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Mrs Blackshaw had a baby. It would be an exaggeration to say that
the baby interested the entire town, Bursley being an ancient,
blase sort of borough of some thirty thousand inhabitants. Babies,
in fact, arrived in Bursley at the rate of more than a thousand
every year. Nevertheless, a few weeks after the advent of Mrs
Blackshaw's baby, when the medical officer of health reported to
the Town Council that the births for the month amounted to ninety-
five, and that the birth-rate of Bursley compared favourably with
the birth-rates of the sister towns, Hanbridge, Knype, Longshaw,
and Turnhill--when the medical officer read these memorable words
at the monthly meeting of the Council, and the Staffordshire
Signal reported them, and Mrs Blackshaw perused them, a blush of
pride spread over Mrs Blackshaw's face, and she picked up the
baby's left foot and gave it a little peck of a kiss. She could
not help feeling that the real solid foundation of that formidable
and magnificent output of babies was her baby. She could not help
feeling that she had done something for the town--had caught the
public eye.
As for the baby, except that it was decidedly superior to the
average infant in external appearance and pleasantness of
disposition, it was, in all essential characteristics, a typical
baby--that is to say, it was purely sensuous and it lived the
life of the senses. It was utterly selfish. It never thought of
anyone but itself. It honestly imagined itself to be the centre of
the created universe. It was convinced that the rest of the
universe had been brought into existence solely for the
convenience and pleasure of it--the baby. When it wanted anything
it made no secret of the fact, and it was always utterly
unscrupulous in trying to get what it wanted. If it could have
obtained the moon it would have upset all the astronomers of
Europe and made Whitaker's Almanack unsalable without a pang. It
had no god but its stomach. It never bothered its head about
higher things. It was a bully and a coward, and it treated women
as beings of a lower order than men. In a word, it was that ideal
creature, sung of the poets, from which we gradually sink and fall
away as we grow older.
At the age of six months it had quite a lot of hair, and a
charming rosy expanse at the back of its neck, caused through
lying on its back in contemplation of its own importance. It
didn't know the date of the Battle of Hastings, but it knew with
the certainty of absolute knowledge that it was master of the
house, and that the activity of the house revolved round it.
Now, the baby loved its bath. In any case its bath would have been
an affair of immense and intricate pomp; but the fact that it
loved its bath raised the interest and significance of the bath to
the nth power. The bath took place at five o'clock in the evening,
and it is not too much to say that the idea of the bath was
immanent in the very atmosphere of the house. When you have an
appointment with the dentist at five o'clock in the afternoon the
idea of the appointment is immanent in your mind from the first
moment of your awakening. Conceive that an appointment with the
dentist implies heavenly joy instead of infernal pain, and you
will have a notion of the daily state of Mrs Blackshaw and Emmie
(the nurse) with regard to the baby's bath.
Even at ten in the morning Emmie would be keeping an eye on the
kitchen fire, lest the cook might let it out. And shortly after
noon Mrs Blackshaw would be keeping an eye on the thermometer in
the bedroom where the bath occurred. From four o'clock onwards the
clocks in the house were spied on and overlooked like suspected
persons; but they were used to that, because the baby had his
sterilized milk every two hours. I have at length allowed you to
penetrate the secret of his sex.
And so at five o'clock precisely the august and exciting ceremony
began in the best bedroom. A bright fire was burning (the month
being December), and the carefully-shaded electric lights were
also burning. A large bath-towel was spread in a convenient place
on the floor, and on the towel were two chairs facing each other,
and a table. On one chair was the bath, and on the other was Mrs
Blackshaw with her sleeves rolled up, and on Mrs Blackshaw was
another towel, and on that towel was Roger (the baby). On the
table were zinc ointment, vaseline, scentless eau de Cologne,
Castile soap, and a powder-puff.
Emmie having pretty nearly filled the bath with a combination of
hot and cold waters, dropped the floating thermometer into it, and
then added more waters until the thermometer indicated the precise
temperature proper for a baby's bath. But you are not to imagine
that Mrs Blackshaw trusted a mere thermometer. No. She put her arm
in the water up to the elbow. She reckoned the sensitive skin near
the elbow was worth forty thermometers.
Emmie was chiefly an audience. Mrs Blackshaw had engaged her as a
nurse, but she could have taught a nigger-boy to do all that she
allowed the nurse to do. During the bath Mrs Blackshaw and Emmie
hated and scorned each other, despite their joy. Emmie was twice
Mrs Blackshaw's age, besides being twice her weight, and she knew
twice as much about babies as Mrs Blackshaw did. However, Mrs
Blackshaw had the terrific advantage of being the mother of that
particular infant, and she could always end an argument when she
chose, and in her own favour. It was unjust, and Emmie felt it to
be unjust; but this is not a world of justice.
Roger, though not at all precocious, was perfectly aware of the
carefully-concealed hostility between his mother and his nurse,
and often, with his usual unscrupulousness, he used it for his own
ends. He was sitting upon his mother's knees toying with the edge
of the bath, already tasting its delights in advance. Mrs
Blackshaw undressed the upper half of him, and then she laid him
on the flat of his back and undressed the lower half of him, but
keeping some wisp of a garment round his equatorial regions. And
then she washed his face with a sponge and the Castile soap, very
gently, but not half gently enough for Emmie, nor half gently
enough for Roger, for Roger looked upon this part of the business
as insulting and superfluous. He breathed hard and kicked his feet
nearly off.
