In the month of March, as the shadows of twilight gathered, two little
children were seated very close together upon a low footstool--two
little ones, between the ages of five and six, dressed in short trousers
with white pinafores over them, as was the fashion of the time. After
having played wildly they were now quietly amusing themselves with paper
and pencils. The dim light seemed to fill them with a vague fear, and it
troubled their spirits.
Of the two children only one was drawing--it was I. The other, a friend
invited over for the day, an exceptional thing, was watching me with
great attention. With some difficulty (trusting me meantime) he followed
the fantastic movements of my pencil whose intention I took care to
explain to him at some length. And my oral interpretation was necessary,
for I was busy executing two drawings that I entitled respectively, “The
Happy Duck” and “The Unhappy Duck.”
The room in which we were seated must have been furnished about the year
1805, at the time of the marriage of my now-very-old grandmother, who
still occupied it, and who this evening was seated in the chair of the
Directory period; she was singing to herself and she took no notice of
us.
My memories of my grandmother are indistinct for her death occurred
shortly after this time; but as I will never again, in the course of
this recital, have a more vivid impression of her, I will here insert
what I know of her history.
It seems that in the stress of all sorts of troubles she had been a
brave and noble mother. After reverses that were so general in those
days, after losing her husband at the Battle of Trafalgar, and her
elder son at the shipwreck of the Medusa, she went resolutely to work to
educate her younger son, my father, until such time as he should be
able to support himself. At about her eightieth year (which was not far
distant when I came into the world) the senility of second childhood
had set in; at that time I knew nothing about the tragedy of the loss of
memory and I could not realize the vacancy of her mind and soul.
She would often stand for a long time before a mirror and talk in a most
amiable way to her own reflection, which she called, “my good neighbor”
or “my dear neighbor.” It was also her mania to sing with a most
excessive ardor the Marseillaise, the Parisiennes, the “Song of
Farewell,” and all the noble songs of the transition time, which had
been the rage in her young womanhood.
During these exciting times she had lived quietly, and had occupied
herself entirely with her household cares and her son's education. For
that reason it seems the more singular that from her disordered mind,
just about as it was to take its journey into complete darkness and to
become disintegrated through death, there should come this tardy echo of
that tempestuous time.
I enjoyed listening to her very much and often I would laugh, but
without any irreverence, and I never was the least afraid of her. She
was extremely lovely and had delicate and regular features, and her
expression was very sweet. Her abundant hair was silver-gray, and upon
her cheeks there was a color similar to that of a faded rose leaf,
a color which the old people of that generation often retained into
extreme old age. I remember that she usually wore a red cashmere shawl
about her shoulders, and that she always had on an old-fashioned cap
trimmed with green ribbons. There was something very modest and gentle
and pleasing about her still graceful little body.
Her room, where I liked to come to play because it was so large and
sunny, was furnished as simply as a Presbyterian parsonage: the waxed
walnut furniture was of the Directory period, the large bed had a canopy
of thick, red, cotton stuff and the walls were painted an ochre yellow;
and upon them in gilt frames, slightly tarnished, were hung water colors
representing vases of flowers. I very soon discovered that this room
was furnished in a very simple and old-fashioned way, and I thought to
myself that the good old grandmother who sang so constantly must be much
poorer than my other grandmother, who was younger by twenty years,
and who always dressed in black--which last matter seemed an elegant
distinction to me.
But to return to my drawings! I think that the pictures of those two
ducks, occupying such different stations in life, were the first I ever
drew.
At the bottom of the picture called “The Happy Duck” I had drawn a tiny
house, and near the duck himself there was a large, kind woman who was
calling him to her so that she might give him food.
“The Unhappy Duck,” on the other hand, was swimming about solitary and
alone on a sort of hazy sea, which I had represented by drawing two or
three straight lines, and in the distance one could see the outline of a
gloomy shore. The thin paper, a leaf torn from a book, had print on the
reverse side, and the letters showed through in grayish flecks and gave
the curious impression as of clouds in the sky. And that little drawing,
with less form than a school-boy's blackboard scrawl, was completely
transfigured by those gray spots, and because of them it took on for me
a deep and dreadful significance. Aided by the dim light in the room the
pictured scene became a vision that faded away into the distance like
the pale surface of the sea. I was terrified at my own work; I was
astonished to find in it those things that I had not put there; to
discover in it those things which elsewhere had given me such a well
remembered anguish.
“Oh!” I said with exaltation to my young companion, who did not
understand anything of what was going forward, “Oh!” I exclaimed with a
voice full of emotion, “you may see it; I cannot bear to look at it!” I
covered the picture with my hands, but nevertheless I peeped at it very
often; and it was so vividly impressed upon my mind that I can still
recall it as it appeared to me transfigured: a gleam of light lay upon
the horizon of that sea so awkwardly represented, the heavens appeared
to be filled with rain, and it seemed to be a dreary winter evening in
which there was a fierce wind blowing.
The “Unhappy Duck” solitary, far away from his family and friends was
making his way toward the foggy shore over which there hung an air of
extreme sadness and desolation. And certainly for one fleeting moment
I had a prescience of those heartaches that I was to know later in
the course of my sailor life. I seemed to have a presentiment of those
stormy December evenings when my boat was to enter, to take shelter
until the morning, one of those uninhabited bays upon the coast of
Brittany; more particularly I had a prescience of those twilights of the
Antarctic winter when, in about the latitude of Magellan, we were to
go in search of protection towards those sterile shores that are as
inhospitable and as absolutely deserted as the waters surrounding them.
The vision faded and I once more found myself in my grandmother's
large room enveloped in the shadows of the evening. My grandmother was
singing, and I was again a tiny being who had seen nothing of the large
world, who had fears without knowing wherefore, and who did not even
know the cause of the tears that he shed.
Since then I have often observed that the rudimentary scrawls made by
children, and which as representations are incorrect and inadequate,
impress them much more than do the able and correct drawing of adults.
For although theirs are incomplete they add to them a thousand things of
their own seeing and imagining; and they add to them also the thousand
things that grow in the deep subsoil of their consciousness--the things
which no brush would be able to paint.