CHAPTER XXIV

IN WHICH AN EXPERIMENT IS MADE IN QUICKENING THE INTELLIGENCE OF THE YOUNG, WITH DISTRESSING RESULTS

Mrs. Frank, I have not perhaps said, is one of the serious mothers who wish to make her children clever from the very first, and she has enlisted my services in the campaign, although I am not clever yet. We all stay on the sand until four, and then there are two hours for the twins and their small sister before bedtime. It is this interlude which Mrs. Frank has entreated me to spend now and then, say three times a week, in instruction.

"Be original with them," she says, "there's a good Kent. Make them think and see."

"Heavens, woman," I reply, "why not save time by telling me to be perfect? What's their father about, anyway? Why isn't he teaching his brood?"

"Oh, Frank's too lazy," says his wife. "Besides, he hasn't any patience. He hates to be interrupted with questions--not a little because he can't answer them."

I am lazy too, and am equally afraid of questions, but it has long been understood in this world that I cannot say no, while ever since I took charge of Mr. Bemerton's shop I have been the natural prey of all mendicants. Moreover, Naomi supporting her sister-in-law's request, I had to say yes once more.

I borrowed my plan from Spanton. You remember what he said about his school lectures and his description of the lives of the labourers. Well, I took that as a basis, and, applying the idea to younger minds, began a little story for these children which should have the effect of making them realize, although so young, their dependent position in the world, and their indebtedness to the world and its workers not only for their luxuries but their necessities. At first it would be merely a matter of curiosity quickened and satisfied, but later, as they grew older and went to school, it might make them the more ready not to harbour insularity and arrogance.

We had a chapter at a time. My story began thus:

WHAT THE WORLD DOES FOR PRUE

Once upon a time there was a little girl called Prue. Or, to be more exact, there is a little girl named Prue, for she is living in London at this minute and is still only ten years old. Prue has no brothers and sisters, but I don't think that this matters very much to her happiness, for she has many friends, not only of her own age but bigger too, quite grown up, in fact, and also a very busy mind which leads her to be interested in a large number of things and so keeps her contented. Her father goes into London in the morning at half-past nine by the Hammer-Smith Tube from Gloucester Road, and he comes back in the afternoon so exactly at the same time every day that Prue can be sure of meeting him by the greengrocer's and florist's on the way, where he buys some flowers for Prue's mother, who is an invalid. On Saturday, however, he does not go to his business at all, but in the morning he plays at golf in the Old Deer Park at Richmond (close to Kew Gardens), and in the afternoon he takes Prue to a picture gallery or a concert. On Sunday afternoons they always go either to the South Kensington Museum, which they are getting to know by heart, from Constable's water-colours of Brighton to Michael Angelo's "David," and from teak houses at Benares to lace caps for babies in the time of Queen Anne; or to the British Museum, which they know also equally well, from the Elgin Marbles to the little Tanagra family groups in terra-cotta, and from Egyptian mummies to Staffordshire jugs with poetry on them. You have no idea how interesting a museum can be if you take it easily and have someone to describe the things to you. The mistake people make in museums is to try and see too much, as if they were going to die to-night.

Prue also has a governess named Miss Fry, and a considerable library of her own, and a dachshund named Herr Bandy, and threepence a week pocket money. She has fair hair and blue eyes, and would much rather be laughing than not, in spite of her visits to museums. And that, I think, is enough introduction to Prue.

The purpose of this story is to give you the same idea as that given to Prue by her father, of the thanks which you owe to the world at large; and when I say you I mean all of us, but particularly those living at this moment in England. For I want you to think of Prue as a little girl standing on England in the flat map of the world which we call Mercator's Projection, to whom from all directions steamers and trains are hurrying. Each of these steamers and trains is bringing her something that is necessary for everyday life, to eat or to wear or to use, and were it not for these steamers and trains, and the sailors and engineers on them, and stevedores who loaded them and others who will unload them, and the workmen who made or dug or gathered the articles they are loaded with, that little girl would very likely die or, at any rate, be no better than a savage. And again when I say that little girl I mean you and me and all of us prosperous, protected, English people who have only to go into the Stores and lay down our money to get all we want, and, for the most part, never think of the way in which men have been toiling under hot suns or freezing skies or in stifling cities, mostly on poor wages, to provide us with it. We take such things for granted: just as Prue did until her eccentric Uncle Frank, who always did such odd things, came back from India, where he was a judge, for a holiday, and told her a little about the origin of things, as I am going to tell you.

