Richard Le Gallienne

“ No such preposterous myth has even been conceived, and one can only bear to read some of those old stories at all by reminding oneself that the conditions of childhood have indeed been changed immeasurably for the better since the days when such stories were possible. Children of our more humane, not to say indulgent, day must regard the stern training of a David Copperfield or a Nicholas Nickleby as their elders look back upon the torture-chambers of a past world—hardly realizable even by the imagination of to-day—the Dark Ages of childhood. ”

“ As I have said, however, happy idyllic childhood has curiously little place in the greatest fiction. It is the tragic, unhappy child that again and again comes to mind as we recall the masterpieces: the orphan at the mercy of pitiless taskmasters, the little dependent, the drudge and butt of prosperous relatives, the helpless waif tossed to and fro on the winds of an inclement world. ”

“ But there are greater writers who, while taking the whole full-orbed world of humanity for their province, include among their various powers a genius for depicting childhood with the rest, and it has not seldom happened with such writers that, masterly as has been their handling of the grown-up drama of life, some of their child-figures remain among their most striking creations, and their pictures of childhood prove to be those which, on reflection, we find most permanent in our memories. ”

“ One cannot help remarking how much better a time the boy in fiction has than the girl; but here, no doubt, it will be said that the reason is simple, and that fiction here is but once more faithful to life. ”

“ And the picture of the two children wandering hand in hand through the tropic woods, drinking of the crystal spring and eating of the cresses of the stream, is still far from fading from the memory of man. Such pictures of dream-like, happy childhood are all too rare in fiction. ”

“ Such writers seem to lose their skill when they attempt to apply it to other matters, and it is no more desired of them that they should thus "put to test art alien to the artist" than it would have been desirable for Kate Greenaway to paint after the manner of Rossetti. Specialists of the nursery, the play-room, and the fireside, their business is with the drama of life in its bud and earliest blossom, and such may well be content with the rare laurel that belongs to the creators of Alice in Wonderland, Tom Brown's School Days, Little Women, and Peter Pan. ”

“ That childhood nowadays is really a happy state of being, not merely so in the hypocritical retrospect of sentimental seniors, is undoubtedly due in part to Charles Dickens, who, of course, of all writers, realized most poignantly the pathos and pity of the lot of children. ”

“ How delightful is that first glimpse of the little Synnöve in church, to which the unruly lad Thorbjörn had been brought by his father for the first time! "'If you look over there you will see Synnöve,' said the father, as he stooped down to Thorbjörn, took him on his knee, and pointed over to the pew opposite, on the woman's side. There was a little girl kneeling on the bench and looking over the railing. She was still fairer than the man—so fair that he had never seen her equal. ”

“ Often, indeed, where they carry one of their characters on from innocent childhood to tragic maturity, we find ourselves regretting—as in our daily lives we so often regret of some particularly charming child—that it was ever necessary for them to grow up at all. ”

“ Children in Fiction
BY RICHARD LE GALLIENNE
AS there are some painters who are especially "good" at painting sheep, so there are some writers who "do" children with that peculiar touch of truth and charm which only comes of one's being born to one's subject-matter—that particular subject-matter, be it what it may, and no other. ”

“ He has often been reproached for his painful pictures of the deaths of children; but indeed, to my thinking, our one consolation in reading of Paul Dombey, Little Nell, and Tiny Tim is that they do die. Their deaths are nothing like so painful as their lives, and with them we feel that it is sincerely a case of whom the gods love. ”

“ Another American heroine of a more lovable and human type is Bret Harte's M'liss, who was probably the original of a long line of backwoods and mining-camp heroines striking the esteemed popular note of contrast between the refining delicacy of womanhood and the rough ways of brutal, primitive men. ”

“ Certain great writers, if they have not created for us any one outstanding figure of a child, have been happy in the portrayal of family groups of companionable children. The good vicar's family in The Vicar of Wakefield is one of the earliest and most genial examples, and there, too, we have one outstanding boy-creation in the simple Moses, with his immortal green spectacles. Another quite delightful family is that of the Yorkes in Charlotte Brontë's Shirley, of whom their creator truly says: "Take Mr. ”

“ Yorke's family in the aggregate, there is as much mental power in those six young heads, as much originality, as much activity and vigor of brain, as, divided amongst half a dozen commonplace broods, would give to each rather more than an average amount of sense and capacity. ”