PREFACE.
CHAPTER II.L’AMIE INCONNUE.
CHAPTER III.BIRTHDAY-PRESENTS.
CHAPTER IV.A CUNNING CONSPIRACY.
CHAPTER V.A BEGGAR’S PALACE.
CHAPTER VI.THE MAGIC LOCKET.
CHAPTER VII.THE BARON’S EMBASSY.
CHAPTER VIII.A RIDE ON A LION.
CHAPTER IX.A JESTER AND A BEAR.
CHAPTER X.THE OTHER PROFESSOR.
CHAPTER XI.PETER AND PAUL.
CHAPTER XII.A MUSICAL GARDENER.
CHAPTER XIII.A VISIT TO DOGLAND.
CHAPTER XIV.FAIRY-SYLVIE.
CHAPTER XV.BRUNO’S REVENGE.
CHAPTER XVI.A CHANGED CROCODILE.
CHAPTER XVII.THE THREE BADGERS.
CHAPTER XVIII.QUEER STREET, NUMBER FORTY.
CHAPTER XIX.HOW TO MAKE A PHLIZZ.
CHAPTER XX.LIGHT COME, LIGHT GO.
CHAPTER XXI.THROUGH THE IVORY DOOR.
CHAPTER XXII.CROSSING THE LINE.
CHAPTER XXIII.AN OUTLANDISH WATCH.
CHAPTER XXIV.THE FROGS’ BIRTHDAY-TREAT.
CHAPTER XXV.LOOKING EASTWARD.
Is
all our Life, then, but a dreamSeen
faintly in the golden gleamAthwart
Time’s dark resistless stream?Bowed
to the earth with bitter woe,Or
laughing at some raree-show,We
flutter idly to and fro.Man’s
little Day in haste we spend,And,
from its merry noontide, sendNo
glance to meet the silent end.
PREFACE.
One
little picture in this book, the Magic Locket, at
p. 77,
was drawn by ‘Miss Alice Havers.’ I did not state this on the
title-page, since it seemed only due, to the artist of all these (to
my mind) wonderful
pictures, that his name should stand there alone.The
descriptions, at pp.
386,
387, of
Sunday as spent by children of the last generation, are quoted
verbatim from a
speech made to me by a child-friend and a letter written to me by a
lady-friend.The
Chapters, headed ‘Fairy Sylvie’ and ‘Bruno’s Revenge,’ are
a reprint, with a few alterations, of a little fairy-tale which I
wrote in the year 1867, at the request of the late Mrs. Gatty, for
‘Aunt Judy’s Magazine,’ which she was then editing.It
was in 1874, I believe, that the idea first occurred to me of making
it the nucleus of a longer story. As the years went on, I jotted
down, at odd moments, all sorts of odd ideas, and fragments of
dialogue, that occurred to me—who knows how?—with a transitory
suddenness that left me no choice but either to record them then and
there, or to abandon them to oblivion. Sometimes one could trace to
their source these random flashes of thought—as being suggested by
the book one was reading, or struck out from the ‘flint’ of one’s
own mind by the ‘steel’ of a friend’s chance remark—but they
had also a way of their own, of occurring,
à propos of
nothing—specimens of that hopelessly illogical phenomenon, ‘an
effect without a cause.’ Such, for example, was the last line of
‘The Hunting of the Snark,’ which came into my head (as I have
already related in ‘The Theatre’ for April, 1887) quite suddenly,
during a solitary walk: and such, again, have been passages which
occurred in dreams,
and which I cannot trace to any antecedent cause whatever. There are
at least two
instances of such dream-suggestions in this book—one, my Lady’s
remark, ‘it often runs in families, just as a love for pastry
does’, at
p. 88;
the other, Eric Lindon’s
badinage about
having been in domestic service, at
p. 332.And
thus it came to pass that I found myself at last in possession of a
huge unwieldy mass of litterature—if the reader will kindly excuse
the spelling—which only needed stringing together, upon the thread
of a consecutive story, to constitute the book I hoped to write.
