The Great Bird of Paradise
The Great Bird of Paradise lives in the middle of the great island
called New Guinea, and all over some quite little islands close to
it which are called the Aru Islands. He is the largest of the Birds
of Paradise, and perhaps he is the most beautiful, but it is not so
easy to be sure about _that_. However, we shall see what you think of
him. His body and wings and tail are brown. "What, only brown?" you
cry. "That is like a sparrow." Ah, but wait. It is not _quite_ like a
sparrow. It is a beautiful, rich, _coffee_-brown, and on the breast it
deepens into a most lovely, dark, _purple-violet_ brown. There! That is
different to being just brown like a sparrow, is it not? Then the head
and neck are yellow, not a common yellow, but a very pretty, light,
delicate yellow, like straw. Sometimes ladies have hair of that colour,
and when they have, then people look at them and say, "What beautiful
hair!" which is just what they themselves say, sometimes, when they
look in the glass. These feathers are very short and set closely
together, which makes them look like plush or velvet, so you can think
how handsome they must be. What would you think if you were to go out
for a walk and see a bird flying about with a yellow plush or yellow
velvet head? But the throat is handsomer still. _That_ is a glorious,
gleaming, metallic green. Some feathers are called "metallic," because
when the light shines on them they flash it back again just as a bright
piece of metal does; a helmet or a breastplate, for instance. You know
how _they_ flash and gleam in the sunshine when the Horse-Guards ride
by. At least, if you have seen the Horse-Guards, you do, and if you
have not, well, I daresay you have seen it in a dish-cover or a bright
coal-scuttle. But fancy feathers as soft as velvet, gleaming as if
they were polished metal, but gleaming all emerald green as if they
were jewels--emeralds--too! Then on the forehead and the chin of this
bird--by which I mean just under the beak--there are glossy velvety
plumes of a deeper green colour. The other is emerald. These are like
the deep, lovely greens that one sees sometimes in the fiery opal or
the mother-of-pearl. What jewellery! and out of it all flash two other
jewels--the bird's two eyes--which are of a beautiful bright yellow
colour to match with the yellow plush of its head. Then this bird has
a pale blue beak and pale pink legs, and I am sure if he thinks himself
very handsome, you can _hardly_ call him conceited. For he would be
handsome only with this that I have told you about; that would be quite
enough to make him a beautiful bird without anything else.
But _has_ he anything else--any other kind of beauty _besides_ what
I have told you about? Listen. The emerald throat and the yellow
velvet-plush head and the blue beak and the pink legs are as nothing,
nothing whatever, compared to the glorious plumes which this Bird of
Paradise has on each side of his body. Oh, you never saw such plumes,
and you cannot think how lovely they are. There are two of them--one
on each side--and each one is made up of a number of very long, soft,
delicate silky feathers, which are of an orange-gold or golden-orange
colour, and so bright and glossy that they shine in the sun like
floss-silk. Just where they spring from the body each one of them has
a stripe of deep crimson-red, and, towards the top, they soften into
a pretty pale, mauvy brown. Even one feather like that on each side
would be beautiful--or one all by itself in the middle--but fancy a
_plume_ of them on each side, a thick plume too, though each feather is
so slender and delicate--there are so many of them. They look lovely
enough when they stream out behind as the bird flies, for they are
twice as long as its whole body, so, of course, the two plumes come
together and make one lovely large one that lies as softly on the air
as the feather of a swan does on the water. The body, then, is almost
covered up in all these soft feathers, so that it is just like looking
at a flying plume with wings and a head to it.
