TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
This book contains illustrations depicting various states of nudity.
More notes can be found at the end of this book.
DANCING, BEAUTY, AND GAMES
[Illustration: LADY CONSTANCE STEWART RICHARDSON
_From a Photograph by the White Studios_]
DANCING, BEAUTY
AND
GAMES
By
Lady Constance Stewart Richardson
LONDON
ARTHUR L. HUMPHREYS
187 PICCADILLY, W.
1913
CONTENTS
PAGE
PHYSICAL CULTURE 1
GAMES 17
BEAUTY 27
TEACHERS 43
DANCING 55
SWIMMING 63
BIG GAME SHOOTING 77
RELIGION 97
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
LADY CONSTANCE STEWART RICHARDSON _Frontispiece_
A GOOD POSE _facing Page_ 4
RORY DANCING ” 8
RORY, TORQUIL, AND HAMISH ” 12
GROTESQUE TOYS ” 34
MISS ISADORA DUNCAN ” 56
MAD^{LLE} ADELINE GENÉE ” 58
MADAME KARSAVINA ” 60
BAREFOOTED DANCING AFTER THE GREEK STYLE ” 62
ENGLISH POSITION IN AIR WHILE DIVING ” 64
SWEDISH SWALLOW DIVE ” 66
DANCING, BEAUTY AND GAMES
PHYSICAL CULTURE
To try and write about Physical Culture without linking it on to Mental
and Moral Culture would be of little use or interest, as these three
cannot be divided and good come from them, any more than a tree can be
separated from its bark and leaves and live. It is true that many have
realised the great and undeniable truth that Physical Culture properly
used is also mental culture, but it is also true that the masses are
absolutely ignorant of this fact, and merely think that the person
who believes so is a harmless lunatic. That it is within the means of
the majority to have a powerful weapon to combat sins and vice that
at present go rampantly on their way, I do most sincerely believe,
and that weapon is a right understanding of the effect which Physical
Culture has on the mind and body; and that ignorance of this weapon
is almost universal amongst the masses is due to the fact that those
who are at the head of things do not understand and will not listen to
those who do, or take the time and trouble to find out the root of the
evils which exist to such an enormous extent, especially throughout
towns.
That this subject has been handled before by far more skilled writers
than myself I know well, but in most of the articles on Physical
Culture there is a great dislike to tackling the serious side of the
question, and my excuse for doing so is that I have spent all my
life or rather all my thinking life in enquiring into and trying to
understand the effect Physical Culture has on the mind, and that this
effect is tremendous no one who knows anything about the subject can
doubt. The more artificial life becomes, the more necessary it is
to fight the evils which arise from this artificial condition, and
personally I am all for fighting artificiality with nature. Nature,
if understood, seldom fails us. Many hundreds of thousands of pounds
are spent annually on hospitals, homes for the feeble-minded, &c.; if
only a few of those thousands were expended in our schools, and in
the proper teaching of the young, surely in a couple of generations a
great many of the former institutions would be empty. And until it is
understood that to help the human race towards real health, and the
happiness that marches hand in hand with that health, it is necessary
to attack and demolish the amazing system of wicked ignorance which has
our young in its grip--both rich and poor--these institutions will be
needed.
For long it has been the cry, give every one a fair chance, and I do
most sincerely believe that it is possible to give that chance by
turning out into the world self-respecting men and women mentally and
physically developed in the manner that I believe God meant us all
to be; and not maimed body and soul by the course of instruction we
have been put through before we are thrown out on our own resources to
struggle blindly through our lives as best we may in a semi-developed
condition, mentally and physically: some of us perhaps to learn
what a fine thing we could have made of life if only we had known
and understood sooner. That moral feebleness allied to real vice is
tremendously on the increase in large towns, cannot be denied; also
that a great deal of it has its beginning in school-life is well known,
just as it is realised by thinking people that very little effort
is made either to enquire into the cause of it or find a remedy.
It seems to be taken for granted that if a young boy or girl shows
moral feebleness there is nothing much to be done except to hope that
they will not be found out and disgraced. I know well that to cure
immorality in the young once it has established itself, is difficult,
though not by any means hopeless. Cures always are difficult and
take time; therefore prevention is so much simpler: and certainly
a great deal, if not all, of this immorality could be prevented if
Physical Culture and its true effects on body and mind were understood,
and the teaching of a right system was insisted on in all places where
the young gather together.
