Happy Half-Hours Read online

  Indeed, the more I survey it, the more I feel that my library is sufficiently ornamental as it stands. Any reassembling of the books might spoil the colour-scheme. Baedeker’s Switzerland and Villette are both in red, a colour which is neatly caught up again, after an interlude in blue, by a volume of Browning and Jevons’ Elementary Logic. We had a woman here only yesterday who said, ‘How pretty your books look,’ and I am inclined to think that that is good enough. There is a careless rapture about them which I should lose if I started to arrange them methodically.

  But perhaps I might risk this to the extent of getting all their heads the same way up. Yes, on one of these fine days (or wet nights) I shall take my library seriously in hand. There are still one or two books which are the wrong way round. I shall put them the right way round.

  – Children’s Books –

  There is a well-established belief among uncles that all babies like to listen to the tick-tick. Perhaps they do. After all, for the first twelve months of one’s life there isn’t, in the way of spiritual refreshment, very much else that offers. One either listens to a watch ticking or one listens to it not ticking. So the millionth uncle takes out his gold hunter and says complacently, ‘Hark to the tick-tick’; the millionth baby is presumed to be harking; and, since no comment is made, the legend that he likes harking goes irresistibly on. The ideal baby-entertainer is the man with the watch.

  In something the same way the ‘children’s writer’ has established himself. To a child of age to read, or to be read to, any book is better than no book, to which extent any book is a children’s book. And because, I suppose, the first ‘children’s writer’ wrote in a certain way, as being the easiest way in which to write, a certain sort of book came to be regarded as the ideal children’s book, and it was agreed that the writer of any such book might safely be referred to as one who understood completely the psychology of the child’s mind.

  ‘Being the easiest way in which to write.’ That is the secret of nine-tenths of the Christmas Books – now so many that they demand a supplement to themselves. Inasmuch as the average father stops being a solicitor or a stockbroker (jobs at which he is an expert) in order to become, for the amusement of his child, an extremely indifferent actor, novelist or draughtsman, so is it assumed that, even in the more formal making of a book, this amateurishness, this sense of relaxation, is not only ‘good enough’ for a child, but is, in a way, a kind of guarantee that one really is amusing the kid, rather than exhibiting oneself priggishly, in one’s own special line, as an expert. For, seeing the author so much at his ease, nobody can fail to realize that he is writing ‘for the young’, and not, the selfish cad, for himself.

  Let us begin a story for children and see where it leads us.

  ‘Once upon a time there was a little girl called – well, you will never guess what her name was, not if you had three hundred million guesses, and your Daddy and your Mummy and your Nanny all guessed too, and you read the Englishdictionary (isn’t that a long word?) right through from beginning to end, including all the twiddly-widdly bits. Because she had a special name of her very-very-very-own, which nobody had ever been called before, and it wasn’t Mary, and it wasn’t Jane, and it wasn’t Anne, and you’ll never believe it but it wasn’t even Flibberty-gibbet. What could it have been? Can’t you guess? Not even if you hold your thumbs tight, and shut your eyes, and take your very very deepest breath like you do when you’re not-feeling-very-well-this-morning-Nanny, and the doctor-man comes and tells you to say ‘Ninety-nine’? Well, then I shall have to tell you. Her name was Yesterday. Isn’t that a funny name?’

  It is not unfair to take this as a representative sample of the children’s-story manner. You see the advantage of it. So far the author has told us that there was once a little girl called Yesterday; a matter of eight words and a certain amount of invention. Without taxing his inventive powers any further, he has written a hundred and seventy words, and is still going strong. As I have said, it is the easiest way in which to write. There is nothing to stop you. You can go on and on at your ease, with your waistcoat unbuttoned (mutatis mutandis, if you are a woman), confident that the little ones are enjoying it.

