Part 6

Leslie, in his Handbook for Young Painters, makes a very sensible reflection upon Raphael’s children, as distinguished from the unchildlike children of Francia, for example. “A fault of many painters,” he says, “in their representations of childhood is, that they make it taking an interest in what can only concern more advanced periods of life. But Raphael’s children, unless the subject requires it should be otherwise, are as we see them generally in nature, wholly unconcerned with the incidents that occupy the attention of their elders. Thus the boy, in the cartoon of the Beautiful Gate, pulls the girdle of his grandfather, who is entirely absorbed in what S. Peter is saying to the cripple. The child, impatient of delay, wants the old man to move on. In the Sacrifice at Lystra, also, the two beautiful boys placed at the altar, to officiate at the ceremony, are too young to comprehend the meaning of what is going on about them. One is engrossed with the pipes on which he is playing, and the attention of the other is attracted by a ram brought for sacrifice. The quiet simplicity of these sweet children has an indescribably charming effect in this picture, where every other figure is under the influence of an excitement they alone do not partake in. Children, in the works of inferior painters, are often nothing else than little actors; but what I have noticed of Raphael’s children is true, in many instances, of the children in the pictures of Rembrandt, Jan Steen, Hogarth, and other great painters, who, like Raphael, looked to nature for their incidents.”

There was one artist of this time who looked to nature not merely for the incidents of childhood, but for the soul of childhood itself. It is impossible to regard the work of Luca della Robbia, especially in that ware which receives his name, without perceiving that here was a man who saw children and rejoiced in their young lives with a simple, ingenuous delight. The very spirit which led this artist to seek for expression in homely forms of material, to domesticate art, as it were, was one which would make him quick to seize upon, not the incidents alone, but the graces, of childhood. Nor is it straining a point to say that the purity of his color was one with the purity of this sympathy with childhood. The Renaissance as a witness to a new occupation of the world by humanity finds its finest expression in the hope which springs in the lovely figures of Luca della Robbia.

It is significant of this Renaissance—it is significant, I think we shall find, of every great new birth in the world—that it turns its face toward childhood, and looks into that image for the profoundest realization of its hopes and dreams. In the attitude of men toward childhood we may discover the near or far realization of that supreme hope and confidence with which the great head of the human family saw, in the vision of a child, the new heaven and the new earth. It was when his disciples were reasoning among themselves which of them should be the greatest that Jesus took a child, and set him by him, and said unto them, “Whosoever shall receive this child in my name receiveth me.” The reception of the Christ by men, from that day to this, has been marked by successive throes of humanity, and in each great movement there has been a new apprehension of childhood, a new recognition of the meaning involved in the pregnant words of the Saviour. Such a recognition lies in the children of Raphael and of Luca della Robbia. There may have been no express intimation on their part of the connection between their works and the great prophecy, but it is often for later generations to read more clearly the presence of a thought by means of light thrown back upon it. The course of Christianity since the Renaissance supplies such a light.

VI

IN ENGLISH LITERATURE AND ART

I

To hunt through English literature and art for representations of childhood would seem to be like looking for the persons of children in any place where people congregate. How could there be any conspicuous absence, except under conditions which necessarily exclude the very young? Yet it is impossible to follow the stream of English literature, with this pursuit in mind, without becoming aware that at one point in its course there is a marked access of this force of childhood. There is, to be sure, a fallacy lurking in the customary study of the development of literature. We fall into the way of thinking of that literature as an organism proceeding from simpler to more complex forms; we are attent upon the transition of one epoch into another; we come to regard each period as essentially anticipatory of the succeeding period. We make the same mistake often in our regard of historical sequence, looking at all past periods simply and exclusively with reference to the present stand from which we take our observations. A too keen sensibility to the logic which requires time for its conclusion, a too feeble sense of the logic which dwells in the relation between the seen and the unseen,—these stand in the way of a clear perception of the forces immanent in literature and life.

The distinction is worth bearing in mind when one surveys English literature with the purpose of recognizing the child in it. There are certain elemental facts and truths of which old and new cannot be predicated. The vision of helpless childhood is no modern discovery; it is no ancient revelation. The child at play was seen by Homer and by Cowper, and the latter did not derive his apprehension from any study of the former. The humanism which underlies all literature is independent of circumstances for its perception of the great moving forces of life; it is independent of the great changes in human history; even so great a change as the advent of Christianity could not interfere with the normal expression of elemental facts in life.

Wherein, then, lies the difference between an antique and a modern apprehension of childhood? For what may one look in a survey of English literature that he would not find in Greek or Roman authors? Is there any development of human thought in relation to childhood to be traced in a literature which has reflected the mind of the centuries since the Renaissance? The most aggressive type of modern Christianity, at any rate the most free type, is to be found amongst English-speaking people; and if Christianity has in any way modified the course of thought regarding the child, the effect will certainly be seen in English literature and art.

