Complete Works of J. M. Barrie

by Unknown

  Leonora is not one of those second-raters who decorate a room and have done with it. She is always adding something. Yesterday in the surgery I missed a packet of my own envelopes, kept together by a blue paper band. So I sought my bedroom, and there they were on a small table beside an ink-bottle, the one in which I am now dipping. The matchbox is hand painted in blue and white, and so are two photograph frames. I have with me a brown dressing-case which vexed her for several days. One day I saw her sewing what looked like a small blue pillow case; and soon afterwards I found my bag inside this garment. My initials had been neatly marked in blue upon a white label. One of Leonora’s few failures is the coalscuttle. It is a tiny wooden one, and she had painted it a delicate blue, with a white handle for the shovel. But the fire did for that delicate blue. So the scuttle has gone, and coals being of an outrageous colour, logs are now brought from the kitchen by a maid who wears a white cap with blue ribbons. I have not mentioned the slippers. They had been specially sewn by Leonora for the blue and white room, so I need not tell their colour. They are not meant for use, but they look very well at the side of the fireplace beneath the white bellows which blow blue smoke from the logs.

  Let it not be supposed that there is no education in a blue and white room. When Leonora married she was the only girl in the family who could not or would not sew. Now behold over the mantelshelf the wool-work which I boldly call tapestry in two colours. As for painting, she never knew in her maiden days how to hold the brush; yet who, daringly perched on crazy steps, painted that Mediterranean ceiling? Our Leonora. What made her fit to do this? The call of the blue and white room. When I have made the journey of the room I cease from smiling, I marvel at the concatenation of things, and remembering how economical she has to be in her new home I praise Leonora.”

  I THINK the story of the Blue and White Room must have been dispatched without re-reading, for I see no embroidery on it, and Anon certainly tended to embroider. He might have called it with gentle pride a real autobiography at last, one of quite a few old articles in this book wherein the memoirs are seldom tripped up by fancies. In studying catalogues of, say, first editions, I am often lost in admiration of the noble candour with which the compilers thereof say of a book, ‘rebacked,’ or ‘a few leaves mended,’ or ‘title-page defective,’ or ‘margins slightly stained,’ or ‘bindings worn,’ or ‘advertisement at end torn.’ If Mr. Anon was expected to be as truthful as that in his articles, and to keep saying in brackets ‘Here my fancy takes the reins,’ or ‘memory at this point slightly defective’; if in short the law had compelled him to guarantee all his statements, he would have been constantly a case for the police.

  The Blue and White Room, however, was a real room, and as far as I can remember he leaves it as he found it, not a white atom added nor a blue one omitted. It was the work of art of a sister of mine, lately married. In the days of the glory of the Blue and White Room when Anon wrote of it he may have been sarcastic about its adornments, and perhaps I was trying to make amends for this when I afterwards put some of its pretty furniture into my play of ‘Quality Street.’ Anon liked visiting that room during those first years of London, as much as he shuddered over most of his visits elsewhere. Not that there were many of them, but they loomed because the awkward man only knew his way about in lodgings.

  I observe that others when they travel are for ever in a worry lest their luggage should go astray. I never had this trouble, as it was always my custom when setting out on those dreadful ‘week-end’ visits to very nice people to carry in my pockets every belonging that I considered of value. All my money was there and bulky MSS., and probably a score of letters (so that my pockets must have stood out like brackets), and thus, as it were, attired, I heeded not the fate of my portmanteau. Alas, my very first visit to the affluent showed me that it was not to be so easy as that. I awoke next morning to find all my treasures gone. While I slept thinking no evil of the household, some menial had stolen into the room and wafted them away. He returned my garments, neatly folded, but the precious parts of me were gone. Great was my relief when at last I found them, as neat as the clothes, on a table; but I had got my warning, and thereafter before retiring in strange houses I always hid the contents of my pockets in unlikely places, as on the tops of wardrobes, very difficult for the enemy (and for myself) to scale.

  The length of those ‘week-ends.’ Anon never knew whether he was most sorry for himself or for the lady whom he took in to dinner. She was usually kindly and courteous, striving in a way that went to his heart to put him at his ease, coming back to him refreshed by a talk with her other neighbour; but all in vain. On the rare occasions when he could say anything she was so nervously desirous to listen that she never knew what it was he said. He more or less loved her by the time she saw she must give him up. If he met her on the stair after dinner (which so far as I know even now is the most dire moment that can come to two people in a country house) she smiled sweetly though she was shuddering, and he stalked on to his room to shudder also.

  CHAPTER XIII

  “A RAG OF PAPER” — DREAM OF A POUND A DAY — ISUNDERSTOOD

  “FROM my window I have been watching a rag of paper that is trying to circumnavigate our shapeless ‘square.’ I look down on the meeting place of five dingy streets, and at the opening of each the rag is caught up in a draught that bears it along to the next or tosses it back to the spot from which it came or even plasters it momentarily on the person of a passer-by. If it adopts pedestrian methods, it trips cautiously in little spurts, like some nice old lady crossing the road; feet trample it, kerbs claw at it, walking-sticks stab it, it adheres momentarily to the wheels of vehicles. The dogged little ragamuffin, however, recovers its breath; it may lie for hours shamming, and then is off again. Watching this paper has become the occupation of my convalescence, though I perceive its grand ambition is only to travel once round the square.

