MISS THACKERAY'S FAIRY STORIES.*

WE never admire Miss Thackeray more than when she gives her fancy the rein for the purpose of casting round modern life some of the undefinable glamour and wonder in which the fairy-stories of our childhood were steeped for us. The new volume of these trans- muted legends of hers include "Bluebeard," "Riquet it la Houppe," "Jack and the Bean-stalk," and "The White Cat." In all those stories the sense of wonder with which we used to regard the marvels they contained is replaced by that more measured and defined, but not less profound, wonder with which the strange beauty of the earth and the sudden mysteries of human emo- tion strike us. And Miss Thackeray has a special genius for the expression of states of wonder of this kind. No one paints a sense of sweet awe so vividly as she ; no one gives the thrilling surprises of life with a truer touch. Indeed, it may be said to be the fault of , her longer tales, like "Old Kensington," that she takes us from golden mist to purple mist, from one airy feeling to another, till we seem to see no solid earth at all in her stories, and the hard habits and rigid thoughts and leathery dispositions of ordinary men and women vanish from before us, and are replaced by nebulte or star- clusters of feeling, beneath which we indistinctly trace the outline of a human character. However, the atmospheric effects which are faulty in her longer tales are great beauties in these, where the object is to produce the nearest sober analogues for those wide- eyed wonder and awful guesses of our childhood, as we pored over the fictitious perils and marvellous ways of escape provided for the heroes and heroines of fairy lore. Miss Thackeray manages, too, we think, under the conditions of compression within which she is obliged to work in tales like these, to give us even more distinct traces of true human nature,—that is, in proportion to the general artistic effect of the whole,—as well as more of "the wonder and bloom of the world," than she does in her more elaborate and long-drawn stories. In " Bluebeard's Keys," for instance, Mrs. de Travers is admirably real with that artificial sense of duty of hers which prompts her to keep afloat in "the fashionable whirl- pool to which she had been promoted by marriage." How skilful is the following touch, and how it keeps up our sense of those arbitrary marvels of human life, which really answer (though under such sadly altered conditions) to the arbitrary marvels of the fairy tale,—to that imperious necessity, for instance, of sorting all the threads in the tangled skein, which the malignant fairy has given you ! Only in the fairy-tale you well know that there is a remedy in the equally surprising magic aid which the guardian • Bluebeards Kos, and other Stories. By Miss Thackeray. London: Smith and Elder. fairy will presently give you ;—but in real life unfortunately the good fairy is apt to fail to appear, and the hopeless task to go on without aid and without end till life closes :— " People's duties are among the most curious things belonging to them. The South Kensington Museum might exhibit a collection of them. They are all-important to each of us, though others would be puzzled enough to say what they mean, or what good they are to any- one else. There might be glass cases with catalogued specimens of disciplines, of hair-shirts, and boiled fish, for some ; then for others, R. sort of social Jacob's ladder, with one foot on earth and the other in Belgrave Square, to be clambered only by much pains, by vigils, by modifications, by strainings and clutehings, and presence of mind. Some people feel that a good dinner is their solemn vocation ; others try for poor soup, cheap flannel, and parochial importance ; some fool that theirs is a mission to preach disagreeable truths; while others have a vocation for agreeable quibbles; there are also divisions, and sermons, and letters, and protests; some of us wish to improve ourselves, others prefer improving their neighbours. Mrs. do Travers had no particular ambition for herself, poor soul! She was a lazy woman, and would have contentedly dozed away the quiet evenings by the smouldering log, but a demon of duty came flitting up the palace stairs. 'Get up,' it whispered to her, 'get up, put on your wedding-garment' (it was a shabby old purple dyed-satin that had once been bought in hopes of an invitation to Tourniquet Castle); 'never mind the draught, never mind the pain in your shoulder,' says duty, 'send old Olympia for a hack- cab, shiver down the long marble flight and be off, or Lady Castleairs won't ask you again.'"

