Little Johannes. Frederik van Eeden
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is always being imitated, – and, in brief, impossible. Mere vagaries of absurdity, mere floods of floral eloquence, do not make a fairy tale. We can never quite recover the old simplicity, energy, and romance, the qualities which, as Charles Nodier said, make Hop o' my Thumb, Puss in Boots, and Blue Beard 'the Ulysses, the Figaro and the Othello of children.' There may possibly be critics or rather there are certain to be critics, who will deny that the modern and literary fairy tale is a legitimate genre, or a proper theme of discussion. The Folklorist is not unnaturally jealous of what, in some degree, looks like Folk-Lore. He apprehends that purely literary stories may 'win their way,' pruned of their excrescences, 'to the fabulous,' and may confuse the speculations of later mycologists. There is very little real danger of this result. I speak, however, not without sympathy; there was a time when I regarded all contes except contes populaires as frivolous and vexatious. This, however, is the fanaticism of pedantry. The French conteurs of the last century, following in the track of Hop o' my Thumb, made and narrated many pleasing discoveries, if they also wrote much that was feeble and is faded. To admit this is but common fairness; literary fairy tales may legitimately amuse both old and young, though 'it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill.' The conteurs, like every one who does not always stretch the bow of Apollo till it breaks, had, of course, their severe censors. To listen to some persons, one might think that gaiety was a crime. You scribble light verses, and you are solemnly told that this is not high poetry, told it by worthy creatures whose rhymes could be uncommonly elevated, if mere owl-like solemnity could make poetry and secure elevation. You make a fairy tale, and you are told that the incidents border on the impossible, that analysis of character, and the discussion of grave social and theological problems are conspicuously absent. The old conteurs were met by those ponderous objections. Madame d'Aulnoy, in Ponce de Léon, makes one of her characters defend the literary Märchen in its place. 'I am persuaded that, in spite of serious critics, there is an art in the simplicity of the stories, and I have known persons of taste who sometimes found in them an hour's amusement… He would be ridiculous who wanted to hear and read nothing but such legends, and he who should write them in a pompous and inflated style, would rob them of their proper character, but I am persuaded that, after some serious occupation, l'on peut badiner avec.' 'I hold,' said Melanie, 'that such stories should be neither trivial nor bombastic, that they should hold a middle course, rather gay than serious, not without a shade of moral, above all, they should be offered as trifles, which the listener alone has a right to put his price upon.'
This is very just criticism of literary fairy tales, made in an age when we read of a professional faiseur des contes des fées vieux et modernes.
Little Johannes is very modern, and, as Juana says in Ponce de Léon:
'Vous y mettrez le prix qu'il vous plaira, mais je ne peux m'empêcher de dire que celui qui le compose est capable de choses plus importantes, quand il veut s'en donner la peine.'
ANDREW LANG.
I
I will tell you something about little Johannes. My tale has much in it of a fairy story; but it nevertheless all really happened. As soon as you do not believe it you need read no farther, as it was not written for you. Also you must never mention the matter to little Johannes if you should chance to meet him, for that would vex him, and I should get into trouble for having told you all about it.
Johannes lived in an old house with a large garden. It was difficult to find one's way about there, for in the house there were many dark doorways and staircases, and cupboards, and lumber-lofts, and all about the garden there were sheds and hen-houses. It was a whole world to Johannes. He could make long journeys there, and he gave names to all he discovered. He had named the rooms in the house from the animal world; the caterpillar-loft, because he kept caterpillars there; the hen-room, because he had once found a hen there. It had not come in of itself; but Johannes' mother had set it there to hatch eggs. In the garden he chose names from plants, preferring those of such products as he thought most interesting. Thus he had Raspberry Hill, Cherry-tree Wood, and Strawberry Hollow. Quite at the end of the garden was a place he had called Paradise, and that, of course, was lovely. There was a large pool, a lake where white water-lilies floated and the reeds held long whispered conversations with the wind. On the farther side of it there were the dunes or sand-hills. Paradise itself was a little grassy meadow on the bank, shut in by bushes, among which the hemlock grew tall. Here Johannes would sometimes He in the thick grass, looking between the swaying reeds at the tops of the sand-hills across the water. On warm summer evenings he was always to be found there, and would lie for hours, gazing up, without ever wearying of it. He would think of the depths of the still, clear water in front of him – how pleasant it must be there among the water-plants, in that strange twilight; and then again of the distant, gorgeously coloured clouds which swept across the sand-downs – what could be behind them? How splendid it would be to be able to fly over to them! Just as the sun disappeared, the clouds gathered round an opening so that it looked like the entrance to a grotto, and in the depths of the cavern gleamed a soft, red glow. That was what Johannes longed to reach. 'If I could but fly there!' thought he to himself. 'What can there be beyond? If I could only once, just for once, get there!'
But even while he was wishing it the cavern fell asunder in rolling dark clouds before he could get any nearer. And then it grew cold and damp by the pool, and he had to go back to his dark little bedroom in the old house.
He did not live all alone there; he had his father, who took good care of him, his dog Presto and the cat Simon. Of course he loved his father best: but he did not love Presto and Simon so very much less, as a grown-up man would have done. He told Presto many more secrets than he ever told his father, and he held Simon in the greatest respect. And no wonder! Simon was a very big cat with a shining black coat and a bushy tail. It was easy to see that he was perfectly convinced of his own importance and wisdom. He was always solemn and dignified, even when he condescended to play with a rolling cork or to gnaw a stale herring's head behind a tree. As he watched Presto's flighty behaviour he would contemptuously blink his green eyes and think: 'Well, well, dogs know no better!'
Now you may understand what respect Johannes had for him. But he was on much more familiar terms with little brown Presto. He was not handsome nor dignified, but a particularly good-natured and clever little dog, who never went two yards from Johannes' side, and sat patiently listening to all his master told him. I need not tell you how dearly Johannes loved Presto. But he had room in his heart for other things as well. Do you think it strange that his dark bedroom with the tiny window-panes filled a large place there? He loved the curtains with the large-flowered pattern in which he could see faces, and which he had studied so long when he lay awake in the mornings or when he was sick; he loved the one picture which hung there, in which stiff figures were represented in a yet stiffer garden, walking by the side of a tranquil pond where fountains were spouting as high as the clouds, and white swans were swimming. But most of all he loved the hanging clock. He pulled up the weights every day with solemn care, and regarded it as an indispensable civility to look up at it whenever it struck. This of course could only be done as long as Johannes remained awake. If by some neglect the clock ran down Johannes felt quite guilty, and begged its pardon a dozen times over. You would have laughed, no doubt, if you had heard him talking to his room. But perhaps you sometimes talk to yourself; that does not seem to you altogether ridiculous; and Johannes was perfectly convinced that his hearers had quite understood him, and he required no answer. Still he secretly thought that he might perhaps have a reply from the clock or the curtains.
Johannes had schoolmates, but they were not exactly friends. He played with them, and plotted tricks with them in school, and robber-games out of school; still he never felt quite at home but when he was alone with Presto. Then he never wanted any boys, and was perfectly at his ease and safe.
His father was a wise, grave man, who sometimes took Johannes with him for long walks through the woods and over the sand-hills; but then he spoke little, and Johannes ran a few steps behind, talking to the flowers he saw, and the old trees which had always to stay in the same place, stroking them gently with his little hand on the rough bark. And the friendly giants rustled their thanks.
Sometimes his father traced letters in the sand as they went along, one by one, and Johannes spelt the words they made: and sometimes his