THE HOPE OF THE KATZEKOPFS; OR, THE SORROWS OF SELFISHNESS. A Fairy Tale.

PREFACE.

The former edition of this little tale was put forth with an Introduction (which was intended to be in keeping with it) from the pen of an imaginary author,—that William Churne, of whom Bishop Corbet writes, and who, two centuries since, seems to have been the great authority on all matters connected with Fairy-land.

In this introduction, the object with which the “Hope of the Katzekopfs” was written viwas stated. It was an attempt, under the guise of a Fairy-tale, to lead young minds to a more wholesome train of thought than is commonly found at the present day in popular juvenile literature. The Author’s aim was to excite the sympathies of the young in behalf of others, and to set before them in its true colours the hideous sin of selfishness. And the book was put forth as an experiment, to ascertain whether the youth of the present generation had patience to glean the lessons which lurk beneath the surface of legendary tales, and the chronicles of the wild and supernatural; whether their hearts could be moved to noble and chivalrous feelings, and to shake off the hard, cold, calculating, worldly, selfish temper of the times, by being brought into more immediate contact with the ideal, the imaginary, and the romantic, than viihas been the fashion of late years,—whether, in short, a race that has been glutted with Peter Parley, and Penny Magazines, and such

like stories of (so called) useful knowledge, would condescend to read a Fable and its Moral, and learn wisdom from a tale of enchantment.

The early call for a Second Edition seems to show that the experiment was not made in vain, and at the request of the Publisher, the Author appends his name.

CONTENTS.

Introduction.

“‘A Fairy tale, by William Churne of Staffordshire!’ And who may he be? I am sure I never heard of him before.”

“Say you so, gentle Reader? Well, perhaps, after all, there is nothing very extraordinary in the fact that a man who was born some two hundred and fifty years ago should be forgotten. Well I wot that William Churne is not the only one who is in that predicament. xiiAnd yet my name has had a better chance of being remembered than that of many of my cotemporaries, who, in their day, were more illustrious than ever I was; for it has been wedded, look you, to immortal verse. Doctor Corbet, Bishop of Norwich,—‘the wittie Bishop,’ as King James the First was wont to call him—conferred on me the title of Registrar-General to the Fairies. Have you never read his ‘Fairies’ Farewell’? They say, indeed, that his poems, like many better things, are little read now-a-days; but you will find it among the ballads collected by a congenial spirit (a prelate likewise), Bishop Percy of Dromore. His ‘Reliques of Ancient Poetry,’ you are surely conversant withal? But stay, I see you have forgotten the passage, which my vanity, perhaps, has preserved in my memory for so

many years. Thus, then, Richard Corbet xiiispeaks of me in connection with those merry elves, whom he supposes to have taken their final farewell of that land, which, since their presence was withdrawn, has deserved the name of merry England no longer:—

There, gentle reader, that was the way in which the Bishop-Poet spake of me. I warrant you, my cheeks tingle still as I repeat the lines.”

xiv“Indeed? cheeks that blushed for the first time two centuries and a half ago, must, I should think, have nearly blushed their last by this time. I cannot read your riddle. You would not have us believe, would you, that a man who was born in the sixteenth century, was story-telling in the nineteenth? I fear you must be story-telling in more senses than one, or else that the event so much deprecated by the Bishop of Norwich, hath befallen you, and that the ‘noddle’ is ‘addle.’”

“Ah, gentle reader, is it even so? Can you think of no other solution of the difficulty? I fear me that you have a larger share of the unbelief of this dull, plodding, unimaginative, money-getting, money-loving nineteenth century, than of the humour, and simplicity, and romance of the seventeenth.”

“Come then, I will hazard a solution. xvWhat if the fairies, whose official you have admitted yourself to be, carried you off some moonlight night, two hundred years ago, and hid you for that space in their secret chambers, amid the recesses of the grassy hills?”

“Hush! hush! kind reader; speak not so loudly. You know not who may be listening. However, I do not say but that it may be even as you suppose. Perhaps, while time and change have worked their will on others, I have been exempted from their influence.”

