Complete Works of J. M. Barrie

by Unknown

  Here is the wood, with only a ditch and a dyke between it and you. The path begins, like so many of its kind, with a gap in the dyke that the farmer fills now and again with whins. Some say that walking in a wood stifles them, but even in summer I prefer it to fields and commons, and in winter it draws me out-of-doors, despite the muddy highway.

  When the rest of the world hereabouts is carpeted with mud, the path through the wood is hard and springy, in most parts green, with here and there a little morass that I can walk around. If we plunged into that deceptive grass we would squirt up water into our faces. Here is a lump of snow that has forgotten to go with the thaw, and we even come to a pool with ice on it. Over the ice is a film of water. Push your stick into the pool, and the ice breaks without a sound. The crispness has gone from it, and if we take it in our hands pieces fall off and are water almost as soon as they touch the grass.

  The path does not make the most of the wood by twisting through it. It grew under the feet of persons anxious to reach their destination; as I understand, they used to walk briskly along the path with milk-cans in their hands. The ploughmen delve through it heavily still, and in summer boys are to be seen. They are not, however, to be met with. We hear in the distance the cry of one boy to another, and think as little of it as though we were listening to the mavis, for boys and girls are equally at home in woods, and I would drive neither from them. “But, like the mavis, the boy promptly hops out of sight, regarding us as intruders, and watching us furtively from behind trees. The birds, I believe, have the same opinion of us, but look on boys as larger birds than themselves, not to be trusted, but with a right to be there. In summer I creep upon the boys, and sink into the heather where I can observe them unseen. They have sharp ears, and if I tread on a brittle twig I am discovered. One gives a shrill cry, another whistles, and a third drops from his tree like an apple. They pick up their ragged jackets, and in a moment I am alone in the wood. They seem to sink into the ground, and I, the enemy, am left behind. But at times I succeed in approaching within earshot; then I see them at games in no way dissimilar to those of monkeys, and quite as mischievous. Or they are here on business, after a nest. One climbs on to the back of the other as the first step toward ascending the tree, then the support gives way, and the climber tumbles to the ground on his head. He sits there dazed for a moment, and then, without a word, the ascending begins again. This time the little villain is successful. He disappears among the branches, and by and by slides down the trunk with three or four eggs in his mouth. If he comes whack upon the ground the eggs break in his mouth, and he screams reproaches at his friend. But if all goes well, they search for a thorn with which to make holes in their spoil. They blow the eggs, put them in their caps, and saunter home unconscious of their torn sleeves. Care has found no resting-place in their buoyant hearts yet, and the holes and rents in their ragged garments are mended by hands, and scanned tenderly by eyes, learned in love’s ways, if careworn and tired.

  But boys come seldom into the wood at this time of year, and I am looking for squirrels. That bundle of firewood resting against a tree is a likely place, so you may shove your stick into it. Squirrels may be anywhere, however, and all we are sure of is that they will come upon us suddenly. Not one is to be seen from here, but it is a capital place to stop a moment at if you would carry away in your mind a fair sample of the wood. The trees are nearly all pines and beeches, two kinds that grow side by side, though they have nothing in common. All summer the beeches in their gay dress laugh at the sombre pines. But with winter the beeches are stripped bare in a few nights, and then the pine can give them a piece of its mind. Some of us are beeches that forget the winter while we can be gay in summer, and others are pines, who think less of show than wear. But I would rather be a beech than a pine, and so know the extremes of delight and despair. The children of the beech have kept their leaves longer than their mother. They are mere twigs sprouting up among the grass, and the wind has not been able to get down to them. But their leaves are a brown-red, only warm when the sun shines on them, and to-day there is no sun. The grass is green, with tufts of hay among it; and if we leave the path we shall soon stumble over heather roots. Those dark green spots in the distance are broom, but they are too dark in color to show well in winter in a pine-wood.