Take, again, this charming glimpse of old Olympia, the old Roman woman who waits on Mrs. de Travers and her girls :-

"Olympia, whose own home was hidden in an archway opening on the street, would discourse to her children of the magnificence of the family she served. To-day she stood on the window-ledge, as she peeped out through the half-closed shutter : outside was a drone of dis- tant hammers, and a great gold silence—the light was falling on the sun-blinds of the opposite windows, on the balconies, courts, and tene- ments; all round about spread the city encircled by hills, with great St. Peter's rearing in the midst. Old Olympia had only looked out to see if her neighbour, the washerwoman, had hung out her clothes to dry, and then, being satisfied, came back to her work again. The, th6, sempre the,' thought the old donna; they ruin their digestions, the English rich ; the lady mother is asleep, but the young ones will come in and call for the, the. We who labour have to wait upon them, while they rest like the saints in heaven. He—she snores ! "

The two girls, too, and Bluebeard himself are sketched in with great precision, while the strange spell of life's surprises, and the sudden gloom and glory cast by changing moods of sentiment, by fear and remorse, by hope and pity, have just that touch of the magician about them which is characteristic of Miss Thackeray, and needful for her purpose in these tales. Perhaps there is not quite so much distinctness given to the characters of the two last tales as there is to those of the two first, if we except Apollina, the living ' harp ' of "Jack and the Bean-stalk," who is drawn, or rather shadowed forth with Miss Thackeray's happiest art. Of course there are touches in the old stories which it is not within the conditions of the ease that the artist who deals only in the colours of this world's scenery can perfectly supply. How shall we ever forget the delight with which we read of the gilded walnut-shell and filbert given by the white cat to the young prince to take back to his father's Court, out of which came respectively the little dog and the hundred yards of cloth, which could both pass through the king's signet-ring? Those easy conjurings of circumstance cannot unfortunately be replaced for us by any human achievements, and Miss Thackeray wisely enough makes no attempt to supply their place. What she can create with wonderful success is the poetry of life, the poetry which lights up suddenly the weary, grim reaches of time till they are trans- figured for ever in the memory, and look like epochs out of another life. Take, for instance, the following beautiful opening to her story of "The White Cat." How could the greatest artist have prepared us better than by this passage for the enchantment which was to break the monotonous toil of a young man's life and interpose a dream all the more glorious for having been something more than a dream?— " Some years are profitless when we look back to them, others seem to be treasuries to which we turn again and again when our store is spent out—treasuries of sunny mornings, green things, birds piping, friends greeting, voices of children at play. How happy and busy they are as they heap up their stores ! Golden chaff, crimson tints, chest- nuts, silver lights—it is all put away for future use ; and years hence they will look back to it, and the lights of their past will reach them as starlight reaches us, clear, sweet, vivid, and entire, travelling through time and space."

That last image is worthy of any poet, however great ; and it is this enchanter's wand which Miss Thackeray wields which fits her so admirably for the task of finding analogies not always merely fanciful between the weird or bright wonders of the children's fairy lore, and the weird or bright wonders of men's actual experience, as they grow up to try the fears and hopes and visionary dreams of their childhood by the test of actual life.

Miss Thackeray has prefixed to each of her tales a humorous hex-

ameter version of the old fairy tale which she is about to attempt to transmute into the wonders of daily life. These hexameter versions are full of humour and spirit, but we rather object to them that instead of so telling the tale as to bring out that element of wonder and child-like belief in magical possibilities, in the trans- mutations of which the beauty of her stories consists, these hexameter versions give rather a farcical aspect to the wonders related, so as to put the mind out of tune with the story she is about to tell. Take, for instance, " Bluebeard's Keys." The 'Bluebeard' to whom Miss Thackeray introduces us is a super- stitious Italian Marquis, of strong passions and narrow beliefs, whose story contains much of guilt, much of remorse, and more of pathos. But it is not at all into the mood for such a story that the following clever hexameter version of the childish tale leads us, but rather into one of comic recollection of the grisly spectres which alarmed our childhood :—

"Bluebeard spake to his wife in tones of tender affection :—

• Barbara, take these keys; thine husband goes on a journey,

Such a necessity drives Ine to go; unwilling I leave thee : Be thou keeper of all while Bluebeard mourns in his absence : All these household keys, one golden—key of a chamber Into the which thou mayst not look, since evil awaits her, Curious, who shall look : so Barbara leave it unopened.'

Bluebeard parted. At once her friends rushed all thro' the castle, Into the chambers peered, tossed shawls and laces about them, Saw great piles of gold, gold suits of wonderful armour, Helmets, velvets, silks, gems, bracelets, necklaces, ermine, Gaudy brocades, and silver spears, and gorgeous hauberks, Meanwhile that gold key grew warm in her ivory fingers ; Ah ! what vast ill on earth is caused by curious wifehood !

Quickly she leapt as a hunted door through gallery windings Straight to the chamber door : unlocked it, saw thro' the doorway Nine fair wives in a heap of helpless de-capitation.

