“I wonders”: Bitten by the blackberry’s dog
excerpt from F.D. How’s “The Book of the Child”
As a Gutenberg Necromancer (First Class, self-appointed), sifting through recently released ebooks offers endless opportunity for discovery.
Buried some 50+ pages into F.D. How’s “The Book of the Child,” a charming little story caught my eye. How thought it illustrated his point about the marvelous imagination of children, and in particular, one little girl who decided the blackberries she was picking were people just like her, with houses, dances, parents, siblings, and…well, mean dogs.
‘Oh! the backberwies’ dog has bit me!’ she cried, as she held up the poor little finger for me to see.
F.D. How, “The Book of the Child” (from Project Gutenberg)
How writes like a kindly Oxford gentleman, though I know little of his biography. He was a professional biographer, it seems. Platitudes proliferate, like the following:
Just as there is no summer without its cool grey days, so among the sunny crowd of children about our path there is here and there a child who seems to live beneath a shadow.
Here and there adults also may share that shadow.
Just, too, as the tender colouring of the grey landscape has a special charm which only needs the seeking, so these quiet little ones amply repay the observation of those who do not let them steal away and escape notice as they always wish to do.
Indeed, so too the words of quiet little authors, like F.D. How himself, leaving testimony of kindness they hoped might be their legacy.
Below is the full story. I’ll keep this book in mind on my next lonely, grim day — summon it forth as a skeletal paladin who intends to raise a sword and shield while plotting to tickle despair away.
“I Wonders”
from F.D. How, The Book of the Child, on Project Gutenberg
It was a lovely September day. I had any number of duties to fulfil at home. There was a pile of letters waiting to be answered, there was a magazine article hardly begun for which I had received an urgent demand from the publishers only that morning, and there was a meeting of school managers which my conscience told me I ought on no account to miss. But, as I said before, it was a simply lovely day and nature (human[Pg 55] and the other) cried shame on staying indoors. Whether I should have had sufficient strength of mind to have resisted the temptation had I been left to fight it out with nature I shall never know, for the enemy received a sudden reinforcement before which I yielded ignominiously and at once. I had gone so far as to clear my blotting-pad of loose letters and to open my ink bottle when there came a tiny tap at the study door. ‘Come in!’ I called, and there ensued a curious twisting at the handle of the door, productive of no result. ‘Come in!’ I called again, and this time there was no further delay.
With a little burst the door flew open and revealed that my visitor was no less and no greater a person than Helen.
Helen.
Now Helen needs some description, and no better time for giving it could be found than as she stood there at the top of the three or four steps which lead up to my sanctum, her face flushed with her struggle with the door handle.
Helen was a town-bred child of five years old, and the colour gave her usually pale face an added charm. Charm is the right word to use, for, though she did not possess any very great beauty (excepting her large dark eyes and lashes), it was impossible not to fall under her charm. She fascinated by her various moods, often serious almost to melancholy, but suddenly bursting out into utter and abandoned joyousness. She fascinated again by her vivid imagination, by the sensitiveness with which she shrank from an unresponsive look or word, and by the gradual unfolding of her nature to anyone who understood. She had come to stay with us in our completely country house, and was entranced with the mystery and delight of all she saw.
On that particular morning she had come to demand that I should fulfil a promise to go out and pick blackberries, for had not I said that I had passed quantities of big ones, all ripe and ready, only the day before? There she stood in her white sun bonnet and her short red flannel jacket, beneath which came the bottom of her white frock and a little pair of legs which country sun and air were already beginning to assimilate to those of our village bairns in colour though not in thickness.
‘Well?’ I said, to which her only reply was to hold up and shake at me an empty basket with which she had provided herself. ‘What’s that for?’ said I. ‘I wonders!’ she answered, using an expression with which we had already become familiar. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘you had better tell me.’ ‘Can’t you guess?’ — with some scorn — and then triumphantly, ‘Backberwies, o’ course!’
There was very little more to be said. Nature might have been resisted alone, but nature and Helen would have proved too much for a stronger and more reluctant man than I. And so it was arranged. Helen was to meet me in the hall in a quarter of an hour, which would give me time to scribble a couple of notes, one (by the way) to the publishers to say that great pressure prevented my finishing the article that day, which was true — in a sense!
I have been many walks with many people, but none that I can compare with the one upon which Helen and I started that sunny September morning. I have walked as an undergraduate with learned dons who discoursed of matters beyond my ken. I have walked with ladies of sentiment, who vainly appealed to my sympathy and imagination. But never till that morning did I walk with a companion who carried me with her into[Pg 59] another world and who obtained complete sway over my every thought and action. This did not begin all at once.
Through the Village.
