It is frightfully difficult to know much about the fairies, and almost
the only thing known for certain is that there are fairies wherever
there are children. Long ago children were forbidden the Gardens, and
at that time there was not a fairy in the place; then the children were
admitted, and the fairies came trooping in that very evening. They can't
resist following the children, but you seldom see them, partly because
they live in the daytime behind the railings, where you are not allowed
to go, and also partly because they are so cunning. They are not a bit
cunning after Lock-out, but until Lock-out, my word!
When you were a bird you knew the fairies pretty well, and you remember
a good deal about them in your babyhood, which it is a great pity you
can't write down, for gradually you forget, and I have heard of children
who declared that they had never once seen a fairy. Very likely if they
said this in the Kensington Gardens, they were standing looking at a
fairy all the time. The reason they were cheated was that she pretended
to be something else. This is one of their best tricks. They usually
pretend to be flowers, because the court sits in the Fairies' Basin,
and there are so many flowers there, and all along the Baby Walk, that
a flower is the thing least likely to attract attention. They dress
exactly like flowers, and change with the seasons, putting on white when
lilies are in and blue for blue-bells, and so on. They like crocus and
hyacinth time best of all, as they are partial to a bit of colour, but
tulips (except white ones, which are the fairy-cradles) they consider
garish, and they sometimes put off dressing like tulips for days, so
that the beginning of the tulip weeks is almost the best time to catch
them.
When they think you are not looking they skip along pretty lively, but
if you look and they fear there is no time to hide, they stand quite
still, pretending to be flowers. Then, after you have passed without
knowing that they were fairies, they rush home and tell their mothers
they have had such an adventure. The Fairy Basin, you remember, is all
covered with ground-ivy (from which they make their castor-oil), with
flowers growing in it here and there. Most of them really are flowers,
but some of them are fairies. You never can be sure of them, but a good
plan is to walk by looking the other way, and then turn round sharply.
Another good plan, which David and I sometimes follow, is to stare them
down. After a long time they can't help winking, and then you know for
certain that they are fairies.
There are also numbers of them along the Baby Walk, which is a
famous gentle place, as spots frequented by fairies are called. Once
twenty-four of them had an extraordinary adventure. They were a girls'
school out for a walk with the governess, and all wearing hyacinth
gowns, when she suddenly put her finger to her mouth, and then they
all stood still on an empty bed and pretended to be hyacinths.
Unfortunately, what the governess had heard was two gardeners coming to
plant new flowers in that very bed. They were wheeling a handcart with
the flowers in it, and were quite surprised to find the bed occupied.
“Pity to lift them hyacinths,” said the one man. “Duke's orders,”
replied the other, and, having emptied the cart, they dug up the
boarding-school and put the poor, terrified things in it in five rows.
Of course, neither the governess nor the girls dare let on that they
were fairies, so they were carted far away to a potting-shed, out of
which they escaped in the night without their shoes, but there was a
great row about it among the parents, and the school was ruined.
As for their houses, it is no use looking for them, because they are
the exact opposite of our houses. You can see our houses by day but you
can't see them by dark. Well, you can see their houses by dark, but you
can't see them by day, for they are the colour of night, and I never
heard of anyone yet who could see night in the daytime. This does not
mean that they are black, for night has its colours just as day has,
but ever so much brighter. Their blues and reds and greens are like ours
with a light behind them. The palace is entirely built of many-coloured
glasses, and is quite the loveliest of all royal residences, but the
queen sometimes complains because the common people will peep in to see
what she is doing. They are very inquisitive folk, and press quite hard
against the glass, and that is why their noses are mostly snubby. The
streets are miles long and very twisty, and have paths on each side made
of bright worsted. The birds used to steal the worsted for their nests,
but a policeman has been appointed to hold on at the other end.
One of the great differences between the fairies and us is that they
never do anything useful. When the first baby laughed for the first
time, his laugh broke into a million pieces, and they all went skipping
about. That was the beginning of fairies. They look tremendously busy,
you know, as if they had not a moment to spare, but if you were to ask
them what they are doing, they could not tell you in the least. They are
frightfully ignorant, and everything they do is make-believe. They have
a postman, but he never calls except at Christmas with his little box,
and though they have beautiful schools, nothing is taught in them; the
youngest child being chief person is always elected mistress, and when
she has called the roll, they all go out for a walk and never come back.
