There and Back

By George MacDonald and Michael Phillips

Goodness leads to the truth in the final novel in the Scottish author’s Wingfold Trilogy, following Thomas Wingfold Curate and Paul Faber Surgeon.
 
This final installment of the Thomas Wingfold trilogy from 1891 adds yet further dimensions to the personal search for faith and the nature of belief, exemplified in the characters of Barbara Wilder and Richard Tuke. Both Barbara and Richard must ask whether or not God’s existence is true, what God’s character is like, and what demands are placed upon them as a result. Wingfold’s conversations with Barbara probe the foundations of belief with depth and profundity. Wingfold continually emphasizes the great truth: Everything depends on the kind of God one believes in.
 
All three of the Wingfold books address the logic and reasonableness of the Christian faith. MacDonald’s characters must reason out belief. There will be no pat answers, no “humbug,” as he called it. Christianity is reasonable, sensible, intellectually consistent. God’s principles are true. This trueness pervades MacDonald’s worldview as the foundation for Everyman’s spiritual quest. As always, the stories upon which MacDonald weaves his spiritual themes are compelling in themselves. There and Back is no exception, with mysteries, romance, a disputed inheritance, again with an old castle and library, and a full range of fascinating characters spread along the spectrum of personal development.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Dec 2, 2018
• ISBN: 9780795352188

George MacDonald

George MacDonald (1824 – 1905) was a Scottish-born novelist and poet. He grew up in a religious home influenced by various sects of Christianity. He attended University of Aberdeen, where he graduated with a degree in chemistry and physics. After experiencing a crisis of faith, he began theological training and became minister of Trinity Congregational Church. Later, he gained success as a writer penning fantasy tales such as Lilith, The Light Princess and At the Back of the North Wind. MacDonald became a well-known lecturer and mentor to various creatives including Lewis Carroll who famously wrote, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland fame.

Book preview

There and Back

George MacDonald

Introductory material © 2018 by Michael Phillips

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

Electronic edition published 2018 by RosettaBooks

ISBN (Kindle): 978-0-7953-5218-8

www.RosettaBooks.com

The Cullen Collection of the

Fiction of George MacDonald

1. Phantastes (1858)

2. David Elginbrod (1863)

3. The Portent (1864)

4. Adela Cathcart (1864)

5. Alec Forbes of Howglen (1865)

6. Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood (1867)

7. Robert Falconer (1868)

8. Guild Court (1868)

9. The Seaboard Parish (1868)

10. At the Back of the North Wind (1871)

11. Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood (1871)

12. The Princess and the Goblin (1872)

13. Wilfrid Cumbermede (1872)

14. The Vicar’s Daughter (1872)

15. Gutta Percha Willie (1873)

16. Malcolm (1875)

17. The Wise Woman (1875)

18. St. George and St. Michael (1876)

19. Thomas Wingfold Curate (1876)

20. The Marquis of Lossie (1877)

21. Paul Faber Surgeon (1879)

22. Sir Gibbie (1879)

23. Mary Marston (1881)

24. Castle Warlock (1881)

25. The Princess and Curdie (1882)

26. Weighed and Wanting (1882)

27. Donal Grant (1883)

28. What’s Mine’s Mine (1886)

29. Home Again (1887)

30. The Elect Lady (1888)

31. A Rough Shaking (1890)

32. There and Back (1891)

33. The Flight of the Shadow (1891)

34. Heather and Snow (1893)

35. Lilith (1895)

36. Salted With Fire (1897)

37. Far Above Rubies (1898)

The introductions to the 37 volumes form a continuous picture of George MacDonald’s literary life, viewed through the prism of the development of his written legacy of works. While each book can of course be read on its own, every introduction picks up where that to the previous volume left off, with special attention to the title under consideration. The introductions together, as a biography of MacDonald’s life as a writer, are compiled in Volume 38.

