Seeing Things at Night
TextOf course, I might have gone over to H. 3rd and, after a short struggle, taken the carving knife away from him by main force, but that would have made him mad. He would at length have suppressed his anger and right away a complex would begin in his little square head.
Picture him now at thirty – he has neuralgia. Somebody mentions the theory of blind abscesses and he has all his teeth pulled out. No good comes of it. He goes to a psychoanalyst and the doctor begins to ask questions. He asks a great many over a long period of time. Eventually he gets a clue. He finds that when H. 3rd was eight years old he dreamed three nights in succession of stepping on a June bug.
"Was it a large, rather fat June bug?" asks the doctor carelessly, as if the answer was not important.
"Yes," says H. 3rd, "it was."
"That June bug," says the doctor, "was a symbol of your father. When you were twenty months old he took a Carving knife away from you and you have had a suppressed anger at him ever since. Now that you know about it your neuralgia will disappear."
And the neuralgia would go at that. But by that time I'd be gone and nothing could be done about this suppressed feud of so many years' standing. My mind went through all these possibilities and I decided it would be simpler and safer to let H. 3rd keep the carving knife as long as he attempted nothing aggressive. A wound is not so dangerous as a complex.
"And, anyhow," I thought, "if he can make that carving knife cut anything he's the best swordsman in the flat."
DECEMBER 20, 1919. – Our attitude toward H. 3rd and the carving knife turns out to have been all wrong. We received a letter from Floyd Dell to-day in which he points out that no Freudian could possibly approve our policy of non-interference. Mr. Dell says we should have used force to the utmost.
"Psychoanalytically speaking," he writes, "I think you were wrong about H. 3rd and the carving knife. There is really no Freudian reason why, when he came carrying it into the parlor, you should not have gone over to him and, 'after a short struggle,' taken it away from him by main force. Of course, that would have made him mad. But what harm would that have done?.. Unless, of course, you had previously represented yourself to him as a Divine and Perfect Being. In that case his new conception of you as a big bully would have had to struggle with his other carefully implanted and nourished emotions – and his sense of the injustice of your behavior might have been 'repressed.'
"But you know quite well that you are not a Divine and Perfect Being, and, if you consider it for a moment from the child's point of view, you will concede that his emotional opinion of you under such circumstances, highly colored as it is, has its justification. When you yourself want something very much (whether you are entitled to it or not) and when some one (however righteously) keeps you from getting it, how do you feel? But you know that you live in a world in which such things happen. H. 3rd has still to learn it, and if he learns it at his father's knee he is just that much ahead. The boys at school will teach it to him, anyway. The fact is, parents are unwilling that their children should hate them, however briefly, healthily and harmlessly.
"The Victorian parent spanked his offspring and commanded them to love him any way. The modern parent refrains from spanking (for good reasons) and hopes the child will love him. The Freudian parent does not mind if his children do hate him once or twice a day, so long as they are not ashamed of doing so. If H. 3rd swats his father in an enraged struggle to keep possession of the precious carving knife he is expressing and not repressing his emotions. And so long as he has done his best to win he is fairly well content to lose. What a child doesn't like is to have to struggle with a big bully that he mustn't (for mysterious reasons) even try to lick! The privilege of fighting with one's father, even if it does incidentally involve getting licked, is all that a healthy child asks for. Never fear, the time will come when he can lick you; and awaiting that happy time will give him an incentive for growing up. Quite possibly you don't want him to grow up; but that is only another of the well-known weaknesses of parents!"
DECEMBER 22, 1919. – Concerning H. 3rd and the carving knife I am gratified to find support for my position from Dr. Edward Hiram Reede, the well-known Washington neurologist, who finds that from the point of view of H. 3rd there was soundness in my policy of non-interference.
"Speaking for him," he writes, "I commend your action. Urged as he is by the two chief traits of childhood, at the present time – curiosity and imitation – I see no reason for direct coercion. So long as the modern child is environed by a museum, as the modern home appears, his curiosity must always be on edge, and if each new goal of curiosity is wrested from him by the usual 'Don't!' or the more ancient struggle for possession instead of by a transference of interest, then the contest will be interminable.