Only! The task, at first, seemed absolutely hopeless, and gave me a
far clearer idea, than I ever had before, of the meaning of the word
‘chaos’: and I think it must have been ten years, or more, before
I had succeeded in classifying these odds-and-ends sufficiently to
see what sort of a story they indicated: for the story had to grow
out of the incidents, not the incidents out of the story.I
am telling all this, in no spirit of egoism, but because I really
believe that some of my readers will be interested in these details
of the ‘genesis’ of a book, which looks so simple and
straight-forward a matter, when completed, that they might suppose it
to have been written straight off, page by page, as one would write a
letter, beginning at the beginning and ending at the end.It
is, no doubt,
possible to write a
story in that way: and, if it be not vanity to say so, I believe that
I could, myself,—if I were in the unfortunate position (for I do
hold it to be a real misfortune) of being obliged to produce a given
amount of fiction in a given time,—that I could ‘fulfil my task,’
and produce my ‘tale of bricks,’ as other slaves have done. One
thing, at any rate, I could guarantee as to the story so
produced—that it should be utterly commonplace, should contain no
new ideas whatever, and should be very very weary reading!This
species of literature has received the very appropriate name of
‘padding’—which might fitly be defined as ‘that which all can
write and none can read.’ That the present volume contains
no such writing I
dare not avow: sometimes, in order to bring a picture into its proper
place, it has been necessary to eke out a page with two or three
extra lines: but I can honestly say I have put in no more than I was
absolutely compelled to do.My
readers may perhaps like to amuse themselves by trying to detect, in
a given passage, the one piece of ‘padding’ it contains. While
arranging the ‘slips’ into pages, I found that the passage, which
now extends from the top of
p. 35 to
the middle of
p. 38,
was 3 lines too short. I supplied the deficiency, not by
interpolating a word here and a word there, but by writing in 3
consecutive lines. Now can my readers guess
which they are?A
harder puzzle—if a harder be desired—would be to determine, as to
the Gardener’s Song, in
which cases (if
any) the stanza was adapted to the surrounding text, and in
which (if any) the
text was adapted to the stanza.Perhaps
the hardest thing in all literature—at least
I have found it so:
by no voluntary effort can I accomplish it: I have to take it as it
comes—is to write anything
original. And
perhaps the easiest is, when once an original line has been struck
out, to follow it up, and to write any amount more to the same tune.
I do not know if ‘Alice in Wonderland’ was an
original story—I
was, at least, no
conscious imitator
in writing it—but I do know that, since it came out, something like
a dozen story-books have appeared, on identically the same pattern.
The path I timidly explored—believing myself to be ‘the first
that ever burst into that silent sea’—is now a beaten high-road:
all the way-side flowers have long ago been trampled into the dust:
and it would be courting disaster for me to attempt that style again.Hence
it is that, in ‘Sylvie and Bruno,’ I have striven—with I know
not what success—to strike out yet another new path: be it bad or
good, it is the best I can do. It is written, not for money, and not
for fame, but in the hope of supplying, for the children whom I love,
some thoughts that may suit those hours of innocent merriment which
are the very life of Childhood; and also in the hope of suggesting,
to them and to others, some thoughts that may prove, I would fain
hope, not wholly out of harmony with the graver cadences of Life.If
I have not already exhausted the patience of my readers, I would like
to seize this opportunity—perhaps the last I shall have of
addressing so many friends at once—of putting on record some ideas
that have occurred to me, as to books desirable to be written—which
I should much like to
attempt, but may
not ever have the time or power to carry through—in the hope that,
if I
should fail (and the years are gliding away
very fast) to
finish the task I have set myself, other hands may take it up.First,
a Child’s Bible. The only real
essentials of this
would be, carefully selected passages, suitable for a child’s
reading, and pictures. One principle of selection, which I would
adopt, would be that Religion should be put before a child as a
revelation of
love—no need to
pain and puzzle the young mind with the history of crime and
punishment. (On such a principle I should, for example, omit the
history of the Flood.) The supplying of the pictures would involve no
great difficulty: no new ones would be needed: hundreds of excellent
pictures already exist, the copyright of which has long ago expired,
and which simply need photo-zincography, or some similar process, for
their successful reproduction. The book should be handy in size—with
a pretty attractive-looking cover—in a clear legible type—and,
above all, with abundance of pictures, pictures, pictures!Secondly,
a book of pieces selected from the Bible—not single texts, but
passages of from 10 to 20 verses each—to be committed to memory.
