Andrew Lang

H J Ford

Many years ago my friend and publisher, Mr. Charles Longman, presented me with Le Cabinet desFées ('The Fairy Cabinet'). This work almost requires a swinging bookcase for its accommodation, like the Encyclopædia Britannica, and in a revolving bookcase I bestowed the volumes. Circumstancesof an intimately domestic character, 'not wholly unconnected, ' as Mr. Micawber might have said, with the narrowness of my study (in which it is impossible to 'swing a cat'), prevent the revolvingbookcase from revolving at this moment. I can see, however, that the Fairy Cabinet contains at leastforty volumes, and I think there are about sixty in all. This great plenitude of fairy tales from allquarters presents legends of fairies, witches, genii or Djinn, monsters, dragons, wicked step-mothers, princesses, pretty or plain, princes lucky or unlucky, giants, dwarfs, and enchantments. The storiesbegin with those which children like best-the old Blue Beard, Puss in Boots, Hop o' my Thumb, LittleRed Riding Hood, The Sleeping Beauty, and Toads and Pearls. These were first collected, written, andprinted at Paris in 1697. The author was Monsieur Charles Perrault, a famous personage in a greatperruque, who in his day wrote large volumes now unread. He never dreamed that he was to beremembered mainly by the shabby little volume with the tiny headpiece pictures-how unlike thefairy way of drawing by Mr. Ford, said to be known as 'Over-the-wall Ford' among authors who playcricket, because of the force with which he swipes! Perrault picked up the rustic tales which thenurse of his little boy used to tell, and he told them again in his own courtly, witty way. They do notseem to have been translated into English until nearly thirty years later, when they were published inEnglish, with the French on the opposite page, by a Mr. Pote, a bookseller at Eton. Probably theyounger Eton boys learned as much French as they condescended to acquire from these fairy tales, which are certainly more amusing than the Télémaque of Messire François de Salignac de la MotteFénelon, tutor of the children of France, Archbishop Duke of Cambrai, and Prince of the HolyRoman Empire.

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