Chapter I: AM willing to acknowledge that until lately, when I was privileged to (1)

entertain a cat under my roof for a fortnight, my knowledge of these noble beings was only academic. I had read what the poets have to say about them—Wordsworth and Swinburne, Cowper and Gray; I knew that “cat” was the only word in the English language that had a vocative, “puss”; I knew that Southey mourned that his kitten should ever attain to cathood, that the Egyptians were very fond of cats and that Lord Roberts is not. Then I had seen cats in the street, and admired the spirit with which a homeless cat with no visible means of subsistence would put shame into the heart of a well-fed terrier. Lying awake by night I had heard their barbaric song ringing like a challenge in the ears of civilisation, and had wondered whether some unknown Strauss might not revolutionise the music of the future by aid of their passionate harmonies. But I had never moved in their society, and therefore I would not understand them. In those days I should probably have thought that the recent message of the Postmaster-General to the Press, to the effect that cats of the old General Post Office had been found comfortable homes, was trivial. And I remember with shame that I watched the malevolent antics of the caricature of a cat that appears in the “Blue Bird” without indignation.

I do not propose to give the events of the fortnight in detail, but rather to summarise them for the benefit of others who, like myself, may be called upon unexpectedly to entertain a feline guest. The name of my visitor was Kim, though I am told that most cats are called William Pitt, after the statesman. He was a short-haired tabby cat, some eighteen months old, and a fine, large fellow for his age. While he was with me he usually wore a white waistcoat, and there was a white mark on his face, as if some milk had been spilled there when he was a kitten. His eyes were very large and of the colour of stage sunlight, and they haunted me from the moment when I raised the lid of the hamper in which he arrived. They were always significant and always inscrutable, but I could not help staring into them in the hope of discovering their meaning. I think he knew they fascinated me, for he would keep them wide open and full of secrets for hours at a time.

I had been informed that his name was Kim because he was the little friend of all the world, but at the first I found him reticent and of an independent disposition. I had always believed that cats purred when you stroked them, but when I stroked him he would endure it in silence for a minute and then retire to a corner of the room and make an elaborate and, under the circumstances, uncomplimentary toilet. In my inexperience I was afraid that he had taken a dislike to me, but one evening, after he had been with me three days, he climbed into my lap and went to sleep. My pipe was on the mantelpiece, and as Kim weighed over twelve pounds my legs grew very cramped; but I knew better than to disturb him, and he slept very comfortably till two in the morning. He repeated this compliment on several occasions, but when I lifted him into my lap he always got off immediately, and made me feel that I had been ill-treating him. His choice of sleeping-places was strange. If I was reading, he waited till I laid the book down on the table and then fell asleep on top of it. When I was writing and he had grown weary of turning his head from side to side to follow the birdlike flight of the pen to the ink-pot, he loved to settle himself down on the wet manuscript and blink drowsily at my embarrassment. Once when I ventured to lift him off he sulked under the table all the afternoon, and I did not repeat the experiment. He seemed to be a very sensitive cat.

Of course he was too old to play with me, but he had famous games by himself with corks and pieces of paper. Sooner or later he would drive these under one of the bookcases, and would sit down and mew plaintively until I went and raked them out for him. Then he would get up and walk away as if such toys were beneath his dignity. The one fault I found in his character was this constant emphasis of an inferiority that I was quite willing to confess. A generous cat would have realised that I was trying to do my best, and would have pardoned my hundred errors of judgment. Kim never wearied of putting me in my place, and turned a scornful tail to my heartfelt apologies. When he was dozing in the evening on the hearthrug he was very angry if any one put coals on the fire, even though he had been warned beforehand of what was about to happen. He would look at me with an air of noble reproach and stalk away to the window, where, perched on the back of a window-seat, he would stay for hours, patiently observant of the sounds and smells of the night.

But it was at mealtimes that he made me realise most the strength of his individuality. I had imagined that all cats were fond of milk, but Kim quickly disillusioned me, and it was as the result of a series of experiments that I discovered that he would only drink new milk raised to a certain temperature, and not then if he thought I was watching him. For the first twenty-four hours after he arrived he would eat nothing, though I tried to tempt him with chicken, sardines, and fillet of sole. Once or twice he gave a little plaintive mew, but for the most part he succeeded in giving me the impression of a brave heart enduring the pangs of a consuming hunger with noble fortitude. At the end of that period, when he had reduced me to despair, he relieved himself and me by stealing a haddock. After that the task of feeding him was comparatively easy. I would prepare him a dinner and pretend to eat it myself with great enjoyment; then I would leave the room as if I had suddenly remembered an appointment. When I returned the plate would be empty—that is, as empty as a cat’s dignity will allow him to leave a plate, and a few delicate impressions of Kim’s paws on the tablecloth would tell me that all was well. The irritating motive that underlay this graceless mannerism was clear to me. He would not be beholden to me for so much as a sardine, and he was willing to steal all his meals so long as he could remain independent. I think, too, that it amused him to undermine my moral character by making me deceitful.

