It is frightfully difficult to know much about the fairies, and almost
the only thing known for certain is that there are fairies wherever
there are children. Long ago children were forbidden the Gardens, and
at that time there was not a fairy in the place; then the children
were admitted, and the fairies came trooping in that very evening.
They can't resist following the children, but you seldom see them,
partly because they live in the daytime behind the railings, where you
are not allowed to go, and also partly because they are so cunning.
They are not a bit cunning after Lock-out, but until Lock-out, my
word!
When you were a bird you knew the fairies pretty well, and you
remember a good deal about them in your babyhood, which it is a great
pity you can't write down, for gradually you forget, and I have heard
of children who declared that they had never once seen a fairy. Very
likely if they said this in the Kensington Gardens, they were standing
looking at a fairy all the time. The reason they were cheated was
that she pretended to be something else. This is one of their best
tricks. They usually pretend to be flowers, because the court sits in
the Fairies' Basin, and there are so many flowers there, and all along
the Baby Walk, that a flower is the thing least likely to attract
attention. They dress exactly like flowers, and change with the
seasons, putting on white when lilies are in and blue for blue-bells,
and so on. They like crocus and hyacinth time best of all, as they
are partial to a bit of colour, but tulips (except white ones, which
are the fairy-cradles) they consider garish, and they sometimes put
off dressing like tulips for days, so that the beginning of the tulip
weeks is almost the best time to catch them.
When they think you are not looking they skip along pretty lively, but
if you look and they fear there is no time to hide, they stand quite
still, pretending to be flowers. Then, after you have passed without
knowing that they were fairies, they rush home and tell their mothers
they have had such an adventure. The Fairy Basin, you remember, is
all covered with ground-ivy (from which they make their castor-oil),
with flowers growing in it here and there. Most of them really are
flowers, but some of them are fairies. You never can be sure of them,
but a good plan is to walk by looking the other way, and then turn
round sharply. Another good plan, which David and I sometimes follow,
is to stare them down. After a long time they can't help winking, and
then you know for certain that they are fairies.
There are also numbers of them along the Baby Walk, which is a famous
gentle place, as spots frequented by fairies are called. Once
twenty-four of them had an extraordinary adventure. They were a
girls' school out for a walk with the governess, and all wearing
hyacinth gowns, when she suddenly put her finger to her mouth, and
then they all stood still on an empty bed and pretended to be
hyacinths. Unfortunately, what the governess had heard was two
gardeners coming to plant new flowers in that very bed. They were
wheeling a handcart with flowers in it, and were quite surprised to
find the bed occupied. "Pity to lift them hyacinths," said the one
man. "Duke's orders," replied the other, and, having emptied the
cart, they dug up the boarding-school and put the poor, terrified
things in it in five rows. Of course, neither the governess nor the
girls dare let on that they were fairies, so they were carted far away
to a potting-shed, out of which they escaped in the night without
their shoes, but there was a great row about it among the parents, and
the school was ruined.
As for their houses, it is no use looking for them, because they are
the exact opposite of our houses. You can see our houses by day but
you can't see them by dark. Well, you can see their houses by dark,
but you can't see them by day, for they are the colour of night, and I
never heard of anyone yet who could see night in the daytime. This
does not mean that they are black, for night has its colours just as
day has, but ever so much brighter. Their blues and reds and greens
are like ours with a light behind them. The palace is entirely built
of many-coloured glasses, and is quite the loveliest of all royal
residences, but the queen sometimes complains because the common
people will peep in to see what she is doing. They are very
inquisitive folk, and press quite hard against the glass, and that is
why their noses are mostly snubby. The streets are miles long and
very twisty, and have paths on each side made of bright worsted. The
birds used to steal the worsted for their nests, but a policeman has
been appointed to hold on at the other end.
One of the great differences between the fairies and us is that they
never do anything useful. When the first baby laughed for the first
time, his laugh broke into a million pieces, and they all went
skipping about. That was the beginning of fairies. They look
tremendously busy, you know, as if they had not a moment to spare, but
if you were to ask them what they are doing, they could not tell you
in the least. They are frightfully ignorant, and everything they do
is make-believe. They have a postman, but he never calls except at
Christmas with his little box, and though they have beautiful schools,
nothing is taught in them; the youngest child being chief person is
always elected mistress, and when she has called the roll, they all go
out for a walk and never come back. It is a very noticeable thing
that, in fairy families, the youngest is always chief person, and
usually becomes a prince or princess, and children remember this, and
think it must be so among humans also, and that is why they are often
made uneasy when they come upon their mother furtively putting new
frills on the basinette.