It is a very noticeable thing that, in fairy families, the youngest
is always chief person, and usually becomes a prince or princess; and
children remember this, and think it must be so among humans also, and
that is why they are often made uneasy when they come upon their mother
furtively putting new frills on the basinette.
You have probably observed that your baby-sister wants to do all sorts
of things that your mother and her nurse want her not to do: to stand up
at sitting-down time, and to sit down at standing-up time, for instance,
or to wake up when she should fall asleep, or to crawl on the floor when
she is wearing her best frock, and so on, and perhaps you put this down
to naughtiness. But it is not; it simply means that she is doing as
she has seen the fairies do; she begins by following their ways, and
it takes about two years to get her into the human ways. Her fits of
passion, which are awful to behold, and are usually called teething,
are no such thing; they are her natural exasperation, because we don't
understand her, though she is talking an intelligible language. She is
talking fairy. The reason mothers and nurses know what her remarks mean,
before other people know, as that “Guch” means “Give it to me at once,”
while “Wa” is “Why do you wear such a funny hat?” is because, mixing so
much with babies, they have picked up a little of the fairy language.
Of late David has been thinking back hard about the fairy tongue, with
his hands clutching his temples, and he has remembered a number of their
phrases which I shall tell you some day if I don't forget. He had heard
them in the days when he was a thrush, and though I suggested to him
that perhaps it is really bird language he is remembering, he says not,
for these phrases are about fun and adventures, and the birds talked of
nothing but nest-building. He distinctly remembers that the birds used
to go from spot to spot like ladies at shop-windows, looking at the
different nests and saying, “Not my colour, my dear,” and “How would
that do with a soft lining?” and “But will it wear?” and “What hideous
trimming!” and so on.
The fairies are exquisite dancers, and that is why one of the first
things the baby does is to sign to you to dance to him and then to cry
when you do it. They hold their great balls in the open air, in what
is called a fairy-ring. For weeks afterward you can see the ring on the
grass. It is not there when they begin, but they make it by waltzing
round and round. Sometimes you will find mushrooms inside the ring, and
these are fairy chairs that the servants have forgotten to clear away.
The chairs and the rings are the only tell-tale marks these little
people leave behind them, and they would remove even these were they not
so fond of dancing that they toe it till the very moment of the opening
of the gates. David and I once found a fairy-ring quite warm.
But there is also a way of finding out about the ball before it takes
place. You know the boards which tell at what time the Gardens are to
close to-day. Well, these tricky fairies sometimes slyly change the
board on a ball night, so that it says the Gardens are to close at
six-thirty for instance, instead of at seven. This enables them to get
begun half an hour earlier.
If on such a night we could remain behind in the Gardens, as the famous
Maimie Mannering did, we might see delicious sights, hundreds of
lovely fairies hastening to the ball, the married ones wearing their
wedding-rings round their waists, the gentlemen, all in uniform, holding
up the ladies' trains, and linkmen running in front carrying winter
cherries, which are the fairy-lanterns, the cloakroom where they put
on their silver slippers and get a ticket for their wraps, the flowers
streaming up from the Baby Walk to look on, and always welcome because
they can lend a pin, the supper-table, with Queen Mab at the head of it,
and behind her chair the Lord Chamberlain, who carries a dandelion on
which he blows when Her Majesty wants to know the time.
The table-cloth varies according to the seasons, and in May it is made
of chestnut-blossom. The ways the fairy-servants do is this: The men,
scores of them, climb up the trees and shake the branches, and the
blossom falls like snow. Then the lady servants sweep it together by
whisking their skirts until it is exactly like a table-cloth, and that
is how they get their table-cloth.