Incidentally, a cookery-book for cats is badly needed. Unlike dogs, they are gourmets rather than gourmands, and their appetites seem to languish if they do not have a continual change of fare. They have subtle palates; Kim liked gorgonzola cheese and curried rabbit, but he would not eat chicken in any form. I found anchovy sauce very useful to make a meal savoury that Kim had not thought palatable enough to steal, and the wise host will hold this condiment in reserve for such occasions. There is no relying on their likes or dislikes; they will eat something with avidity one day and reject it with infinite distaste the next.

On the whole it was a busy fortnight, and it was not without a certain relief that I said farewell to my emotional guest and sent him back to his owner. Designedly, as I believe, he had succeeded in making me painfully self-conscious, so that I could not do anything without being led to feel that in some way I was sinning against the laws of hospitality. It was pleasant to realise that my life was once more my own, and that I was free from the critical inspection of those significant, inscrutable eyes. I have commented on the independence of his character; it would be unjust if I failed to mention the one exception. One night I was awakened by a soft paw, a paw innocent of all claws, patting me gently on the cheek, and in the dark I was aware of Kim sitting on my pillow. I supposed that he was lonely and put up my hand to stroke him. Then for once in a way the proudest of sentient beings was pleased to drop the mask of his pride and purr loudly and without restraint. In the morning he treated me with exaggerated coldness, but I was not cheated into believing that his friendliness had been a dream. There are possibilities about Kim; and I believe that if he were to stop with me for two years we should come to a very tolerable understanding.

ON PIRATES

OF the nameless classics which were of so much concern to all of us when we were young, the most important were certainly those salt and blusterous volumes that told of pirates. It was in vain for kindly relatives to give us books on Nelson and his like; for their craft, beautiful though they might be to the eye, had ever the moralities lurking between decks, and if we met them it was only that we might make their crews walk the plank, and add new stores of guns and treasure to the crimson vessel with the sinister flag which it was our pleasure to command.

And yet the books that gave us this splendid dominion, where are they now? In truth, I cannot say. Examination of recent boys’ books has convinced me that the old spirit is lacking, for if pirates are there, it is only as the hapless victims of horrible British crews with every virtue save that one which youth should cherish most, the revolutionary spirit. Who would be a midshipman when he might be a pirate? Yet all the books would have it so, and even Mr. Kenneth Grahame, who knows everything that is worth knowing, does not always take the right side in such matters. The grown-up books are equally unsatisfactory to the inquiring mind. “Treasure Island,” which is sometimes loosely referred to as if it were a horn-book for young pirates, hardly touches the main problems of pirate life at all. Stevenson’s consideration for “youth and the fond parient” made him leave out all oaths. No ships are taken, no lovely females captured, nobody walks the plank, and Captain John Silver, for all the maimed strength and masterfulness that Henley suggested to the author, falls lamentably short of what a pirate should be. Captain Teach, of the _Sarah_, in the “Master of Ballantrae,” is better, and there were the makings of a very good pirate captain in the master himself, but this section of the book is too short to supply our requirements. The book must be all pirates. Defoe’s “Captain Singleton” repents and is therefore disqualified, and Marryat’s “Pirate” is, as Stevenson said, “written in sand with a saltspoon.” Mr. Clark Russell, in one of his romances, ingeniously melts a pirate who has been frozen for a couple of centuries into life, but though he promises well at first, his is but a torpid ferocity, and ends, as it began, in words. Nor are the histories of the pirates more satisfying. Captain Johnson’s “History of Notorious Pirates” I have not seen, but any one who wishes to lose an illusion can read the trial of William Kidd and a few of his companions in the State trials of the year 1701. The captain of the _Adventure Galley_ appears to have done little to merit the name of pirate beyond killing his gunner with a bucket, and the miserable results of his pilferings bear no relationship to the enormous hoard associated with his name in “The Gold Bug” of Poe, though there is certainly a familiar note in finding included among his captives a number of barrels of sugar-candy, which were divided in shares among the crew, the captain himself having forty shares. The Turkish pirates mentioned in “Purchas” cut a very poor figure. You can read there how four English youths overcame a prize crew of thirteen men who had been put in the ship _Jacob_. In a storm they slew the pirate captain, for with the handle of a pump “they gave him such a palt on the pate as made his brains forsake the possession of his head.” They then killed three of the other pirates with “cuttleaxes,” and brought the ship safely into Spain, “where they sold the nine Turkes for galley-slaves for a good summe of money, and as I thinke, a great deale more than they were worth.” Not thus would the chronicles have described the pirates who fought and caroused with such splendid devotion in my youth. To die beneath the handle of a pump is an unworthy end for a pirate captain. The “History of the Buccaneers of America,” written by a brother of Fanny Burney, a book which was the subject of one of Mr. Andrew Lang’s appreciative essays, is nearer the mark, for among other notable fellows mentioned therein is one François L’Olonnois, who put to death the whole crew of a Spanish ship, ninety men, by beheading them, performing himself the office of executioner. One of the gentlemen in this book turned buccaneer in order to pay his debts, while it is told of another that he shot one of his crew in church for behaving irreverently during Mass. Sir Henry Morgan and Richard Sawkins performed some pretty feats of piracy, but their main energies were concerned in the sacking of towns, and the whole book suffers from an unaccountable prejudice which the author displays against the brave and hard-working villains of whom he writes.

