Penny Plain, Twopence Coloured*
Toy Theatres and Other Things
By HUGH WALPOLE.
AS one turns over the pages of Mr. Wilson's delightful book one's childhood comes rushing up again. I owe so deep a debt to Mr. Wilson who has written this book, and to Messrs. Harrap who have delightfully published it, that I can never hope to repay either of them. he most I can hope to do is to say here and any- where else (if I have the chance) that this is a grand book to give your child for Christmas, not so much because the child will enjoy it (although it should, but you can never tell in these queer days) as because you yourself will have in reading it a poignant, sad and luxurious experience (that is if you enjoyed any childhood worth the name !).
I look on the picture opposite page 32, and I read under it : "One of Green's scenes which served in a multitude of plays." Well, I didn't know then that it was one of Green's scenes, but I did know very well that it was one of mine. And not only one of mine but the' only one, and it did "serve for a multitude of plays."
My scene was identical with this one in the picture. There was the Church Tower in the left-hand corner, then the wooden gate and palings, the old tufted tree, 'and finally the two adjacent cottages with the thatched roofs and the ginger-beer bottle windows. In Mr. Wilson's book this picture is not coloured, but my picture was coloured with a sort of blood-red sunset that ran in its enthusiasm even into the green of the tufted tree.
This was for a long while the only scene that I pos- sessed. Pocket-money was scarce and seemed to be for ever due to somebody for something before it arrived. After a while a kind uncle' from Australia gave me -a pound and I bought two more scenes—one was a Roman ruin and the other a lake with mountains behind it. It was the second of these that I especially adored, and I have looked through Mr. Wilson's book to find its image ; but no—the nearest to it is "Scene in Pollock's the Battle of Waterloo," on page 74, and that is very far away from it indeed.
My" lake "scene had in it a mountain shaped strangely like Skiddaw, and I remember that when down in Corn- 'wall I read Redgauntlet for the first time. I dramatized it, habitually calling one of my characters Herries and pushing him up and down in the front of Skiddaw—so do future catastrophes fling their shadows before them !
, My figures were cut from sheets and pasted on to little wooden stands. These stands fitted into long grooves, and along these the figures were pulled (in very wobbly fashion) by pieces of cotton (which were for ever breaking).
My theatre was an exceedingly small one and my resources very limited. Worst of all you would suppose was the thinness of my audience, for family and relations grew very quickly tired of my long gabbled monologues. I treated my characters more psychologically then than I have ever done since. Like Miss Richardson's Miriam or M. Proust's. delicate hero, every step (or, in this case, every wobble> suggested another step, every memory another memory. • My three scenes were quite enough for me if not for my audience. At that period (my passion for my toy theatre lasted for two years or So) my favourite authors were : * Penny Plain, Twopence Coloured. By A. E. Wilson. (Geo. Hari-op. 21s.) Scott, Ainsworth, Fenimore Cooper, Stevenson and (most oddly) Tolstoi. The last named came into the gallery because my niother had in the drawing-roont bookcase three shabby grey-blue volumes—an early English translation of War and Peace. I read bits of these, skipping Prince Andrew and Natasha and other grown-up persons to come to Napoleon and the battle- piece-s. These I read exactly as I read -Ainsworth and Stevenson : they seemed to me. quite as exciting. I remember well a clergyman visitor asking- me,: With that sham-generous interest so common then When grown- ups approached the young, what I was reading"; and, when I said " Tolstoi " (I was eleven-years old) he looked at Me with a real horror. I must be, he thought, a liar, a prig, or a debased, -depraved monstrosity. was none of these things at that time. It never occurred fo Mtn that the lively bits of Tolstoi are as lively and as easy to understand - as the• lively : bits- of Treasure Island or Robinson Crusoe.
'What it all led- to was that I 'enacted "The Retreat from Moscow" in- front of ,my Roman ruin, The Roman ruin -di a 'very 'well for Moscow in flames, and a stout rubicund figure I had '(in a farther's hat and corduroy) did NiT11 enough for Napoleon. • I dropped scraps of paper through the top of the scenery for a snowstorm, and I had tin soldiers for the Russian Army; My Toy Theatre was ruined by becoming too elaborate. A kind American friend of my father's, paying us a visit, saw my modest affair, went to Gamage's or somewhere, and bought me a theatre as magnificent and nearly as large as Drury Lane. It had with it about twenty scenes and a whole wagon-load of characters. (Americans were wealthy in those days !) One picture in 31r. Wilson's book resembles very nearly my grand theatre – the one opposite page 21, " Webb's Stage Front,'" although my theatre did not have "the elegant assembly of guests" in the side-boxes. The theatre, I remember, was all gold, crimson and blue. There was also a book of plays to be enacted.
For a day or two after its presentation I was in a Paradisal state. I set the theatre up beside my bed so that I might see it when I woke in the morning. I wrote out elaborate play-bills of a- coining performance and distributed them among the family. But it all came to nothing. It was too much for me. My own imagination was choked by these splendours. None of these figures seemed to have any relation to me at all as the hatted farmer or the squinting Queen or the village maiden with the red cloak once had. Then it was all too difficult. There were so many side-scenes and I was for ever changiug from one scene to another.
And yet I could not return to my old simple theatre. It seemed to me shabby now and childish. I ashamed of it and the theatre knew it. So I took to writing novels instead !
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