Littlekin and Keats

LITTLEKIN, aged two and a half years, was standing by my knee looking at pictures in a little cloth book, and we came to the ’Three Blind Mice.’ The scene was a sprightly one, representing the farmer’s wife, scared almost out of her wits, running away with such a stride as ought to have taken her quite off the page in a single wink of Littlekin’s long dark eyelashes. The three mice pursued, scampering in fearsome proximity to the wife’s red-stockinged ankles. Littlekin gazed, rapt, while I repeated the classic lines. She caught the idea: pursuit, nerve-racking pursuit. ’Dey are wunning after dat lady. See dem wun! ’ She gave a little gasping laugh full of joyous suspense. Then a new idea swept over her face, and, acting upon it, a little forefinger delicately extended itself toward the page — toward the mice. For if they could chase the lady, why not Littlekin’s finger? A pause of rapturous and fearful expectancy — ’De mice will wun after baby’s finger — dey will bite my finger — Eee! Eee! Dey will bite it! Eee! Dey will! Dey will! Don’t let dem bite my finger! Eee! ’

The finger was plucked back hastily, a brand snatched from the burning; again it approached — little moth-finger seeking the flame; again it was withdrawn, somewhat less quickly. The hazel-brown eyes, deep-set, intent, observed the mice steadily, as though to draw out the very heart of their secret. Then my hand was seized, and my finger drawn toward the Three: ‘Make dem wun, mudda, make dem wun after baby’s finger!’ I urged them on with finger and voice, but Littlekin, wholly dissatisfied with the results, pushed my hand back and studied the picture afresh.

‘Dey won’t bite my finger because dey are going after de lady. Dey are going to bite dose’ (pointing to the wife’s red-stockinged ankles). Another pause, and finally, with a certain soft yet reproachful vehemence, she broke out, ‘Wun! Mice! Wun! Catch dose! Catch dem, mice! Go on! GO ON! ’

Nothing happened, and the book was flung to the far corner of the room.

What did she make me think of — Littlekin, with her vehemence and her intolerance of the poor, mute symbol? Ah yes — by contrast — of Keats, of Keats and his Grecian urn with its ‘leaf-fringed legend.’

No pipes and timbrels here, indeed, and the farmer’s wife is neither a man, nor a god, nor a maiden loath. Yet there is the mad pursuit, the struggle to escape; and as for the wild ecstasy, it was Littlekin’s for a moment, before she fell a prey to her impatience.

Clearly, Littlekin is no Keats. If she could look upon that urn of his, would she discover compensations in its eternal suspense? She would not. I think that, after that long, deep look of hers, she would say to the pipers, ‘ Pipe louder! Louder!’ To the heifer, garlanded for the sacrifice, she would say, ‘Go on, cow! Go on!’ And to the lover ‘winning near the goal,’ she would say, ‘ Wun, boy, wun! Catch de lady! ’ Yes, I feel sure she would, — untutored, inartistic Littlekin that she is!

Did Keats himself, I wonder, at two and a half, like his mice to keep their ‘fair attitude,’ or would he have preferred them to run? Is this a matter of age, of training, or of temperament? Or is the Zeitgeist, speaking through Littlekin, hinting of the time, soon to come, when the ‘movies’ shall be in every household, and even the child’s picture-book be no longer tamely static? But no, now that I bethink me, age and the Zeitgeist must be counted out; for Lessing lived more than a century before the ‘movies’ (more’s the pity! fancy what philosophic-æsthetic

nuts they would have made for him to crack!), and he was, I feel sure, a good deal older than Littlekin when he decided that, since the Laocoön could not have more action, it should have had less. Like Littlekin, he felt that it was unfortunate to choose a subject in its moment of extreme unrest. Like Littlekin, he was teased by frozen action. It rests Keats. It annoys Lessing and Littlekin.

Here is a puzzle for the student of æsthetics. Littlekin stands with Lessing, and they make, for obvious reasons, a strong team. Will any care to stand with Keats? I confess myself in difficulties.