CHILD STUDY AND CHILD NATURE.
Dickens was a profound student of children, and he revealed his
consciousness of the need of a general study of childhood in all he wrote
about the importance of a free childhood, individuality, the imagination,
coercion, cramming, and wrong methods of training children.
He criticised the blindness of those who saw boys as a class or in a
limited number of classes, distinguished by external and comparatively
unimportant characteristics, in Mr. Grimwig, "who never saw any difference
in boys, and only knew two sorts of boys, mealy boys and beef-faced boys."
He exposed the ignorance--the wilful ignorance--of vast numbers of parents
and teachers who indignantly resent the suggestion that they need to study
children, in Jane Murdstone. When Jane was interfering in the management
of David, and with her brother totally misunderstanding him and
misrepresenting him, his timid mother ventured to say:
"I beg your pardon, my dear Jane, but are you quite sure--I am certain
you'll excuse me, my dear Jane--that you quite understand Davy?"
"I should be somewhat ashamed of myself, Clara," returned Miss
Murdstone, "if I could not understand the boy, or any boy. I don't
profess to be profound, but I do lay claim to common sense."
Many Jane Murdstones still claim that it is not necessary to study so
common a thing as a boy. Yet a child is the most wonderful thing in the
world, and, whether the Jane Murdstones in the schools and homes like it
or not, the wise people _are_ studying the child with a view to finding
out what he should be guided to do in the accomplishment of his own
training.
Richard Carstone had been eight years at school, and he was a miserable
failure in life, although a man of good ability.
"It had never been anybody's business to find out what his natural bent
was, or where his failings lay, or to adapt any kind of knowledge to him."
Esther wisely said: "I did doubt whether Richard would not have profited
by some one studying him a little, instead of his studying Latin verses so
much."
Dickens studied every subject about which he wrote with great care and
discrimination. As an instance of this careful study it may be stated that
medical authorities say that the description of Smike's sickness and death
is the best description of consumption ever written. Dickens had a
wonderful imagination, but he never relied on his imagination for his
facts or his philosophy. It is therefore reasonable to believe that as he
wrote more about children than any other man or woman, he was the greatest
and most reverent student of childhood that England has produced.
In addition to the revelations of his conclusions given in the evolution
of his child characters, and in the many illustrations of good and of bad
training, he continually makes direct statements in regard to child nature
and how to deal with it in its varied manifestations.
His central motive was expressed by the old gentleman who found Little
Nell astray in London: "I love these little people; and it is not a slight
thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us."
His ideal of unperverted child nature was entirely different from that
which had been taught by theology and psychology. He believed the child to
be pure and good, and that even when heredity was bad, its baneful
influences need not blight the divinity in his life, if he was wisely
trained and had a free life of self-activity, a suitable environment, and
truly sympathetic friends.
"It would be a curious speculation," said I, after some restless turns
across and across the room, "to imagine her in her future life,
holding her solitary way among a crowd of wild, grotesque companions,
the only pure, fresh, youthful object in the throng."
To keep children pure and fresh was the chief aim of his life work. He had
no respect for those who treated children as if they were grown-up,
reasonable beings; who judged children as they would judge adults, and
therefore misjudged them. He always remembered that a child was a little
stranger in a new world, and that his complex nature had to adjust itself
to its environment. He had a perfect, reverent, considerate sympathy for
the timid young soul venturing to look out upon its new conditions. One of
the most pathetic things in the world to him was the fact that children
are nearly universally misunderstood and misinterpreted. How he longed to
tear down the barriers of formalism, and conventionality, and
indifference, and misconception from the lives of parents and teachers, so
that timid children might be true to their better natures in their
presence.
When little Florence timidly presented herself, Mr. Dombey stopped in
his pacing up and down and looked toward her. Had he looked with
greater interest and with a father's eye, he might have read in her
keen glance the impulses and fears that made her waver; the passionate
desire to run clinging to him, crying, as she hid her face in his
embrace, "Oh, father, try to love me! there's no one else!" the dread
of a repulse; the fear of being too bold, and of offending him; the
pitiable need in which she stood of some assurance and encouragement;
and how her overcharged young heart was wandering to find some natural
resting place for its sorrow and affection.
But he saw nothing of this. He saw her pause irresolutely at the door
and look toward him; and he saw no more.
"Come in," he said, "come in; what is the child afraid of?"
She came in, and after glancing round her for a moment with an
uncertain air, stood pressing her small hands hard together, close
within the door.
"Come here, Florence," said her father coldly. "Do you know who I am?"
"Yes, papa."
"Have you nothing to say to me?"
The tears that stood in her eyes as she raised them quickly to his
face were frozen by the expression it wore. She looked down again and
put out her trembling hand.
Mr. Dombey took it loosely in his own, and stood looking down upon her
for a moment, as if he knew as little as the child what to say or do.
"There! Be a good girl," he said, patting her on the head, and
regarding her, as it were, by stealth with a disturbed and doubtful
look. "Go to Richards. Go!"
