IN WHICH AN EXPERIMENT IS MADE IN QUICKENING THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE
YOUNG, WITH DISTRESSING RESULTS
Mrs. Frank, I have not perhaps said, is one of the serious mothers
who wish to make her children clever from the very first, and she has
enlisted my services in the campaign, although I am not clever yet.
We all stay on the sand until four, and then there are two hours for
the twins and their small sister before bedtime. It is this
interlude which Mrs. Frank has entreated me to spend now and then,
say three times a week, in instruction.
"Be original with them," she says, "there's a good Kent. Make them
think and see."
"Heavens, woman," I reply, "why not save time by telling me to be
perfect? What's their father about, anyway? Why isn't he teaching
his brood?"
"Oh, Frank's too lazy," says his wife. "Besides, he hasn't any
patience. He hates to be interrupted with questions--not a little
because he can't answer them."
I am lazy too, and am equally afraid of questions, but it has long
been understood in this world that I cannot say no, while ever since
I took charge of Mr. Bemerton's shop I have been the natural prey of
all mendicants. Moreover, Naomi supporting her sister-in-law's
request, I had to say yes once more.
I borrowed my plan from Spanton. You remember what he said about his
school lectures and his description of the lives of the labourers.
Well, I took that as a basis, and, applying the idea to younger
minds, began a little story for these children which should have the
effect of making them realize, although so young, their dependent
position in the world, and their indebtedness to the world and its
workers not only for their luxuries but their necessities. At first
it would be merely a matter of curiosity quickened and satisfied, but
later, as they grew older and went to school, it might make them the
more ready not to harbour insularity and arrogance.
We had a chapter at a time. My story began thus:
WHAT THE WORLD DOES FOR PRUE
Once upon a time there was a little girl called Prue. Or, to be more
exact, there is a little girl named Prue, for she is living in London
at this minute and is still only ten years old. Prue has no brothers
and sisters, but I don't think that this matters very much to her
happiness, for she has many friends, not only of her own age but
bigger too, quite grown up, in fact, and also a very busy mind which
leads her to be interested in a large number of things and so keeps
her contented. Her father goes into London in the morning at
half-past nine by the Hammer-Smith Tube from Gloucester Road, and he
comes back in the afternoon so exactly at the same time every day
that Prue can be sure of meeting him by the greengrocer's and
florist's on the way, where he buys some flowers for Prue's mother,
who is an invalid. On Saturday, however, he does not go to his
business at all, but in the morning he plays at golf in the Old Deer
Park at Richmond (close to Kew Gardens), and in the afternoon he
takes Prue to a picture gallery or a concert. On Sunday afternoons
they always go either to the South Kensington Museum, which they are
getting to know by heart, from Constable's water-colours of Brighton
to Michael Angelo's "David," and from teak houses at Benares to lace
caps for babies in the time of Queen Anne; or to the British Museum,
which they know also equally well, from the Elgin Marbles to the
little Tanagra family groups in terra-cotta, and from Egyptian
mummies to Staffordshire jugs with poetry on them. You have no idea
how interesting a museum can be if you take it easily and have
someone to describe the things to you. The mistake people make in
museums is to try and see too much, as if they were going to die
to-night.
Prue also has a governess named Miss Fry, and a considerable library
of her own, and a dachshund named Herr Bandy, and threepence a week
pocket money. She has fair hair and blue eyes, and would much rather
be laughing than not, in spite of her visits to museums. And that, I
think, is enough introduction to Prue.
The purpose of this story is to give you the same idea as that given
to Prue by her father, of the thanks which you owe to the world at
large; and when I say you I mean all of us, but particularly those
living at this moment in England. For I want you to think of Prue as
a little girl standing on England in the flat map of the world which
we call Mercator's Projection, to whom from all directions steamers
and trains are hurrying. Each of these steamers and trains is
bringing her something that is necessary for everyday life, to eat or
to wear or to use, and were it not for these steamers and trains, and
the sailors and engineers on them, and stevedores who loaded them and
others who will unload them, and the workmen who made or dug or
gathered the articles they are loaded with, that little girl would
very likely die or, at any rate, be no better than a savage. And
again when I say that little girl I mean you and me and all of us
prosperous, protected, English people who have only to go into the
Stores and lay down our money to get all we want, and, for the most
part, never think of the way in which men have been toiling under hot
suns or freezing skies or in stifling cities, mostly on poor wages,
to provide us with it. We take such things for granted: just as Prue
did until her eccentric Uncle Frank, who always did such odd things,
came back from India, where he was a judge, for a holiday, and told
her a little about the origin of things, as I am going to tell you.