In truth, these real pirates are disappointing men to meet. They are usually lacking in fierceness and in fidelity to the pirate ideals of courage and faithfulness to their comrades, while the fine nobility of character which was never absent from those other pirates is unknown in the historical kind. Few, if any, of them merit the old Portuguese punishment for pirates, which consisted in hanging them from the yards of their own ship, and setting the latter to drift with the winds and waves without rudder or sails, an example for rogues and a source of considerable danger to honest mariners.

If that were a fitting end for great knaves, the meaner ruffians must be content with the pump-handle and the bucket.

It is hard if our hearts may not go out to those gloomy vessels, with their cargoes of gold and courage and rum, that sail, it seems, the mental seas of youth no more. Were they really bad for us, those sanguinary tussles, those star-lit nights of dissipation? A pinafore would wipe away a deal of blood, and the rum, though we might drink it boiling like Quilp, in no wise lessened our interest in home-made cake. But these regrets are of yesterday, and to-day I must draw what consolation I may from the kindly comment of Mr. Lang: “Alluring as the pirate’s profession is, we must not forget that it had a seamy side, and was by no means all rum and pieces-of-eight. And there is something repulsive to a generous nature in roasting men because they will not show you where to steal hogs.”

THE FLUTE-PLAYER

HE used to play to me in the magic hour before bedtime, when, in the summer, the red sun threw long shadows across the lawn, and in winter the fire burned brighter and brighter in the hearth. This was the hour when all the interminable squabbles of the schoolroom were forgotten, and even the noisiest of us would hush his voice to listen drowsily to a fairy-tale, or to watch the palaces raise aloft their minarets, and crumble to dull red ash in the heart of the fire. It was then that I would see him sitting astride of the fireguard and puffing out his cheeks over his shining flute. Even in the most thrilling moments of fairy stories, when Cinderella lost her crystal slipper or Sister Ann saw the cloud of dust from the summit of Bluebeard’s tower, his shrill melodies would ring in my ears and quicken my sleepy senses with the desire to hear more of this enchanted music. I knew that it was real magic, but I did not find it strange, because as far as I knew I had heard it all my life. Perhaps he had played to me when I yet lay in my cradle, and watched the night-light winking on the nursery ceiling; but I did not try to remember whether this was so. I was content to accept my strange musician as a fact of my existence, and to feel a sense of loss on the rare evenings when he failed me. I did not know how to dance, but sometimes I would tap my feet on the floor in time to the music, till some one would tell me not to fidget. For no one else would either see him or hear him, which proved that it was real magic, and flattered my sense of possession. It was evident that he came for me alone.

The years passed, and in due course the imaginative graces of my childhood were destroyed by the boys of my own age at school. They compelled me to exchange a hundred star-roofed palaces, three distinct kingdoms of dreams, and my enchanted flute-player for a threadbare habit of mimicry that left me cold and unprotected from the winds in the large places of life. There was something at once pathetic and ridiculous in our childish efforts to imitate our elders, but as it seemed that our masters and grown-up relatives were in the conspiracy to make us materialistically wise before our time, a boy would have needed a rare force of character to linger with his childhood and refuse to ape the man. So, for a while, I saw my glad musician no more, though sometimes I thought I heard him playing far away, and the child within me was warmed and encouraged even while my new-found manhood was condemning the weakness. I knew now that no man worthy of the name was escorted through life by a fairy flute-player, and that dreamers and wool-gatherers invariably sank to be poets and musicians, persons who wear bowler-hats with frock-coats, have no crease in their trousers, and come to a bad end. Fortunately, all education that is repressive rather than stimulating is only skin-deep, and it was inevitable that sooner or later I should meet the flute-player again. One Saturday afternoon in high summer I avoided cricket and went for a long walk in the woods, moved by a spirit of revolt against all the traditions and conventions of boy-life; and presently, in a mossy clearing, all splashed and wetted by little pools of sunlight, I found him playing to an audience of two squirrels and a redstart. When he saw me he winked the eye that glittered over his parading fingers, as though he had left me only five minutes before, but I had not listened long before I realised that I must pay the price of my infidelity. It was the old music and the old magic, but try as I might I could not hear it so clearly as I had when I was a child. The continuity of my faith had been broken, and though he was willing to forgive, I myself could not forget those dark years of doubt and denial; and while I often met him in the days that followed, I never won back to the old childish intimacy. I sought his company eagerly and listened passionately to his piping, but I was conscious now that this was a strange thing, and sometimes when he saw by my eyes that I was moved by wonder rather than by the love of beauty, he would put his flute in his pocket and disappear. The world is an enchanted place only to the incurious and tranquil-minded.

