I continued to have night fears for a long time. When, later, I went to boarding school, this was my one consolation when the holidays came to an end: there were no dragons in dormitories.
Once – I can’t put a date to it, but I think I must have been about ten – my father, when he came to say good-night to me, asked me an odd question. ‘Which side do you usually go to sleep on?’ he said. I thought for a bit. I didn’t really know. So I made a guess. ‘My right, I think.’ He nodded. ‘That’s supposed to be the best side,’ he said. ‘You’re supposed to be more likely to have bad dreams if you sleep on your left, because then you’re lying on your heart.’ Bad dreams! BAD DREAMS! I did have bad dreams, awful dreams about witches. Now I knew why. I had been going to sleep on my left side . . . In those days I used to lie on my tummy with one hand rucked under the mattress and the other under the pillow. I would start facing one way. After a while I would feel restless and turn over to face the other way. Then over again, and so on until finally I was asleep. So I might end up on my right side, or I might equally well end up on my left. I must never end up on my left side again! Whenever I turned on to my left I must keep my eyes open, wide open, staring, however much I longed to shut them. Then I must turn back on to the other side as soon as ever I could. And every night from then on this became the way I had to go to sleep. For how long? For years, I believe.
I’m lying on my left side . . .
I’m lying on my right . . .
I’ll play a lot tomorrow
I’ll think a lot tomorrow
I’ll laugh a lot tomorrow . . .
Good-night!
Before I come to the second poem that I must disown – and the reader may start guessing which one it will be – I must quote from something my father wrote in a ‘Preface to Parents’ for a special edition of the verses and which he later reprinted in his autobiography.
In real life very young children have an artless beauty, an innocent grace, an unstudied abandon of movement, which, taken together, make an appeal to our emotions similar in kind to that made by any other young and artless creatures: kittens, puppies, lambs: but greater in degree, for the reason that the beauty of childhood seems in some way to transcend the body. Heaven, that is, does really appear to lie about the child in its infancy, as it does not lie about even the most attractive kitten. But with this outstanding physical quality there is a natural lack of moral quality, which expresses itself, as Nature always insists on expressing herself, in an egotism entirely ruthless . . . The mother of a little boy of three has disappeared, and is never seen again. The child’s reaction to the total loss of his mother is given in these lines:
James James
Morrison Morrison
(Commonly known as Jim)
Told his
Other relations
Not to go blaming him.
And that is all. It is the truth about a child: children are, indeed, as heartless as that . . .
Is it? Are they? Was I? I cannot pretend to know for sure how I felt about anything at the age of three. I can only guess that though I might not have missed my mother had she disappeared, and would certainly not have missed my father, I would have missed Nanny – most desolately. A young child’s world is a small one and within it things may have odd values. A teddy bear may be worth more than a father. But the egotism with which (I will admit) a child is born, surely very quickly disappears as attachments are made and relationships established. When a child plays with his bear the bear comes alive and there is at once a child–bear relationship which tries to copy the Nanny–child relationship. Then the child gets inside his bear and looks at it the other way round: that’s how bear feels about it. And at once sympathy is born and egotism has died. A poem in which my father really does express what I feel is the truth about a child is ‘Market Square’, which ends up:
So I’m sorry for the people who sell fine saucepans,
I’m sorry for the people who sell fresh mackerel,
I’m sorry for the people who sell sweet lavender,
’Cos they haven’t got a rabbit, not anywhere there!
How well I remember this feeling of sympathy – totally misplaced, of course – yet agonizingly sincere!
Undoubtedly children can be selfish, but so, too, can adults. By accusing the young of heartless egotism are we perhaps subconsciously reassuring ourselves that, selfish though we still may be, there was once a time when we were worse . . .
This brings me to the second poem I must disown – ‘Vespers’. It is one of my father’s best known and one that has brought me over the years more toe-curling, fist-clenching, lip-biting embarrassment than any other. So let me, for the first time in my life, look it clearly in the eyes and see how things stand between us.
The general impression left by ‘Vespers’ – especially with anyone who has heard Vera Lynn singing it – is of a rather soppy poem about a good little boy who is saying his prayers. But if one reads it rather more carefully, one will see that it is nothing of the sort. It is a poem about a rather naughty little boy who is not saying his prayers. He is merely pretending; and to his and the author’s surprise he has managed to fool a great many people. ‘Vespers’, then, is not a sentimental poem at all: it is a mildly cynical one. But even so, nothing to get worked up about. After all, everyone is naughty sometimes.
So you might think. But it is not quite what my father thought. Let us see what he had to say in that ‘Preface to Parents’.
Finally, let me refer to the poem which has been more sentimentalized over than any other in the book: ‘Vespers’. Well, if mothers and aunts and hard-headed reviewers have been sentimental over it, I am glad; for the spectacle in real life of a child of three at its prayers is one over which thousands have been sentimental. It is indeed calculated to bring a lump to the throat. But even so one must tell the truth about the matter. Not ‘God bless Mummy, because I love her so’, but ‘God bless Mummy, I know that’s right’; not ‘God bless Daddy, because he buys me food and clothes’ but ‘God bless Daddy, I quite forgot’; not even the egotism of ‘God bless Me, because I’m the most important person in the house’, but the super-egotism of feeling so impregnable that the blessing of this mysterious God for Oneself is the very last thing for which it would seem necessary to ask. And since this is the Truth about a Child, let us get all these things into the poem, and the further truth that prayer means nothing to a child of three, whose thoughts are engaged with other, more exciting matters . . .
