AUNT MARY'S BRAN PIE.* IF there is one tax upon
our inventive genius and ingenuity, or one trial of our patience and perseverance greater than another, it is the laborious selection of gifts entailed by the modern system of extensive present-giving. The more juvenile, and
• Aunt Mantis Bran Pie. By the Author of "St. 0:are's." London: Henry S. Nthfc and Co. therefore the more numerous, the objects of your benevolent intentions, the more difficult becomes your work, and the more confined your choice ; and if, unfortunately, you be somewhat impecunious in your condition, and propose to restrict your out- lay to a few shillings a head, dreary days, weeks, months must be devoted to the arduous task, and you must be prepared for a strain upon your mind upon which brain-fever will not improbably supervene, and for an exacerbation of temper, during which it will be a wise caution to retire from the society of those before whom you do not feel the necessity for careful self-control. There is only one other modern custom—we say it advisedly—that leads to such direful results, and that is church decoration. During the periodic attacks of this last-mentioned epidemic, about Christmas and Easter, we have discovered usually most amiable family-circles in a condition of the deepest mental gloom and physical prostration ; literally and figuratively taking up their cross, but in a spirit of such ascetic self-devotion as made the bright wreaths of vivid green and glowing scarlet ludicrously inappropriate, and left even the cross of lifeless and colourless " everlastings " a far too cheerful emblem of their state of mind. But to return to the bran-pie, Christmas- tree, or other form of present-distribution. It is quite easy to choose a little memorial of our regard for a public man,—a huge salver, with a large space for central inscription, is all that is required. Even for a bridegroom there is little difficulty ; if something better does not occur, there is the inevitable butter-knife, for the exchange of a score or so of which the happy but prudent receiver will already have made arrangeinents with his silversmith. But what is there now-a-days that children have not already had ? Let us for a moment contemplate the distress of the bachelor uncle, leaving his club and his book in such December days as those just past, to commence his annual dis- tracting inspection of shop-windows, in the certain knowledge that he shall see nothing new, and with the dismal impression that there is in his sister's house some secret drawer, secured from his chance gaze, where the many duplicate purses, pocket-books, ladies'-companions, paper-cutters, &c., are yearly deposited by his grateful but somewhat crest-fallen young relatives, in anything but a sure and certain hope of a more happy selection next year. It is not long since the present writer was thus addressed in confi- dence by an old-fashioned but juvenile little friend :—" One thing I do trust—that nobody will give me a doll! I don't know what to do with them ! If I leave them in a drawer, I get low- spirited to think they are being neglected ; and if I play with them, —well, they're no amusement to me in the world. I'm quite sick of dolls,—and besides, I've got nine. And I hate toys; now, there's that pramylator, I know it cost ever so much, so I don't think its right to let it get broken, and I've nowhere to put it ; and if I leave it about, the boys will break it,—and besides, it's of no use, for it is so dull to push it about, up and down, when I know it does not do the dolls the least bit of good." This was cheering for the confidant, who knew that, by his advice, an elaborate young lady, most expensively dressed, was at that very time on its voyage across the Atlantic to greet this very little girl as its new mamma on Christmas Eve.
