If I May | Page 8

it in order to find out whether it is a
"genuine antique" or only a modern reproduction; but it is obvious that
years of stroking would be necessary before an article of furniture
would be properly responsive. Is it worth while wasting these years of
one's life? Indeed, is it worth while (I ask nervously) bothering whether
a chair or a table is antique or modern so long as it is both useful and
beautiful?
Well, let me tell you what happened to us yesterday. We found a
dresser which appealed to us considerably, and we stood in front of it,
looking at it. We decided that except for a little curley-wiggle at the top
it was the jolliest dresser we had seen, "That's a fine old dresser," said
the shopman, coming up at that moment, and he smacked it
encouragingly. "A really fine old dresser, that." We agreed. "Except for
those curley-wiggles," I added, pointing to them with my umbrella. "If
we could take those off." He looked at me reproachfully. "You wouldn't
take those off----" he said. "Why, that's what tells you that it's a Welsh
dresser of 1720." We didn't buy that dresser. We decided that the size
or the price was all wrong. But I wonder now, supposing we had
bought it, whether we should have had the pluck to remove the
curley-wiggles (and let people mistake it for an English dresser of 1920)
in order that, so abbreviated, it might have been more beautiful.
For furniture is not beautiful merely because it is old. It is absurd to
suppose that everything made in 1720--or 1620 or 1520--was made
beautifully, as it would be absurd to say that everything made in 1920
was beautiful. No doubt there will always be people who will regard
the passing of time as sufficient justification for any article of furniture;
I could wish that they were equally tolerant among the arts as among
the crafts, so that in 2120 this very article which I write now could be
referred to with awe as a genuine 1920; but all that the passage of time
can really do for your dresser is to give a more beautiful surface and
tone to the wood. This, surely, is a matter which you can judge for
yourself without being an expert. If your dresser looks old you have got
from it all that age can give you; if it looks beautiful you have got from

it all that a craftsman of any period can give you; why worry, then, as
to whether or not it is a "genuine antique"? The expert may tell you that
it is a fake, but the fact that he has suddenly said so has not made your
dining-room less beautiful. Or if it is less beautiful, it is only because
an "expert" is now in it. Hurry him out.

The Robinson Tradition

Having read lately an appreciation of that almost forgotten author
Marryat, and having seen in the shilling box of a second-hand
bookseller a few days afterward a copy of Masterman Ready, I went in
and bought the same. I had read it as a child, and remembered vaguely
that it combined desert-island adventure with a high moral tone; jam
and powder in the usual proportions. Reading it again, I found that the
powder was even more thickly spread than I had expected; hardly a
page but carried with it a valuable lesson for the young; yet this
particular jam (guava and cocoanut) has such an irresistible attraction
for me that I swallowed it all without a struggle, and was left with a
renewed craving for more and yet more desert-island stories. Having,
unfortunately, no others at hand, the only satisfaction I can give myself
is to write about them.
I would say first that, even if an author is writing for children (as was
Marryat), and even if morality can best be implanted in the young mind
with a watering of fiction, yet a desert-island story is the last story
which should be used for this purpose. For a desert-island is a child's
escape from real life and its many lessons. Ask yourself why you
longed for a desert-island when you were young, and you will find the
answer to be that you did what you liked there, ate what you liked, and
carried through your own adventures. It is the "Family" which spoils
The Swiss Family Robinson, just as it is the Seagrave family which
nearly wrecks Masterman Ready. What is the good of imagining
yourself (as every boy does) "Alone in the Pacific" if you are not going
to be alone? Well, perhaps we do not wish to be quite alone; but
certainly to have more than two on an island is to overcrowd it,