“How? What? Can such things be? Dear Sir, how much I should like to make your acquaintance. Two hundred and fifty years old! Why, your face must be a wilderness of wrinkles! And your dress, how strange and antiquated must be its cut! Are you not greatly incommoded, as you walk the streets, by the curiosity of the populace?”

xvi“Nay, my friend, if that which I have hinted be the case, it is more than probable that I have the secret of fern-seed, and walk invisible.”

“What changes you must find among us! What advances have been made since you went to Fairy-land!”

“Changes, indeed! and advances, too, for that matter! but whether on the right road is another question. However, of this I can assure you, gentle reader, that I would I were back again in Fairy-land. I see nothing here to tempt me to linger among you.”

“Then why do you linger?”

“I only wait to see if it be a hopeless task to speak to the youth of the rising generation, as I spake to their forefathers. I would fain learn whether it be possible to excite their sympathies in behalf of anything but themselves; whether they have yet patience to glean the xviilessons of wisdom, which lurk beneath the surface of legendary tales, and the chronicles of the wild and supernatural; whether their hearts can be moved to noble and chivalrous feelings, and to shake off the hard, cold, calculating, worldly, selfish temper of the times, by being brought into more immediate contact with the ideal, the imaginary, and the romantic, than has been the fashion of late years.”

“In plain English, then, good Master Churne, you desire to ascertain whether a race that has been glutted with Peter Parley and Penny Magazines, and such like stores of (so called) useful knowledge, will condescend to read a Fable and its moral, or to interest themselves with the grotesque nonsense, the palpable, fantastic absurdities, the utter impossibilities of a Tale of Enchantment?”

“Such is my object.”

xviii“Well, we have lived to see a tunnel under the Thames, and they are talking of a canal across the isthmus of Darien. But your scheme is a wild one.”

“I do not think so.”

“And suppose you can find readers, is it your object to retail those ‘hundred merry pranks’ of Fairy-land, of which Bishop Corbet tells us that you are the depositary?”

“I shall be better able to answer your question, gentle reader, when I know how far your patience has carried you through the ensuing pages. Till then farewell.”

CHAPTER I. The Heir and many Friends.

Never were such rejoicings heard of before as those which took place at the Court of King Katzekopf when it was announced that Queen Ninnilinda had got a little boy. It was what everybody had been wishing for, hoping for, expecting, year after year, but no little boy came; and so, at length, folks began to despair, and to settle it in their own minds that, whenever King Katzekopf died, the crown would go to his second cousin nine 4times removed, one of the Katzekopfs of Katzenellenbogen-Katzevervankotsdarsprakenluftschlosser, whom nobody knew or cared about.

So when Queen Ninnilinda had an heir, the nation almost went beside itself with joy. The church bells rang till they cracked; the guns of the citadel were fired till they grew so hot that they went off of themselves; oxen were roasted whole in the great square (my dear reader, never attempt to roast an ox whole, either on your own birthday, or on that of anybody else; the thing is an impossibility, half the meat is sure to be raw, and the other half burnt, and so good beef is spoiled); the two chief conduits of the city no longer poured forth water, but one spouted out cowslip-wine, and the other raspberry-vinegar; the lake in front of the palace was filled with small beer (this, however, was a failure, as it killed the fish, and folks said that the beer tasted muddy); an air-balloon hovered over the principal streets, and showered down carraway 5comfits and burnt almonds; Punch was exhibited all day for nothing; the prisons were all thrown open, and everybody paid the debts of everybody else.

Such being the state of things out of doors, you will readily believe that within the palace, the joy was of the most exuberant kind. Everything was in confusion; people ran up-stairs and down-stairs, jostling against one another, and always forgetting whither they were going, and for what they had been sent. Some were laughing, and some were crying, but the greater part were all talking at once, each making his own remarks, and nobody listening to his neighbour. The lords of the bed-chamber were laying wagers upon the likelihood of a new creation of peers; the maids of honour were discussing the probable colour of the infant prince’s eyes; the pages were speculating upon an increase of salary; nay, the very scullions were counting on a brevet for the kitchen.