  No, don’t stone him; stand quietly, and watch. We have, it will be seen, come upon a squirrel. The mildest of men looks for a stone when he sees a squirrel laughing at him or a bottle bobbing up and down in the water. But, of course, if you did strike the squirrel — not that I believe you could do so — you would go home distressed, all pleasure in the walk lost. Besides, if you frighten the squirrel, he will simply climb out of sight; while if we only arouse his suspicions, he may take us for a walk. See, he has leaped to the beech; now he is on the fir; now where is he? There, two trees ahead. The squirrel, once he has set off in a straight line, will continue on it though nature be against him. He runs along the trees. Though I have seen the squirrel miss his jump, I never saw him fall to the ground. Ninety-nine times in a hundred he leaps correctly, dropping on the exact centre of the branch, and running along it without a pause. When he is out in his reckoning, he always succeeds in catching at some other branch. We walk at an ordinary pace beneath and keep up with him, for he never stops, except for a moment now and again to cock his head at us. If we are coming, he is willing to go on; but if not, he will rest. My reason for following him still is that I want to see how he will act when he comes to the end of the wood. But he has often raced me to this point before, and I can guess what he will do. One would expect him to turn back, or to skurry off to the right or left; but no, he goes straight on, and when he reaches the last tree never hesitates a moment as to what he ought to do next. He slides down the trunk at the other side from you, darts across the road, and is up a tree again, asking if you have had enough of it. He has made us stray from the path at all events, and our boots are beginning to chirp. If we follow the squirrel farther we shall probably slip on the roots of trees to which the rain has given a polish. That was not rain you felt just now; it was only a drop from a leaf. But the rain will be on before we reach home.

  WOMAN AND THE PRESS.

  FORTUNATELY for the ladies who are now making or half making a livelihood by journalism, the rank and file of them are not to be measured by the notorieties. Many lady-journalists whose names are in no one’s mouth are already proving that the press affords a calling in every way as honorable for them as for men. Until the other day the opinion was almost universal in this country that a lady could not earn her living modestly unless she followed some downtrodden profession such as that of the governess, in which she retained her modesty because she could not become brazen at the salary. With independence her womanliness would take flight. These chains of prejudice are breaking, and by the beginning of next century we shall doubtless find that the lady-journalist, by the example of her life, has done something to break them. Even those who sigh over the lady-politician, or put out their tongue (uninvited) to the lady-doctor, or shake their heads at the actress, will be able to condemn journalism as an unwomanly profession because of its publicity. The journalism best suited to ladies can be done at home and anonymously, which is one of its advantages.

  As it happens, however — though this is only an accident of the moment — the most prominent lady journalists are doing their best to weaken these arguments by making themselves as noisy as street organs.

  The New Journalism has discovered that some of the ladies whom it finds useful are prepared to “go a considerable length.” Here is this Miss Nellie Something of America, for instance; one of a type that has sprung up since Martin Chuzzlewit was requested to gaze upon the celebrated characters of that country. Miss Nellie has been shot round the world by a New York paper, which holds — perhaps rightly — that because she has beaten Jules Verne’s “record,” an American lady has gone around the world in less than eighty days. Sensible people, however — those who can keep
their heads when a hero goes over Niagara in a barrel, and see that the barrel only is worthy of admiration — will agree that if this is the kind of thing expected of lady journalists, journalism is scarcely a sphere for their sisters. Miss Nellie, of course, so far as we on this side know, is not a journalist at all. She has been behaving as a music-hall “artiste” and is only comparable to the lady who walks the tight-rope or excels at “high-kicking.” Like these, her rivals, she is very plucky, and no more need be said of her. Scores of high-kickers and male-impersonators in this country are ready to start round the world tomorrow “in costume” in the attempt to beat Miss Nellie’s record, if our New Journalism will send them. But, fortunately, the New Journalism of this country has not as yet been a financial success.

