Chapter I: MET him first at Lord’s, the best place, perhaps, in all London for

making acquaintances and even friends. Even if he had not worn a light suit of clothes that drew the critical eye inevitably to his monstrous girth he would have been conspicuous as occupying with difficulty the space provided for two persons on an afternoon when seats were at a premium. But though I own to no prejudice against flesh in itself, it was not his notable presence that induced me to speak to him, but rather the appealing glances that he threw to right and left of him when he thought to have detected that fine wine of the game which, tasted socially, changes a cricket match to a rare and solemn festival. Such an invitation is one that no one for whom cricket is an inspiration can refuse, and it was natural that thereafter we should praise and criticise in wise and sympathetic chorus.

The acquaintance thus begun warmed to intimacy at the Oval and Canterbury, and I began to seek his easily recognisable figure on cricket-grounds with eagerness, to feel a pang of disappointment if he was not there. For though to his careless eye his great moonlike face might suggest no more than good-natured stupidity, I had soon discovered that this exuberance of form barely concealed a delicate and engaging personality, that within those vast galleries of flesh there roamed the timid spirit of a little child. I have said that to the uncritical his face might seem wanting in intelligence, but it was rather that the normal placidity of his features suggested a lack of emotional sensitiveness. Save with his eyes—and it needed experience to read their message—he had no means of expressing his minor emotions, no compromise between his wonted serenity and the monstrous phenomenon of his laughter, that induced a facial metamorphosis almost too startling to convey an impression of mirth. If normally his face might be compared with a deep, still pool, laughter may be said to have stirred it up with a stick, and the consequent ripples seemed to roll to the very extremities of his body, growing in force as they went, so that his hands and feet vibrated in humorous ecstasy.

Later, when, in one of his quaint interrogative moods, he showed me a photograph of himself as a child, I was able to give form to the charming spirit that Nature had burdened with this grievous load. I saw the picture of a strikingly handsome little boy, with dark, wide eyes and slightly parted lips that alike told of a noble sense of wonder. This, I felt, was the man I knew, whose connection with that monstrous shape of flesh had been so difficult to trace. Yet strangely I could recognise the features of the boy in the expansive areas of the man. In the light of the photograph he resembled one of those great cabbage-roses that a too lavish season has swollen beyond all flowerlike proportions, yet which are none the less undeniably roses. Others might find him clumsy, elephantine, colossal; thenceforward he was for me clearly boyish.

His voice varied more in tone and quality than that of any other man I have ever met, and over these variations he seemed to have little control; and this, too, made it very difficult for strangers to detect the trippings and hesitancies, gentle, wayward, and infinitely sensitive, of his childlike temperament. Within the limits of one simple utterance he would achieve sounds resembling the drumming of sudden rain on galvanised iron and the ecstatic whistlings of dew-drunk birds. It was sometimes difficult to follow the purport of his speech for sheer wonder at the sounds that slid and leaped and burst from his lips. His voice reminded me of a child strumming on some strange musical instrument of extraordinary range and capacity which it had not learned how to play. His laughter was ventriloquial and rarely bore any accountable relationship to the expressions of mirth of ordinary men. It was like an explosive rendering of one of those florid scales dear to piano-tuners, but sometimes it suggested rather an earthquake in his boots.

He dwelt in a little flat that seemed like the upper floor of a doll’s-house when related to its proprietor, and here it was his delight to dispense a hospitality charmingly individual. His meals recalled nothing so much as the illicit feasts held in school dormitories, and when he peered curiously into his own cupboards he always looked as if he were about to steal jam. He would produce viand after viand with the glee of a successful explorer, and in terms of his eager hospitality the most bizarre cates appeared congruous and even intimately connected, so that at his board grown men would eat like schoolboys, with the great careless appetite of youth.

