Poems By a Little Girl.

by Hilda Conkling.

PREFACE

A book which needs to be written is one dealing with the childhood of authors. It would be not only interesting, but instructive; not merely profitable in a general way, but practical in a particular. We might hope, in reading it, to gain some sort of knowledge as to what environments and conditions are most conducive to the growth of the creative faculty. We might even learn how not to strangle this rare faculty in its early years.

At this moment I am faced with a difficult task, for here is an author and her childhood in a most unusual position; these two conditions--that of being an author, and that of being a child--appear simultaneously, instead of in the due order to which we are accustomed. For I wish at the outset to state, and emphatically, that it is poetry, the stuff and essence of poetry, which this book contains. I know of no other instance in which such really beautiful poetry has been written by a child; but, confronted with so unwonted a state of things, two questions obtrude themselves: how far has the condition of childhood been impaired by, not only the possession, but the expression, of the gift of writing; how far has the condition of authorship (at least in its more mature state still to come) been hampered by this early leap into the light?

The first question concerns the little girl and can best be answered by herself some twenty years hence; the second concerns the world, and again the answer must wait. We can, however, do something--we can see what she is and what she has done. And if the one is interesting to the psychologist, the other is no less important to the poet.

Hilda Conkling is the younger daughter of Mrs. Grace Hazard Conkling, a.s.sistant Professor of English at Smith College, Northampton, Ma.s.sachusetts. At the time of writing, Hilda has just pa.s.sed her ninth birthday. Her sister, Elsa, is two years her senior. The children and their mother live all the year round in Northampton, and glimpses of the woods and hills surrounding the little town crop up again and again in these poems. This is Emily d.i.c.kinson's country, and there is a reminiscent sameness in the fauna and flora of her poems in these.

The two little girls go to a school a few blocks from where they live.

In the afternoons, they take long walks with their mother, or play in the garden while she writes. On rainy days, there are books and Mrs.

Conkling's piano, which is not just a piano, for Mrs. Conkling is a musician, and we may imagine that the children hear a special music as they certainly read a special literature. By "special" I do not mean a prescribed course (for diet.i.tians of the mind are quite as apt to be faddists as diet.i.tians of the stomach), but just that sort of reading which a person who pa.s.sionately loves books would most want to introduce her children to. And here I think we have the answer to the why of Hilda. She and her sister have been their mother's close companions ever since they were born. They have never known that somewhat equivocal relationship--a child with its nurse. They have never been for hours at a time in contact with an elementary intelligence. If Hilda had shown these poems to even the most sympathetic nurse, what would have been the result? In the first place, they would, in all probability, have been lost, since Hilda does not write her poems, but tells them; in the second, they would have been either extravagantly praised or laughingly commented upon. In either case, the fine flower of creation would most certainly have been injured.

Then again, blessed though many of the nurses of childhood undoubtedly are (and we all remember them), they have no means of answering the thousand and one questions of an eager, opening mind. To be an adequate companion to childhood, one must know so many things. Hilda is fortunate in her mother, for if these poems reveal one thing more than another it is that Mrs. Conkling is dowered with an admirable tact. In the dedication poem to her mother, the little girl says:

"If I sing, you listen; If I think, you know."

No finer tribute could be offered by one person to another than the contented certainty of understanding in those two lines.

Hilda tells her poems, and the method of it is this: They come out in the course of conversation, and Mrs. Conkling is so often engaged in writing that there is nothing to be remarked if she scribbles absently while talking to the little girls. But this scribbling is really a complete draught of the poem. Occasionally Mrs. Conkling writes down the poem later from memory and reads it afterwards to the child, who always remembers if it is not exactly in its original form. No line, no cadence, is altered from Hilda's version; the t.i.tles have been added for convenience, but they are merely obvious handles derived from the text.

Naturally it is only a small proportion of Hilda's life which is given to poetry. Much is devoted to running about, a part to study, etc. It is, however, significant that Hilda is not very keen about games with other children. Not that she is by any means either shy or solitary, but they do not greatly interest her. Doubtless childhood pays its debt of possession more steadily than we know.

Now to turn to the book itself; at the very start, here is an amazing thing. This slim volume contains one hundred and seven separate poems, and that is counting as one all the very short pieces written between the ages of five and six. Certainly that is a remarkable output for a little girl, and the only possible explanation is that the poems are perfectly instinctive. There is no working over as with an adult poet.

