A short time ago, I was favored with a flying visit from my young friend
Eustace Bright, whom I had not before met with since quitting the breezy
mountains of Berkshire. It being the winter vacation at his college,
Eustace was allowing himself a little relaxation, in the hope, he told
me, of repairing the inroads which severe application to study had
made upon his health; and I was happy to conclude, from the excellent
physical condition in which I saw him, that the remedy had already been
attended with very desirable success. He had now run up from Boston by
the noon train, partly impelled by the friendly regard with which he
is pleased to honor me, and partly, as I soon found, on a matter of
literary business.
It delighted me to receive Mr. Bright, for the first time, under a roof,
though a very humble one, which I could really call my own. Nor did I
fail (as is the custom of landed proprietors all about the world) to
parade the poor fellow up and down over my half a dozen acres; secretly
rejoicing, nevertheless, that the disarray of the inclement season, and
particularly the six inches of snow then upon the ground, prevented him
from observing the ragged neglect of soil and shrubbery into which the
place had lapsed. It was idle, however, to imagine that an airy guest
from Monument Mountain, Bald Summit, and old Graylock, shaggy with
primeval forests, could see anything to admire in my poor little
hillside, with its growth of frail and insect-eaten locust trees.
Eustace very frankly called the view from my hill top tame; and so,
no doubt, it was, after rough, broken, rugged, headlong Berkshire, and
especially the northern parts of the county, with which his college
residence had made him familiar. But to me there is a peculiar, quiet
charm in these broad meadows and gentle eminences. They are better than
mountains, because they do not stamp and stereotype themselves into the
brain, and thus grow wearisome with the same strong impression, repeated
day after day. A few summer weeks among mountains, a lifetime among
green meadows and placid slopes, with outlines forever new, because
continually fading out of the memory--such would be my sober choice.
I doubt whether Eustace did not internally pronounce the whole thing a
bore, until I led him to my predecessor's little ruined, rustic summer
house, midway on the hillside. It is a mere skeleton of slender,
decaying tree trunks, with neither walls nor a roof; nothing but a
tracery of branches and twigs, which the next wintry blast will be very
likely to scatter in fragments along the terrace. It looks, and is, as
evanescent as a dream; and yet, in its rustic network of boughs, it
has somehow enclosed a hint of spiritual beauty, and has become a true
emblem of the subtile and ethereal mind that planned it. I made Eustace
Bright sit down on a snow bank, which had heaped itself over the mossy
seat, and gazing through the arched windows opposite, he acknowledged
that the scene at once grew picturesque.
"Simple as it looks," said he, "this little edifice seems to be the work
of magic. It is full of suggestiveness, and, in its way, is as good as a
cathedral. Ah, it would be just the spot for one to sit in, of a summer
afternoon, and tell the children some more of those wild stories from
the classic myths!"
"It would, indeed," answered I. "The summer house itself, so airy and
so broken, is like one of those old tales, imperfectly remembered; and
these living branches of the Baldwin apple tree, thrusting so rudely
in, are like your unwarrantable interpolations. But, by the by, have
you added any more legends to the series, since the publication of the
'Wonder-Book'?"
"Many more," said Eustace; "Primrose, Periwinkle, and the rest of them,
allow me no comfort of my life unless I tell them a story every day or
two. I have run away from home partly to escape the importunity of these
little wretches! But I have written out six of the new stories, and have
brought them for you to look over."
"Are they as good as the first?" I inquired.
"Better chosen, and better handled," replied Eustace Bright. "You will
say so when you read them."
"Possibly not," I remarked. "I know from my own experience, that an
author's last work is always his best one, in his own estimate, until it
quite loses the red heat of composition. After that, it falls into its
true place, quietly enough. But let us adjourn to my study, and examine
these new stories. It would hardly be doing yourself justice, were you
to bring me acquainted with them, sitting here on this snow bank!"
So we descended the hill to my small, old cottage, and shut ourselves
up in the south-eastern room, where the sunshine comes in, warmly and
brightly, through the better half of a winter's day. Eustace put his
bundle of manuscript into my hands; and I skimmed through it pretty
rapidly, trying to find out its merits and demerits by the touch of my
fingers, as a veteran story-teller ought to know how to do.
It will be remembered that Mr. Bright condescended to avail himself of
my literary experience by constituting me editor of the "Wonder-Book."
As he had no reason to complain of the reception of that erudite work by
the public, he was now disposed to retain me in a similar position with
respect to the present volume, which he entitled TANGLEWOOD TALES. Not,
as Eustace hinted, that there was any real necessity for my services as
introducer, inasmuch as his own name had become established in some good
degree of favor with the literary world. But the connection with myself,
he was kind enough to say, had been highly agreeable; nor was he by any
means desirous, as most people are, of kicking away the ladder that had
perhaps helped him to reach his present elevation. My young friend was
willing, in short, that the fresh verdure of his growing reputation
should spread over my straggling and half-naked boughs; even as I have
sometimes thought of training a vine, with its broad leafiness, and
purple fruitage, over the worm-eaten posts and rafters of the rustic
summer house. I was not insensible to the advantages of his proposal,
and gladly assured him of my acceptance.
