Rudolph: A Monograph

[The editors print the following paper with the assurance of the author that it is substantially a statement of facts.]

PERHAPS Daines Barrington might have gone down to posterity unknown, save for having coupled his name with the youthful Mozart, in a paper illustrative of the wonderful genius of the child. With no attempt at such distinction, having a minor subject to describe, I still believe a meagre yet truthful account of Rudolph, a lad of ten, may be worth recording.

The Blimber hot-house atmosphere of the present time has forced so much precocity, that wonderful children scarcely attract attention. There are so many mental sowers, croppers, reapers, and harrowers, tearing through and pulverizing the soil, that children are producing untold crops of something immature, — we may call it fruit, if you please. Two-year-old children are pitted against two-year-old Derby colts, brains against hoofs, and, regardless of future strains, spavins, and founders, so that a rousing stride is arrived at early, a fearful pace is acquired ; the future race, the long, steady pull, trying matured wind and muscle, is entirely forgotten. The escapes from this overwork are very rare ; with a few most brilliant exceptions, brain or body suffer, sometimes both, mostly the latter. I should, perhaps, dislike quite as much to be taxed with the perverse taste of attending public executions, as to be laid under the imputation of a seeker-out and annalist of wonderful children ; yet a strange fatality has thrown me, I believe, in contact with several precocities, and involuntarily I have kept a mental record of them.

Mélanie N——was born in a French garrison town. At two years of age, when a strolling band passed, — her nursery was off the street, — she could distinguish every individual instrument, saying, “ I hear a clarionet, a cornet, a harp, and a bass-viol.” At four, by ear, not by sight, she would instantly determine what military band was performing, indicating the regiment, as, for instance, “ That is the music of the 22d Chasseurs,” or, “Of the 14th Infantry.” There happened to be a rivalry between the two band-masters ; they were contending for some musical prize, and both performed similar pieces. On being asked how she knew one from the other, she would reply, “ Because the 14th has one more ophicleide than the 22d, and the drum of the 22d differs from the drum of the 14th ; and, besides, if you will only wait a little while, the new ophicleide of the 14th, before he gets through, is sure to be flat.” At five she improvised on the piano, and, though inaccurately, was able to note down what she composed. Then all objects animate and inanimate had a sound for her. The water-butt ran off its contents, when full, in a sliding scale commencing with re, or the sheep bleeted in fa, the cows lowed in mi. At seven, on the occasion of the Curé’s fête, she wrote an Agnus Dei in four parts, charming from its naïveté and harmony, still performed, as far as I know, in the departmental church ; and at eight she died. Melanie’s parents were well-to-do shopkeepers, both fair musicians, but I cannot tax them with having forced the inclinations of their only child. If the piano was closed, Melanie was ill and would sob herself into hysterics ; yet she was a sweet and amiable child. An accursed musical-box placed under a pillow when she was a twelvemonth old had started this wonderful musical machinery, had fired the train which ultimately consumed her. She was diminutive to a degree, with an oversized head ; her health was wretched, and she died of a spinal complaint with cerebral disturbance.

The philological child I think I found once in New Orleans, in Patrick. His father was an Irishman, his mother a Bavarian ; their profession, keepers of a sailors’ boarding-house. At nine years old Patrick spoke German, French, Spanish, Italian, and Swedish. Of course, English was his vernacular, but his German was as good as his English. In French, as to accent and genders, he was absolutely perfect. His Spanish was fair, and the peculiar j always right. Italian he knew less about, but in Swedish he was again perfectly at home. It was strange to see a ragged little Mezzofanti in a squalid room, from a filthy bar, dispensing spirits to all the drunken nationalities, having a word or two for each, and sometimes, when encouraged by his father, urging the payment of an old score, by the hour, with some foreign sailor. Patrick could scarcely read ; his language-acquisitiveness, of course, is well understood ; he had heard all manner of strange sounds from his birth, he was nothing more than a linguistic mocking-bird. Ten years ago, I chanced to meet him as a boat-hand on the Ohio River. He told me he had forgotten “ all the lingo,” as he expressed it. On asking the captain of the boat what kind of a person he was, he replied : “ Pretty fair for an ordinary hand ; not much brains, and not strong enough for boatwork.” I forgot to mention his dialect was changed to that of the Hoosier ; it struck me then, that the gift of language had not entirely disappeared, there was still some very faint persistence.