38. George MacDonald A Writer’s Life

The Cullen Collection

of the Fiction of George MacDonald

New editions of George MacDonald’s classic fiction works updated and introduced by Michael Phillips

CONTENTS

Foreword to The Cullen Collection

Introduction to There and Back

1.     Bookbinder and Son

2.     Brother and Sister

3.     Simon Armour

4.     A Lost Shoe

5.     The Library

6.     Alice

7.     Mortgrange

8.     Barbara Wylder

9.     Mrs. Wylder

10.   Barbara and Her Critics

11.   The Parson’s Parable

12.   The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

13.   The Beginning

14.   Wingfold

15.   Far From Home

16.   A Sister

17.   Barbara and Lady Ann

18.   Alice and Barbara

19.   Barbara Thinks

20.   Wingfold and Barbara

21.   The Shoeing of Miss Brown

22.   Vixen

23.   Barbara’s Duty

24.   The Parson’s Counsel

25.   Lady Ann

26.   Dismissal

27.   The Wylders

28.   London

29.   Nature

30.   A Drunken Disclosure

31.   To Be Redeemed, One Must Redeem

32.   A Door Opened in Heaven

33.   Doors Opened on Earth

34.   Death the Deliverer

35.   The Cave in the Fire

36.   Duck Fists

37.   Baronet and Blacksmith

38.   Revelation

39.   The Bookbinder’s Heritage

40.   Stepmother

41.   Flight

42.   Gone

43.   Uncle-Father and Aunt-Mother

44.   A Meeting

45.   Wylder Hall

46.   Miss Brown

47.   Wingfold and Barbara

48.   The Will

49.   The Heir

50.   Wingfold and Arthur Manson

51.   Richard and His Family

52.   Heart-to-Heart

53.   The Quarrel

54.   Baronet and Blacksmith

55.   The Funeral

56.   The Packet

57.   Barbara’s Dream

"Papa seems so quietly happy."

—Louisa MacDonald, May 4, 1872, from Deskford (near Cullen)

"Papa does enjoy this place so much."

—Louisa MacDonald, May 6, 1872 from the Seafield Arms Hotel, Cullen

"Papa oh! so jolly & bright & happy. . .Papa was taken for Lord Seafield yesterday."

—Louisa MacDonald, Sept. 2, 1873, from Cullen

"Papa is very poorly. He ought to go to Cullen for a week I think."

—Louisa MacDonald, October 5, 1873, from London

FOREWORD

The Cullen Collection

of the Fiction of George MacDonald

The series name for these works of Scotsman George MacDonald (1824-1905) has its origins in the 1830s when the boy MacDonald formed what would be a lifelong affection for the northeast Scottish village of Cullen.

The ocean became young George’s delight. At the age of eleven, writing from Portsoy or Cullen, he announced to his father his intention to go to sea as a sailor—in his words, as soon as possible. The broad white beach of Cullen Bay, the Seatown, the grounds of Cullen House, the temple of Psyche (Temple of the Winds), Cullen Burn, the dwellings along Grant Street, Scarnose, and especially Findlater Castle, all seized the youth’s imagination with a love that never left him. MacDonald continued to visit Huntly and Cullen throughout his life, using his childhood love for his homeland as the backdrop for his richest novels, including what is arguably his greatest work of fiction, Malcolm, published in 1875.

We therefore honor MacDonald’s unique relationship to Cullen with these newly updated editions of his novels. In Cullen, in certain respects more than in any other place, one finds the transcendent spirit of George MacDonald’s life and the ongoing legacy of his work still magically alive after a century and a half. This release of The Cullen Collection of the Fiction of George MacDonald coincides with a memorial bench and plaque established on Cullen’s Castle Hill commemorating MacDonald’s visits to the region.