But if all his court were thus in such a 6frenzy of pleasurable emotion, what must have been the condition of King Katzekopf himself? It must be confessed, that, in the main, his Majesty was one of those easy, indolent, careless sort of folks, who are content to let things take their own course, and who can very seldom be roused to make an exertion of any kind. But the birth of an heir had thrown even him into a state of excitement. Happily, he was a king, and so he had it in his power to give vent to his emotions in the manner which was most agreeable to him, for if such unwonted exhilaration had been pent up too long, there is no saying what the consequences might not have been. Fortunately, however, there was a safety-valve, through which he was enabled to let off the steaming overflow of his spirits.

So first he sent for the Yeoman of the Mouth, and bespoke a roast goose, with plenty of sage and onions, for his dinner; then he summoned the Master of the Robes, and ordered himself four new suits of clothes; 7then the head Confectioner was commanded to prepare materials for the manufacture of the largest christening-cake that the world had ever seen; and, lastly, he called together his Privy Council, and having created the new born infant Commander in Chief, and Lord High Admiral, Inspector General of everything and everybody, and settled on him the Crown revenues accruing from the sale of shrimps and periwinkles, his Majesty in a fervour of patriotism and paternal pride, rang the bell, and desired that the nurse, Mrs. Yellowlily, should bring the heir apparent into the Council-chamber.

Accordingly, in a few moments, the folding doors were thrown open, and nurse Yellowlily appeared with her precious charge swathed in a mantle of sky-blue taffety and silver, supported by two of the royal rockers.

“No indeed!” said the Lord Chancellor, dropping his mace and the great seal, and clasping his hands, as he fixed his eyes on the ceiling, “never was such a lovely infant seen!”

8“Wait a moment, my Lord,” said nurse Yellowlily, “and you shall have a peep at his Royal Highness:”—for as yet the Chancellor had not beheld him.

With that she gently turned back the mantle, and the Privy Councillors crowded round her. “There, my Lord,” she exclaimed, “you can now see his blessed little nose.”

Everybody was delighted: it was the most exquisite nose ever beheld. The King was so gratified, that he instantly created the nurse a Baroness in her own right; upon which she curtsied three times, walked backwards till she trod upon the Lord Chamberlain’s gouty foot, and then retired with the rockers, who, as they proceeded down the corridor, chanted the softest of lullabies.

The Privy Councillors listened till the last faint echoes of the melody had died away, when King Katzekopf thus addressed them.

“My Lords,” said he, “I have called you together on the present auspicious occasion, for the purpose of making you acquainted 9with certain measures which I am about to take with reference to the Prince, my son. And first, my Lord Chamberlain, I have to announce to you my intention of giving a most magnificent fête on the occasion of his Royal Highness’s christening. You will be pleased to send out cards of invitation according to this list, which I believe contains the name of every person of reputation in the kingdom.”

Here his Majesty handed a book to the Lord Chamberlain, which that functionary received with reverence, and proceeded to inspect with great attention. Having turned over five or six pages, the Chamberlain suddenly nodded his head as if a thought had struck him. This was so uncommon an event that the Lord Steward of the Household immediately inquired in a whisper what it was that had attracted his attention. The Chamberlain pointed to the list of names, and said in an under tone, “Look through the A’s, my Lord, and see if there is not a very important name omitted.”

10At this moment King Katzekopf’s attention was attracted by the whispering, and he graciously exclaimed, “Well, my Lords, what’s the matter?”

“I apprehend,” said the Chamberlain with becoming diffidence, “that your Majesty has caused these names to be written in alphabetical order.”

“Certainly, my Lord,” replied the King.

“I speak with all possible deference,” rejoined the Chamberlain, “but I presume that your Majesty did not intend that the Lady Abracadabra should be excluded from the invitations.”

“Humph,” said the King, “I never thought about her.”

“But she is your Majesty’s consort’s great aunt,” observed the Chamberlain.

“And a very powerful Fairy,” suggested the Steward of the Household.

“And, if I may say it without offence, rather capricious in her temper at times; at least she turned an acquaintance of mine into 11a tadpole,” remarked the Groom of the Stole.

“And your Majesty,” said the Keeper of the Records, interposing, “cannot have forgotten the very untoward event which took place in your Majesty’s family, some centuries ago, when all the misfortunes that occurred to your Majesty’s ancestress, the Sleeping Beauty, arose from her Fairy relative not being invited to the christening.”