* * * * *

A recollection of ballad literature, without critical inquiry of the comparative age of the writings, brings to light the familiar and frequent incident of cruelty to children in some form: of the secret putting away of babes, as in the affecting ballad of the Queen’s Marie; of the cold and heartless murder, as in the Cruel Mother, and in the tragic tale of The Child’s Last Will, where a sudden dramatic and revealing turn is given, after the child has willed its various possessions, in the lines,—

“‘What wish leav’st thou thy step-mother Little daughter dear?’ ‘Of hell the bitter sorrow Sweet step-mother mine For ah, all! I am so ill, ah!’

“‘What wish leav’st thou thy old nurse Little daughter dear?’ ‘For her I wish the same pangs Sweet step-mother mine For ah, ah! I am so ill, ah!’”

That grewsome story of Lamkin, with its dripping of blood in almost every stanza, gets half its curdling power from the slow torture of the sensibilities, as the babe is slain and then rocked in its cradle, and the mother, summoned by its cries, meets her own fate at the hands of the treacherous nurse and Lamkin, whose name is a piece of bald irony:—

“Then Lamkin’s ta’en a sharp knife That hang down by his gaire, And he has gi’en the bonny babe A deep wound and a sair.

“Then Lamkin he rocked, And the fause nourice sang Till frae ilkae bore o’ the cradle The red blood out sprang.

“Then out it spak the ladie As she stood on the stair, ‘What ails my bairn, nourice, That he’s greeting sae sair?

“‘O still my bairn, nourice O still him wi’ the pap!’ ‘He winna still, lady, For this nor for that.’

“‘O still my bairn, nourice; O still him wi’ the wand!’ ‘He winna still, lady, For a’ his father’s land.’

“‘O still my bairn, nourice, Oh still him wi’ the bell!’ ‘He winna still, lady, Till ye come down yoursel.’

“O the firsten step she steppit, She steppit on a stane; But the neisten step she steppit, She met him, Lamkin.”

Another early and significant illustration is found in the popular story of Hugh of Lincoln; but instead of turning to the ballad of that name, one may better have recourse to Chaucer’s version as contained in the Canterbury tale of the Prioress. In the prologue to this tale appear the words of Scripture, “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings,” in a paraphrase, and the Prioress turns to the Virgin, beseeching her to give words for the telling of the piteous tale. The story of Hugh of Lincoln—that in the reign of Henry III., the Jews of Lincoln stole a boy of eight years, named Hugh, tortured and crucified him—was received with great credit, for it concentrated the venomous enmity with which Christians regarded the Jews, and by a refinement of cruelty pictured the Jews in a solitary instance as behaving in a Christian-like manner. Chaucer tells the story with exquisite pathos, lingering upon the childish ways of Hugh, and preparing the tears of his readers by picturing the little boy as a miniature saint. It can scarcely be called a picture of artless childhood; for though touches here and there bring out the prattler, Chaucer appears to have meant that his readers should be especially impressed by the piety of this “litel clergeoun,” or chorister boy:—

“A litel clergeoun, seven yeer of age, That day by day to scole was his wone; And eek also, whereas he saugh thymage Of Cristes mooder, he hadde in usage, As hym was taught, to knele adoun and seye His _Ave Marie_, as he goth by the weye.”

And so we are told of the little fellow eager to learn the Alma Redemptoris of his elders, and conning it as he went to and from school, his way leading through the Jews’ quarter:—

“As I have seyd, thurgh-out the Jewerie This litel child, as he cam to and fro, Ful murily wolde he synge and crie O _Alma redemptoris_ evere-mo The swetnesse hath his herte perced so Of Cristes mooder, that to hire to preye He kan nat stynte of syngyng by the weye.”

The wicked Jews, vexed by his singing, kill him, and cast his body into a pit. His weeping mother seeks him, and, happening by the pit, is made aware of his presence by the miracle of his dead lips still singing the Alma Redemptoris.

In two other stories has Chaucer dwelt upon the pathos of childhood and bereft or suffering motherhood. In the Man of Law’s tale of Custance, there is a touching passage where Custance and her babe are driven away from the kingdom, and exposed to the sea in the ship which had brought them. The mother kneels upon the sand before embarking, and puts her trust in the Lord.

“Her litel child lay wepying in hir arm, And knelynge, pitously to hym she seyde, ‘Pees litel sone, I wol do thee noon harm!’ With that hir kerchief of hir heed she breyde, And over hise litel eyen she it leyde, And in hir arm she lulleth it ful faste And in-to hevene hire eyen up she caste.”

