The Victorian Fairy Tale Book (Pantheon Fairy Tale & Folklore Library)

by Hearn, Michael Patrick

  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 nightgown 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.

  “O 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 should 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 he next 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, “O Peter, how exquisitely you play!” However, as she now seemed comfortable, he again cast looks at the window. You must 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 today 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 shoulders 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.

  1906

  About the Authors and Illustrators

  WILLIAM ALLINGHAM (1824–1889) was an Irish poet, whose circle included Thomas Carlyle, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Alfred Lord Tennyson.

  SIR JAMES MATTHEW BARRIE (1860–1937) was the most successful British playwright of his generation, the author of such works as The Admirable Chrichton (1902) and What Every Woman Knows (1908). Among his novels are The Little Minister (1891), Sentimental Tommy (1896), and The Little White Bird (1902), from which Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens was excerpted (1906). His most enduring effort, however, is the play Peter Pan (1904), which he rewrote in 1911 as the novel Peter and Wendy.

  CHARLES HENRY BENNETT (1829–1867) was a prolific author and illustrator of children’s books, as well as an important Punch cartoonist. Among the books he illustrated are The Fables of Aesop (1857), The Pilgrim’s Progress (1859), and Henry Morley’s Fables and Fairy Tales (1860) and Oberon’s Horn (1861).

  FORD MADOX BROWN (1821–1893) was an early member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. He was also the grandfather of Ford Madox Ford and illustrated his grandson’s earliest books, The Brown Owl (1892) and The Feather (1893).

  ROBERT BROWNING (1812–1889) was one of the greatest of Victorian poets. His works include Dramatis Personae (1864), The Ring and the Book (1868–1869), and, of course, “The Pied Piper of Hamelin,” first published in Dramatic Lyrics (1842), the third part of Bells and Pomegranates (1841–1846).

  DINAH MARIA MULOCK CRAIK (1826–1887) was a prolific author, best known
in her day for the novel John Halifax, Gentleman (1856). She also wrote several children’s books, the most important of which were The Adventures of a Brownie (1872) and The Little Lame Prince and His Travelling-Cloak (1875).

  WALTER CRANE (1845–1915) was one of the most influential designers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Associated with the Pre-Raphaelites, he was a leading exponent of the Aesthetic and Arts and Crafts movements. He made his most lasting contribution to book illustration, embellishing such fairy tale collections as Mary De Morgan’s The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde and Other Stories (1880), Household Stories from the Brothers Grimm (1882), and Oscar Wilde’s The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1888).

  GEORGE CRUIKSHANK (1792–1878) was the greatest of England’s nineteenth-century comic artists. He made his reputation with his pictures for Edgar Taylor’s translation of the Grimms’ German Popular Stories (1823 and 1826) and went on to illustrate Charles Dickens’ Sketches by Boz (1836) and Oliver Twist (1838) among countless other books. His later work, such as his Fairy Library (1854 and 1864), was marred by temperance propaganda.

  MARY DE MORGAN (1850–1907) knew the Pre-Raphaelites through her brother William De Morgan, the artist and author. She wrote several exceptional collections of fairy tales: On a Pincushion and Other Fairy Tales (1877), The Necklace of Princess Fiorimonde and Other Stories (1880), and The Windfairies and Other Tales (1900).

  CHARLES DICKENS (1812–1870) was the pre-eminent novelist of the Victorian Age. The Pickwick Papers (1838), Oliver Twist (1838), A Christmas Carol (1843), David Copperfield (1850), and all his other books were as avidly read by children as by their parents. His only works written specifically for a juvenile audience were A Child’s History of England (1852–1854) and Holiday Romance, first serialized in the American magazine Our Young Folks and Dickens’ own journal All the Year Round in 1868.

  RICHARD DOYLE (1824–1883) was one of the most popular comic artists of his day. He contributed to Punch and illustrated many books, including William Makepeace Thackeray’s Rebecca and Rowena (1850) and The Newcomes (1855), The Story of Jack and the Giants (1851), and John Ruskin’s The King of the Golden River (1851). His most ambitious effort was his suite of color wood engravings In Fairyland (1870), accompanied by verses by William Allingham.