[Illustration: A GOOD POSE
_From a Photograph by Andrew Paterson, Inverness_]
Let me try and explain what I mean by a right system. It is not just a
different way of exercising the arms, legs, and body. There are many
most admirable methods of Physical Culture, composed and propounded by
men who thoroughly understand the human body and its needs. But what
I think is wanting in our teaching of the young when we teach them
at all, is the giving of any reason as to why they should exercise
regularly; beyond the rather feeble fact that they will most likely
feel better if they do. Give children a true reason for doing anything
and they will hold on to it throughout life, and the true reason for
Physical Culture surely is that God has given you a body and a brain
to develop to the best of your ability, and that when the time comes
to render them back again to your Maker you will be able to do so with
no sense of shame. Instil this into the young and it is wonderful how
they understand and reverence the thought. To merely tell children that
it is jolly to have big muscles and be stronger than their neighbours,
will certainly urge them on for the moment, but these reasons have
little strength or help in them if there is a temptation to be
overcome, and to continue to use them is but building upon sand.
Children are born idealists, and surely it ought to be the duty of all
to make those ideals higher and of a strength that will last through
life. The only ideal that the average child has nowadays is ‘how to
get on,’ and in the getting on if the other fellow goes to the wall
no matter; the ideal of Physical and Mental culture ought to be of
the highest and the greatest purity, and it is only possible to instil
this into the very young. All chance of pure thinking as regards the
body is generally entirely shattered by nurses and parents before a
child reaches four or five years of age: its body is made a shameful
thing to hide as much as possible and never to be referred to. If you
want to feel real shame, and understand the impure manner in which the
body is regarded, watch small children in any well-to-do nursery being
washed by their nurses; instead of being taught that their body is a
beautiful and sacred thing and one of God’s greatest works, they are
made to believe it is a shameful thing. Little harmless questions that
all children ask and which ought to get straight, sensible answers, are
greeted with giggles or winks, and the child is told not to ask naughty
questions. Thus at the beginning of their lives is planted the little,
creeping, insidious, dirty growth. All children will think about their
bodies, it is right and natural that they should do so; only those
thoughts must be guided into pure, sensible channels, not left in black
ignorance, except for the unclean hints dropped by many who, to our
shame be it said, have children in their charge.
To instil pure-mindedness, a child from the moment it can understand
must be taught to take a proper pride in its body, then when come to
man or woman’s full growth, a clean-minded, healthy, happy, human being
will be the result, and during the always more or less difficult age
before full growth is reached there need be little fear of the dangers
and temptations which as a rule beset the young.
[Illustration: RORY DANCING
_From a Photograph by Andrew Paterson_]
If from early youth it was explained and impressed on the young of
both sexes, that it was a real sin against God to allow their minds
to become a mass of sensuality, and that the mind becoming like this
means that the body has been neglected, and the only right remedy for
body and mind is proper exercise and a proper understanding of
what to eat and what to avoid in eating and drinking, what a help it
would be to them. As a rule this is never explained to the young, and
surely its great importance ought to be understood at least by those
who have children in their charge. The ordinary man or woman fighting
the temptations which arise from the artificial conditions of life, are
as helpless from their ignorance and neglect of the human body as a man
naked fighting against one fully armed.
There are a certain number of men and women who are strong-minded
enough to be able to take up physical exercises late in life and get
a considerable amount of good from them, but with the majority unless
the exercises are a habit from early youth, they find them a bore after
the novelty has worn off, and they are eventually dropped altogether.
It is a very great effort for a man or woman who has neglected any
regular exercise all their lives, to get up in the morning and perform
a certain set amount. But if a child is trained almost from infancy to
do this, and made to understand that it is quite as dirty to neglect
the body or to put dirty (otherwise unwholesome) food into it, as it
is to walk about with unwashed teeth, they no more think of neglecting
the care of the one than they do of the other. Therefore, personally,
I always train my own children to exercise ten minutes every morning
before their baths; not that it is a real necessity when living an
open-air life, but that I feel the habit will go with them through
life; also that the time may come when having to be in town it may
prove of incalculable value. At present they would no more think of
missing their exercises than they would their baths.
Again, I think great help against the bad and harmful habits of
drinking and smoking can be given, if a child is taught that his body
is a beautiful and precious trust, and that to soil and harm it by the
accumulation of bad and artificial habits is to commit a real sin,
and also shows a considerable lack of intelligence if commenced with
open eyes and understanding. Also, if the explanation is given of how
these habits grow and take hold, if once started, and how a liking for
them becomes quickly ingrained, I am quite sure that boys and girls
would no more make a habit of these harmful things than they would
cheat at cards--as in one case you are behaving dishonourably to your
fellow-men, in the other you are betraying a trust given into your
hands by God; surely the latter ought to be made of as much importance
as the former. It is all very well to say that smoking and drinking in
moderation harm no one; perhaps not, but the difficulty of keeping them
in moderation is very great, particularly when troubles come along,
which even if they be molehills in reality, to the young are always
mountains, and it seems somewhat foolish to learn and encourage an
artificial habit which may at any time prove a most dangerous enemy,
and is certainly not missed if never begun.
