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.