THE CHILD—ITS IMAGINATION
The imagination of the poet, of the novelist, of the advertiser of a
patent medicine, is as nothing compared with that of a little child.
No one who is unable to realise this will understand children or be
really successful in their upbringing.
[Sidenote: The Riotous Imagination of Children.]
[Sidenote: Unimaginative Parents.]
Whence come all the marvellous ideas that people the brain of a
mere baby of two or three years? Is it that it has descended but a
step or two down the staircase and still has a mind to some extent
untrammelled by human limitations and the hard dry facts of earth?
Or is it that, possessed of a keenly receptive power, it has not
learnt to control or arrange the multitudes of facts that present
themselves daily to its senses? This wonderful imagination is no
doubt closely allied with the early powers of memory of which mention
has been made, and may also have something at least to do with the
early propensity to untruthfulness. Many a child has suffered at the
hands of an unimaginative parent for words which have been ruthlessly
called lies though they have been so strongly prompted by a vivid
imagination that they have seemed as true to the utterer as much that
is unintelligible but has to be accepted.
[Sidenote: Arrangement of the Numerals.]
[Sidenote: The Circle of the Months.]
A moment’s thought will show at what an early age imagination came
into play with most people. By far the greater number have by its aid
clothed certain abstract ideas in definite concrete forms, and have
done this when so young that it is impossible for them to remember
the time when these things first took shape. For instance, most
people have a definite arrangement of the numerals. A common form for
this to take is that of the numbers one to twelve appearing to run
slightly upwards and towards the right, those from twelve to twenty
taking a downward turn in the same direction. At the number twenty a
sharp turn is taken to the left, and from that point to one hundred
they run uphill with an increasing steepness. Many other directions
and shapes are discovered by questioning people on this subject, but
it is very rare to find an example of the numerals being nothing but
an abstract idea. The same thing occurs with the months. To most
people they appear in a circle, winter being in some cases at the
top, and summer in others. In one case a person imagines them in a
semicircle, and in another (the strangest yet met with) they are in
a zig-zag, three months running up, and three down, and so on, the
form being like that of a rather straggling M.
[Sidenote: Effects of Colour.]
Colour also is occasionally imagined, and there is no doubt that
children are specially susceptible to its influence at a very early
age. A writer in the eighteenth century to whom allusion has been
made in Chapter I makes the following observation: “There are some
children so tenderly organised that many kinds of sounds are harsh
to their Infant Ears and apt to fright them, and some colours strike
them with too great and quick a Glare and have the same Effect till
by Custom they are made familiar to their Organs.”
[Sidenote: Colour of the Days.]
It is certain at all events that colour has played an important part
in the imagination of many people from their earliest years. A lady
declares that all her life long the days of the week have appeared
to her to be of certain definite colours. Thus, Sunday is brick red,
Monday the same, Tuesday lilac, Wednesday white, Thursday dark brown,
Friday grey, and Saturday mauve and yellow. All this imagining took
place so near the start of her life that the colour, form, etc., of
the days appear to this lady to be facts dating from the beginning
of time itself. It should be noted that in these and all similar
instances the imagination is apparently independent of outside
influences such as pictures or descriptions which might be supposed
to have affected a little child.
[Sidenote: The Imaginary Child-Friend.]
It is possible to go further than this and to say that the most vivid
imaginings are as a rule those which a child produces absolutely
and apart from the suggestion of others. Under this head comes the
imaginary child-friend called into existence in most cases by one
who has no playmate of similar age. The grown-up people in the
house know nothing of this imaginary friend until the real child is
overheard talking to it and calling it by name. It is remarkable to
notice how nothing seems to disturb the commonplace reality of the
whole thing in the mind of the child. When the imaginary friend is
in the room his or her presence is never for a moment forgotten, and
plans are gravely made to suit the convenience not of one only but of
_both_ the children.
Next in importance to the unsuggested imaginings are those to which
a sensitive child gives way on the slightest hint. This is a very
practical matter, and one to which those who have to do with children
should take heed.
[Sidenote: Imaginary Terrors.]
