The Making of Stories
- Author:
Rosa Hobhouse
(Author of ” Story-Making,” etc.) Those upon whom the telling of stories to children constantly falls, no doubt share with one another in the discovery that they tend increasingly to become story-makers as well as story-tellers. Amongst the old themes little tales of their own creation appear which, after being told, are often no doubt forgotten. Apart from the intention of yielding pleasure at the moment no especial thought, per- haps, has been given to the actual task of story-making. Yet the work may become more delightful if we give some consideration to those things which will help us to grow in the art.
Our chief qualification as makers of stories will lie in a first-hand interest in life and living persons in the different spheres of activity, in the ancient human relationships and occupations. Even if we only desire the humblest place amongst the story-makers of our generation, if we aspire no further than the making of a single story for a single child, and that for one whose mental fabric has been impaired, we shall still require this quality in our outlook.1 For to none dare we offer less than the best which it lies within our power to give, however slender the gift. Romance must savour of realities known through intimate association, the very words we use should from time to time be dipped afresh into the realm from which their meaning was derived. As my fleece duly teased in readiness for spinning lay one morning strewn on the table, I was reminded of a flight of clouds before a south-west wind. From that hour the word ” fleecy ” as applied to clouds had a richer meaning. In this little incident we have an illustration of the kind of equipment that is needed by story-tellers, whether the stories told are of their own making or not. As the maker of stories we therefore become, in a measure, the guardians of a delightful and varied experience, both for ourselves and, as far as in us lies, for our hearers. How, otherwise, as I have expressed it elsewhere, can a wave, a cliff, field, harrow or barn (all things of which we may speak in our tales) smell salty, feel high, look green, bring to mind an array of sharp spikes, or suggest a dusky shelter for hay and farm implements?
What is true of the descriptions we weave into our themes is also true of the deeper things that will recur in them?the human relationships, the emotions of joy and sorrow, the fears and hopes, the laughter and the tears. At the exhibition of Memling’s paintings in Bruges they give you magnifying glasses with which to study the detail, and I remember the beauty of the workmanship which had been expended on a single tear. As story-tellers we shall not so much be con- cerned with the exquisite light and shade of tears (unless we tell a story of how tears turned into pearls or were carried away to hang as dewdrops in the bells of flowers), as with their claim to an affinity with the little pansy, the “hearts-ease.” ” Children’s griefs are little,” says Francis Thompson, adding with his inimitable tenderness, ” but then children are little too.” Older persons who teach a child to scorn its own tears are to my mind teaching it to scorn one of the gifts of heaven and may be doing an injury which will spell disaster in after years. I am speak- ing, of course, .of tears in a true proportion to the occasion for them. Whether those who appear in our tales laugh or weep, the touch of sympathy with the event must be equally present. The love of life for its own sake must be the ground 1 Mrs. Hobhouse has been lecturing recently on Story-Making at our Courses for Teachers of Mentally Defective and of Dull and Backward Children.
out of which our work springs. Then and only then can we be expected to bear the study of Story-Making as an art without the introduction of artificiality. If we are to tell stories of poor travellers we shall need for instance a dis- tinctly human attitude of mind towards the actual plodder we meet along the hot roads of summer, scantily fed and ill shod, yet withal, perhaps, content with his lot on the variously coloured highways, from the unromantic more or less black macadam to those which shine with celestial whiteness between banks of blue flax in the chalk countries. If fate is unkind and we do not see our way for some long time to come to get on these roads ourselves, the next best thing we can do will be to read a book such as The Changing Face of England by Collett (Nesbit). That is not to say that we should immediately make it our business to make a story into which to bring similar descriptions but rather that, if it so happens that a tale of a wanderer comes to mind, we shall be furnished with the sort of setting into which to put the events of his history. Two points of contact with such in my own experience created for me a little tale called THE BEGGAR AT THE BIRTHDAY FEAST.