That was the start, and it was very successful, except that the twins both wondered why I had made a little girl the heroine.

"Well," I said, "it is because girls are more interesting. I wrote it really for Jill, only she is too young for it at the moment. Little boys don't make such good stories as little girls."

"Why?" they asked.

"Ah," I replied (for I am not altogether a fool), "you must ask your father. He knows everything."

Now for the real beginning, the first chapter:

It was a bright morning in April. Prue woke up at seven, half an hour before she need get up. This is a very pleasant thing to do. She knew it was seven because she looked at her watch. Her watch! This is rather serious, because few things that we use in daily life contain the results of more labour in many countries than a very ordinary watch, and if I tell you all about that now, we shall not get back to Prue for many pages. I had forgotten that Prue's watch would come in so soon. Let us then postpone the examination of her watch for a little, because I want to tell you how she began to think of this dependence of hers (and ours) upon the rest of the world. She lay there in her little bed all cosy between the sheets and blankets. (Sheets and blankets, did I say? This story is not only never going to end, I can see, but is never going to begin either, for Prue's sheets jump us straight away to Carolina in North America, and the cotton fields, and the negroes at work there, and the great Atlantic steamers being laden with the bales, and the Lancashire cotton mills, and the girls in clogs, and the boys thinking of football as they work, and the broad, Lancashire dialect filling the air, and ... do you see what a task we have before us? While as for Prue's blankets, they take us farther still, right away to Australia, to a great sheep farm with thousands and thousands of sheep, and the hot sun, and the dry Bush stretching as far as the eye can reach, and the rouseabouts driving the sheep up to the shearing sheds, and rows of half-naked men shearing and shearing, with the sheep kicking and struggling beneath them. Think of the heat of it all, and the dust and thirst and weariness, and nothing to do when evening comes in this wilderness but rest and get ready for the next day! And then the despatch of the wool in wagons to the nearest train, and the train going to the port and the long voyage to the factory in England where it is to be spun. How many sheep's warm coats contributed to make one of your blankets? You never thought of that before, perhaps. But still we have not reached the awakening of Prue's consciousness on this great matter of herself and the world.)

She lay there in that blessed half-awake, half-asleep state for some minutes, until she began to feel something warm on her cheek, and realized that it was the sun. And she suddenly thought how wonderful it was that there should be such a substance as glass which can keep out the cold but lets light and warmth through it, and, idly thinking, she began to wonder how glass is made, and when it was discovered, and what people did before they had it, and either how draughty or how dark their rooms must have been; and she determined to ask her father and Miss Fry about it; and that was the beginning of this story.

From the window as she lay there, her eyes strayed all round the room, and everything that they saw set her wondering afresh. It was a very nice little bedroom. The wall-paper was white, with little bunches of wall-paper flowers tied with blue ribbon all over it--the kind of wall-paper that does not look like anything but what it is and is therefore happy and restful, and very different from the wall-paper that was there when Prue had measles last year. That had a curly, twisted pattern on it which, when Prue had fever, turned into animals and frightened her; and then it was badly hung in some places, and Prue would lie there for hours wishing that it fitted and longing to get up and alter it. But the new paper was gay and properly pasted on, and Prue liked it very much.

On the walls were a few pictures--one or two coloured ones from the Christmas numbers in cheap frames (glass again!) and the "Angels' heads," by Sir Joshua Reynolds from the National Gallery, and the little King Philip on his pony, by Velasquez, from the Wallace Collection, and an illuminated text from Aunt Mildred, very beautifully done in gold and water-colours--"The Lord is my Shepherd," and a Shakespeare date calendar. There were ornaments on the mantelpiece--a gaily-painted wooden figure from Munich, two Japanese vases, a tiny cat and a tiny dog in brass, painted just like life, from Vienna, and a serpentine cup from the Lizard. In the fire-place was coal and wood all ready to be lit when Prue had a cold. Before the window was her dressing-table with a mirror over it, and her brush and comb and so forth on little mats with fringe round them. Then there were the curtains, and the blind, and the wardrobe of white wood with a little painted pattern, and the chest of drawers, and the washing-stand with soap and toothbrush and so forth, and the chairs. There was also a little hanging bookshelf, and on the floor was a bright green carpet.

