them to other young folk; for Perrault, though a very learned scholar, was not ashamed to set the fashion of writing fairy stories, which now became very popular with the ladies and gentlemen of leisure. The proper title of his book was "Stories or Tales of Past Times," but it had another and better title, Tales of Mother Goose." THE GRAND LADY WHO WROTE THE TALE OF CINDERELLA One of the many grand ladies who lived in France at the same time as Perrault and amused themselves by writing stories was Madame D'Aulnoy, Every time that Christmas comes round and they are playing pantomimes at the theatres, her stories, like those of Perrault, are used throughout our land for this form of entertainment. "The White Cat," "The Yellow Dwarf," The Fair One with the Golden Locks," Cinderella," and many another nursery favourite was shaped by her pen from the earliest tales of Straparola. There were many other ladies who, about the time of Madame D'Aulnoy and somewhat later, practised this delightful art of weaving fairy tales, but none of them calls for notice, and as they all borrowed from that little-known writer who plied his pen by the sparkling waters of Venice, a hundred years before them, our thanks for the pleasure of these old tales are perhaps more due to him. The names of the authors of whom we have been reading may be unknown to all our readers, but we come now to those whose names are familiar to every one of us. THE BROTHERS GRIMM, WHO WROTE DOWN THE GERMAN FAIRY STORIES What delight is associated with the otherwise forbidding name of Grimm! "Tom Thumb," "The Queen Bee," "Hansel and Gretel," "The Frog Prince," "Rumpel-stiltskin," and ever so many other stories that boys and girls for nearly a hundred years now have been reading with endless entertainment, were all written down by two brothers named Grimm, who lived in Germany during the first half of last century. Jacob Grimm was the elder of the two brothers, being born at the town of Hanau on January 4, 1785, while his brother Wilhelm was born on February 24, 1786. one would expect to be fond of telling fairy tales. As a matter of fact, they were sober, industrious scholars whose whole lives were devoted to literary studies and teaching, both of them becoming professors at the university of Berlin. Grave and learned gentlemen they were, whose greatest concern was to produce books of a kind that only students read, and yet they quite unconsciously made themselves famous for ever by collecting the old German fairy stories into a book, which has been translated into all the principal languages of the world, and has made the name of the brothers Grimm as well known in England and America as it was in their native land. They went out together, these two industrious scholars, among the countrypeople of Germany, and induced them to tell such stories as they knew of the fairies. What a charming occupation, and how delightful were the results! HANND LANKY COBBLER'S SON ANS CHRISTIAN ANDERSEN, THE LONG The other name that stands beside the Grimms in fame is that of Hans Christian Andersen, the great Danish story-teller, who is really a much abler writer than the Grimms. Hans Andersen was certainly one who knew the fairies, as most of his wonderful storiessuch as "Little Klaus and Big Klaus," 66 The Little Mermaid," "The TinderBox," "The Wild Swans," "The Ugly Duckling," and "The Snow Queen' were told to him not by the peasant-folk, but by the fairies of his own brain. We might almost say that while Hans Andersen knew the fairies, the Grimms, and the others we have spoken about, only knew the folk who knew the fairies. A wonderful and a strange man he was, this Hans Christian Andersen. The son of a poor cobbler, he was born in the year 1805 in the ancient city of Odense, in Denmark. The poor cobbler was a iearned man in his way, and used to read books at night with his son Hans, who was growing up a long, lanky lad. But neither his father nor mother were sufficiently strict about his attending school, so that, as a boy, his education was very irregular. He was perhaps more sensitive than most children, being of a nervous, highlystrung nature, and his mother found it necessary to arrange at the first school he attended that he should never be These two brothers were probably not in the least like the sort of people HANS ANDERSEN'S DREAM OF FAIRYLAND Hans Christian Andersen was the greatest of all the writers of fairy tales. His mind was like a wonderland thronged with fairy folk, and in his stories he has told us what these little people of his dreams could do. Here we see him seated in thoughtful mood, while many of the fairies to whom his pen has introduced us are busy in the air about him. If we read his stories we shall know all these quaint little beings as though they were old friends. birched. One day when the mistress, forgetting this, gave him a slight tap with the rod, he immediately took up his books and slate and marched off home. His mother then sent him to another school, where, among the scholars, was a tiny girl who told Hans once that her ambition was to be a dairymaid at a large country house. WHAT HAPPENED WHEN HANS ANDERSEN TOLD HIS FIRST FAIRY TALE "You shall be a dairymaid at my castle when I am a gentleman," said the boy in jest, and he drew upon his slate a rough picture of what his castle was like. The little fairies of the brain were already at work prompting him to tell strange stories about himself. So he went on to assure the little scholar that he was really of noble birth, but that the fairies had changed him in his cradle. The girl was very matterof-fact, and she only replied to his fanciful tale by turning to some playmates and exclaiming, "He is mad, like his grandfather." Alas, it was true his grandfather was weak-witted, and this unhappy reception of one of his earliest efforts to tell a fairy story must have filled the sensitive boy with dread. It would be quite a long