Then she commits herself and her child to Mary by the love of Mary’s child.

“And up she rist, and walketh doun the stronde Toward the ship,—hir folweth al the prees,— And evere she preyeth hire child to hold his pees.”

Again, in the Clerk’s tale of Patient Griselda, the effect of the story is greatly heightened by the narrative of the successive partings of the mother with her child; and the climax is reached in the burst of gladness and pent-up feeling which overtakes Griselda at the restoration of her son and daughter. It is noticeable that in these and other instances childhood appears chiefly as an appeal to pity, rarely as an object of direct love and joy. This is not to be wondered at when one considers the character of the English race, and the nature of the redemption which it has been undergoing in the slow process of its submission to the spirit of Christ. We say the English race, without stopping to make nice distinctions between the elements which existed at the time of the Great Charter, just as we may properly speak of the American people of the time of the Constitution.

This character is marked by a brutality, a murderous spirit, which lies scarcely concealed, to-day, in the temper of every English crowd, and has left its mark on literature from the ballads to Oliver Twist. This brutal instinct, this rude, savage, northern spirit, is discovered in conflict with the disarming power of the spirit of Christ, and the stages of the conflict are most clearly indicated in poetry, which is to England what pictorial and sculpturesque art is to the south, the highest exponent of its spiritual life. More comprehensively, English literature affords the most complete means of measuring the advance of England in humanity.

It belongs to the nature of this deep conflict that there should appear from time to time the finest exemplars of the ideals formed by the divine spirit, side by side with exhibitions of the most willful baseness. English literature abounds in these contrasts; it is still more expressive of tides of spiritual life, the elevation of thought and imagination succeeded by almost groveling animalism. And since one of the symbols of a perfected Christianity is the child, it is not unfair to seek for its presence in literature, nor would it be a rare thing to discover it in passages which hint at the conflict between the forces of good and evil so constantly going on.

It is not strange, therefore, that the earliest illustrations of childhood should mainly turn, as we have seen, upon that aspect which is at once most natural and most Christian. Pity, like a naked, new-born babe, does indeed ride the blast in those wild, more than half-savage bursts of the English spirit which are preserved for us in ballad literature; and in the first springs of English poetic art in Chaucer, the child is as it were the mediator between the rough story and the melody of the singer. One cannot fail to see how the introduction of the child by Chaucer, in close union with the mother, is almost a transfer of the Madonna into English poetry,—a Madonna not of ritual, but of humanity.

* * * * *

There are periods in the history of every nation when the inner life is more completely exposed to view, and when the student, if he be observant, may trace most clearly the fundamental arteries of being. Such a period in England was the Elizabethan era, when the tumultuous English spirit manifested itself in religion, in politics, in enterprise, in adventure, and in intellectual daring,—that era which was dominated by the great master of English speech. It is the fashion of every age to write its characteristics in forms which have become obsolete, and to resort to masquerade for a display of its real emotions. It was because chivalry was no longer the every-day habit of men that Spenser used it for his purposes, and translated the Seven Champions of Christendom into a profounder and more impassioned poem, emblematical of that great ethical conflict which has been a significant feature of English history from the first. In that series of knightly adventures, The Faery Queen, wherein the field of human character is traversed, sin traced to its lurking-place, and the old dragon of unrighteousness set upon furiously, there is a conspicuous incident contained in the second book. In each book Spenser conceives the antagonist of the knight, in some spiritual form, to have wrought a mischief which needs to be repaired and revenged. Thus a dragon occasions the adventures of the Red Cross knight, and in the legend of Sir Guyon the enchantress Acrasia, or Intemperance, has caused the death of a knight and his lady; the latter slays herself because of her husband’s death, and plunges her babe’s innocent hands into her own bloody breast for a witness. Sir Guyon and the Palmer, standing over the dead bodies, hold grave discourse upon the incident; then they bury the dead, and seek in vain to cleanse the babe’s hands in a neighboring fountain. The pure water will not be stained, and the child bears the name Ruddymane,—the Red-Handed,—and shall so bear the sign of a vengeance he is yet to execute.

It is somewhat difficult to see into the full meaning of Spenser’s allegory, for the reason that the poet breaks through the meshes of his allegoric net and soars into a freer air; but there are certain strong lines running through the poem, and this of the ineradicable nature of sin is one of them. To Spenser, vexed with problems of life, that conception of childhood which knit it closely with the generations was a significant one, and in the bloody hand of the infant, which could not be suffered to stain the chaste fountain, he saw the dread transmission of an inherited guilt and wrong. The poet and the moralist struggle for ascendency, and in this conflict one may see reflected the passion for speculation in divinity which was already making deep marks in English literature.