"H. 3rd by right of experience looks upon the armamentarium of the kitchen as his indisputable possessions and can hardly be expected to except a carver. The deification of the parent occurs in accord with the ancestor worship of primitive forebears, and the father will remain the god to the child so long as observation daily reveals the parent as a worker of miracles. Parental self-canonization is not at all necessary to produce this."
DECEMBER 23, 1919. – Recently, a reader wrote to inform us that in her opinion we were a "semi-Bolshevist," and added, "your style is cramped by this demi-semi attitude, and your stuff seems a little grotesque both to conservatives and radicals." This seemed fair comment to us and we confessed frankly that we were not a conservative and on clear and pleasant days not quite a radical. This business of sticking to the middle of the road, with perhaps a slight slant to the left, seems ever so difficult. One is ambushed and potted at from either side. Seemingly, even in our confession we have again offended, for Miss Mora M. Deane writes:
"As it happens I have just read your comment on my letter; and since you have turned out to be merely an egotist who twists an adverse criticism to his own advantage, I must now add to my letter that part which I lopped off considerately. This precisely because I did not know you were an egotist. The deleted part which originally closed the letter follows:
"At any rate I have lately heard intelligent persons from both camps saying, 'Heywood Broun is responsible for my going to see some pretty rotten plays and for reading some stupid books.'
"I myself should like to warn you against letting Heywood 3rd ever read Floyd Dell's book. The very idea of his advising about children leaves a bad taste in the mouth. You'll be sorry some day if you ever take him seriously."
Of course, Miss Deane does wisely to let us have the deletion. First impulses are usually sound.
And in one respect Miss Deane has scored more heavily than she could well have realized. Her warning that I should protect H. 3rd from radical literature touches an impending tragedy in my life. Almost by intuition Miss Deane seems to realize that the child and I are not in agreement in our political opinions. Of the fifteen or twenty words in which H. 3rd is proficient one is "mine" and another is "gimme." When he goes to the park he wears a naval uniform with the insignia of an ensign on his left arm. There is gold braid on his cap. Moreover, H. 3rd has in his own right two Liberty bonds, a card of thrift stamps, a rocking-horse, a railroad, a submarine, three picture books, an automobile and a Noah's ark. Any effort to socialize a single one of these holdings is met by a protest so violent that I cannot help but realize that the child's sense of property rights is strongly developed. That is, his own property rights, for he is often inclined to dispute my title to cigarette stumps, safety razor blades and carving knives.
Moreover, H. 3rd is unblushingly parasitic. We fail to remember that he has ever offered to make any return for the regular income of milk and oatmeal, and sometimes carrots, which is issued to him regularly by his parents. To be sure, he once gave me a chicken bone and on another occasion a spool of cotton, but both times he promptly took them away again. I am even inclined to question whether, in any strictly legal sense, the chicken bone or the spool were his. Granting that they had been carelessly discarded by other members of his family, and that, by his own efforts, H. 3rd rescued the spool from the scrapbasket and the chicken bone from behind the trash box, the fact remains that it was I who bought the chicken and Miss X who purchased the spool. We were entitled at least to a royalty during the life of the two utilities, but H. 3rd merely absorbed them without explanation or promise.
I doubt whether Dell or Eastman or even Karl Marx himself could avail to check the rampant individualism of the child. He has always displayed an impatience and an irritation at abstract arguments. The best that can be done is to avoid introducing contentious subjects. For the present Miss X and I are able to carry on destructive and seditious conversations even in his presence by spelling out "p-r-o-l-e-t-a-r-i-a-t" and "b-o-u-r-g-e-o-i-s-i-e" and other words which might make him mad. We have even been able to keep Trotzky's picture above the mantelpiece in the red room, but in this case Miss X adopted a subterfuge which seems to me rather questionable. She told H. 3rd that it was a portrait of Nicholas Murray Butler.
When H. 3rd is twenty-one he will come into undisputed possession of the two Liberty bonds and the card of thrift stamps for which Miss X and I starved and scraped. I rather hope he will thank us, but beyond that I expect nothing except good advice. I can see him now squaring his shoulders, as becomes a man of property and independent income, and then laying a kindly hand on my shoulder as he says, "Dad, can't you understand how wrong you are? Don't you see that if you disturb or even threaten the institution of private property you undermine the home, imperil the state and destroy initiative?"
