[Illustration: Front end paper.]
NUMBER ONE JOY STREET
[Illustration: Black and white line drawing of a house situated above a
downward-pointing chevron shape with checkered patterns.]
[Illustration: NUMBER ONE JOY STREET
WALTER DE LA MARE THE NIGHTINGALES HILAIRE BELLOC HALLIWELL
SUTCLIFFE EDITH SITWELL ELEANOR FARJEON LAURENCE HOUSMAN HUGH
CHESTERMAN MABEL MARLOWE ROSE FYLEMAN
BASIL BLACKWELL OXFORD]
TO
ROSE FYLEMAN
WITH MANY THANKS
FOR HELP RENDERED
IN SETTING IN ORDER
THE FIRST HOUSE IN
OUR STREET
[Illustration: Stylized illustration of a person in a yellow coat and
brown hat playing a flute in a rural landscape against a blue sky.]
PIPER
Piper, piper, play me a tune
Of a summery sunshiny afternoon,
And the little brown bunnies will all come out
Frisking and jumping and bobbing about.
Piper, piper, play me a tune
Of a posy of stars and a little wee moon,
And all the fairies will start to sing
And dance on the grass in a great round ring.
ROSE FYLEMAN.
_Number One Joy Street_
_A Medley of Prose & Verse for Boys and Girls_
_By_
WALTER DE LA MARE
ELEANOR FARJEON
HILAIRE BELLOC
MADELEINE NIGHTINGALE
B. KATHLEEN PYKE
LAURENCE HOUSMAN
MABEL MARLOWE
HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE
EDITH SITWELL
HUGH CHESTERMAN
ROSE FYLEMAN
_BASIL BLACKWELL
Broad Street, Oxford
MD·CCCC·XXIII_
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN
[Illustration:
_Alec Buckels_, 1922.
]
CONTENTS
PAGE
THE PIPER _By ROSE FYLEMAN_ v
_Picture by MARIAN ALLEN._
TOM COBBLE _By ELEANOR FARJEON_ 1
_Pictures by M. DOBSON._
POEMS _By HUGH CHESTERMAN_ 42
MERCHANT ADVENTURERS 42
BROTHER BLAISE 44
THE BOWMAN 46
THE BAFFLED BARD 48
_Pictures by the AUTHOR._
THE MAN IN THE MOON _By ROSE FYLEMAN_ 51
_Pictures by M. BALLANCE._
POEMS _By B. K. PYKE_ 60
THE DREAM 60
FRIENDLESS 62
JOHNNY MUNNS 63
RESPECTABLE PEOPLE 64
_Pictures by ALEC BUCKELS._
PARSON’S TWINS _By HALLIWELL SUTCLIFFE_ 65
_Pictures by ROY MELDRUM._
POEMS _By EDITH SITWELL_ 96
MARCH FOR A TOY SOLDIER 96
DIRGE FOR A GOLLYWOG 98
THE LITTLE MUSICAL BOX 100
_Pictures by K. M. GIBBS._
PUCK’S MARKET _By MADELINE NIGHTINGALE_ 102
PUCK’S MAGIC _By MADELINE NIGHTINGALE_ 104
_Pictures by C. T.
NIGHTINGALE._
MARIA, WHO MADE FACES _By HILAIRE BELLOC_ 134
_Pictures by GABRIEL
PIPPET._
MISS JEMIMA _By WALTER DE LA MARE_ 145
_Pictures by ALEC BUCKELS._
POEMS _By ROSE FYLEMAN_ 179
GOSSIP 179
_Picture by TINKER TAYLOR._
CLOUDS 182
_Picture by EUGÉNIE
RICHARDS._
COUNTRY AND TOWN 184
_Picture by D. PHILLIPS._
HOLLOW TREE STORE _By MABLE MARLOWE_ 186
_Pictures by D. HUTTON._
TOFFEE BOY _By MABLE MARLOWE_ 194
_Pictures by D. HUTTON._
THE OPEN DOOR _By LAURENCE HOUSMAN_ 200
_Pictures by ALEC BUCKELS._
[Illustration: Black and white illustration of a figure in a cap and
coat holding a bowl, centered above a triangle with floral motifs.]
LIST OF COLOURED PLATES
THE PIPER
_By Marian Allen_ _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
“WHEN SHE FED THE DOG HE GOT A DRAGON’S TAIL”
_By M. Dobson_ 1
“THE MAN IN THE MOON WAS VERY BUSY REPAINTING THE OUTSIDE OF HIS HOUSE”
_By M. Ballance_ 51
“THEY MET ON THE CLIFF TOP ONE MOONLIGHT NIGHT”
_By Roy Meldrum_ 65
“XII O’CLOCK KNOB”
_By C. T. Nightingale_ 104
“A VERY SMALL FACE, MORE OVAL THAN ROUND”
_By Alec Buckets_ 145
“MRS. FLUFF WAS A SQUIRREL WHO KEPT A SHOP”
_By D. Hutton_ 186
“... A LITTLE CHILD WRAPPED IN A SILVER RABBIT-SKIN”
_By Alec Buckels_ 200
[Illustration: Black and white decorative border featuring repeating
floral motifs and small dotted triangles.]
_The pattern on the Cover and End-papers of this book is based on a
design from a picture by Orcagna (No. 569) in the National Gallery. It
is taken from a plate in “Fifteenth-Century Italian Ornament,” by
Sydney Vacher, and is reproduced by kind permission of Messrs. Bernard
Quaritch._
[Illustration: Black and white circular illustration featuring a tree in
a landscape.]
[Illustration: Black and white illustration of a person cooking in a
kitchen, with a dog, a spilled bowl, and a person seen through a
doorway.]