You have probably observed that your baby-sister wants to do all sorts
of things that your mother and her nurse want her not to do: to stand
up at sitting-down time, and to sit down at standing-up time, for
instance, or to wake up when she should fall asleep, or to crawl on
the floor when she is wearing her best frock, and so on, and perhaps
you put this down to naughtiness. But it is not; it simply means that
she is doing as she has seen the fairies do; she begins by following
their ways, and it takes about two years to get her into the human
ways. Her fits of passion, which are awful to behold, and are usually
called teething, are no such thing; they are her natural exasperation,
because we don't understand her, though she is talking an intelligible
language. She is talking fairy. The reason mothers and nurses know
what her remarks mean, before other people know, as that "Guch" means
"Give it to me at once," while "Wa" is "Why do you wear such a funny
hat?" is because, mixing so much with babies, they have picked up a
little of the fairy language.
Of late David has been thinking back hard about the fairy tongue, with
his hands clutching his temples, and he has remembered a number of
their phrases which I shall tell you some day if I don't forget. He
had heard them in the days when he was a thrush, and though I
suggested to him that perhaps it is really bird language he is
remembering, he says not, for these phrases are about fun and
adventures, and the birds talked of nothing but nest-building. He
distinctly remembers that the birds used to go from spot to spot like
ladies at shop-windows, looking at the different nests and saying,
"Not my colour, my dear," and "How would that do with a soft lining?"
and "But will it wear?" and "What hideous trimming!" and so on.
The fairies are exquisite dancers, and that is why one of the first
things the baby does is to sign to you to dance to him and then to cry
when you do it. They hold their great balls in the open air, in what
is called a fairy-ring. For weeks afterward you can see the ring on
the grass. It is not there when they begin, but they make it by
waltzing round and round. Sometimes you will find mushrooms inside
the ring, and these are fairy chairs that the servants have forgotten
to clear away. The chairs and the rings are the only tell-tale marks
these little people leave behind them, and they would remove even
these were they not so fond of dancing that they toe it till the very
moment of the opening of the gates. David and I once found a
fairy-ring quite warm.
But there is also a way of finding out about the ball before it takes
place. You know the boards which tell at what time the Gardens are to
close to-day. Well, these tricky fairies sometimes slyly change the
board on a ball night, so that it says the Gardens are to close at
six-thirty for instance, instead of at seven. This enables them to
get begun half an hour earlier.
If on such a night we could remain behind in the Gardens, as the
famous Maimie Mannering did, we might see delicious sights, hundreds
of lovely fairies hastening to the ball, the married ones wearing
their wedding-rings round their waists, the gentlemen, all in uniform,
holding up the ladies' trains, and linkmen running in front carrying
winter cherries, which are the fairy-lanterns, the cloakroom where
they put on their silver slippers and get a ticket for their wraps,
the flowers streaming up from the Baby Walk to look on, and always
welcome because they can lend a pin, the supper-table, with Queen Mab
at the head of it, and behind her chair the Lord Chamberlain, who
carries a dandelion on which he blows when Her Majesty wants to know
the time.
The table-cloth varies according to the seasons, and in May it is made
of chestnut-blossom. The way the fairy-servants do is this: The men,
scores of them, climb up the trees and shake the branches, and the
blossom falls like snow. Then the lady servants sweep it together by
whisking their skirts until it is exactly like a table-cloth, and that
is how they get their table-cloth.
They have real glasses and real wine of three kinds, namely,
blackthorn wine, berberris wine, and cowslip wine, and the Queen pours
out, but the bottles are so heavy that she just pretends to pour out.