King Katzekopf would have rather preferred the Lady Abracadabra’s room to her company, for he was very much afraid of the Fairies, but then, on the other hand, the bare thought of having the Hope of his House turned into a tadpole, or put to sleep in a castle in a wood for a hundred and fifty years, was most alarming. His Majesty grew red and pale alternately, shifted from one side of his throne to the other, and was evidently in a state of great anxiety.

“But how is the Lady Abracadabra to be found?” said he at length. “Who can tell 12where to look for her? One moment she may be a thousand miles off, and the next she may bob up through a crack in the floor, as if she had passed the night in the cellar.”

“He! he! he!” cried a shrill tiny voice in the distance, as though the owner of the said voice was greatly amused at something it had just heard.

“How the mice are squeaking behind the arras to-day!” exclaimed the King. “My Lord Chamberlain, you must send for a cat, and when she has caught the mice, we will set her to catch the Lady Abracadabra. Ha! ha! ha!” continued his Majesty, laughing at his own wit.

But the Keeper of the Records, who, from his study of the archives of the kingdom, knew better than most people what a dangerous thing it is to speak disrespectfully of the Fairies, and who was supposed to have acquired a smattering of the black art himself, immediately endeavoured to repress King Katzekopf’s laughter, by saying,—“So please you, 13my Liege, I apprehend that there would be little difficulty in sending an invitation to the Lady Abracadabra. If one of the Government messengers will bury it under a fairy-hill, next Wednesday morning, any time before noon, turning his face to the East, and calling her by her name three times....”

At this point the Keeper of the Records stopped short, for all of a sudden, a very strange sound was heard at the keyhole of the Council-chamber door, a scratching, rustling, noise, followed by a violent blast, such as might issue from the nozzle of a blacksmith’s bellows.

The President of the Council looked up to see what was the matter, but was immediately struck on the nose by a pellet of closely squeezed paper, which was immediately followed by another, and another, as the blowing at the keyhole was repeated. At length, when another blast had produced a shrill whistle, which showed that the aperture was clear, a little object, about the size of a hornet, 14darted through it, and increasing instantaneously in dimensions, presented the appearance of an old woman, some three feet high, by the time it had reached the floor.

Whether the Lady Abracadabra (for of course it was she) had been a beauty in the days of her youth, some eight or nine hundred years before, there is, at present, no means of ascertaining; but certainly, when she stood upon the floor of the Council-chamber, her appearance was anything but prepossessing. Perhaps, gentle reader, you have been in the habit of supposing that all the Fairies are dainty, little, airy beings, with butterfly wings, and vests of green and gold, who hide themselves in a blue-bell, and lose themselves among the petals of a peony. And such, no doubt, are the elves that live among the green hills, and who love to dance by moonlight, in the glades of the forest, or beside the pleasant water-courses. But there are others who mingle more with the human race, and adopt their habits, and hence, it may be, they become 15more subject to the changes which affect mortals. Perhaps this was the cause why the Lady Abracadabra’s face had become so brown, and shrunken, and covered with deep-set wrinkles; or perhaps it was the having had her own way

so much; or those long journeys in which she travelled at the rate of a thousand miles a minute, might have spoiled her complexion; or perhaps, having arrived at (what even among the Fairies is allowed to be) a certain age, she could not help looking like an old woman. But be this as it may, she did look very old, and the effect of her short black velvet jacket, and yellow satin petticoat, did not mend matters. She wore on her head a tall, steeple-crowned hat, of the same material as her jacket; had high-heeled shoes with diamond buckles, and bore in her hand a pliant rod of ebony, with a small star of living light at each end of it.

It was evident that she was very angry, for she scowled at the Privy Councillors, stamped 16vehemently on the floor, and every muscle of her face quivered with passion, as she addressed the King.

“So, nephew! you are determined to keep me out of your palace at any rate, I see. Let who will come to court, I am to be excluded. There is always greater difficulty in getting into your house than anybody’s else.”

King Katzekopf stammered forth an apology, assured his kinswoman that he was delighted to see her, that he had just been speaking of sending her an invitation, and that he had given general orders that she should be admitted at all times.