NUMBER ONE JOY STREET
✥
TOM COBBLE _By ELEANOR FARJEON_
CHAPTER I
When Tom Cobble of Shortways was seven years old, he got stolen by the
fairies. Perhaps it would be better to say that he got himself stolen,
for he certainly did it on purpose.
At about that time of life he was feeling rather offended. He was then
living with his Grandfather, who kept one of the Lodges of the Duke’s
Park. The Park ran up hill and down dale, and the wall that went round
it was twenty miles long, so that it had a great many Lodges, some of
which were on highroads and bye-roads, and others in woods and meadows.
Tom Cobble’s Grandfather’s Lodge was lucky enough to lie in a dale, with
the river flowing just outside, where fishermen would come to sit in the
reeds in the middle of the night, with lanterns and creels beside them.
The lanterns had lights in them, but the creels had nothing at all,
except a little green grass at the bottom. Sometimes Tom would get out
of the window when his Grandfather was snoring, and go and talk to the
fishermen, but they were all deaf and dumb. This was a pity, because Tom
had a lot of interesting things to ask them, and even more to tell them.
“Why doos you fish in the dark?” said Tom Cobble. “There ain’t never no
fish in the river at night; they all goos and swims in the sky. Why doos
you bait with worms and gentles? I don’t like gentles I don’t. You’d
ought to fish with parsley sauce you did. Why doos you sit with your
feet in the reeds? There was a fishingman once and his feet took root
and growed there, and he couldn’t goo away never no more, and so when my
Grandad killed the pig I bringed him toasted chitterlings I did, but one
time they mowed the reeds for thatching and so the fishingman ain’t
there no more he ain’t, but they thatched him into Betsy Ware’s lean-to
and that’s where he is now.”
The fishermen never answered his questions, or even said “Oh!” to his
information, but some wind or other would always blow up, and the reeds
would say “Shish! shish!” This offended Tom Cobble.
Just inside the Lodge gate was a knobbly grassy hollow, with fruit-trees
and chickens and patches of flower-beds, and a sheet of vegetables, and
a green bucket lying on its side half in and half out of a weedy pond.
All this was Tom’s playground, but a bit further back the beeches and
wild cherry-trees began, at the foot of a slope; the wild cherries got
tired before they reached the top, but the beeches went all the way up.
Tom Cobble was not supposed to go further than the first two
cherry-trees, but he often tried to get as high as the top beech. This
was difficult, because the ground was in ridges that were hard to climb
and hollows that were easy to tumble in. They were covered and filled
with beech-mast, as brown as a fishing-sail on top, and as black as
pickled walnuts underneath. The mast lay so thick in the hollows that
Tom Cobble sometimes tumbled into a drift of beech-leaf as deep as snow,
and he came out with the old leaves in his hair and down his neck, and
sticking to every part of his little person before and behind; and his
palms and knees were as black as walnut-juice. Then his Grandfather knew
where he had been. So he needn’t have asked,
“Where you been, Tom?”
[Illustration: Black and white illustration of a child falling through
the air near a running rabbit.]
But he did.
Tom said, “I seed a little rabbit with horns on its head I did, and I
runned to catch it by its little tail, but the tail comed off in my
hand, and the Duke comed by with gold boots on and said if I would plant
the little tail in the beech-mast another little rabbit would grow on it
come Michaelmas, and so I did, Grandad, you come and see.”
But his Grandad didn’t come and see; he went instead to the
chimney-place where his carpet slippers were warming, and he laid his
grandson across his knee, and the slipper said “Slap! slap!” This also
offended Tom Cobble. For Tom Cobble saw the world in his own way, and if
other people saw it different, he couldn’t help that.
It was these things which made him get himself stolen by the fairies.
He knew how, quite well. He went one evening to the mushroom field
before the moon was up, and lay down in the middle of the biggest green
ring there without saying his prayers. When the moon came up, the
fairies came out and got him.
“It’s no manner of use, Tom Cobble,” they said, when he woke up under
the Hill. “We’ve got you fast for seven years, and it’s no manner of use
to cry.”
“I aren’t crying I aren’t,” said Tom. “Ol’ Betsy Ware she cried when the
fox got her chickens, she cried so hard she did ‘at the Duke’s Steward
comed in a pink satin coach and laid a gold gutter down her garden to
catch her crying, with a little pool for goldfishes at the bottom. But
her tears was that hot ’at the goldfishes frizzled, an’ she eat ’em for
supper, an’ she gived me one and it tasted like treacle pudden.”
The fairies listened attentively, and then they looked worried and said,
“What shall we do with him?”
“Let’s let him go,” said one.
“We can’t do that,” said a second, “we’ve bound him fast for seven
years, and who knows what he’ll pick up in that time? Why, once he gets
the hang of it, he’ll outdo Puck himself.”
[Illustration:
_An old Enchanter limped forward._
]
“Hang o’ what?” asked Tom Cobble.
“Magic,” said a thoughtless elf—and clapped his hand over his mouth as
he said it.
“We’s got the hang o’ magic at home we has,” said Tom Cobble. “We hanged
its flitch in the chimbley-piece the day afore I comed away; an’ I left
my Grandad a-plaiting of Puck’s chitterlings I did, and the rest of
him’s in the pickle-tub.”
At this an old Enchanter limped forward and said, “Give the brat to me.
I’ll keep him out of harm’s way. He shall serve his time as my
kitchen-boy, and learn no more than I choose.”
So the fairies handed Tom Cobble over to the Enchanter and went back to
their dancing.
[Illustration: Black and white illustration depicting a person eating at
a table supported by a lion, with "Chapter II" written in a ribbon
above.]