story if we were to follow the incidents of Hans Andersen's life, though everything concerning this strange genius would be well worth telling. We can only, however, mention a very few of the facts of his life. His father died when the lad was eleven, and even at that age he had made very poor use of his schooling, dreaming and idling his time away. OW HANS ANDERSEN WENT OUT TO H MAKE A FORTUNE, AND WHAT HE DID It was not very long before he had a stepfather, and soon he had to think of making his way in the world by going to Copenhagen, the capital of his country. It was all because of having appeared on the stage of the theatre at Odense in a very tiny part in "Cinderella," and having written a boyish play which he thought good enough for the stage, that long, dreamy Hans, the laughing-stock of all the lads of Odense, set off on the coach with a little bundle packed by his mother and the sum of thirty-seven shillings in his pocket to seek fame and fortune in Copenhagen; but many a sad and hungry day he was to have before he was famous, and even after his name was known throughout Europe he was so poor a man of business, and made so little money from his stories, that he had grown into an old bachelor before he could have afforded to marry. So he never had any children of his own to listen to his fairy tales, which have charmed the children of all the world. Nor did he think so much of these tales himself at first. His ambition was to be a great dramatist or novelist or poet. Some success he had in each of these branches of the literary art, and indeed, for a time, was very famous as a novelist. His fairy stories were written at first to please his own fancy or to entertain the children of friends in Copenhagen; but, you see, it was fairy stories the world wanted him to write, and although his novels and poems, as well as his plays, are seldom read by anyone now, the world will never let the fairy tales of Hans Christian Andersen, the poor cobbler's son, who died in 1875, be forgotten. WHO WROTE "THE WONDER BOOK" NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, THE AMERICAN We have now to take a long imaginary trip across the Atlantic Ocean to that pleasant part of America which is called New England, if we wish to visit the old home of the next story-teller who claims our attention-Nathaniel Hawthorne. He, too, was born in an oldfashioned town and lived among_oldfashioned people; for Salem, in the State of Massachusetts, some fifteen miles distant from the great town of Boston, was one of the old homes of the Puritans. It was there that Hawthorne was born in the year 1804. His ancestors for generations had been seafaring folk, and his own father never returned from one of his long and dangerous voyages. Nathaniel seems to have been an imaginative, sensitive boy, proud of his brave forefathers and his beautiful mother. He entered into all sorts of boyish games, but meeting with an accident at bat and ball, he was crippled for a time, and during those days he became a great reader. fond of "The Faerie Queene" and "The Pilgrim's Progress." A little later he had another illness, and had to stay so long an invalid that he could only pass his time in book-reading. But his accident and his illness were not y He was very WRITERS OF THE FAIRY BOOKS altogether misfortunes if they stored his young mind with so much of what is best in English literature. When he himself came to write down stories of the people he had known and the life of old Salem, the richness of his mind, as the result of his early reading, was seen in the beauty of his literary style. Nathaniel Hawthorne had written a great many beautiful stories before he began the book which should endear his name to all young people and entitles him to come into our little company of those who knew the fairies. This is called "The Wonder Book," and it is surely one of the most delightful series of fairy stories ever written. STRANGE OLD LEGENDS OF GREECE TFOLD OVER AGAIN The author's own children were just tiny tots when he wrote "The Gorgon's Head," "The Three Golden Apples," "The Dragon's Teeth,' and ten other stories that every boy and girl must read. They tell over again with a wonderful freshness, and in a way that is altogether unique, the strange old legends of Greece. As soon as he wrote these stories he read them to his own children, and so keen were they to hear and clever to remember, that they could repeat most of "The Wonder Book" by heart before it was printed. For grown-up readers Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote one of the greatest novels, which he called "The Scarlet Letter," and it is for this he is chiefly famous. He was for some years the American Consul at Liverpool, and he died at the town of Concord in the United States, in the year 1864. THOME OF FAIRIES Ireland is a real home of fairies, the Irish people having had in the old days far more stories of "the wee folk," as the fairies are often called, than the English. So it is surprising that there are not many Irish story-tellers to mention in the present company. Perhaps Thomas Crofton Croker, who was born in 1798, and died in 1854, is the most notable of those who, like the brothers Grimm, collected and recorded the folklore of his country. He wrote a fascinating book called The Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland," which we know that that great and famous writer of romance, Sir Walter Scott, took great delight in reading. But more interesting than Croker and a closer friend of the fairies-for they must have come to her, as she could not go to them—was a blind Irish lady named Frances Browne, who wrote "Granny's Wonderful Chair." The fairy stories told from Granny's wonderful chair are full of delicious fancy and bright with pictures of Nature. Yet it would not be too much to say that there is nothing so wonderful about them as the fact that their gay and lively scenes