It is impossible to say at how early an age a suggestion of any kind
may bear fruit. A lady once said that her childhood was one long
misery owing to a vivid imagination of the terrors that awaited her
for having committed a certain fault when a baby in the nursery. It
was not, she said, that much had been made of it at the time, but
there was some suggestion of an awful unknown punishment, which her
childish brain worked upon and developed until she dared not be left
alone and became a thoroughly morbid and wretched little being.
It is obvious that too great care cannot possibly be taken by those
to whom children are entrusted, inasmuch as a chance word may set a
child’s imagination working and affect the tendency of its thoughts
and actions for years.
[Sidenote: Untruthfulness and Imagination.]
It was suggested at the beginning of this chapter that there is
probably some relation between this power of imagination and the
tendency to untruthfulness which is found in so many children. It is
one of the most difficult things possible to define exactly where
the knowledge of untruthfulness comes in. Probably no two children
are alike in this, and it requires the utmost tact and a close
knowledge of a particular child’s character to determine the point
where the one thing ends and the other begins.
Here is an example. A short time ago a little boy still in the
nursery was taken out by his father in the carriage for a drive. When
they arrived at the farther end of the town the little chap was sent
home in the carriage by himself, his father having been deposited at
his place of business. When the carriage arrived back at the door of
the house the parlourmaid came out and carried the child indoors,
being surprised to find him in tears. Struggling out of her arms he
set off upstairs to the nursery, sobbing bitterly all the way. “What
is the matter, dear?” said the nurse. “I’se had to walk by mine own
self all froo the town, and I was dreffly frightened,” was the reply.
“How ever did you get across the High Street, my poor darling?”
“There was lots of cabs and cawwiages and things, and I knewed I
would be runned over!” All this with many sobs and much burying
of his head in nurse’s lap. Hearing the wailing in the nursery up
came the parlourmaid, to whom the nurse poured out her indignation.
“Just fancy! Making this poor lamb walk home all through the town
by himself! It’s a mercy he was not killed again and again!” “Walk
through the town! Why, whatever do you mean? Why, I lifted him out of
the carriage at this very door not ten minutes ago!”
Well, the temptation to punish the little fellow must have been
great. One hopes it was resisted. There can be small doubt that a
vivid imagination had mastered him as he drove home alone. It was
all “what might have been,” and it became so real to him that it
seemed to be “what was.”
[Sidenote: Confession of an Imaginary Sin.]
Again, a case recurs to the recollection of the writer where a small
child was summoned into the presence of an angry parent who listened
to no excuses, but insisted so strongly and so often on the guilt
of the small boy, that at last he actually seemed convinced by the
reiterated accusation and, imagining that his parent must know best,
actually confessed to a sin which subsequent events proved the
impossibility of his having committed.
Now for an example where it is probable that the imagination of the
child is used for ulterior purposes and the borderland between fancy
and untruthfulness is likely to be crossed.
[Sidenote: Jinks.]
There is a little girl who a few years ago was possessed of many
dolls, but the supreme favourite was an old monkey-doll by name
“Jinks.” He was so much hugged and cuddled from the first that he
soon became shabby. He quickly lost all his hair except a tuft on
each side of his face, and his clothes were reduced to a pair of dark
blue trousers and a sort of shabby white jersey. But the shabbier he
became the more she loved him, and in time, being an ingenious little
person, she began to make use of him, as is often the case among
grown-up people. The first instance on record is of the simplest
kind, but showed much insight into human nature. The little girl had
been disobedient and was being duly lectured on her fault. She stood
there looking very serious with “Jinks” tightly clasped in her arms.
All of a sudden the length of the lecture became more than she could
bear. Something must be done. Suddenly she held up the ugly old doll
and with a pleasant smile upon her face remarked, “Look at Jinks! ’ow
’e’s laughing!” It was an ingenious and effective ruse, but a ruse it
was and not mere play of imagination.
On another more recent occasion she made use of “Jinks” in a rather
more elaborate fashion. Her everyday gloves were knitted woollen
ones and these she disliked intensely. One day she was seen starting
out in a pair which were properly kept for Sundays. She was stopped
and asked why she had put on her best gloves. “Why,” she answered at
once, “You see when I was getting ready I thought p’raps I should
meet Jinks on the stairs—and he can’t _bear_ to see me in those
woolly gloves!”