We said, " What is there, now-a-days, that children have not already had ? " New books—those they cannot have had —and what more easy than for the generous uncle aforesaid, instead of turning out into the cold, to take up the review columns of a trusted newspaper, and thence select from the multitude of adventure-books for boys, or of quieter stories for little girls, what will not merely answer the purpose of Christmas presents, but will be for years—for children are not easily tired of the same story—a perpetual pleasure, both to the happy recipients and to their young friends? So much, at least, is true of the books for little girls—four of which are before us— by the authoress of the story at the head of this notice. Her tales for children of an older growth—described commonly as novels— are clever, and thoughtful, and interesting, but undoubtedly the most original and striking parts of them—the passages which re- main in our memory when the rest are forgotten—are those which describe the ways and doings and sayings of children, if, happily, there be children in the story. Our authoress writes of them con amore. We distinguish at once a lighter and gayer spirit, an absence of the thin stream of bitterness which suffuses and colours her life-like, but not always cheerful or quite impartial pictures of grown-up men and women ; the humour, which borders on satire when it concerns these, is simple and gay when children are the theme ; the look of scorn, or smile of good-humoured contempt, vanish before the unconstrained laughter of happy love, as little girls and boys troop before her mind's eye, with their riotous spirits, their mischievous naughtiness, their comical tricks, their
timid credulity, their quaint thoughtfulness, and their tender devotion. She knows them and loves them in all these aspects, and portrays them with a fidelity and humour that makes her children's books almost as attractive to the seniors as to those for whom they are designed. It would not be true to say that the stories are free from little moral lessons ; but much as we hate the preachy and didactic compositions for children, in which some incident is mixed, like jam with a powder— which, by the bye, since they are carefully avoided by sensible people, are, we are glad to think, seldom now to be met with—we do not see any reason whatever why the lesson taught by a story told, in all simplicity, for its own sake, should not be glanced at in passing ; and when this is done, straightforwardly and with cheerful humour and full personal sympathy in the trouble or temptation described, and then dis- missed promptly, it absolutely adds to the interest felt in the narrative, by bringing the little hearer into that fuller sympathy with the subject of it which consciousness of a likeness in disci- pline begets, and by creating a personal relationship with the unknown and otherwise unthought-of narrator. The fascination which these stories possess over little children is quite remark- able, and we do not wonder. The child-life, the games, the adventures and misadventures, the quarrels, the struggles with self, the sorrows, the surprises, the secrets, the festivals—all trifles, but everything to a natural child—are described with the very spirit and earnestness of a child—as if a child, by some strange power, had been able to write of its interests while in the vivid light and under the sharp shadows of the present—before time had effaced the detail and obliterated the turns and angles of circumstance. A very beautiful setting to these annals of child-life is the fresh-air feeling which pervades them, laid, as their scenes principally are, in the country, which is never de- scribed in set paragraphs, but which is so thoroughly enjoyed by the authoress that it is felt all through. And a very delightful accompaniment is the cognate love of animals, the power of inter- preting their thoughts—or of seeming to interpret them, which is much the same for us—in which our authoress is so earnest that she never breaks the illusion by too conscientiously informing us that such and such a dog " would have said " so and so " if dogs could speak," but boldly refers to them throughout as she would
to children or grown-up people, saying now and then, in the most natural manner, of a dog, for instance, that if he had not been a little bit stuck-up, he would have been " more than human," or of calves, that like " other people," they did not like to go to bed. Indeed the numerous amusing, delightful and characteristic de-
scriptions and anecdotes of animals are quite a feature in these stories ; for whether our authoress is speaking of dogs, kittens, calves, or ducks, there are the same love and admiration—and in the case of dogs, real respect for them—the same perfect acquaintance with their habits, and the same spirit of fun and enjoyment in their ways. One thing, however, we regret and dissent from; and that is her theory of training ; even when anger is entirely absent, we do not believe in the necessity of blows for the successful education of dogs. We cannot resist giving the following story of "Dido," not because it is more amusing than many others, but because we are assured that it is true, and so it will add one to the many illustrations of the intelligence of dogs :-