There was a little bit of the village through which we must pass, and here there were sundry dangers. Old Sawyer’s black and white sow had got loose and certainly looked formidably large and fierce as she shoved her snout with deep grunts into the ditch beside the road. Then a farmer’s collie-dog — a particular friend of mine, but a stranger and therefore a possible foe to my companion — came prancing up. These and other sources of terror, such as the village flock of geese, made it essential that we should proceed with caution and with such strength as a union of hands might afford. However, it did not take long to bring us to the end of the cottages and out on to the road beside which I had seen the blackberries hanging all ready to be[Pg 60] picked. It was a good wide road with a broad strip of grass on either side, along one of which was a row of telegraph posts which brought the single wire by which we were connected with the busy world. The hedges were high and bushy — full of honeysuckle, now out of bloom, wild roses by this time showing only their scarlet fruit, wild hops climbing everywhere with rapid eager growth, clematis giving promise of a hoary show of old man’s beard, and in and out and over and through it all the long thorny brambles with their many-coloured leaves and their shiny black and red and green berries.
The Backberwy People.
With just one look round to assure herself that nobody and nothing was about, Helen let go my hand and rushed off like a mad thing along the grass, just recovering herself with a gasp from a bad stumble over a dried and hidden heap of road scrapings. All of a sudden she stopped. She had caught sight of the ‘backberwies’ and of the numberless other brilliant and tempting objects in the hedge. In a moment her imagination had caught fire. ‘I wonders!’ she said as I came up. Then, when her breath was quite recovered, she added very earnestly, ‘Can us get them backberwy people? It’s vewy dangewous, isn’t it? Look at them nettles and fistles! Is them the backberwies’ policemen — I wonders?’
If they were, they proved very useful as far as warding off attacks on the part of a little bare-legged maiden went. However, by dint of very careful steering she managed to get close up to a splendid cluster of fruit and had picked some four or five when one of the sharp hooky thorns tore her finger and brought tears into her eyes. Even so, the play went on. ‘Oh! the backberwies’ dog has bit me!’ she cried, as she held up the poor little finger for me to see. It was really a nasty prick, and I could see that it hurt her a good deal, so I tied her handkerchief round it, and said we would try to find a place further on where the dogs were not so savage.
The Backberwy Ball.
We went on a yard or two and passed close to one of the telegraph posts through which a light breeze was humming. Helen stopped short with eyes dilated and open mouth. ‘Oh! I wonders!’ she cried. ‘What is it?’ I asked her. She whispered to me to keep quite still while she went to see, and proceeded to put her ear against the post, holding up one finger of the injured hand in warning to me not to stir. ‘There’s beautiful music,’ she said at last very softly, ‘there’s a ball, and all the little backberwies is dancing!’ I said that if the old blackberries let the young ones go to a ball without them it served them[Pg 63] right if they got picked themselves. I then suggested that we should go on to the next post and see what was going on there. As we went Helen noticed that near each one there was a heap of stones and a bare gravelly patch of ground. ‘Them is the backberwy houses,’ she said, ‘and all the backberwies are out, and the children are gone to a dancing class, so the old backberwies send them by theirselves.’ So the little difficulty which I had mentioned was explained away, though to the vividness of her imagination it had evidently presented a real difficulty and had not been forgotten.
Presently, after listening to the music in several telegraph posts, saying that there was an organ in one and fiddles in another, while in a third she declared that the blackberries were singing, she returned to the hedge and the more serious duty of filling her little basket. All the time, however, she kept up a comment upon what she saw. The red hips and haws were ‘the backberwies’ soldiers,’ the elderberries were their clergymen, and the sloes were guards. Every few minutes she stopped in a sort of ecstasy at all that was around her, and gazing in one direction and another would softly say, ‘Oh! I wonders!’ It was evidently a revelation of beauty to her, and at the same time a scene of mystery, a sort of fairyland where everything thought and lived and breathed.
The Wicked Soldiers.
At last the basket was getting nearly full, and in stretching up for some specially fine berries a dog-rose thorn tore the back of my hand, leaving a long scratch. Helen’s anger knew no bounds.
‘The wicked, wicked soldiers,’ she said, and then taking several of the bright red hips she tore them into fragments and threw them away. And now we had wandered backwards and forwards along[Pg 65] that special bit of hedge until all the blackberries within reach were picked, and only the baby green ones were left. ‘Will they die if we leaves them all alone?’ she said, and then she gathered as many as possible, and carrying them in her two hands placed them in little heaps near each telegraph post that they might be noticed when the balls and concerts were over.
I said that I wondered what the young blackberries would do when they came out and found all their fathers and mothers gone, and only the little babies left. And Helen said ‘I wonders.’