Yes, they look lovely enough then, these glorious plumes; but sometimes
they look lovelier still, and that is when the Great Bird of Paradise
raises them both up above its back so that they shoot into the air
like two golden feather-fountains that mingle together and bend over
and fall in spray all around, only it is a spray of feathers--not a
real spray--and, instead of falling, they only wave and dance. Such a
glorious, plumy cascade! The bird himself is almost hidden in his own
shower-bath, but the emerald throat and the yellow-plush head look out
of it and gleam like jewels as he peeps and peers about from side to
side to see if any one is looking at him. For, of course, the Great
Bird of Paradise does not make himself so _very_ beautiful just for
nothing. When he shoots up his feather-fountains and sits in a soft,
silky shower-bath, he does it to be looked at, and the person he wants
to look at him most is the hen Great Bird of Paradise, for--do you know
and _can_ you believe it?--the poor hen Great Bird of Paradise is _not_
beautiful. She has no wonderful plumes--she has no plumes at all--and
out of all those splendid colours I have told you about--orangy-gold
and emerald green and all the rest of them--she has only one, which is
the coffee-brown. Now, of course, a nice rich coffee-brown is a very
good colour, but still, by itself it is not enough to make a bird one
of the most beautiful birds in the world. So when a bird is _only_
coffee-brown, then, compared to a bird who has all those other colours
and the most wonderful plumes as well, it is quite a plain bird. So a
poor hen Great Bird of Paradise is quite a plain bird compared to her
handsome husband, with his emerald throat and yellow-plush head and his
wonderful orangy-gold plumes.
But, then, if the poor hen bird has no glorious plumes of her own, she
is always looking at them, always having them spread out on purpose
for her to look at, and that must be very pleasant indeed. When the
male Great Birds of Paradise wish to show their poor plain hens how
handsome they are--just to comfort them and make them not mind being
plain themselves--they come to a particular kind of tree in the forest,
a tree that has a great many wide-spreading branches at the top, with
not so very many leaves upon them, so that it is easy for them to be
seen by the hens, who are sitting in other trees near, all ready to
watch them. Then they raise up their wings above their backs, stretch
out their emerald necks, bow their yellow heads politely to each other,
and shoot up their golden feather-fountains, making each of the long,
plumy tufts tremble and vibrate and quiver, as they droop all over them
and almost cover them up. The plumes begin from under the wings--that
is why they lift their wings up first so that they can shoot straight
up and so that the hen birds may see the little stripes of red, which
I told you about, and which look like little crimson clouds floating
in a little golden sunset. How beautiful they must look! Perhaps there
may be a dozen Great Birds of Paradise, all bowing their heads and
quivering their plumes, on a dozen branches of the tree, whilst a
dozen more will be flying about from one branch to another, so that
the tree and the air are full of beauty. The air never had anything to
float upon her softer or lovelier than those golden floating plumes,
and no tree ever bore blossoms _quite_ so beautiful as those wonderful
golden Paradise-flowers. And both the air and the trees are happy.
Both of them whisper, "Oh thank you, thank you, Birds of Paradise." Of
course the Birds of Paradise are happy too. They are happy to have such
beauty and to be able to show it to the hens, who sit hidden in the
trees and bushes around, and _they_ perhaps--the hens for whom it is
all done--are happiest of all. Then it is all happiness--and beauty.
Beauty and happiness, those are the two things it is made up of.
There are not so many things that are made up of just those two. Try
and think of some. A party, perhaps you may say (only it must be a
juvenile one), or a pantomime. Well, of course, there is an _enormous_
amount of beauty and happiness at things of that kind; but is it _all_
beauty and happiness? Not _quite_ all, I think. Still I am sure you
would think it a very unkind thing if somebody were to break up a party
before it were over, or to stop a pantomime before the last act had
been performed. You would think that cruel, I am sure. And now if you
were looking at those beautiful, happy Birds of Paradise at _their_
party or pantomime (I _think_ it is as pretty as a transformation
scene), and all at once, when they were just in the middle of it, first
one and then another of them were to fall down dead to the ground,
till at last half of them lay there underneath the tree and the rest
had flown away, would you not think _that_ a most cruel and dreadful
thing? Where would be the beauty and the happiness now? It would all be
gone. Joy would have been changed into sorrow, and beauty _almost_ into
ugliness--for a dead bird is _almost_ ugly compared to a beautiful,
living one. And life would have been changed into death--yes, and
_such_ life, the life of happy, lovely birds, of Birds of Paradise.
And I think that if you were there and saw that happen--saw those
beautiful birds fall down dead--_murdered_--all of a sudden--you would
be sorry and angry too, and you would say that only a demon could have
done so wicked a thing.
