Once upon a time there was a little boy whose name was Tommy. As a
matter of fact, his name was Tobias Theodore; the former because it was
an old name in the family, and the latter because it was an entirely new
name in the neighbourhood. It is to be hoped that the parents who called
him Tobias Theodore, moved by a natural desire to keep it quiet, agreed
to call him Tommy; and anyhow we will agree to call him Tommy. It is
always assumed in stories that Tommy is a common name for a boy; just as
it is always assumed that Tomkins is a common name for a man. I do not
really know very many boys named Tommy. I do not know any man named
Tomkins. Do you? Does anybody? But this enquiry would lead us far.
Anyhow, Tommy was sitting one very hot afternoon on a green lawn outside
the cottage that his father and mother had taken in the country. The
cottage had a bare white-washed wall; and at that moment it seemed to
Tommy very bare. The summer sky was of a blank blue, which at that
moment seemed to him very blank. The dull yellow thatch looked very dull
and rather dusty; and the row of flower-pots in front of him, with red
flowers in them, looked irritatingly straight, so that he wanted to
knock some of them over like ninepins. Even the grass around him moved
him only to pluck it up in a vicious way; almost as if he were wicked
enough to wish it was his sister’s hair. Only he had no sister and,
indeed, no brothers. He was an only child and at that moment rather a
lonely child, which is not necessarily the same thing. For Tommy, on
that hot and empty afternoon, was in that state of mind in which
grown-up people go away and write books about their view of the whole
world, and stories about what it is like to be married, and plays about
the important problems of modern times. Tommy, being only ten years old,
was not able to do harm on this large and handsome scale. So he
continued to pull out the grass like the green hair of an imaginary and
irritating sister, when he was surprised to hear a stir and a step
behind him, on the side of the garden far away from the garden gate.
He saw walking towards him a rather strange-looking young man wearing
blue spectacles. He was clad in a suit of such very light grey that it
looked almost white in the strong sunlight; and he had long loose hair
of such very light or faint yellow that the hair might almost have been
white as well as the clothes. He had a large limp straw hat to shade him
from the sun; and, presumably for the same purpose, he flourished in his
left hand a Japanese parasol of a bright peacock green. Tommy had no
idea of how he had come on to that side of the garden; but it appeared
most probable that he had jumped over the hedge.
[Illustration: Black and white illustration of a person wearing glasses
and a jacket, holding an open umbrella overhead as their hat blows off
in the wind, with a dense hedge in the background.]
All that he said was, with the most casual and familiar accent, “Got the
blues?”
Tommy did not answer and perhaps did not understand; but the strange
young man proceeded with great composure to take off his blue
spectacles.
“Blue spectacles are a queer cure for the blues,” he said cheerfully;
“but you just look through these for a minute.”
Tommy was moved to a mild curiosity and peered through the glasses;
there certainly was something weird and quaint about the discoloration
of everything—the red roses black and the white wall blue, and the grass
a bluish green like the plumes of a peacock.
“Looks like a new world, doesn’t it?” said the stranger. “Wouldn’t you
like to go wandering in a blue world once in a blue moon?”
“Yes,” said Tommy, and put the spectacles down with a rather puzzled
air. Then his expression changed to surprise; for the extraordinary
young man had put on another pair of spectacles, and this time they were
red.
“Try these,” he said affably. “These, I suppose, are revolutionary
glasses. Some people call it looking through rose-coloured spectacles.
Others call it seeing red.”
Tommy tried the spectacles, and was quite startled by the effect; it
looked as if the whole world were on fire. The sky was of a glowing or
rather glaring purple, and the roses were not so much red as red-hot. He
took off the glasses almost in alarm, only to note that the young man’s
immovable countenance was now adorned with yellow spectacles. By the
time that these had been followed by green spectacles, Tommy thought he
had been looking at four totally different landscapes.
[Illustration: Black and white illustration of a person leaning backward
while holding an open umbrella and hat in one hand, reaching down to
touch a young boy sitting on a grassy slope.]
“And so,” said the young man, “you would like to travel in a country of
your favourite colour. I did it once myself.”
Tommy was staring up at him with round eyes.
“Who are you?” he asked suddenly.
“I’m not sure,” replied the other. “I rather think I am your long-lost
brother.”
“But I haven’t got a brother,” objected Tommy.
“It only shows how very long-lost I was,” replied his remarkable
relative. “But I assure you that, before they managed to long-lose me, I
used to live in this house myself.”
“When you were a little boy like me?” asked Tommy with some reviving
interest.
“Yes,” said the stranger gravely. “When I was a little boy and very like
you. I also used to sit on the grass and wonder what to do with myself.
I also got tired of the blank white wall. I also got tired even of the
beautiful blue sky. I also thought the thatch was just thatch and wished
the roses did not stand in a row.”
“Why, how do you know I felt like that?” asked the little boy, who was
rather frightened.
“Why, because I felt like that myself,” said the other with a smile.
Then after a pause he went on:
“And I also thought that everything might look different if the colours
were different; if I could wander about on blue roads between blue
fields and go on wandering till all was blue. And a wizard who was a
friend of mine actually granted my wish; and I found myself walking in
forests of great blue flowers like gigantic lupins and larkspurs, with
only glimpses now and then of pale blue skies over a dark blue sea. The
trees were inhabited by blue jays and bright blue kingfishers.
Unfortunately they were also inhabited by blue baboons.”
“Were there any people in that country?” enquired Tommy.
