IT is something to have heard once in a lifetime the ecstatic thrill that
glorifies Essex Hall while that intellectual pirate Mr. Bernard Shaw
sails out and scuttles a number of little merchant ships of thought that
have never hurt anybody. The applause and admiring laughter that
punctuate his periods really suggest that Fabianism makes people happy,
while the continued prosperity of the group gives the lie to the cynic
who reminded me how popular ping-pong was while the craze lasted, and how
utterly forgotten it is to-day. But I had to rub my eyes while I stood
in the overcrowded room, listening to Puck in Jaeger, more witty,
perhaps, than the old Puck, but no less boyishly malicious, and ask
myself whether, after all, this was only the old magic in a new form.
True, civilisation had perforce made him larger in order that human
beings might appreciate his eloquence, and I saw no traces of wings or
magic flowers. But beyond that I recognised the same pitying contempt
for mortals, the same arrogant confession of his own faults, the same
naïve cunning. And then (perhaps a turn of the voice did it, or some
slight slurring of the words) the enchantment passed, the ears of his
audience resumed their ordinary dimensions, and I offered mentally two
teaspoonfuls of honey to the real Puck, for I saw that he had tricked me
into recognising his qualities in the most serious man the twentieth
century knows.
Yet, though I found Mr. Shaw to be only a prophet and his fellow-Fabians
honest enthusiasts instead of bewitched weavers, I cannot say that the
discovery left my mind at ease for the welfare of the fairy kingdom that
is so important to every one who has not forgotten it. What if this
terrible seriousness were to spread? What if every one were to turn
prophet? What if a night should come when never a child in all the Duke
of York’s Theatre would clap its hands to keep Tinker Bell alive? At
first I wished to reject this frightful end of all our play and laughter
and wonder as impossible. Yet sinister stories of children who preferred
sewing-machines and working models to dolls and tin soldiers rose in my
mind, and it is hardly more than a step from that degree of progress to
the case of the child who may find the science of sanitation more
interesting than tales of fairies. The possibility should make even the
extremists shudder, but it must be remembered that many honest people
believe in technical education, and that for that matter practically the
whole of the teaching in our schools takes the form of an attack on the
stronghold of the imaginative child. It is our barbarous custom to
supplant a child’s really beautiful theories with the ugly crudities
which we call facts, and it is impossible to realise how much humanity
loses in the process. As for the fairies, frail little folk at best, how
shall they prevail against the criticism of our sulphur and the cunning
of our permanganate of potash? Shall we always be able to distinguish
them from microbes?
It may be well to pause here and see whither the wise, serious men of
to-day are taking us. I suppose they will abolish Will-o’-the-Wisp by
draining all the marshes, and their extreme industry will render Puck’s
kindly household labours ludicrously unnecessary. They will turn their
swords against all the bad barons, unjust kings, and spiteful magicians,
whose punishment has been hitherto the fairies’ special task; and this
they will do in blackleg fashion, neither demanding nor receiving their
just wages of beauty and immortality. They will scornfully set aside the
law, so dear to the younger inhabitants of nurseries, by which it is
always the youngest son or the youngest daughter whom the gods delight to
honour. They will fill with porridge and deck with flannel underclothing
the little flower-girls and crossing-sweepers, whose triumphs set faith
in the eyes of babes. With their hard, cruel facts they will completely
wreck the fairy civilisation which has taken centuries of dreaming and
wondering children to construct. They will brush our fancies away like
cobwebs.
A while ago, when I was a little boy, some enemy seeing me admire the
stars thought it necessary to tell me exactly what they were; later, my
natural interest in the extraordinary behaviour of the sea led another
enemy to place a globe in my hands, and prick the bubble of the universe
with ridiculous explanations. So it is that when I regard the heavens I
see enormous balls of rotting chemicals, rendered contemptibly small by
distance, floating in a thin fluid called space; so it is that when I
look at the sea my mind is occupied with stupid problems about the route
of floating bamboos, when I ought to be exalted as one who peers out
through the darkness towards the Unknown. Where there were two then,
there are to-day twenty kindly persons about every child, eager to prove
the things it would like to believe in superstitions, and eager to
explain away its miracles in terms of dustcarts and vegetable soup. Our
babies are taught to hang out their stockings and to batter in their
empty egg-shells, but are reminded at the same moment that these charming
rituals are but follies, and that the capital of Scotland is Edinburgh.
Youngsters babble Imperialism and Socialism when they ought to be
standing on their heads to look at the Antipodes, and their parents
commend their common sense. Already, I fear, the wings of many of the
fairies are beginning to fade, and Puck capers but mournfully in his
lonely haunts.
But fairies, goblins, elves, call them what you will, they are worth
having, and that is why I would entreat the wise men who are arranging
to-morrow for us to spare them, even though they have forgotten
themselves all that the presence of fairies in the world is worth. By
all means feed the children and give them Union Jacks, but let their
faith in the beautiful be looked to as well. And, finally, to the
serious person who says with raised eyebrows, “You can’t honestly say you
believe in fairies!” I would answer this: In a world which at present is
fiercely antagonistic to the belief in any emotion less material than
hunger, it is impossible to avoid occasional doubt concerning the
existence of anything which it is not possible to eat. But when I am in
the company of those who really do believe I do not fail to hear the
echoes of fairy laughter in their speech, and see the flicker of fairy
wings reflected in their eyes, and with this knowledge I am content.