You would be right if you were to say so. It _could_ only be a
demon--that same little demon that I told you about who sang a charm
to send the Goddess of Pity to sleep and then froze the hearts of the
women with his bad, wicked powder. That wretched little demon who wears
the magic suit of clothes, which makes him seem all that he ought to
be, is always killing the poor Birds of Paradise, just when they are
feeling so happy and looking so beautiful. He does not do it himself
(any more than the women), for, as he could not be in more than one
place at a time, he would not be able to kill a sufficient number to
satisfy him, and besides he has a great many other things of the same
kind, but more important, to do. So he makes his servants do it. That
has always been his plan. He has servants all over the world, and you
must not think that they are as bad as himself, for that is not the
case at all. They are not bad, but enchanted, so that they do all
sorts of bad things without having any idea that they are bad. In fact
they generally think that they are the finest things in the world.
The demon has all sorts of little bottles with different kinds of
powders in them, one for every kind of servant that he wants. In his
little private workshop they all stand in rows upon a shelf and every
one has a different label on it, so that he knows which to take up
in a minute. One is labelled "Glory," and has a powder in it of all
sorts of different colours, scarlet, blue, green, white, and a little
of it dirty yellow. The man on whom a grain of this powder falls will
always be wanting to kill people, and the more he kills the better man
he will think himself, and so, too, will other people think him. You
may imagine what a lot of work the demon can get out of a servant like
that. Another one is labelled "Justice," and whoever the powder in that
falls on will go through life always saying what he doesn't believe,
and trying to make other people believe it. Others are labelled
"Patriotism," "Duty," "Culture," "Refinement," "Taste," "Sensibility,"
and so on (all which words your mother will explain to you). The demon
chooses them according to the kind of thing he wants done, and all on
whom any of the powders inside the bottles fall become his servants in
different ways--very grand ways, too, they are often thought--and go on
serving him and thinking well of themselves, and being held always in
great honour and respect, all their lives.
Now you must not, of course, think that these bottles _really_ contain
the things that are written on their labels. No, indeed, they are
_false_ labels, for, you see, _these_ bottles stand in the window where
people can see them, the demon does not keep them in his pocket like
those other two I told you of. So when people see them they think that
they have good powders instead of bad ones inside them, and when the
stoppers are taken out the powders fly into their eyes, and they are
blinded and never know the difference. Almost every one is blinded,
for the demon just stands at the window of his workshop and blows his
powders through the world. It is not necessary for him to walk up and
down in it sprinkling them about. That would be a long, tedious way
of doing things. He just blows them, and he need never be afraid of
blowing too much away, for his bottles are magic bottles and always
full. Outside his window there is always a great crowd looking at the
bottles and admiring them, whilst the demon stands there in his magic
suit of clothes, and seems to every one to be just what he ought to be.
They say that somewhere else in the world there is a very beautiful
house with a radiant angel inside it, and that there, in vases of
crystal and diamond--or something like crystal and diamond, but very
much more beautiful--are the real things which the demon only pretends
to have in his ugly little bottles. Any one has only to step in and
ask for them, and the angel will open the vase and shed the essence
that is inside it into his very heart. But--is it not funny?--hardly
anybody ever goes into that house, and the few who do cannot persuade
others to follow them. I will tell you why this is. The beautiful house
does not _look_ like a beautiful house at all to most people, and the
angel of light who sits in the open doorway seems to them to be only
a shabbily dressed, unfashionable sort of person. Nobody sees his
wings, or, if they do, they think wings are vulgar and out of date.
It is the demon who is to blame for this. He has had time to blow his
magic powders all about the world, and they have blinded people's eyes
and made what is really beautiful seem mean and ugly to them--for the
demon's powders can blind the eyes as well as freeze the heart. But the
little workshop of the demon, which is really as mean and wretched a
place as you could find, _that_ people think glorious and beautiful,
and his ugly bottles are to them as vases of crystal and diamond. So
they crowd about the demon's workshop, thinking it to be the angel's
house, and into the angel's house they never go, for they think a
demon--or at least an unfashionably dressed person with wings--which
are out of date--lives there.
