NOVELS.
THE LITTLE WHITE BIRD.*
WS foresee that there will be a considerable divergence of opinion over Mr. Barrie's new book, and that while perhaps the majority of readers will be delighted, not a few will be re- pelled by precisely the qualities which appeal to the majority. To begin with, it belongs to that species of literary entertain- ment which is governed by no hard-and-fast canons of con- struction or arrangement. It has no homogeneity, being part novel, part fantasy, in which one alternately looks at the world through the large and the small end of an opera-glass, —through the eyes of childhood and of middle age. It is, in other words, the autobiography of a middle-aged and extremely whimsical crypto-philanthropist, with as its central feature a brilliantly imaginative Child's Fairy Guide to Kensington Gardens.—Incidentally, we may say that there are whole pages in it which might be read and appreciated by a child of eight, or certainly ten.—There are plenty of touches of dry humour, there is considerable play of delicate and poetic fancy, but the dominant note of the book is sentiment of the most intimate, we had almost said the most unbridled, character. The formula, it is true, occasionally recalls Sterne, but the spirit is more closely akin to that of David Copperfi,eld. The narrator plays at being a purely selfish cynic, and adopts all sorts of fantastic and eccentric devices to preserve his attitude of detach- ment and guard against the natural results of his exorbi- tant benevolence. But although he conceals his feelings under a bearskin, and emulates the attitude of a porcupine, he is, none the less, signed and sealed of the tribe of Cheeryble.
It is not easy in the space at our disposal to convey even an outline sketch of this ingenious medley. You are to imagine a middle-aged soldier, of independent fortune, an inveterate clubman, who from his favourite window in Pall Mall witnesses the occasional meetings of a little nursery governess and a struggling artist, divines their mutual relations, and by a dramatic, but silent, intervention precipitates the crisis which brings about their marriage. You are to accept, amongst a host of other coincidences, a contiguity of residence between the clubman and the young couple which enables him to realise the acuteness of their struggle, decides him to adopt the role of fairy-godfather, patron, and good Samaritan, and prompts him a year later, in an acute spasm of sympathy for the distressed father, to invent a dream-child of his own to vindicate and justify his benevo- lent interest. For the carrying out of his schemes an accomplice is needed, and the opportune misfortune of a club-waiter enables the hero—whose powers of telescopic vision from the club window are once more exercised with prodigious effect—to secure the services of the entire family, including a preternaturally sharp little street-Arabess named Irene, who steps straight out of Dickens. From this point the appropriation of David (the young couple's child) by his fairy-godfather progresses rapidly, the peculiar feature of the relationship being that the benefactor never speaks to the mother or allows any other person to share in his interviews, excursions, or walks with the child. From this point also the story disappears in a maze of fantastic inter- ludes and digressions, connected more or less closely with the child fairy-lore of Kensington Gardens. Some of these show Mr. Barrie at his best, which is saying a great deal. The chapter headed "The Grand Tour of the Gardens " is alto- gether delightful, and we are glad to justify the use of the epithet by the following extract:—
"The Gardens are a tremendous big place, with millions and
. TM TAU Whits Bird. By L N. Barrie. London : Hodder/Stoughton. fis.] hundreds of trees ; and first you come to the Figs, but you scorn to loiter there, for the Figs is the resort of superior little persons, who are forbidden to mix with the commonalty, and is so named, according to legend, because they dress in full fig. These dainty ones are themselves contemptuously called Figs by David and other heroes, and you have a key to the manners and customs of this dandiacal section of the Gardens when I tell you that cricket is called crickets here. Occasionally a rebel Fig climbs over the fence into the world, and such a one was Miss Mabel Grey, of whom I shall tell you when we come to Miss Mabel Grey's gate. She was the only really celebrated Fig. We are now in the Broad Walk, and it is as much bigger than the other walks as your father is bigger than you. David wondered if it began little, and grew and grew, until it was quite grown up, and whether the other walks are its babies, and he drew a picture, which diverted him very much, of the Broad Walk giving a tiny walk an airing in a perambulator. In the Broad Walk you meet all the people who are worth knowing, and there is usually a grown-up with them to prevent their going on the damp grass, and to make them stand disgraced at the corner of a seat if they have been mad-dog or Mary-Annish To be Mary-Annish is to behave like a girl, whimpering because nurse won't carry you, or simpering with your thumb in your mouth, and it is a hateful quality ; but to be mad-dog is to kick out at everything, and there is some satisfaction in that. If I were to point out all the notable places as we pees up the Broad Walk, it would be time to turn back before we reach them, and I simply wave my stick at Cecco Hewlett's Tree, that memorable spot where a boy called Cecco lost his penny, and, looking for it, found twopence. There has been a good deal of excavation going on there ever since. Farther up the walk is the little wooden house in which Marmadnke Perry hid. There is no more awful story of the Gardens than this of Marmaduke Perry, who had been Mary-Annish three days in succession, and was sentenced to appear in the Broad Walk dressed in his sister's clothes. He hid in the little wooden house, and refused to emerge until they brought him knickerbockers with pockets."
The exclusively fairy scenes, again, are admirable. What could be better, for example, than the distinction drawn by Mr. Barrie between some of the guiding principles of the fairy and the human community ?—
" One of the great differences between the fairies and us is that they never do anything useful. When the first baby laughed for the first time, his laugh broke into a million pieces, and they all went skipping about. That was the beginning of fairies. They look tremendously busy, you know, as if they had not a moment to spare, but if you were to ask them what they are doing, they could not tell you in the least. They are frightfully ignorant, and everything they do is make-believe. They have a postman. but he never calls except at Christmas with his little box, and though they have beautiful schools, nothing is taught in them; the youngest child being chief person is always elected mistress, and when she has called the roll, they all go out for a walk and never come back."
We would also single out for especial commendation the letter which the narrator writes to David's mother instituting an exhaustive comparison between the merits and demerits of her- child and of his St. Bernard dog Porthos.' Having done this, we are free to declare that the book, as a whole, illustrates a fact which has already been startlingly revealed by Mr. Barrie's recent novels,—that he is of all contemporary writers of real merit least capable of self-criticism, least conscious of his lapses from tact, and even taste, of his sudden trans- gressions across the border-line that severs romance from melodrama, simplicity from effusion, poignancy from in- trusiveness. The whimsicality and poetic charm of a great deal of The Little White Bird are beyond question. Speaking for ourselves, and we are quite ready to admit that this will be a minority view, we are bound to add that at least half the book is a mere aberration of talent,--a distressingly clever exhibition of the workings of a sensitive, subtle, yet ill-
regulated imagination.
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