Part 17 (1/2)
A little girl who had kept her fifth birthday joyously in the garden of her father's home went on the morrow to the great and grimy city which was nearest to it. We were to visit the bazaars and buy books and toys.
As we went through the great square in which the Town Hall stands the small hand in mine told me that here was something which we must stay to consider. We stood at the base of the statue which the citizens had raised in memory of a statesman's endeavour and success. She looked steadily and long at the figure of which the n.o.ble head redeemed the vulgar insignificance of costume and posture. ”What did this man do, uncle?” she asked, ”that he has been turned into stone?” I was dreadfully startled, for the horrid suspicion darted through my mind that my little niece had remembered my talk with her father about modern sculpture, and at five years old had already begun to pose. ”Of course, it had to be stone not salt in England,” she went on to say, and I was rea.s.sured; she at least was remembering Lot's wife.
It was in the later spring of 1888, and when the evening post brought me fresh from the press ”The Happy Prince and Other Tales,” the first story told me that Oscar Wilde, of whom men, even then, had many things sinister and strange to say, had yet within him the heart of a little child.
”High above the city, on a tall column, stood the statue of the Happy Prince.”
”When I was alive and had a human heart I did not know what tears were, for I lived in the Palace of Sans Souci, where sorrow is not allowed to enter. In the daytime I played with my companions in the garden, and in the evening I led the dance in the great Hall. Round the garden ran a very lofty wall, but I never cared to ask what lay beyond it, everything about me was so beautiful. My courtiers called me the Happy Prince, and happy indeed I was, if pleasure be happiness, so I lived and so I died.
And now that I am dead they have set me up here so high that I can see all the ugliness and all the misery of my city, and though my heart is made of lead yet I cannot choose but weep.”
Here, strange to say, is the note of pathos which we hear again and again in the volume of fairy stories which many men look upon as Oscar Wilde's best and most characteristic prose work. Time after time they make me murmur Vergil's untranslatable line _sunt lachrymae rerum et mentem mortalia tangunt_.
The felicity of expression is exquisite, and an opulent imagination lavishes its treasures in every story. Our author has come into full possession of his sovereignty of words and every sentence has its carefully considered, yet spontaneous charm. Nevertheless, Oscar Wilde makes the Linnet his mouthpiece in the fourth story ”The Devoted Friend.” ”'The fact is, that I told him a story with a moral.' 'Ah, that is always a very dangerous thing to do,' said the Duck--and I quite agreed with her.”
Dangerous though it is, Oscar Wilde essayed the endeavour. I do not think that children would easily detect that _amari aliquid_ which makes the fairy stories fascinating to minds that are mature, and I am sure that many little ones have revelled in the Swallow's stories of what he had seen in strange lands when he told ”the Happy Prince of the red ibises, who stand in long rows on the banks of the Nile and catch gold fish in their beaks; of the Sphinx, who is as old as the world itself, and lives in the desert, and knows everything; of the merchants who walk slowly by the side of their camels, and carry amber beads in their hands; of the King of the Mountains of the Moon, who is as black as ebony, and wors.h.i.+ps a large crystal; of the great green snake that sleeps in a palm-tree, and has twenty priests to feed it with honey cakes; and of the pygmies who sail over a big lake on large flat leaves, and are always at war with the b.u.t.terflies.”
I suppose it would shock the authorities of the Education Department at Whitehall if it were suggested that the children in the Elementary Day Schools should have for their reading lesson, sometimes, the volume of ”The Happy Prince and Other Tales, by Oscar Wilde, ill.u.s.trated by Walter Crane and Jacomb Hood”--but I think the starved and stunted imaginations of the children in the great, cruel cities would revive and grow if this could be done.
But perhaps it would have to be an expurgated edition. The sad consciousness of, and stern satire on, our social system might remain, the children would take no hurt, and the weary school teachers would be glad to hear and to read a children's fairy tale, which sets the student thinking and makes the more worldly man consider his ways. But if I had the editing of the book I would leave out here and there a sentence.
”'Bring me the two most precious things in the city,' said G.o.d to one of His angels; and the angel brought him the leaden heart and the dead bird.
”'You have rightly chosen,' said G.o.d, 'for in my garden of Paradise this little bird shall sing for evermore, and in my city of gold the Happy Prince shall praise me.'” The children would not like this, for in their ears sound often the severe words of Sinai, ”The Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh His name in vain,” and I, who delight in the beautiful prose poems, feel that here the dead artist was not at his best.