He had a fine library and a still finer collection of mechanical toys, which were for him a passion and a delight. It was pleasant to see him set some painted piece of clockwork careering on the hearthrug, stooping over it tenderly, with wondering eyes, and hands intent to guard it from disaster. It was pleasant, too, to hear him recite Swinburne, of whom he was a passionate admirer; for, though his voice would be as rebellious as ever, his whole body would thrill and pulse with the music of the poet. He always touched books softly because he loved them. Of bonfires he spoke reverently, though a London flat hardly lent itself to their active exploitation; and I remember that he told me once that nothing gave him a keener sense of what he had lost in growing up than the scent of burning twigs and leaves. Yet if he felt this loss, what should it have been for us who had come so much farther than he!

Himself a child, he was beloved of children and treated by them as an equal; but I never knew another child who was so easily and continuously amused. The Hippodrome, the British Museum, the Tower of London, and the art of Messrs. Maskelyne and Devant alike raised in him the highest enthusiasm, which he expressed with charming but sometimes embarrassing freedom. Alone of all men, perhaps, he found the Royal Academy wholly satisfying, and it could be said of him truly that if he did not admire the picture he would always like the frame. He had a huge admiration for any one who did anything, and he liked riding in lifts.

Though he treated women with elaborate courtesy, their society made him self-conscious, and he, who could direct his body featly enough in a crowded street, was apt to be clumsy in drawing-rooms. Perhaps it was for this reason that they had apparently played no marked part in his life, and I may be wrong in attaching any special significance to a phrase he made one quiet evening in his flat. We had been speaking of the latest sensation in our group of mutual acquaintances, of the marriage of Phyllis, daintiest and most witty of cricket-lovers, to a man in whom the jealously critical eyes of her friends could perceive no charm; but the conversation had dwindled to silence when he said, “Surely his love can make any man lovely!”

Then, as if the subject were closed, he fell to speaking of his latest pocket-knife with boyish animation; but the phrase dwelt in my mind, though the image of the brave boy with wide eyes and lips parted in wonder was all that I ever knew of the man who made it.

CAROL SINGERS

When we were boys there was no part of the Christmas festivities to which we looked forward more eagerly than the singing of carols from house to house on Christmas Eve. If the night fell wild and rainy, we had to abandon our tuneful journey and content ourselves with singing indoors. But if it was a dry night, we set forth joyfully, even though a disquieted moon and inattentive stars foretold a wet Christmas. Our hearts were lighter than men’s hearts can be, as we clattered down the lanes, fortified by a hot supper and possibly a scalding tumblerful of mulled claret. We would always start at the houses of friends, and then, made bold by success, we would sing our glad tidings to any house which had a lit window. For the credit of human nature it may be said that we were made welcome wherever we went. Sometimes people offered us money, which our code forbade us to accept, though we should have liked it well enough; more frequently we were asked to come in and have something to eat or drink, offers with which even the infinite capacity of youth could by no means cope. If the night was frosty it was pleasant to toast ourselves for a minute or two in front of the fire before going out again into a world of frozen ruts, sparkling hedgerows, and mysterious shadows, wherein we felt ourselves veritable figures of romance.

And, indeed, we ourselves sang better than we knew. However cheerfully and noisily we might undertake the expedition, it was not long before we became aware that other spirits were abroad. The simple words and merry tunes which we sang suddenly became wonderfully significant. Between the verses we heard the sheep calling on far hills while the shepherd kings rode down to Bethlehem with their gifts. The trees and fields and houses took up the chant, and our noises were blended with that deep song of the Universe which the new ears of the young hear so often and so clearly. When our carol was over there would fall a great silence that seemed to our quickened senses to be but a gentler and sweeter music of hope and joy. As we passed from one house to the next we spoke to each other in whispers for fear we should break the spell that held the night enchanted. Even as we heard other noises when we sang, so now we heard the sound of other feet that trod the same glad road as our own. From being a half-dozen of little boys come out to have some fun on Christmas eve, we had become a small section of a great army. Tramp, tramp, the joyful feet fell before and behind us along the road, and when we stopped to sing, the whole night thrilled into a triumphant ecstasy of song. On such nights the very earth, it seemed, sang carols.

