Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1912-03-19

Children were only discovered yes
terday. Before the nineteenth CEN
tury the child mind and the child
heart were not supposed to have
enough in them to interest the ma
jestic adult. 1t is true that you find a
delightful baby in Homer; that in
Virgil there is the prettiest glimpse of
a little girl and up and down in the
classics you may meet half a dozen
other pleasant shadows of children.
But they are only shadows, only at the
most charming pictures. They give
you. much as if they were painting or
sculpture-for in childrens bodies art
, has always had interest enough-only
what a child looks like, the pretty
weakness, the instinct for play, the
naive gesture and movement. Not till
the return to nature" not till the
spirit of romance moved on the waters
at the end of the eighteenth century,
do you find poets beginning to tell of
the thought and faith in childs
mind, the mysteries of the child's
heart, the fancies that are dreams and
the fancies that are visions. You may
think that they have gone too far,
that they read into childhood the la
borious philosophizing and sometimes
the labored sentimentality of the
adult. But no one who loves children
Will deny that the best of the children
in nineteenth century books have a
far richer reality. far fuller life than
any that We're born in earlier words.
And some of the best of the best are
in Dickens.
1t is perhaps surprising. You might
have expected that Dickens, with his
love of the quaint, the odd the BIZ
Zarre. of strongly marked character
and mannerism, would not be at his
ease in the delicate nuances of child
fancy. You might have argued that
his taste for eccentriety would make
him blind to the interest of the slight
~ marked features. the ordinariness
OF the ordinary child. You might have
thought that Thackeray, on the one
hand, with his fine restraint, or on
the other, Fielding's mastery of the
normal and wholesome love of it.
would have done better work with
children. But though Thackeray has
given us some jolly, natural boys, he
does not seem TO have felt ANYTHING
a.,
neither his insight nor imagination
worked upon it powerfully, Fielding
came before children were discovered.
They are only part of the background
to him. Even in Amelia" they exist
merely TO glorify the pathetic beauty
Of Amelia's charm. Who remembers
one child for its childhoods sake out
OF Thackerey or Fielding? Who ever
forgot the Warehouses, or David Cop
perfields boyhoad?
There is no mystery about the rea-
son. Dickens had a rare love of
children, and the insight that is born
of love and a rare memory of the WAY
he thought and felt as a child. And
the reason of that, in turn. is obvious
enough. His own childhood was
miserable. Distress, suffering. shame.
stamped recollection into him. You
may read in the Life. how exactly.
how infinitely the tale of the hard life.
IN mean streets, of little David Con-
perfeid rcproduces his own sorrows.
he had, indeed, no Mr. Murdstone to
torture him, but then there was no
Betsy frotWood 10 come TO the res
cue. The penury the servitude 10
rough work among rough lads. were
not observed or imagined They had
been lived through. 1t is this which
gives the rare poignant seality to his
Unused children, not only to David.
put 10 the Marchioness and 10 and
Ilny Tim. which discovers pathos in
those jolly young ruffians. the
Dodger and Charley Bates. 1t is this
which fired his imagination whenever
MS scene needed a child, which gave
US the aHecuonate subtlety of the
study OF Pip and the Jelyby children.
"hlch urged him to make even so
sHsht figure as Quilp's boy WILDLY
allFe. He had to show us children
as they are to themselves, passionate
~ real, vastly important. The fa-
mlliar sentimental theory about pocts
who must learn in suffering what
they teach in song is often a snare
and delusion. But it was precisely
true of Dickens
1t explains not only his supreme
success with children. but the odd
mlnsling OF mastery success ana
elaborate, laborious failure. His
children give US some of the truest
anu most charming child fancy that
ever was written down. some of the
most vivid moments of child life. per
maps the iinest, the purest expression
III ali literature of the inherent
pathos of childhood But they give
us. too, some of the most richly en-
proldered sentimentality, some of the
heaviest rhetoric that ever was
wrapped about child The reason is
SIMPLY, that he loved childhood too
Well he remembered childhood too
We'll The sorrows of child. the
pathos of child's suffering. meant so
lnuch to him that he was always try
ing to make more of them in nrint
that he could never be sure he had
made the world understand. A chiId
To nm was so interesting so impor-
taht creature, a child's life so rich
ana wonderful, that he must always
De straining his invention for new Of
tects to show it off.
Your whole-heared Dickensian win
nave none of this explanation ~ He