The traveller had to reflect for a moment; then he nodded and said:
“Yes; but, of course, wherever there are people there are troubles. You
couldn’t expect all the people in the Blue Country to get on with each
other very well. Naturally there was a crack regiment called the
Prussian Blues. Unfortunately there was also a very energetic semi-naval
brigade called French Ultramarines. You can imagine the consequence.” He
paused again for a moment and then said: “I met one person who made
rather an impression on me. I came upon him in a place of great gardens
shaped in a crescent like the moon, and in the centre above a fringe of
blue-gum trees there rose a great blue lustrous dome, like the Mosque of
Omar. And I heard a great and terrible voice that seemed to toss the
trees to and fro, and there came out between them a tremendously tall
man, with a crown of huge sapphires round his turban, and his beard was
quite blue. I need not explain that he was Bluebeard.”
“You must have been frightened,” said the little boy.
“At first perhaps,” replied the stranger, “but I came to the conclusion
that Bluebeard is not so black—or perhaps so blue—as he is painted. I
had a little confidential talk with him, and really there was something
to be said on his side of the case. Living where he did, he naturally
married wives who were all blue-stockings.”
[Illustration: Black and white illustration of a man wearing glasses
being blown through the air by strong wind, holding an umbrella in one
hand and losing his hat with the other.]
“What are blue-stockings?” asked Tommy.
“Naturally you don’t know,” replied the other; “if you did you would
sympathize more with Bluebeard. They were ladies who were always reading
books. They even read them aloud.”
“What sort of books were they?”
[Illustration: Black and white illustration featuring a giant figure
with an immense, wild beard and turban, towering over a smaller person
holding an umbrella, with a miniature figure reading in the background.]
“Blue books, of course,” replied the traveller. “They are the only kind
of book allowed there. That is why I decided to leave. With the
assistance of my friend the Wizard, I obtained a passport to cross the
frontier, which was a very vague and shadowy one, like the fine shade
between two tints of the rainbow. I only felt that I was passing over
peacockcoloured seas and meadows, and the world was growing greener and
greener, till I knew I was in a Green Country. You would think that was
more restful, and so it was, up to a point. The point was when I met the
celebrated Green Man, who has given his name for so many excellent
public houses. And then there is always a certain amount of limitation
in the work and trade of these beautiful harmonious landscapes. Have you
ever lived in a country where all the people were greengrocers? I think
not. After all, I asked myself, why should all grocers be green? I felt
myself longing to look at a yellow grocer. I saw rise up before me the
glowing image of a red grocer. It was just about this time that I
floated insensibly into the Yellow Country; but I did not stay there
very long. At first it was very splendid, a radiant scene of sunflowers
and golden crowns; but I soon found it was almost entirely filled with
Yellow Fever and the Yellow Press discussing the Yellow Peril. Of the
three I preferred the Yellow Fever; but I could not get any real peace
or happiness even out of that. So I faded through an orange haze until I
came to the Red Country, and it was there that I really found out the
truth of the matter.”
“What did you find out?” asked Tommy, who was beginning to listen much
more attentively.
[Illustration: Black and white illustration of a man standing with one
foot on an open, upturned umbrella on the grass, holding a tray with
food while reaching up toward a thatched roof, as a small boy looks on.]
“You may have heard,” said the young man, “a very vulgar expression
about painting the town red. It is more probable that you have heard the
same thought put in a more refined form by a very scholarly poet who
wrote about a rose-red city, half as old as time. Well, do you know, it
is a curious fact that in a rose-red city you cannot really see any
roses. Everything is a great deal too red. Your eyes are tired until it
might just as well all be brown. After I had been walking for ten
minutes on scarlet grass under a scarlet sky and scarlet trees, I called
out in a loud voice, ‘Oh, this is all a mistake.’ And the moment I had
said that the whole red vision vanished, and I found myself standing in
quite a different sort of place; and opposite me was my old friend the
Wizard, whose face and long rolling beard were all one sort of
colourless colour like ivory, but his eyes of a colourless blinding
brilliance like diamonds.
“‘Well,’ he said, ‘you don’t seem very easy to please. If you can’t put
up with any of these countries of any of these colours, you shall jolly
well make a country of your own.’
“And then I looked round me at the place to which he had brought me; and
a very curious place it was. It lay in great ranges of mountains, in
layers of different colours; and it looked something like sunset clouds
turned solid and something like those maps that mark geological soils
grown gigantic. And all along the terraces of the hills, they were
trenched and hollowed into great quarries; and I think I understood
without being told that this was the great original place from which all
the colours came, like the paint-box of creation. But the most curious
thing of all was that right in front of me there was a huge chasm in the
hills that opened into sheer blank daylight. At least, sometimes I
thought it was a blank and sometimes a sort of wall made of frozen light
or air and sometimes a sort of tank or tower of clear water; but anyhow
the curious thing about it was that if you splashed some of the coloured
earths upon it they remained where you had thrown them, as a bird hangs
in the air. And there the Wizard told me, rather impatiently, to make
what sort of world I liked for myself, for he was sick of my grumbling
at everything.
“So I set to work very carefully; first blocking in a great deal of
blue, because I thought it would throw up a sort of square of white in
the middle; and then I thought a fringe of a sort of dead gold would
look well along the top of the white; and I spilt some green at the
bottom of it. As for red, I had already found out the secret about red.
You have to have a very little of it to make a lot of it. So I just made
a row of little blobs of bright red on the white just above the green;
and as I went on working at the details, I slowly discovered what I was
doing; which is what very few people ever discover in this world. I
found I had put back, bit by bit, the whole of that picture over there
in front of us. I had made that white cottage with the thatch and that
summer sky behind it and that green lawn below, and the row of the red
flowers just as you see them now. That is how they come to be there. I
thought you might be interested to know it.”
And with that he turned so sharply that Tommy had not time to turn and
see him jump over the hedge; for Tommy remained staring at the cottage,
with a new look in his eyes.