On Something (Dodo Press) (20 page)

I was happy to be able to tell her that her scepticism, though well
founded, was extreme. The existence of Fairyland, I was able to point out
to her both by documentary evidence from books and also by calling in the
testimony of the aged, could not be doubted by any reasonable person. What
was really difficult was the way to get there. Indeed, so obviously true
was the existence of Fairyland, that every one in this world set out to go
there as a matter of course, but so difficult was it to find the way that
very few reached the place. Upon this the child very naturally asked me
what sort of way the way was and why it was so difficult.

"You must first understand," said I, "where Fairyland is: it lies a little
way farther than the farthest hill you can see. It lies, in fact, just
beyond that hill. The frontiers of it are sometimes a little doubtful in
any landscape, because the landscape is confused, but if on the extreme
limits of the horizon you see a long line of hills bounding your view
exactly, then you may be perfectly certain that on the other side of those
hills is Fairyland. There are times of the day and of the weather when the
sky over Fairyland can be clearly perceived, for it has a different colour
from any other kind of sky. That is where Fairyland is. It is not on an
island, as some have pretended, still less is it under the earth—a
ridiculous story, for there it is all dark."

"But how do you get there?" asked the child. "Do you get there by walking
to the hills and going over?"

"No," said I, "that is just the bother of it. Several people have thought
that that was the way of getting there; in fact, it looked plain common
sense, but there is a trick about it; when you get to the hills everything
changes, because the fairies have that power: the hills become ordinary,
the people living on them turn into people just like you and me, and then
when you get to the top of the hills, before you can say knife another
common country just like ours has been stuck on the other side. On this
account, through the power of the fairies, who hate particularly to be
disturbed, no one can reach Fairyland in so simple a way as by walking
towards it."

"Then," said the child to me, "I don't see how any one can get there"—for
this child had good brains and common sense.

"But," said I, "you must have read in stories of people who get to
Fairyland, and I think you will notice that in the stories written by
people who know anything about it (and you know how easily these are
distinguished from the others) there are always two ways of getting to
Fairyland, and only two: one is by mistake, and the other is by a spell.
In the first way to Fairyland is to lose your way, and this is one of the
best ways of getting there; but it is dangerous, because if you get there
that way you offend the fairies. It is better to get there by a spell.
But the inconvenience of that is that you are blindfolded so as not to be
allowed to remember the way there or back again. When you get there by a
spell, one of the people from Fairyland takes you in charge. They prefer
to do it when you are asleep, but they are quite game to do it at other
times if they think it worth their while.

"Why do they do it?" said the child.

"They do it," said I, "because it annoys the fairies very much to think
that people are stopping believing in them. They are very proud people,
and think a lot of themselves. They can, if they like, do us good, and
they think us ungrateful when we forget about them. Sometimes in the past
people have gone on forgetting about fairies more and more and more,
until at last they have stopped believing in them altogether. The fairies
meanwhile have been looking after their own affairs, and it is their fault
more than ours when we forget about them. But when this has gone on for
too long a time the fairies wake up and find out by a way they have that
men have stopped believing in them, and get very much annoyed. Then some
fairy proposes that a map of the way to Fairyland should be drawn up and
given to the people; but this is always voted down; and at last they make
up their minds to wake people up to Fairyland by going and visiting this
world, and by spells bringing several people into their kingdom and so
getting witnesses. For, as you can imagine, it is a most unpleasant thing
to be really important and for other people not to know it."

"Yes," said the child, who had had this unpleasant experience, and greatly
sympathized with the fairies when I explained how much they disliked it.
Then the child asked me again:

"Why do the fairies let us forget about them?"