Nevertheless, though like all boys I had been forced to discard my childish dreams before I had really finished with them, the lovely melodies of the flute-player served to enrich my latter years at school with much of the old enchantment. Often enough he would play to me at night during preparation, and I would spend my time in trying to set words to his tunes instead of doing my lessons. It was then that I regretted the lost years that had dulled my ear and prevented me from winning the inmost magic of his song, compared with which my verses seemed but the shadow of a shadow. Yet I saw that he was content with my efforts, and gradually made the discovery that while great achievement is granted to the fortunate, it is the fine effort that justifies a man to himself. What did it matter whether my songs were good or bad? They were the highest expression I could find for the rapture of beauty that had filled my heart as a child when I had been gifted to see life with clean and truthful eyes. For the songs the flute-player played to me were the great dreams of my childhood, the dreams that a wise man prolongs to the day of his death.

I do not hear him often now, for I have learnt my lesson, and though my hands tremble and my ear deceives me, I am by way of being a flute-player myself. This article, it is clear, is a child’s dream, and so have been, and will be, I hope, all the articles I shall ever write. What else should we write about? We have learnt a few long words since we grew up, and a few crimes, but no new virtues. That is why I like to get back to the nursery floor, and play with the old toys and think the old thoughts. We knew intuitively then a number of beautiful truths that circumstance appears to deny now, and we grown men are the poorer in consequence. It is folly to find life ugly when the flute lies within our reach and we can pipe ourselves back to the world of beauty with a song made of an old dream.

As for the flute-player, if I see him no more with wakeful eyes, I know that he is never very far away. Likely enough one of these wintry evenings, in the hour before bedtime, when the fire burns brighter and brighter in the hearth, I shall look up and see him sitting astride of the fireguard and puffing out his cheeks over his shining flute. Not many nights ago I heard some one playing the flute out in the street, and I went down and found a poor fellow blowing his heart out for rare _sous_. There was not much enchantment about him—he had been dismissed from a music-hall orchestra for drinking red wine to excess—but he was a real flute-player, and I could well imagine that such a man might be driven to intemperance by the failure to achieve those “unheard melodies” not to be detected by the sensual ear. To be a bad flute-player must be rather like being a bad poet, a joyous but sadly finite life. He was a sad dog, this earthly musician, and he frankly conceived the ideal state as a kind of communal Bodega where thirsty souls could find peace in satiety. I gave him fivepence to help him on his way, and left him to make doleful music in the night till he had enough money to supply his crimson dreams. But he ought not to have said that my flute-player was only an amateur.

THE WOOL-GATHERER

WHEN he walked down the streets with his head drooping towards the pavement and his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his overcoat the grown-ups would say, “There goes poor Mr. X. wool-gathering as usual”; and we children used to wonder what he did with all the wool and where he found it to gather. Perhaps he collected it from the thorn-bushes whereon the sheep had scratched themselves, or perhaps, being a magician, he had found a way to shear the flocks that we often saw in the sky on fine and windy days. At all events, for a while his strange calling made us regard him with interest as a man capable of doing dark and mysterious things. Then the grown-ups tried to dispel our illusions by explaining that they only meant that he was absent-minded, a dreamer, an awful warning to young folk who had their way to make in the world. This admirable moral lesson, like most of their moral lessons, failed because they did not appreciate the subtlety of our minds. We saw that the wool-gatherer did no recognisable work, wore comfortably untidy clothes, walked in the mud as much as he wanted to, and, in fine, lived a life of enviable freedom; and we thought that on the whole when we grew up we should like to be wool-gatherers too. Even the phrase “absent-minded” excited our admiration; for we knew that it would be a fine thing if our thoughts could travel in foreign countries, where there are parrots and monkeys loose in the woods, while our bodies were imprisoned in the schoolroom under the unsympathetic supervision of the governess of the moment. Although we no longer credited him with being a magician, the tardy explanations of the grown-ups had, if anything, increased his glamour. It seemed to us that he must be very wise.

He lived in an old house a little way out of the town, and the house stood in a garden after our own heart. We knew by the shocked comments of our elders that it had formerly been cut and trimmed like all the other gardens with which we were acquainted, but it was now a perfect wilderness, a delightful place. My brother and I got up early one morning when the dew was on the world and explored it thoroughly. `We found a goat in an outhouse and could see the marks in the meadow that had once been a lawn, where he was tethered during the day. The wool-gatherer was evidently in the habit of sitting under a tree that stood at one corner, for the earth was pitted with the holes that had been made by the legs of his chair. Being a wise man, we thought it probable that he conversed with his goat and could understand the answers of that pensive animal, who wagged his beard at us when we peeped shyly into his den. In the long grass by the tree we found a book bound like a school prize lying quite wet with the dew. It was full of cabalistic signs, and we took care to leave it where we found it lest it should be black magic, though now I would support the theory that Mr. X. read his Homer in the original. Taking it altogether, it was the most sensible garden we had ever seen, with plenty of old fruit-trees, but with none of those silly flower-beds that incommode the careless feet of youth. Our expedition enhanced our opinion of the wool-gatherer’s wisdom.