They have real glasses and real wine of three kinds, namely, blackthorn
wine, berberris wine, and cowslip wine, and the Queen pours out, but the
bottles are so heavy that she just pretends to pour out. There is bread
and butter to begin with, of the size of a threepenny bit; and cakes to
end with, and they are so small that they have no crumbs. The fairies
sit round on mushrooms, and at first they are very well-behaved and
always cough off the table, and so on, but after a bit they are not so
well-behaved and stick their fingers into the butter, which is got
from the roots of old trees, and the really horrid ones crawl over the
table-cloth chasing sugar or other delicacies with their tongues. When
the Queen sees them doing this she signs to the servants to wash up and
put away, and then everybody adjourns to the dance, the Queen walking in
front while the Lord Chamberlain walks behind her, carrying two little
pots, one of which contains the juice of wall-flower and the other the
juice of Solomon's Seals. Wall-flower juice is good for reviving dancers
who fall to the ground in a fit, and Solomon's Seals juice is for
bruises. They bruise very easily and when Peter plays faster and faster
they foot it till they fall down in fits. For, as you know without my
telling you, Peter Pan is the fairies' orchestra. He sits in the middle
of the ring, and they would never dream of having a smart dance nowadays
without him. “P. P.” is written on the corner of the invitation-cards
sent out by all really good families. They are grateful little people,
too, and at the princess's coming-of-age ball (they come of age on their
second birthday and have a birthday every month) they gave him the wish
of his heart.
The way it was done was this. The Queen ordered him to kneel, and then
said that for playing so beautifully she would give him the wish of his
heart. Then they all gathered round Peter to hear what was the wish of
his heart, but for a long time he hesitated, not being certain what it
was himself.
“If I chose to go back to mother,” he asked at last, “could you give me
that wish?”
Now this question vexed them, for were he to return to his mother they
should lose his music, so the Queen tilted her nose contemptuously and
said, “Pooh, ask for a much bigger wish than that.”
“Is that quite a little wish?” he inquired.
“As little as this,” the Queen answered, putting her hands near each
other.
“What size is a big wish?” he asked.
She measured it off on her skirt and it was a very handsome length.
Then Peter reflected and said, “Well, then, I think I shall have two
little wishes instead of one big one.”
Of course, the fairies had to agree, though his cleverness rather
shocked them, and he said that his first wish was to go to his
mother, but with the right to return to the Gardens if he found her
disappointing. His second wish he would hold in reserve.
They tried to dissuade him, and even put obstacles in the way.
“I can give you the power to fly to her house,” the Queen said, “but I
can't open the door for you.
“The window I flew out at will be open,” Peter said confidently. “Mother
always keeps it open in the hope that I may fly back.”
“How do you know?” they asked, quite surprised, and, really, Peter could
not explain how he knew.
“I just do know,” he said.
So as he persisted in his wish, they had to grant it. The way they gave
him power to fly was this: They all tickled him on the shoulder, and
soon he felt a funny itching in that part and then up he rose higher and
higher and flew away out of the Gardens and over the house-tops.
It was so delicious that instead of flying straight to his old home he
skimmed away over St. Paul's to the Crystal Palace and back by the river
and Regent's Park, and by the time he reached his mother's window he had
quite made up his mind that his second wish should be to become a bird.
The window was wide open, just as he knew it would be, and in he
fluttered, and there was his mother lying asleep. Peter alighted softly
on the wooden rail at the foot of the bed and had a good look at her.
She lay with her head on her hand, and the hollow in the pillow was like
a nest lined with her brown wavy hair. He remembered, though he had
long forgotten it, that she always gave her hair a holiday at night. How
sweet the frills of her night-gown were. He was very glad she was such a
pretty mother.
But she looked sad, and he knew why she looked sad. One of her arms
moved as if it wanted to go round something, and he knew what it wanted
to go round.
“Oh, mother,” said Peter to himself, “if you just knew who is sitting on
the rail at the foot of the bed.”
Very gently he patted the little mound that her feet made, and he could
see by her face that she liked it. He knew he had but to say “Mother”
ever so softly, and she would wake up. They always wake up at once if it
is you that says their name. Then she would give such a joyous cry
and squeeze him tight. How nice that would be to him, but oh, how
exquisitely delicious it would be to her. That I am afraid is how Peter
regarded it. In returning to his mother he never doubted that he was
giving her the greatest treat a woman can have. Nothing can be more
splendid, he thought, than to have a little boy of your own. How proud
of him they are; and very right and proper, too.
But why does Peter sit so long on the rail, why does he not tell his
mother that he has come back?
I quite shrink from the truth, which is that he sat there in two minds.
Sometimes he looked longingly at his mother, and sometimes he looked
longingly at the window. Certainly it would be pleasant to be her boy
again, but, on the other hand, what times those had been in the Gardens!