  Nevertheless, whatsoever is specially objectionable in the ways of the New Journalism ladies can be found to do. It is well known that they are the best interviewers, because they can go where men are not admitted and ask questions at which even the male interviewer would blush. The celebrity into whose study the lady interviewer pushes her way is in an awkward position. It is quite within his right to tell his servants to remove the male interviewer with their feet; but the lady is here, and the question is how to get her out. How did she get in? Probably by pretending to be somebody else, if indeed she has not tripped in behind some visitor. She may have been despatched to the work after the other sex has failed to gain an entrance, and she is determined to succeed. She may wait calmly for hours until she sees the door ajar. If her victim is a lawyer she will take the name, of one of his clients; if a doctor she will call herself a patient; if a politician she pretends to be the wife of his agent. In short, there is no lie to which she will not resort, and her conscience is so dead that she boasts of her methods when they have succeeded. Now she has borne down on her victim, and he tells her politely that he must decline to be interviewed. She then takes a chair and insists on interviewing him. His wisest course is not to answer any question; but it is a course not easy to pursue, for she is an adept at exasperating. Even if he is dumb to her she examines the room. She “takes in” the furniture, and her “host’s” dress, and pounces on the papers that litter his writing-table. On her way out she may have the good fortune to see her victim’s little boy, and him she at once crossexamines. The servants are also pressed. It is the lady interviewers who ask their victim whether it be true that he is applying for a divorce, and what his proof is, and which is the stool his wife flung at him. This would read like exaggeration were it not notorious that the New Journalism is ever on the scent of scandals, and that the ladies are its best servants.

  Less discreditable to their calling are the lady-journalists who frequent “private views” and “first nights,” in order to say at great length who were present and what they wore. This sort of thing is carried by some of them to impertinence; but they are at least comparatively harmless, and they look so happy while plying their vocation that it would be cruel to frown at them. They provide gossip for the society journals and such provincial papers as fill their London letter with personalities. The personalities are usually inaccurate, but, like quack pills, do no perceptible harm. Of some of the ladies, too, it may be said that they write capital letters — usually in weekly journals — for their own sex.

  But journalism offers an excellent profession for ladies who do not want either to gossip or interview or be reporters. All the leading papers nowadays are to some extent magazines, and devote space to short leaders or essays on social, literary, or artistic subjects. As it is, a number of these are written by ladies, and no doubt ladies will write more of them in future. Many men of some mark write little else, and find the work pleasant. It can be done anywhere, and the writer is his own master. Editors have not yet educated themselves up to the point of having women on their night-staff, and there is in newspaper offices a prejudice — if such it should be called — against “petticoats.” But any editor not a ninny is as willing to print articles from the outside by women as by men, and judges these articles entirely by their merit. Women with some literary faculty have thus a lucrative profession upon which they can enter any day they choose with the certainty that they are not handicapped by their sex. There are thousands of subjects ready to their hands, and they can do the work when and where they like.

  A PLEA FOR SMALLER BOOKS.

  An author advises us to publish weekly a list of selected books, for which he proposes the title, “Books to Borrow.” The British public, he thinks, is still wondering what Mr. Mark Pattison meant by saying that men, to respect themselves, must own at least a thousand volumes. Not only does the public shun the bookseller; like the Argyllshire dairymaid, who stipulates that she shall not dine on salmon oftener than four times a week, it has become fastidious, and will not now even borrow lightly. It must have its library fiction hot from the press, as if novels, like milk, turned sour with keeping; and it declines to gorge on memoirs that are not as fashionable as the last thing in bonnets. Mr. Macniven must not send “Pride and Prejudice” to his subscribers, the Misses Insatiable — they know it is not new by the cover. Messrs. Douglas & Foulis will not impose upon Mrs. Uptodate with the “Life of Macaulay,” which is an achievement, when she can have Mr. Hatton’s “Toole,” which may be mostly drivel, but was only issued yesterday. Such, we must agree with our cynical novelist, are among the ways of the “reading public,” which, however, seldom buys, borrows, or gets from the library so long as newspapers or magazines will condense the new tome into an article. Authors and publishers complain, but the public is not the only sinner. The bane of British literature at present is its bulk. The law of the land is as much that novels should be in three volumes as that there must be a public-house at every street-corner. “924 pages” is advertised as a recommendation. As for the biographies of Undistinguished Persons and the Reminiscences of Men! Have Known for Five Minutes, they seem to be manufactured for sale by weight. Like the epistles Gabrielissime Harvey sent to Tom Nash, they would break the wheels of a carrier’s cart, and could be hurled forth at arm’s-length for a wager. If the public is to keep up with current literature it must take all the short cuts. We need a poet to sing the praises of little books.

