The Toy Theatre - Page 2

much as if
it were really the thing which it is supposed to symbolize. The point
is that the man writing on motherhood is merely an educationalist;
the child playing with a doll is a mother.

Take the case of soldiers. A man writing an article on military strategy
is simply a man writing an article; a horrid sight. But a boy making a
campaign with tin soldiers is like a General making a campaign with live
soldiers. He must to the limit of his juvenile powers think about the
thing; whereas the war correspondent need not think at all. I remember
a war correspondent who remarked after the capture of Methuen: "This
renewed activity on the part of Delarey is probably due to his being
short of stores." The same military critic had mentioned a few
paragraphs before that Delarey was being hard pressed by a column which
was pursuing him under the command of Methuen. Methuen chased Delarey;
and Delarey's activity was due to his being short of stores.
Otherwise he would have stood quite still while he was chased.
I run after Jones with a hatchet, and if he turns round and tries
to get rid of me the only possible explanation is that he has
a very small balance at his bankers. I cannot believe that any boy
playing at soldiers would be as idiotic as this. But then any one
playing at anything has to be serious. Whereas, as I have only too
good reason to know, if you are writing an article you can say anything
that comes into your head.

. . . . .

Broadly, then, what keeps adults from joining in children's
games is, generally speaking, not that they have no pleasure
in them; it is simply that they have no leisure for them.
It is that they cannot afford the expenditure of toil
and time and consideration for so grand and grave a scheme.
I have been myself attempting for some time past to complete
a play in a small toy theatre, the sort of toy theatre
that used to be called Penny Plain and Twopence Coloured;
only that I drew and coloured the figures and scenes myself.
Hence I was free from the degrading obligation of having to pay
either a penny or twopence; I only had to pay a shilling a sheet
for good cardboard and a shilling a box for bad water colours.
The kind of miniature stage I mean is probably familiar to every one;
it is never more than a development of the stage which Skelt
made and Stevenson celebrated.

But though I have worked much harder at the toy theatre than I
ever worked at any tale or article, I cannot finish it; the work
seems too heavy for me. I have to break off and betake myself
to lighter employments; such as the biographies of great men.
The play of "St. George and the Dragon," over which I have burnt
the midnight oil (you must colour the thing