Hilda is subconscious, not self-conscious. Her mother says that she rarely hesitates for a word. When the feeling is strong, it speaks for itself. Read the dedication poem, "For You, Mother." It is full of feeling, and of that simple, dignified, adequate diction which is the speech of feeling:

"I have found a way of thinking To make you happy."

That is beautiful, and, once read, inevitable; but it waited for a child to say. Poem after poem is charged with this feeling, this expression of great love:

"I will sing you a song, Sweets-of-my-heart, With love in it, (How I love you!)"

"Will you love me to-morrow after next As if I had a bird's way of singing?"

But it is not only the pulse of feeling in such pa.s.sages which makes them surprising; it is the perfectly original expression of it. When one reads a thing and voluntarily exclaims: "How beautiful! How natural!

How true!" then one knows that one has stumbled upon that flash of personality which we call genius. These poems are full of such flashes:

"Sparkle up, little tired flower Leaning in the gra.s.s!"

"There is a star that runs very fast, That goes pulling the moon Through the tops of the poplars."

"There is sweetness in the tree, And fireflies are counting the leaves.

I like this country, I like the way it has."

A pansy has a "thinking face"; a rooster has a comb "gay as a parade,"

he shouts "crooked words, loud . . . sharp . . . not beautiful!"; frozen water is asked if it cannot "lift" itself "with sun," and "Easter morning says a glad thing over and over."

No matter who wrote them, those pa.s.sages would be beautiful, the oldest poet in the world could not improve upon them; and yet the reader has only to turn to the text to see the incredibly early age at which such expressions came into the author's mind.

Where childhood betrays genius is in the mounting up of detail.

Inadequate lines not infrequently jar a total effect, as when, in the poem of the star pulling the moon, she suddenly ends, "Mr. Moon, does he make you hurry?" Or, speaking of a drop of water:

"So it went on with its life For several years Until at last it was never heard of Any more."

This is the perennial child, thinking as children think; and we are glad of it. It makes the whole more healthy, more sure of development. When the subconscious mind of Hilda Conkling takes a vacation, she does not "nod," as erstwhile Homer; she merely reverts to type and is a child again.

I think too highly of these poems to speak of the volume as though it were the finished achievement of a grown-up person. Some of the poems can be taken in that way, but by no means all. The child who writes them frequently transcends herself, but her thoughts for the most part are those proper to every imaginative child. Fairies play a large role in her fancies, and so does the sandman. There are kings, and princesses, and golden wings, and there are reminiscences of story-books, and hints of pictures that have pleased her. After all, that is the way we all make our poems, but the grown-up poet tries to get away from his author, he tries to see more than the painter has seen. The little girl is quite untroubled by any questions of technique. She takes what to her is the obvious always, and in these copied pieces it is, naturally, less her own peculiar obvious than in the nature poems.

Hilda Conkling is evidently possessed of a rare and accurate power of observation. And when we add this to her gift of imagination, we see that it is the perfectly natural play of these two faculties which makes what to her is an obvious expression. She does not search for it, it is her natural mode of thought. But, luckily for her, she has been guided by a wisdom which has not attempted to show her a better way. Her observation has been carefully, but un.o.btrusively, cultivated; her imagination has been stimulated by the reading of excellent books; but both these lines of instruction have been kept apparently apart from her own work. She has been let alone there; she has been taught by an a.n.a.logy which she has never suspected. By this means, her poetical gift has functioned happily, without ever for a moment experiencing the tension of doubt.

A few pa.s.sages will serve to show how well Hilda knows how to use her eyes:

"The water came in with a wavy look Like a spider's web."

A bluebird has a back "like a feathered sky." Apostrophizing a snow-capped mountain she writes:

"You shine like a lily But with a different whiteness."

She asks a humming-bird:

"Why do you stand on the air And no sun shining?"

She hears a chickadee:

"Far off I hear him talking The way smooth bright pebbles Drop into water."

Now let us follow her a step farther, to where the imagination takes a firmer hold:

"The world turns softly Not to spill its lakes and rivers.

The water is held in its arms And the sky is held in the water."

School lessons, and a reflection in a pond--that is the stuff of which all poetry is made. It is the fusion which shows the quality of the poet. Turn to the text and read "Geography." Really, this is an extraordinary child!

It is pleasant to watch her with the artist's eagerness intrigued by the sounds of words, for instance:

"--silvery lonesome lapping of the long wave."

Again, enchanted by a little bell of rhyme, we have this amusing catalogue:

"John-flowers, Mary-flowers, Polly-flowers Cauli-flowers."