



Produced by Juliet Sutherland, Phil McLaury, Charles Franks
and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team










ALICE SIT-BY-THE-FIRE

THE PLAYS OF J. M. BARRIE

By J. M. Barrie




I

One would like to peep covertly into Amy's diary (octavo, with the
word 'Amy' in gold letters wandering across the soft brown leather
covers, as if it was a long word and, in Amy's opinion, rather a
dear). To take such a liberty, and allow the reader to look over our
shoulders, as they often invite you to do in novels (which, however,
are much more coquettish things than plays) would be very helpful to
us; we should learn at once what sort of girl Amy is, and why to-day
finds her washing her hair. We should also get proof or otherwise,
that we are interpreting her aright; for it is our desire not to
record our feelings about Amy, but merely Amy's feelings about
herself; not to tell what we think happened, but what Amy thought
happened. The book, to be sure, is padlocked, but we happen to know
where it is kept. (In the lower drawer of that hand-painted
escritoire.) Sometimes in the night Amy, waking up, wonders whether
she did lock her diary, and steals downstairs in white to make sure.
On these occasions she undoubtedly lingers among the pages, re-reading
the peculiarly delightful bit she wrote yesterday; so we could peep
over her shoulder, while the reader peeps over ours. Then why don't we
do it? Is it because this would be a form of eavesdropping, and that
we cannot be sure our hands are clean enough to turn the pages of a
young girl's thoughts? It cannot be that, because the novelists do it.
It is because in a play we must tell nothing that is not revealed by
the spoken words; you must find out all you want to know from them;
there is no weather even in plays nowadays except in melodrama; the
novelist can have sixteen chapters about the hero's grandparents, but
we cannot even say he had any unless he says it himself. There can be
no rummaging in the past for us to show what sort of people our
characters are; we are allowed only to present them as they toe the
mark; then the handkerchief falls, and off they go.

So now we know why we must not spy into Amy's diary. Perhaps we have
not always been such sticklers for the etiquette of the thing; but we
are always sticklers on Thursdays, and this is a Thursday.

As you are to be shown Amy's room, we are permitted to describe it,
though not to tell (which would be much more interesting) why a girl
of seventeen has, as her very own, the chief room of a house. The
moment you open the door of this room (and please, you are not to look
consciously at the escritoire as if you knew the diary was in it) you
are aware, though Amy may not be visible, that there is an uncommonly
clever girl in the house. The door does not always open easily,
because attached thereto is a curtain which frequently catches in it,
and this curtain is hand-sewn (extinct animals); indeed a gifted
woman's touch is everywhere; if you are not hand-sewn you are almost
certainly hand-painted, but incompletely, for Amy in her pursuit of
the arts has often to drop one in order to keep pace with another.
Some of the chairs have escaped as yet, but their time will come. The
table-cover and the curtains are of a lovely pink, perforated
ingeniously with many tiny holes, which when you consider them against
a dark background, gradually assume the appearance of something
pictorial, such as a basket of odd flowers. The fender stool is in
brown velvet, and there are words on it that invite you to sit down.
Some of the letters of this message have been burned away. There are
artistic white bookshelves hanging lopsidedly here and there, and they
also have pink curtains, no larger than a doll's garments. These
little curtains are for covering the parts where there are no books as
yet. The pictures on the walls are mostly studies done at school, and
include the well-known windmill, and the equally popular old lady by
the shore. Their frames are of fir-cones, glued together, or of straws
which have gone limp, and droop like streaks of macaroni. There is a
cosy corner; also a milking-stool, but no cow. The lampshades have had
ribbons added to them, and from a distance look like ladies of the
ballet. The flower-pot also is in a skirt. Near the door is a large
screen, such as people hide behind in the more ordinary sort of play;
it will be interesting to see whether we can resist the temptation to
hide some one behind it.

A few common weeds rear their profane heads in this innocent garden;
for instance a cruet-stand, a basket