I also feel most strongly that it will be an impossibility to make
Physical Culture what it ought to be until a radical change is made in
present-day clothing for both sexes.
Revolutionise the clothing of children and all would be well, as if
sanely clad during their growing years, they certainly would not submit
in later life to the absurd garments worn by their parents.
[Illustration: RORY, TORQUIL AND HAMISH
_From a Photograph by Andrew Paterson_]
I do not suggest that every one should go about in Greek tunics, as
this garment is not very suitable to our grey climate; but there is a
far cry between a Greek tunic and an Eton suit, for instance. That the
garments children often have to wear are responsible for a great deal
of immorality I am certain, and they are on the whole most insanitary,
great carriers of germs, and intensely uncomfortable as well. There
has certainly been a slight move for the better amongst some who have
stopped their children wearing hats; thus giving them a chance to
grow up without chronic headaches, and to have beautiful hair. Also
a few now give their children a shoe that does not deform their feet
as in the past, but even now it is very rarely that one sees a child
over ten years of age with toes that are not crooked; for it does not
seem to be realised the tremendous pace a child’s foot grows between
the ages of two and fifteen; therefore if only sandals were used for
growing children such a lot of pain and expense might be saved; a
sandal showing at once if it is too small, and also is much cheaper to
replace than shoes, or those still greater iniquities, boots, which
cramp the muscles of the legs and stop the ankle muscles from gaining
growth and strength.
I know that many people will contend that the mental impurity I have
spoken of is the exception and not the rule. I can but ask these people
to spend an afternoon in the sculpture room at a museum or in a
picture gallery, and watch the majority of those who come through and
see the nudes in either marble or on canvas. Apart from a few serious
art students there are generally two types, the one who passes by with
averted head and downcast eyes, getting slightly red in doing so; these
are generally men or women very religious from the world’s point of
view, and with sad, contracted minds. They pray, but at the same time
they have made up their minds that one of God’s most splendid works is
a shameful thing to be covered up, neglected and forgotten as much as
possible.
The other type is the man or woman who comes to stare and giggle, and
nudge with coarse innuendo and joke. These are more awful than the
others to watch, as they are alive with a horrible wakefulness coming
from minds that are merely cesspools.
And with both types the same cause is at work in different ways. They
cannot see a naked figure either in life, painting, or sculpture
without bringing in the sex question. They can see no beauty, as it is
obscured by the grime of their minds.
Surely a state of things to make one stand aghast with bent and shamed
head.
I do not think I ever realised fully the extreme impurity that is rife
through the minds particularly of those who live in towns until I went
on to the stage, and took up classical dancing seriously. Then there
used to pour in upon me a stream of letters of such a terrible kind
that one wondered it were possible for any living being who had a soul
to write such things, and in those days came to me a great and sincere
wish to help on in any way possible the work of trying to establish a
system of Physical and Mental Culture that should give the children
their fair chance in life; for rich and poor there ought to be but one
system, and that instilled in a manner to give to them a knowledge and
reverent love of all that is God’s work, to bring within the reach
of all the chance to keep the body beautiful outwardly and clean
inwardly, and to fill the mind with high ideals and a fine knowledge
of men and books. May we all try and make it more possible and easier
for the little children to walk with firm and unfaltering footsteps the
path that ours have tottered so painfully along.
GAMES
Games are nearly always regarded as recreation, though a few people
take them seriously and work at them with a view to becoming
professionals and earning a livelihood in this manner. When I say
they are used as a recreation, this is applicable to those people who
play different games in a desultory fashion during the whole or part
of the year; showing as time passes curiously little improvement in
their play. Plodding continuously on, but from what point of view it
is difficult to understand, unless it be from a purely animal liking
of being in the open air and the pleasure they derive from following
after, hitting, or kicking a ball. One cannot believe that they can
get any pleasure from the competition arising in games, as they never
strive to improve their play. Many I know have devoted several hours
weekly for a long time to a game, but they play no better or very
slightly better now than when they commenced.
If one remarks on the rather curious mental condition a person must be
in to act like this, the reply generally is, ‘Every one cannot play
games well. A good eye is necessary,’ &c. Certainly that is so, but a
good eye is mostly training and practice like any other muscle control.
Surely if a thing is worth doing at all it is worth doing well, and I
think that any one who gives the matter a few moments’ thought will
agree that it is extremely harmful physically and mentally to go on
doing a thing in the wrong way year after year. It denotes lack of
concentration, lack of self-control, and a general mental sloppiness.
