Discreet Reader!
You have seen--and 'tis no longer ago than YESTERDAY!--you must well
remember the picture--which showed you from the rough yet
delicate--the humorous yet sympathetic and picturesque--the original
yet insinuating pencil of a shrewd and hearty Lusatian
mountaineer--the aerial, brilliant, sensitive, subtle, fascinating,
enigmatical, outwardly--mirth-given, inwardly--sorrow-touched,
congregated folk numberless--of the Fairies Proper!--showed them at
the urgency of a rare and strange need--clung, in DEPENDENCY, to one
fair, kind, good and happily-born Daughter of Man!--And what
wonder?--The once glorious, but now forlorn spirits, leaning for one
fate-burthened instant their trust upon the spirits ineffably
favoured!--What wonder! that often as the revolution of ages brings
on the appointed hour, the rebellious and outcast children of heaven
must sue--to their keen emergency--help--oh! speak up to the height
of the want, of the succour! and call it _a lent ray of grace_, from
the rebellious and REDEEMED children of the earth!--And see, where,
in the serene eyes of the soft Christian maiden, the hallowing
influence shines!--Auspiciously begun, the awed though aspiring Rite,
the still, the multitudinous, the mystical, prospers!--_Gratefully_,
as for the boon inexpressibly worth--_easily_, as of their own
transcending power--_promptly_, as though fearing that a benefit
received could wax cold, the joyful Elves crown upon the bright hair
of their graciously natured, but humanly and womanly weak
benefactress--the wedded felicity of pure love!
And the imaginary curtain has dropped! Lo, where it rises again,
discovering to view our stage, greatly changed, and, a little
perhaps, our actors!--Once more, attaching to the HUMAN DRAMA,
slight, as though it were structured of cloud, of air, the same light
and radiant MACHINERY! Once more, only that They, whom you lately saw
tranquil, earnest even to pathos--"now are frolic"--enough and to
spare!--Once more--THE FAIRIES.
And see, too--where, centring in herself interest and action of the
rapidly shifting scenery--ever again a beautiful granddaughter of Eve
steps--free and fearless, and bouyant and bounding--our fancy-laid
boards!--Ah! but how much unresembling the sweet maid!--_Outwardly_,
for lofty-piled is the roof that ceils over the superb head of the
modern Amazon, Swanhilda--more unlike _within_. Instead of the clear
truth, the soul's gentle purity, the "plain and holy Innocence" of
the poor fairy-beloved mountain child--SHE, in whose person and
fortunes you are invited--for the next fifty minutes--to forget your
own--harbours, fondly harbours, ill housemates of her virginal
breast! a small, resolute, well-armed and well confederated garrison
of unwomanly faults. Pride is there!--The iron-hard and the
iron-cold! There Scorn--edging repulse with insult!--and envenoming
insult with despair!--leaps up, in eager answer to the beseeching
sighs, tears, and groans of earth-bent Adoration. And there is the
indulged Insolency of a domineering--and as you will precipitately
augur--an _indomitable_ Will! And there is exuberant SELF-POWER,
that, from the innermost mind, oozing up, out, distilling,
circulating along nerve and vein, effects a magical metamorphosis!
turns the nymph into a squire of arms; usurping even the clamorous
and blood-sprinkled joy of man--the tempestuous and terrible CHASE,
which, in the bosom of peace, imaging war, shows in the rougher lord
of creation himself, as harsh, wild, and turbulent! Oh, how much
other than yon sweet lily of the high Lusatian valleys, the
shade-loving Flower, the good Maud--herself looked upon with love by
the glad eyes of men, women, children, Fairies, and Angels! oh, other
indeed! And yet, have you, in this thickly clustered enumeration of
unamiable qualities, implicitly heard the CALL which must fasten,
which has fastened, upon the gentle Maud's _haughty_ antithesis--the
serviceable regard, and--the FAVOUR, even of THE FAIRIES.
The FAVOUR!!
Hear, impatient spectator, the simple plot and its brief process. You
are, after a fashion, informed with what studious, persevering, and
unmerciful violation of all gentle decorum and feminine pity, the
lovely marble-souled tyranness has, in the course of the last three
or four years, turned back from her beetle-browed castle-gate, one by
one, as they showed themselves there--a hundred, all worthily
born--otherwise more and less meritorious--petitioners for that
whip-and-javelin-bearing hand. You are NOW to know, that upon this
very morning, an embassy from the willow-wearers all--or, to speak
indeed more germanely to the matter, of the BASKET-BEARERS[22],
waited upon their beautiful enemy with an ultimatum and manifesto in
one, importing first a requisition to surrender; then, in case of
refusal to capitulate, the announcement that HYMEN having found in
CUPID an inefficient ally, he was about associating with himself, in
league offensive, the god MARS, with intent of carrying the
Maiden-fortress by storm, and reducing the aforesaid wild occupants
of the stronghold into captivity--whereunto she made answer--
----our castle's strength
Will laugh a siege to scorn--
herself laughing outrageously to scorn the senders and the sent This
crowning of wrong upon wrong will the Fairies, in the first place,
wreak and right.
