Once upon a time there were two little boys who lived chiefly in the
front garden, because their villa was a model one. The front garden was
about the same size as the dinner table; it consisted of four strips of
gravel, a square of turf with some mysterious pieces of cork standing up
in the middle and one flower bed with a row of red daisies. One morning
while they were at play in these romantic grounds, a passing individual,
probably the milkman, leaned over the railing and engaged them in
philosophical conversation. The boys, whom we will call Paul and Peter,
were at least sharply interested in his remarks. For the milkman (who
was, I need say, a fairy) did his duty in that state of life by offering
them in the regulation manner anything that they chose to ask for. And
Paul closed with the offer with a business-like abruptness, explaining
that he had long wished to be a giant that he might stride across
continents and oceans and visit Niagara or the Himalayas in an afternoon
dinner stroll. The milkman producing a wand from his breast pocket,
waved it in a hurried and perfunctory manner; and in an instant the
model villa with its front garden was like a tiny doll’s house at Paul’s
colossal feet. He went striding away with his head above the clouds to
visit Niagara and the Himalayas. But when he came to the Himalayas,
he found they were quite small and silly-looking, like the little cork
rockery in the garden; and when he found Niagara it was no bigger than
the tap turned on in the bathroom. He wandered round the world for
several minutes trying to find something really large and finding
everything small, till in sheer boredom he lay down on four or five
prairies and fell asleep. Unfortunately his head was just outside the
hut of an intellectual backwoodsman who came out of it at that moment
with an axe in one hand and a book of Neo-Catholic Philosophy in the
other. The man looked at the book and then at the giant, and then at the
book again. And in the book it said, “It can be maintained that the evil
of pride consists in being out of proportion to the universe.” So the
backwoodsman put down his book, took his axe and, working eight hours a
day for about a week, cut the giant’s head off; and there was an end of
him.
Such is the severe yet salutary history of Paul. But Peter, oddly
enough, made exactly the opposite request; he said he had long wished to
be a pigmy about half an inch high; and of course he immediately became
one. When the transformation was over he found himself in the midst of
an immense plain, covered with a tall green jungle and above which, at
intervals, rose strange trees each with a head like the sun in symbolic
pictures, with gigantic rays of silver and a huge heart of gold. Toward
the middle of this prairie stood up a mountain of such romantic and
impossible shape, yet of such stony height and dominance, that it looked
like some incident of the end of the world. And far away on the faint
horizon he could see the line of another forest, taller and yet more
mystical, of a terrible crimson colour, like a forest on fire for ever.
He set out on his adventures across that coloured plain; and he has not
come to the end of it yet.
Such is the story of Peter and Paul, which contains all the highest
qualities of a modern fairy tale, including that of being wholly unfit
for children; and indeed the motive with which I have introduced it is
not childish, but rather full of subtlety and reaction. It is in fact
the almost desperate motive of excusing or palliating the pages that
follow. Peter and Paul are the two primary influences upon European
literature to-day; and I may be permitted to put my own preference in
its most favourable shape, even if I can only do it by what little girls
call telling a story.
I need scarcely say that I am the pigmy. The only excuse for the scraps
that follow is that they show what can be achieved with a commonplace
existence and the sacred spectacles of exaggeration. The other great
literary theory, that which is roughly represented in England by Mr.
Rudyard Kipling, is that we moderns are to regain the primal zest by
sprawling all over the world growing used to travel and geographical
variety, being at home everywhere, that is being at home nowhere. Let it
be granted that a man in a frock coat is a heartrending sight; and the
two alternative methods still remain. Mr. Kipling’s school advises us
to go to Central Africa in order to find a man without a frock coat. The
school to which I belong suggests that we should stare steadily at the
man until we see the man inside the frock coat. If we stare at him long
enough he may even be moved to take off his coat to us; and that is a
far greater compliment than his taking off his hat. In other words,
we may, by fixing our attention almost fiercely on the facts actually
before us, force them to turn into adventures; force them to give up
their meaning and fulfil their mysterious purpose. The purpose of the
Kipling literature is to show how many extraordinary things a man may
see if he is active and strides from continent to continent like the
giant in my tale. But the object of my school is to show how many
extraordinary things even a lazy and ordinary man may see if he can spur
himself to the single activity of seeing. For this purpose I have taken
the laziest person of my acquaintance, that is myself; and made an idle
diary of such odd things as I have fallen over by accident, in walking
in a very limited area at a very indolent pace. If anyone says that
these are very small affairs talked about in very big language, I can
only gracefully compliment him upon seeing the joke. If anyone says that
I am making mountains out of molehills, I confess with pride that it is
so. I can imagine no more successful and productive form of manufacture
than that of making mountains out of molehills. But I would add this not
unimportant fact, that molehills are mountains; one has only to become a
pigmy like Peter to discover that.
I have my doubts about all this real value in mountaineering, in getting
to the top of everything and overlooking everything. Satan was the
most celebrated of Alpine guides, when he took Jesus to the top of an
exceeding high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the earth.
But the joy of Satan in standing on a peak is not a joy in largeness,
but a joy in beholding smallness, in the fact that all men look like
insects at his feet. It is from the valley that things look large; it is
from the level that things look high; I am a child of the level and have
no need of that celebrated Alpine guide. I will lift up my eyes to the
hills, from whence cometh my help; but I will not lift up my carcass
to the hills, unless it is absolutely necessary. Everything is in an
attitude of mind; and at this moment I am in a comfortable attitude. I
will sit still and let the marvels and the adventures settle on me like
flies. There are plenty of them, I assure you. The world will never
starve for want of wonders; but only for want of wonder.