Most people who have little children among their friends can remember
similar instances, and these are just the cases where firm but
sympathetic interference is necessary to prevent confusion between
imagination and want of truth.
[Sidenote: The Idea of Death.]
[Sidenote: Desire for a Legacy.]
Possessed as they are of such great powers of imagination in many
directions it is curious to notice how often children seem unable
to realise or picture to themselves matters with which they will be
familiar enough in after life. Take, for instance, the subject of
death. A child will imagine the death of a doll. This is a fancy that
occurs rarely, and the imagination goes as a rule no further. A child
does not picture to itself the sorrow and loss commonly caused by the
death of a real person. A little girl of three years old was sitting
on her godfather’s knee. There was an immense affection between the
two, and either would have missed the other sadly. An old man in
the village known by sight to the little girl had lately died, and
she had just remarked to her godfather quite as a bit of cheerful
gossip, “Old John is dead.” The conversation then turned upon a
certain gold watch which the little maiden desired more than anything
in the world. Once more she was told, “No, I really can’t give it
to you; I want it so badly myself.” Then followed these apparently
callous words. “Your hair is _rather_ white like old John’s. I s’pect
you will be dead soon. Then can I have the watch?”
At first sight this sounds heartless and calculating, but as a matter
of fact it was certainly not the former. The subject of death was too
big for her imagination, that was all.
[Sidenote: Small Imagination of Suffering.]
In this same connection it is found that pain as affecting others
is often very slightly realised by children, and they seem to be
unable to imagine suffering such as has not come within their own
experience. It is for this reason that little children often inflict
tortures on animals, especially on flies and other small creatures
which are at their mercy. It is not from a love of cruelty as some
people have said, but simply because their imagination falls short in
this direction, and they do not realise the effects of their actions.
But, with certain exceptions, a child has invariably an immense
capability for imagining. As has been stated, the most vivid fancies
seem to spring up unbidden, but it is equally true that it is
possible in a large degree to influence the _kind_ of imagination.
Happiness is an essential atmosphere for the upbringing of a child,
and happiness is to a large extent dependent in childhood upon
imagination. By supplying this atmosphere the best kind of imaginings
can be ensured.
[Sidenote: Parental Sympathy.]
A child whose parents are occupied entirely with themselves and their
own affairs and have no sympathy with childish fancies will shrink
up into itself and have a stunted mental and spiritual growth: the
terrified child will grow up amid horrible imaginings; it is only the
child to whom gentleness and sympathy are as the very air it breathes
who will imagine happy and beautiful things, and live to enjoy the
fulfilment of them here and hereafter.
[Sidenote: Poetic Imaginings.]
This leads naturally to the poetic imaginings of many children who
have outgrown their babyhood, but have not yet had their fancies
blurred and obscured by the tasks and troubles of the world. They
possess a gift which all may envy—the gift of endowing all manner
of things, both those which are beautiful in themselves and those
which are not, with a glory not their own. This gift comes from the
power of connecting one thought with another, or perhaps of allowing
one idea unconsciously to suggest another, which is the root of all
imagination. It is a gift that has brought sunshine and happiness to
thousands of children, and is preserved by some in after life. All
our great poets and painters have kept hold of this power, and many
persons share vicariously in its delights as they read the glorious
thoughts or gaze on the exquisite pictures that have been thus
inspired.
And yet there are some who scoff. They have forgotten their
childhood’s gift, and are too self-satisfied to regret it. Not so the
old poet Wordsworth. He felt the power leaving him. The brightness of
his poetic imagination was on the wane, and he thus lamented it:—
There was a time when meadow, grove and stream,
The earth and every common sight,
To me did seem
Apparell’d in celestial light,
The glory and the freshness of a dream.
It is not now as it hath been of yore;
Turn wheresoe’er I may
By night or day,
The things which I have seen I now can see no more.
There are many people who have never troubled to understand children
and who are mightily sceptical as to the powers and the charm that is
claimed for them. It is hardly possible to do better here than to ask
such persons to read the example given below of a child’s poetical
imaginings.