‘Vespers’, it seems, is not just about what a certain little boy did on a certain occasion. It is the Truth (with a capital T) about a Child (with a capital C). And although I knew that this was my father’s general feeling, I had entirely forgotten how uncompromisingly he had expressed himself.
It was at this point, while I was collecting my thoughts together, wondering how to go on, that I noticed the quotation from Wordsworth. It comes in the first of the two passages I have quoted:
Heaven lies about us in our infancy
This is a line from Wordsworth’s ‘Intimations of Immortality’. At first glance it seemed at home in its context. But on looking closer I saw that this was far from the case. For the line had been given a new and altogether different meaning. Wordsworth had been saying that Heaven appeared to the child to lie around him. My father was saying that this was how it seemed to the onlooker. So then I read the whole poem. It is, of course, the Truth about a Child as Wordsworth sees it, and it is the complete reverse of my father’s view. And at once it awakened an echo in my heart – as it must have awakened many another echo in many another heart.
Those first affections,
Those shadowy recollections,
Which, be they what they may,
Are yet the fountain light of all our day.
In those days of splendour and glory I certainly felt myself nearer to God – both the God that Nanny was telling me about who lived up in the sky and the God who painted the buttercups – than I
do today. And so, asked to choose between these two views of childhood, I am bound to say that I’m for Wordsworth. Maybe he is just being sentimental. Maybe the infant William has fooled the middle-aged poet in the same way that the kneeling Christopher Robin fooled so many of his readers. Maybe my cynical father is right. But this is not how I feel about it.
Today it is fashionable to maintain that at the age of five a child is too young to be taught about God. The Divine is beyond his comprehension. One should wait until he is older. Dare I suggest that the reverse might be true: that the child of five is not too young; he is already too old.
I don’t really want to get too involved either with Poetry or with Religious Instruction, nor do I want to spend too long on my infant knees. Furthermore, in a world heavily over-populated with sociologists, psychologists and research workers generally, I am reluctant to set up theories backed by nothing more than memory against the statistics and case histories of the opposition. However, this I must say. The Christopher Robin of that wretched poem is indeed me at the age of three. I retain the most vivid memories of saying my prayers as a child. They go back a long way, but I cannot date them. I well recall how I knelt, how Nanny sat, her hands round mine, and what we said aloud together. Did my thoughts wander? Were they engaged on other, more exciting things? The answer – and let me say it loudly and clearly – is NO. Would I agree that prayer meant nothing to a child of three? If the stress is on the last word, I must be careful: I may be thinking of a child of four. All I can accurately say is that I can recall no occasion when this was so.
At this point a picture floats uninvited into my mind. Nothing that ever happened, nothing to do with my parents, purely imaginary. Papa and Mama in church. Both kneeling. Mama’s mind, disconnected from her ears, hovering around the Sunday lunch. Papa, squinting through his fingers, studying the hats in the pew in front. No, it’s not only the three year old whose thoughts wander.
I said earlier than I was going to have things out with ‘Vespers’. Partly, I must confess, I wanted to get my own back. But there was another reason. This seems the appropriate moment to give credit where credit was due.
And of course credit lies with my Nanny.
She had me when I was very young. I was all hers and remained all hers until the age of nine. Other people hovered around the edges, but they meant little. My total loyalty was to her. To the extent that I was a ‘good little boy’, to the extent that my prayers had real meaning for me at a very early age and continued to have meaning for many years afterwards, and to the extent that all this was something acquired rather than inherited, this was Nanny’s doing. Was she a brilliant teacher? Not specially. She was just a very good and very loving person; and when that has been said, no more need be added.
It will now be apparent why, earlier, I disowned the conversation in ‘Buckingham Palace’. This poem, too, gets mentioned in the Parents Preface. ‘“Do you think the king knows all about me?” Could egotism be more gross?’ I’m prepared to let that go, but not the line that follows:
Sure to, dear, but it’s time for tea.
Listen to Alice saying that: the daily routine clearly far more important for her than the child’s question. You find the same thing in the poem ‘Brownie’. Here are the last two lines of each verse. The child is speaking:
I think it is a Brownie but I’m not quite certain
(Nanny isn’t certain, too)
and
They wriggle off at once because they’re all so tickly
(Nanny says they’re tickly, too)
What Nanny actually says on both occasions – and you can hear her saying it, not even pausing in her sewing, not even bothering to look up – is ‘That’s right, dear’. Undoubtedly, this is the Truth about Some Nannies. But, as I hope I’ve now made quite clear, NOT MINE.
When I was eight years old an odd little incident occurred. It is not strictly relevant and I only mention it because it remains so vividly in my mind.
