Beloved: I think that small children see very much as animals must do:
just the parts of things which have a direct influence on their lives, and
no memory outside that. I remember the kindness or frowns of faces in
early days far more than the faces themselves: and it is quite a distinct
and later memory that I have of standing within a doorway and watching my
mother pass downstairs unconscious of my being there,--and _then_, for the
first time, studying her features and seeing in them a certain solitude
and distance which I had never before noticed:--I suppose because I had
never before thought of looking at her when she was not concerned with me.
It was this unobservance of actual features, I imagine, which made me
think all gray-haired people alike, and find a difficulty in recognizing
those who called, except generically as callers--people who kissed me,
and whom therefore I liked to see.
One, I remember, for no reason unless because she had a brown face, I
mistook from a distance for my Aunt Dolly, and bounded into the room
where she was sitting, with a cry of rapture. And it was my earliest
conscious test of politeness, when I found out my mistake, not to cry over
it in the kind but very inferior presence to that one I had hoped for.
I suppose, also, that many sights which have no meaning to children go,
happily, quite out of memory; and that what our early years leave for us
in the mind's lavender are just the tit-bits of life, or the first blows
to our intelligence--things which did matter and mean much.
Corduroys come early into my life,--their color and the queer earthy
smell of those which particularly concerned me: because I was picked up
from a fall and tenderly handled by a rough working-man so clothed, whom
I regarded for a long time afterward as an adorable object. He and I
lived to my recognition of him as a wizened, scrubby, middle-aged man,
but remained good friends after the romance was over. I don't know when
the change in my sense of beauty took place as regards him.
Anything unusual that appealed to my senses left exaggerated marks. My
father once in full uniform appeared to me as a giant, so that I
screamed and ran, and required much of his kindest voice to coax me back
to him.
Also once in the street a dancer in fancy costume struck me in the same
way, and seemed in his red tunic twice the size of the people who
crowded round him.
I think as a child the small ground-flowers of spring took a larger hold
upon me than any others:--I was so close to them. Roses I don't remember
till I was four or five; but crocus and snowdrop seem to have been in my
blood from the very beginning of things; and I remember likening the
green inner petals of the snowdrop to the skirts of some ballet-dancing
dolls, which danced themselves out of sight before I was four years old.
Snapdragons, too, I remember as if with my first summer: I used to feed
them with bits of their own green leaves, believing faithfully that
those mouths must need food of some sort. When I became more thoughtful
I ceased to make cannibals of them: but I think I was less convinced
then of the digestive process. I don't know when I left off feeding
snapdragons: I think calceolarias helped to break me off the habit, for
I found they had no throats to swallow with.
In much the same way as sights that have no meaning leave no traces, so
I suppose do words and sounds. It was many years before I overheard, in
the sense of taking in, a conversation by elders not meant for me:
though once, in my innocence, I hid under the table during the elders'
late dinner, and came out at dessert, to which we were always allowed to
come down, hoping to be an amusing surprise to them. And I could not at
all understand why I was scolded; for, indeed, I had _heard_ nothing at
all, though no doubt plenty that was unsuitable for a child's ears had
been said, and was on the elders' minds when they upbraided me.
Dearest, such a long-ago! and all these smallest of small things I
remember again, to lay them up for you: all the child-parentage of me whom
you loved once, and will again if ever these come to you.
Bless my childhood, dearest: it did not know it was lonely of you, as I
know of myself now! And yet I have known you, and know you still, so am
the more blest.--Good-night.