"M. Soymonof's rooms were adorned with bronzes, medals, and costly marbles. Sophia was on terms of intimacy with these personages of fable and history; but she felt an unconquerable repugnance to a cabinet full of mummies. The poor child blushed for her weakness, and one day, when alone, opened the terrible door, ran straight to the nearest mummy, took it up, and embraced it till her strength and courage gave away, and she fell down in a swoon. At the noise of her fall, her father hastened in, raised her in his arms, and obtained from her, not without difficulty, an avowal of the terrors which she had hitherto concealed from him. But this supreme effort was as good for her as a victory. From that day the mummies were to her only common objects of interest and curiosity.
"Studious as was her education, M. Soymonof did not banish dolls. His daughter loved them as friends and preserved this taste beyond her childish years, but elevated it by the admixture of an intellectual and often dramatic interest. Her dolls were generally of the largest size. She gave them each a name and part to act, established connected relations between the different individuals, and kept up animated dialogues which occupied her imagination vividly, and became a means of instruction. Playing dolls was for her an introduction to ethics and a knowledge of the world.
"Catherine's court was a succession of continual fêtes. The fairy pantomimes performed at the Hermitage were the first to strike the imagination of the child, who as yet could not relish the tragedies of Voltaire. She composed a ballet which she called 'The Faithful Shepherdess and the Fickle Shepherdess.' She writes in her sixtieth year: 'One of the liveliest pleasures of my childhood was to compose festive decorations which I loved to light up and arrange upon the white marble chimney-piece of my schoolroom. The ardour which I threw into designing, cutting out, and painting transparencies, and finding emblems and mottoes for them was something incredible. My heart beat high while the preparations were in progress but the moment my illumination began to fade an ineffable devouring melancholy seized me.'"
This extract is invaluable not only for its historic importance, but for the keynote which it sounds to a child's nature. The noble little Russian girl at the court of Catherine of Russia found only those pleasures lasting which came from herself, and when she could invest the fairy pantomime with her own personality.
A fairy pantomime is possible to the poorest child if some superior intelligence, an older sister or aunt, will lend her help. The fairies can all be of pasteboard, with strings as the motive power. There can be no cheaper corps de ballet, nor any so amusing.
"You have done much for your child" is an expression we often hear. "You have had a nurse, a nursery governess, a fine pony for your boy, you take your children often to the play and give them dancing parties, and yet they are not happy." It is the sincere regret of many a mamma that she cannot make her children happy. Yet in a large town, in a house shut up from our cold winter blasts, what can she do? A good dog and a kind-hearted set of servants will solve the problem better than all the intellect in the world. Grandmamma brings a doll to the little girl, who looks it over and says: "The dolly cannot be undressed, I do not want it." It is the dressing and the undressing which are the delights of her heart.
A boy wants to make a noise, first of all things. Let him have a large upper room, a drum, a tambourine, a ball, and there he should be allowed to kick out the effervescence of early manhood. Do not follow him with all manner of prohibitions. Constant nagging and fault-finding is an offence against a child's paradise. Put him in a room for certain hours of the day where no one need say, "Get down! don't do that! don't make so much noise!" Let him roar, and shout, and climb over chairs and tables, and tear his gown, and work off his exuberance, and then he will be very glad to have his hands and face washed and listen to a story, or come down to meet papa with a smiling countenance.
Children should be allowed to have pet birds, kittens, dogs, and as much live stock as the house will hold; it develops their sympathies. When a bird dies, and the floodgates of the poor little heart are opened, sympathize with it. It is cruel to laugh at childish woe. Never refuse a child sympathy in joy or sorrow. This lack of sympathy has made more criminals than anything else.
Children should never be deceived either in the taking of medicine or the administration of knowledge. One witty writer a few years ago spoke of the bad influence of good books. He declared that reading "that Tommy was a good boy and kept his pinafore clean and rose to affluence, while Harry flung stones and told fibs and was carried off by robbers," developed his sympathies for Harry; and that although he was naturally a good boy he went, for pure hatred of the virtuous Tommy, to the river's brink and helped a bad boy to drown his aunt's cat, and then went home and wrote a prize composition called "Frank the Friendless, or Honesty is Best." All this was because the boy saw that Tommy was a prig, that his virtue was of that kind mentioned in Jane Eyre, in which the charity child was asked whether she would rather learn a hymn or receive a cake; she said "Learn a hymn," whereupon she received "two cakes as a reward for her infant piety." Children cannot be humbugged; they can be made into hypocrites, however, by too many good books.
The best entertainment for children is to let them play at being useful. Let the little girl get papa's slippers, brush his hat, even if the wrong way, find his walking stick, hold the yarn for grandma's knitting, or rock her brother's cradle, and she will be happy. Give the boy a printing-press or some safe tools, let him make a garden, feed his chickens, or clean out the cage of his pet robin, and he will be happy. Try to make them think and decide for themselves. A little girl says, "I don't know which dress to put on my dolly, Mamma, which shall I?" The mamma will be wise if she says, "You must decide, you know dolly best."