What Is Man? and Other Essays
him occupied by a flight of stone steps; and I can locate Stephen to an
inch when he comes into my mind, for he just filled the stretch which
went by the summer-house. Victoria’s reign reached almost to my study
door on the first little summit; there’s sixteen feet to be added now;
I believe that that would carry it to a big pine-tree that was
shattered by some lightning one summer when it was trying to hit me.
[3] Summer of 1899.
We got a good deal of fun out of the history road; and exercise, too.
We trotted the course from the conqueror to the study, the children
calling out the names, dates, and length of reigns as we passed the
stakes, going a good gait along the long reigns, but slowing down when
we came upon people like Mary and Edward VI., and the short Stuart and
Plantagenet, to give time to get in the statistics. I offered prizes,
too—apples. I threw one as far as I could send it, and the child that
first shouted the reign it fell in got the apple.
The children were encouraged to stop locating things as being “over by
the arbor,” or “in the oak parlor,” or “up at the stone steps,” and say
instead that the things were in Stephen, or in the Commonwealth, or in
George III. They got the habit without trouble. To have the long road
mapped out with such exactness was a great boon for me, for I had the
habit of leaving books and other articles lying around everywhere, and
had not previously been able to definitely name the place, and so had
often been obliged to go to fetch them myself, to save time and
failure; but now I could name the reign I left them in, and send the
children.
Next I thought I would measure off the French reigns, and peg them
alongside the English ones, so that we could always have
contemporaneous French history under our eyes as we went our English
rounds. We pegged them down to the Hundred Years’ War, then threw the
idea aside, I do not now remember why. After that we made the English
pegs fence in European and American history as well as English, and
that answered very well. English and alien poets, statesmen, artists,
heroes, battles, plagues, cataclysms, revolutions—we shoveled them all
into the English fences according to their dates. Do you understand? We
gave Washington’s birth to George II.’s pegs and his death to George
III.’s; George II. got the Lisbon earthquake and George III. the
Declaration of Independence. Goethe, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Savonarola,
Joan of Arc, the French Revolution, the Edict of Nantes, Clive,
Wellington, Waterloo, Plassey, Patay, Cowpens, Saratoga, the Battle of
the Boyne, the invention of the logarithms, the microscope, the
steam-engine, the telegraph—anything and everything all over the
world—we dumped it all in among the English pegs according to its date
and regardless of its nationality.
If the road-pegging scheme had not succeeded I should have lodged the
kings in the children’s heads by means of pictures—that is, I should
have tried. It might have failed, for the pictures could only be
effective _when made by the pupil_; not the master, for it is the work
put upon the drawing that makes the drawing stay in the memory, and my
children were too little to make drawings at that time. And, besides,
they had no talent for art, which is strange, for in other ways they
are like me.
But I will develop the picture plan now, hoping that you will be able
to use it. It will come good for indoors when the weather is bad and
one cannot go outside and peg a road. Let us imagine that the kings are
a procession, and that they have come out of the Ark and down Ararat
for exercise and are now starting back again up the zigzag road. This
will bring several of them into view at once, and each zigzag will
represent the length of a king’s reign.
And so on. You will have plenty of space, for by my project you will
use the parlor wall. You do not mark on the wall; that would cause
trouble. You only attach bits of paper to it with pins or thumb-tacks.
These will leave no mark.
Take your pen now, and twenty-one pieces of white paper, each two
inches square, and we will do the twenty-one years of the Conqueror’s
reign. On each square draw a picture of a whale and write the dates and
term of service. We choose the whale for several reasons: its name and
William’s begin with the same letter; it is the biggest fish that
swims, and William is the most conspicuous figure in English history in
the way of a landmark; finally, a whale is about the easiest thing to
draw. By the time you have drawn twenty-one wales and written “William
I.—1066-1087—twenty-one years” twenty-one times, those details will be
your property; you cannot dislodge them from your memory with anything
but dynamite. I will make a sample for you to copy: (Fig. 3).
I have got his chin up too high, but that is no matter; he is looking
for Harold. It may be that a whale hasn’t that fin up there on his
back, but I do not remember; and so, since there is a doubt, it is best
to err on the safe side. He looks better, anyway, than he would without
it.
Be very careful and _attentive _while you are drawing your first whale
from my sample and writing the word and figures under it, so that you
will not need to copy the sample any more. Compare your copy with the
sample; examine closely; if you find you have got everything right and
can shut your eyes and see the picture and call the words and figures,
then turn the sample and copy upside down and make the next copy from
memory; and also the next and next, and so on, always drawing and
writing from memory until you have finished the whole twenty-one. This
will take you twenty minutes, or thirty, and by that time you will find
that you can make a whale in less time than an unpracticed person can
make a sardine; also, up to the time you die you will always be able to
furnish William’s dates to any ignorant person that inquires after
them.
