The Doll’s House

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 483, 12 October 1928, Page 14

The Doll’s House

[Written for The Sun.] AT this moment, on rarious parts of the earth’s broadly-smiling face, thousands of people are probably listening with pleasure to selections from A. A. Milne’s books, "When We Were Very Young” and “Now We Are Six.” A wireless performer has chosen the one about little brown rabbits, and is delighting his audience by a perfect mimicry of the very accents of wistful, rabbit-seeking childhood. A skilled elocutionist gives us the prettiest poem of pU: J.ittle boy kneels at the foot of the bed, hays on little hand golden head— Hush, hush. Whisper who dares, Christopher Robin is saying his prayers. We are shown here an intimate and touching picture. Fathers—and those who are not fathers —get a trifle misty about the spectacles. There kneels Christopher Robin, his bare toes tucked beneath his little white nightgown. We can almost see how flushed he is from that hot bath which was such great fun. Father, broadshouldered, sits on the edge of the bed. listening to childish secrets and confidences, all told in the most taking prattle. Ever and anon, a hand motions the somewhat sparsely concealed audience to look at this pretty

gesture, to listen to that quaint fancy of a small boy’s mind! The subdued clicking of the unseen cameras assures us that not a corner ot this small, pink-toed, white-night-gowned person’s mental make-up shall be withheld from us. The kingdom of childhood becomes unreservedly our own. But do we, perhaps, feel that as an audience we are rather overwhelming? Are we at heart a little ashamed of the condescension with which we greet Christopher Robin’s childish-clever little flights of fancy, as one might pat a dog who had evolved, almost by himself, some new and becoming trick. You see, our relations with childhood have always been a matter of such extreme delicacy. The hedges around that gay kingdom are thorny and high. When we come Into a drawing-room where the Junior Members are drawn up to meet us, who are truly under inspection—we or they? Unless we are acidulous aunts or unwanted uncles we realise at once that it is our plain duty, by tact, good behaviour, and not by condescension, to show our rights to be guests within the kingdom. It is rather surprising to be told, as A. A. Milne has told us, that we may walk right in, never minding whether or not our boots creak, and sit down on the doll’s house chair. The small people will do their trained (and strained) best to entertain ns. When we come to search our records, we shall find that very few outstanding books have been written about childhood itself, most authors concerning themselves with the wonderful adventures and deeds of derringdo which will naturally come the way of any young person who waits and dreams long enough. Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books are different and delightful. but in them the spotlight is never once turned on Alice. She thinks what any little girl might think, says wßat any little girl might say. We don’t stare at her, but at the Caterpillar, the Magic Mushroom, and the peevish Duchess. There is a world of difference. Everybody remembers that after the publication of "Little Lord Fauntleroy” dreadful disaster befell a certain number of good, coarse, bullet-headed English boys. They were seized upon, scrubbed, and dressed in little velveteen suits with broad, white collars. The fondest of mothers smothered a passing sigh when noticing her son. in lieu of being fragile and golden haired, wore freckles, tore his Jackets, and asked for two helpings of everything except rice-pudding. But little Lord Fauntleroy was a passing phase because, poor child, he was unreal—as unreal as the stage "kittens” on whom it is the fashion for so many of our young maidens to model themselves. He vanished, and the world of childhood probably found good use for its velveteen jackets on some fine sth of November eve. Christopher Robin is slightly more dangerous because, if one can ignore the atmosphere of curtain-promptings and soft lighting-effects in which he has his being, he has some resemblance to the Little Boy that most of us dream about: but there’s this difference. We should probably keep that little boy, for all his marvellous works and ways, selfishly to ourselves. We shouldn’t hire out his imagination at so much the hour. As he grew older, we should look to see that charming mind of his put out new and lovely flowers of its very own, flowers that could never have been if we had taken the first small buds, twisted and coloured them until they pleased our artistic eye. and thereafter and forever demanded a selfconscious reproduction of the same phenomena. "We moderns” have assumed that privacy is stuffy. Romance, for example. has been so carefully examined, vivisected, and pulled about by the occasionally grubby fingers of our promising young novelists that it feels rather hot and sticky to the mental touch. Is childhood also to become a limelit. instead of a starlit, world?

There was something very deep and true about that magic mushroom which Lewis Carroll planted in the "Alice in Wonderland” pages. You find it, after desperately hard search. You nibble one side of it and become small —small enough to go inside the doll’s house, and sit on the doll’s chairs without straining their patience: small enough to be impressed by the tremendous height of a sunflower, to be just the right size to cox a pirate ooat and squeeze your way, wxcuoui sticking, through smugglers’ bottlenecked passages. The charm may wear off at any minute. Then, if you are wise, you will take your hat and go. But you will have had, of youi own free right, a place and a welcome in the kingdom. And I don’t think we want the doll's house enlarged, so that we can just stroll in without any bother about door-knocking (tiptoeing, of course, if it’s prayer-time. But so very squeakily!) In the best child-book of al! Wendy frankly, if tearfully, admits that she has to grow up; and only in the spring-time of the world’s youth will she be able to fly back and live in the tree-house with Peter, the immortal bird-boy who never grows old. Tears are better than pretence. And the rare magic of a windy spring day in the tree-tops, or a taste of the enchanted mushroom, are more precious than all A. A. Milne’s genial invitations into a world which he knows, but does not quite understand. ROBIN HYDE. Wellington.