But the Elizabethan era had its share of light-heartedness. The songs of the dramatists and other lyrics exhibit very clearly the influence upon literature of the revival of ancient learning. As the art of Italy showed the old poetic grace risen again under new conditions, so the dominant art of England caught a light from the uncovered glory of Greece and Rome. It was the time of the great translations of Phaer, Golding, North, and Chapman; and as those translations are bold appropriations of antiquity, not timid attempts at satisfying the requisitions of scholarship, so the figures of the old mythology are used freely and ingenuously; they are naturalized in English verse far more positively than afterwards in the _elegantia_ of the Queen Anne and Georgian periods. Ben Jonson’s Venus’ Runaway is an exquisite illustration of this rich, decorative use of the old fable. It was partly through this sportive appropriation of the myth of Amor, so vital in all literature, that the lullabies of the time came to get their sweetness. The poet, in putting songs into the mother’s mouth, is not so much reflecting the Virgin and Child as he is possessed with the spirit of Greek beauty, and his delicate fancy plays about the image of a little Love. Thus may we read the Golden Slumbers of Dekker, in his Patient Grissel. By a pretty conceit George Gascoigne, in his Lullaby of a Lover, captures the sentiment of a mother and babe, to make it tell the story of his own love and content. There is a touching song by Robert Greene in his Menaphon, where Sephestia puts into her lullaby the story of her parting with the child’s father:—

“Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, When thou art old, there’s grief enough for thee. The wanton smiled, father wept, Mother cried, baby leapt, More thou crowed, more he cried, Nature could not sorrow hide; He must go, he must kiss Child and mother, baby bless; For he left his pretty boy, Father’s sorrow, father’s joy. Weep not, my wanton, smile upon my knee, When thou art old, there’s grief enough for thee.”

We are apt to look for everything in Shakespeare, but in this matter of childhood we must confess that there is a meagreness of reference which almost tempts us into constructing a theory to account for it. So far as dramatic representation is concerned, the necessary limitations of the stage easily account for the absence of the young. Girls were not allowed to act in Shakespeare’s time, and it is not easy to reduce boys capable of acting to the stature of young girls. More than this, boys and girls are not themselves dramatic in action, though in the more modern drama they are sometimes used, especially in domestic scenes, to heighten effects, and to make most reasonable people wish them in bed.

Still, within the limits enforced by his art, Shakespeare more than once rested much on youthful figures. The gay, agile Moth has a species of femineity about him, so that we fancy he would be most easily shown on the stage by a girl; but one readily recalls others who have distinct boyish properties. In Coriolanus, when the mother and wife go out to plead with the angry Roman, they take with them his little boy. Volumnia, frantic with fear, with love, and with a woman’s changing passion, calls upon one and another to join her in her entreaty. Virgilia, the wife, crowds in a word at the height of Volumnia’s appeal, when the voluble grandmother has been rather excitedly talking about Coriolanus treading on his mother’s womb, that brought him into the world. Virgilia strikes in,—

“Ay, and mine That brought you forth this boy, to keep your name Living to time.”

Whereupon young Marcius, with delicious boyish brag and chivalry:—

“A’ shall not tread on me; I’ll run away till I am bigger, but then I’ll fight.”

In the same play there is a description of the boy which tallies exactly with the single appearance which he makes in person. Valeria drops in upon the mother and grandmother in a friendly way, and civilly asks after the boy.

“_Vir._ I thank your ladyship; well, good madam.

“_Vol._ He had rather see the swords, and hear a drum, than look upon his schoolmaster.

“_Val._ O’ my word, the father’s son: I’ll swear, ’tis a very pretty boy. O’ my troth, I looked upon him o’ Wednesday half an hour together: has such a confirmed countenance. I saw him run after a gilded butterfly; and when he caught it, he let it go again; and after it again: and over and over he comes, and up again; catched it again; or whether his fall enraged him, or how ’twas, he did so set his teeth and tear it; O, I warrant, how he mammocked it!

“_Vol._ One on ’s father’s moods.

“_Val._ Indeed, la, ’tis a noble child.

“_Vir._ A crack, madam.”

The most eminent example in Shakespeare of active childhood is unquestionably the part played by young Arthur in the drama of King John. It is the youth of Arthur, his dependence, his sorry inheritance of misery, his helplessness among the raging wolves about him, his childish victory over Hubert, and his forlorn death, when he leaps trembling from the walls, which impress the imagination. “Stay yet,” says Pembroke to Salisbury,—

“I’ll go with thee And find the inheritance of this poor child, His little kingdom of a forced grave.”