His little daughter hesitated for another instant as though she would
have clung about him still, or had some lingering hope that he might
raise her in his arms and kiss her. She looked up in his face once
more. He thought how like her expression was then to what it had been
when she looked round at the doctor--that night--and instinctively
dropped her hand and turned away.
It was not difficult to perceive that Florence was at a great
disadvantage in her father's presence. It was not only a constraint
upon the child's mind, but even upon the natural grace and freedom of
her actions.
The child, in her grief and neglect, was so gentle, so quiet and
uncomplaining, was possessed of so much affection that no one seemed
to care to have, and so much sorrowful intelligence that no one seemed
to mind or think about the wounding of, that Polly's heart was sore
when she was left alone again.
The same lesson was given to parents and teachers in Murdstone's treatment
of Davy. The sensitive, shy boy was regarded as sullen, and treated "like
a dog" in consequence. Oh, what bitterness it puts into a child's life to
be misunderstood by its dearest friends! If there were no other reason for
the co-operative study of children by parents and teachers, it would be a
sufficient reason that they might be understood and appreciated. Many
lives are made barren and wicked by the failure of parents and teachers to
understand them.
It is so easy for children to get the impression that they are not liked
by adults. When Walter started life in Mr. Dombey's great warehouse, his
uncle, old Solomon Gills, with whom he lived, asked him on his return
from work the first day:
"Has Mr. Dombey been there to-day?"
"Oh, yes! In and out all day."
"He didn't take any notice of you, I suppose?"
"Yes, he did. He walked up to my seat--I wish he wasn't so solemn and
stiff, uncle--and said, 'Oh! you are the son of Mr. Gills, the ships'
instrument maker.' 'Nephew, sir,' I said. 'I said nephew, boy,' said
he. But I could take my oath he said son, uncle."
"You're mistaken, I dare say. It's no matter."
"No, it's no matter, but he needn't have been so sharp, I thought.
There was no harm in it, though he did say son. Then he told me that
you had spoken to him about me, and that he had found me employment in
the house accordingly, and that I was expected to be attentive and
punctual, and then he went away. I thought he didn't seem to like me
much."
"You mean, I suppose," observed the instrument maker, "that you didn't
seem to like him much."
"Well, uncle," returned the boy, laughing, "perhaps so; I never
thought of that."
This short selection reveals the disrespect for childhood which leads
adulthood to flatly contradict what a child says, whether he is making a
statement of fact or of opinion. This is most inconsiderate, and naturally
leads to a corresponding disrespect for adulthood on the part of the
child. The selection clearly intimates that childhood would be more happy,
and like adulthood better, if adulthood was not so "solemn and stiff."
Parents and teachers should learn from Solomon's philosophy that a child's
feelings toward an adult partly determine his impressions regarding the
attitude of adulthood toward him.
The first thing necessary in training a child to be his real, best self is
to win his affectionate regard and confidence. One has to be very true,
very unconventional, and very joyous, to do this fully.
Dickens pitied the child because, even when he is understood, his wishes,
plans, and decisions are not treated with respect. This is a gross
injustice to the child's nature. As Pip so truly said: "It may be only
small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small,
and its world is small, and its rocking horse stands as many hands high,
according to scale, as a big-boned Irish hunter."
Adulthood needs to learn no lesson more than that childhood lives a life
of its own, that that life should not be tested by the scales and tape
lines of adulthood, and that within its range of action its choice should
be respected, and its opinions treated with reverent consideration.
Mrs. Lirriper said that when she used to read the Bible to Mrs. Edson,
when that lady was dying, "though she took to all I read to her, I used to
fancy that next to what was taught upon the Mount she took most of all to
his gentle compassion for us poor women, and to his young life, and to how
his mother was proud of him, and treasured his sayings in her heart."
The divinity in any child will grow more rapidly if his mother "treasures
his sayings in her heart." We need more reverence for the child.
Dickens tried to make parents regard the child as a sacred thing, which
should always be the richest joy of his parents.
Speaking of Mrs. Darnay, in The Tale of Two Cities, he says:
The time passed, and her little Lucie lay on her bosom. Then, among
the advancing echoes, there was the tread of her tiny feet and the
sound of her prattling words. Let greater echoes resound as they
would, the young mother at the cradle side could always hear those
coming. They came, and the shady house was sunny with a child's laugh,
and the divine Friend of children, to whom in her trouble she had
confided hers, seemed to take her child in his arms, as he took the
child of old, and made it a sacred joy to her.
Dickens had profound faith in children whose true development had not been
arrested.
Doctor Strong had a simple faith in him that might have touched the
stone hearts of the very urns upon the wall.... He appealed in
everything to the honour and good faith of the boys, and relied on
their possession of those qualities unless they proved themselves
unworthy.
Reliance begets reliance. Faith increases the qualities that merit faith.
David said the doctor's reliance on the boys "worked wonders." No wonder
it worked wonders. We can help a boy to grow no higher than our faith in
him can reach.