Some have said that there are no fairy stories like Oscar Wilde's, but Hans Andersen had written before him, and Charles Kingsley's ”Water Babies” was published long before ”The Happy Prince.” The Dane managed to touch on things Divine without a discord, and Charles Kingsley's satire was not less keen than Oscar's, but he could point his moral without intruding very sacred things into his playful pages, and I wish that the two last sentences of ”The Happy Prince” could be erased.
It is the gorgeous colour and the vivid sonorous words that charm us most. It is easy to a.n.a.lyse these sentences and to note how pearls and pomegranates, and the hyacinth blossom, and the pale ivory, and the crimson of the ruby, again and again glow on the pages like the illuminations of the mediaeval missal; but each story has its own peculiar charm.
”The Nightingale and the Rose” is a tale full of pa.s.sion and tenderness, and sad in the sorrow of wasted sympathy and unrequited love.
”Surely Love is a wonderful thing. It is more precious than emeralds, and dearer than fine opals. Pearls and pomegranates cannot buy it, nor is it set forth in the market-place. It may not be purchased of the merchants, nor can it be weighed out in the balance of gold.”
I can fancy Oscar Wilde writing thus in the happy days of his early married life in Chelsea, in the little study where his best work was done, whilst memories of the Chapel of Magdalen murmured in his brain, and he heard again the surpliced scholar reading from the lectern the praise of wisdom which he trans.m.u.ted into the praise of love which was not wise. ”It cannot be gotten for gold, neither shall silver be weighed for the price thereof. It cannot be valued with the gold of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. The gold and the crystal cannot equal it: and the exchange of it shall not be for jewels or fine gold.
No mention shall be made of coral or of pearls: for the price of wisdom is above rubies. The topaz of Ethiopia shall not equal it, neither shall it be valued with pure gold.”
Throughout ”The Song of the Nightingale” there is a reminiscence of that Song of Solomon which Wilde told a fellow-prisoner he had always loved.
”Many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it: if a man would give all the substance of his house for love, it would be utterly contemned.”
In ”The Selfish Giant” another note is sounded. As we read it we pa.s.s into the mediaeval age, and we think of the story of Christopher.
The giant keeps the garden to himself and the children that played in it are banished, and thenceforward its glories are gone. In the garden of the Selfish Giant it was still winter. The birds did not care to sing in it as there were no children, and the trees forgot to blossom. The Snow covered up the gra.s.s with his great white cloak, and the Frost painted all the trees silver, but anon there came a child who wept as he wandered in the desolated garden, and the Selfish Giant's heart melted; once again the children's voices are heard and the garden flourishes as it did before, and the Giant grows old and watches from his chair the children at their play. ”I have many beautiful flowers,” he said, ”but the children are the most beautiful flowers of it all,” till at last the grey old Giant finds again in his garden the child who had first touched his hard heart--”but when he came quite close his face grew red with anger, and he said, 'Who hath dared to wound thee?' for on the palms of the child's hands were the prints of two nails, and the prints of two nails were on the little feet. 'Who hath dared to wound thee?' cried the Giant, 'tell me, that I may take my big sword and slay him.' 'Nay,'
answered the child, 'but these are the wounds of love.'”
”The Devoted Friend” is altogether in another vein. As the first story is fragrant of the East and the second mediaeval in its memories, so the third is Teutonic, and ”Hans and the Miller's Friends.h.i.+p” reminds us of the Brothers Grimm. Now that every child has the chance of reading the German fairy stories, Oscar Wilde's tale will be compared with theirs, but I think the children will like this one best for the simple reason that, being written in exquisite English, nothing that has pa.s.sed through the perils of translation can have its charm. Children are wonderful, because perfectly unconscious, critics of style.
It is doubtful if readers will enjoy ”The Remarkable Rocket” as they will the other stories. The modern _milieu_ intrudes here and there. The satire is keen and there are some clever epigrams. The Russian Princess ”had driven all the way from Finland in a sledge drawn by six reindeer which was shaped like a great golden swan, and between the swan's wings lay the little princess herself”--and we think that we are going to enjoy again the atmosphere of Watteau, and are a little disappointed when we find our author saying, ”He was something of a politician, and had always taken a prominent part in the local elections, or he knew the proper Parliamentary expressions to use.” And the story, alas! will suggest over and over again painful thoughts which I would keep at a distance when I read these other lovely tales. Was not this sentence of evil omen? ”'However, I don't care a bit,' said the Rocket. 'Genius like mine is sure to be appreciated some day,' and he sank down a little deeper into the mud.” And the last sentence of all is terribly sinister.
”'I knew I should create a sensation,' gasped the Rocket, and he went out.”