  Let us turn to poetry and consider a supreme example of relaxation: John Gilpin, or, The Curate Unbends. It is not a typical ‘children’s poem’, though it has been sold often enough as ‘suitable for a child’, but it is typical of the method. Cowper was a poet; he wrote The Task; took it seriously, we may suppose, from ten till two each morning; but John Gilpin was another matter. He had been told the story by Lady Austen. It was a humorous story. One must not blame him for supposing that, if he turned it into verse, the result would inevitably, one might almost say legally, be humorous verse. At any rate it would not be serious verse, and therefore need not be taken seriously, not even by the author. ‘So he jotted it down’ during a ‘sleepless night’. There are sixty-three verses in it; it should have taken him a month of the hardest work within the capacity of man. When we read it, we know why it did not take him a month.

  Quoth Mrs. Gilpin, ‘That’s well said;

  And for that wine is dear,

  We will be furnished with our own

  Which is both bright and clear.’

  ‘Why “bright and clear”?’ you ask. ‘Why not?’ answers Cowper. ‘It helps to end the line and rhymes with “dear”.’

  He soon replied, ‘I do admire

  Of womankind but one.’

  Why ‘soon replied’ when he obviously answered at once; why ‘I do admire’, when he would naturally say ‘I admire’? ‘Well,’ says Cowper, ‘you have to have eight syllables in the line, and as I only had six, I put in two more. It still makes grammar.’

  I fancy that in verse, even if written for the young, there should be something more than grammar, the correct number of syllables in a line, and correct rhymes at prearranged intervals. If I write:

  When Tommy saw his dog again,

  A cry he then did give,

  And took him quickly back to where

  They both of them did live

  – if I write this, it can only be because I am not bothering. Instead of spending days at it, I am working off my sleepless nights. How many children’s books, one wonders, are the result of sleepless nights – the days, of course, being devoted to ‘serious’ work?

  This brings us back to the old question, What do children like? The answer to the question concerns the writer for children as much as, and no more than, the answer to the question ‘What do men and women like?’ concerned Shakespeare or Dickens. In other words – and I have taken a long time coming to the obvious – a ‘children’s book’ must be written, not for children, but for the author himself. That the book, when written, should satisfy children must be regarded as a happy accident, just as one regards it as a happy accident if a dog or a child loves one; it is a matter of personality, and personality is the last matter about which one can take thought. But whatever fears one has, one need not fear that one is writing too well for a child, any more than one need fear that one is becoming almost too lovable. It is difficult enough to express oneself with all the words in the dictionary at one’s disposal; with none but simple words the difficulty is much greater. We need not spare ourselves.

  This, I think, is the one technical concession which must be made: the use of simple words. It is, of course, annoying when your second line ends in ‘self’ to realize suddenly that you are writing a ‘children’s book’ and mustn’t say ‘pelf’; many a poet has torn up his manuscript at this point and started on a sex novel, as giving him more scope. Others have said ‘pelf’ and not bothered. They are the ones who dash off their poems during a sleepless night, thinking anything good enough for a child. But those who are themselves still children as they write will reject ‘pelf’ instinctively, as one of those short cuts which spoil the game. It makes writing more difficult; amazingly so, at a moment when we were hoping to relax a little from the serious work of describing Life in the Ni
ght Clubs, but alas! there seems to be no help for it.

  – Lewis Carroll –

  To turn to another sort of writing. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson was born on January 27th, 1832, became a mathematical lecturer at Oxford in 1855, and was ordained deacon in 1861. Mathematical lecturers joke with difficulty; clergymen with lamentable ease. The combination does not seem promising. We picture Don Dodgson and Deacon Dodgson setting out together to amuse the Liddell girls, and for all the brightness of the day we shudder. But this was one of those enchanted afternoons when anything may happen. A fairy wand touched Don and Deacon, and magically they became Lewis Carroll; the three little girls became magically a million little girls, a million little boys, big girls, big boys, men and women; and there was born on a golden afternoon nearly ninety years ago Alice, of Wonderland and the Looking Glass. But don’t suppose that this strange Lewis Carroll was now trying to amuse a world-audience, or that he was thinking, when once he had put pen to paper, of his Liddell girls. He was writing solely to amuse the strange Lewis Carroll, this childlike person whom he had suddenly discovered in himself. Sometimes one of the old Dodgsons would elbow his way in and insist on being amused too. Then would come prolonged aquatic jokes about ‘feathering’ and ‘catching crabs’, such as would appeal to an unathletic deacon and be the occasion of sycophantic laughter from a nice little girl.