Such passages would be found useful, to repeat to one’s-self and to
ponder over, on many occasions when reading is difficult, if not
impossible: for instance, when lying awake at night—on a
railway-journey—when taking a solitary walk—in old age, when
eye-sight is failing or wholly lost—and, best of all, when illness,
while incapacitating us for reading or any other occupation, condemns
us to lie awake through many weary silent hours: at such a time how
keenly one may realise the truth of David’s rapturous cry ‘O
how sweet are thy words unto my throat: yea, sweeter than honey unto
my mouth!’I
have said ‘passages,’ rather than single texts, because we have
no means of
recalling single
texts: memory needs
links, and here are
none: one may have a hundred texts stored in the memory, and not be
able to recall, at will, more than half-a-dozen—and those by mere
chance: whereas, once get hold of any portion of a
chapter that has
been committed to memory, and the whole can be recovered: all hangs
together.Thirdly,
a collection of passages, both prose and verse, from books other than
the Bible. There is not perhaps much, in what is called ‘un-inspired’
literature (a misnomer, I hold: if Shakespeare was not inspired, one
may well doubt if any man ever was), that will bear the process of
being pondered over, a hundred times: still there
are such
passages—enough, I think, to make a goodly store for the memory.These
two books—of sacred, and secular, passages for memory—will serve
other good purposes besides merely occupying vacant hours: they will
help to keep at bay many anxious thoughts, worrying thoughts,
uncharitable thoughts, unholy thoughts. Let me say this, in better
words than my own, by copying a passage from that most interesting
book, Robertson’s Lectures on the Epistles to the Corinthians,
Lecture XLIX. “If a man finds himself haunted by evil desires and
unholy images, which will generally be at periodical hours, let him
commit to memory passages of Scripture, or passages from the best
writers in verse or prose. Let him store his mind with these, as
safe-guards to repeat when he lies awake in some restless night, or
when despairing imaginations, or gloomy, suicidal thoughts, beset
him. Let these be to him the sword, turning everywhere to keep the
way of the Garden of Life from the intrusion of profaner footsteps.”Fourthly,
a “Shakespeare” for girls: that is, an edition in which
everything, not suitable for the perusal of girls of (say) from 10 to
17, should be omitted. Few children under 10 would be likely to
understand or enjoy the greatest of poets: and those, who have passed
out of girlhood, may safely be left to read Shakespeare, in any
edition, ‘expurgated’ or not, that they may prefer: but it seems
a pity that so many children, in the intermediate stage, should be
debarred from a great pleasure for want of an edition suitable to
them. Neither Bowdler’s, Chambers’s, Brandram’s, nor Cundell’s
‘Boudoir’ Shakespeare, seems to me to meet the want: they are not
sufficiently ‘expurgated.’ Bowdler’s is the most extraordinary
of all: looking through it, I am filled with a deep sense of wonder,
considering what he has left in, that he should have cut
anything out!
Besides relentlessly erasing all that is unsuitable on the score of
reverence or decency, I should be inclined to omit also all that
seems too difficult, or not likely to interest young readers. The
resulting book might be slightly fragmentary: but it would be a real
treasure to all British maidens who have any taste for poetry.If
it be needful to apologize to any one for the new departure I have
taken in this story—by introducing, along with what will, I hope,
prove to be acceptable nonsense for children, some of the graver
thoughts of human life—it must be to one who has learned the Art of
keeping such thoughts wholly at a distance in hours of mirth and
careless ease. To him such a mixture will seem, no doubt, ill-judged
and repulsive. And that such an Art
exists I do not
dispute: with youth, good health, and sufficient money, it seems
quite possible to lead, for years together, a life of unmixed
gaiety—with the exception of one solemn fact, with which we are
liable to be confronted at
any moment, even in
the midst of the most brilliant company or the most sparkling
entertainment. A man may fix his own times for admitting serious
thought, for attending public worship, for prayer, for reading the
Bible: all such matters he can defer to that ‘convenient season’,
which is so apt never to occur at all: but he cannot defer, for one
single moment, the necessity of attending to a message, which may
come before he has finished reading this page, ‘this
night shall thy soul be required of thee.’The
ever-present sense of this grim possibility has been, in all ages,[1]
an incubus that men have striven to shake off. Few more interesting
subjects of enquiry could be found, by a student of history, than the
various weapons that have been used against this shadowy foe. Saddest
of all must have been the thoughts of those who saw indeed an
existence beyond
the grave, but an existence far more terrible than annihilation—an
existence as filmy, impalpable, all but invisible spectres, drifting
about, through endless ages, in a world of shadows, with nothing to
do, nothing to hope for, nothing to love! In the midst of the gay
verses of that genial ‘bon vivant’ Horace, there stands one
dreary word whose utter sadness goes to one’s heart. It is the word
‘exilium’
in the well-known passageOmnes
eodem cogimur, omniumVersatur
urnâ serius ociusSors
exitura et nos in æternumExilium
impositura cymbæ.Yes,
to him this present life—spite of all its weariness and all its
sorrow—was the only life worth having: all else was ‘exile’!
