in the month of march, as the shadows of twilight gathered, two little children were seated very close together upon a low footstool—two little ones, between the ages of five and six, dressed in short trousers with white pinafores over them, as was the fashion of the time. after having played wildly they were now quietly amusing themselves with paper and pencils. the dim light seemed to fill them with a vague fear, and it troubled their spirits.
of the two children only one was drawing—it was i. the other, a friend invited over for the day, an exceptional thing, was watching me with great attention. with some difficulty (trusting me meantime) he followed the fantastic movements of my pencil whose intention i took care to explain to him at some length. and my oral interpretation was necessary, for i was busy executing two drawings that i entitled respectively, “the happy duck” and “the unhappy duck.”
the room in which we were seated must have been furnished about the year 1805, at the time of the marriage of my now-very-old grandmother, who still occupied it, and who this evening was seated in the chair of the directory period; she was singing to herself and she took no notice of us.
my memories of my grandmother are indistinct for her death occurred shortly after this time; but as i will never again, in the course of this recital, have a more vivid impression of her, i will here insert what i know of her history.
it seems that in the stress of all sorts of troubles she had been a brave and noble mother. after reverses that were so general in those days, after losing her husband at the battle of trafalgar, and her elder son at the shipwreck of the medusa, she went resolutely to work to educate her younger son, my father, until such time as he should be able to support himself. at about her eightieth year (which was not far distant when i came into the world) the senility of second childhood had set in; at that time i knew nothing about the tragedy of the loss of memory and i could not realize the vacancy of her mind and soul.
she would often stand for a long time before a mirror and talk in a most amiable way to her own reflection, which she called, “my good neighbor” or “my dear neighbor.” it was also her mania to sing with a most excessive ardor the marseillaise, the parisiennes, the “song of farewell,” and all the noble songs of the transition time, which had been the rage in her young womanhood.
during these exciting times she had lived quietly, and had occupied herself entirely with her household cares and her son's education. for that reason it seems the more singular that from her disordered mind, just about as it was to take its journey into complete darkness and to become disintegrated through death, there should come this tardy echo of that tempestuous time.
i enjoyed listening to her very much and often i would laugh, but without any irreverence, and i never was the least afraid of her. she was extremely lovely and had delicate and regular features, and her expression was very sweet. her abundant hair was silver-gray, and upon her cheeks there was a color similar to that of a faded rose leaf, a color which the old people of that generation often retained into extreme old age. i remember that she usually wore a red cashmere shawl about her shoulders, and that she always had on an old-fashioned cap trimmed with green ribbons. there was something very modest and gentle and pleasing about her still graceful little body.
her room, where i liked to come to play because it was so large and sunny, was furnished as simply as a presbyterian parsonage: the waxed walnut furniture was of the directory period, the large bed had a canopy of thick, red, cotton stuff and the walls were painted an ochre yellow; and upon them in gilt frames, slightly tarnished, were hung water colors representing vases of flowers. i very soon discovered that this room was furnished in a very simple and old-fashioned way, and i thought to myself that the good old grandmother who sang so constantly must be much poorer than my other grandmother, who was younger by twenty years, and who always dressed in black—which last matter seemed an elegant distinction to me.
but to return to my drawings! i think that the pictures of those two ducks, occupying such different stations in life, were the first i ever drew.
at the bottom of the picture called “the happy duck” i had drawn a tiny house, and near the duck himself there was a large, kind woman who was calling him to her so that she might give him food.
“the unhappy duck,” on the other hand, was swimming about solitary and alone on a sort of hazy sea, which i had represented by drawing two or three straight lines, and in the distance one could see the outline of a gloomy shore. the thin paper, a leaf torn from a book, had print on the reverse side, and the letters showed through in grayish flecks and gave the curious impression as of clouds in the sky. and that little drawing, with less form than a school-boy's blackboard scrawl, was completely transfigured by those gray spots, and because of them it took on for me a deep and dreadful significance. aided by the dim light in the room the pictured scene became a vision that faded away into the distance like the pale surface of the sea. i was terrified at my own work; i was astonished to find in it those things that i had not put there; to discover in it those things which elsewhere had given me such a well remembered anguish.
“oh!” i said with exaltation to my young companion, who did not understand anything of what was going forward, “oh!” i exclaimed with a voice full of emotion, “you may see it; i cannot bear to look at it!” i covered the picture with my hands, but nevertheless i peeped at it very often; and it was so vividly impressed upon my mind that i can still recall it as it appeared to me transfigured: a gleam of light lay upon the horizon of that sea so awkwardly represented, the heavens appeared to be filled with rain, and it seemed to be a dreary winter evening in which there was a fierce wind blowing.
the “unhappy duck” solitary, far away from his family and friends was making his way toward the foggy shore over which there hung an air of extreme sadness and desolation. and certainly for one fleeting moment i had a prescience of those heartaches that i was to know later in the course of my sailor life. i seemed to have a presentiment of those stormy december evenings when my boat was to enter, to take shelter until the morning, one of those uninhabited bays upon the coast of brittany; more particularly i had a prescience of those twilights of the antarctic winter when, in about the latitude of magellan, we were to go in search of protection towards those sterile shores that are as inhospitable and as absolutely deserted as the waters surrounding them.
the vision faded and i once more found myself in my grandmother's large room enveloped in the shadows of the evening. my grandmother was singing, and i was again a tiny being who had seen nothing of the large world, who had fears without knowing wherefore, and who did not even know the cause of the tears that he shed.
since then i have often observed that the rudimentary scrawls made by children, and which as representations are incorrect and inadequate, impress them much more than do the able and correct drawing of adults. for although theirs are incomplete they add to them a thousand things of their own seeing and imagining; and they add to them also the thousand things that grow in the deep subsoil of their consciousness—the things which no brush would be able to paint.