Curiously enough these people are always the ones who continually ask
others to teach and help them to improve their play, but an endeavour
to do so is nearly always greeted with a laugh, and, ‘Oh, yes, I see,’
and they go steadily on with the same faults as before, though quite
often showing that with a little concentration and control they might
have become admirable players. This class of game-player, I feel sure,
has developed from the child who has been allowed to undertake its
games and its work in a slipshod fashion, never being made to realise
that if a game or a piece of work is taken up it should either be done
well and completely or left alone. By this I naturally do not mean
that all amateurs ought not to play a game unless they play it like a
professional, but there is a very far cry between professionalism and
the slipshod game-player. The next type of man who plays games is the
one who does so purely from the health-giving point of view and not
from any real love of games, doing so most likely only when he is a
bit off colour, and in vulgar parlance, wishes to have a good sweat!
A Turkish bath would have as good an effect, but he, like a good
many others, cannot be bothered to seek after health unless his mind
is stimulated and amused at the same time. He is not really of much
interest from the game-playing point of view, as he enters into the
world of games but little.
At the opposite extreme is to be found the man who takes games
seriously, though this type is really divided into two classes; one who
plays games to keep fit, and the other who keeps fit to play games. The
latter, of course, are the men with a real devotion to games who spend
little time doing anything else; at all events, during the season when
their own particular game is to the fore. The questions I think one is
inclined to ask oneself, when seriously thinking over games, are: in
what spirit ought games to be taken? Are they a waste of time or not?
and are they of real good mentally and physically to the player? I have
always personally felt that games, regarded as they are at the present
day, are extremely bad, but if taken in a sane and sensible fashion
ought to be of the greatest value. This is what I mean. Children when
they start to play games are nearly always allowed to do so in a most
haphazard manner; for instance, a child who shows a strong fancy for
games is often left to play them _ad lib._, only being reproved if his
school-work suffers, and often a lenient eye is turned on all shirking
of work if the shirker is found to have used the time for game-playing.
It is rarely explained to him or her that games ought to be regarded as
a recreation and an aid to health, also that if played they ought to
be played properly at proper times. Shirking your other work to play
them or playing them badly is misusing both your body and mind, and
generally hurting yourself physically and mentally.
Games must be looked at in their proper proportion and once finished
with not allowed to usurp the mind, as a man who makes games his sole
thought throughout life is a sad person to meet. If the child who was
backward and rather stupid at games was taken a little trouble with
and equally taught with his more forward brother that games are to be
regarded educationally like any other physical exercise, I think that
as grown men they would both be improved. On the one hand, you would
not find the man who does not play games at all, from having been told
when a child that he was no use; and on the other, the man who eats,
thinks, talks, and sleeps games: but two human beings with the good
health, concentration, quickness, and self-control which games properly
used certainly bring, all of which are most admirable qualities having
a very great effect on a man’s life in all and every profession. A man
of the above qualities, added to a clean outdoor sense of things, is
far more apt to make a success of his life from the higher point of
view than the one without them. Equally this reacts on his children.
The man of control and understanding will most assuredly see that his
children are trained to have the same qualities.
I do not think it can be repeated too often what great harm can be
done to children, and, alas! is done both physically and mentally, by
allowing them to play games at all times and in any manner they please.
It is quite time it was realised that during the period the brain and
body are developing, enormous care ought to be taken in the supervision
of all bodily exercises, for that their effect is very great on the
brain only the ignorant will deny. A child left to exercise itself
at games will as a rule play till it is dead beat, thus undoing any
good that might come to it from the exercise of its muscles and mind,
as long before it has got to this stage of tiredness it will have
been hitting wrong, running wrong, and forcing the heart to overwork.
Mentally it will be over-excited, the eye will be strained, and the
temper out of control. One of the great advantages of games is the
teaching of tolerance and self-control, but when a thing is young and
tender it does not do to bear too heavily on it. Whereas judicious
exercise strengthens a weak thing, heavy work will merely spoil it,
and in all probability ruin it for all time. How often one sees a
child burst into tears for no obvious reason, become irritable and
bad-tempered, and when bedtime comes lie awake for hours. The cause
nearly always being the ignorance of teachers and parents who in their
mistaken kindness allow children to play games until they can hardly
walk with fatigue. I have often been asked if I advocate games for
children; before the ages of ten or eleven years old I certainly do
not, and between those ages and sixteen, I think games ought to be most
carefully supervised and chosen, and for these reasons. From infancy
up to eleven years is a most critical period, the most critical I
personally believe in the whole life. When a young child is playing
games it is most difficult, in fact almost impossible, to get it to
remember several things at once. What I mean is this. A young child at
this period is merely learning everything, how to walk, how to run,
and how to balance itself correctly. The meaning of perfect poise
ought at this age to be installing itself into a child’s mind; in the
excitement of the game a child as a rule tries to do too much, with
the result that in a short space of time it will be walking badly and
heavily, and running in an ugly, uncertain fashion.