  Turn to the ‘Wool and Water’ chapter in the Looking Glass, and listen carefully to the conversation between the Sheep and Alice in the boat. The Reverend Dodgson is at large. Turn to the next chapter and listen to Humpty Dumpty:

  ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.’

  ‘The question is,’ said Alice, ‘whether you can make words mean different things.’

  ‘The question is,’ said Humpty Dumpty, ‘which is to be master – that’s all … Impenetrability! That’s what I say.’

  Lewis Carroll is back again. The Deacon has vanished with the suddenness which is such a feature of the country.

  But it must have been the Don who insisted afterwards on making the stories into dreams.

  ‘My dear fellow,’ he said to Carroll, ‘a human child couldn’t go down a rabbit-hole. Consider for a moment the relative sizes of the aperture and the intruding body. And, in any case, rabbits do not talk, and what’s all this about substituting a flamingo for a croquet-mallet? Have you ever observed the Common Flamingo – Phoenicopterus Antiquorum? Think carefully for a moment and you will see that the whole thing is absurd. Now, if it had been Alice’s dream – well, we all know what ridiculous things happen in dreams. Only last night I dreamed that I was giving a lecture on Determinants in my night-shirt, before, of all people, the late Prince Consort, when suddenly –

  And Lewis Carroll rubbed his head in a bewildered way and said sadly, ‘No, it couldn’t have happened, could it? You know, just for a moment I thought it did. Somewhere … somehow … Oh, well.’ So it became (how wrongly, how stupidly) a dream and, being a work of genius, managed to survive it.

  For who is ever interested in somebody else’s dream? Do we think of Alice as a little girl who ate too much pudding for dinner and had a nightmare in the afternoon? We can all do that for ourselves.

  But Alice is that real little girl who, alone of all little girls, has had tea with the March Hare and the Mad Hatter, and played croquet with the Queen of Hearts; who has had ‘Jabberwocky’ explained to her by Humpty Dumpty, and heard Tweedledee recite ‘The Walrus and the Carpenter’; the child who walked into the setting sun by the side of the White Knight, that gentle, foolish, fond old man, with whom, in some literary Valhalla, Mr Dick flies kites – special kites, kites not now of Mr Dick’s invention.

  ‘I was wondering what the mouse-trap was for,’ said Alice. ‘It isn’t likely that there would be any mice on the horse’s back.’

  ‘Not very likely, perhaps,’ said the Knight, ‘but if they do come, I don’t choose to have them running all about.’

  O happy Carroll! O blessed Knight! Did Alice dream that? Listen:

  Years afterwards she could bring the whole scene back again, as if it had been only yesterday’ – the mild blue eyes and kindly smile of the Knight – the setting sun gleaming through his hair and shining on his armour in a blaze of light – the horse quietly moving about, with the reins hanging loose on his neck, cropping the grass at her feet – and the black shadows of the forest behind.

  There you have Lewis Carroll giving the lie to the Dodgsons. It was no dream, no story for children. It happened. He was there himself.

  I have emphasized the absurdity of the dream-convention, because it is Alice who has kept the books in the hearts of children, Alice of whom children would expect real adventures, not dreams. But it is also Alice who was responsible for the occasional intrusions of the Dodgsons: the chop-logic of the Don, the over-easiness of the Deacon. They never could resist a little girl. In The Hunting of the Snark there is no little girl, and the result is undiluted Carroll, the most inspired nonsense in the language. Had he written no more than the Snark and The Walrus and the Carpenter, he would have deserved immortality.