The inventive child, I think, very rare, because, unable to handle tools, he cannot produce materially his mental creations. Yet I must ever remember a farmer’s son of seven, just able to spell, who, miles away from any mill, with a spool, some umbrella-wire, and a shingle, made an under-shot wheel, and ran it in a little brook. It was as near a turbine-wheel of a peculiar form as possible, so close that, had this child’s invention been able to claim a priority, it might have settled a patent suit which eight years afterwards involved a fortune. What is, however, wonderful in this case is its pleasant dénouement. At ten years of age he went to school, at fifteen he entered a machineshop, and at twenty-two, for distinguished talent and inventive power, having made a speciality of marineengines, he now occupies the position of second engineer in the work-shop of a foreign government. He has no drawbacks, body and mind being in perfect tone and condition.

The subject of this article, whose name we will call Rudolph, is a few months over ten years old ; he lives in the South, and his origin is a foreign one. This is evident from his pronunciation, shown principally by placing a wrong accentuation on the syllables. Grammatically he never makes an error; his language in treating commonplace things is stilted ; for instance, he will say, having something for my children in his pocket, instead of, “ Boys, I’ve got something good for you,” “ I have brought something excellent, to propitiate you little ones with.” In appearance he is somewhat below the average size ; the head is rather large, the eyes blue, subdued, and dull, the complexion pallid, the mouth large and mobile, the chin massive, the ears too large and at right angles with the head, and the whole contour of the face crowned with a forehead not so high as immensely wide. Did a good mother of healthy children pass him, she would say, “ That boy wants sea-bathing, careful diet, and change of air.”

Rudolph is playing with my children, and the marbles are spinning over the floor, and shouts of, “ Knuckle down ! ” “My first!” and “Fen dabs!” resound. Presently a marble rolls along and is stopped by a kaleidoscope left by one of my boys on the floor.

“What is that, Rudolph?” asks a friend of the house, a stranger to Rudolph.

“ A kaleidoscope, sir,” is the reply.

“ Would you like to know something more about it, my lad?” inquires the gentleman, kindly.

Rudolph looks at him in a puzzled way, and shows a disposition to resume marbles. I make a sign to my friend, and motion him to allow Rudolph to explain, and the boy commences. “ Sir David Brewster invented it. It is an optical toy. Copies of the forms it produces are sometimes used as designs for goods. It is made in this way: you take a tube, close one end with a double glass, the outside one semi-transparent; between these two glasses you place whatever small objects you please ; in this instance it is bits of colored glass and beads ; on the other side is a small aperture to look through. Inside are two mirrors or reflecting surfaces joined at an angle of sixty degrees, and the image must be reflected or repeated five times, causing an exact combination of images, in fact, a regular figure.” This is gotten off easily, glibly, without hesitation ; the only error in pronunciation is in “reduplicating,” the third syllable having been over-accentuated.

My friend says to me in Latin, “A parrot.” I reply in French, “ Have a care, for, as far as I know, the boy will understand you.” Somewhat nettled, the gentleman says : “ All right, Rudolph ; but pray explain to me what you mean by reflected.”

“ In this instance it is a plane surface which reflects. Sometimes it is a concave or convex surface which reflects ; do you want the simplest, in this case, the reflection from a plane surface ? When an image is thrown on a surface, it is either absorbed and is lost, or a luminous recoil takes place, visible to our senses, and the image is said to be reflected. The substance giving the picture again is called the reflector ; the image is said to be reflected.” This was said very quietly, with a marble in his hand. The boy paused, and then the marble dropped on the floor, and his mien changed. “ Don’t you think there may be other reflections than those of heat, sound, and motion ? Other imponderable agents might be reflected, there is such a close connection between them all. Is it a fair inference — ” and here the brain commenced to assume entire mastery of the body ; the boy swerved from right to left, walked in an agitated way from side to side, entirely absorbed in his thoughts.

“ Bless me, Rudolph,” I interposed, “this is speculative science. Do you ever think on these subjects ? Have you read anything about them ?”

