"A Girl Writing," Henriette Browne (1829-1901)
I chanced upon this painting of a girl writing at her desk and yet momentarily distracted by a little bird, and it took me back in time to the first little story that I wrote and typed and bound into a little booklet.
I was about nine years old, spending the summer with my grandmother. She gave me some typing paper and let me use an old typewriter. I cut the paper into sheets to make a smallish book, about 5 x 7 inches. I labored over the first page, starting half-way down with my title and the words "Chapter One" carefully centered.
And then I tried my best to write the rest of the first page so that the sentences were justified on both the left and the right, because that was the way it was in real books. I puzzled and puzzled and puzzled over how to do this. I could only manage it by counting how many letters and spaces could go on a line, and then trying to write words that would somehow make sense and also add up to this magic number. It meant having to change many, many words. For example, I might change "red" to "blue" if I needed just one more letter on that particular line.
Luckily, there was only room for a very short paragraph on this first page, for I had to give up the effort to justify my story after that, although I worried over that right-hand raggedy edge (so unprofessional!) for days (or maybe just a few minutes).
This little story is long lost, but I remember the title: "Katy's Quest." And I remember choosing the name "Katy" for my heroine because it was the closest I could get to "Kari" without actually using my own name. The story was a little mystery, but I have no recollection of the plot.
And I am struck just this very moment at how my title was such a precursor to my whole life, for I have been ever since on "Kari's quest" to find whatever it is that I am always and forever looking for.
Henriette Browne's painting not only takes me back in time, it is also a metaphor for my whole life, for like the little writer in the painting, I have been forever torn between my writing and my fascination with looking at the world around me.
And the more I look into this painting, the more I want to explore that moment in childhood when we latch onto something that makes us feel that this is what our life is all about. When did each of us begin to be who we are?
I suppose we have many beginnings. One of my beginnings is this little mystery that I wrote when I was nine. Before this moment I loved reading stories; after this moment I loved writing stories.
This past week I went searching for other young girls caught in the beginning.
"Sewing," William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905)
Here is a young girl caught in a moment of sewing a piece of antique-golden cloth. I love her bare feet, and the way in which this painter seems to have surprised her at her work. In a second, she will pierce the cloth with her needle and draw the thread through, just so.
"Knitting Girl," Albert Anker (1831-1910)
This little girl is so involved in her knitting that she does not seem to know her portrait is being painted at all. You can almost see her counting the stitches. And I love how she seems to be playing those knitting needles as if they were a musical instrument!
Self-portrait of Caterina van Hemessen, (1528-1587)
According to Wikipedia, Caterina "is often given the distinction of creating the first self-portrait of an artist, of either gender, depicted seated at an easel."
I love it that this painting dates all the way back to the 1500s, a young girl at an easel at a time when women simply did not become painters or musicians or writers, except in some limited way of being exposed just enough to culture to make a nice showing of the feminine arts in the drawing room before company.
And to think of how little is known about Caterina van Hemessen! I never heard of her before I found this painting when I went looking for "girls painting in art."
"In the Secret Garden," Gustave Doyen (1837 - ?)
Those of us who grew up with The Secret Garden will not forget that moment when Mary finds a little sharp piece of wood and begins to dig in the earth to clear a space around the tiny green plants trying to come up through the weeds and grass.
"Now they look as if they could breathe," she said.
Postcard, Elizaveta Merkuryevna Bem (1843-1914)
And here is a little teacher-storyteller enchanting her captive audience with her tales and perhaps her magic potions. I did not play with my dolls very much, but I had friends who had whole classrooms and theaters of dolls, with lessons and dramas that unfolded day by day.
"Alone in the World,"
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825–1905)
There were a number of paintings of young musicians, but I chose this one partly because of the title: "Seule au Monde" or "Alone in the World." All of my young girls were chosen, in fact, for that quality of aloneness that each painting seemed to evoke, for I think that it is often when we are absolutely alone that we have the chance to find out who we are.
Like the little writer in the top painting, this girl seems to be torn between her violin and something in the world that we cannot see, something that the faraway look in her eyes is dwelling upon.
Does each person have to choose between what we most want to do and the world-at-large? Is it always that way, I wonder? Or, instead of choosing, do we always find ourselves stealing time for one away from time for the other?
"Beggar," Ilya Yefimovich Repin (1844–1930)
And then I stumbled upon this sweet little "beggar" or "fisher girl," and she quite broke my heart. A child, or anyone, in these kinds of rags always gives us pause.
These are the frayed rags of poverty, and even though art and poetry can make these rags beautiful, in reality they tell us the story of a fragile life being lived too far on the edge.
I have had this very child walk into my classroom, and while I know only too well how much better our schools need to be, I am also very proud to know that, in almost every single public school in our country, on her first day of class this child will be given all that is in our power to give her: a free lunch, writing paper, textbooks, and a little supply box in which she will find a pencil, a box of crayons, a pair of scissors, a bottle of glue. She will be assigned to a social worker, a nurse will check her over, and there will be new clothes for her, too. In fact, she will be clothed in new things before she walks into the classroom.
She is my reason for wanting our public schools to be the very best in the world, for in her, but for the grace of God, we might find ourselves.
Sometimes our beginning is in that moment when someone sees us in our time of greatest need and reaches out to us.
Oh, I will have to come back to this little girl again, but for now, I put her here, as if she were a vow, to bear witness to the importance of the turning points in our lives, for turning points can make the difference between being lost and being saved.
"A Little Princess," Written by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Illustrated by Ethel Franklin Betts
Which brings me full circle back to A Little Princess. I wrote about "All the Little Princesses" here. My post about Sara in the attic might be my letter to the world, or one of them, at any rate (I seem to have too much to say).
I think that I myself am forever at this attic window, imagining the world, and maybe not quite living in it yet. I love this painting of Sara imagining her life against all odds.
And so, dear reader, this long, meandering post is all to say that I would love to know if there was a time in your childhood, or later on, when you wrote a poem or painted a picture or planted a seed or took something apart to see how it worked or baked a cake or sewed or knitted or hammered or chiseled or burst into song or knelt down in prayer, and said to yourself that this is what your life was going to be all about.
Please do tell me about it in a comment, if you should feel that you could.
In the beginning . . .
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