All the Way to Fairyland
By Evelyn Sharp
Ever so long ago, in the wonderful country of Nonamia, there lived an absent-minded magician. It is not usual, of course, for a magician to be absent-minded; but then, if it were usual it would not have happened in Nonamia. Nobody knew very much about this particular magician, for he lived in his castle in the air, and it is not easy to visit anyone who lives in the air. He did not want to be visited, however; visitors always meant conversation, and he could not endure conversation. This, by the way, was not surprising, for he was so absent-minded that he always forgot the end of his sentence before he was halfway through the beginning of it; and as for his visitors’ remarks—well, if he had had any visitors, he would never have heard their remarks at all. So, when someone did call on him, one day,—and that was when he had been living in his castle in the air for seven hundred and seventy-seven years and had almost forgotten who he was and why he was there,—the magician was so astonished that he could not think of anything to say.
“How did you get here?” he asked at last; for even an absent-minded magician cannot remain altogether silent, when he looks out of his castle in the air and sees a Princess in a gold and silver frock, with a bright little crown on her head, floating about on a soft white cloud.
“Well, I just came, that’s all,” answered the Princess, with a particularly friendly smile. “You see, I have never been able to find my castle in the air, so when the West Wind told me about yours I asked him to blow me here. May I come in and see what it is like?”
“Certainly not,” said the magician, hastily. “It is not like anything; and even if it were, I should not let you come in. Don’t you know that, if you were to enter another person’s castle in the air, it would vanish away like a puff of smoke?”
“Oh, dear!” sighed the Princess. “I did so want to know what a real castle in the air was like. I wonder if yours is at all like mine!”
“Tell me about yours,” said the magician. “I may be able to help you to find it.” Of course, he only said this to prevent her from coming inside his castle. At the same time, a little conversation with a friendly Princess in a gold and silver gown is not at all unpleasant, when one has lived in a castle in the air for seven hundred and seventy-seven years.
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Evelyn Sharp
Evelyn Jane Sharp (4 August 1869 – 17 June 1955) was a pacifist and writer who was a key figure in two major British women’s suffrage societies, the militant Women’s Social and Political Union and the United Suffragists. She helped found the latter and became editor of Votes for Women during the First World War. She was twice imprisoned and became a tax resister. An established author who had published in The Yellow Book, she was especially well known for her children’s fiction.
Early life
Evelyn Sharp, the ninth of eleven children, was born on 4 August 1869. Cecil Sharp the folk-song collector was her elder brother. Sharp’s family sent her to a boarding school. She went to a Parisian finishing school while her brothers went to university.
In 1894, against the wishes of her family, she moved to London, where she worked as a private tutor and wrote several novels including All the Way to Fairyland (1898) and The Other Side of the Sun (1900).
In 1903 Sharp, with the help of her friend and lover, Henry Nevinson, began to find work writing articles for the Daily Chronicle, the Pall Mall Gazette, and the Manchester Guardian, a newspaper that published her work for over thirty years. Sharp highlights the importance of Nevinson and the Men’s League for Women’s Suffrage: “It is impossible to rate too highly the sacrifices that they (Henry Nevinson and Laurence Housman) and H. N. Brailsford, F. W. Pethick Lawrence, Harold Laski, Israel Zangwill, Gerald Gould, George Lansbury, and many others made to keep our movement free from the suggestion of a sex war.”
Sharp’s journalism made her more aware of the problems of working-class women and she joined the Women’s Industrial Council and the National Union of Women’s Suffrage Societies. In the autumn of 1906, Sharp was sent by the Manchester Guardian to cover the first speech by actress and novelist Elizabeth Robins. Sharp was moved by Robins’ arguments for militant action and she joined the Women’s Social and Political Union.
Evelyn Sharp