  FORD MADOX FORD (1873–1939), whose real name was Ford Hermann Hueffer, is best known as the author of the modern novel The Good Soldier (1915) and as the founder of the Transatlantic Review, but his earliest works were children’s stories: The Brown Owl (1892), The Feather (1893), and The Queen Who Flew (1894).

  SIR JOHN GILBERT (1817–1897) was a prolific illustrator, the first major artist to contribute to the Illustrated London News. His numerous books range from The Illustrated Webster Spelling Book (1856) to Mme. D’Aulnoy’s Fairy Tales (1855).

  KENNETH GRAHAME (1859–1932) was employed by the Bank of England (later as its secretary) and in his spare time wrote the charming books The Golden Age (1895), Dream Days (1898), and The Wind in the Willows (1908).

  LAURENCE HOUSMAN (1865–1959), brother of the poet A. E. Housman, was an exceptional author and illustrator. Besides embellishing his own fairy tales with his exquisite pictures, he illustrated Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market (1893), E. Nesbit’s A Pomander of Verses (1895), and George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind and The Princess and the Goblin (1900). His most famous work of literature was the play Victoria Regina (1934).

  ARTHUR HUGHES (1832–1915) was the member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood who most diligently pursued book illustration as a profession. Besides George MacDonald’s fairy tales, the books he illustrated include William Allingham’s The Music Master (1855), Thomas Hughes’ Tom Brown’s Schooldays (1869), and Christina Rossetti’s Speaking Likenesses (1874) and Sing-Song (1872).

  GEORGE MACDONALD (1824–1905) was ordained as a Congregationalist minister, but quickly lost his pulpit due to his liberal religious beliefs. He devoted the remainder of his life to writing, reflecting on spiritual matters in works of fantasy, such as Phantasies (1858), Dealings with the Fairies (1867), At the Back of the North Wind (1871), The Princess and the Goblin (1872), The Princess and Curdie (1883), and Lilith (1895).

  HAROLD ROBERT MILLAR (1869–1942) flourished between 1890 and 1935 as a magazine illustrator, primarily for the Strand. Many of E. Nesbit’s stories first appeared in the Strand with his pictures.

  HENRY MORLEY (1822–1894) became an editor of Household Words at Charles Dickens’ request. He was also a distinguished literary scholar and wrote two collections of children’s stories, Fables and Fairy Tales (1860) and Oberon’s Horn (1861).

  “E. NESBIT” (1858–1924) was Edith Nesbit Bland, a prominent Fabian Socialist whose friends included George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, and G. K. Chesterton. She also wrote many fine children’s books, including The Book of Dragons (1900), The Railway Children (1906), the Bastable books, and the Five Children trilogy.

  MAXFIELD PARRISH (1870–1966) was one of the premier American illustrators of the early twentieth century. After his first book, L. Frank Baum’s Mother Goose in Prose (1897), was published in England, he was commissioned to illustrate Kenneth Grahame’s The Golden Age (1899) and Dream Days (1902).

  ARTHUR RACKHAM (1867–1939) was the outstanding British book illustrator of his generation. He produced many lavish gift books, including J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens (1906), Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1907), Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1915), John Ruskin’s The King of the Golden River (1932), Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market (1933), Robert Browning’s The Pied Piper of Hamelin (1934), and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows (1940).

  JOHN MCL. RALSTON was active as a watercolorist and a contributor to the Illustrated London News between 1872 and 1881. Besides Dinah M. Mulock Craik’s The Little Lame Prince and His Travelling-Cloak (1875), the books he illustrated include Charles Dickens’ A Child’s History of England (1873) and John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1880).

  CHRISTINA ROSSETTI (1830–1894), the sister of the Pre-Raphaelite painter and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti and the art critic William Michael Rossetti, was a distinguished poet in her own right. Goblin Market and Other Poems (1862) is her most important book, but she also wrote a collection of children’s verse, Sing-Song (1872), and an imitation of Alice in Wonderland, Speaking Likenesses (1874), both illustrated by Arthur Hughes.

  DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828–1882) founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood with John Everett Millais and William Holman Hunt. He was as gifted a poet as he was a painter. He contributed illustrations to several books, including William Allingham’s The Music Master (1855) and his sister Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market (1862) and The Prince’s Progress (1866).

  JOHN RUSSIN (1819–1900) became one of the most revered art and social critics of his day with the publication of his first book Modern Painters (1843). His only published work of fiction was the children’s story The King of the Golden River (1851).

  WILLIAM MAKEPEACE THACKERAY (1811–1863) was a cartoonist as well as one of the most important novelists of the Victorian Age. His works include The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844), Vanity Fair (1847), Rebecca and Rowena (1850), and The Newcomes (1855), as well as a series of “Christmas Books” in imitation of Charles Dickens, the most famous being The Rose and the Ring (1855).

  OSCAR WILDE (1854–1900) was one of the most flamboyant literary figures of the late nineteenth century. His reputation rests on a wide variety of writing, including his collections of fairy tales, The Happy Prince and Other Tales (1889) and The House of Pomegranates (1891), the novel The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891), his plays Lady Windermere’s Fan (1892) and The Importance of Being Earnest (1895), and the poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol (1898).

  WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (1865–1939), perhaps the greatest modern poet in English, was a prominent member of the Irish revival called “the Celtic Twilight” after his book of 1893. Besides writ
ing many exquisite poems based upon his native folklore, such as those in The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889), he collected several volumes of Irish fairy tales and legends.

  The Pantheon Fairy Tale and Folklore Library

  AFRICAN FOLKTALES by Roger D. Abrahams 0–394–72117–9

  AFRICAN AMERICAN FOLKTALES by Roger D. Abrahams 0–375–70539–2

  AMERICAN INDIAN MYTHS AND LEGENDS by Richard Erdoes and Alfonso Ortiz 0–394–74018–1

  CHINESE FAIRY TALES AND FANTASIES by Moss Roberts 0–394–73994–9

  THE COMPLETE GRIMM’S FAIRY TALES

  by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm 0–394–70930–6

  FAVORITE FOLKTALES FROM AROUND THE WORLD by Jane Yolen 0–394–75188–4

  FOLKTALES FROM INDIA by A.K. Ramanujan 0–679–74832–6

  GODS AND HEROES OF ANCIENT GREECE by Gustav Schwab 0–375–71446–4

  IRISH FOLKTALES by Henry Glassie 0–679–77412–2

  JAPANESE TALES by Royall Tyler 0–375–71451–0

  LATIN AMERICAN FOLKTALES by John Bierhorst 0–375–42066–5

  LEGENDS AND TALES OF THE AMERICAN WEST by Richard Erdoes 0–375–70266–0

  THE HORSE MYTHS by Kevin Crossley-Holland 0–394–74846–8

  NORWEGIAN FOLK TALES by Peter Asbjørnsen and Jørgen Moe 0–394–71054–1

  RUSSIAN FAIRY TALES by Aleksandr Afanas’ev 0–394–73090–9

  THE VICTORIAN FAIRY TALE BOOK by Michael Patrick Hearn 0–375–71455–3

  About the Editor

  MICHAEL PATRICK HEARN is America’s foremost man of letters specializing in children’s literature and its illustration. The author of The Annotated Huckleberry Finn, The Annnotated Wizard of Oz, The Annotated Christmas Carol, and The Art of the Broadway Poster, and the editor of The Andrew Lang Fairy Tale Book, he has also provided introductions to such classics as At the Back of the North Wind, Peter and Wendy, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood, and Little Wizard Stories of Oz. His articles have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post Book World, the Nation, Graphis, American Artist, the Ladies’ Home Journal, and other publications. He is also the author of an original fairy tale, The Porcelain Cat, with illustrations by Leo and Diane Dillon.