The story is told in the first person, and is in the main literally
true. It is called
“I WONDERS”
[Sidenote: “I Wonders”]
“It was a lovely September day. I had any number of duties to fulfil
at home. There was a pile of letters waiting to be answered, there
was a magazine article hardly begun for which I had received an
urgent demand from the publishers only that morning, and there was a
meeting of school managers which my conscience told me I ought on no
account to miss. But, as I said before, it was a simply lovely day
and nature (human and the other) cried shame on staying indoors.
Whether I should have had sufficient strength of mind to have
resisted the temptation had I been left to fight it out with nature
I shall never know, for the enemy received a sudden reinforcement
before which I yielded ignominiously and at once. I had gone so far
as to clear my blotting-pad of loose letters and to open my ink
bottle when there came a tiny tap at the study door. ‘Come in!’ I
called, and there ensued a curious twisting at the handle of the
door, productive of no result. ‘Come in!’ I called again, and this
time there was no further delay.
“With a little burst the door flew open and revealed that my visitor
was no less and no greater a person than Helen.
[Sidenote: Helen.]
“Now Helen needs some description, and no better time for giving it
could be found than as she stood there at the top of the three or
four steps which lead up to my sanctum, her face flushed with her
struggle with the door handle.
“Helen was a town-bred child of five years old, and the colour gave
her usually pale face an added charm. Charm is the right word to use,
for, though she did not possess any very great beauty (excepting her
large dark eyes and lashes), it was impossible not to fall under her
charm. She fascinated by her various moods, often serious almost
to melancholy, but suddenly bursting out into utter and abandoned
joyousness. She fascinated again by her vivid imagination, by the
sensitiveness with which she shrank from an unresponsive look or
word, and by the gradual unfolding of her nature to anyone who
_understood_. She had come to stay with us in our completely country
house, and was entranced with the mystery and delight of all she saw.
“On that particular morning she had come to demand that I should
fulfil a promise to go out and pick blackberries, for had not I said
that I had passed quantities of big ones, all ripe and ready, only
the day before? There she stood in her white sun bonnet and her short
red flannel jacket, beneath which came the bottom of her white frock
and a little pair of legs which country sun and air were already
beginning to assimilate to those of our village bairns in colour
though not in thickness.
“‘Well?’ I said, to which her only reply was to hold up and shake at
me an empty basket with which she had provided herself. ‘What’s that
for?’ said I. ‘I wonders!’ she answered, using an expression with
which we had already become familiar. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you had better
tell me.’ ‘Can’t you guess?’—with some scorn—and then triumphantly,
‘Backberwies, o’ course!’
“There was very little more to be said. Nature might have been
resisted alone, but nature _and_ Helen would have proved too much for
a stronger and more reluctant man than I. And so it was arranged.
Helen was to meet me in the hall in a quarter of an hour, which would
give me time to scribble a couple of notes, one (by the way) to the
publishers to say that great pressure prevented my finishing the
article that day, which was true—in a sense!
“I have been many walks with many people, but none that I can compare
with the one upon which Helen and I started that sunny September
morning. I have walked as an undergraduate with learned dons who
discoursed of matters beyond my ken. I have walked with ladies of
sentiment, who vainly appealed to my sympathy and imagination. But
never till that morning did I walk with a companion who carried me
with her into another world and who obtained complete sway over my
every thought and action. This did not begin all at once.
[Sidenote: Through the Village.]
“There was a little bit of the village through which we must pass,
and here there were sundry dangers. Old Sawyer’s black and white
sow had got loose and certainly looked formidably large and fierce
as she shoved her snout with deep grunts into the ditch beside the
road. Then a farmer’s collie-dog—a particular friend of mine, but a
stranger and therefore a possible foe to my companion—came prancing
up. These and other sources of terror, such as the village flock of
geese, made it essential that we should proceed with caution and with
such strength as a union of hands might afford. However, it did not
take long to bring us to the end of the cottages and out on to the
road beside which I had seen the blackberries hanging all ready to
be picked. It was a good wide road with a broad strip of grass on
either side, along one of which was a row of telegraph posts which
brought the single wire by which we were connected with the busy
world. The hedges were high and bushy—full of honeysuckle, now out of
bloom, wild roses by this time showing only their scarlet fruit, wild
hops climbing everywhere with rapid eager growth, clematis giving
promise of a hoary show of old man’s beard, and in and out and over
and through it all the long thorny brambles with their many-coloured
leaves and their shiny black and red and green berries.
