The Lilac Fairy Book | Page 4

know me well, they generally ask 'Are
you writing anything now?' (as if they should ask a painter 'Are you
painting anything now?' or a lawyer 'Have you any cases at present?').
Sometimes they are more definite and inquire 'What are you writing
now?' as if I must be writing something--which, indeed, is the case,
though I dislike being reminded of it. It is an awkward question,
because the fair being does not care a bawbee what I am writing; nor
would she be much enlightened if I replied 'Madam, I am engaged on a
treatise intended to prove that Normal is prior to Conceptional
Totemism'- -though that answer would be as true in fact as obscure in
significance. The best plan seems to be to answer that I have entirely
abandoned mere literature, and am contemplating a book on 'The
Causes of Early Blight in the Potato,' a melancholy circumstance which
threatens to deprive us of our chief esculent root. The inquirer would

never be undeceived. One nymph who, like the rest, could not keep off
the horrid topic of my occupation, said 'You never write anything but
fairy books, do you?' A French gentleman, too, an educationist and
expert in portraits of Queen Mary, once sent me a newspaper article in
which he had written that I was exclusively devoted to the composition
of fairy books, and nothing else. He then came to England, visited me,
and found that I knew rather more about portraits of Queen Mary than
he did.
In truth I never did write any fairy books in my life, except 'Prince
Prigio,' 'Prince Ricardo,' and 'Tales from a Fairy Court'--that of the
aforesaid Prigio. I take this opportunity of recommending these fairy
books--poor things, but my own--to parents and guardians who may
never have heard of them. They are rich in romantic adventure, and the
Princes always marry the right Princesses and live happy ever
afterwards; while the wicked witches, stepmothers, tutors and
governesses are never cruelly punished, but retire to the country on
ample pensions. I hate cruelty: I never put a wicked stepmother in a
barrel and send her tobogganing down a hill. It is true that Prince
Ricardo did kill the Yellow Dwarf; but that was in fair fight, sword in
hand, and the dwarf, peace to his ashes! died in harness.
The object of these confessions is not only that of advertising my own
fairy books (which are not 'out of print'; if your bookseller says so, the
truth is not in him), but of giving credit where credit is due. The fairy
books have been almost wholly the work of Mrs. Lang, who has
translated and adapted them from the French, German, Portuguese,
Italian, Spanish, Catalan, and other languages.
My part has been that of Adam, according to Mark Twain, in the
Garden of Eden. Eve worked, Adam superintended. I also superintend.
I find out where the stories are, and advise, and, in short, superintend. I
do not write the stories out of my own head. The reputation of having
written all the fairy books (an European reputation in nurseries and the
United States of America) is 'the burden of an honour unto which I was
not born.' It weighs upon and is killing me, as the general fash of being
the wife of the Lord of Burleigh, Burleigh House by Stamford Town,

was too much for the village maiden espoused by that peer.
Nobody really wrote most of the stories. People told them in all parts of
the world long before Egyptian hieroglyphics or Cretan signs or
Cyprian syllabaries, or alphabets were invented. They are older than
reading and writing, and arose like wild flowers before men had any
education to quarrel over. The grannies told them to the grandchildren,
and when the grandchildren became grannies they repeated the same
old tales to the new generation. Homer knew the stories and made up
the 'Odyssey' out of half a dozen of them. All the history of Greece till
about 800 B.C. is a string of the fairy tales, all about Theseus and
Heracles and Oedipus and Minos and Perseus is a Cabinet des F‚es, a
collection of fairy tales. Shakespeare took them and put bits of them
into 'King Lear' and other plays; he could not have made them up
himself, great as he was. Let ladies and gentlemen think of this when
they sit down to write fairy tales, and have them nicely typed, and send
them to Messrs. Longman & Co. to be published. They think that to
write a new fairy tale is easy work. They are mistaken: the thing is
impossible. Nobody can write a new fairy tale; you can only mix up
and dress up the old, old stories, and put the characters into new