  Our literature lies crushed beneath its load of “padding.” Take the novelists — the four-in-hand popular novelists, most prolific of writers, if we except the book-makers who cook with other men’s brains. The critic, with spade, buries rows of new novelists weekly. They may have merit, but he gazes at the piles of three-volumes until his one ambition is to make them corpses. Novelists who have refused to die in the bud he leaves to wither in flower. They are nearly all able, entertaining writers; but fiction is their means of livelihood, and were they to cram all their best into one book they would soon be empty. They must not be too prodigal of either character or plot, and consequently their story would generally reach its natural end in a single volume. Having to run three times round the course, however, instead of once, they must not “spurt” at the start. Padding is of various merits and many kinds. We have a distinguished novelist who can become a landscape painter by sending anyone of his characters to the window. There is philosophical padding, which is usually the cheapest of all. When a lady-novelist thinks she is getting along too quickly she arranges for another ball, or sends Claude and Emmeline back to the conservatory. The smoking-room, with cigars and gossip, or what they think of the situation in the kitchen, is another reserve that may be drawn upon; and there are hardened novelists who do not hesitate to write “Retrospective” at the head of several chapters in volume two. Thus novels become paper bags blown out with wind. Often it is cleverly done, but at its best the sand can be detected in the sugar; and at its second-best, which is not the lowest degree of comparison, it is an attempt to stock a whole house with the drawingroom furniture. It spoils the style of the rare writer who has any. Probably the novels of the present year that do not suffer from length could be counted on the fingers of a one-armed man. Mr. Stevenson is a
brave exception to the rule; but the shilling novels, now so popular, being mostly refuse, need not be considered. It remains a fact that few novels published nowadays are not at least twice as long as “Silas Mamer.” One of the fine things to remember about George Eliot is that she was offered a tempting sum to lengthen one of her books, and declined it.

  Curiously, while all see what is wrong, no one proposes a remedy. The public blames the author, the author the publisher, the publisher the public; but they are as helpless as the lady who complained of the heat, yet never thought of sitting further away from the fire. It is a commercial question. The authors, who are no doubt in most cases their own severe critics, say that the publishers look askance at one volume. The publishers say they must produce what pays. Yet the public is all the time pointing out that it cannot pay, and its shelves show that it does not. In short, the publisher’s appeal is to the library, which prefers books to be in several volumes, thus tempting the public to become heavy subscribers. The publisher flourishes moderately without much risk under this arrangement, for the libraries take as many copies of an average book as will at least secure him against loss. He also bears in mind that a twenty-shilling book’s cost of production may be little more than that of a six-shilling book. To appeal direct to the public with cheap single volumes might mean a much greater sale, but it would be more risky. The gain to literature would be certain. Many books which now get a library circulation would never be printed, and the better books would drop the ballast that now keeps them trailing to earth, for padding would be at a discount. As it is, books of merit, when offered, years after their first publication, in one volume, have a considerable sale, which would doubtless have been much greater had they been published originally at the same price, and without their superfluous chapters. We ought to take a lesson from France. With so many books to choose between, we have not the appetite of the boy at a public dinner, who, when told by his father to eat for tomorrow and the next day, replied that he must first eat for yesterday and the day before. The public should be denied no opportunity of becoming its own critic. As it passes saner judgments, the standard of contemporary literature will rise.