[Sidenote: The Backberwy People.]
“With just one look round to assure herself that nobody and nothing
was about, Helen let go my hand and rushed off like a mad thing along
the grass, just recovering herself with a gasp from a bad stumble
over a dried and hidden heap of road scrapings. All of a sudden
she stopped. She had caught sight of the ‘backberwies’ and of the
numberless other brilliant and tempting objects in the hedge. In a
moment her imagination had caught fire. ‘I wonders!’ she said as I
came up. Then, when her breath was quite recovered, she added very
earnestly, ‘Can us get them backberwy people? It’s vewy dangewous,
isn’t it? Look at them nettles and fistles! Is them the backberwies’
policemen—I wonders?’
“If they were, they proved very useful as far as warding off attacks
on the part of a little bare-legged maiden went. However, by dint of
_very_ careful steering she managed to get close up to a splendid
cluster of fruit and had picked some four or five when one of the
sharp hooky thorns tore her finger and brought tears into her eyes.
Even so, the play went on. ‘Oh! the backberwies’ dog has bit me!’ she
cried, as she held up the poor little finger for me to see. It was
really a nasty prick, and I could see that it hurt her a good deal,
so I tied her handkerchief round it, and said we would try to find a
place further on where the dogs were not so savage.
[Sidenote: The Backberwy Ball.]
“We went on a yard or two and passed close to one of the telegraph
posts through which a light breeze was humming. Helen stopped short
with eyes dilated and open mouth. ‘Oh! I _wonders_!’ she cried.
‘What is it?’ I asked her. She whispered to me to keep quite still
while she went to see, and proceeded to put her ear against the
post, holding up one finger of the injured hand in warning to me not
to stir. ‘There’s beautiful music,’ she said at last very softly,
‘there’s a ball, and all the little backberwies is dancing!’ I said
that if the old blackberries let the young ones go to a ball without
them it served them right if they got picked themselves. I then
suggested that we should go on to the next post and see what was
going on there. As we went Helen noticed that near each one there was
a heap of stones and a bare gravelly patch of ground. ‘Them is the
backberwy houses,’ she said, ‘and all the backberwies are out, and
the children are gone to a dancing class, so the old backberwies send
them by theirselves.’ So the little difficulty which I had mentioned
was explained away, though to the vividness of her imagination it had
evidently presented a real difficulty and had not been forgotten.
“Presently, after listening to the music in several telegraph posts,
saying that there was an organ in one and fiddles in another, while
in a third she declared that the blackberries were singing, she
returned to the hedge and the more serious duty of filling her little
basket. All the time, however, she kept up a comment upon what she
saw. The red hips and haws were ‘the backberwies’ soldiers,’ the
elderberries were their clergymen, and the sloes were guards. Every
few minutes she stopped in a sort of ecstasy at all that was around
her, and gazing in one direction and another would softly say, ‘Oh! I
wonders!’ It was evidently a revelation of beauty to her, and at the
same time a scene of mystery, a sort of fairyland where everything
thought and lived and breathed.
[Sidenote: The Wicked Soldiers.]
“At last the basket was getting nearly full, and in stretching up
for some specially fine berries a dog-rose thorn tore the back of my
hand, leaving a long scratch. Helen’s anger knew no bounds.
“‘The wicked, wicked soldiers,’ she said, and then taking several of
the bright red hips she tore them into fragments and threw them away.
And now we had wandered backwards and forwards along that special
bit of hedge until all the blackberries within reach were picked, and
only the baby green ones were left. ‘Will they die if we leaves them
all alone?’ she said, and then she gathered as many as possible, and
carrying them in her two hands placed them in little heaps near each
telegraph post that they might be noticed when the balls and concerts
were over.
“I said that I wondered what the young blackberries would do when
they came out and found all their fathers and mothers gone, and only
the little babies left. And Helen said ‘I wonders.’”