Study Edition · Essay 68
Under the Early Stars
Source: From The Children (1897); reprinted in Essays (1914). Text from Essays, Project Gutenberg #1434. Complete. Archaic verb forms modernized; vocabulary kept and glossed.
Alice Meynell was a poet, journalist, campaigner for women's suffrage and the mother of eight children. Her essays are short, precise and full of surprising observations. This one watches children at dusk: the sudden wildness that comes over them at bedtime, their “blow for liberty,” and the ancient rituals of falling asleep. Notice her compressed, almost epigram-like sentences, her ear for children's speech (“new maid”), and her idea that every child's bedtime habits are as old as human history.
38 sentences: 18 simple, 18 moderate, 2 complex. Hover a number for its paraphrase; click it for the full note.
Key Vocabulary
- randomchosen without plan or pattern
- froliclively, playful fun
- potteringdoing small, unhurried tasks
- industrieshere, busy occupations
- punctualhappening exactly on time
- predatoryhunting other animals for food
- impa small mischievous spirit
- ambusha surprise attack from hiding
- mimicryimitation
- impotentpowerless
- jaunta short pleasure trip
- beguileto pass time pleasantly
- immemorialolder than anyone can remember
- incalculabletoo great to be measured
- thraldomslavery; being in someone's power
- sequesteredsecluded; hidden away
- subjectionbeing under another's control
The Essay
Play is not for every hour of the day, or for any hour taken at random.1 There is a tide in the affairs of children.2 Civilization is cruel in sending them to bed at the most stimulating time of dusk.3 Summer dusk, especially, is the frolic moment for children, baffle them how you may.4 They may have been in a pottering mood all day, intent upon all kinds of close industries, breathing hard over choppings and poundings.5 But when late twilight comes, there comes also the punctual wildness.6 The children will run and pursue, and laugh for the mere movement; it does so jolt their spirits.7
What remembrances does this imply of the hunt, what of the predatory dark?8 The kitten grows alert at the same hour, and hunts for moths and crickets in the grass.9 It comes like an imp, leaping on all fours.10 The children lie in ambush and fall upon one another in the mimicry of hunting.11
The sudden outbreak of action is complained of as a defiance and a rebellion.12 Their entertainers are tired, and the children are to go home.13 But, with more or less of life and fire, the children strike some blow for liberty.14 It may be the impotent revolt of the ineffectual child, or the stroke of the conqueror; but something, something is done for freedom under the early stars.15
This is not the only time when the energy of children is in conflict with the weariness of men.16 But it is less tolerable that the energy of men should be at odds with the weariness of children, which happens at some time of their jaunts together, especially, alas! in the jaunts of the poor.17
Of games for the summer dusk when it rains, cards are most beloved by children.18 Three tiny girls were to be taught “old maid” to beguile the time.19 One of them, a nut-brown child of five, was persuading another to play.20 “Oh come,” she said, “and play with me at new maid.”21
The time of falling asleep is a child's immemorial and incalculable hour.22 It is full of traditions, and beset by antique habits.23 The habit of prehistoric races has been cited as the only explanation of the fixity of some customs in mankind.24 But if the inquirers who appeal to that beginning remembered better their own infancy, they would seek no further.25 See the habits in falling to sleep which have children in their thralldom.26 Try to overcome them in any child, and his own conviction of their high antiquity weakens your hand.27
Childhood is antiquity, and with the sense of time and the sense of mystery is connected for ever the hearing of a lullaby.28 The French sleep-song is the most romantic.29 There is in it such a sound of history as must inspire any imaginative child, falling to sleep, with a sense of the incalculable; and the songs themselves are old.30 “Le Bon Roi Dagobert” has been sung over French cradles since the legend was fresh.31 The nurse knows nothing more sleepy than the tune and the verse that she herself slept to when a child.32 The gaiety of the thirteenth century, in “Le Pont d'Avignon,” is put mysteriously to sleep, away in the tête-à-tête of child and nurse, in a thousand little sequestered rooms at night.33 “Malbrook” would be comparatively modern, were not all things that are sung to a drowsing child as distant as the day of Abraham.34
If English children are not rocked to many such aged lullabies, some of them are put to sleep to strange cradle-songs.35 The affectionate races that are brought into subjection sing the primitive lullaby to the white child.36 Asiatic voices and African persuade him to sleep in the tropical night.37 His closing eyes are filled with alien images.38
Sentence Notes
In plain English: Play doesn't belong to every hour of the day, or to any hour picked at random.
In plain English: Children's lives have their own tides.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Shakespeare's grand line about statesmen applied, playfully, to children.
Reference & context: Adapts Brutus in Julius Caesar IV.iii.218: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, / Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.”
In plain English: Civilized life is cruel to send them to bed at the most exciting time of evening.
In plain English: Summer dusk especially is children's moment for wild play, however much you try to stop them.
In plain English: They may have spent the whole day in a quiet, busy mood, absorbed in all sorts of fiddly tasks, breathing hard over their chopping and pounding.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: “Breathing hard over choppings and poundings” captures a small child's intense concentration.
