There is need to ask indulgence for this little book, because at first sight it seems to possess no other unity than that of type and cover. The root of its unity lies deeper, deeper even than any of subject or of method; it lies in the personal gift, the communication of heart to heart, which is the secret of charm in all the author’s work. For this reason its publication is justified.
The papers, poems, and stories it contains have, with two exceptions, appeared elsewhere, most of them in ‘The Pilot,’ where the Roadmender found his first welcome and his literary home.
The fairy-tales were told by word of mouth to one child and another of widely differing ages; and three of them were afterwards published in ‘The Parents’ Review.’ ‘The Grey Brethren’ is from ‘The Commonwealth.’ The Christmas papers and poems were brought out as a booklet by Messrs Mowbray & Son.
The author’s characteristic quality is best displayed in these last, and in ‘The Grey Brethren,’ but there will be interest for many readers in the rest of the book as well. That which afterwards became a firm artistic touch is seen in its uncertain beginning in ‘By Rivers and Streams’; and the delightful headlong humour of ‘The Dreadful Griffin’ (invented for the “boy named Cecco Hewlett,” of whom Mr Barrie speaks in his ‘Little White Bird’) will shew Michael Fairless in a new light to those who have known her only in her books.
Some of the many readers who have found her there will understand me when I say that the story of her life and death, and of her life too (as I believe) after death, is written down in the little tale of ‘The Tinkle-Tinkle,’ first told to her best beloved in the wild garden at Kew, among blue hyacinths and shining grasses of the spring that spoke to her of Paradise.
M. E. D.