There is bread and butter to begin with, of the size of a threepenny
bit; and cakes to end with, and they are so small that they have no
crumbs. The fairies sit round on mushrooms, and at first they are
very well-behaved and always cough off the table, and so on, but after
a bit they are not so well-behaved and stick their fingers into the
butter, which is got from the roots of old trees, and the really
horrid ones crawl over the table-cloth chasing sugar or other
delicacies with their tongues. When the Queen sees them doing this
she signs to the servants to wash up and put away, and then everybody
adjourns to the dance, the Queen walking in front while the Lord
Chamberlain walks behind her, carrying two little pots, one of which
contains the juice of wall-flower and the other the juice of Solomon's
Seals. Wall-flower juice is good for reviving dancers who fall to the
ground in a fit, and Solomon's Seals juice is for bruises. They
bruise very easily and when Peter plays faster and faster they foot it
till they fall down in fits. For, as you know without my telling you,
Peter Pan is the fairies' orchestra. He sits in the middle of the
ring, and they would never dream of having a smart dance nowadays
without him. "P. P." is written on the corner of the invitation-cards
sent out by all really good families. They are grateful little
people, too, and at the princess's coming-of-age ball (they come of
age on their second birthday and have a birthday every month) they
gave him the wish of his heart.
The way it was done was this. The Queen ordered him to kneel, and
then said that for playing so beautifully she would give him the wish
of his heart. Then they all gathered round Peter to hear what was the
wish of his heart, but for a long time he hesitated, not being certain
what it was himself.
"If I chose to go back to mother," he asked at last, "could you give
me that wish?"
Now this question vexed them, for were he to return to his mother they
should lose his music, so the Queen tilted her nose contemptuously and
said, "Pooh, ask for a much bigger wish than that."
"Is that quite a little wish?" he inquired.
"As little as this," the Queen answered, putting her hands near each
other.
"What size is a big wish?" he asked.
She measured it off on her skirt and it was a very handsome length.
Then Peter reflected and said, "Well, then, I think I shall have two
little wishes instead of one big one."
Of course, the fairies had to agree, though his cleverness rather
shocked them, and he said that his first wish was to go to his mother,
but with the right to return to the Gardens if he found her
disappointing. His second wish he would hold in reserve.
They tried to dissuade him, and even put obstacles in the way.
"I can give you the power to fly to her house," the Queen said, "but I
can't open the door for you."
"The window I flew out at will be open," Peter said confidently.
"Mother always keeps it open in the hope that I may fly back.
"How do you know?" they asked, quite surprised, and, really, Peter
could not explain how he knew.
"I just do know," he said.
So as he persisted in his wish, they had to grant it. The way they
gave him power to fly was this: They all tickled him on the shoulder,
and soon he felt a funny itching in that part and then up he rose
higher and higher and flew away out of the Gardens and over the
house-tops.
It was so delicious that instead of flying straight to his old home he
skimmed away over St. Paul's to the Crystal Palace and back by the
river and Regent's Park, and by the time he reached his mother's
window he had quite made up his mind that his second wish should be to
become a bird.
The window was wide open, just as he knew it would be, and in he
fluttered, and there was his mother lying asleep.
Peter alighted softly on the wooden rail at the foot of the bed and
had a good look at her. She lay with her head on her hand, and the
hollow in the pillow was like a nest lined with her brown wavy hair.
He remembered, though he had long forgotten it, that she always gave
her hair a holiday at night.
How sweet the frills of her night-gown were. He was very glad she was
such a pretty mother.
But she looked sad, and he knew why she looked sad. One of her arms
moved as if it wanted to go round something, and he knew what it
wanted to go round.
"Oh, mother," said Peter to himself, "if you just knew who is sitting
on the rail at the foot of the bed."
Very gently he patted the little mound that her feet made, and he
could see by her face that she liked it. He knew he had but to say
"Mother" ever so softly, and she would wake up. They always wake up
at once if it is you that says their name. Then she would give such a
joyous cry and squeeze him tight. How nice that would be to him, but
oh, how exquisitely delicious it would be to her. That I am afraid is
how Peter regarded it. In returning to his mother he never doubted
that he was giving her the greatest treat a woman can have. Nothing
can be more splendid, he thought, than to have a little boy of your
own. How proud of him they are; and very right and proper, too.
But why does Peter sit so long on the rail, why does he not tell his
mother that he has come back?