  Since this vagabond of the streets hove in sight some days ago a change of Government has threatened, and we have had the riotous mobs in London which no one sees but the Press. Before it is borne away from Bloomsbury or reduced to mire, there may be Events. I have a wager on the subject with my doctor, who still drops in to comfort the solitary. It is that this morsel of paper will outlive the Administration. Should it not, he gets a stethoscope of the newest, and if I win he presents no bill. He had misgivings lest, since so many paper scraps wing their way through the streets until they migrate for the winter, mine might vanish and its place be taken by another. He does not allow for the fascination this rag of gallantry has had for me since I divined its project. I look for it in the morning when I am wheeled to the window, and I can tell at once by its appearance what kind of night it has had. Nay, more: I believe I am able to decide the trend of the wind since sundown, whether there has been much traffic, and if the fire engine has been out. There is a fire station to dignify one of our sordid corners, and if the heavy wheels run over my little one it has an excusably crushed look, yet not without a slum touch of bravado. You can conceive it playing street urchin at the firemen. However, though I felt certain that I could pick it out of a flock, the doctor insisted on making sure. The bet was arranged during the third or fourth day and recorded on the scrap itself, the doctor having captured it and brought it to my room for our signatures. It proved to be a fragment of newspaper about the size of a lady’s handkerchief, in which the words had long run to mush. Once perhaps an item of momentous intelligence, it was now living a vagrant life of its own. It was become so sloppy that pieces adhered to our fingers and we could only initial it in blobs. Then we opened the window and cast it forth as from a cage. The doctor promised by 99 not to remove it by stealth when evening fell, and I vowed by 98 4 to report progress fairly.

  I no longer find time so heavy in my legs; my attention is divided between two papers, the one in the streets that I have backed and my daily copy of the ‘Times.’ Any morning the absence of the one below may tell me that I have lost my bet, the
pages of the other that I have won it. I hobble to the window before they can bring the chair, fearing that my rag of paper has predeceased the Government. Obviously neither of them can last much longer. It is remarkable how greatly my interest in politics has increased since I made this wager.

  The doctor, I believe, relies chiefly on the scavengers. He thinks that they are sure to pounce first upon the more tattered object, though they are after both. For my part I do not see why I should fear scavengers: they come into the square so seldom, and stay so short a time. If he knew how much they kept away he might say I bribe them. I got a fright, nevertheless, yesterday from a dog. He was one of the breed that infest the square in half-dozens, but seldom alone. He appeared from one of the side streets with my rag in his mouth. Then he stood still and looked around. I had a sinking. The impulse seized me to throw open the sash and hurl a yorker at the miscreant; but I remembered my promise to the doctor. A man has seldom been more disturbed by a mongrel. At one of the street corners there is a melancholy shop to let; six times within the last two years have fried fish, toys, ha’penny buns, sorrowful hearts and the like, which had entered on the adventure of life in that shop, had to depart in barrows. A skeleton cat is often to be seen coming up from the area to lounge in the doorway. To that cat I believe I owed it that so far I had not lost my wager. The faithful animal stretched itself; in the act of doing so it caught sight of the dog, and put up its back. The dog, resenting this demonstration, dropped its mouthful and made for the foe. I saw the cat victorious and sank back relieved.

  There was a greater alarm within an hour. An unshaven idler looking about for work or a pipe-light, espied the paper frisking light-heartedly on the pavement. He picked it up with the obvious intention of lighting it laboriously at a hot potato stove where I have spent some engaging minutes. The gods being kind, a gay young butcher collided with him, and the loafer, a man and a brother after all when tested, evidently at once asked him for a match. The match too was on my side, and to my infinite relief the quaking scrap was restored to freedom. At this the Government lost heart and went out at 11.45 last night. So to-day’s ‘Times,’ though unaware of the importance of its news, tells me this morning that I have won my bet. Financially this is a relief to me, as otherwise I should have been pinched; but my victory is incomplete, for I cannot lead my rag of paper to the stable it deserves; it may never have the pride of knowing that it was once backed as a winner.

  We parted for ever to-day at noon. All morning it had lain in one position, yet with an occasional flutter of the lungs, as if, I thought, the discomfiture of St. Stephen’s was not displeasing to it; though I should have known that now, and all the days I watched, it had one single thought — not of politics nor of me, but to make victoriously the circuit of the square. We are born for different ends, or so we think, we rags, and it thought it was born for this. It lay there, neither exhausted nor boastful, I now feel sure, but studying the winds, aware that rain was threatening and dissolution near. It had gone so thin that but for its mud it would have been transparent. Of a sudden it rose, lifted, the materialist might say, by an accidental puff of wind, but as I know by some nobler palpitation, and under that guidance went sailing round our square. It just succeeded, not many feet past the tape, but it did the round and had an exultant moment to know that it had won before the rain swept it into the gutter and it went gamely down the drain. Hats off.”

