XV.
The war imbued my tin soldiers with quite a new interest. It was impossible to have boxes enough of them. You could set them out in companies and battalions; they opened their ranks to attack, stormed, were wounded, and fell. Sometimes they lay down fatigued and slept on the field of battle. But a new box that came one day made the old ones lose all value for me. For the soldiers in the new box were proper soldiers, with chests and backs, round to the touch, heavy to hold. In comparison with them, the older ones, profile soldiers, so small that you could only look at them sideways, sank into utter insignificance. A step had been taken from the abstract to the concrete. It was no longer any pleasure to me to play with the smaller soldiers. I said: "They amused me last year, when I was little." There was a similar change, a similar picture of historic progress, when the hobby-horse on which I had spent so many happy hours, and on which I had ridden through rooms and passages, was put in the corner in favour of the new rocking-horse which, long coveted and desired, was carried in through the door, and stood in the room, rocking slightly, as though ready for the boldest ride, the moment its rider flung himself into the saddle.
I mounted it and oh, happiness! I began to ride, and rode on with passionate delight till I nearly went over the horse's head. "When I was a little boy the hobby-horse amused me, but it does not now." Every time I climbed a fresh rung of the ladder, no matter how low an one, the same feeling possessed me, and the same train of thought. Mother often joked about it, up to the time when I was a full grown man. If I quickly outgrew my fancies, if I had quite done with anything or anybody that had absorbed me a little while before, she would say, with a smile: "Last year, when I was a little boy, the hobby-horse amused me."
Still, progress was not always smooth. When I was small I had pretty blouses, one especially, grey, with brown worsted lace upon it, that I was fond of wearing; now I had plain, flat blouses with a leather belt round the waist. Later on, I was ambitious to have a jacket, like big boys, and when this wish had been gratified there awoke in me, as happens in life, a more lofty ambition still, that to wear a frock coat. In the fulness of time an old frock coat of my father's was altered to fit me. I looked thin and lank in it, but the dress was honourable. Then it occurred to me that everybody would see I was wearing a frock coat for the first time. I did not dare to go out into the streets with it on, but went out of my way round the ramparts for fear of meeting anyone.
When I was a little boy I did not, of course, trouble much about my appearance. I did not remember that my portrait had been drawn several times. But when I was nine years old, Aunt Sarah--at that time everybody was either uncle or aunt--determined that we brothers should have our portraits taken in daguerreotype for Father's birthday. The event made a profound impression, because I had to stand perfectly still while the picture was being taken, and because the daguerreotypist, a German, whose name was Schätzig, rolled his rs and hissed his ss. The whole affair was a great secret, which was not to be betrayed. The present was to be a surprise, and I was compelled to promise perfect silence. I kept my promise for one day. But next day, at the dinner- table, I accidentally burst out: "Now! quite shtill! as the man said." "What man?" "Ah! that was the secret!"
The visit to Schätzig in itself I had reason to remember a long time. Some one or another had said that I had a slender neck, and that it was pretty. Just as we were going in, my aunt said: "You will catch cold inside," and in spite of my protests tied a little silk handkerchief round my neck. That handkerchief spoilt all my pleasure in being immortalised. And it is round my neck on the old picture to this day.
XVI.
The tin soldiers had called all my warlike instincts into being. After the rocking-horse, more and more military appurtenances followed. A shining helmet to buckle firmly under the chin, in which one looked quite imposing; a cuirass of real metal like the Horseguards', and a short rapier in a leather scabbard, which went by the foreign name of Hirschfänger, and was a very awe-inspiring weapon in the eyes of one's small brothers, when they were mercilessly massacred with it. Sitting on the rocking-horse, arrayed in all this splendour, wild dreams of military greatness filled the soul, dreams which grew wilder and more ambitious from year to year until between the age of 8 and 9 they received a fresh and unwholesome stimulus from Ingemann's novels. [Footnote: B.S. Ingemann (1789-1862), a Danish writer celebrated chiefly as the author of many historical novels, now only read by very young children.]
On horseback, at the head of a chosen band, fighting like the lost against unnumbered odds! Rock goes the rocking-horse, violently up and down. The enemy wavers, he begins to give way. The rocking-horse is pulled up. A sign with the Hirschfänger to the herd of common troops. The enemy is beaten and flies, the next thing is to pursue him. The rocking-horse is set once more in furious motion. Complete victory. Procession into the capital; shouts of jubilation and wreaths of flowers, for the victor and his men.