Here at least was a grown-up person who knew how to live in a decent fashion, and when he ambled by us in the market-place, his muddy boots tripping on the cobbles, and the pockets of his green-grey overcoat pulled down by the weight of his hands, our eyes paid him respectful tribute. He really served a useful purpose in our universe, for he showed us that it was possible to grow old without going hopelessly to the bad. Sometimes, considering the sad lives of our elders who did of their own free will all the disagreeable things that we were made to do by force, we had been smitten with the fear that in the course of years we, too, would be afflicted with this melancholy disease. The wool-gatherer restored our confidence in ourselves. If he could be grown-up without troubling to be tidy or energetic, why, then, so could we! It amused us to feel that our affronted rulers were itching to give him a good talking to and to send him off to brush his clothes and his boots; but he was beyond the reach of authority, this splendid man. And one of these days we thought that we, too, would enjoy this delightful condition of freedom, for, like many grown men and women, we did not realise that liberty is a state of mind and not an environment.

We had never seen the inside of his house, but we could imagine what it was like. No doubt he kept his servants in proper order and did not allow them to tidy up, so that his things lay all over the room where he could find them when he wanted them. He had a friendly cat, with whom we were acquainted, so that he would not lack company, and probably on wet days when he could not go out into the garden he had the goat in to play with him. He went to bed when he liked and got up when he liked, and had cake for every meal instead of common bread. A man like that would be quite capable of having a sweetshop in one of the rooms, with a real pair of scales, so that he could help himself whenever he wanted to. Whenever our own lives grew a little dull we played at being the wool-gatherer, but although he occupied such a large part of our thoughts we never dared to speak to him, because we were afraid of his extraordinary wisdom. This was not our normal reason for avoiding the society of grown-up people.

When one day a funeral passed us in the street, and we were told that it was the wool-gatherer’s, we shook our heads sceptically. The coffin was quite new and shiny, and all the horses had their hoofs neatly blacked, and we thought we knew our man better than that. But as day followed day and we met him no more our doubts were overcome, and we knew that he was dead. After a while his will was published in the local newspaper, and the grown-ups were greatly impressed, because it seemed that he had been very rich and had left all his money to hospitals. Secretly we patronised them for their tardy discovery of our man’s worth; it had not needed any newspaper to tell us that he was remarkable. But when some new people took his house and cut down all the bushes and tidied up the garden we were really hurt, and began to realise what we had lost. Where should we play now these hot nights of summer when the hours passed so slowly and we could not sleep? They had made his beautiful wilderness as dull as our own, and our dreams must find a new playground. We never heard what happened to the goat.

Now that I am myself grown-up, though children occasionally flatter me by treating me as an equal, I revert sometimes to our earliest thoughts and wonder what the wool-gatherer did with all his wool. Perhaps he wove it into blankets for the poor dreamless ones of the world. They are many, for it is not so easy to be absent-minded as people think; in the first place, it is necessary to have a mind. It is wrong also to believe that wool-gatherers fill no useful place in life. I have shown how Mr. X., lost in his world of dreams, was yet of real service to us as children, and in the same way I think that we who live the hurried life derive genuine satisfaction from the spectacle of the dreamers sauntering by. If they serve no other purpose, they are at least milestones by aid of which we can estimate our own speed, and if no one were idle we would win no credit from our marvellous energy. Also they are happy, and the philosopher will always hesitate to condemn the way of life of a man who succeeds in that task. Perhaps we should all be better off gathering wool!

THE PERIL OF THE FAIRIES

IT is something to have heard once in a lifetime the ecstatic thrill that glorifies Essex Hall while that intellectual pirate Mr. Bernard Shaw sails out and scuttles a number of little merchant ships of thought that have never hurt anybody. The applause and admiring laughter that punctuate his periods really suggest that Fabianism makes people happy, while the continued prosperity of the group gives the lie to the cynic who reminded me how popular ping-pong was while the craze lasted, and how utterly forgotten it is to-day. But I had to rub my eyes while I stood in the overcrowded room, listening to Puck in Jaeger, more witty, perhaps, than the old Puck, but no less boyishly malicious, and ask myself whether, after all, this was only the old magic in a new form. True, civilisation had perforce made him larger in order that human beings might appreciate his eloquence, and I saw no traces of wings or magic flowers. But beyond that I recognised the same pitying contempt for mortals, the same arrogant confession of his own faults, the same naïve cunning. And then (perhaps a turn of the voice did it, or some slight slurring of the words) the enchantment passed, the ears of his audience resumed their ordinary dimensions, and I offered mentally two teaspoonfuls of honey to the real Puck, for I saw that he had tricked me into recognising his qualities in the most serious man the twentieth century knows.

