The Story of My Life from Childhood to Manhood | Page 7

felt exquisitely soft, and beneath
which one could rest delightfully. When the time for rising came, my
mother called me. I climbed joyfully into her warm bed, and she drew
her darling into her arms, played all sorts of pranks with him, and never

did I listen to more beautiful fairy tales than at those hours. They
became instinct with life to me, and have always remained so; for my
mother gave them the form of dramas, in which I was permitted to be
an actor.
The best one of all was Little Red Riding Hood. I played the little girl
who goes into the wood, and she was the wolf. When the wicked beast
had disguised itself in the grandmother's cap I not only asked the
regulation questions: "Grandmother, what makes you have such big
eyes? Grandmother, why is your skin so rough?" etc., but invented new
ones to defer the grand final effect, which followed the words,
"Grandmother, why do you have such big, sharp teeth?" and the answer,
"So that I can eat you," whereupon the wolf sprang on me and
devoured me--with kisses.
Another time I was Snow-White and she the wicked step-mother, and
also the hunter, the dwarf, and the handsome prince who married her.
How real this merry sport made the distress of persecuted innocence,
the terrors and charm of the forest, the joys and splendours of the fairy
realm! If the flowers in the garden had raised their voices in song, if the
birds on the boughs had called and spoken to me--nay, if a tree had
changed into a beautiful fairy, or the toad in the damp path of our
shaded avenue into a witch--it would have seemed only natural.
It is a singular thing that actual events which happened in those early
days have largely vanished from my memory; but the fairy tales I heard
and secretly experienced became firmly impressed on my mind.
Education and life provided for my familiarity with reality in all its
harshness and angles, its strains and hurts; but who in later years could
have flung wide the gates of the kingdom where everything is beautiful
and good, and where ugliness is as surely doomed to destruction as evil
to punishment? Even poesy in our times turns from the Castalian fount
whose crystal-clear water becomes an unclean pool and, though
reluctantly, obeys the impulse to make its abode in the dust of reality.
Therefore I plead with voice and pen in behalf of fairy tales; therefore I
tell them to my children and grandchildren, and have even written a
volume of them myself.

How perverse and unjust it is to banish the fairy tale from the life of the
child, because devotion to its charm might prove detrimental to the
grown person! Has not the former the same claim to consideration as
the latter?
Every child is entitled to expect a different treatment and judgment, and
to receive what is his due undiminished. Therefore it is unjust to injure
and rob the child for the benefit of the man. Are we even sure that the
boy is destined to attain the second and third stages--youth and
manhood?
True, there are some apostles of caution who deny themselves every
joy of existence while in their prime, in order, when their locks are grey,
to possess wealth which frequently benefits only their heirs.
All sensible mothers will doubtless, like ours, take care that their
children do not believe the stories which they tell them to be true. I do
not remember any time when, if my mind had been called upon to
decide, I should have thought that anything I invented myself had really
happened; but I know that we were often unable to distinguish whether
the plausible tale related by some one else belonged to the realm of fact
or fiction. On such occasions we appealed to my mother, and her
answer instantly set all doubts at rest; for we thought she could never
be mistaken, and knew that she always told the truth.
As to the stories invented by myself, I fared like other imaginative
children. I could imagine the most marvellous things about every
member of the household, and while telling them--but only during that
time--I often fancied that they were true; yet the moment I was asked
whether these things had actually occurred, it seemed as if I woke from
a dream. I at once separated what I had imagined from what I had
actually experienced, and it would never have occurred to me to persist
against my better knowledge. So the vividly awakened power of
imagination led neither me, my brothers and sisters, nor my children
and grandchildren into falsehood.
In after years I abhorred it, not only because my mother would rather
have permitted