It is, perhaps, our vivid recollection of the glories of those memorable Christmas Eves that leads us to be gentle with the little boys and girls who sing at our door to-night. We have all listened to the eloquent persons who can prove that Christmas is not what it used to be. They point to the decadence of pantomime, the decay of the waits and mummers, and the democratic impudence of those who demand Christmas-boxes. Well, it may be—but children do like modern pantomimes in spite of the generalisations of critics; and though a Salvation Army band is an unpicturesque substitute for such a village orchestra as is described in “Under the Greenwood Tree,” it at least satisfies the ear of the sentimentalist at two o’clock of a frosty morning. That Christmas-boxes are a nuisance is no new discovery. We find Swift grumbling to Stella about them exactly two hundred years ago. Mummers, we are told, are still to be found in the country; five years back we saw them ourselves and were satisfied that they had learnt their rather obscure rhymes from their fathers before them, and not from any well-meaning society for faking old customs.

This said, it must be admitted that carol-singers are not what they were. Of the long procession of ragged children who have sung “While shepherds watched their flocks by night” at our gate this December, not one had taken the trouble to learn either the words or the tune accurately. When asked to sing some other carol they broke down, and it was apparent that they were trusting to their hungry and thinly clad appearance rather than to their singing as a means to obtain alms from the charitable. Sometimes—this we fear is really a modern note—the father was waiting in the background to collect the takings! It is rather difficult to know what to do in such cases, for the children may be punished if they are not successful; and yet the practice of sending insufficiently clad children into the streets on a winter’s night is hardly to be encouraged.

Nevertheless, though the abuse is manifest, we would hesitate to say that the custom of singing carols at our doors should be stopped. It is difficult to read the heart of a child aright, but it seems to us at least possible that a few of the children win more than a mere handful of pennies from their singing. Though they mumble their words to a tune they only half remember, it is not likely that the spirit that made wonderful the Christmas Eves of long ago shall altogether pass them by. Surely the night conspires with lights of the world to enchant them, and for their own ears their voices achieve beauty beyond the measure of mortal song.

In truth, this is a dream that we can ill afford to spare. It seems a pity, however, that the children are not taught carol-singing at school, especially as they are now often taught, to our great content, the old games and dances. Many of the older carols are really beautiful, both in the homely simplicity of their words and in the unaffected charm of the airs to which they are set. The desire of the average child for song is extraordinary—as extraordinary, perhaps, as the regrettable contempt of the average adult for poetry. Last year we were present at the dress rehearsal of the pantomime at Drury Lane, and we heard a theatreful of poor children sing the music-hall ditties of the hour with wonderful spirit and intensity. Our emotions were mixed. Mingled with the natural pleasure that they should be enjoying themselves was something of regret for the sad lives that so small a treat should rouse to ecstasy. Afterwards we felt sorry that the children had nothing better to sing. We have no prejudice against music-hall songs in general. They are not as intelligent as they might be, but they serve their time in pleasing, harmlessly enough, a number of people who also are not as intelligent as they might be. But somehow the lyres of little singing children deserve better fare than this. We look forward to a time when they will have it.

THE MAGIC CARPET

THERE were two rugs in the library, and for some time we used to dispute the vexed question of their relative merits. Æsthetically, there was something to be said for both of them. The rug that stood by the writing-desk from which father wrote to the newspapers was soft and furry; indeed, it was almost as pleasant a couch as the sofa with the soft cushions in the drawing-room, which was taboo. Moreover, it lent itself very readily to such fashionable winter sport as bear-hunting, providing as it did a trackless prairie, a dangerous marsh, or the quarry itself as the adventure required. The joys of the other rug were of a calmer kind, and were, perhaps, chiefly due to its advantageous position before the fire. It was pleasant to toast oneself on a winter evening and trace with idle fingers the agreeable deviations of its pattern. Sometimes it might be the ground plan of a make-up city, with forts and sweet-shops and palaces for our friends; sometimes it would be a maze, and we would pursue, with bated breath, the vaulted passages that led to the dread lair of the Minotaur. But such plots as these were of passive, rather than active, interest. Reviewing the argument dispassionately, Fenimore Cooper may have had a slight advantage over Nathaniel Hawthorne; bear-hunting may have been a little more popular than the dim excitements of Greek myth.