Now, it is one of those bottles with the false labels which the demon
takes when he wants one of his servants in that part of the world to
kill the Great Bird of Paradise; for I don't think the men in those
countries would much mind what the women said to them. I cannot tell
you which bottle it is, but it is none of those that I have told you
about. The label upon it is not nearly such a grand one, and the powder
is of a much coarser grain, for the man that the demon is going to blow
it at is only a poor savage, who is black and nearly naked, and who is
not able to serve him in such important ways as are people of a lighter
colour and less scantily dressed. He is only fit to do little odd jobs
now and again, and his wages are very low in consequence. Even what he
gets he is often not allowed to keep, for the demon's upper servants
take them away from him, and he is not strong enough to resist. One
of his odd jobs is killing the poor Great Birds of Paradise, and now
I will tell you how he does it. Only you must not be angry with him,
or even with the other people whose servant he _thinks_ he is, though
they are all of them _really_ the servants of one master, that wretched
little demon in the magic suit of clothes, which makes him seem nice to
everybody, although he is so nasty. It is _he_ you must be angry with,
for it is he who does all the mischief, in the way I have told you. He
gets people into his power; but, if you do as I tell you, perhaps you
will be able to save them from him, and to save the poor, beautiful
Birds of Paradise, as well as other beautiful birds, from being killed
and killed until they are all dead. Think what a lot of good you will
have done, then, to have kept such beauty safe in the world, when it
might have been lost out of it for ever. Yes, and you will have done
more good than that even, for you will have helped to wake up the
Goddess of Pity, and when once she is awake there will be so much for
her to do--for, ah! she has been asleep so long.
But, now, listen. I have told you that the man who kills the Great Bird
of Paradise is black and naked and a savage. But he is not a negro,
although he is rather like one. His hair is something like a negro's
hair, but there is much more of it. In fact it is quite a mop, and he
is very proud of it. He is a Papuan, and the islands that he lives in
are called the Papuan Islands, and are a very long way from Africa,
which is where the negroes live. He is a tall, fine-looking man, with
a beautiful figure, and he looks very much better naked than he would
do if he were dressed. And when I said that he was black, this was not
_quite_ true, because he is really brown, but it is such a very dark
brown that it looks black, and when a man is such a very dark brown
that he looks black, then people _will_ call him a black man, so that
is what we will call this Papuan. Now, this black man is very quick
and active--which is what most savages are--and he can climb trees
almost as well as a monkey. When he finds one of those trees where the
Great Birds of Paradise have their parties, their "Sacalelies" (that
is what _he_ calls them, it is a word that means a dancing-party), he
climbs up into it early in the morning, before it is daylight, and
waits for them to come. It does not matter how tall the tree is (and
this kind of tree is very tall), or how dark it may be, this naked
Papuan savage climbs up it quite easily and without slipping, just like
a monkey. He takes up with him some leafy branches of another tree, and
with these he makes a little screen to sit under, so that the Birds of
Paradise shall not see him. Besides this, he takes his bow and arrows
to shoot the poor birds with, for he does not use a gun, which would
make too much noise, and, besides, the shot would hurt the beautiful
plumage. The arrows do not hurt the plumage as the shot would, because
at the end of each one there is a piece of wood, shaped something like
an acorn, but as large as a teacup, and the large end of it makes what
would be the point of an ordinary arrow. When the poor birds are hit
with that great, smooth piece of wood they are killed, because it hits
them so hard, but their plumage is not hurt at all, for nothing has
gone into the skin, or torn the feathers.
[Illustration: PAPUAN SHOOTING BIRDS OF PARADISE]
So the naked black man waits behind his screen for the Great Birds of
Paradise to come, and as soon as they come and begin to spread their
plumes, he shoots first one and then another of them with his great
wooden arrows, and they fall down dead underneath the tree. And, do you
know, they are so occupied in showing off their beautiful plumes, and
so happy and excited as they spread them out and look through them, or
fly like little feathery cascades from branch to branch, that it is
not till quite a number of them have been killed (for the black savage
does not often miss his aim) that the others take fright and fly away.
Then the black man climbs down from the tree and picks up the poor,
beautiful, dead birds and takes them to another man who is yellow and
not quite so naked as he is, who gives him something for them, but not
so much as he ought to. The yellow man cheats the black man, and, when
he has cheated him, he takes the skins to a white man, who is quite
dressed and civilised, and sells them to him, and the white man cheats
_him_ a good deal more than _he_ has cheated the black man--for, of
course, the white man is the cleverest of the three. (You see there
are yellow men in those countries--called Malays--as well as black
men, and a good many white men go there as well.) Then the white man
puts all the beautiful skins that he has bought from the yellow man,
as well as a great many others which have been brought to him from all
the country and from all the islands round about, into one of those
large kinds of boxes called "crates," that I have told you about, and
it is put on board a ship where there are a great many others of the
same kind, all full of the skins and feathers of beautiful birds that
have been killed. And the ship sails to England, and then up the Thames
to London, where the crates are taken out and put into great vans and
driven away to the great ugly warehouses to be unpacked and laid on the
floor there in a heap, all as I have told you. You know what happens to
them then.