Yet, though I found Mr. Shaw to be only a prophet and his fellow-Fabians honest enthusiasts instead of bewitched weavers, I cannot say that the discovery left my mind at ease for the welfare of the fairy kingdom that is so important to every one who has not forgotten it. What if this terrible seriousness were to spread? What if every one were to turn prophet? What if a night should come when never a child in all the Duke of York’s Theatre would clap its hands to keep Tinker Bell alive? At first I wished to reject this frightful end of all our play and laughter and wonder as impossible. Yet sinister stories of children who preferred sewing-machines and working models to dolls and tin soldiers rose in my mind, and it is hardly more than a step from that degree of progress to the case of the child who may find the science of sanitation more interesting than tales of fairies. The possibility should make even the extremists shudder, but it must be remembered that many honest people believe in technical education, and that for that matter practically the whole of the teaching in our schools takes the form of an attack on the stronghold of the imaginative child. It is our barbarous custom to supplant a child’s really beautiful theories with the ugly crudities which we call facts, and it is impossible to realise how much humanity loses in the process. As for the fairies, frail little folk at best, how shall they prevail against the criticism of our sulphur and the cunning of our permanganate of potash? Shall we always be able to distinguish them from microbes?

It may be well to pause here and see whither the wise, serious men of to-day are taking us. I suppose they will abolish Will-o’-the-Wisp by draining all the marshes, and their extreme industry will render Puck’s kindly household labours ludicrously unnecessary. They will turn their swords against all the bad barons, unjust kings, and spiteful magicians, whose punishment has been hitherto the fairies’ special task; and this they will do in blackleg fashion, neither demanding nor receiving their just wages of beauty and immortality. They will scornfully set aside the law, so dear to the younger inhabitants of nurseries, by which it is always the youngest son or the youngest daughter whom the gods delight to honour. They will fill with porridge and deck with flannel underclothing the little flower-girls and crossing-sweepers, whose triumphs set faith in the eyes of babes. With their hard, cruel facts they will completely wreck the fairy civilisation which has taken centuries of dreaming and wondering children to construct. They will brush our fancies away like cobwebs.

A while ago, when I was a little boy, some enemy seeing me admire the stars thought it necessary to tell me exactly what they were; later, my natural interest in the extraordinary behaviour of the sea led another enemy to place a globe in my hands, and prick the bubble of the universe with ridiculous explanations. So it is that when I regard the heavens I see enormous balls of rotting chemicals, rendered contemptibly small by distance, floating in a thin fluid called space; so it is that when I look at the sea my mind is occupied with stupid problems about the route of floating bamboos, when I ought to be exalted as one who peers out through the darkness towards the Unknown. Where there were two then, there are to-day twenty kindly persons about every child, eager to prove the things it would like to believe in superstitions, and eager to explain away its miracles in terms of dustcarts and vegetable soup. Our babies are taught to hang out their stockings and to batter in their empty egg-shells, but are reminded at the same moment that these charming rituals are but follies, and that the capital of Scotland is Edinburgh. Youngsters babble Imperialism and Socialism when they ought to be standing on their heads to look at the Antipodes, and their parents commend their common sense. Already, I fear, the wings of many of the fairies are beginning to fade, and Puck capers but mournfully in his lonely haunts.

But fairies, goblins, elves, call them what you will, they are worth having, and that is why I would entreat the wise men who are arranging to-morrow for us to spare them, even though they have forgotten themselves all that the presence of fairies in the world is worth. By all means feed the children and give them Union Jacks, but let their faith in the beautiful be looked to as well. And, finally, to the serious person who says with raised eyebrows, “You can’t honestly say you believe in fairies!” I would answer this: In a world which at present is fiercely antagonistic to the belief in any emotion less material than hunger, it is impossible to avoid occasional doubt concerning the existence of anything which it is not possible to eat. But when I am in the company of those who really do believe I do not fail to hear the echoes of fairy laughter in their speech, and see the flicker of fairy wings reflected in their eyes, and with this knowledge I am content.

DRURY LANE AND THE CHILDREN

WE have noticed that in writing about pantomimes the critics of our contemporaries usually make two rather serious mistakes. The first is the assumption that pantomime is really intended for the amusement of children, and the second (which to a certain extent is implicit in the first) is the conclusion that most pantomimes are unsatisfactory because they fail to provide the children with suitable fare. A glance at any pantomime audience should dispel the first illusion. Even at matinées the children are in the minority, while at night the disproportion is quite startling. To us it seems that the real purpose of modern pantomime is to give conscientious objectors to music-halls an opportunity of witnessing a music-hall entertainment without shame. It follows that, even if the second criticism were just, it would not be very important; but though we agree that the average pantomime is far removed from the ideal entertainment for children, it is at all events quite harmless, and contains a number of elements that children like. They appreciate the colour of the pageant, the papier-mâché treasures, the gilt moons and ultramarine sunsets, the jewelled and gilt scenery; they like the funny clothes and red noses and boisterous horseplay of the low comedians; they like the “little girls” in short skirts, in whom the sophisticated recognise the tired ladies of the ballet; they like, in fact, nearly all the things which writers with sentimental views on children think it necessary to condemn. As a general rule they do not care for the love-making or the singing; after a long experience of pantomimes we are prepared to say that they are right, though our reasons are not perhaps theirs. The singing in pantomimes is nearly always extremely bad, and the fact that the principal boy is always the principal girl makes the love-scenes ridiculous. The wonder is that in an entertainment that must at all costs be made attractive to adults there should be so much that gives genuine pleasure to young people.

