The April Baby's Book of Tunes / with the story of how they came to be written

by Elizabeth Von Arnim

Séraphine had been meek, and soft, and delicate when first she came to be the babies' nurse, but that had all worn off long ago, and she had grown robust in the healthy forest air, and round and rosy on the wholesome country food, and with her roundness and rosiness had come a determination to have her own way and circumvent the babies; and they, after lording it over her during those first few blissful months, had found to their sorrowful surprise that she had unaccountably grown to be a match for them.

On this occasion also she was a match for them. First she threw up her hands and shrilly cried Mon Dieu! Then she ordered them to clear up all the mess they had made; and then, exasperated by the unwilling slowness of their movements, and still more so by the conviction that it was she who would ultimately have to do the clearing up, swept them off, after a moment's impatient watching, into the three corners of the room, kept carefully clear for such emergencies. It was a good thing there was not a fourth baby, for there would have been no corner to put it in, because, though there was a fourth corner in this, as in most rooms, it was occupied by the stove. April pointed this out one day to her mother, who agreed that it was all very conveniently arranged.

Their mother in the next room heard Séraphine's entrance and exclamation of dismay, and then the sudden stillness which she knew from experience meant corners. She got up and looked out the window. It had left off snowing, and the garden was covered up with the loveliest smooth, thick, white coat, and all the trees looked like Christmas trees. It made one long, somehow, to run out and make footmarks everywhere on the spotlessness.

She waited a little while, so as not to interfere with Séraphine's ideas of justice, and then went into the playroom with an appropriately grave face, and called them out of their corners, and gave them a short lecture as mothers have to do when children are not good. She told them, when she had done, that of all things in the world she disliked having to lecture, and she would be so grateful if only they would keep out of corners and save her the trouble of it; upon which there was a sudden outburst of enthusiasm, and a confusion of arms and legs, and a great amount of kissing, and then they made a determined attack on the saucepans and scoured with such goodwill that in ten minutes everything was tidy again, and they could pull on their boots and gaiters and go out and help their mother spoil the beautiful, fascinating snow.

But they sank right in, June up to her ears, May up to her neck, and April up to her shoulders, and it was quite impossible to move. So the mother ordered the sleigh, and had them wrapped up to the eyes in furs, and fur hoods pulled over their foreheads, and took them sleighing along the wintry roads.

Where these babies lived, when you drive in winter you sit in fur bags up to your waist, and the rest of you is so covered up that nothing but your eyes can be seen. If you don't do that you are frost-bitten, which is a very disagreeable thing to be, and may end in your nose crumbling away, and your beauty crumbling away with it. It is no use my telling you how cold the thermometer showed it to be, for children who live in London and go for walks every day in the Park or Kensington Gardens needn't bother much about thermometers, so you wouldn't understand. But where April and her sisters lived, you look anxiously at the thermometer hanging outside your window before you go out, so as to know how many furs to put on, or whether you can venture out at all. Sometimes it is so cold that for days you are shut up in the house, especially if you happen to be a baby. The babies' mother very nearly decided to oil them all over, as the people do who live more or less at the North Pole, so that they should not feel the cold so much; but then she remembered that babies are sent into the world chiefly that mothers may have something to kiss all the time, and how can you kiss oiled babies? She soon found out in the sleigh that this was one of the days when people who are not oiled are better at home, and she turned back and sent April and May in again. June begged so hard to be allowed to stay that she took her a little further, giving in because June was the fattest, and fat babies are never so cold as lean ones. That is why, I suppose, everybody who lives up in those forests where the babies did, are so fat. They eat and drink a great deal all the summer, so that when the long, bitter winter comes they may be nicely protected against the cold, and needn't buy so many furs; and though that sort of figure may not be pretty at a party, it is very convenient in a frost.

But the mother and June soon had to turn back too, for their eyelashes froze tight on to the long fur round their faces and they couldn't open their eyes any more, which made it dreadfully dull. So they went home again, and had to grope their way in, and thaw their eyelashes at the fire; and then the mother sat down and wondered what she could do to help the babies over the long days that had to be got through before it was time to hide the Easter eggs.

The schoolmaster who came every day to teach them was snowed up too in his house, so they had no lessons to keep them busy. Séraphine couldn't teach them, because she didn't know anything herself, which was the best of reasons; all she could do was to sing French songs without any tune in them over and over again till the babies had learnt them, by which time the mother in the next room was almost distracted. They had cooked their dolls, they had no lessons, they couldn't get out and run in the garden,—I don't believe any baby in the world could keep long out of a corner under such conditions, or any mother, knowing its difficulties, be happy.

This particular mother didn't believe it either, and sat and wondered what she could do. She sat and wondered in front of the big fireplace, with her feet nearly in the fire. It had begun to snow again harder than ever, and she knew there was no chance of the babies getting out for two or three days. It grew dark, and when the tea was brought in, and fresh peat had been thrown on the fire, and the room was all full of firelight, she called the babies and invited them to come and have tea with her, and sit comfortably on a row of footstools in front of the fire, instead of solemnly round the schoolroom table with Séraphine's stern eye petrifying them from behind the teapot.

They loved having tea with their mother, although there was no jam on the bread and butter as there was in the schoolroom. They liked their mother without jam better a thousand times than Séraphine with jam,—even if it had been the best jam in the world, which, of course, as every baby knows, is apricot if it isn't strawberry. They flew to fetch footstools, and sat on them munching their bread and butter in the pleasant firelight, warming their toes at the blaze like their mother, and getting hotter, and happier, and more buttery every minute. Then their mother poured them each out a cup of her own tea in her own pretty cups, with saucers and spoons all proper, instead of the mortifying mugs they had in the schoolroom; and the tea was so hot and sweet and delicious that it made them feel as though their insides were being wrapped round in hot flannel petticoats with sugar on them, which is the loveliest feeling in the world.