JANUARY 21, 1920. – When the rest went out and left me alone in the house, they said that H. 3rd would surely sleep through the evening. Nobody remembered that he had ever waked up to cry. But he did this night. I didn't quite know what to do about it. I sang "Rockabye Baby" to him, but that didn't do any good, and then I said "I wouldn't cry if I were you." This, too, had no effect, and, in fact, no sooner had I uttered it than I recognized it as a piece of gratuitous impertinence. How could I possibly tell whether or not I would cry if the safety pins were in wrong or anything else of that sort was not quite right?
Nor was it even fair to assume that H. 3rd was crying for any such personal reasons. After all, he lives in a state which has recently suspended five duly elected assemblymen, and in which as fine a book as Jurgen has aroused the meddlesome attention of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and his country has gone quite hysterical on the subject of "Reds" and "Red" propaganda and I haven't paid him back yet for that $50 Liberty Bond of his which I sold.
And after I had thought of these things it seemed to me that he was entirely justified in crying, and that I ought to be ashamed of myself because I didn't cry, too, since there were so many wrong things in the world to be righted. Humbly I left him to continue his dignified protest without any further unwarranted meddling on my part.
JANUARY 24, 1920. – "My attention has been called," writes John S. Sumner, secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, "to a paragraph of your article in the Tribune of January 21, wherein you refrain from blaming H. 3rd for crying, because among other things, he 'lives in a state which has recently suspended five duly elected assemblymen, and in which as fine a book as Jurgen has aroused the meddlesome attention of the Society for the Suppression of Vice.'
"I assume that H. 3rd is too young to appreciate the contents of any publication, but some day he will be old enough, and no doubt his character will be molded and his conduct controlled, in a measure, by what he reads and the thoughts suggested by such reading. That is the usual thing.
"If, when H. 3rd or any other young person, reached the age of understanding a stranger came into the home and attempted to entertain the young mind with stories and suggestions such as are contained in the book in question, whoever had in charge the moral welfare of the young person would no doubt be very indignant and the stranger would be expelled forthwith. We cannot properly have a rule for the protection of our own and fail to extend that protection to others."
Mr. Sumner is incorrect in his assumption that any stranger who told H. 3rd such merry and gorgeous stories as those of Jurgen would be expelled forthwith by "whoever had in charge the welfare of the young person." To be sure, this description hardly fits us. We mean to have as little to do with the morals of H. 3rd as possible. It seems to us a sorry business for parents to hand down their own morals, with a tuck here and a patch there, and expect a growing child to wear them with any comfort. Let the child go out and find his own morals.
But if H. 3rd went out and found Jurgen and read it at the age of adolescence, or thereabouts, it might be excellent literature for him. After all, a boy has to learn the facts of sex some time or other, and Cabell has been felicitious enough in Jurgen to present them not only as beautiful, but merry as well. Those elements ought to be present in everybody's sex education. The new knowledge comes to almost all youngsters as a distinct shock, because, while the things their boy companions tell them may be merry enough, they are also sufficiently gross to be distinctly harmful in a number of cases; and, if their parents tell them it is either in some form so highly poetic that it means nothing, or as something decidedly grim and solemn as Sunday School. In either case this knowledge is apt to be regarded as something of which to be ashamed, and it seems to us that the world is just beginning to realize that shame is almost the most destructive of all the evil forces in the world. And so, unless our opinions change, we shall continue to pray each night, "Oh God, please keep all shame out of the heart and mind of H. 3rd."
MARCH 10, 1920. – Some little time ago we were asked what method we were going to use to instil moral ideas into the head of H. 3rd. We said then that we rather hoped that he would be able to get along, for a while at any rate, without any. We felt that it was the last thing in the world concerning which we wanted to be dogmatic. Unfortunately, the moral sense seems to arise early. Already H. 3rd is constantly inquiring "Good boy, dada?" Usually this comes after he has chipped the furniture or broken some of the china.
