The Child Persona in Taxis and Toadstools

In some of the poems of Taxis and Toadstools, Rachel Field speaks as an adult to children; in a few, she speaks through the persona of a small boy; but in the majority, she seems to be speaking through the persona of a young girl. An examination of the poems reveals some interesting facets of Miss Field's young female persona.

Nearly all the poems have either rural or urban settings (hence the title), and the young girl shows herself to be a city-bred child. For example, in "Taking Root," she wonders if she sat the summer through and never moved or stirred, "Could I take root on this pasture slope/ With the bay and juniper?" Though it is a question that either a city or country child might ask, it is one that a country child probably would not have to ask. In "Wood-Strawberries," the child picks strawberries "till my hands were red," and "It seemed there was nothing to do at all/ But fill my hands and eat." As every country-reared child knows, strawberries are for sharing with the family in strawberry ice-cream or in strawberry short-cake and for preserving in jelly and jam for the winter to come. In "Vegetables," after offering some fresh descriptions of a few vegetables, the child asks a question that no country child would have to ask:

But when potatoes all have eyes,Why is it they should bePut in the ground and covered up—Where it's too dark to see?

Taxis and Toadstools is divided into ten sections, and in the seventh, "Fringes of Fairyland," the persona, like many children, shows a bright imagination. In "The Visitor," she prepares "bread and a sup of tea" for "an elfin gentleman," who is "Feather-footed and swift as a mouse. . . ." In "The Elf Tree," a poem reflecting some of the folklore about fairies, the persona knocks her "knuckles three times three," just in case it should be the one "tree in all that wood . . . where the elves and fairies hide. . . ." In one of the longest poems, "The Green Fiddler," the child imagines meeting a fairy and giving him "Four bright gold hairs" for his fiddle. The resulting music is so entrancing that "Stock still I stood in the shadowed wood,/ Lest I should miss one note."

Nearly all children are disarmingly egocentric, and Rachel Field's is no exception. In "The Peabody Bird," the young girl asks the bird why it keeps calling for someone named "Peabody" when no one answers. Finally, she asks, "Couldn't you look for someone else?/And wouldn't I do instead?" The best example, however, of the child's egocentric nature is in "I'd Like to Be a Lighthouse," where she wants to be one so that she can

stay awake all nightTo keep my eye on everythingThat sails my patch of sea;I'd like to be a lighthouseWith the ships all watching me.

One of the most appealing qualities of the persona is her sympathy. "Skyscrapers" shows her sympathizing with tall buildings, wondering if they "ever grow tired/Of holding themselves up high?" of if they "ever shiver on frosty nights" or if "they feel lonely . . . Because they have grown so tall?" She feels sorry for the little ceramic dog in "The China Dog" because he can never bark, tease for cake, or wag his tail; and if it were left to her, he'd be a real, live dog, barking, nipping her fingers, licking her hair, and "every single night he'd be/Snuggled up warm in bed with me!"

Another remarkable trait of the child is that she is nearly always cheerful. Rain to most of us can be somewhat depressing, but not to this child, who loves to "see it fall," making "Streets of shiny wetness" and "rumbling [a] tune that sings/Through everything I do." There's hardly anything that will depress her ebullient spirit. Even when she comes across a tombstone in "The Lamb," marking the grave of "'Jonathan Preble, agéd three,'" she does not...