You will now take thirteen pieces of BLUE paper, each two inches
square, and do William II. (Fig. 4.)
Make him spout his water forward instead of backward; also make him
small, and stick a harpoon in him and give him that sick look in the
eye. Otherwise you might seem to be continuing the other William, and
that would be confusing and a damage. It is quite right to make him
small; he was only about a No. 11 whale, or along there somewhere;
there wasn’t room in him for his father’s great spirit. The barb of
that harpoon ought not to show like that, because it is down inside the
whale and ought to be out of sight, but it cannot be helped; if the
barb were removed people would think some one had stuck a whip-stock
into the whale. It is best to leave the barb the way it is, then every
one will know it is a harpoon and attending to business. Remember—draw
from the copy only once; make your other twelve and the inscription
from memory.
Now the truth is that whenever you have copied a picture and its
inscription once from my sample and two or three times from memory the
details will stay with you and be hard to forget. After that, if you
like, you may make merely the whale’s _head and water-spout_ for the
Conqueror till you end his reign, each time _saying _the inscription in
place of writing it; and in the case of William II. make the _harpoon
_alone, and say over the inscription each time you do it. You see, it
will take nearly twice as long to do the first set as it will to do the
second, and that will give you a marked sense of the difference in
length of the two reigns.
Next do Henry I. on thirty-five squares of _red _paper. (Fig. 5.)
That is a hen, and suggests Henry by furnishing the first syllable.
When you have repeated the hen and the inscription until you are
perfectly sure of them, draw merely the hen’s head the rest of the
thirty-five times, saying over the inscription each time. Thus: (Fig.
6).
You begin to understand now how this procession is going to look when
it is on the wall. First there will be the Conqueror’s twenty-one
whales and water-spouts, the twenty-one white squares joined to one
another and making a white stripe three and one-half feet long; the
thirteen blue squares of William II. will be joined to that—a blue
stripe two feet, two inches long, followed by Henry’s red stripe five
feet, ten inches long, and so on. The colored divisions will smartly
show to the eye the difference in the length of the reigns and impress
the proportions on the memory and the understanding. (Fig. 7.)
Stephen of Blois comes next. He requires nineteen two-inch squares of
_yellow_ paper. (Fig. 8.)
That is a steer. The sound suggests the beginning of Stephen’s name. I
choose it for that reason. I can make a better steer than that when I
am not excited. But this one will do. It is a good-enough steer for
history. The tail is defective, but it only wants straightening out.
Next comes Henry II. Give him thirty-five squares of _red _paper. These
hens must face west, like the former ones. (Fig. 9.)
This hen differs from the other one. He is on his way to inquire what
has been happening in Canterbury.
Now we arrive at Richard I., called Richard of the Lion-heart because
he was a brave fighter and was never so contented as when he was
leading crusades in Palestine and neglecting his affairs at home. Give
him ten squares of _white _paper. (Fig. 10).
That is a lion. His office is to remind you of the lion-hearted
Richard. There is something the matter with his legs, but I do not
quite know what it is, they do not seem right. I think the hind ones
are the most unsatisfactory; the front ones are well enough, though it
would be better if they were rights and lefts.
Next comes King John, and he was a poor circumstance. He was called
Lackland. He gave his realm to the Pope. Let him have seventeen squares
of _yellow _paper. (Fig. 11.)
That creature is a jamboree. It looks like a trademark, but that is
only an accident and not intentional. It is prehistoric and extinct. It
used to roam the earth in the Old Silurian times, and lay eggs and
catch fish and climb trees and live on fossils; for it was of a mixed
breed, which was the fashion then. It was very fierce, and the Old
Silurians were afraid of it, but this is a tame one. Physically it has
no representative now, but its mind has been transmitted. First I drew
it sitting down, but have turned it the other way now because I think
it looks more attractive and spirited when one end of it is galloping.
I love to think that in this attitude it gives us a pleasant idea of
John coming all in a happy excitement to see what the barons have been
arranging for him at Runnymede, while the other one gives us an idea of
him sitting down to wring his hands and grieve over it.
We now come to Henry III.; _red _squares again, of course—fifty-six of
them. We must make all the Henrys the same color; it will make their
long reigns show up handsomely on the wall. Among all the eight Henrys
there were but two short ones. A lucky name, as far as longevity goes.
The reigns of six of the Henrys cover 227 years. It might have been
well to name all the royal princes Henry, but this was overlooked until
it was too late. (Fig. 12.)
This is the best one yet. He is on his way (1265) to have a look at the
first House of Commons in English history. It was a monumental event,
the situation of the House, and was the second great liberty landmark
which the century had set up. I have made Henry looking glad, but this
was not intentional.
Edward I. comes next; _light-brown_ paper, thirty-five squares. (Fig.
13.)
That is an editor. He is trying to think of a word. He props his feet
on the chair, which is the editor’s way; then he can think better. I do
not care much for this one; his ears are not alike; still, editor