  THOUGH Anon after his first year was so near his pound a day that he could reach it when he stood on tiptoe, he always remained a freelance. Every few weeks, however, his prince of editors let him call at the ‘St. James’s’ office, and submit a list of possible subjects. It was then that the Hat came into play. Whether Greenwood ever noticed the Hat in those days will now never be known, but it encouraged Anon, though often in his way. Greenwood heard of it in the end, as you shall learn in our moving last chapter, which I have already decided to call ‘Goodbye to the Hat.’

  Those visits to the sanctum, which Anon enjoyed greatly (once they were over), were not very profitable, for among various discoveries he was making about himself was this, that he was incapable (except for a wager) of writing about anything that he announced he was to write about. Some imp within him, who loved to take control, immediately coaxed him away from that subject to another. This holds good with me still (but the word should be bad). Friends who wish me to proceed with a new project always hurry from my presence if I begin to tell them of it.

  The rows of subjects that Greenwood passed as possibles and were no more heard of, and the rows he put that pen of his through and were promptly posted to him, no Hat could have held them. He never complained on this score, but he was sometimes nervous over articles which meant the reverse of what they seemed to say, a kind of writing that the imp referred to was constantly egging Anon to write. These brought many letters to the harassed editor from puzzled readers. Greenwood liked to get correspondence as the result of articles, but not letters (mostly in a feminine hand) that raged. The only editor Anon ever had who liked that kind of article was Henley. There was one in the ‘St. James’s’ of a journalist who had written so many articles about the Jubilee that when told to write another he retired to the study and shot himself. This was accepted in some quarters as news, and a provincial paper commenting on it called it one of the saddest affairs connected with the Jubilee. More severe language was used about another in which Anon described himself as having been so pestered by the Waits that he buried them in Brunswick Square. One of the letters passed on by Greenwood to the author said of this, ‘The most cold-blooded murder I ever read about, and the writer shows no contrition.’ There were many such criticisms, and Greenwood maintained that every outraged reader represented at least a dozen more.

  Mr. Anon, as has been told, when hard pressed even wrote what are called ‘informative’ articles. Many of these were about his doings in distant climes, his adventures there, and his occupations, though had he taken time to reflect he must have known that he had never left his native island. One audacious series of the kind described his experiences in India as a civil engineer, when, among other deeds, he banked the Irrawaddy, with fifteen thousand coolies under his command. I re-read this lately and found it engrossing; my present-day knowledge of India indeed is largely founded on my recollection of such articles. They fascinated Greenwood, who probably wanted to know about India also, and though he was a little scared of the Irrawaddy he took some more about Anon as second in command of a convict settlement on the Andaman Islands. The series ended with a stern indictment of the Government for paying Anon his pension in rupees. Many retired Civil servants wrote to join in this fight for justice, and thanked the anonymous writer warmly. After this Greenwood let him have his head.

  A number of Anon’s articles, including the ‘Rag of Paper,’ were written in answer to challenges from friends who wanted to o’erthrow him. In this case they had pointed to a piece of paper in the gutter and defied him to make two guineas out of it. Strictly speaking, it has no right to be here. Ever since I began making this compilation I have been worried by discovering that papers chosen for it have already been incorporated to some extent in books, and this is one of them. I have discarded the others, but decided to retain this, as it was Greenwood’s favourite among the soap-bubbles of Anon.

  CHAPTER XIV

  “EDUCATIONAL NURSERIES” — HOW A CHILD DROVE ME INTO THE WILDERNESS

  “No one (writes a child of six) who knows what it is to be brought up on alphabetical biscuits will wonder at my being able to write an article. Do not think me proud of it. Acutely I feel the false position in which an educational nursery has placed me. Here am I, at the age of six years, so full of learning that yesterday I had a grey hair. I spend much of my life between historical wall-papers, and if I look closely at the ball I am ‘playing’ with I find it is a globe of the Hemispheres. Only the other day I was inveigled into what purported to be a game of soldiers, and before I knew what I was about I was halfway th
rough the Wars of the Roses. At Christmas I got a present of (apparently) a pot of jam. I opened it, and out jumped the leaders of the Liberal Party, and I had to learn their names. No matter how careful I am, I am constantly being tricked in this way. Of course it is too late now for anything to be done for me. I am lost; and as they have got it all into me by false pretences I am a sinik as well. There are, however, younger children to follow, and for their sakes I appeal to parents. I would particularly implore them, as they remember their own childhood in the happy pre-educational nurseries, to set their faces against the latest abomination, the gegraphical carpet, which is even worse than the zological doors, for there is no licking the paint off it.