Then there are very few games which do not draw the body forward,
contracting the chest, in consequence of which the breathing is
restricted, which naturally renders the blood impure, this leading to
a thousand troubles. Also I do not believe it is good or natural for
any young undeveloped thing to be knocked about in the way that happens
in a good many games, as the muscles and bones are soft and apt to
be distorted easily. Children in a natural rough-and-tumble amongst
themselves are no more likely to hurt themselves or each other than
puppies or any other young animal at play, but bring in the competition
and the unnatural excitement which creeps into games that after all
are an artificial amusement, more harm than good is likely to result to
children under sixteen years of age. After that age, regarded in their
proper proportion, I think they are excellent. I am a firm believer for
the young in individual athletic exercises such as running, jumping,
throwing the hammer, the discus, swimming and dancing, &c., but under
the eye always of an experienced person, as in these exercises it is
possible to control and watch the work of each child, to see and teach
that each muscle is developed in proper fashion, and by degrees the
girl or boy will understand how to control the whole body in a perfect
manner, each and every muscle hardening and enlarging to its full
development. If this form of physical education is carried out from
infancy, at sixteen years old a girl or boy ought to be fit to take
up any game they may have a fancy for, reaping the great good that
certainly may be got from games and equally avoiding the great harm.
BEAUTY
To instil a love of beauty into a child’s mind at the commencement
of its life is not necessary, as normal children will always hold
out their hands and seek to draw towards them all that is beautiful,
instinctively turning away and shrinking from the hideous and
grotesque. But what is necessary is to foster, protect, and encourage
this natural gift, and it is only too evident that this necessity is
not only neglected, but that the love of the hideous and grotesque is
actually forced into the minds of the young, and the growth of that
love helped on in every possible way. There are many who scoff at the
belief that the love and true realisation of all beauty ought to be
one of the most serious sides in the education of the young, but I
think it would behove them to give a few hours’ serious consideration
to the subject, before dismissing it with one of the contemptuous
laughs that are so freely given by the people who have never taken the
trouble to probe very deeply into any new effort or idea that may come
their way. Not that the idea of instilling the love and understanding
of beauty into the young is a new one, as in ancient Greece it was a
recognised part of all education, but most certainly for many and many
a generation it has never been given a thought to, except in isolated
cases. I do not think it would be a waste of time if some of our best
brains at the head of things would give some serious consideration from
a purely common-sense point of view, as to whether it may not stand
within the bounds of reason that a very large part of the decadence,
vice, and educational failure is not largely due to the entire lack
in that education of any effort being made to teach the difference
between the ugly and the beautiful.
Sin and vice are strangely like unto ugliness and repulsiveness.
Equally, cleanliness and culture of mind, body, and spirit are not
mean reflectors of the beautiful. It is not difficult to realise that
perhaps the neglect of teaching the one has a good deal to do with the
existence of the other. That a most drastic change in this direction
would be greatly for the benefit of all children I most firmly believe.
The richest and the poorest ought to have the same chance of being
allowed to keep that wonderful gift, a love of beauty, which is a
heritage to all, and not to have it snatched away only to be replaced
by that which will cause them to go mentally blind through life,
missing all the joy which comes to those who can see with undimmed eyes
the wonders that God has placed in the world for all.
A love of the obviously beautiful I do not think is of any great help
or value, though naturally better than entire blindness: to only
admire what, so to speak, shrieks its beauty at you, takes no great
understanding or discrimination. Neither does it take great powers
of observation. Stone-blindness would have to be the portion of the
man who was not more or less impressed by the Grand Canyon or Niagara
Falls. But to see and rejoice over little pools with the light throwing
different shadows, a drop of dew hanging on a blade of grass, or a
myriad other miniature miracles, which happen around us day and night,
takes a power of observation and realisation that lies only in the
human being who has had his eye trained to observe and his mind to feel
and rejoice in all beauty, whether it be great or small, the largely
obvious or that which requires careful looking for.
It cannot be denied that a power of observation is of great value in
all walks of life; allied to a powerful memory it is of still greater
value. Both of these can be taught to a great extent by encouraging
the children in their love of the beautiful, which ought to be
commenced in the observation and understanding of God’s work in Nature.
The millions of beautiful things by which He has surrounded us are
generally entirely unnoticed and ignored by the average child, and
the wonderful reading of that book of Nature He has laid before us to
instruct and help, is indeed a closed book except to the very few. That
Nature-study is taught in many schools I am fully aware, but it is
taught as a rule in a purely scientific manner, which at once does away
with any chance of establishing high ideals by its help. Flowers are
pulled to pieces, their growth and formation explained; a drop of water
is taken, placed under a microscope, and the germs in it pointed out.