'Yes, it's dreadful having our face washed, isn't it?' said Mrs
Blackshaw, with her sleeves up, and her hair by this time down.
'We don't like it, do we? Yes, yes.'
Emmie grunted, without a sound, and yet Mrs Blackshaw heard her,
and finished that face quickly and turned to the hands.
'Potato-gardens every day,' she said. 'Evzy day-day. Enough of
that, Colonel!' (For, after all, she had plenty of spirit.) 'Fat
little creases! Fat little creases! There! He likes that! There!
Feet! Feet! Feet and legs! Then our back. And then WHUP we shall
go into the bath! That's it. Kick! Kick your mother!'
And she turned him over.
'Incredible bungler!' said the eyes of the nurse. 'Can't she turn
him over neater than that?'
'Harridan!' said the eyes of Mrs Blackshaw. 'I wouldn't let you
bath him for twenty thousand pounds!'
Roger continued to breathe hard, as if his mother were a horse and
he were rubbing her down.
'Now! Zoop! Whup!' cried his mother, and having deprived him of
his final rag, she picked him up and sat him in the bath, and he
was divinely happy, and so were the women. He appeared a gross
little animal in the bath, all the tints of his flesh shimmering
under the electric light. His chest was superb, but the rolled and
creased bigness of his inordinate stomach was simply appalling,
not to mention his great thighs and calves. The truth was, he had
grown so that if he had been only a little bit bigger, he would
have burst the bath. He resembled an old man who had been steadily
eating too much for about forty years.
His two womenfolk now candidly and openly worshipped him,
forgetting sectarian differences.
And he splashed. Oh! he splashed. You see, he had learnt how to
splash, and he had certainly got an inkling that to splash was
wicked and messy. So he splashed--in his mother's face, in Emmie's
face, in the fire. He pretty well splashed the fire out. Ten
minutes before, the bedroom had been tidy, a thing of beauty. It
was now naught but a wild welter of towels, socks, binders--
peninsulas of clothes nearly surrounded by water.
Finally his mother seized him again, and, rearing his little legs
up out of the water, immersed the whole of his inflated torso
beneath the surface.
'Hallo!' she exclaimed. 'Did the water run over his mouf? Did it?'
'Angels and ministers of grace defend us! How clumsy she is!'
commented the eyes of Emmie.
'There! I fink that's about long enough for this kind of wevver,'
said the mother.
'I should think it was! There's almost a crust of ice on the water
now!' the nurse refrained from saying.
And Roger, full of regrets, was wrenched out of the bath. He had
ceased breathing hard while in the water, but he began again
immediately he emerged.
'We don't like our face wiped, do we?' said his mother on his
behalf. 'We want to go back into that bath. We like it. It's more
fun than anything that happens all day long! Eh? That old
dandruff's coming up in fine style. It's a-peeling off like
anything.'
And all the while she wiped him, patted eau de Cologne into him
with the flat of her hand, and rubbed zinc ointment into him, and
massaged him, and powdered him, and turned him over and over and
over, till he was thoroughly well basted and cooked. And he kept
on breathing hard.
Then he sneezed, amid general horror!
'I told you so!' the nurse didn't say, and she rushed to the bed
where all the idol's beautiful, clean, aired things were lying
safe from splashings, and handed a flannel shirt, about two inches
in length, to Mrs Blackshaw. And Mrs Blackshaw rolled the left
sleeve of it into a wad and stuck it over his arm, and his poor
little vaccination marks were hidden from view till next morning.
Roger protested.
'We don't like clothes, do we?' said his mother. 'We want to
tumble back into our tub. We aren't much for clothes anyway. We'se
a little Hottentot, aren't we?'
And she gradually covered him with one garment or another until
there was nothing left of him but his head and his hands and feet.
And she sat him up on her knees, so as to fasten his things
behind. And then it might have been observed that he was no longer
breathing hard, but giving vent to a sound between a laugh and a
cry, while sucking his thumb and gazing round the room.
'That's our little affected cry that we start for our milk, isn't
it?' his mother explained to him.
And he agreed that it was.
And before Emmie could fly across the room for the bottle, all
ready and waiting, his mouth, in the shape of a perfect rectangle,
had monopolized five-sixths of his face, and he was scarlet and
bellowing with impatience.
He took the bottle like a tiger his prey, and seized his mother's
hand that held the bottle, and he furiously pumped the milk into
that insatiable gulf of a stomach. But he found time to gaze about
the room too. A tear stood in each roving eye, caused by the
effort of feeding.
'Yes, that's it,' said his mother. 'Now look round and see what's
happening. Curiosity! Well, if you WILL bob your head, I can't
help it.'
'Of course you can!' the nurse didn't say.
Then he put his finger into his mouth side by side with the
bottle, and gagged himself, and choked, and gave a terrible--
excuse the word--hiccough. After which he seemed to lose interest
in the milk, and the pumping operations slackened and then ceased.
'Goosey!' whispered his mother, 'getting seepy? Is the sandman
throwing sand in your eyes? Old Sandman at it? Sh--' ... He had
gone.
Emmie took him. The women spoke in whispers. And Mrs Blackshaw,
after a day spent in being a mother, reconstituted herself a wife,
and began to beautify herself for her husband.
Read next: PART II - BABY'S BATH: CHAPTER II
Read previous: PART I - The Lion's Share: CHAPTER V
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