For the collection of the stories, poems and sketches published under
this title I alone am responsible. There is no need to repeat what I
said in the preface about their previous publication in this or that
magazine or weekly paper. I had rather, and I think more fitly, discuss
some few of them in relation to aspects of the author’s character that
they point to or reveal.
In ‘A Song of Low Degree’ she speaks from the heart of her philosophy,
as of her religion:—
‘Lord, I am small, and yet so great.
The whole world stands to my estate
And in Thine Image I create.’
It is the same note that we hear as the roadmender chants the glories of
the daffodil-field, and here too it rouses deeper harmonies.
‘All, all are mine; and yet so small
Am I, that lo, I needs must call,
Great King, upon the Babe in Thee.’
· · · · ·
‘We who are made Kings after His likeness,’ she wrote in ‘The
Roadmender,’ ‘possess all things, not after this world’s fashion but in
proportion to our poverty.’ Only as we are kings, she saw—masters, not
slaves, to the things that we own—do we in fact own, instead of being
owned by, either the outer gifts of the world, or the nature and
passions in ourselves. So she tells us; and it is the burden of every
inclusive mystic’s song.
All these mystics are of one family and speak the same language. They
are great and small, eloquent or halting in their speech—everywhere they
have one mind and one tongue, whether they stammer, or utter music of
the spheres. You may take, for example, one of the very great, Rabindra
Nath Tagore; and, turning over the slender volume of his songs, you will
find the fulfilment of the voice of the soul of Michael Fairless. Take
this, the first in his ‘Gitanjali.’
‘Thou hast made me endless, such is thy pleasure. This frail vessel thou
emptiest again and again, and fillest it ever with fresh life.
‘This little flute of a reed thou hast carried over hills and dales, and
hast breathed through it melodies eternally new.
‘At the immortal touch of thy hands my little heart loses its limits in
joy and gives birth to utterance ineffable.
‘Thy infinite gifts come to me only on these very small hands of mine.
Ages pass, and still thou pourest, and still there is room to fill.’
Of one family are these, elder and younger, little or great; of one
family and—marvellous to record—of the same family as every one of us.
Do we not know it when their word finds its echo in us or an answering
thrill, however faint and quickly dying away?
Even when they sing of earth and its joys, we, who ruin those joys at
their source and are blind to the real earth, making for it a cloak of
thick darkness of our stupidity and sins, find that our blood stirs in
answer.
‘The same stream of life that runs through my veins night and day runs
through the world and dances in rhythmic measures.
‘It is the same life that shoots in joy through the dust of the earth in
numberless blades of grass and breaks into tumultuous waves of leaves
and flowers.
‘It is the same life that is rocked in the ocean-cradle of birth and of
death, in ebb and in flow.
‘I feel my limbs are made glorious by the touch of this world of life.
And my pride is from the life-throb of ages dancing in my blood this
moment.’
East or West, the voices join in one, and we are able to listen—that is
the wonder of us and the ground of our hope.
There are charming pieces in ‘The Grey Brethren,’ notably ‘A German
Christmas Eve,’ and ‘A Christmas Idyll,’ with the sermon that is Michael
Fairless telling (through the mouth of the Forest Recluse) news of the
Kingdom of God and Man. ‘My brothers and sisters,’ she says to us,
‘to-night we keep the Birth of the Holy Babe, and to-night you and I
stand at the gate of the Kingdom of Heaven, the gate which is undone
only at the cry of a little child. “Except ye be converted and become as
little children, ye shall not enter.”
‘The Kingdom is a great one, nay, a limitless one; and many enter in
calling it by another name. It includes your own hearts and this
wonderful forest, all the wise and beautiful works that men have ever
thought of or done, and your daily toil; it includes your nearest and
dearest, the outcast, the prisoner, and the stranger; it holds your
cottage home and the jewelled City, the New Jerusalem itself. People are
apt to think the Kingdom of Heaven is like church on Sunday, a place to
enter once a week in one’s best: whereas it holds every flower, and has
room for the ox and the ass, and the least of all creatures, as well as
for our prayer and worship and praise.
‘“Except ye become as little children.” How are we to be born again,
simple children with wondering eyes?
‘We must learn to lie in helpless dependence, to open our mouth wide
that it may be filled, to speak with halting tongue the language we
think we know; we must learn, above all, our own ignorance, and keep
alight and cherish the flame of innocency in our hearts.