From the days of our youth we have always had a kindness for Drury Lane Theatre, and, above all, for Drury Lane pantomime. The theatre has an individual atmosphere, the pantomime is not like the pantomime one sees anywhere else. In order to appreciate the size of the place it is necessary to put on a very small pair of knickerbockers and gaze upwards from the stalls between the chocolates and the ices. It is like looking into the deeps of heaven, though here the gods suck oranges and make cat-calls—those fascinating sounds that our youthful lips would never achieve. Drury Lane is the only theatre that preserves the old glamour. We never enter its doors without thinking of Charles Lamb, and it would hardly astonish us if Mistress Nell Gwynn came to greet us with her basket of China oranges, wearing that famous pair of thick worsted stockings that the little link-boy gave her to save her pretty feet from the chilblains. Outside, the image of Shakespeare leans on its pedestal, sadly contemplative of the grey roofs of Covent Garden. The porters who carry about bunches of bananas unconsciously reproduce the pictures of Mr. Frank Brangwyn. If Shakespeare ever slips down from his perch to watch a scene or two of the pantomime from the shadows of the auditorium, he must wonder a little at our twentieth-century masques. Like the children, he would probably appreciate the splendid colour and brightness of the spectacle, and, having been an actor himself, he would perhaps pardon the actors’ cheerful neglect of the rights of the dramatist. For modern pantomime is a business of strongly contrasted individualities rather than the product of blended and related effort. This is especially true of Drury Lane, whose stage at this season of the year is always crowded with vaudeville Napoleons and musical-comedy Cleopatras. In detail the pantomime is excellent; as an artistic entity it does not exist.

At first sight this seems rather a pity. Given a wonderfully appointed stage, gorgeous mounting, a fine orchestra, and a number of gifted performers, it is natural to expect that the result should be more than the mere sum of these units. But, as a matter of fact, pantomime is essentially formless. Those critics who clamour for straightforward versions of the old nursery stories would be vastly disappointed if they got what they wanted. The old stories are well enough when told by firelight in the nursery after tea of a winter’s evening. But they lack humour, and are not, as a rule, dramatic. (“Bluebeard,” of course, is a striking exception.) When a story lasting twenty minutes must be expanded to last four hours the story is bound to suffer. When, in addition, all the characters are played by performers whose strength lies in their individuality, it will be surprising if any part of the illusion created by the original fable survives at all.

CHILDREN’S DRAMA

AT a season of the year when children invade both the stage and the auditorium of many theatres in unwonted numbers it would be at least topical to speculate as to the philosophy of pantomime and the artistic merits and defects of child actors and actresses. But while juvenile mimicry of adult conceptions of drama is entertaining enough, it is more to our purpose to consider the dramatic spirit as it is actually present in children themselves. Pantomimes certainly do not reflect this spirit, and, in spite of the sentimental, but hardly more childish influence of fairy-plays, are still aimed exclusively at adult audiences who grant themselves no other opportunity of appreciating the humours of the music-halls. Probably the ideal children’s play would have the colour of pantomime, the atmosphere of “Peter Pan,” the poetry of the “Blue Bird,” and, most important of all, a downright melodramatic plot. It is this last that is invariably lacking in entertainments nominally provided for children; it is the first consideration in the entertainments they provide for themselves.

If grown-up people were in the habit, which unfortunately they are not, of meeting together in moments of relaxation and acting little extemporary plays, these plays would surely give a first-hand indication of the dramatic situations that interested them. Yet this is what children are always doing, and in terms of play every little boy is a dashing and manly actor and every little girl a beautiful and accomplished actress. From the first glad hour when little brother cries to little sister, “You be Red Riding Hood, and I’ll be the wolf and eat you!” the dramatic aspect of life is never absent from the mind of imaginative youth.

In one respect, at all events, these play-dramas of children should meet with the approval of modern dramatic critics. No one can accuse them of losing sight of the motive of their drama in elaboration of scenery or stage effects. A chair will serve for a beleaguered castle, a pirate ship, or Cinderella’s coach in turn, and the costumes imitate this Elizabethan simplicity. Nevertheless, it cannot be said that their stage is entirely free from the tyranny of those pernicious conventions that place obstacles in the way of art. The law of primogeniture, always rigidly enforced in nurseries, as Mr. Kenneth Grahame has observed, makes the eldest brother as much of a nuisance as the actor-manager. According to his nature, and the character of the play, he always insists on being either hero or villain, and in the absence of limelight contrives to give himself an exaggerated share both of the action and of the dialogue. Sisters are placid creatures and do not very much mind whether they have anything to do or not as long as they can all be princesses; but it is hard on a younger brother to be compelled to walk the plank, although he has the heart of a pirate chief. And the fact that whatever part he may play the eldest brother must triumph at the end of the last act tends to stereotype the lines along which the drama develops.