But while the discussion was at its height, there dawned in the East the sun that was to prove fatal to Perseus and the Deerslayer alike. I do not know from which of our uncles “The Arabian Nights” first came to an enraptured audience; but I am sure that an uncle must have been responsible for its coming, for as a gift it was avuncular in its splendour. We quickly realised that the world had changed, and took the necessary steps to welcome our new guest. The old lamp in the hall that had graced the illicit doings of pirates and smugglers in the past was thenceforward the property of Aladdin; a strange bottle that had been Crusoe’s served to confine the unfortunate genie; and with quickening pulses we discovered that in the fireside rug we possessed no less a treasure than the original magic carpet.

I must explain that we were not like those fortunate children of whom Miss Nesbit writes with such humorous charm. To us there fell no tremendous adventures; we might polish Aladdin’s lamp till it shone like the moon without gaining a single concrete acid-drop for our pains. But the “Arabian Nights” gave us all that we ever thought of seeking either in books or toys in those uncritical days—a starting-point for our dreams. And this, I take it, is the best thing that a writer can give a child, and it was for lack of this that we considered the works of Lewis Carroll silly, while finding one of the books of Miss Molesworth—I wish I could recall its name—a masterpiece of fancy and erudition.

So when the din of the schoolroom did not suit my mood, or the authorities were unduly didactic, I would slip away to the twilit library and guide the magic carpet through the delicate meadows of my dreams. The fire would blaze and crackle in the grate and fill my eyes with tears, so that it was easy to fancy myself in a sparkling world of sunshine. And from the shadows of the room little creatures would creep out to touch my glowing cheeks with cool, soft fingers, or to pluck timidly at the sleeve of my coat. I did not endeavour to give these shy companions of the dark any definite place in my universe. Their sympathetic reticence was reassuring in that room of great leaping shadows, and I was glad that they should keep me company in the blackness, a thing so terrible when I woke up at night in my bed. Sometimes, perhaps, I wondered how they could bear to live in the place where nightmare was; but for the rest I accepted their society gladly and without question. There was plenty of room on the carpet for such quiet fellows, and if they liked to accompany me on my travels I, at least, would not prevent them.

It did not occur to me at the time, as it certainly does now, that I should never again be so near to fairyland as I was then. I was inclined to be sceptical concerning the actual existence of the supernatural, though I recognised that a judicious acceptance of its theories set a new kingdom beneath one’s feet for play. And it is only now that I realise how wonderfully vivid my dreams were, with what zest of timid life the little shadow-folk thrilled and trembled round me. It is true that I remained conscious of my normal environment; the fire, the dark room, and the bookcases were all there, and even a kind of quiet sense of the World beyond the Door, the hall and the passages and my brothers and sisters at their quarrels. But it was as if these things had become merely an idea in my mind, while my feet were set on the pleasant roads of a new world. The thing that I had hoped became true; and the truth that I had been taught lingered in my mind only as a familiar story, a business of second-hand emotions, neither very desirable nor very interesting. The little folk gathered and whispered round me in the dark, and there was full day in the world that was my own.

It was hard to leave that world for this other place, which even now I cannot understand; but when some errant Olympian or righteously indignant brother had dragged me from my lair, I did not attempt to defend myself from the charge of moodiness. I had no words to tell them what they had done, and I could only stand blinking beneath the light of the gas in the hall, and endeavour to recall their wholly tiresome rules and regulations for the life of youth. Dimly I knew that my right place was before the fire in the library, and I wondered whether the little folk could use the Magic Carpet without me, or whether they stayed expectant in the shadows, like me, a little lonely, and a little chill. But in those days moodiness was only a lesser crime than sulkiness, and I had perforce to fold up my fancies and pass, an emotional bankrupt, into the unsympathetic world of the playroom. To-morrow, perhaps, the Magic Carpet might be mine again; meanwhile, I would exist.

Peter Pan has asked us a good many times whether we believe in fairies. It is, of course, a matter of faith, to be accepted or denied, but not to be discussed. For my part, I think of a little boy nodding on a rug before the fire on many a winter’s evening, and I clap my hands. Gratitude could do no less.

STAGE CHILDREN