That this is excellent and ought to be known and understood by all, I
do not for a moment deny, but its place is secondary; God’s unspoken
lesson of beauty in Nature is surely a far greater one than what man
has found out about His work, and if this is the case, it seems to me
that the first lesson of all that ought to be taught to the young is to
look for and find all the beauties expressed in Nature. The colours and
the scent of the flowers, the way they group themselves, the fashion
in which they turn and seek the sun; to hear the music in the streams
composed of a hundred different notes, to lie and watch the many
changing lights and colours on running waters, to love the reflections
in the pools and to learn to wander in that children’s second land
‘under the water,’ or to watch in breathless wonder the ripple of the
soft summer breezes across that dry land-sea, the bit of rough ground
with tall grasses of many kinds in full bloom; some almost pigeon-blood
in colour, others pure gold. To hear the voices of the wood-people
complaining as the wind-god moving through the trees disturbs them, or
in his anger storms along on wintry days and nights, calling out in his
wrath to the thunder and lightning to come and join him on his noisy
way. All idealistic and fanciful, no doubt.
But who will deny that the man or woman who can see and hear clearly
the voices of Nature, and who has the power to weave happy, harmless
fancies, is not a better and more pure-minded person than one who
outside of his own profession can neither see nor hear, and if placed
apart from that profession is helpless and miserably bored. If
unhappiness comes to him in his chosen work, he knows not where to seek
help and distraction in a clean and healthy way. It has often been
said that Mother Nature is a great healer: she most certainly is when
we are given a chance of finding and knowing her, but to the average
human being her existence may be known of, but the way of reaching
her healing touch is a road carefully guarded, and hidden away out
of sight, except to the adventurous few who have strength of mind to
struggle on against all difficulties and seek her for themselves.
Surely we have no right not to lay open to the best of our abilities
this road of happiness and comfort to all children; to shut them out
into a materialistic darkness of mind, to crush that love of beauty
that God has thought right to instil into every infant mind. Instead,
there are a great many parents and teachers banded together with one
object, that being to destroy and stamp out any love of beauty that may
peep out from a child’s mind, to uproot it and there plant instead a
million growths of rank and ugly thoughts all overshadowed by one great
primary planted tree whose name is the love of the ugly and grotesque;
from it branches another smaller tree called the power of being able
only to see the bad; creeping up this is the worm of blindness to all
God’s teaching of Nature. A truly terrible garden indeed, and apt to
bear fruit plentifully now and afterwards.
I went to one of London’s largest toy-shops the other day and there
bought some toys which can be seen in the following photograph. I was
told that they were very popular, and it is difficult to believe that
sane people can give their children toys of this kind, and not
realise in any way the irreparable harm they are doing to their minds,
particularly as most small infants will turn shuddering from this
ugliness presented to them, but are coaxed into thinking they like
these hideous things, until they really do come to take a pleasure in
them. So the first great lesson of man’s teaching is learnt, taken into
your heart and mind the ugly and repulsive thought and thing that God
tells you instinctively to turn from and beware of. A few years of this
teaching and God’s voice of instinct grows dim and at last ceases. So
we wilfully and of our own accord strike out of our children’s lives
one great help and safeguard, instead of aiding them to develop and
strengthen it, so as to get all the joy and happiness possible from
this great gift.
[Illustration: GROTESQUE TOYS]
It may be agreed that a love of beauty has brought many a man and woman
to sin, and it is true that such a love superficial and untrained,
may well do so, But that love, trained and instilled into the human
mind along with a deep and reverent understanding, can only be of the
greatest help and benefit. In this case the beauty and purity of the
soul, and that wondrous temple, the human body, would prove too strong
a responsibility to allow the mind to smirch them with sin and vice. In
advocating that children should be taught to see Nature’s works with
clear eyes, I do not mean that the many wonderful and beautiful works
of Man should be ignored: only with God’s works we can roam amongst
them, knowing that what they teach can only be good; with Men’s we
must walk warily, picking out for the help of the young only those
things that speak of fine and pure intention, and that can start no
train of impure thought. Of the greatest influence for good, I put the
sculpture of the ancient Greeks foremost: it cannot be studied too much
by the young; the more it is loved and understood the more lessons it
teaches, a deep and wide sense of extreme quietness and nobility, an
understanding and reverence in the truest sense of the word for the
beauty of the human body, to mar or ill-treat which was a sin against
all that was highest in them. A great patience and an almost superhuman
effort and striving towards all that was greatest and best, a reaching
out of mind and soul to do honour to Him who made them; what matter if
their gods were many, the effort and the reverence were the same, and
as such will surely be recorded.