[Footnote 22: To German ears--to SEND A BASKET--is to REFUSE A
PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE.]
But further, later upon the same unlucky day, the Kingdom of Elves,
being in full council assembled in the broad light of the sun, upon
the fair greensward; ere the very numerous, but not widely sitting
diet had yet well opened its proceedings--"tramp, tramp, across the
land," came, flying at full speed, boar-spear in hand, our madcap
huntress; and without other note of preparation sounded than their
own thunder, her iron-grey's hoofs were in the thick of the sage
assembly, causing an indecorous trepidation, combined with
devastation dire to persons and--wearing apparel.
This wrong, in the second place, the Fairies will wreak and right.
And all transgression and injury, under one procedure, which
is--_summary_; as, from the character of the judges and executioners,
into whose hands the sinner has fallen, you would expect;
sufficiently prankish too. With one sleight of their magical hand
they turn the impoverished heiress of ill-possessed acres forth upon
the highway, doomed to earn, with strenuous manual industry, her
livelihood; until, from the winnings of her handicraft, she is
moreover able to make good, as far as this was liable to pecuniary
assessment, the damage sustained under foot of her fiery barb by the
Fairy realm; comfort with handsome presents the rejected suitors; and
until, thoroughly tame, she yields into her softened and opened
bosom, now rid of its intemperate inmates, an entrance to the once
debarred and contemned visitant--LOVE.
As to the way and style of the Fairy operations that carry out this
drift, comparing the Two Tales, you will see, that omitting, as a
matter that is related merely, not presented, that misadventure under
the oak-tree--there is, in the chamber of Swanhilda, but a Fairy
delegation active, whilst under the Sun's hill whole Elfdom is in
presence; in that resplendent hollow, wearing their own lovely
shapes; within the German castle-walls, in apt masquerade. There they
were grave. Here, we have already said, that they are merry. There
their office was to feel and to think. Here, if there be any trust in
apparitions, they drink, and what is more critical for an Elfin
lip--they eat!
Lastly, to end the comparisons for our well-bred, well-dressed, and
right courtly cavalier, who transacted between the Fairy Queen and
the stonemason's daughter, him you shall presently see turned into a
sort of Elfin cupbearer or court butler; not without fairy grace of
person and of mind assuredly; not without a due innate sense of the
beautiful, as his perfumed name (SWEETFLOWER) at the outset warns
you; and, as the proximity of his function to her Majesty's
person--for we do not here fall in with any thing like mention of a
king--would suggest, independently of the delicately responsible part
borne by him in the action, the chief stress of which you will find
incumbent upon his capable shoulders.
Such, in respect of the subject, is, thrice courteous and intelligent
reader, the second piece of art, which we are glad to have the
opportunity of placing before you, from our clever friend Ernst
Willkomm's apparently right fertile easel. The second, answering to
the first, LIKE and UNLIKE, you perceive, as two companion pictures
should be.
But it would be worse than useless to tell you that which you have
seen and that which you will see, unless, from the juxtaposition of
the two fables, there followed--a moral. They have, as we apprehend,
a moral--_i.e._ one moral, and that a grave one, in common between
them.
Hitherto we have superficially compared THE FAIRIES' SABBATH and the
FAIRY TUTOR. We now wish to develope a profounder analogy connecting
them. We have compared them, as if ESTHETICALLY; we would now compare
them MYTHOLOGICALLY--for, in our understanding, there lies at the
very foundation of both tales A MYTHOLOGICAL ROOT--by whomsoever set,
whether by Ernst Willkomm to-day, or by the population of the
Lusatian mountains--three, six, ten centuries ago; or, in unreckoned
antiquity, by the common Ancestors of the believers, who, in still
unmeasured antiquity, brought the superstition of the Fairies out of
central Asia to remote occidental Europe.
This ROOT we are bold to think is--"A DEEPLY SEATED ATTRACTION,
ALLYING THE FAIRY MIND TO THE PURITY AND INTEGRITY OF THE MORAL WILL
IN THE MIND OF MEN." And first for the Tale which presently concerns
us:--THE FAIRY TUTOR.
SWEETFLOWER will beguile us into believing that the interposition of
the Fairies in our Baroness's domestic arrangements, grows up, if one
shall so hazardously speak, from TWO seeds, each bearing two
branches--namely, from two wrongs, the one hitting, the other
striking from, themselves--BOTH which wrongs they will AVENGE and
AMEND. We take up a strenuous theory; and we deny--and we
defy--SWEETFLOWER. Nay, more! Should our excellent friend, ERNST
WILLKOMM, be found taking part, real or apparent, with SWEETFLOWER,
we defy and we deny Ernst Willkomm. For in this mixed case of the
Fairy wrong, we distinguish, first, INJURIES which shall be
retaliated, and, as far as may be, compensated; and secondly, a
SHREW, who is to be turned _into_ a WIFE, being previously turned
_out of_ a shrew.