Of course, we ought not to answer him. We have no idea whether he is a good boy or not. The marks of his destruction are plain enough, but without knowing his motives we can't pass on his conduct. We were slightly annoyed when he broke the lamp, but perhaps it was no more than pardonable curiosity on his part. Perhaps it was wanton. How can we tell? And yet, it is impossible to preserve neutrality. After the fifteenth or sixteenth reiteration of the query we always say, "Yes, you are a good boy," and then he goes away satisfied. But we are not. He is beginning to make us feel like the Supreme Court or Moses. It's too much responsibility.
MARCH 12, 1920. – "Your troubles are just beginning," writes M. B. "H. 3rd knew he was a bad boy when he broke that lamp. He has simply been testing your moral sense, which for some months he has suspected of being inadequate. I foresee that you will be a great disappointment to him as time goes on. In twelve years or so he will find your political views unsound and your literary tastes decadent. I doubt whether he will approve of the way you spend Sunday.
"You may think you can retain his affection, if not his respect, by keeping clear of the arbitrary methods of a bygone generation. Alas! I don't think there is even that hope for the radical parent of a conservative child. By the time H. 3rd has grown to adolescence he will feel that dogmatism is a sine qua non of parenthood, and he will wish that he had had a real father. He may even resolve to have military discipline in his home.
"I am sorry. I wish I could see brighter things for you in the days to come. Please forgive the impertinence of this prophecy. It has been wrung from the experience of one who has been condemned out of the mouth of fourteen as a socialist, a pacifist and (if he had known the word) a pagan."
We have feared as much. Already we have found that we do not know the child. A week ago we were delighted when he picked up a pocketbook and, with a scornful exclamation of "Money!" threw it far across the room. "He will be an artist," we said, but last Saturday morning he came charging down upon the crap game loudly shouting, "I want a dollar!" He had to be forcibly restrained from gathering up the entire stake – it was two dollars and not one – which lay upon the floor. We were so disconcerted by the revelation of his spirit that we threw twelve twice and failed on an eight. Of course, that is not the thing which disturbs us. We fear that H. 3rd will grow up to be a business man. As such, of course, he may become the support of our old age, but we shall consider support more than earned if it entails our receiving with our allowance a monthly homily on the reason and cure for unrest.
APRIL 6, 1920. – Some time ago I wrote a bitter attack on H. 3rd, the reactionary, in which I stated that his political emotions made it necessary for his parents to avoid the use of "proletariat" and such words except when disguised by the expedient of spelling out "p-r-o-l-e-t-a-r-i-a-t." And it is only fair to say that the device takes a good deal of the zest out of sedition. I also stated at the time that we had been able to keep the picture of Trotzky over the mantelpiece in the red room by mendaciously telling H. 3rd that it was a portrait of Nicholas Murray Butler.
It now becomes necessary for me to make a public apology to H. 3rd. It is perhaps a tasteless proceeding for me to drag his private political views into print, but the retraction ought to have as much publicity as the original slander. H. 3rd is not a reactionary. He is a liberal. It would have been perfectly safe for us to have said "proletariat" right out and to have confessed the identity of Trotzky. H. 3rd might not have been altogether in support, but he would have been interested.
I discovered that he was a liberal early on Sunday morning while we were walking in Central Park. We happened to go near the merry-go-round and H. 3rd, drawn by the strains of "Dardanella," dragged me eagerly toward the pavilion. I supposed, of course, that he wanted to ride and had just time to strap him on top of a camel before the platform began to move. No sooner were we in motion round and round, slow at first and then faster and faster as the revolutions increased in violence, than H. 3rd began to cry. As soon as possible I lifted him back to the firm and stable ground and briskly started to walk away from the scene of his harrowing experience. I thought he wanted to get as far away from it as possible, but after a few steps I noticed that he was not following me. Instead he was hurrying back to the merry-go-round as fast as his legs would carry him. "Perhaps," I thought, "he intends to discipline his will and is going to ride that merry-go-round again just because he is so much afraid of it." I knew that people sometimes did things like that because I had read it in The Research Magnificent. H. 3rd is not among them. He howled louder than before when I tried to put him on the camel again. I even tested the fantastic possibility that it was the camel and not the carrousel to which he objected, but he yelled just as vigorously when offered a horse and later a unicorn.