And now I will tell you something funny that I daresay you would never
have thought of, but which is quite true all the same. That great
heap of brightly coloured feathers lying on the floor, to make which
hundreds of thousands of the most beautiful birds in the world have
been killed, and hundreds of hundreds of thousands of their young ones
that would have grown up beautiful, too, have been starved to death
in the nest--that great big heap of the loveliest plumage is not so
lovely, not nearly so beautiful as one living thrush or one living
blackbird or one living swallow or one living robin-redbreast. That
is the difference between life and death. A live Bird of Paradise is
hundreds of times more beautiful than a live blackbird or thrush or
swallow or robin-redbreast, but when it is dead it is not so beautiful
as they are. Its feathers are more beautiful, still, of course, but
where are the _waving_ feathers, the _floating_ plumes, the bright
eyes, the quick, graceful movements, and the flight--the glorious
flight--of a bird. They are gone, they are gone for ever, and, in their
place, there is only stiffness and deadness and dustiness. Oh never,
never wish to see a dead Bird of Paradise in a hat, when you can see
a living thrush or blackbird on the lawn of your garden, or a living
swallow flying over it. And even if you can never see a living Bird
of Paradise--as I daresay you never will be able to--what then?--what
then? You cannot see everything, but have you not got an imagination
(your mother, who has got one, will tell you what it is), and is it not
better to imagine a beautiful bird flying about in life and loveliness
than to see it dead? And the people who have these hats with the Birds
of Paradise, or with other beautiful birds, sewn into them, how much
do you think they really care about them? Do they ever look at them
after they have once bought them? Oh no, they never do. Sometimes they
look in the glass with the hat on--yes--but then it is only to see
themselves _in_ the hat, not the hat.
So now you know what kind of birds the Birds of Paradise are, and how
very beautiful they are, and you know how gloriously beautiful the
Great Bird of Paradise is, and how it is killed and not allowed to live
and be happy, just because it is so beautiful. But now these Great
Birds of Paradise live only in some quite small islands and just in one
part of one large one, and although there may be a good many of them
where they do live, yet if they are always being killed in that way,
very soon there will be no more of them left. Then there will be no
more Great Birds of Paradise in the world--for they do not live outside
those islands--and when they are once gone they can never, never come
again.
But do you not think that it would be a dreadful thing if such a bird
as this--this beautiful Great Bird of Paradise that I have told you
about--were to be killed and killed until it was not in the world
any more? Of course you think it would be a dreadful thing, and I am
sure that you would prevent it if you could. And you _can_ prevent
it--_now_--yes, _now_--and in the easiest way possible. All you have
to do--only you must do it directly--is to put your arms round your
mother's neck and make her promise never, never to wear a hat with the
feathers of a Great Bird of Paradise in it. Of course she will promise,
if you ask her in that way, and keep on, and when she once has promised
you must not let her forget it. You must remind her of it from time
to time ("Remember, mother, you _promised_"), and, especially, when
you hear her talking about getting a new hat. And when you have made
her promise about herself, then you must make her promise never to let
_you_ wear a hat of the sort (of course when you are grown-up and buy
your own hats you never will), or your sisters either. And if you have
a sister very much older than yourself who buys her own hats, then you
can make _her_ promise too. Perhaps _that_ will be less easy, but she
will do it in time if you tease her enough about it and want her to
read the book. And then if you can get any other lady to promise, well,
the more who do, the better chance there will be for the beautiful
Great Bird of Paradise. Only you must make your mother promise
first--that is the chief thing--and, to do it, you must tell her all
about the wicked little demon, with his powders and his charm to send
the Goddess of Pity to sleep. So now go to your mother, go at once, do
not wait, or, if your mother is out anywhere, you must only wait till
she comes home again.