To those readers familiar with my previous editions of MacDonald’s novels, I should make clear that eighteen of the volumes in this new series (including this one) are updated and expanded titles from the Bethany House series of the 1980s. Limitations of length dictated much about how those previous volumes were produced. To interest a publisher in the project during those years when MacDonald was a virtual unknown in the publishing world, certain sacrifices had to be made. Cuts to length had to be more severe than I would have preferred. Practicality drove the effort. Imperfect as they were in some respects, I am enormously grateful for those editions. They helped inaugurate a worldwide renaissance of interest in MacDonald. They were wonderful door-openers for many thousands into MacDonald’s world.

Hopefully this new and more comprehensive set of MacDonald’s fiction will take up where they left off. Not constrained by the limitations that dictated production of the former volumes, these new editions, though identical at many points, have been expanded—sometimes significantly. In that sense they reflect MacDonald’s originals somewhat more closely, while still preserving the flavor, pace, and readability of their predecessors. Nineteen additional titles have been added. The thirteen realistic novels among these have been updated according to the same priorities that guided the earlier Bethany House series. That process will be explained in more detail in the introductions to the books of the series. The final six, which would more accurately be termed fantasy, have not been edited in any way. They are faithful reproductions of the originals exactly as they were first published. These six—Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin, The Wise Woman, The Princess and Curdie, and Lilith—are so well known and have been published literally in hundreds of editions through the years, that it has seemed best to reproduce them for The Cullen Collection with the same texts by which they are generally known.*

Dedicated followers of all great men and women continually seek hints that reveal their inner being—the true man, the true woman. What were they really like? What made him or her tick? Many biographies and studies attempt to answer such questions. In George MacDonald’s case, however, a panorama of windows exists that reveals far more about his person than the sum-total of everything that has been written about him over the years. Those are the novels that encompass his life’s work. The volumes of this series represent the true spiritual biography of the man, a far more important biography than life’s details can ever tell.

In 1911, six years after his father’s death, George MacDonald’s son Ronald wrote of the man with whom he had spent his life:

"The ideals of his didactic novels were the motive of his own life. . .a life of literal, and, which is more, imaginative consistency with his doctrine. . .There has probably never been a writer whose work was a better expression of his personal character. This I am not engaged to prove; but I very positively assert. . .that in his novels. . .and allegories. . .one encounters. . .the same rich imagination, the same generous lover of God and man, the same consistent practiser of his own preaching, the same tender charity to the sinner with the same uncompromising hostility to the sin, which were known in daily use and by his own people counted upon more surely than sunshine." *

Thirty years after the publication of my one-volume biography George MacDonald Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller, it now gives me great pleasure to present this thirty-seven-volume biography of the man, the Scotsman, the prophetic spiritual voice who is George MacDonald. *

How fitting is the original title in which Ronald MacDonald’s sketch of his father quoted above first appeared, From A Northern Window. For any attempted portrait of the man George MacDonald becomes at once a window into his homeland as well.

Therefore, I invite you to gaze back in time through the northern windows of these volumes. Picture yourself perhaps near the cheerful hearth described in the opening pages of What’s Mine’s Mine, looking out the window to the cold seas and mountains in the distance, where perhaps you get a fleeting glimpse of highlanders Ian and Alister Macruadh.

Or imagine yourself walking up Duke Street in Huntly from MacDonald’s birth home, following in the footsteps of fictional Robert Falconer to the town square.

Or envision yourself on some windswept highland moor with Gibbie or Cosmo Warlock.

Or walk up the circular staircase of Fyvie Castle to Donal Grant’s tiny tower hideaway where he began to unravel the mysteries of that ancient and spooky place.

Or walk from Cullen’s Seatown alongside Malcolm selling the fish in his creel, turning at the Market Cross into Grant Street and continuing past Miss Horn’s house and up the hill to the entrance of the Cullen House grounds.

Or perhaps climb Castle Hill to the George MacDonald memorial bench and gaze across the sweep of Cullen Bay to Scarnose as Malcolm’s story comes to life before your eyes.

