There is a remarkably nice little girl in that pleasant English novel, published a few years ago, Sir Charles Danvers—a little girl who can be safely recommended to all child-lovers, who will only wish they could hear a great deal more about her. Molly Danvers is not particularly precocious; she is not at all supersensitive, and we are not even told that she is pretty. There is absolutely no inventory given of her personal charms; and as to her clothes, “a white frock and two slim black legs” are casually mentioned on her first introduction, and we never hear another word about them. “A white frock and two slim black legs!” Could any description be more meagre? Imagine Little Saint Elizabeth, or Sara Crewe, reduced ruthlessly to a white frock, and not another allusion to their wardrobes in the whole course of their histories. But Molly doesn’t care. I have a suspicion that her white frocks don’t stay white very long, and that her slim black legs are better distinguished for activity than for grace. She is anything but heroic, and runs fleetly away from danger, leaving both her cousin and her donkey to their fate; but she has a loving little heart, nevertheless, and when her terrier dies, this heart is as nearly broken as a healthy little girl’s can be.
“‘He is dead, Uncle Charles. He was quite well, and eating Albert biscuits with the dolls this morning, and now’—the rest was too dreadful, and Molly burst into a flood of tears, and burrowed with her head against the faithful waistcoat of Uncle Charles—of Uncle Charles, the friend, the consoler of all the ills that Molly had so far been heir to.
“‘Vic had a very happy life, Molly,’ said Charles, pressing the little brown head against his cheek, and vaguely wondering what it would be like to have any one to turn to in time of trouble.
“‘I always kept trouble from him except that time I shut him in the door,’ gasped Molly. ‘I never took him out in a string, and he only wore his collar—that collar you gave him that made him scratch so—on Sundays.’
“‘And he was not ill a long time? He did not suffer any pain?’
“‘No, Uncle Charles, not much. But, though he did not say anything, his face looked worse than screaming, and he passed away very stiff in his hind-legs. Oh!’ (with a fresh outburst) ‘when cook told me that her sister that was in a decline had gone, I never thought’ (sob, sob!) ‘poor Vic would be the next.’”
This is not the less heartrending for being amusing, and that short sentence “his face looked worse than screaming” is a master-stroke of realistic description. On the whole, for ordinary family purposes, Molly Danvers is one of the nicest little girls I know; and if we seek—as many people rightly seek—for the poetry, the beauty of childhood, subtly transferred to paper, let us turn back a few years, and re-read for the fifth or the fiftieth time, as it chances, those seven delicious chapters of Quatre-Vingt-Treize, which describe a single day in the lives of the three babies, René Jean, Gros Alain, and Georgette. How many hours must Victor Hugo have watched patiently and gladly the ways of little children before he could paint them with such minute and charming truth, and what sheer delight is embodied in every line! They do nothing remarkable, these tiny French peasants; they say nothing worth noting; they are clothed in rags; they are alone all day; they are mischievous, healthy, and natural. They hang enchanted, all three, over a wood-louse, their curls touching, their breath suspended, their eyes fixed on the embarrassed insect: and we watch them with a joy and wonder equal to their own. “It is a she-creature,” announces René Jean, and Georgette laughs, Georgette who, at twenty months, has not yet acquired the art of conversation. She utters a single word from time to time, but sentences lie beyond her scope. She is occupied with grave thoughts, and when she breathes a soft monosyllable, her brothers pause encouragingly to listen. A belated bee comes buzzing in the window and departs.
“‘She is going home,’ said René Jean.
“‘It is a beast,’ said Gros Alain. ‘No,’ said René Jean, ‘it is a fly.’ ‘A f’y,’ said Georgette.”
This is the extent of their conversational powers, and how very limited it seems. They do not talk, these babies; they act. They lay their destructive hands on the rare old folio of Saint Bartholomew, and tear out the leaves one by one, solemnly, innocently, conscientiously. Georgette, who cannot reach the volume, sits on the floor, and tears each leaf into little pieces with painstaking amiability; and all three are so happy over their self-appointed task. By the side of their absolute unconsciousness, the Willie Winkies and Lord Fauntleroys of romance grow suddenly Utopian and unreal. The chivalry, honor, generosity, loyalty, picturesqueness, and brilliancy, all the story-book virtues of story-book children, seem less winning and less dear than the birdlike contentment of three silent, sleepy little creatures, curled softly together, and painted by a master’s hand.