Was he so sure that he would enjoy wearing clothes again? He popped off
the bed and opened some drawers to have a look at his old garments. They
were still there, but he could not remember how you put them on. The
socks, for instance, were they worn on the hands or on the feet? He was
about to try one of them on his hand, when he had a great adventure.
Perhaps the drawer had creaked; at any rate, his mother woke up, for
he heard her say “Peter,” as if it was the most lovely word in the
language. He remained sitting on the floor and held his breath,
wondering how she knew that he had come back. If she said “Peter” again,
he meant to cry “Mother” and run to her. But she spoke no more, she
made little moans only, and when next he peeped at her she was once more
asleep, with tears on her face.
It made Peter very miserable, and what do you think was the first
thing he did? Sitting on the rail at the foot of the bed, he played a
beautiful lullaby to his mother on his pipe. He had made it up himself
out of the way she said “Peter,” and he never stopped playing until she
looked happy.
He thought this so clever of him that he could scarcely resist wakening
her to hear her say, “Oh, Peter, how exquisitely you play.” However, as
she now seemed comfortable, he again cast looks at the window. You must
not think that he meditated flying away and never coming back. He had
quite decided to be his mother's boy, but hesitated about beginning
to-night. It was the second wish which troubled him. He no longer meant
to make it a wish to be a bird, but not to ask for a second wish seemed
wasteful, and, of course, he could not ask for it without returning to
the fairies. Also, if he put off asking for his wish too long it might
go bad. He asked himself if he had not been hardhearted to fly away
without saying good-bye to Solomon. “I should like awfully to sail in my
boat just once more,” he said wistfully to his sleeping mother. He quite
argued with her as if she could hear him. “It would be so splendid to
tell the birds of this adventure,” he said coaxingly. “I promise to come
back,” he said solemnly and meant it, too.
And in the end, you know, he flew away. Twice he came back from the
window, wanting to kiss his mother, but he feared the delight of it
might waken her, so at last he played her a lovely kiss on his pipe, and
then he flew back to the Gardens.
Many nights and even months passed before he asked the fairies for his
second wish; and I am not sure that I quite know why he delayed so long.
One reason was that he had so many good-byes to say, not only to his
particular friends, but to a hundred favourite spots. Then he had his
last sail, and his very last sail, and his last sail of all, and so on.
Again, a number of farewell feasts were given in his honour; and another
comfortable reason was that, after all, there was no hurry, for his
mother would never weary of waiting for him. This last reason displeased
old Solomon, for it was an encouragement to the birds to procrastinate.
Solomon had several excellent mottoes for keeping them at their work,
such as “Never put off laying to-day, because you can lay to-morrow,”
and “In this world there are no second chances,” and yet here was Peter
gaily putting off and none the worse for it. The birds pointed this out
to each other, and fell into lazy habits.
But, mind you, though Peter was so slow in going back to his mother,
he was quite decided to go back. The best proof of this was his caution
with the fairies. They were most anxious that he should remain in the
Gardens to play to them, and to bring this to pass they tried to trick
him into making such a remark as “I wish the grass was not so wet,” and
some of them danced out of time in the hope that he might cry, “I do
wish you would keep time!” Then they would have said that this was his
second wish. But he smoked their design, and though on occasions he
began, “I wish--” he always stopped in time. So when at last he said
to them bravely, “I wish now to go back to mother for ever and always,”
they had to tickle his shoulders and let him go.
He went in a hurry in the end because he had dreamt that his mother was
crying, and he knew what was the great thing she cried for, and that a
hug from her splendid Peter would quickly make her to smile. Oh, he felt
sure of it, and so eager was he to be nestling in her arms that this
time he flew straight to the window, which was always to be open for
him.
But the window was closed, and there were iron bars on it, and peering
inside he saw his mother sleeping peacefully with her arm round another
little boy.
Peter called, “Mother! mother!” but she heard him not; in vain he beat
his little limbs against the iron bars. He had to fly back, sobbing, to
the Gardens, and he never saw his dear again. What a glorious boy he had
meant to be to her. Ah, Peter, we who have made the great mistake, how
differently we should all act at the second chance. But Solomon was
right; there is no second chance, not for most of us. When we reach the
window it is Lock-out Time. The iron bars are up for life.