In plain English: But when late twilight arrives, so does the wildness, right on time.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: “Punctual” and “wildness” are opposites, joined to show that the wildness is as regular as a clock.
In plain English: The children run and chase each other and laugh just because they are moving; it shakes their spirits up so.
In plain English: What memories of hunting does this suggest, what memories of the dark as a time for predators?
Reference & context: Meynell hints that children's dusk excitement may be an inherited instinct from humanity's hunting past, an idea popular after Darwin.
In plain English: The kitten becomes alert at the same time and hunts moths and crickets in the grass.
In plain English: It comes bounding on all four legs like a little imp.
In plain English: The children hide in ambush and pounce on each other, pretending to hunt.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Kitten and child side by side: the same instinct in both.
In plain English: Adults complain that this sudden burst of activity is disobedience and rebellion.
In plain English: The grown-ups looking after them are tired, and it's time for the children to go home.
In plain English: But with more or less energy and spirit, the children strike a blow for freedom.
In plain English: It may be the useless rebellion of a child who can't win, or a winner's decisive blow; but something, something, is done for freedom under the first stars of evening.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The essay's title appears in a phrase that makes bedtime resistance sound like a heroic uprising.
In plain English: This isn't the only time children's energy clashes with adults' tiredness.
In plain English: But it's harder to bear when adults' energy clashes with children's tiredness, which happens at some point on their outings together, especially, sadly, on the outings of the poor.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A sudden turn from comedy to compassion, by reversing the phrase.
Reference & context: She may be thinking of poor families who could afford only long walks or crowded day trips, dragging exhausted children home.
In plain English: Of all the games for a rainy summer evening, children love cards best.
In plain English: Three little girls were going to be taught “Old Maid” to pass the time.
Reference & context: Old Maid is a simple card game in which the loser is left holding the unmatched “old maid” card.
In plain English: One of them, a suntanned five-year-old, was coaxing another to play.
In plain English: “Oh, come on,” she said, “and play ‘New Maid’ with me.”
Why this phrase is worth keeping: The child's charming mistake: being young, she naturally turns “old” into “new.”
In plain English: The time of falling asleep is a child's age-old, mysterious hour.
In plain English: It's full of traditions and surrounded by ancient habits.
In plain English: Scholars have said that the habits of prehistoric peoples are the only explanation for why some human customs never change.
Reference & context: Victorian anthropologists such as E. B. Tylor explained odd modern customs as “survivals” from prehistoric times.
In plain English: But if those researchers remembered their own early childhood better, they wouldn't need to look so far back.
In plain English: Look at the bedtime habits that hold children completely in their grip.
In plain English: Try to break them in any child, and his firm belief that they are ancient and sacred defeats you.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A small child's bedtime ritual, only a year or two old, feels to him as old as the world.
In plain English: Childhood is the ancient past, and hearing a lullaby is linked forever with our sense of time and of mystery.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: Three words carry the central idea: a child's few years feel like all of history.
In plain English: French lullabies are the most romantic.
In plain English: They have such a sound of history that they must fill any imaginative child, drifting off to sleep, with a sense of something immeasurable; and the songs really are old.
In plain English: “Good King Dagobert” has been sung over French cradles since the legend was new.
Reference & context: A comic song about the seventh-century Frankish king Dagobert I, who put his trousers on inside out. The song itself dates from the 1700s.
In plain English: The nursemaid knows nothing more sleep-inducing than the tune and words she fell asleep to as a child.
In plain English: The merriment of the thirteenth century, in “Sur le Pont d'Avignon,” is mysteriously lulled to sleep in the private moment between child and nurse, in a thousand little hidden rooms at night.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A dance song becomes a lullaby: the century's gaiety is itself put to sleep.
Reference & context: The famous bridge at Avignon was built in the late 1100s; the dancing song is much later. Tête-à-tête (French): a private conversation between two people.
In plain English: “Malbrough” would be fairly modern, except that everything sung to a sleepy child feels as far away as the days of Abraham.
Reference & context: “Malbrough s'en va-t-en guerre” mocks the Duke of Marlborough (early 1700s); its tune is the same as “For He's a Jolly Good Fellow.” Abraham is the Bible's ancient patriarch.
In plain English: English children may not be rocked to many lullabies that old, but some are put to sleep with strange cradle songs.
In plain English: Peoples conquered by the British Empire, described here as affectionate, sing their traditional lullabies to white children.
Reference & context: She means Indian ayahs and African nursemaids who cared for British children in the colonies. The words “races” and “primitive” reflect imperial attitudes of the 1890s.
In plain English: Asian and African voices coax him to sleep in the tropical night.
In plain English: As his eyes close, they fill with foreign images.
Why this phrase is worth keeping: A quiet, haunting last line: the child of the empire falls asleep inside another culture's dreams.
Fun Fact
Alice Meynell was suggested for Poet Laureate after Tennyson died in 1892, and again in 1913, which would have made her the first woman to hold the post. That honour finally went to Carol Ann Duffy in 2009, more than a century later.