Then, I ceased to interfere and resolved to watch. When the merry-go-round began to whirl H. 3rd edged up closer and closer with a look of the most intense interest which I have ever seen on his face. He was fascinated by the sight of men, women and children engaged in a wild and, perhaps, a debauching experiment. Hitherto he had observed that people went forward and back in reasonably straight lines, but this progress was flagrantly rotary. I could not get him away. He stood his ground firmly. He would not retreat a step, nor would he go any nearer. In fact, he was already so close to the carrousel that he could have leaped on board with no more than a hop. By leaning just a little he could have touched it. But he did neither. He preferred a combination of the closest possible proximity and stability. And after a while I realized just what it was of which he reminded me. He was an editor of The New Republic watching the Russian Revolution. The mad whirling thing lay right at his feet, but his interest in it and even its imminence never disturbed his tranquillity. The lines of communication with the safe and sane rear remained unbroken. He could retreat the minute the carrousel attempted to become overly familiar.
And so we knew that H. 3rd was and is a liberal.
APRIL 18, 1920. – The nurse said that H. 3rd had a fight in the park with one of his little playmates and won it. She was proud and partisan.
"Woodie," she said, using the fearful nickname which has fastened itself upon the child, "wanted to play with Archie's fire engine, and Archie wouldn't let him. Woodie hit him in the mouth and made it bleed, and Archie cried."
I said "Tut, tut."
"I think it's right," said the nurse. "I think children ought to stand up for their rights."
"But, after all," I reminded her, "it was Archie's fire engine."
"Archie's older than Woodie," she said; "he's two and a half and he's bigger."
"That sort of justification," I objected, "if carried far enough, would lead straight to criminal anarchy. After all, the bituminous miners might say that Mr. Palmer was bigger than they are."
"We didn't think they'd fight," she said, cleverly dodging the larger implications of the discussion. "We were watching them, and all of a sudden Woodie swung his left hand and hit Archie in the mouth."
"Which hand?" I exclaimed.
"His left hand," she said.
"Are you sure?" I insisted.
"Why, yes, sir. Didn't you ever notice Woodie always picks up things with his left hand?"
Before, I had been the cool, impartial judge, but it was impossible to maintain that attitude. In a moment I had become again the parent, human and fallible to emotion. I motioned to the nurse to leave me. I wanted to be alone with my problem. I must face the fact with as much courage as I could muster. There seemed to be no shadow of doubt from which hope could spring. I was the father of a southpaw.
APRIL 20, 1920. – We decided not to let H. 3rd play with lead soldiers, for fear they might inculcate a spirit of militarism. Instead, he received an illuminated set of Freedom Blocks. We remember that among the titles were "Bill of Rights," "Free Speech," "Magna Charta" and "Habeas Corpus." The blocks have not been altogether a success. The set is badly depleted, for the child licked all the paint off "Free Speech" and threw "Habeas Corpus" out of the window.
APRIL 21, 1920. – Although we don't know the exact legal form, we think we have seen announcements of somewhat the same sort. At any rate, we want to advertise the fact that on and after this date we will not be responsible for persons who may be injured by falling objects while passing the apartment house on the west side of Seventh Avenue between Fifty-fifth and Fifty-sixth streets. Our first hint of the danger came when the hairbrush disappeared and could not be found. That was only circumstantial evidence, but on Monday we caught him in the act of tossing out a hand mirror.
It was our idea to dissuade him by trying to make him understand that breaking mirrors is bad luck, but R. says that it is best not to plant any superstitions in the undeveloped mind of a child. The best we could do was to take the mirror away and shadow him closely. But yesterday a bronze vase disappeared and two books. So far no casualties have been reported. Although we live on the fifth floor, I don't believe the books could have hurt anybody very much. They were light fiction, but the vase is different. We told M. not to leave the stove unguarded for a moment, and we are seeking to perfect a device to padlock the piano to the wall. As yet we have reached no plan to guard the books. Probably the best we can do is to allow any passerby who is hit and hurt to keep the book. Of course, the point naturally arises as to whether a passerby who has been hit with the second volume of Gibbon's Rome has a right to demand the whole set. We rather think there would be justice in that. At any rate, we are not disposed to be petty about the matter, because we realize that from the fifth floor even a single volume of Gibbon might be deadly.