"It is," said I, "because they get so excited about their own affairs.
Rather more than a hundred years ago, for instance, a war broke out in
Fairyland because the King of the Fairies, whose name is Oberon, and the
Queen of the Fairies, whose name is Titania, had asked the Trolls to
dinner. The Gnomes were very much annoyed at this, and the Elves still
more so, for the chief glory of the Elves was that being elfish got you to
know people; and it was universally admitted that the Trolls ought never
to be asked out, because they were trollish. King Oberon said that all
that was a wicked prejudice, and that the Trolls ought to be asked out to
dinner just as much as the Elves, in common justice. But his real reason
was that he was bored by the perpetual elfishness of the Elves, and wanted
to see the great ugly Trolls trying to behave like gentlemen for a change.
So the Trolls came and tied their napkins round their necks, and ate such
enormous quantities at dinner that King Oberon and his Queen almost died
of laughing. The Elves were frightfully jealous, and so the war began. And
while it was going on everybody in Earthland forgot more and more about
Fairyland, until at last some people went so far as to say, like you, that
Fairyland did not exist."

"I did not say so," said the child, "I only asked."

"But," I answered severely, "asking about such things is the beginning of
doubting them. Anyhow, the fairies woke up one fine day about the time
when your great-grandfather got married, to discover that they were not
believed in, so they patched up their quarrel and they sent fairies to
cast spells, and any amount of people began to be taken to Fairyland,
until at last every one was forced to believe their evidence and to say
that Fairyland existed."

"Were they glad?" said the child.

"Who?" said I; "the witnesses who were thus taken away and shown
Fairyland?"

"Yes," said the child. "They ought to have been glad."

"Well, they
weren't
!" said I. "They were as sick as dogs. Not one
of them but got into some dreadful trouble. From one his wife ran away,
another starved to death, a third killed himself, a fourth was drowned
and then burned upon the seashore, a fifth went mad (and so did several
others), and as for poverty, and all the misfortunes that go with it, it
simply rained upon the people who had been to Fairyland."

"Why?" said the child, greatly troubled.

"Ah!" said I, "that is what none of us know, but so it is, if they take
you to Fairyland you are in for a very bad business indeed. There is only
one way out of it."

"And what is that?" said the child, interested.

"Washing," said I, "washing in cold water. It has been proved over and
over again."

"Then," said the child happily, "they can take me to Fairyland as often as
they like, and I shall not be the worse for it, for I am washed in cold
water every day. What about the other way to Fairyland?"

"Oh
that
," said I, "that, I think, is much the best way; I've gone
there myself."

"Have you really?" said the child, now intensely interested. "That
is
good! How often have you been there?"

"Oh I can't tell you," I said carelessly, "but at least eight times, and
perhaps more, and the dodge is, as I told you, to lose your way; only the
great trouble is that no one can lose his way on purpose. At first I used
to think that one had to follow signs. There was an omnibus going down the
King's Road which had 'To the World's End' painted on it. I got into this
one day, and after I had gone some miles I said to the man, 'When do we
get to the World's End?' 'Oh,' said he, 'you have passed it long ago,' and
he rang a little bell to make me get out. So it was a fraud. Another time
I saw another omnibus with the words, 'To the Monster,' and I got into
that, but I heard that it was only a sort of joke, and that though the
Monster was there all right, he was not in Fairyland. This omnibus went
through a very uninteresting part of London, and Fairyland was nowhere in
the neighbourhood. Another time in the country of France I came upon a
printed placard which said: 'The excursion will pass by the Seven Winds,
the Foolish Heath, and St. Martin under Heaven.' This time also I thought
I had got it, but when I looked at the date on the placard I saw that the
excursion had started several days before, so I missed it again. Another
time up in Scotland I saw a signpost on which there was, 'To the King's
House seven miles.' And some one had written underneath in pencil: 'And
to the Dragon's Cave eleven.' But nothing came of it. It was a false
lane. After that I gave up believing that one could get to Fairyland by
signposts or omnibuses, until one day, quite by mistake, I chanced on the
dodge of losing one's way."

"How is that done?" said the child.

"That is what no one can tell you," said I. "If people knew how it was
done everybody would do it, but the whole point of losing your way is that
you do it by mistake. You must be quite certain that you have not lost
your way or it is no good. You walk along, and you walk along, and you
wonder how long it will be before you get to the town, and then instead of
getting to the town at all, there you are in Fairyland."

"How do you know that you are in Fairyland?" said the little child.