Merely from the title of the stories I saw at once that the subjects
were not less rich than those of the former volume; nor did I at all
doubt that Mr. Bright's audacity (so far as that endowment might avail)
had enabled him to take full advantage of whatever capabilities they
offered. Yet, in spite of my experience of his free way of handling
them, I did not quite see, I confess, how he could have obviated all the
difficulties in the way of rendering them presentable to children. These
old legends, so brimming over with everything that is most abhorrent
to our Christianized moral sense some of them so hideous, others so
melancholy and miserable, amid which the Greek tragedians sought their
themes, and moulded them into the sternest forms of grief that ever the
world saw; was such material the stuff that children's playthings should
be made of! How were they to be purified? How was the blessed sunshine
to be thrown into them?
But Eustace told me that these myths were the most singular things in
the world, and that he was invariably astonished, whenever he began
to relate one, by the readiness with which it adapted itself to the
childish purity of his auditors. The objectionable characteristics seem
to be a parasitical growth, having no essential connection with the
original fable. They fall away, and are thought of no more, the instant
he puts his imagination in sympathy with the innocent little circle,
whose wide-open eyes are fixed so eagerly upon him. Thus the stories
(not by any strained effort of the narrator's, but in harmony with their
inherent germ) transform themselves, and re-assume the shapes which they
might be supposed to possess in the pure childhood of the world. When
the first poet or romancer told these marvellous legends (such is
Eustace Bright's opinion), it was still the Golden Age. Evil had never
yet existed; and sorrow, misfortune, crime, were mere shadows which
the mind fancifully created for itself, as a shelter against too sunny
realities; or, at most, but prophetic dreams to which the dreamer
himself did not yield a waking credence. Children are now the only
representatives of the men and women of that happy era; and therefore it
is that we must raise the intellect and fancy to the level of childhood,
in order to re-create the original myths.
I let the youthful author talk as much and as extravagantly as he
pleased, and was glad to see him commencing life with such confidence in
himself and his performances. A few years will do all that is necessary
towards showing him the truth in both respects. Meanwhile, it is
but right to say, he does really appear to have overcome the moral
objections against these fables, although at the expense of such
liberties with their structure as must be left to plead their own
excuse, without any help from me. Indeed, except that there was a
necessity for it--and that the inner life of the legends cannot be come
at save by making them entirely one's own property--there is no defense
to be made.
Eustace informed me that he had told his stories to the children in
various situations--in the woods, on the shore of the lake, in the
dell of Shadow Brook, in the playroom, at Tanglewood fireside, and in a
magnificent palace of snow, with ice windows, which he helped his
little friends to build. His auditors were even more delighted with
the contents of the present volume than with the specimens which have
already been given to the world. The classically learned Mr. Pringle,
too, had listened to two or three of the tales, and censured them even
more bitterly than he did THE THREE GOLDEN APPLES; so that, what with
praise, and what with criticism, Eustace Bright thinks that there is
good hope of at least as much success with the public as in the case of
the "WonderBook."
I made all sorts of inquiries about the children, not doubting that
there would be great eagerness to hear of their welfare, among some good
little folks who have written to me, to ask for another volume of myths.
They are all, I am happy to say (unless we except Clover), in excellent
health and spirits. Primrose is now almost a young lady, and, Eustace
tells me, is just as saucy as ever. She pretends to consider herself
quite beyond the age to be interested by such idle stories as these;
but, for all that, whenever a story is to be told, Primrose never
fails to be one of the listeners, and to make fun of it when finished.
Periwinkle is very much grown, and is expected to shut up her baby house
and throw away her doll in a month or two more. Sweet Fern has learned
to read and write, and has put on a jacket and pair of pantaloons--all
of which improvements I am sorry for. Squash Blossom, Blue Eye,
Plantain, and Buttercup have had the scarlet fever, but came easily
through it. Huckleberry, Milkweed, and Dandelion were attacked with the
whooping cough, but bore it bravely, and kept out of doors whenever the
sun shone. Cowslip, during the autumn, had either the measles, or some
eruption that looked very much like it, but was hardly sick a day. Poor
Clover has been a good deal troubled with her second teeth, which have
made her meagre in aspect and rather fractious in temper; nor, even when
she smiles, is the matter much mended, since it discloses a gap just
within her lips, almost as wide as the barn door. But all this will pass
over, and it is predicted that she will turn out a very pretty girl.
As for Mr. Bright himself, he is now in his senior year at Williams
College, and has a prospect of graduating with some degree of honorable
distinction at the next Commencement. In his oration for the bachelor's
degree, he gives me to understand, he will treat of the classical myths,
viewed in the aspect of baby stories, and has a great mind to discuss
the expediency of using up the whole of ancient history, for the same
purpose. I do not know what he means to do with himself after leaving
college, but trust that, by dabbling so early with the dangerous and
seductive business of authorship, he will not be tempted to become an
author by profession. If so I shall be very sorry for the little that I
have had to do with the matter, in encouraging these first beginnings.
I wish there were any likelihood of my soon seeing Primrose, Periwinkle,
Dandelion, Sweet Fern, Clover Plantain, Huckleberry, Milkweed, Cowslip,
Buttercup, Blue Eye, and Squash Blossom again. But as I do not know when
I shall re-visit Tanglewood, and as Eustace Bright probably will not
ask me to edit a third "WonderBook," the public of little folks must not
expect to hear any more about those dear children from me. Heaven bless
them, and everybody else, whether grown people or children!