could have been described by a poor woman whose eyes had never looked upon the beauties of Nature. Frances Browne was blind from infancy, but she must have had that "inner vision" which enables its possessor to see into the mysteries of life with the eyes of the soul. A wonderful figure in every way was this poor Irish woman, and since she had not the use of her eyes, she developed the use of other faculties. For example, while her brothers and sisters were saying their lessons aloud for the next day at school, she would learn their lessons by heart, and to induce them to read to her, she began inventing stories from her own imagination. THE BLIND IRISH LADY WHO WROTE "GRANNY'S WONDERFUL CHAIR" When only seven years of age Frances Browne had composed a poem, but at fifteen she was so impressed with the wonderful music of Homer's "Iliad," when that was read to her, that she had her own poor childish efforts destroyed, and did not again attempt to compose poems until she was twenty-four. From that age onwards, she composed much charming verse and many stories, removing from her Irish home to Edinburgh, where she became a busy contributor to the magazines. "Granny's Wonderful Chair" she wrote: in 1856, after settling in London, and it immediately became the favourite fairy-story book of the day. Her last novel was written in 1887, when she was seventy-one years of age; and the life of Frances Browne, though one of comparative poverty, was rich in the pleasures of the imagination and in the joy her fairy stories have brought, and still bring, to multitudes of readers. That fine novelist and splendid type of the Christian gentleman, Charles Kingsley, might be included here, for did he not write "The Water Babies," which he must have had from the fairies? And John Ruskin also, for he wrote "The King of the Golden River," a perfect fairy tale. But we shall have to speak of them among the writers of the great books, and so we pass to one who is surely the greatest of all our modern explorers of fairyland-none other than the creator of "Alice in Wonderland." THE HE CLEVER STORY-TELLER WHO FIRST TOOK US ALL TO "WONDERLAND" On the title-pages of his books we know this most celebrated of modern fairy-story tellers as "Lewis Carroll," but in real life he had a very different and much less attractive name-Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. We will only think of him as Lewis Carroll, however, as it was under that name, just forty years ago, he became the favourite storyteller for boys and girls. Everybody, of course, has read Alice in Wonderland," and perhaps his other fairy books as well-"Through the Looking-Glass," "The Hunting of the Snark," and "Sylvie and Bruno." It is quite unnecessary to recall the name of the many strange characters, such as the Mad Hatter, Tweedledum and Tweedledee, the White Rabbit, and all that varied throng with which every boy and girl loses no time in making acquaintance. But what sort of man was he from whose brain of teeming fancies these strange and delightful creatures came ? Should we picture him as a jolly, middle-aged gentleman, leading a life free from care, and happiest with his children round his knees, telling stories? "L EWIS CARROLL" AND LITTLE ALICE, THE DEAN'S DAUGHTER stories for the amusement of the children of his friends. Perhaps he was just a little "moody," being sometimes rather a dull companion to grown-ups, and although he was sixty-six years of age at the time of his death, on January 14, 1898, he had never been married. But though he was an old bachelor" for many years before his death, he was a comparatively young one when he wrote his immortal story of " Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," first published in 1865. It is very interesting to know how he came to write this story. There really was a little girl named Alice, one of many little girls who were delighted when Lewis Carroll came to visit their parents, as they had never any difficulty in getting him to tell a story. The real Alice was a daughter of Dean Liddell, and she herself has told us how the wonderful story was first begun. How LEWIS CARROLL TOLD ALICE A STORY ON THE RIVER BANK We cannot do better than let the words of the real Alice be heard again. "Most of Mr. Dodgson's stories," she says, were told to us on river expeditions to Nuneham or Godstow, near Oxford. My eldest sister, now Mrs. Skene, was Prima, I was Secunda, and Tertia was my sister Edith. I believe the beginning of 'Alice' was told one summer afternoon when the sun was so burning that we had landed in the meadows down the river, deserting the boat to take refuge in the only bit of shade to be found, which was under a new-made hayrick. Here from all three came the old petition of 'Tell us a story,' and so began the ever-delightful tale. Sometimes, to tease us and perhaps being really tired-Mr. Dodgson would stop suddenly and say, And that's all till next time.' 'Ah, but it is next time!' would be the exclamation from all three, and after some persuasion the story would start afresh. Another day, perhaps, the story would begin in the boat, and Mr. Dodgson, in the middle of telling a thrilling adventure, would pretend to go fast asleep, to our great dismay." Such a picture would be curiously incorrect, for Lewis Carroll was in certain ways as strange a character as some of his own fairy folk. In the first place, he was, of all things in the world, a mathematician, and lectured at Oxford University on that sicence which is the terror of most young scholars. Perhaps it was because he spent so much time over difficult problems in Is not that a pretty story of how the mathematics that he liked to clear gate was open that leads us into and refresh his brain with humorous Wonderland? Lewis Carroll himself thoughts and happy fancies, which he has told us of that afternoon when turned into the shape of fantastic little Alice Liddell and her sisters |