In Charles Kingsley’s Letters there is a delightful tribute to roaming mus- icians?” Why,” he exclaims, ” should I not love them and pray for them? ” adding, ” Let us never despise the wandering minstrel. He is an unconscious preacher of world-music?the power of sweet sounds, which is a link between every age and race?the language which all can understand though few can speak. And who knows what tender thoughts his own sweet music stirs within him, though he eat in pot-houses and sleep in barns?” After such a tribute is it not possible that in the latter days our civilisation will have more, not less, of such persons giving us primitive themes in their melodies of a kind to ensure a welcome. Even the pedlar who knocks at our door must be regarded with de- creasing annoyance and we shall recollect it in his favour that the shoelaces, dangling from his tray, have sufficiently attracted the botanist to have given their name to one of our wild flowers?” pedlar’s laces ! ” I once was privileged to know a pedlar who spent the long winter months in dreary London lodging- houses, but who, with the first feeling of spring in the skies above Whitechapel, was no longer to be found. He remarked to me once that when you awaken from under a hedge in the early morning you feel ” as if you could walk over a house,” and went on with fine simplicity to describe the pleasure of sharing your break- fast with the ” robin ” hopping round. It seemed clear to me he was using the word for any little birds as the Scriptures use the word ” sparrows.” We called this old man ” Uncle Highway ” and there is no doubt that he furnished me with one of my ” clues ” as a story-maker. In my story THE MAN WITH THE LEATHER PATCH, something of his spirit will transpire.
We must allow ourselves, in other aords, to be driven back on reality, what- ever sphere of life we may touch?not merely upon the petty realities which chance may or may not have imposed upon us at the moment, but upon the larger realities of all time. These will be of joy, hope, fear, endurance or gaiety and above all of love itself, ” which,” as Ruskin says, 1 ” in the heart of a child, should represent the most constant and vital part of its being; which ought to be the sign of the most solemn thoughts that inform its awakening soul and in one wide mystery of pure sunrise should flood the zenith of its heaven, and gleam on the dew at its feet; and whose meaning should soften and animate every emotion through which the inferior things and feeble creatures, set beneath.it in its narrow world, are revealed to its curiosity or companionship.”
Many indeed will be the realms into which we shall be invited to enter by the exigencies of our art, this world of ” the feeble-creatures ” presented to the 1 Introduction to ” German Popular Stories ” (Chatto & Windus, 1892).
curiosity or companionship being one of the most delightful. And again how much more attractive and vivid will our stories of insect life be if the children who listen to them have had the right kind of initiation into their universe! Fabre, who has been called the ” Homer of Insect Life,” in his Life of the Grass Hopper, writes the following of his children :?” Mind you are ready, children, tomorrow morning, before the sun gets too hot: we are going locust hunting. This announcement throws the household into great excitement at bed-time. What do my little help-mates see in their dreams? Blue wings, red wings, sud- denly flung out fanwise; long saw-toothed legs, pale-blue or pink, which kick out when we hold the owners in our fingers; great shanks acting as springs that make the insect leap forward like a projectile shot from some dwarf catapult hidden in the grass. What they behold in sleep’s sweet magic lantern I also happen to see. Life lulls us with the same simple things in its first steps and its last.” Amiel in his Journal also writes of the same experience from a different angle. He speaks of having spent ” an hour in the garden with the children.^ I made them closely examine the flowers, the shrubs, the grasshoppers, the snails, in order to practise them in observation, in wonder, in kindness. How important are these first conversations with childhood.” What is here remarked of our first conversations with children is equally true of the stories with which we occupy their imagination, and these will be rich and sensitive according to the measure of observation, wonder, kindness of which our own hearts are capable. We shall need to go into the habitations of insects with a mind undressed of its prejudice, willing to learn afresh. Robert Louis Stevenson in his ” Book of Prayers,” has the following:?” The sea around us, which this rain recruits, teems with the race of fish; teach us, Lord, the meaning of fishes.” And surely when Keats wrote those lines about the minnows in ” I Stood Tip-Toe Upon A Little Hill,” he proved himself abundantly equipped for the task of writing the life history of a minnow for a child’s book of fables.
” Where swarms of minnows show their little heads, Staying their wavy bodies ‘gainst the stream, To taste the luxury of sunny beams Tempered with coolness. How they ever wrestle With their own sweet delight, and ever nestle Their silver bellies in the pebbly sand ! If you but scantily hold out your hand, That very instant not one will remain; But turn your eye and they are there again.”
