In reply to his temperate and
courteous letter the critic sent a postcard bearing only five short
words--"Why did you write it?" This was bad manners, but the author was sensible enough to see that
it might be good criticism, especially as he found some difficulty in
answering the question. Why had he written a book? Not for money, or
for fame, or to express a personality of which he saw no reason to be
proud. All his friends had said that he ought to write a novel, and
he had thought that he could write a better one than the average. But
he had to admit that such motives seemed to him insufficient. There
was, perhaps, some mysterious force that drove men to create works of
art, and the critic had seen that his book had lacked this necessary
impulse. In the light of this new theory the author was roused by a
sense of injustice. He felt that it should be possible for anyone to
write a good book if they took sufficient pains, and he set himself
to work again with a savage and unproductive energy. It seemed to him that in spite of his effort to bear in mind that the
whole should be greater than any part, his chapters broke up into
sentences and his sentences into forlorn and ungregarious words. When
he looked to his first book for comfort he found the same horrid
phenomenon taking place in its familiar pages. Sometimes when he was
disheartened by his fruitless efforts he slipped out into the
streets, fixing his attention on concrete objects to rest his tired
mind. But he could not help noticing that London had discovered the
secret which made his intellectual life a torment. The streets were
more than a mere assemblage of houses, London herself was more than a
tangled skein of streets, and overhead heaven was more than a
meeting-place of individual stars. What was this secret that made
words into a book, houses into cities, and restless and measurable
stars into an unchanging and immeasurable universe? The Bird In The Garden

The room in which the Burchell family lived in Love Street, S.E., was
underground and depended for light and air on a grating let into the
pavement above. Uncle John, who was a queer one, had filled the area with green
plants and creepers in boxes and tins hanging from the grating, so
that the room itself obtained very little light indeed, but there
was always a nice bright green place for the people sitting in it to
look at. Toby, who had peeped into the areas of other little boys,
knew that his was of quite exceptional beauty, and it was with a
certain awe that he helped Uncle John to tend the plants in the
morning, watering them and taking the pieces of paper and straws
that had fallen through the grating from their hair. "It is a great
mistake to have straws in ones hair," Uncle John would say gravely;
and Toby knew that it was true. It was in the morning after they had just been watered that the
plants looked and smelt best, and when the sun shone through the
grating and the diamonds were shining and falling through the forest,
Toby would tell the baby about the great bird who would one day come
flying through the trees--a bird of all colours, ugly and beautiful,
with a harsh sweet voice. "And that will be the end of everything,"
said Toby, though of course he was only repeating a story his Uncle
John had told him. There were other people in the big, dark room besides Toby and Uncle
John and the baby; dark people who flitted to and fro about secret
matters, people called father and mother and Mr. Hearn, who were apt
to kick if they found you in their way, and who never laughed except
at nights, and then they laughed too loudly. "They will frighten the bird," thought Toby; but they were kind to
Uncle John because he had a pension. Toby slept in a corner on the
ground beside the baby, and when father and Mr. Hearn fought at
nights he would wake up and watch and shiver; but when this happened
it seemed to him that the baby was laughing at him, and he would
pinch her to make her stop. One night, when the men were fighting
very fiercely and mother had fallen asleep on the table, Uncle John
rose from his bed and began singing in a great voice. It was a song
Toby knew very well about Trafalgar's Bay, but it frightened the two
men a great deal because they thought Uncle John would be too mad to
fetch the pension any more. Next day he was quite well, however, and
he and Toby found a large green caterpillar in the garden among the
plants. "This is a fact of great importance," said Uncle John, stroking it
with a little stick. "It is a sign!" Toby used to lie awake at nights after that and listen for the bird,
but he only heard the clatter of feet on the pavement and the
screaming of engines far away. Later there came a new young woman to live in the cellar--not a dark
person, but a person you could see and speak to. She patted Toby on
the head; but when she saw the baby she caught it to her breast and
cried over it, calling it pretty names. At first father and Mr. Hearn were both very kind to her, and mother
used to sit all day in the corner with burning eyes, but after a time
the three used to laugh together at nights as before, and the woman
would sit with her wet face and wait for the coming of the bird, with
Toby and the baby and Uncle John, who was a queer one. "All we have to do," Uncle John would say, "is to keep the garden
clean and tidy, and to water the plants every morning so that they
may be very green." And Toby would go and whisper this to the baby,
and she would stare at the ceiling with large, stupid eyes. There came a time when Toby was very sick, and he lay all day in his
corner wondering about wonder. Sometimes the room in which he lay
became so small that he was choked for lack of air, sometimes it was
so large that he screamed out because he felt lonely. He could not
see the dark people then at all, but only Uncle John and the woman,
who told him in whispers that her name was "Mummie." She called him
Sonny, which is a very pretty name, and when Toby heard it he felt a
tickling in his sides which he knew to be gladness. Mummie's face was
wet and warm and soft, and she was very fond of kissing. Every
morning Uncle John would lift Toby up and show him the garden, and
Toby would slip out of his arms and walk among the trees and plants. And the place would grow bigger and bigger until it was all the
world, and Toby would lose himself; amongst the tangle of trees and
flowers and creepers. He would see butterflies there and tame
animals, and the sky was full of birds of all colours, ugly and
beautiful; but he knew that none of these was the bird, because their
voices were only sweet. Sometimes he showed these wonders to a little
boy called Toby, who held his hand and called him Uncle John,
sometimes he showed them to his mummie and he himself was Toby; but
always when he came back he found himself lying in Uncle John's arms,
and, weary from his walk, would fall into a pleasant dreamless sleep.