  But he would not have got it. He needed Alice to hold his hand. She is not pretty, as drawn by Tenniel; she has no great charm of manner; but, because she is a real child, wherever her piping voice is heard, children will follow, and at their heels will troop the grown-ups, eager to see what strange new company she is keeping. Look! Now she is talking to a man on a horse! Observe the spiked anklets round the horse’s feet. That is to guard against the bites of Sharks. It is the rider’s own invention …

  – The Robinson Tradition –

  Having read lately an appreciation of that almost forgotten author Marryat, and having seen in the shilling box of a second-hand bookseller a few days afterwards a copy of Masterman Ready, I went in and bought the same. I had read it as a child, and remembered vaguely that it combined desert-island adventure with a high moral tone; jam and powder in the usual proportions. Reading it again, I found that the powder was even more thickly spread than I had expected; hardly a page but carried with it a valuable lesson for the young; yet this particular jam (guava and cocoanut) has such an irresistible attraction for me that I swallowed it all without a struggle, and was left with a renewed craving for more and yet more desert-island stories. Having, unfortunately, no others at hand, the only satisfaction I can give myself is to write about them.

  I would say first that, even if an author is writing for children (as was Marryat), and even if morality can best be implanted in the young mind with a watering of fiction, yet a desert-island story is the last story which should be used for this purpose. For a desert-island is a child’s escape from real life and its many lessons. Ask yourself why you longed for a desert-island when you were young, and you will find the answer to be that you did what you liked there, ate what you liked, and carried through your own adventures. It is the ‘Family’ which spoils The Swiss Family Robinson, just as it is the Seagrave family which nearly wrecks Masterman Ready. What is the good of imagining yourself (as every boy does) ‘Alone in the Pacific’ if you are not going to be alone? Well, perhaps we do not wish to be quite alone; but certainly to have more than two on an island is to overcrowd it, and our companion must be of a like age and disposition.

  For this reason parents spoil any island for a healthy-minded boy. He may love his father and mother as fondly as even they could wish, but he does not want to take them bathing in the lagoon with him – still less to have them on the shore, telling him that there are too many sharks this morning and that it is quite time he came out. Nor for that matter do parents want to be bothered with children on a South Sea holiday. In Masterman Ready there is a horrid little boy called Tommy, aged six, who is always letting the musket off accidentally, or getting bitten by a turtle, or taking more than his share of the cocoanut milk. As a grown-up I wondered why his father did not give him to the first savage who c
ame by, and so allow himself a chance of enjoying his island in peace; but at Tommy’s age I should have resented just as strongly a father who, even on a desert-island, could not bear to see his boy making a fool of himself with turtle and gunpowder.

  I am not saying that a boy would really be happy for long, whether on a desert-island or elsewhere, without his father and mother. Indeed it is doubtful if he could even survive, happily or unhappily. Possibly William Seagrave could have managed it. William was only twelve, but he talked like this: ‘I agree with you, Ready. Indeed I have been thinking the same thing for many days past … I wish the savages would come on again, for the sooner they come the sooner the affair will be decided.’ A boy who can talk like this at twelve is capable of finding the bread-fruit tree for himself. But William is an exception. I claim no such independence for the ordinary boy; I only say that the ordinary boy, however dependent on his parents, does like to pretend that he is capable of doing without them, wherefore he gives them no leading part in the imaginary adventures which he pursues so ardently. If they are there at all, it is only that he may come back to them in the last chapter and tell them all about it … and be suitably admired.

  Masterman Ready seems to me, then, to be the work of a father, not of an understanding writer for boys. Marryat wrote it for his own children, towards whom he had responsibilities; not for other people’s children, for whom he would only be concerned to provide entertainment. But even if the book was meant for no wider circle than the home, one would still feel that the moral teaching was overdone. It should be possible to be edifying without losing one’s sense of humour. When Juno, the black servant, was struck by lightning and not quite killed, she ‘appeared to be very sensible of the wonderful preservation which she had had. She had always been attentive whenever the Bible was read, but now she did not appear to think that the morning and evening services were sufficient to express her gratitude.’ Even a child would feel that Juno really need not have been struck by lightning at all; even a child might wonder how many services, on this scale of gratitude, were adequate for the rest of the party whom the lightning had completely missed. And it was perhaps a little self-centred of Ready to thank God for her recovery on the grounds that she could ‘ill be spared’ by a family rather short-handed in the rainy season.