And doesn’t know.
Beyond all doubt M. Zola would say that he is happier to-day (with “Nana” in its 150th thousand) than he was in his childhood, but that is because his childhood was devoid of Idealism. On the other hand, if I may be pardoned for mentioning myself in the same paragraph with the greatest novelist of all time, my own childhood was happy because I lived purely in a world of the imagination. There never was a bolder or more truly noble pirate than I was during the hour of the Sunday sermon, when I whiled away the good clergyman’s discourse by sweeping the seas in my piratical schooner, and harrowing the Spanish Main. My tin soldiers were flesh and blood heroes, my kites flew nearly to the outer limits of the solar system, and I never quite lost the belief that I could dig a tunnel to China with the kitchen fire-shovel, had the cook only had sufficient scientific zeal to be willing to lend it to me for a few hours. I was very happy then, but I am equally happy now. I have never got over the Idealism of my childhood, and I make my own political and social world to-day quite as irrationally and delightfully as I did eighty—well, when I was a child. I do find, I admit, that one cannot be an Idealist in financial matters, which is, after all, the main source of unhappiness in mature life, but if you ask me whether I was happier in childhood than I am now, I should not know how to answer. All of which goes to show that I might have done better if I had stuck to the safe and judicious in my attempted answer, instead of yielding to the temptation to be philosophical.
Miss Florence Marryat thinks it the most miserable.
If I am to choose one, or the other, extreme, I should say decidedly the most miserable, and made so by the folly, ignorance, or neglect of parents. Not one-hundredth part of the men and women who marry are fit to become fathers and mothers. Who does not pity the wretched little mortal whom one meets, dressed up in some fantastic or grotesque costume, to gratify the vanity of those who own it, forbidden to run or play, for fear of spoiling the velvet tunic, or silken sash—unable to be comfortable even, on account of buttoned boots and kid gloves? A child is simply a young animal. Give it warmth and food and liberty, and it will be happy and hungry and healthy! To dress it up in the fashion, and let it be dragged at the heels of an indifferent nursemaid along a pavement, is tantamount to confining a puppy by a heavy chain to a kennel. I believe the greatest misery of children arises from their being so culpably trusted to the care of servants. A fashionable mother engages a head-nurse, who is well-mannered, respectful, and experienced, and thereupon delivers over her children to her entire jurisdiction, perfectly content if they appear before her, at stated periods, clean and neat, with smiling faces. She little knows how (in the majority of instances) the poor little creatures are coerced, by nursery discipline, not to betray their real feelings for the woman who has them under her influence day and night.
And gives the reason why.
At one time, when I walked daily in Hyde Park, I constantly met a nurse whose behaviour to the children under her charge excited my greatest indignation. If one of the little ones lagged behind with the nursemaid, or whimpered, because it was cold or tired, the head-nurse would shake it by the arm, or strike it across the head with such violence as to upset its equilibrium, and her voice at all times was harsh and repellent. I knew it would be useless to speak to her, but one day I followed her home to a house in Park Lane, and, sending up my card, asked if I could speak to the mistress of it. The flunky informed me she was Lady—let us say, “the Lord knows who”—and I was presently admitted to her presence. I did not stand on ceremony with “Lady the Lord knows who.” I told her I made no excuse for disturbing her, because if she loved her children she would be very much obliged to me for telling her, from my personal observation, that she had (unconsciously no doubt) trusted them to the care of a woman who was not fit to take charge of a dog. Her ladyship heard me to the end, and then, rising grandly, touched the bell for her flunky and said, “Many thanks for the trouble you have taken, but I have the utmost confidence in my attendants.” And so I was bowed out again. How many parents live with the little children they have brought into the world? How many teach them, or explain to them, all they want to know? It is too much trouble! All that sort of thing is delegated to hirelings. How often has one heard an intelligent child snubbed for the very questioning which should be encouraged! The bright, eager little brain, just opening, as it were, to all the wonders of living, is bursting to know the why and wherefore of everything it sees, and for answer to its excited enquiries it only gets such rebuffs as “Don’t worry!” “Hold your tongue!” “If you don’t behave yourself I’ll send you out of the room.” Which of us who have brains cannot remember the heart-sickening feeling of having in some unconscious manner done wrong by asking questions which our elders were probably too ignorant to answer? And then followed the intense longing to be “grown-up,” and independent. Can’t we all remember that longing to be “grown-up?” Is it not in itself an answer to the question if childhood is not a miserable period, except perhaps for a favoured few?