Does it not seem almost incredible that one, holding such a creed,
should ever have smiled?And
many in this day, I fear, even though believing in an existence
beyond the grave far more real than Horace ever dreamed of, yet
regard it as a sort of ‘exile’ from all the joys of life, and so
adopt Horace’s theory, and say ‘let us eat and drink, for
to-morrow we die.’We
go to entertainments, such as the theatre—I say ‘we’, for
I also go to the
play, whenever I get a chance of seeing a really good one—and keep
at arm’s length, if possible, the thought that we may not return
alive. Yet how do you know—dear friend, whose patience has carried
you through this garrulous preface—that it may not be
your lot, when
mirth is fastest and most furious, to feel the sharp pang, or the
deadly faintness, which heralds the final crisis—to see, with vague
wonder, anxious friends bending over you—to hear their troubled
whispers—perhaps yourself to shape the question, with trembling
lips, “Is it serious?”, and to be told “Yes: the end is near”
(and oh, how different all Life will look when those words are
said!)—how do you know, I say, that all this may not happen to
you, this night?And
dare you, knowing
this, say to yourself “Well, perhaps it
is an immoral play:
perhaps the situations
are a little too
‘risky’, the dialogue a little too strong, the ‘business’ a
little too suggestive. I don’t say that conscience is
quite easy: but the
piece is so clever, I must see it this once! I’ll begin a stricter
life to-morrow.”
To-morrow, and to-morrow, and to-morrow!
“Who
sins in hope, who, sinning, says,
‘Sorrow
for sin God’s judgement stays!’Against
God’s Spirit he lies; quite stopsMercy
with insult; dares, and drops,Like
a scorch’d fly, that spins in vainUpon
the axis of its pain,Then
takes its doom, to limp and crawl,Blind
and forgot, from fall to fall.”Let
me pause for a moment to say that I believe this thought, of the
possibility of death—if calmly realised, and steadily faced—would
be one of the best possible tests as to our going to any scene of
amusement being right or wrong. If the thought of sudden death
acquires, for you,
a special horror when imagined as happening in a
theatre, then be
very sure the theatre is harmful for
you, however
harmless it may be for others; and that
you are incurring a
deadly peril in going. Be sure the safest rule is that we should not
dare to live
in any scene in which we dare not
die.But,
once realise what the true object
is in life—that
it is not
pleasure, not
knowledge, not
even fame itself, ‘that last infirmity of noble minds’—but that
it is
the development of
character, the
rising to a higher, nobler, purer standard, the building-up of the
perfect Man—and
then, so long as we feel that this is going on, and will (we trust)
go on for evermore, death has for us no terror; it is not a shadow,
but a light; not an end, but a beginning!One
other matter may perhaps seem to call for apology—that I should
have treated with such entire want of sympathy the British passion
for ‘Sport’, which no doubt has been in by-gone days, and is
still, in some forms of it, an excellent school for hardihood and for
coolness in moments of danger. But I am not entirely without sympathy
for genuine
‘Sport’: I can heartily admire the courage of the man who, with
severe bodily toil, and at the risk of his life, hunts down some
‘man-eating’ tiger: and I can heartily sympathize with him when
he exults in the glorious excitement of the chase and the
hand-to-hand struggle with the monster brought to bay. But I can but
look with deep wonder and sorrow on the hunter who, at his ease and
in safety, can find pleasure in what involves, for some defenceless
creature, wild terror and a death of agony: deeper, if the hunter be
one who has pledged himself to preach to men the Religion of
universal Love: deepest of all, if it be one of those ‘tender
and delicate’
beings, whose very name serves as a symbol of Love—‘thy
love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women’—whose
mission here is surely to help and comfort all that are in pain or
sorrow!
‘Farewell,
farewell! but this I tellTo
thee, thou Wedding-Guest!He
prayeth well, who loveth wellBoth
man and bird and beast.He
prayeth best, who loveth bestAll
things both great and small;For
the dear God who loveth us,He
made and loveth all.’