“No, nothing; will you give me something to read which would explain these things ? But I wanted to ask you something. I precipitated a salt of copper with ammonia, and redissolved it, of course, in ammonia with an excess ; I went further with my ammonia, and got a second trace, faint, though, of a precipitate. Now I have every reason to suppose my solution was chemically pure, as I made it myself ; I used, though, a piece of an old galvanic battery, and perhaps — ”

Just here Henry, who had been standing near with mouth wide open, sung out, “ I say, Rudolph, come finish your game. Your first, and my second, and knuckle down ! ”

Rudolph joins the game, though I think the action is accomplished with a painful mental jerk.

Said my companion: “I thought at first this was an awful little prig, some little Sandford and Merton brute ; but I must express myself amazed ; why, it seems to me that baby is absolutely venturing on the realms of speculative science ; but a word or so more, and he would have been lecturing on latent galvanism, its influence on chemical affinity. Is this cramming, or is it not ? I do hate cramming so, and agree with old Epictetus, when he expresses his disgust, and how men differ from sheep in this respect; whereas the sheep give the shepherd the fragrant curd and fleecy wool, and not the undigested food of a year’s grass-croppings. I should so like to find out what more this wonderfully little wretched child knows ; but I deem it sinful, murderous, to tax him further. I do so hate to be a Pumblechook.”

“ You will not have to wait very long,” I replied; “you have awakened Rudolph ; unfortunately, he never plays long enough.” And presently the child abruptly left the game and approached the study-table. On it was “ Tyndall on Sound,” He singled it out, among numerous volumes, opened it at hazard, and in an instant, with his eyes not more than three inches from the page, was utterly lost in its contents.

“ Rudolph,” I said, waking him up from a brown study, taking the book gently from him, “ have you ever seen this book before?”

“ Never.”

“ Know anything about sound ? ”

“Acoustics? Not much; very little. Then, simply started with some elementary question, he commenced with the theory of sound, its wave motion, the exact figures of its rapidity, its differences of transmission through various media ; talked of sirenes, vibrations, pulsations; presently I stopped him, and, opening the book haphazard at page 257, figure 138, asked, “ What is this?” He paused for a moment, examined it eagerly, and replied: “I should think it is the form a liquid would probably take — perhaps in this particular instance mercury—when a disturbance takes place on its surface. I should think that here there may be more than one centre of disturbance ; perhaps two or three.” This reply from a boy of ten would have doubtless pleased the distinguished author who so worthily has taken up Farraday’s mantle. “ Did you ever see this picture before ? ” asked my friend. “ No,” was the reply ; and Rudolph is perfectly truthful. I then sought out Chladni’s figures, caused by the vibrations of glass affecting some light substances placed on them. Rudolph knew all about them, and told me he had been comparing them with somewhat similar figures caused by magnetic influences on metalfilings. My friend, in mockery of spirit, says something about singingflames : he thinks he has nonplussed Rudolph. We allow the boy a chance, and he clearly shows that he understands rather more about it than either of us.

“ What more does this boy know ?” asks my friend, in despair.

“ Know, ” I reply, “ why, there is scarcely a question in inorganic chemistry he cannot reply to, and as a recreation he will give you every prescription in Wood and Bache, if you want it ; since you have broken the ice now, you might as well go on.

Questioning recommences, and every possible metal and earth, solids, fluids, acids, alkalis, bases, oxides, sulphates, chlorides, nitrates, we can think of are asked about. Equivalents, atomic proportions, all ordinary and extraordinary processes of manufacture, are included ; the new methods of iron reductions are thrown in. We try to blow him up with the fulminates ; he retorts by going into the formations of the gaseous compounds arising from their combustion. And now, as he warms up to his work, he drops all the common terms, uses the scientific nomenclature, and, as far as we know, has not made a single error. Rudolph has certainly gone through an examination which perhaps only one in a thousand of medical graduates could have stood ; and, as far as chemistry is required, would have passed as assistant surgeon before an army or navy board. As he concludes he naïvely remarks, “ But I don’t know anything at all about organic chemistry ” ; and yet he takes up the alcoholic transitions, the ethers, the fermentations, gives the elements of all the common and uncommon substances we ask about, with their complex O, C, N, and H’s, gives the theory of their analysis, and somehow or other, by what seemed to us to be a natural transition, winds up with the solar-spectrum, the Newtonian theory, the separation of the rays of light, the polarity, Froenhoffer’s lines, a description of the new metals, the constant presence of sodium ; and then Henry captures him, just as he has started ozone, and the game of marbles is resumed ; we are only too glad of it, for Rudolph has exhausted us.