‘It is a tired world, my brethren, and we are most of us tired men and
women who live on it, for we seek ever after some new thing. Let us pass
out through the gate into the Kingdom of Heaven and not be tired any
more, because there we shall find the new thing that we seek. Heaven is
on earth, the Kingdom is here and now; the gate stands wide to-night,
for it is the birthnight of the Eternal Child. We are none of us too
poor, or stupid, or lowly; it was the simple shepherds who saw Him
first. We are none of us too great, or learned, or rich; it was the
three wise kings who came next and offered gifts. We are none of us too
young; it was little children who first laid down their lives for Him;
or too old, for Simeon saw and recognised Him. There is only one thing
against most of us—we are too proud.
‘My brethren, “let us now go even unto Bethlehem, and see this thing
which is come to pass, which the Lord hath made known to us.”’
Here is the authentic message of the mystic and of religion. It is the
proclamation of sovran Love; from which nothing is shut out, by which
nothing can ever be forgotten or ignored. ‘There is only one thing
against most of us—we are too proud.’ But for that,—say Michael Fairless
and the whole mystical chorus,—but for that, we too should be
proclaiming the beauty of the Lord and of his kingdom within us and
without.
Of Michael Fairless, as she is in the last of the four stories told to
children, the last thing in the book, I wrote thus in the original
preface:—
‘Some of the many readers who have found her there will understand me
when I say that the story of her life and death, and of her life too (as
I believe) after death, is written down in the little tale of “The
Tinkle-Tinkle,” first told to her best beloved in the wild garden at
Kew, among blue hyacinths and shining grasses of the spring that spoke
to her of Paradise.’
I have told the story of her life and death at greater length now and
with comments and comparisons. But I still think that it is all in ‘The
Tinkle-Tinkle,’ and far better told than I can tell it. There will be
some who will not agree with me; but they have never known her as I do.
They do not see her looking upon herself and every one in the world, and
saying, ‘I cannot tell you what he was like, because no man knows, not
even the Tinkle-Tinkle himself.’ For anyone who had not watched her
infinite variety, her swift transitions, her adaptability, the surprises
of her, there would be little enough sense in being told that her very
self is there when she says:—‘Sometimes he lived on the ground,
sometimes in a tree, sometimes in the water, sometimes in a cave; and I
can’t tell you what he lived on, for no man knows, not even the
Tinkle-Tinkle himself.’
We find her, as well as her interpretation of life, from the beginning
of this little tale to the end. And here in this refrain of ignorance,
‘no man knows, not even the Tinkle-Tinkle himself,’ we find an
expression of her always reverent agnosticism, the agnosticism of the
mystic—of him who sees too deeply to be able to persuade himself that he
sees all.
It is she, too, who hears ‘a piteous weeping’ from the least and lowest
of the lost creatures of the earth, and would lead each one of them to
its own home— but I cannot tell you how he went, for no man knows, not
even the ‘Tinkle-Tinkle.’ No man really knows the secret of the
irresistible power of love; no man knows, even when it is at work in him
and is working by him.
Yet man, as the Tinkle-Tinkle knows, must be ever a seeker; therefore
‘it was a great grief to the Tinkle-Tinkle not to know what he was, or
how he lived, or where he was going,’—the grief of the metaphysician,
with his ever-repeated questions, whence and what? why? whither?—the
grief, too, of every honest thinker who does not answer himself with
lies. Yet here is the lofty and special privilege of these two, as
Michael Fairless was aware; and they must hide both their privilege and
their grief:— ‘It often made him depressed, but he always concealed it
from the dormice, appearing a most cheerful and contented creature.’
This is of the tenderness that guards bruised reeds and the smoking
flax. But of the privilege and indeed of the grief there comes to the
like of Tinkle-Tinkle an opening of wonders. ‘Now it happened on a
certain evening that the Tinkle-Tinkle was travelling over the sea, when
suddenly in the depths he caught sight of a most beautiful creature. It
was all sorts of colours—white, rosy pink, and deep crimson, and pale
blue fading into white and gold. It had no face but a bright light; and
it had quantities of beautiful iridescent wings, like the rainbow; and
the most lovely voice you ever heard, like the sighing of the waves in
the hollow of the sea.’
(‘Thy sunbeam,’ says the great Indian poet and seer, ‘comes upon this
earth of mine with arms outstretched, and stands at my door the livelong
day to carry back to thy feet clouds made of my tears and sighs and
songs.