Here then we start our studies, all more or less in love with life in its mani- fold phases, among the fortunes or misfortunes, the chances or monotonies that attend our way, even those who have had more discouragements than most being willing, perhaps, after all, for the sake of the children under their care to accept the philosophy contained in Edmund Spenser’s line ” An ounce of sweet is worth a pound of sour.” And may it not be that even for such the very practice of the art of story-making may win them back to humour and gladness through a quick- ened vision which will lead them to mark with delight how the spider builds, as John Clare puts it:?
” His webs of silken lace on twigs and leaves, Which every morning meet the poet’s eye Like fairies’ dew-wet dresses hung to dry,” or how exquisitely the cap of a sea-poppy fits, up to the moment of its doffing ! I once watched one of these in a vase throw off its cap on to the table. For many weeks also the gauzy, spurred cap of a common garden leek lay on my bookshelf.
It was my intention to make a drawing of it but although the making of the draw- ing did not come off, I shall never be without an elf’s cap in my mind’s eye in consequence and the dim suggestion of a story in the imagined order :?” Leek, Leek, doff your cap ! ” In every direction, in fact, we shall find ourselves collect- ing treasures from holes and corners, in hedges or cupboards (I have a story called THE CUPBOARD ORCHESTRA thus found) to the conversations of friends and strangers. It does not mean that we shall need to become profoundly learned, for we shall become, on the contrary, gleaners in many fields. Yet it is important not to confuse the capacity to gain insight into the many ways of life which it may fall to us as story-makers to introduce into our tales, and the idea of a smattering of knowledge. An insight, however swiftly or slenderly gained, has always the precision and fidelity to atmosphere that marks truth. Whilst a smattering has ragged edges of untruth about its little bit of knowledge. Naturally we shall frequently betray our ignorance, and we may even have to learn some- times from those we are setting out to teach, but then that is the beauty of this art in particular, that it makes learners of us, and no fragment of local colour or green-room glimpse that we can get into the lives of others will be wasted. I remember once being pulled up by an audience of boys for calling the nails with which a cobbler works ” tacks ” instead of ” brads,” but no sooner had I shown my willingness to laugh at my mistake with them, than they were ready to follow the story of the young cobbler with attention, and I believe with increased inter- est, for now he was a real workman. Certainly the title of the story gained considerably in my estimation, as THE YOUNG COBBLER or THE BOWL OF GOLDEN BRADS became from that time the name by which it is known. The word was new to me and had the decided attraction which belongs to authenticity. I need hardly say perhaps that these were boys who probably helped their fathers after working hours to mend the family boots.
This reminds me of a pair of shining brass ornaments in the hearth of a poor family in London representing a pair of high laced boots, and another pair of wrought ornaments (also in the fireplace) of two riders on horseback, which I have always thought would some day give me a tale. Strangely enough, I cannot recollect whether the riders are in brass or iron?this simply means that I must revisit these acquaintances and in the course of conversation, it may be, there will be disclosures of a kind that will give me my beginning ! On the other hand an Egyptian bird on the mantlepiece of a friend in the West of London has already furnished me with a little story called THE TREASURE FINDER?the bird incidentally having the ” seeingest eyes that ever were ! ” Indeed it is impossible to guess where we shall discover suggestions for our themes. As I have often mentioned in my talks on Story-making, I found one of the stories I love most up my father-in-law’s chimney, in the form of an old fireback?a great square of metal planted in the shadow, upon which is imprinted a giant blacksmith and multitudinous other things. Since then we have discovered a less perfect cast, and what appears to be a less attractive copy, in the South Kensington Museum. In my story which is called IVAN AND THE FIREBACK, the large letters R L printed on the metal stand for Richard Longlegs?the child Ivan’s grandfather? so I am not sorry to have forgotten the actual name of the historic blacksmith of the Museum catalogue, especially as my personality had become real to imagina- tion before we had discovered that anything was recorded of the real owner of the initials.
Here then we have just a few suggestion as to the kind of things a story- maker’s workshop will harbour?memories of incidents and places, fragments of insight gained through talk with all sorts and conditions of men, personalities, and little objects of interest which seem to hint at a possible ” history.”
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