Parents and children

by Charlotte M. Mason

“That may be; but, as for getting what we want—pooh! it’s a question of demand and supply. If you don’t mind my talking about ourselves I should like just to tell you what we did last summer. Perhaps you may know that I dabble a little in geology—only dabble—but every tyro must have noticed how the features of a landscape depend on its geological formation, and not only the look of the landscape, but the occupations of the people. Well, it occurred to me that if, instead of the hideous ‘resources’—save the word!—of a watering-place, what if we were to study the ‘scape’ of a single formation? The children would have that, at any rate, in visible presentation, and would hold a key to much besides.

“My wife and I love the South Downs, perhaps for auld sake’s sake, so we put up at a farmhouse in one of the lovely ‘Lavants’ near Goodwood. Chalk and a blackboard were inseparably associated; and a hill of chalk was as surprising to the children as if all the trees were bread and cheese. Here was wonder to start with, wonder and desire to know. Truly, a man hath joy in the answer of his mouth! The delight, the deliciousness of pouring out answers to their eager questions! and the illimitable receptivity of the children! This was the sort of thing—after scrawling on a flint with a fragment of chalk:—

“‘What is that white line on the flint, Bob?’—‘Chalk, father,’ with surprise at my dulness; and then the unfolding of the tale of wonder—thousands of lovely infinitely small shells in that scrawl of chalk; each had, ages and ages ago, its little inmate, and so on. Wide eyes and open mouths, until sceptical Dick—‘Well, but, father, how did they get here? How could they crawl or swim to the dry land when they were dead?’ More wonders, and a snub for that small boy. ‘Why, this hillside we are sitting on is a bit of that old sea-bottom!’ And still the marvel grew, until, trust me, there is not a feature of the chalk that is not written down in le journal intime of each child’s soul. They know the soft roll of the hills, the smooth dip of the valleys, the delights of travellers’ joy, queer old yews, and black-berrying in the sudden ‘bottoms’ of the chalk. The endless singing of a solitary lark—nothing but larks—the trailing of cloud-shadows over the hills, the blue skies of Sussex, blue as those of Naples—these things are theirs to have and to hold, and are all associated with the chalk; they have the sense of the earth-mother, of the connection of things, which makes for poetry.

“Then their mother has rather a happy way of getting pictures printed on the ‘sensitive plate’ of each. She hits on a view, of narrow range generally, and makes the children look at it well and then describe it with closed eyes. One never-to-be forgotten view was seized in this way. ‘First grass, the hill-slopes below us, with sheep feeding about: and then a great field of red poppies—there’s corn, but we can’t see it; then fields and fields of corn, quite yellow and ripe, reaching out a long way; next, the sea, very blue, and three rather little boats with white sails; a lark a long way up in the sky singing as loud as a band of music; and such a shining sun!’ No doubt our little maid will have all that to her dying day; and isn’t it a picture worth having?”

“Mr. Morris’s hint admits of endless expansion; why, you could cover the surface formations of England in the course of the summer holidays of a boy’s schooldays, and thus give him a key to the landscape, fauna, and flora of much of the earth’s surface. It’s admirable.”

“What a salvage! The long holidays, which are apt to hang on hand, would be more fully and usefully employed than schooldays, and in ways full of out-of-door delights. I see how it would work. Think of the dales of Yorkshire, where the vivid green of the mountain limestone forms a distinct line of junction with the dim tints of the heather on the millstone grit of the moors, of the innumerable rocky nests where the ferns of the limestone—hartstongue, limestone polypody, beech fern, and the rest—grow delicately green and perfect as if conserved under glass. Think of the endless ferns and mosses and the picturesque outlines of the slate, both in the Lake Country and in Wales. What collections the children might form, always having the geological formation of the district as the leading idea.”

“You are getting excited, Mrs. Tremlow. For my part, I cannot rise to the occasion. It is dull to have ‘delicious!’ ‘delightful!’ ‘lovely!’ hailing about one’s ears, and to be out of it. Pray, do not turn me out for the admission, but my own feeling is strongly against this sort of dabbling in science. In this bird’s-eye view of geology, for instance, why in the world did you begin with the chalk? At least you might have started with, say, Cornwall.”

“That is just one of the points where the line is to be drawn; you specialists do one thing thoroughly—begin at the beginning, if a beginning there is, and go on to the end, if life is long enough. Now, we contend that the specialist’s work should be laid on a wide basis of common information, which differs from science in this amongst other things—you take it as it occurs. A fact comes under your notice; you want to know why it is, and what it is; but its relations to other facts must settle themselves as time goes on, and the other facts turn up. For instance, a child of mine should know the ‘blackcap’ by its rich note and black upstanding headgear, and take his chance of ever knowing even the name of the family to which his friend belongs.”

“And surely, Mr. Morris, you would teach history in the same way; while you are doing a county, or a ‘formation’—isn’t it?—you get fine opportunities for making history a real thing. For instance, supposing you are doing the—what is it?—of Dorsetshire? You come across Corfe Castle standing in a dip of the hills, like the trough between two waves, and how real you can make the story of the bleeding prince dragged over the downs at the heels of his horse.”

“Yes, and speaking of the downs, do you happen to know, Mrs. Tremlow, the glorious downs behind Lewes, and the Abbey and the Castle below, all concerned in the story of the great battle; and the ridge of Mount Harry across which De Montfort and his men marched while the royal party were holding orgies in the Abbey, and where, in the grey of the early morning, each man vowed his life to the cause of liberty, face downwards to the cool grass, and arms outstretched in the form of a cross? Once you have made a study on the spot of one of those historic sites, why, the place and the scene is a part of you. You couldn’t forget it if you would.”