Will ever a quarter be understood as to what we owe these ancient
masters of art, the help they have been to thousands in their gentle
and sincere teaching--only thousands, alas! for of the millions of
people reared and taught in our country, it is the few who find out
by accident or design the beauties and wonders of their works? It is
true that bodies of school-children are escorted at intervals to the
British Museum, where they are shown round by some one who is supposed
to have a knowledge of the contents. Many a time have I watched the
groups with a sad heart, realising how much help and joy they were
missing. ‘That is a statue by So-and-so, 400 B.C.,’ on and on from one
thing to another, merely a jumble of names and dates; no aid given to
those muddled young minds towards their seeing and understanding the
beauty they are gazing at; no chance given them to take in the message
of purity and quietness that those great works send forth everlastingly
to those who have learnt to see and hear. What good is there in knowing
a list of famous names if the knowledge ceases at that, and the work
that made those names famous is unknown and unrealised? The human being
who feels a great humility and thankfulness before all beauty, whether
God’s work or Man’s, says a truer and more sincere prayer than he who
sits in church and parrot-like repeats long prayers to the God whose
work he either knows not, or does his best to destroy.
We are told in the Bible that we are made in the likeness of God.
It is wonderful how far we have managed to stray from it, and how
determined we are that our children shall have no chance to attain to
it. With studious care have we built up year by year a mass of customs
and habits that successfully bar us from anything much higher in
appearance than the apes some think we are descended from. Sometimes
one sees a human face and body that has been strong enough to struggle
into maturity unmarked and maimed in spite of Man’s laws, and when we
see such a one, it is with a heart full of wrath and pity that we gaze
around on the crippled, hideous bodies that might be like unto gods
walking, and are merely distorted shapes, breeding further shapes still
more distorted, and a vista of horror is opened in the mind, and one
seems to hear the cries of millions of unborn children, each generation
a little more horrible to look at; with minds a little lower and more
sin-filled, and with less and less hope of gaining all that has been
lost. More lives to work out their own hell, fewer to live in Heaven.
To keep a child’s mind filled with beautiful thoughts, and let their
eyes see only beautiful things is, I know well, a difficult matter
nowadays, since we have filled the world with hideous things and the
minds of those about us with ugly thoughts, but the importance of
doing so is, as I have said before, very great. It seems to me as if
beautiful ideas and things have a very slight, delicate growth in
the brain while it is in its early development, while the ugly and
grotesque takes hold with giant roots, and once allow the latter to
creep in first, it will oust all after attempts to replace it with the
delicate plant of beauty. But keep the mind well stocked with all that
is beautiful, and by the time the brain and body are developed, these
plants will have attained to such strong and noble proportions that
little fear need be felt of the others finding any space to live in and
flourish.
There is a great deal of talk nowadays about Eugenics and theories on
improving the human race. It might be well worth the experiment to try
how the gospel of beauty taught in the deepest and truest sense might
succeed where everything else has failed; if we were educated to see
ugliness, mental and physical, as sins of the most serious description
against our Maker, whether would it not prove a very powerful help
towards the uplifting of the human race from the mire in which it at
present lies.
TEACHERS
Having tried to show how important the teaching of the love of beauty
is to children, and how important it is during the early development of
the brain to keep all that is bad and repulsive away, and only present
the good and the beautiful, it may not be out of place to say a little
on the subject as to the difficulty of getting teachers who have ever
given these ideas a thought, and if asked to carry out one’s wishes
on this subject simply regard one as a harmless lunatic. A few are
conscientious enough to make efforts, but even these are a hopeless
failure, and for this reason, if no thought has been given during the
years of training as to the necessity of keeping ugliness, physical
and mental, from children, it is almost impossible, unless unusually
gifted in self-control, to restrain one’s self a hundred times an hour
from doing or saying something ugly before children; also, with the
best endeavours in the world, the deplorable fact remains that the
great majority do not know what is ugly and what is beautiful.
Nine years ago, I started with a light heart and a happy mind to
educate my eldest son in the way in which I considered all children
ought to be educated: in other words only pure and good thoughts were
to be instilled into his mind, and he was never to have the ugly and
grotesque forced on his notice. My difficulties began with my first
nurse, and they have gone on increasing through a series of nurses and
governesses. That they should not understand one’s ideas on the subject
was not surprising, as their upbringing made these ideas a closed
book to them; but what was so heart-breaking was that after hours of
explaining and reasoning, and eventually in despair almost extorting
promises that they should endeavour to speak only what was truthful and
good, and that they should refrain from ugly tales and dirty ideas,
it began to dawn on me that most of these people who take charge of
children do not know the difference between what is good and what is
bad for children to see and hear, and all the explaining in the world
could not teach them: proving that unless the study of these things is
undertaken in youth, it is of little use later in life to try and learn
it. Some of them really tried, they genuinely wished to please me, but
it was hopeless from my point of view; in fact, I was talking a strange
tongue to them, and with the best endeavours they could not understand
a language they had never learnt. It is certainly not my wish to decry
the faithful service that nurses have given to their charges, a good
deal more faithful than many mothers. But what I do want to point out
is that the training of nurses and teachers is as a rule far from what
it ought to be, and until this training is most thoroughly altered it
is worse than useless to try and raise the education of children to a
higher and purer level. First of all, it must be recognised that these
people on whom the future of our young so largely depends ought to be
the most respected and honoured amongst people, and this feeling of
responsibility and honour ought to be ingrained in the minds of those
who intend to enter the vocations of nursing or teaching. Not, as so
often is the case, that teaching is taken up when a failure is made at
other professions, and when you find in rich houses that the teachers
or nurses of the children are paid considerably less than the cook or
butler. Until teaching is put upon its proper pedestal and regarded
as the most honoured of professions, and one not to be entered into
lightly, so will education remain at its present low level.