That was the start, and it was very successful, except that the twins
both wondered why I had made a little girl the heroine.
"Well," I said, "it is because girls are more interesting. I wrote
it really for Jill, only she is too young for it at the moment.
Little boys don't make such good stories as little girls."
"Why?" they asked.
"Ah," I replied (for I am not altogether a fool), "you must ask your
father. He knows everything."
Now for the real beginning, the first chapter:
It was a bright morning in April. Prue woke up at seven, half an
hour before she need get up. This is a very pleasant thing to do.
She knew it was seven because she looked at her watch. Her watch!
This is rather serious, because few things that we use in daily life
contain the results of more labour in many countries than a very
ordinary watch, and if I tell you all about that now, we shall not
get back to Prue for many pages. I had forgotten that Prue's watch
would come in so soon. Let us then postpone the examination of her
watch for a little, because I want to tell you how she began to think
of this dependence of hers (and ours) upon the rest of the world.
She lay there in her little bed all cosy between the sheets and
blankets. (Sheets and blankets, did I say? This story is not only
never going to end, I can see, but is never going to begin either,
for Prue's sheets jump us straight away to Carolina in North America,
and the cotton fields, and the negroes at work there, and the great
Atlantic steamers being laden with the bales, and the Lancashire
cotton mills, and the girls in clogs, and the boys thinking of
football as they work, and the broad, Lancashire dialect filling the
air, and ... do you see what a task we have before us? While as for
Prue's blankets, they take us farther still, right away to Australia,
to a great sheep farm with thousands and thousands of sheep, and the
hot sun, and the dry Bush stretching as far as the eye can reach, and
the rouseabouts driving the sheep up to the shearing sheds, and rows
of half-naked men shearing and shearing, with the sheep kicking and
struggling beneath them. Think of the heat of it all, and the dust
and thirst and weariness, and nothing to do when evening comes in
this wilderness but rest and get ready for the next day! And then
the despatch of the wool in wagons to the nearest train, and the
train going to the port and the long voyage to the factory in England
where it is to be spun. How many sheep's warm coats contributed to
make one of your blankets? You never thought of that before,
perhaps. But still we have not reached the awakening of Prue's
consciousness on this great matter of herself and the world.)
She lay there in that blessed half-awake, half-asleep state for some
minutes, until she began to feel something warm on her cheek, and
realized that it was the sun. And she suddenly thought how wonderful
it was that there should be such a substance as glass which can keep
out the cold but lets light and warmth through it, and, idly
thinking, she began to wonder how glass is made, and when it was
discovered, and what people did before they had it, and either how
draughty or how dark their rooms must have been; and she determined
to ask her father and Miss Fry about it; and that was the beginning
of this story.
From the window as she lay there, her eyes strayed all round the
room, and everything that they saw set her wondering afresh. It was
a very nice little bedroom. The wall-paper was white, with little
bunches of wall-paper flowers tied with blue ribbon all over it--the
kind of wall-paper that does not look like anything but what it is
and is therefore happy and restful, and very different from the
wall-paper that was there when Prue had measles last year. That had
a curly, twisted pattern on it which, when Prue had fever, turned
into animals and frightened her; and then it was badly hung in some
places, and Prue would lie there for hours wishing that it fitted and
longing to get up and alter it. But the new paper was gay and
properly pasted on, and Prue liked it very much.
On the walls were a few pictures--one or two coloured ones from the
Christmas numbers in cheap frames (glass again!) and the "Angels'
heads," by Sir Joshua Reynolds from the National Gallery, and the
little King Philip on his pony, by Velasquez, from the Wallace
Collection, and an illuminated text from Aunt Mildred, very
beautifully done in gold and water-colours--"The Lord is my
Shepherd," and a Shakespeare date calendar. There were ornaments on
the mantelpiece--a gaily-painted wooden figure from Munich, two
Japanese vases, a tiny cat and a tiny dog in brass, painted just like
life, from Vienna, and a serpentine cup from the Lizard. In the
fire-place was coal and wood all ready to be lit when Prue had a
cold. Before the window was her dressing-table with a mirror over
it, and her brush and comb and so forth on little mats with fringe
round them. Then there were the curtains, and the blind, and the
wardrobe of white wood with a little painted pattern, and the chest
of drawers, and the washing-stand with soap and toothbrush and so
forth, and the chairs. There was also a little hanging bookshelf,
and on the floor was a bright green carpet.