As for the plays themselves, it must be owned that they cover an extraordinary extent of ground, and display a variety that no other repertory theatre can hope to equal. The present writer has seen five children in one afternoon give spirited performances of Aladdin, David and Goliath, an unnamed drama of pirates, and the famous comedy of teacher and naughty pupils. This last is the standard performance of Elementary School girls all over London, and to the discerning critic displays just those faults of sophistication and over-elaboration to which long runs at our theatres have made us accustomed. The teacher is always too monotonously ill-tempered, the pupils are ill-behaved beyond all discretion; Ibsen, one feels, would have expressed this eternal warfare between youth and authority in subtler terms. Sometimes, however, London children achieve a really startling realism in their games; and the looker-on may derive a considerable knowledge of the mothers from watching the children perform in some such drama of life as the ever-popular “Shopping on Saturday Night.” It may be noted here that children’s rhapsodies over dolls and kittens, or, indeed, over anything, are always clever pieces of character-acting. Naturally, children do not rhapsodise, but they soon learn the secret of the art from observation of their elders.

But though in large towns the poorer children may not have escaped the spirit of the age, so that their art hardly raises them from the grey levels of their lives, children in general are eager to find the artistic symbol for their dreams, and allow realism but an accidental share in the expression of their romantic ideals. They do not seek the materials for their dramas in the little comedies and tragedies of nursery or schoolroom life; they prefer to forget that ordinary everyday happenings have ever wooed them to tributary laughters or tears, and fulfil their destiny as pirates or highwaymen, fairies or forlorn princesses.

Probably the nearest approach to children’s drama that we have on the modern stage is the so-called cloak-and-sword drama. Children’s plays are full of action; speeches are short and emphatic, and attempts at character-acting are desultory and provocative of laughter in the other members of the company. The fights are always carried out with spirit and enthusiasm. To have seen Captain Shark, that incarnadined pirate, wiping his sword on his pinafore is to have realised that beauty of violence for which Mr. Chesterton pleads so eloquently in the “Napoleon of Notting Hill.”

Bearing in mind the nature of the dramas that children play to please themselves, it should be possible to lay down certain rules as to the composition of plays for their entertainment. Working by light of Stevenson’s lantern, Mr. Barrie has done good work in “Peter Pan,” but he has made tremendous mistakes. The scene on the pirate ship is perfect, a model of what such a scene should be, with plenty of fighting and no burdensome excess of talk. But in a play that is essentially a boys’ play Wendy is a mistake. There was no Wendy on Stevenson’s island of treasure, and her continual intrusion into the story would not be tolerated in any nursery. In real life she would either have had to discard her sex and become a member of the band, or else have adopted the honorary rôle of princess and stayed tactfully in the background. The Pirate Chief is very good—so good, in fact, that it looks very like an eldest brother’s part, in which case he would have beaten Peter and made him walk the plank. The end, though pleasing to adult minds, is impossible from a childish point of view. The boys would never have left their fun of their own free will. The gong ought to have sounded for tea, or perhaps Mr. Darling could have returned from the City with some mysterious parcels for the children to open. That is how things really happen. To our mind, as we have said above, the greatest fault a play for children can have is the lack of a straightforward plot that allows of plenty of stirring and adventurous action. Children love stories, whether they be make-up stories of their own or real stories told them by some one else. The hero of the play should be the biggest boy acting it; the female characters should have no greater share of the action than the most rudimentary sense of politeness would allow them, but they may sit in the background, mute but beautiful princesses, as much as they like, and they are permitted to comment on the courage of the hero when occasion offers. Successful scenes should be repeated three or four times till their possibilities had been exhausted. Every now and then, if realism is desired, nurse or governess should look through the door and say, “Children, don’t be rough,” to which the whole company must reply, “We’re only playing!” Once at least in the course of the play one of the smaller members of the company should be smitten into tears, to be comforted by the princesses. The actors should quarrel freely among themselves and throw up their parts every half-hour, but, on the whole, they should all enjoy themselves enormously.

Such an entertainment, we admit, would be intolerable to the sentimental adult; but the criticisms of the children in the audience would be worth hearing.

CHILDHOOD IN RETROSPECT

“In age to wish for youth is full as vain,
As for a youth to turn a child again.”

_Denham_.

IT is to be supposed that there are few men and women who do not occasionally look back on the days of their childhood with regret. The responsibilities of age are sometimes so pressing, its duties so irksome, that the most contented mind must travel back with envy to a period when responsibilities were not, and duties were merely the simple rules of a pleasing game, the due keeping of which was sure to entail proportionate reward.