From any of these settings, whether real or imaginary, drift back through the years and gaze through the panoramic windows of these stories, and take in with pleasure the drama, relationships, images, characters, settings, and spiritual truths George MacDonald offers us as we are drawn into his world.

Michael Phillips

Cullen, Morayshire

Scotland, 2017

INTRODUCTION

Everything Depends on the God You Believe In

In There and Back we meet for a third time one of George MacDonald’s most memorable characters—the former curate of the book bearing his own name, now rector of a new parish. Though one of MacDonald’s seasoned literary veterans, in this case Thomas Wingfold steps aside to occupy a supporting role. Indeed, it is some time before he appears on stage. Once he does, however, he becomes the spiritual soul and anchor of the unfolding drama.

There and Back and A Rough Shaking were probably written, if not simultaneously certainly in close proximity. Dates of publication tell only part of the story and depend on many factors, particularly MacDonald’s contractual arrangements with magazine and book publishers and their scheduling priorities. *

What we know for certain is that the two books were serialized in two different magazines from the fall of 1889 through the fall of 1890, There and Back running but one month ahead. Their book publications, however, were reversed, A Rough Shaking released by Blackie in December of 1890 or January of 1891, with There and Back following from Kegan Paul in April. All we can say for certain is that the timing of these two titles are closely intertwined and that they were the last two books written as the decade of the 1880s drew to a close.

The new decade opened with MacDonald turning his attention to a new fantasy he felt stirring within him, though he confessed doubts that he would be able to write it. In March of 1890 he began a preliminary draft of this new fantasy which he would later entitle: Anacosm,† A Tale of the Seventh Dimension. It would, of course, evolve five years later after many more drafts, into Lilith. But this is getting ahead of the story.

Though Wingfold himself plays but a supporting (though important) role in the story, There and Back is the final installment of the Thomas Wingfold trilogy. A dozen years have now passed since the completion of the second volume, Paul Faber Surgeon. It is obvious, however, that the character of Thomas Wingfold still exercised a hold on the mind of his creator, much as had Robert Falconer earlier in his career. It took Falconer ten years to get into print from brain-child to finished book. Now Wingfold has been waiting in the wings twelve years to make his final appearance. MacDonald brings him back in another burst of creative energy that produced one final long, massive novel replete with many of George MacDonald’s signature tunes. During the previous few years, MacDonald’s books had been shrinking dramatically. Yet even as he was struggling to get underway with Lilith, suddenly here came another monster book—the ninth longest, in fact, in his entire corpus of over fifty titles.

Wingfold ages exactly at the same rate as his creator. In the story, consistent with MacDonald’s own life, exactly twelve years have passed. Thomas Wingfold (now approximately forty) and Helen (thirty-seven) and their young son have relocated to a country parish some thirty or forty miles outside London.

The theme again, as in the two previous Wingfold books, is belief. Is the Christian story true? Does God exist? If so, what kind of God is he, and what is to be our response to him?

Two new characters, Barbara Wylder (one of MacDonald’s wonderfully memorable young women—strong, energetic, feisty, determined, outspoken, hungry, fearless, and full of a heart of compassion) and Richard Tuke (a good, honest, hard-working sincere agnostic), now follow in the questioning footsteps of Paul Faber, asking what belief means, and, on a more profound level, where truth is to be found.

The people and surroundings have changed, but the essential themes have not. This third book in the trilogy concludes MacDonald’s multifaceted examination of the fundamental themes of man’s need for God, and the validity of the Christian faith.

Wingfold presses a little harder in this case than he did with Faber, forcing the imperative question, not merely whether one believes in God, but what manner of God forms the object of that belief. He makes the bold assertion that it is better to be an honest, open-minded atheist than a so-called Christian who believes in a false god.

