at the Louvre and the
girls are mine,’ he exclaims. We must use Mrs. Hemans again for one of
the girls; she says ‘Never,’ and stabs Marshal Saxe to the heart.”
“He bleeds dreadfully,” exclaimed Bertie, splashing red ink liberally
over the façade of the Association building.
“The soldiers rush in and avenge his death with the utmost savagery. A
hundred girls are killed”—here Bertie emptied the remainder of the red
ink over the devoted building—“and the surviving five hundred are dragged
off to the French ships. ‘I have lost a Marshal,’ says Louis, ‘but I do
not go back empty-handed.’”
Harvey stole away from the room, and sought out his sister.
“Eleanor,” he said, “the experiment—”
“Yes?”
“Has failed. We have begun too late.”