I was in bed, trying to go to sleep, but I couldn’t, and as I turned from side to side so I got more restless and wretched. I didn’t feel ill. It was something else. A very strange feeling. Something – someone – was stopping me from going to sleep, was keeping me awake. But who? And why? I struggled for an answer and gradually one began to dawn on me.
‘Nanny!’
‘What is it, dear?’
‘Can you come?’
She came at once.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘I can’t get to sleep.’
‘Are you feeling all right? Have you got a pain?’
‘It’s not that.’
‘What is it, then?’
A pause. Then in a hushed voice:
‘Nanny, I think I know . . . It’s God. I think He’s cross with me.’
‘I’m sure He’s not dear. Whyever should He be?’
‘No, Nanny; He is. And I think I know why. It’s because of that Bible we bought for school. He doesn’t like me having two Bibles.’
‘I don’t think He would mind that, dear.’
‘No, Nanny: He does. I know He does. So can we give it away. Who shall we give it to?’
Nanny thought.
‘We could give it to Farm Street. I think they might like it. I’m sure they would.’
(Farm Street was a girls’ school in Birmingham. The children had been writing to me over a number of years and I used to write back. In April I used to send them bunches of primroses.)
‘Oh, Nanny, do let’s. Can we do it now?’
‘Well, dear . . .’
‘Please start doing it.’
‘It’s got your name inside . . . It could be from you. I could write “from” in front of your name. Shall I do that?’
‘Yes, do do that. Do it now. Please.’
So she did. She went next door and wrote and then she came back and showed me and told me that everything was all right now and that if God had been cross with me, now He had forgiven me, and I could go to sleep, and tomorrow we would post off the book.
Immediately the strange feeling left me and I went to sleep. The next morning the incident was all but forgotten. The Bible was never sent. I took it to school as usual. The ‘from’ (in a different handwriting) always looked a bit odd, but I left it there.
A year later I went to boarding school and Nanny departed. Alfred was waiting for her. Indeed he had been waiting for her patiently for many years. Alfred! My rival! ‘Nanny, don’t marry Alfred. Marry me.’ But in the end she did. And together they bought a bungalow, and they called it ‘Vespers’.
It was a nice gesture to my father. But only Nanny and I knew what the name really meant.
4. Soldier
I want a soldier
(A soldier with a busby)
I want a soldier to come and play with me . . .
Daddy’s going to get one
(He’s written to the shopman)
Daddy’s going to get one as soon as he can come.
And Daddy did. And it was one of the most exciting moments in all our lives when the nursery door opened and a giant Guardsman in full regalia with scarlet tunic and huge, furry busby strode into the room, marched up to the tiny boy and saluted. The tiny boy was totally overcome; so much so that I cannot in the least recall what happened next. I imagine that I was allowed to hold his busby, even to try it on, to finger his buttons and epaulettes and all his accoutrements. Did I sit on his lap or ride on his back? Did he stay for tea? Did I cry when at last he said goodbye? But of course he would have promised to return; and he did – many, many times, though never again in scarlet. But he was always Soldier to me, indeed to us all. For after that first, wonderful appearance, how could he have been anything else? Other people knew him as Louis Goodrich, an actor. He was, I believe, a casual acquaintance of my father’s at the Garrick Club. One day my father had been talking to him and had mentioned my current passion for the military, and Goodrich had said: ‘How would he like it if I dressed up and came to se
e him?’ And so it was arranged. The day was chosen, the uniform hired, and thus began a long and close friendship between us.
Some people are ‘good with children’, just as others are ‘good with animals’. It isn’t just that they like them and enjoy playing with them. There is a mysterious something about them that the child – or animal – is unconsciously and immediately aware of. The animal loses its fear, the child his shyness. The animal lets itself be touched. The child starts scrambling all over you. So it was with Soldier and me.
He came to tea often – nursery tea, of course; for he came to see me, not my parents. He was such a very wonderful and exciting person that Anne was allowed to share him, and the four of us – Nanny, me, Soldier and Anne – had tea together. When tea was over the business of the afternoon began. The table was cleared. Nanny went down to the kitchen and returned bearing bowls and jugs, rolling pins, pastry boards and egg cups, icing sugar and egg white, peppermint essence and cochineal. ‘I must have an apron,’ said Soldier, ‘the largest apron you can find.’ Nanny went hunting. Then we started: pouring, mixing, stirring, tasting, adding a bit more of this and a bit more of that, tasting again to make sure, trying the other person’s, then scooping, flattening, tasting once more to see if it was still all right, rolling, getting it all wrapped round everything, unwrapping it, laughing, saying ‘Oh, Soldier, you are so funny!’, getting more and more wild and excited, then stamping out with the egg cups, squashing up the remainder, tasting just once more, rolling again, stamping again, looking to see how the others were doing. ‘Oh, Soldier, look what you’ve done!’ . . . I can see us still, though the picture is dim at the edges. Soldier is there with his voluminous apron and I believe on one occasion a chef’s hat; Anne is there, husky with excitement; Nanny is there; and, yes, I think I can see my mother . . . But however much I strain my eyes I can see no one else.
The Enchanted Places Page 3