We dare to believe that this last-mentioned end is the thing
uppermost, and undermost, and middlemost in the mind of the Fairies;
is, in fact, the true and _the sole final cause_ of all their
proceedings.
Or that the _moral heart_ of the poem--that root in the human breast
and will, from which every true poem springs heavenward--is here the
zeal of the spirits for _morally reforming Swanhilda_; is, therefore,
that deep-seated attraction, which, as we have averred, essentially
allies the inclination of the Fairies to the moral conscience in our
own kind.
One end, therefore, grounds the whole story, although two and more
are proposed by _Sweetflower_. It is one that _satisfies_ the moral
reason in man; for it is no less than to cleanse and heal the will,
wounded with error, of a human creature. That other, which he
displays, with mock emphasis, of restitution to the downtrodden
fairyhood, is an exotic, fair and slight bud, grafted into the
sturdier indigenous stock. For let us fix but a steady look upon the
thing itself, and what is there before us? a whim, a trick of the
fancy, tickling the fancy. We are amused with a quaint calamity--a
panic of caps and cloaks. We laugh--we cannot help it--as the pigmy
assembly flies a thousand ways at once--grave councillors and
all--throwing terrified somersets--hiding under stones, roots--diving
into coney-burrows--"any where--any where"--vanishing out of
harm's--if not out of dismay's--reach. In a tale of the Fairies, THE
FANCY rules:--and the interest of such a misfortune, definite and not
infinite, is congenial to the spirit of the gay faculty which hovers
over, lives upon surfaces, and which flees abysses; which thence,
likewise, in the moral sphere, is equal to apprehending resentment of
a personal wrong, and a judicial assessment of damages--but NOT A
DISINTERESTED MORAL END.
What is our conclusion then? plainly that the dolorous overthrow of
the fairy divan is no better than an invention--the device of an
esthetical artist. We hold that Ernst Willkomm has _gratuitously_
bestowed upon us the disastrous catastrophe; that he has done this,
knowing the obligation which lies upon Fancy within her own chosen
domain to _create_, because--there, Fancy listens and reads. The
adroit Fairy delineator must wile over and reconcile the most
sportive, capricious, and self-willed spirit of our understanding, to
accept a purpose foreign to that spirit's habitual sympathies--a
purpose solemn and austere--THE MORAL PURPOSE OF RESCUING A
SIN-ENTANGLED HUMAN SOUL.
Or, if Ernst Willkomm shall guarantee to us, that the reminiscences
of his people have furnished him with the materials of this tale; if
he is, as we must needs hope, who have freely dealt with you to
believe that he is--honest: honest both as to the general character,
and the particular facts of his representations--if, in short, the
Lusatian Highlanders do, sitting by the bench and the stove, aver and
protest that the said Swanhilda did overturn both council-board and
councillors--then we say, upon this occasion, that which we must all,
hundreds of times, declare--namely, that _The Genius of Tradition_ is
the foremost of artists; and further, that in this instance _an
unwilled fiction_, determined by a necessity of the human bosom, has
risen up _to mantle seriousness with grace_, as a free woodbine
enclasps with her slender-gadding twines, and bedecks with her sweet
bright blossoms, a towering giant of the grove.
It will perhaps be objected, that the moral purity and goodness that
are so powerful to draw to themselves the regard and care of the
spiritual people, are wanting in the character of the over-bold
Swanhilda. We have said that her _faults_ are the CALL to the Fairies
for help and reformation: but we may likewise guess that Virtue and
Truth first won their love. It must be recollected that the faults
which are extirpated from the breast of our heroine, are not such as,
in our natural understanding of humanity, dishonour or sully. Taken
away, the character may stand clear. It is quite possible that this
gone, there shall be left behind a kind, good, affectionate,
generous, noble nature.
We are free, or, more properly speaking, we are bound to believe,
that thus the Fairies left Swanhilda.
As for Maud, we know--for she was told--that the Fairies loved her
for herself ere they needed her aid. Hanging as it were upon that
wondrous power to help which dwelt within her--her simple
goodness--may we not say that the Fairies discover an ENFORCED
attraction, when they afterwards approach the maiden for their own
succour and salvation; as they do, a FREE attraction, when, in the
person of Swanhilda, they disinterestedly attach themselves to
reforming a fault for the welfare and happiness of her whom it
aggrieves?
* * * * *
We will now proceed, as in our former communication, to adduce
instances from other quarters, confirming the fairy delineations
offered by our tale; or which may tend generally to bring out its
mythological and literary character.
Two points would suggest themselves to us in the tale of the Fairy
Tutor, as chiefly provoking comparison. The first is:--_The affirmed
Presidency of the Fairies over human morals_, viewed as _a Shape of
the Interest_ which they take in the uprightness and purity of the
human will.