Night-Shirts and Babies
On Hindhead, last Easter, we saw a family wash hung out to dry. There were papa’s two great night-shirts and mamma’s two lesser night-gowns and then the children’s smaller articles of clothing and mamma’s drawers and the girls’ drawers, all full swollen with a strong north-east wind. But mamma’s night-gown was not so well pinned on and, instead of being full of steady wind like the others, kept blowing up and down as though she were preaching wildly. We stood and laughed for ten minutes. The housewife came to the window and wondered at us, but we could not resist the pleasure of watching the absurdly life-like gestures which the night-gowns made. I should like a Santa Famiglia with clothes drying in the background.
A love story might be told in a series of sketches of the clothes of two families hanging out to dry in adjacent gardens. Then a gentleman’s night-shirt from one garden, and a lady’s night-gown from the other should be shown hanging in a third garden by themselves. By and by there should be added a little night-shirt.
A philosopher might be tempted, on seeing the little night-shirt, to suppose that the big night-shirts had made it. What we do is much the same, for the body of a baby is not much more made by the two old babies, after whose pattern it has cut itself out, than the little night-shirt is made by the big ones. The thing that makes either the little night-shirt or the little baby is something about which we know nothing whatever at all.