Thomas Wingfold Curate laid the groundwork for spiritual birth, with the awakening of Wingfold himself after a long struggle to come to grips with the truthfulness of Christianity. MacDonald even uses the term born again in Wingfold’s case, a rarity for MacDonald who zealously avoided terms that could be associated with traditional or evangelical jargon. Yet he recognized the imperative of the principle involved—that there is a new birth, a new outlook, a salvation that must come. Paul Faber Surgeon followed as the natural outgrowth of the curate’s new faith—the spread of that faith into the lives of those around him. Now in There and Back, another conundrum is raised: The question of moral goodness.

Do those without obvious sin need God, too? Do good men and women need salvation? Does an injunction rest upon man to respond to God simply because of who he is, in virtue of being true to the Truth? MacDonald sets up a fascinating contrast. In Paul Faber Surgeon it is sin that leads to truth. In There and Back it is goodness that leads to truth—emphasizing what MacDonald says of one of the minor characters in Mary Marston: She was one of those, not a few, who, knowing nothing of religion toward God, are yet full of religion toward their fellows, and with the Son of Man that goes a long way.

Richard and Barbara, two morally virtuous young people (complete opposites to Juliet and Paul Faber), must each face their personal responsibility to respond to the truth of God’s existence, to the imperative of his goodness, and to the mandate of obedience. They must ask whether or not God’s existence is true, what God’s character is like, and what demands are placed upon them as a result.

MacDonald here approaches salvation from the vantage point of the intellect not emotion, prompted not by tearful repentance of recognized sin, but instead by a recognition of what must be true.

As is often the case, MacDonald’s characters must reason out the Christian faith. There will be no pat answers, no humbug, as he called it. Christianity is reasonable, sensible, intellectually consistent. God is not only the source of life’s joy, contentment, meaning, and fulfillment, but his principles are true. This true-ness pervades all MacDonald’s books as the foundation for Everyman’s spiritual quest.

With belief as a central theme, MacDonald explores more than any other place in his writings the role of spiritual proofs and evidences (some of the discussions are positively fascinating!) and develops an entire Wingfoldian apologetic for the Christian faith. The result is one of the clearest articulations we have of MacDonald’s approach to belief—that it invades the consciousness (brain and heart together) slowly, invisibly, personally, uniquely in the life of every human soul. This highly individual and invisible blowing of the Spirit’s winds is the reason MacDonald hated plans of salvation. The road to truth, and to the deep reality of the process of being born again, cannot be boxed into a one-size-fits-all formula. True to MacDonald’s perspective of the inner and personal essence of belief, there are no altar calls from Wingfold’s pulpit.

Those intent on formularizing salvationary moments will be scandalized by MacDonald’s words about Barbara:

Barbara was one who, so far as human eyes could see, had never required what is commonly termed conversion. She had but to go on, recognize, and do. She turned to the light by a holy will as well as holy instinct.

MacDonald’s theology of evangelism, so called (entirely my term—I doubt he ever thought of it as such), is brilliantly laid out in the two chapters Wingfold and Barbara and The Parson’s Counsel (chapters 19 and 23). Paralleling his perspective of how Christians should walk among unbelievers, and building upon the themes explored in The Elect Lady, MacDonald also articulates a forceful vision for the church and its clergy.

Not only does MacDonald continually emphasize that belief must come from within, that no one will be persuaded by intellectual argument that Christianity is true (thus placing proofs in their proper perspective), he lays the same foundation for doctrine and theology. It is fruitless to argue and contend about points of doctrine. Speaking of Wingfold, he gives us a window into his own perspective when confronted with controversy and accusations of heterodoxy. Even when making the controversial statement that God did not originally ordain the sacrifice (a point he makes forcefully in his sermon, The Consuming Fire) he will not proclaim it from the pulpit nor defend his view by argument. He knew neither argument nor attempted persuasion was of any use. Those hungering for God’s deep truths would find them. When that hunger brought them to him, only then would he speak.

When the Lord is known as the heart of every joy, as well as the refuge from every sorrow, then the altar will be known for what it is—an ecclesiastical antique. The Father permitted but never ordained sacrifice. In tenderness to his children he ordered the ways of their unbelieving belief.

