M. “For stealing, hurting other people, and telling stories.”
C. (abruptly). “Oh, E. tells a lot of stories.”
M. “Oh no, E. doesn’t tell stories.”
C. “Yes, she does. When I say yes she says no, and I know that I am right.”
He talked of this same experience of feminine frailty to others, remarking to one of his lady friends that E. had not said a sensible thing all the week he was staying with her. He also attacked his father on the subject, and after illustrating her odd way of contradicting others, he observed: “She’s are never as sensible as he’s, I suppose, are they, papa? especially if a boy is older”.
The father asked him if he had shown his displeasure to his girl playmate, to which he replied: “I didn’t show my angriness;” and after a pause: “I’d better not show how angry I can be, I’m too strong and too big, ain’t I?” As a matter of fact he had once, at least, been so ungallant as to strike his companion on her nose with one of his toys, selecting this objective for his attack apparently for no other reason than that it was already disfigured by a scratch. He wound up this disquisition on E.’s shortcomings by an attempt at a magnanimous allowance for her weakness: “I b’lieve she tries not to say these things because she knows they will tease me, but I think she can’t help it;” and he repeated this as if to emphasise the point.
Even our much-biassed chronicler is obliged to own that all this is a lamentable exhibition of boyish swagger, and particularly out of place in one born in these enlightened days, when, as we all know, ‘she’s’ are as good as ‘he’s,’ if not a great deal better. The only palliation of the unpleasant picture of coxcombry which he offers is the information that a year or too later C.’s views about girls were profoundly modified when he found himself in a school where a girl of his own age could beat him at certain things of the mind.
The growing vigour of his self-consciousness was shown in other ways too. He was much hurt by anything which seemed to him an invasion of his liberty. About the end of the sixth month, we read, he had got into ‘finicking’ ways of taking his food. Thus he conceived a strong dislike for the ‘cream’ on his boiled milk. If anybody attempted to cross him in these faddish ways he would be greatly offended. It looks as if he were at this time getting a keen sense of private rights, any interference with which he regarded as an offence.
The story about what he would do if his family were ship-wrecked suggests that self-sacrifice was as yet not a strong element in the boy’s moral constitution. Egoism, it might well seem, was still the foundation of his character. This egoism would peep out now and again in his talk. One day (middle of eighth month) when the family was lodging in a cottage his mother had reason to scold him for walking on the flower-beds in the cottage garden. Whereupon he answered: “It isn’t your garden, it’s Mr. G.’s”. To this the mother observed: “I know, dear, but I have to be all the more particular because it is not mine”; which observation drew forth the following: “I should think Mr. G. would be all the more particular because it is his”. It was evident, writes the father, from this somewhat cynical observation that caring for things and resenting any injury to them seemed to C. to devolve on the owner and on nobody else.
He himself certainly did repel any encroachment on his rights. Here is an amusing illustration. One day (the end of seventh month) he was playing on the Heath under the eye of his mother. He had put on one of the seats a lot of grass and sand as fodder for his wooden horse. While he went away for a minute a strange nurse and children arrived, making a perfectly legitimate use of the bench by seating themselves on it, and in order to get room brushing away the precious result of his foraging expedition. On coming back and seeing what had happened he turned to his mother and swelling with indignation exclaimed loudly: “What do you mean by it, letting these children move away my things?” Of course this was intended to intimidate the real culprits, the children. Finding that they were not abashed at this, but on the contrary were looking at one another with a look of high-bred astonishment, he turned to them and shouted: “What do you mean by it?” This outburst, observes the father, showed a preternatural heat of indignation, for in general he was very distant and reserved towards strange children.