"Dido, the other dog who lived with grandmamma, was a very neat, particular little lady, with the smoothest of black-and-tan coats, and such large soft brown eyes, and the most delicate, shapely little paws that were ever seen. She very seldom went out of doors, for she prided herself on being somewhat of an invalid ; and as for jumping and capering and making a jackanapes of herself like Rags, why, Dido turned away in disgust if you mentioned such a thing to her. But she was very clever. You will b3 amused when you hear what her special piece of cleverness was. Grade, one of grandmamma's daughters, bad taught her to do, it. She used to sit on a low wicker chair by Gracie's side at dinner, and when Sarah, the maid, was wanted for anything, instead of ringing the boll, Gracie used to say,—' Dido, go and tell Sarah.' And Dido used to bustle off her chair, trot away out of the door, across the hall, down the kitchen stairs, and pull the corner of Sarah's apron. Sarah knew what that meant, it meant that she was to come up into the dining-room. When Dido came back to her chair, she always had a bit of meat given to her, or a chicken-bone, or something nice One day it was very cold, very cold indeed, and Dido had been lying all the morning muffled up under her deer-skin. She did not come out of it at all, except to take her place on the wicker chair at dinner-time. When Sarah was wanted, Gracie said as usual,— 'Now, Dido, go and tell Sarah.' Dido shrugged her shoulders. She did not much like going across that cold hall and down those draughty stairs. However, as that was her only chance of earning a bit of meat and Dido dearly loved eating, although she was such an elegant lady, she went off. But at the top of the kitchen stairs her resolution failed her, and she said to herself,—'Now why in the world need I trot all the way down those draughty stairs, and up again, getting the east wind on my chest, and perhaps catching bronchitis, which dear Dr. Plausible said I was to avoid.if possible ? I'll just stand here a little while, and
go back again and take my place as if I really had been down into the kitchen, and then I shall get my piece of meat ; and, to toll the truth,
I do need it very much, for I feel such a sinking, I can hardly express
it. Ali! what a thing it is to have such poor health. There's that vulgar Rags, he never knows what it is to have an ache or pain. But as for myself—.' Dido stopped about a minute, and then came back to her chair as if everything was quite right, and the piece of meat was given her, and she ate with a sweetly resigned expression
Owaited, but Sarah never came. After they had been sitting forrsroalculee time, she said,—' Grandmamma, I do believe Dido has been playing us a trick. You know she came back very soon. I don't think she could have had time to go down to the kitchen and up again.'—' We won't ring,' said grandmamma. 'We will just sit quite still, and see what she will do. The naughty little thing, and to take her piece of meat too.' So they sat and waited and waited, without ever saying another word, only sometimes they looked very hard at Dido. By-and-by she began to fidget about and look very uncomfortable, for she was a very sensitive person. Indeed she prided herself almost as much upon her sensitiveness as upon her delicate health, and would become wounded or 'morbid' upon the slightest provocation. She had a conscience, too, and it was pricking her, for she knew what an unladylike thing she had been doing. First she turned her head away, and then she looked at grandmamma out of the corners of her eyes, and then she winked and shuffled about, and began to wash her paws, and tried to appear as if she knew nothing about anything. Still grandmamma and Gracie sat quite still in fiont of their empty plates. Not a word was spoken, and they both looked BO hard at poor Dido. At last she could bear it no longer. With a deeply wounded and penitent air, she slipped off her seat, sidled out of the room, going as far round as ever she could, under the sofa and behind the piano, so as to keep out of sight, for she did feel very much ashamed, and so across the hall, and downstairs to Sarah, who thought dinner was taking an unusually long time to-day. It was no use going back to her chair, for there would be no second piece of meat for her ; so she returned quietly to her deer-skin, and remained there for the rest of the day. What her reflections might be, who can tell ? All that can be said is, that she looked very sheepish, and if ever she caught Gracie's eye or grandmamma's, she turned and twisted and wriggled about, and did not seem to know where to put herself. But never after that did Dido play false again when told to go and fetch Sarah."
The style is the very style of all others for little children ; homely in language, discarding more correctness in composition than would enter into vied voce narration, and with just such slang expressions as are natural to the children of gentlefolks ; merry and full of gen- tleness and feeling, dashing-in an effective hint briefly and with humour, but not without a reverential tone, though there is no- where a suggestion of cant, but rather a freedom in dealing with serious subjects that, whether objected to or not by over- scrupulous mammas, makes them more acceptable and familiar to the mind of the child. As for extracts, we are simply quite unable to select ; to those who are fond of children, neither the fun nor the sad little parts—such as the life and death of little Callie or the history of poor little Skinny—will come amiss. Our authoress seems equally intimate with the loving nature of a tiny girl, or the teasing propensities of a big brother, or the self- deception and plausibility of childish selfishness, or the thoughtful devotion or impulsive generosity of the little sister or daughter. She seems to know everything that either delights or distresses a child, and, indirectly, gives numberless valuable hints to those who have them in charge. Let the bachelor uncle order, without hesita- tion, for his little nieces, When I was a Little Girl, or Nine Years Old, or Alice in the Country, or Aunt Mary's Bran Pie, but let him keep out of their way afterwards, unless he is prepared to re-read them aloud in season and out of season, or, as in a case we know of, to listen while whole chapters are repeated by heart by their devotees. We like them in the order we have put down. The disjointed form of the Bran-pie " book is not so much to our taste. We feel a reluctance to return day after day to a pie that
must surely be getting ragged and untidy and stale, and the in- troduction is slightly forced, and the allegory about " little Gurgles" is quite out of keeping with the rest,—not compre- hensible by children, and it seems to us, not at all in our authoress's line.
Previous page