It is constantly being said that there are so many clever women
leaving our colleges each year, and finding it difficult to earn a
livelihood: surely teaching ought to give many of them a profession
in life; but until the profession is regarded rightly, as one of the
most high and sacred callings, clever men and women will consider it
beneath them, or only to be used as a step towards something better.
Certainly, latterly, there has been some improvement in the methods
of imparting knowledge to the young, but I am afraid that these
methods have not always been used for the good only of the child. Too
many good teachers are given to cramming infants’ minds to an extent
extremely harmful, only caring to produce on examination days tiny
children who can repeat pages of verse and prose--in other words, at
the expense of the child’s health and mind, they nurture their own
vanity, showing that their idea of responsibility is as lax as their
knowledge of the delicate structure they undertake to build up. The
ignorance of the people to whom children are entrusted on the science
of Pedagogy is truly amazing. They know nothing about the body, and
still less about the working of a child’s brain. They do not know
what is harmful physically, or what effect body has on brain, or
_vice-versa_; they have a smattering of Physical Culture and this is
used indiscriminately, and they cannot be blamed, as they have never
been taught even the rudiments of a science which they ought to know
thoroughly before they essay to teach. For it is, I am certain, this
entire lack of knowledge as to the brain and body and the effect of
one on the other, that leads to so much distress and sin, and that is
such a handicap in any efforts that are made to fill the mind with only
what is worth while. Excellent methods such as Dr. Montessori’s are
terribly hampered by the difficulty of finding people in any quantity
capable of carrying out ideas which require careful observation and a
real knowledge of the child’s mind and body. They may earnestly strive,
but they will fail, and consequently many good methods brought forward
by clever trained people go to the wall and are labelled as useless,
simply because the teachers are quite incompetent to either grasp
or carry out any method which requires a real and not a superficial
knowledge of Pedagogy.
Now this is all rather dreadful, and the only way to improve matters
and give children a chance of starting life with a healthy and pure
outlook is for all parents to band themselves together and insist
that the people who volunteer to take charge of and educate children,
shall have received a proper training both mentally and physically. If
this was done, in one generation, education in the highest sense of
the word would have a bright outlook, as people who have received a
sane and clean education themselves will most certainly see that their
children receive and benefit by the same. I do not think that parents
can often give much thought as to the unlimited amount of harm done in
their nurseries. The conversations that are carried on before young
children, between nurse and nursery-maids, are five times out of six
harmful, I am certain; and any observing mother can tell, from the way
children behave and the things they talk about, the sort of influence
that is unconsciously wielded by the nurses in charge. Looking back at
my nursery days, and my memory of them is very distinct, I can easily
remember the kind of topics that were discussed before me: every sort
of gossip on the latest scandals, the latest murder, horrors of war,
&c., all in their most gruesome details. I was, I suppose, about four
or five years of age, and those conversations are clear in my memory
to this day. My nurse was the dearest and most faithful of old Scotch
servants, and would have given her life gladly for any of her charges,
but she had never been taught herself as to what was harmful and what
was not for children to see and hear, and had the uneducated person’s
general idea that children up to the age of about ten years are deaf,
dumb, and blind. Many and many an evil growth and crooked outlook on
life is gained in those early nursery days, and they cling steadily
through life. In these days of heavy doings and light thinkings, the
children of the well-to-do are more and more left in the charge of
others than their parents, and it seems that this would become more
so than less in the future. So, surely, a giant effort should be
made towards establishing a training college, or improving the ones
at present in existence, and insisting that nurses and teachers are
trained so as to have considerably higher ideals than they have at
present, and a far deeper knowledge of the mind and body, before they
are allowed to play havoc with the lives of the young.
Most certainly there are many young people who love children, and have
themselves been brought up in a clean, though perhaps limited manner:
opportunities should be given to them to train so as to become able
to take charge of children and to fully understand the tremendous
responsibilities they undertake when children are given into their
charge.