I quite shrink from the truth, which is that he sat there in two
minds. Sometimes he looked longingly at his mother, and sometimes he
looked longingly at the window. Certainly it would be pleasant to be
her boy again, but, on the other hand, what times those had been in
the Gardens! Was he so sure that he would enjoy wearing clothes
again? He popped off the bed and opened some drawers to have a look
at his old garments. They were still there, but he could not remember
how you put them on. The socks, for instance, were they worn on the
hands or on the feet? He was about to try one of them on his hand,
when he had a great adventure. Perhaps the drawer had creaked; at any
rate, his mother woke up, for he heard her say "Peter," as if it was
the most lovely word in the language. He remained sitting on the
floor and held his breath, wondering how she knew that he had come
back. If she said "Peter" again, he meant to cry "Mother" and run to
her. But she spoke no more, she made little moans only, and when next
he peeped at her she was once more asleep, with tears on her face.
It made Peter very miserable, and what do you think was the first
thing he did? Sitting on the rail at the foot of the bed, he played a
beautiful lullaby to his mother on his pipe. He had made it up
himself out of the way she said "Peter," and he never stopped playing
until she looked happy.
He thought this so clever of him that he could scarcely resist
wakening her to hear her say, "Oh, Peter, how exquisitely you play."
However, as she now seemed comfortable, he again cast looks at the
window. You must not think that he meditated flying away and never
coming back. He had quite decided to be his mother's boy, but
hesitated about beginning to-night. It was the second wish which
troubled him. He no longer meant to make it a wish to be a bird, but
not to ask for a second wish seemed wasteful, and, of course, he could
not ask for it without returning to the fairies. Also, if he put off
asking for his wish too long it might go bad. He asked himself if he
had not been hard-hearted to fly away without saying good-bye to
Solomon. "I should like awfully to sail in my boat just once more,"
he said wistfully to his sleeping mother. He quite argued with her as
if she could hear him. "It would be so splendid to tell the birds of
this adventure," he said coaxingly. "I promise to come back," he said
solemnly and meant it, too.
And in the end, you know, he flew away. Twice he came back from the
window, wanting to kiss his mother, but he feared the delight of it
might waken her, so at last he played her a lovely kiss on his pipe,
and then he flew back to the Gardens.
Many nights and even months passed before he asked the fairies for his
second wish; and I am not sure that I quite know why he delayed so
long. One reason was that he had so many good-byes to say, not only
to his particular friends, but to a hundred favourite spots. Then he
had his last sail, and his very last sail, and his last sail of all,
and so on. Again, a number of farewell feasts were given in his
honour; and another comfortable reason was that, after all, there was
no hurry, for his mother would never weary of waiting for him. This
last reason displeased old Solomon, for it was an encouragement to the
birds to procrastinate. Solomon had several excellent mottoes for
keeping them at their work, such as "Never put off laying to-day,
because you can lay to-morrow," and "In this world there are no second
chances," and yet here was Peter gaily putting off and none the worse
for it. The birds pointed this out to each other, and fell into lazy
habits.
But, mind you, though Peter was so slow in going back to his mother,
he was quite decided to go back. The best proof of this was his
caution with the fairies. They were most anxious that he should
remain in the Gardens to play to them, and to bring this to pass they
tried to trick him into making such a remark as "I wish the grass was
not so wet," and some of them danced out of time in the hope that he
might cry, "I do wish you would keep time!" Then they would have said
that this was his second wish. But he smoked their design, and though
on occasions he began, "I wish--" he always stopped in time. So when
at last he said to them bravely, "I wish now to go back to mother for
ever and always," they had to tickle his shoulder and let him go.
He went in a hurry in the end because he had dreamt that his mother
was crying, and he knew what was the great thing she cried for, and
that a hug from her splendid Peter would quickly make her to smile.
Oh, he felt sure of it, and so eager was he to be nestling in her arms
that this time he flew straight to the window, which was always to be
open for him.
But the window was closed, and there were iron bars on it, and peering
inside he saw his mother sleeping peacefully with her arm round
another little boy.
Peter called, "Mother! mother!" but she heard him not; in vain he beat
his little limbs against the iron bars. He had to fly back, sobbing,
to the Gardens, and he never saw his dear again. What a glorious boy
he had meant to be to her. Ah, Peter, we who have made the great
mistake, how differently we should all act at the second chance. But
Solomon was right; there is no second chance, not for most of us.
When we reach the window it is Lock-out Time. The iron bars are up
for life.