It is not my intention to give here the impressions made on us. I should simply state that amazement, pain, and irritability were commingled. It required a constant mental effort fully to appreciate that it was a mere child talking. He is crammed, crammed, crammed, would be always uppermost in our minds. The feeling of irritability is most difficult to explain ; there is intense sympathy for the child, and none for the tremendous mental power which takes the form of a monstrosity, and the two feelings clash. As to the boy himself, the physical disturbances became more manifest, the voice was even affected, the pronunciation more outré, the words, though correct, would sometimes halt, as if language would not come fast enough for thoughts. Any interruption (though he never would leave the train of thought commenced) was so apparently painful, that we let him have his bent.

It would be wearisome did I catalogue all this boy has at his finger’s end. Chemistry is his forte, though all the kindred sciences are familiar to him. I defy a lecturer to explain to his class the process of telegraphy, its history, the nature of the instruments now in use, or that have been in use and discarded, with the entire theory, better than Rudolph can. Some time ago I lent him “ Farraday’s Lectures to his Younger Classes ” ; he returned it, saying, “ I was acquainted with the facts, and it is too elementary,” which, undoubtedly, it was.

But how is he in his general studies ? He goes to a public school, and the head-master says: “He is first in his class in everything. He never misses. Sometimes he leaves his books in school, and I think I will pass him his recitations for the day, but he knows them perfectly. He comes five minutes before school and studies them. I never think of requiring his attention during school hours, so necessary for most other children ; so he is orderly, that is all I require. I do wish he could get up a passion for butterflies. Of course he would know all about them entomologically before long, but then he would have the run of the fields, and it would do him so much good. My boys are all devoted to him ; if you wanted to see a right down good fight, only let anybody crook a little finger at him. I have taught a great many children in my time, but Rudolph is the most wonderful child in every respect I ever saw. I do so wish he was stronger.”

A day or so ago I met Rudolph under the trees, seated, book in hand, whilst his comrades were riotous over base-ball. “Why don’t you join them, Rudolph ? ” I asked. “ I cannot see the ball clearly enough to seize it. I tried to do so the other day. It struck me in the face. It hurt me exceedingly. I saw all the constellations. I wonder why, when the optic nerve is contused, you see a delirium of colors ? ” Just then Henry and Frank enter en scène, and Rudolph calls Frank “a six-legged spider.”

“ Why a spider, my boy, and why six-legged ? ” I ask.

“ Because he has legs, arms, eyes, ears, a mouth, and a brain. The legs are amputated, the arms remain ; the eyes are blind, the ears still hear ; the mouth becomes silent, yet the brain may think : we are all six-legged creatures.” The way this was said, its half intensity, its half comicality, struck me. Presently, with head down, that fearful brain of his working up, perhaps further elucidating this grotesque idea, he left us.

At my tea-table some friends were talking Max Müller, and a very weak philological conversation, adapted to the heat of the climate and the occasion, was going on. A very kind lady, not a bit femme forte, said Semitic-Aryan, and talked “ Lothair.” The boy was busy with his supper, — and, by the way, his table manners savor of the adolescent Dr. Johnson, — when this enfant terrible commenced on Sanscrit-Pali, spoke of the origin of languages, gave some derivations, traced it roughly up to English, and, though ignorant of any general rules, was more conversant with it, had a greater foundation to build upon, than would have had one in ten thousand of thoroughly educated people, such as we might meet in a drawing-room.

Again, is all this cramming? Is Rudolph aught else than a mental hopper, into which all kinds of miscellaneous facts are thrown, to be discharged again ? It may be so, but yet, by some wonderful adaptation, a power of assortment takes place, and the substances are separated, classed, and generalized. We may be surprised at the mental property of retaining so much, but we must think it supernatural that he should dare even to speculate on them. At three Rudolph read ; it is impossible that he should have been able to take any interest in scientific subjects before seven ; we know that two years ago he was ignorant, comparatively, of chemistry. How surprising, then, it must be, to think how much this boy has absorbed in two or three years ! I may be taxed with an exaggeration prone to make me ridiculous, but if Humboldt at forty, in his universal knowledge, was a cosmologist, then Rudolph at ten, comparing age for age, is quite as wonderful.