Prue lay in her little brass bed and looked at these things one by one while the sun continued to pour through the windows and the time to get up came nearer and nearer. And all the while she was getting up she was thinking about these things, and how they were made, and where they came from, and when she came downstairs she told her father about it.

We have seen something about the origin of the sheets and the blankets of Prue's bed. But what about the mattress and the pillows and the framework. Just as before there could be the blankets there had to be sheep with fleece on their backs, so before there could be this mattress there had to be horses, for it was stuffed with horsehair, the long hairs combed from their tails chiefly in Russia, South America, and Australia. But, you say, the hair in a horse's tail is long and straight, while the hair that one can pull out of mattresses is short and curly. That is true; but the curl has been put there artificially, for a number of processes have to be gone through between the combing of the tail and Prue's slumbers on the mattress, and curling the hair is one of the most important, or there would be no spring to it.

And just as sheep and horses had to live before there could be blankets or mattresses, so did geese have to cackle over commons and be killed for the market before Prue could lay her head on that soft pillow. The goose is a familiar enough bird; a much rarer bird contributed to keep Prue warm at nights by supplying her with the beautiful soft quilt that lay on the top of her bed--the eider duck. The eider duck is a bird that lives in very cold regions, such as Spitzbergen and Greenland and Iceland and the north of Norway. The down comes from her breast and is plucked by herself to cover her eggs and keeps them warm. Having marked down an eider-duck's nest, the down-hunter takes away all its contents, and this he does again and again at intervals of a few days until he guesses that the eider-duck's patience is almost exhausted. He then leaves the eggs and down undisturbed, for fear that she will lay no more. The business of collecting down has become so important that artificial nests are made to which the birds gladly come, and in which, in spite of the way they are treated, they bravely go on laying eggs. From each of these nests half a pound of down is collected each breeding season; but before it is ready to be put into quilts it has to be washed and cleaned to such an extent that the half-pound has dwindled to a quarter. It all does not sound very gentlemanly, does it? but there are worse things than that in store for us. Well-to-do little girls in London cannot be made comfortable without a good deal of suffering going on in other parts of the world.

Take the looking-glass, for example, over there on the dressing-table: what about the brightness at the back of it which makes it reflect, and reflect not only what is in front of it but, as you have probably discovered by looking sideways at it, that which is apparently wholly out of its range too. I must confess that this strange power of a mirror amazes me as much as its ordinary gift of reflecting what is straight in front of it amazes a dog. The reflecting power of a mirror is obtained by spreading mercury or quicksilver on the back; but before this can be done the mercury has to be obtained, and that process is one of the most dangerous to men.

Quicksilver is a most delightful plaything. The first school to which I was sent, a school for girls and boys, was kept by a little old Quaker lady with highly-magnifying, gold-rimmed spectacles, who, when we had been good, used to bring out a little bottle of quicksilver and pour great shining drops from it on the green baize table, and it would run about in all directions. No doubt she explained the origin and nature of mercury as it ran, but I have forgotten that. All that I remember and have always remembered is that the presence of the quicksilver proved that we had been good and that everyone was happy; and it remains in my mind as a sign of content. This little old lady with the gold-rimmed spectacles kept also a casket containing those yellow, round, gelatine lozenges which look like sovereigns, and which confectioners often use to mend broken windows with. One of them was given to any child who coughed. You should have heard what a lot of coughing there was!

There I stopped the first lesson; and, as it happened, there the experiment stopped permanently. For I had let loose the furies! For the rest of that evening and the whole of the next morning, before we got them into the sea, the children did nothing but ask questions as to the origin of this and that. We were in despair, and my unpopularity reached a point almost beyond endurance. Frank avoided his family as though it owed him money; Wynne was undisguisedly testy, and even Mrs. Frank confessed that children's intelligences can be overstimulated. "At any rate," she said, "at Rimini and in summer. You must wait till we get back and it is colder."

I accepted the decree with composure.

"At any rate," I said, "you will admit that the idea was good."

"It depends," she said, "on Frank. If he returns to his wife I will forgive you."