(Those had Bluebeard slain for spying into the chamber.) Seized with affright she shrieked, and falling fainted in horror Far from her hand in among those headless, beautiful Houris, Glided, alas! the glittering key : but Barbara bending Picked it in anguish up ; ran forth and cardfully wiped it,

Stained as it was with a mark of murder, a horrible gore-spot ;

Gore unwipeable, gore unwashable, not to be cleansed. Hearken ! a noise in the hall, the strong portcullis ascending !

Bluebeard strode to his bride, and kissed his Barbara fiercely, Thundering, Where's my key ?' but waiting long for an answer, His blue beard grew dark and writhed in an indigo blackness ; Barbara turned very pale, and all red again in an instant, Handed him his strange key. He roaring, 'Here is a gore-spot, Gore unwipeable, gore unwashable, not to be cleansed, Gore of my late wives' hearts; die thou too, Barbara—join them,' Straight strode out for a sword. She called upon Anna her sister, Anna, my sister, go up to the tower, and scream for assistance Come brothers, oh, come quick, bring swords and smite and avenge us!'

Anna returned with streaming eyes and woefully sighing, Fie upon all that long, bare highway, no man approaches ;' So they wept and knelt and prayed for a speedy deliv'ranee : Come brother Osman, come brother Alec, come to the rescue.'

All in a wink those two, like wild cats, sprang thro' the casement, Caught Bluebeard by the beard, and dyed it a dolorous crimson,

Making his head two halves. Then. . . Barbara dropped 'em a curtsey,

Clapped her white little hands with &laugh, and whirled pirouetting.—

Thus doth a vengeful Fate o'ertake all human oppressors."

"Gore unwipeable, gore unwashable, not to be cleansed."

is an admirable line of the grisly-comic kind, but it is not a line which well expresses the real grimness which the story has for children, and the very amusing description of the dead wives, "Nine fair wives in a heap of helpless de-capitation."

is a line intended to excite open and hearty laughter. Nothing could be better of its sort, but then that sort is hardly a good prelude to Miss Thackeray's story. She is not making fun of the old recollections ; she is trying to catch the old glamour, and to reproduce it in a new medium. The mood in which we banter our old credulities is not the mood in which to approach the tales over which Miss Thackeray has so skilfully cast the golden cloud of her soft imagination. Our remark applies less to the " Arguments " of "The White Cat" and " Riquet h la Houppe " than to the two others, which are evidently intended to poke a little fun at the old tales. Perhaps, indeed, the worst sinner in this respect is "Jack and the Bean-stalk." The giant's wife, "with fat cheeks, peony-bulbous," who hides Jack while her husband eats his too savoury meal, is an amusingly farcical figure, and the "Nix dolly pals" which Jack " shrills " as he mounts his bean-stalk is exactly the song for such a farce. Also the reply of the time-serving fairy harp to Jack after he has slain the Giant, speaking of her old master as "a rascal," just as she bad previously spoken to her old master of the young aspirant as "a rascal," though a touch of broad humour is, like the rest, quite out of keeping with the tale which Miss Thackeray is about to tell. For the living fairy-harp of that tale, the heroine whom Jack wins from her unscrupulous father, is quite indisposed to think of her father with any super- fluous harshness, so that the " Argiunent " strikes a note which it is the chief purpose of the tale itself to drown and lead the reader to forget. We might almost suppose that the " Argu- ments " of all the tales were written by another hand, and the hand of one who could not quite catch the key-note of Miss Thackeray's charming stories, or at least thought it not undesirable to bring out their drift by a discord rather than by a harmony. Were it so, we could not agree in that view. The fairy-stories in question have no doubt a grotesque and comic side, a side which, for Miss Thackeray's purpose, is even too obvious. We think they should have been related again, so as to bring out their other side, the mysterious, wonder-inspiring side, which makes children find a mystery in circumstance, an unworked golden mine of possibilities in what we call accident ; —which makes, for instance, the story of the ogre's castle at the top of the bean-stalk sound like a revelation of new worlds,—of new openings for courage, new scenes of terror, and new fields of fortune; and makes the white cat's nut-shells symbols of dis- coverable caskets containing unimagined miracles of Nature and Art. The man addresses " Circumstance " as "that unspiritual god," but the child thinks of it only as a treasury of golden hopes. Clever, humorous even in a high degree, as these "Arguments" are, we should have thought the book a far more perfect work of art, if they had so recast the old fairy tales as to revive the deep though playful awe of our childish days, instead of so as to excite the hearty laughter of self-bantering recollection. But any way; the stories themselves are not laughable, but will wield over all their readers a magical and a tender spell.