A. W., who is frivolous, suggests that we lock up all but a certain number of suitable books which we shall allow H. 3rd to throw out the window without interference. His list includes The Rise and Fall of the Dutch Republic, The Descent of Man, La Débâcle, The Fall and Rise of Susan Lennox, and then he would add, rather optimistically, we fear, It Never Can Happen Again.
What is getting into children these days, anyway? Frankly, we view their conduct with alarm. That spirit of destruction and unrest seems to have gripped them all. Where do they get it? Why has the Lusk committee failed to act in the matter? To us it seems a clear case of Bolshevist propaganda.
APRIL 23, 1920. – H. 3rd handed me a pencil, and then stood around as if he expected me to do something with it. I didn't suppose he wanted me to commit myself in writing about any recent plays or books, and I guessed that he desired something more pictorial. I drew a face and showed it to him. It wasn't any face in particular and I didn't know whether to call it the Spirit of the Ages or a young Jugo-Slav artillery officer. H. 3rd looked at it with interest and promptly said "baybay."
I let it go at that and was pleased that he had caught the general intent of the work. Unfortunately, I tried to show my versatility, and the next head was stuck underneath a pompadour and on top of a rather elaborate gown. But again he called it "baybay." I added trousers, a walking stick, a high hat, a fierce scowl and put a long pipe in the mouth, but he could see no difference. It was still a "baybay."
I was put in the quandary of setting H. 3rd down as a little unintelligent or stigmatizing my art as ineffective, until I suddenly came upon the correct explanation. These pictures of mine were direct, naïve, unspoiled by any theory of life or composition. They were the natural expression of a creative impulse. In them was the spirit of spring, and freshets, and early birds, and saplings, and What Every Young Man Ought to Know and all that sort of thing. "Baybay," said H. 3rd, and he was quite right. I couldn't fool him by putting Peter Pan in long trousers.
MAY 5, 1920. – This is the story of the low-cut lady and the lisping tot. It is contained in The Menace of Immorality, by the Rev. John Roach Straton, in a chapter entitled "Slaves of Fashion":
"I once heard one of the most famous reform workers of this city explain why she gave up low-cut gowns," writes Dr. Straton. "She explained how she was ready to start for the theater one night in such a dress, when her little boy of five said to her, 'But, mother, you are not going that way? You are not dressed.' And then, with trembling voice, she told us how all the evening through, as she sat in the playhouse she kept hearing that sweet childish voice saying 'Not dressed! Not dressed! Not dressed!' until at last, with the blush of shame mantling to her cheeks, and with the realization that a Christian mother should dress differently from the idle and godless women of the world, she drew her cloak about her and went home, dressed – or rather undressed – for the last time in such a costume!"
Nothing we have read in a month has been quite so disturbing to us as this simple little tale. Before it our theories tremble and fall. Upon many an occasion we have set down the conviction that little children should never be spanked under any provocation whatsoever. And yet if we had been that low-cut lady we would certainly have given that interfering and priggish little youngster a walloping. Even in the case of H. 3rd we are minded to make an exception in our program. He may rampage and roar and destroy without laying himself open to corporal punishment, but he will do very well to refrain from any comment of any sort about our clothes or personal appearance. We do not purpose to come home in our cloak from any show with our evening entirely spoiled by the fact that a sweet childish voice has been saying in our ear, "Not shaved! Not shaved! Not shaved!"
JUNE 3, 1920. – Of late I am beginning to notice with perturbation a distinctly sentimental streak in H. 3rd. Nothing else will account for his tenderness toward Goliath. When we first began to talk about him he was treated by common consent rather scornfully. He was known to us as "Ole Goliath he talks too much." Even in those early days it cannot be said that Goliath was treated with special spite, for as the story grew in the telling he fared not much worse than David. Somehow or other I eventually came into the incident myself. Just now I can't remember whether it was at the special invitation of H. 3rd or my own egotistic urge.