"It depends how far you get in," said I. "If you get in far enough trees
and rocks change into men, rivers talk, and voices of people whom you
cannot see tell you all sorts of things in loud and clear tones close to
your ear. But if you only get a little way inside then you know that you
are there by a sort of wonderment. The things ought to be like the things
you see every day, but they are a little different, notably the trees.
It happened to me once in a town called Lanchester. A part of that
town (though no one would think of it to look at it) happens to be in
Fairyland. And there I was received by three fairies, who gave me supper
in an inn. And it happened to me once in the mountains and once it
happened to me at sea. I lost my way and came upon a beach which was in
Fairyland. Another time it happened to me between Goodwood and Upwaltham
in Sussex."

At this moment the child's nurse came in to take it away, so she came to
the point:

"How did you know you were in Fairyland?' she said doubtfully." Perhaps
you are making all this up."

"Nonsense!" I said reprovingly, "the only people who make things up are
little children, for they always tell lies. Grown-up people never tell
lies. Let me tell you that one always knows when one has been in Fairyland
by the feeling afterwards, and because it is impossible to find it again."

The child said, "Very well, I will believe you," but I could see from the
expression of her eyes that she was not wholly convinced, and that in the
bottom of her heart she does not believe there is any such place. She
will, however, if she can hang on another forty years, and then I shall
have my revenge.

In a garden which must, I think, lie somewhat apart and enclosed in one
of the valleys of central England, you came across the English grass in
summer beneath the shade of a tree; you were running, but your arms were
stretched before you in a sort of dance and balance as though you rather
belonged to the air and to the growing things about you and above you than
to the earth over which you passed; and you were not three years old.

As, in jest, this charming vision was recorded by a camera which some
guest had with him, a happy accident (designed, for all we know, by
whatever powers arrange such things, an accident of the instrument or of
the plate upon which your small, happy, advancing figure was recorded) so
chanced that your figure, when the picture was printed, shone all around
with light.

I cannot, as I look at it now before me and as I write these words,
express, however much I may seek for expression, how great a meaning
underlies that accident nor how full of fate and of reason and of
suggested truth that aureole grows as I gaze. Your innocence is beatified
by it, and takes on with majesty the glory which lies behind all
innocence, but which our eyes can never see. Your happiness seems in that
mist of light to be removed and permanent; the common world in which you
are moving passes, through this trick of the lens, into a stronger world
more apt for such a sight, and one in which I am half persuaded (as I
still look upon the picture) blessedness is not a rare adventure, but
something native and secure.

Little child, the trick which the camera has played means more and more as
I still watch your picture, for there is present in that light not only
blessedness, but holiness as well. The lightness of your movement and of
your poise (as though you were blown like a blossom along the tops of the
grass) is shone through, and your face, especially its ready and wondering
laughter, is inspired, as though the Light had filled it from within;
so that, looking thus, I look not on, but through. I say that in this
portrait which I treasure there is not only blessedness, but holiness as
well—holiness which is the cause of blessedness and which contains it,
and by which secretly all this world is sustained.

Now there is a third thing in your portrait, little child. That accident
of light, light all about you and shining through your face, is not only
blessed nor only holy, but it is also sacred, and with that thought there
returns to me as I look what always should return to man if he is to find
any stuff or profit in his consideration of divine things. In blessedness
there is joy for which here we are not made, so that we catch it only
in glimpses or in adumbrations. And in holiness, when we perceive it we
perceive something far off; it is that from which we came and to which
we should return; yet holiness is not a human thing. But things sacred—
things devoted to a purpose, things about which there lies an awful
necessity of sacrifice, things devoted and necessarily suffering some
doom—these are certainly of this world; that, indeed, all men know well
at last, and find it part of the business through which they needs must
pass. Human memories, since they are only memories; human attachments,
since they are offered up and end; great human fears and hopeless human
longings—these are sacred things attached to a victim and to a sacrifice;
and in this picture of yours, with the light so glorifying you all round,
no one can doubt who sees it but that the sacredness of human life will be
yours also; that is, you must learn how it is offered up to some end and
what a sacrifice is there.