So at least thought and said Wingfold, and if he did not say so in the pulpit, it was not lest his fellows should regard him as a traitor, but because so few of his people would understand. He would spend no strength in trying to shore up the church—he sent his life-blood through its veins, and his appeal to the Living One, for whose judgment he waited.

The most memorable focal point of the book for me, which I have quoted numerous times throughout the years, is the emphasis MacDonald drives home more forcefully here than I have encountered elsewhere in his novels—that belief is not in itself enough. Everything, he says in a variety of ways, depends on the kind of God we believe in. *

When Barbara asks Wingfold if he thought it wicked for a man not to believe in God, Wingfold replies, That depends on the sort of God he fancied himself asked to believe in. Then in a passage of huge insight, MacDonald comments on Richard’s unbelief:

From an early age Richard had been accustomed to despise the form he called God which stood in the gallery of his imagination, carved at by the hands of successive generations of sculptors—some hard, some feeble, some clever, some stupid, all conventional and without prophetic imagination. His antagonism had long taken the shape of an angry hostility to the notion of any God whatever. . .

Into the workshop of Richard’s mind was now introduced. . .a new idea of divinity. . .the idea, namely, of a being to call God, who was a delight to think of. . .The one door to admit this formal notion was hard to open. . .The human niche where the idea of a God must stand, was in Richard’s house occupied by the most hideous falsity. . .

It was not pleasant to Richard to imagine any one with rights over him. It may be that some persist in calling up the false idea of such a one hitherto presented to them, in order to avoid feeling obligation to believe in him. . .

It is one thing to seem to know with the brain, quite another to know with the heart. . .

Naturally. . .his notion of. . .God. . .was very far from being religion yet. The fact was only this—that the idea of a God worth believing in, was coming a little nearer to him, was becoming to him a little more thinkable. . .

Instead of automatically blaming the person who does not believe in a God, we should ask first if his notion of God is a god that ought to be believed in.

Barbara’s internal quest comes first. Independent and thoughtful, her search is bolstered by a deepening friendship with the Wingfolds, who step into the role earlier occupied by Polwarth in Wingfold’s life.

Barbara ultimately forces Richard to reevaluate notions he has long taken for granted. Paralleling Bascombe’s interchange with Wingfold early in Thomas Wingfold, Barbara challenges Richard with an equally probing question: "Tell me honestly, are you sure there is no God? Have you gone through all the universe looking for him and failed to find him? Is there no possible chance that there may be a God?"

By this point, everything around and within her confirms God’s presence to Barbara. To acknowledge him is but to recognize the obvious.

I do not believe there is, Richard responds.

"But are you sure? presses Barbara. Do you know it, so that you have a right to say it?"

I cannot say, Richard finally admits, that I know it as I know a mathematical fact.

Then what right do you have to say there is no God?

Richard falls silent, then replies, I will think about what you say.

And because he is a man of integrity, he does think about what she has said. Eventually he falls in, as had Barbara, with the Wingfolds.

Paralleling the stories of Barbara and Richard, we meet a multitude of characters along the spectrum of spiritual receptivity. Many spiritual seeds are sown in ways that suit different individual needs, all with unique and individual responses. Some, like Leopold and Juliet, respond through a sense of guilt and sin. Others like Helen come to know God through suffering and sorrow. Still others, like Wingfold, Richard, and Barbara, find themselves compelled to respond to the truth-ness of God’s being.