‘With fond delight thou wrappest about thy starry breast that mantle of
misty cloud, turning it into numberless shapes and folds and colouring
it with hues everchanging.
‘It is so light and so fleeting, tender and tearful and dark, that is
why thou lovest it, O thou spotless and serene. And that is why it may
cover thy awful white light with its pathetic shadows.’)
‘And the beautiful Creature cried out to him, and its voice made
Tinkle-Tinkle remember a dream he had once had of sunshine, and forest
trees, and the song of birds; and the Creature said, “Ah, Tinkle-Tinkle!
you are lonely and perplexed and sad, and you do not know whence you
came nor why you are here; but the dormice know and the green bird
knows, and I know, and we are glad for your being. Go on, Tinkle-Tinkle,
and do not sorrow, for some day you shall come back to me, and I will
wrap you in my wings and take you where you belong, and then you will
understand.”’
Love knows and love shall reveal, and the beginning of the tale of love
makes its hearer ‘glad with a strange new gladness’; so that when he
returns to ‘his cave’ he is ‘not alone, for the spirit of hope’ goes
with him.
Not only the metaphysician hidden in other men as in Michael Fairless
speaks in this child’s tale, but the artist too. ‘The Tinkle-Tinkle had
one gift—he could sing—how, no man knew, not even the Tinkle-Tinkle
himself; and this is how he discovered his gift.
‘One day in a secluded spot in the forest he found a dying stag, and the
Tinkle-Tinkle was moved with great compassion and yet could do nothing.
‘The great stag’s head drooped lower and lower till even the sun melted
in a mist of pity, and the trees sighed, and the breezes hushed their
voices. Then suddenly the Tinkle-Tinkle crept close and began to sing,
why or how he knew not. As he sang, the birds and the stream were
silenced and the breezes ceased, and the great stag’s breathing grew
less and less laboured, and his eyes brightened, and presently he rose
slowly to his feet and paced away to join the rest of the herd, and the
Tinkle-Tinkle went with him.
‘When the stag’s companions heard the story, they wept for all that had
befallen their leader, but rejoiced also and blessed the Tinkle-Tinkle;
and he sang once more for them, and the star-spirits leaned out of their
bright little windows to listen, and the night was glad.’
A dumb poet, a frustrate artist, the singer of this child’s song was
when she sang it. She could not know that her swan-song would travel
through all the world of her own people and bring her blessing; but she
knew the artist’s longing and had felt, too, not a little of the
strength of the power of beauty in his hands.
The end of the story comes as the Tinkle-Tinkle began ‘to feel very old
and worn and weary,’ and the spirit of hope, that went back with him to
the world’s cave when he had seen in a vision the light of its day,
stirred within his heart. ‘Then he remembered the promise of the
beautiful Creature, and went slowly over the sea hoping the time had
come for it to be fulfilled, and it had. The beautiful Creature
stretched out its lovely rose and purple wings and wrapped the
Tinkle-Tinkle in their warm soft greatness, and bore him down and down
through the depths till they came to the Great Gate. At the beautiful
Creature’s voice it swung slowly back, and they passed down the Blue
Pathway, which is all ice, cut and carved into lovely pinnacles and
spires, very blue with the blue of the summer sky and the southern seas.
The Tinkle-Tinkle could just see it from between the beautiful
Creature’s wings, stretching away in the blue distance, and at the end
one star.
‘Presently—and though the time had been one thousand years it had not
seemed long to the Tinkle-Tinkle—they came out into a beautiful place
that was nothing but light, and the beautiful Creature set the
Tinkle-Tinkle down. He looked around him and saw many other
Tinkle-Tinkles, and he knew them for what they were and loved their
beauty; and the Creature gently swept one of its purple pinions across
him, and the Tinkle-Tinkle took form. He had many, many little soft,
strong hands and many little white feet, and long sweeping wings and a
face which shone with something of the light of the beautiful Creature;
and the Tinkle-Tinkle saw and understood and sang for joy.’
_Vere Ierusalem est illa civitas
Cuius pax iugis et summa iucunditas;
Ubi non prœvenit rem desiderium,
Nec desiderio minus est prœmium._
PRINTED BY
TURNBULL AND SPEARS,
EDINBURGH
[Illustration: Back cover]
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