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 p. 206made 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 na?ve 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 p. 207to 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?
p. 208it 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.
p. 209a 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 p. 210the 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 p. 211the 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.