Perhaps some kindly people may accuse me of cruelty towards this child. I am free to acknowledge that only once, when ignorant of his powers, I thoroughly examined him ; but from that time until now I have done all I could, not to suppress exactly, —for that would, I believe, kill him, — but gradually to lead him through other paths, and to teach him how to play. “If he must devour books and digest all facts,” I argued, “ suppose lighter food be placed before him.” To this new food, fiction, he took too eagerly, and what he did with it was sui generis. Alexander Dumas once told the writer, “ I never enjoy my own plays or anybody else’s after the curtain is up and the characters all chalked out (calcqué). I don’t know how it is, but I have a wretched way of appropriating them, just as does poor Mr. Morphy playing blindfold several games of chess. I run my characters through three or four entirely different plots; sometimes the author does as I do, but often my new dénouement is the better.” Just so did Rudolph ; when he had mastered the story, he changed everything, and made new scenes, new incidents. Of course, this I could not consider as very injurious, but, nevertheless, chemistry, physics, kept on aggregating.

Will this boy’s brain be able to sustain the tension ? I fear not ; but should the Almighty keep up his mind and body, and the power increase, there is stuff in him to make an Arago, a Laplace, a Humboldt, or a Farraday, — perhaps the scientific illumination of this century ; but I am afraid the balance between brain and body is too far apart. What he wants is a careful, tender guide, one whose task would be more than difficult. You would likely kill the child did you attempt to suppress the brain entirely at one rude push. Physiologically I believe the brain circulation is so flooded that a refluent wave might cause the blood to surge on some weaker part, and drown him. This child’s intellect should be unfolded leaf by leaf, and just as tenderly, as gently, as the expert divides the old Egyptian papyrus ; the question of physique might or might not be easy. We suppose a physician of undoubted talent and change of climate might effect something; and why is this not done ? Because the gifts of this world are sometimes very unevenly distributed.

Here he comes now, very wan and pale, and sidles up to my table, and looks wistfully at my books. Henry is trying all he can to read “ Little Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” and can’t. On the table is a compass ; all Henry knows about the instrument is that it will keep pointing one way, and that if he faces that way it is north, and then the back of his head is south ; east and west he is not very sure about yet, and Henry is seven years old.

“ O Rudolph, do now do tell me about the compass. Father says I am too young yet to know much about it. I know that you know all about her!.” (My eldest delights in the negro fieldhands’ peculiarities of genders and pronouns.)

“My son,” I say, “have I not requested you not to bother Rudolph with questions ? Go out on the veranda and play tag ; make all the noise you please. Rudolph is invited here to play, not to teach you things ; so clear out, both of you.”

Said Rudolph, “ It don’t trouble me, and I am not in the mood for playing to-day.” And away they go, and through the open window I watch Henry, eager at first, with mouth and eyes wide open ready to swallow the compass. I hear Rudolph, who commences at the commencement, with the Chinese, the loadstone, magnetic iron, the horse-shoe magnet, the needle, the true pole, the various methods of suspension, the artificial deviations caused by iron ships, English admiralty experiments, the natural progression of variations, how these disturbances were noted in 1576, when it varied easterly 10 15', when it got right again, how it went westerly again ; and here he paused, for Henry, I am thankful for it (it was such a warm summer’s afternoon), was sound asleep. Rudolph looked at him a moment, laughed a pleasant chuckle, then resumed his grave countenance and lounged into my study. I offer him a ball, wishing devoutly it was a pony, so that his pale face might get hale and hearty and blowzed as my boy’s, with sun and wind and play. He takes the ball, then asks about the mitrailleuse, then develops (he who has perhaps never shot a gun, perhaps not a cracker) the theory of projectiles, talks trajectory, gravity, windage, recoil, guncotton, nitro-glycerine ! I am not inclined to talk, so he takes the nearest book, “ Gallon on Hereditary Genius.” In a moment he is deep in it ; I surreptitiously substitute Hans Andersen ; he smiles, and says, “ Taboo.”

If commonplace Henry, when grown to man’s estate, can understand, theoretically only, as much about the compass as Rudolph does now at ten, I shall be satisfied. But I do so thank God that Henry is sound asleep, sprawling at full length on the veranda. I think when he is eight he ought to be made to read.

Barnet Phillips.