Prue lay in her little brass bed and looked at these things one by
one while the sun continued to pour through the windows and the time
to get up came nearer and nearer. And all the while she was getting
up she was thinking about these things, and how they were made, and
where they came from, and when she came downstairs she told her
father about it.
We have seen something about the origin of the sheets and the
blankets of Prue's bed. But what about the mattress and the pillows
and the framework. Just as before there could be the blankets there
had to be sheep with fleece on their backs, so before there could be
this mattress there had to be horses, for it was stuffed with
horsehair, the long hairs combed from their tails chiefly in Russia,
South America, and Australia. But, you say, the hair in a horse's
tail is long and straight, while the hair that one can pull out of
mattresses is short and curly. That is true; but the curl has been
put there artificially, for a number of processes have to be gone
through between the combing of the tail and Prue's slumbers on the
mattress, and curling the hair is one of the most important, or there
would be no spring to it.
And just as sheep and horses had to live before there could be
blankets or mattresses, so did geese have to cackle over commons and
be killed for the market before Prue could lay her head on that soft
pillow. The goose is a familiar enough bird; a much rarer bird
contributed to keep Prue warm at nights by supplying her with the
beautiful soft quilt that lay on the top of her bed--the eider duck.
The eider duck is a bird that lives in very cold regions, such as
Spitzbergen and Greenland and Iceland and the north of Norway. The
down comes from her breast and is plucked by herself to cover her
eggs and keeps them warm. Having marked down an eider-duck's nest,
the down-hunter takes away all its contents, and this he does again
and again at intervals of a few days until he guesses that the
eider-duck's patience is almost exhausted. He then leaves the eggs
and down undisturbed, for fear that she will lay no more. The
business of collecting down has become so important that artificial
nests are made to which the birds gladly come, and in which, in spite
of the way they are treated, they bravely go on laying eggs. From
each of these nests half a pound of down is collected each breeding
season; but before it is ready to be put into quilts it has to be
washed and cleaned to such an extent that the half-pound has dwindled
to a quarter. It all does not sound very gentlemanly, does it? but
there are worse things than that in store for us. Well-to-do little
girls in London cannot be made comfortable without a good deal of
suffering going on in other parts of the world.
Take the looking-glass, for example, over there on the
dressing-table: what about the brightness at the back of it which
makes it reflect, and reflect not only what is in front of it but, as
you have probably discovered by looking sideways at it, that which is
apparently wholly out of its range too. I must confess that this
strange power of a mirror amazes me as much as its ordinary gift of
reflecting what is straight in front of it amazes a dog. The
reflecting power of a mirror is obtained by spreading mercury or
quicksilver on the back; but before this can be done the mercury has
to be obtained, and that process is one of the most dangerous to men.
Quicksilver is a most delightful plaything. The first school to
which I was sent, a school for girls and boys, was kept by a little
old Quaker lady with highly-magnifying, gold-rimmed spectacles, who,
when we had been good, used to bring out a little bottle of
quicksilver and pour great shining drops from it on the green baize
table, and it would run about in all directions. No doubt she
explained the origin and nature of mercury as it ran, but I have
forgotten that. All that I remember and have always remembered is
that the presence of the quicksilver proved that we had been good and
that everyone was happy; and it remains in my mind as a sign of
content. This little old lady with the gold-rimmed spectacles kept
also a casket containing those yellow, round, gelatine lozenges which
look like sovereigns, and which confectioners often use to mend
broken windows with. One of them was given to any child who coughed.
You should have heard what a lot of coughing there was!
There I stopped the first lesson; and, as it happened, there the
experiment stopped permanently. For I had let loose the furies! For
the rest of that evening and the whole of the next morning, before we
got them into the sea, the children did nothing but ask questions as
to the origin of this and that. We were in despair, and my
unpopularity reached a point almost beyond endurance. Frank avoided
his family as though it owed him money; Wynne was undisguisedly
testy, and even Mrs. Frank confessed that children's intelligences
can be overstimulated. "At any rate," she said, "at Rimini and in
summer. You must wait till we get back and it is colder."
I accepted the decree with composure.
"At any rate," I said, "you will admit that the idea was good."
"It depends," she said, "on Frank. If he returns to his wife I will
forgive you."