Rolland Hein observes,

The separate quests for God of Richard and. . .Barbara, form the matrix of the novel. Richard’s quest begins radically; he reacts with earnest unbelief against the evangelical God-in-a-box. . .Barbara’s quest is quite different. Her parents are antagonistic to Christianity, and she, in her open and sweet-spirited manner, is looking for the God behind nature. Typical to MacDonald’s thought, the characters develop Christian faith not from ponderings over scripture passages but from human longings and moral realities carefully and shrewdly considered. ¹

As an interesting autobiographical note, MacDonald’s new hobby of bookbinding (a lifelong fascination which became a serious pursuit in Bordighera) is integral to the story. His hours with paste, paper, parchment, leather, and chemical solutions restoring his own old books, were expanded into the fictional restoration of an entire library through the skills of his main character. From beginning to end—from cataloguing to restoration—MacDonald’s love of great old libraries never left him. It began with The Portent all the way back in 1860, and here is one of his main characters again thirty years later in another great library surrounded by old and valuable books.

I mentioned earlier that There and Back was the first long novel MacDonald had written in several years. As his sixth from last book, there would never be anything like it again. With its unparalleled insight into the nature of belief and how belief is arrived at, there may yet be indications of MacDonald’s age showing through now and then. Some of the theological and apologetic passages are so dense and circuitous that I had trouble making heads or tails of them. And some sloppiness of detail is evident, indicating to me that MacDonald may not have gone over the manuscript as carefully as had been his practice in previous years. As much as I have made of MacDonald’s passion for editing his work, this may be an example of what I call first draft, final draft.

For instance, he gives two of the central characters—made worse that they are related—the same name, Arthur. I can interpret this in no other way than as a fairly massive blunder, because it is never accounted for. If it was intentional, MacDonald would surely have made some reference to the glaringly odd fact. We saw that in Castle Warlock, when MacDonald inadvertently used James for two men, he later corrected the oversight, giving one of the two another name. But here no correction is made. In my earlier edited edition from 1986, The Baron’s Apprenticeship, one of the Arthurs was changed to Adam. Since that time I have had second thoughts about changing the name of a central character. I have thus reverted for this new edition to MacDonald’s original and kept both as Arthur, notwithstanding the confusion it causes in the story. If this is an indication of MacDonald’s age not catching everything, it seemed appropriate to leave the mistake as illuminating the reality that both MacDonald as an author and his books come to us within the ongoing dynamic of an imperfect humanity.

Likewise there are two chapters entitled Wingfold and Barbara and another two carrying the title Baronet and Blacksmith. I left these oversights intact for the same reason. (It is possible MacDonald did not mind multiple chapters with the same title, as it does in rare instances occur elsewhere.)

Finally, in the chapter entitled The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, MacDonald treats us to some fascinating insights into his perspective of editing and different editions of works of the past. His words are all the more interesting in that now I find myself, as do many others, engaging in the analysis of his texts in exactly the same way he speaks of analyzing Coleridge’s. It is now we who are trying to figure out what MacDonald wrote, when and in what order, and what were his intentions and meanings. As we find so often, MacDonald often spoke prophetically (though unintentionally) about the legacy that would follow him.

"I’ve copied out different editions for comparison, and they’ve got a little mixed in my head."

"But surely the printers, with all their blunders and changes, can’t keep you from seeing what the author wrote!"

"The editions I mean are those of the author himself. He kept making changes, some of them very great changes. Not many people know the poem as Coleridge first published it. . ."

"Oh! He altered it afterwards. . .Did he make it better?"

"Much better."

"Then why should you care any more for the first way of it?"

"Just because it is different. A thing not so good may have a different goodness. A man may not be so good as another man, and yet have some good things in him the other has not. That implies that not every change he made was for the better. And where he has put a better phrase, or passage, the former may yet be good. So you see a new form may be much better, and yet the old form remain much too good to be parted with. In any case it is intensely interesting to see how and why he changed a thing or its shape, and to ponder wherein it is for the better or the worse. That is to take it like a study in natural history. In that we learn how an animal grows different to meet a difference in the supply of its needs. In the varying editions of a poem we see how it alters to meet a new requirement of the poet’s mind. I don’t mean the cases are parallel, but they correspond somehow. If I were a schoolmaster, I should make my pupils compare different forms of the same poem, and find out why the poet made the changes. That would do far more for them, I think, than comparing poets with each other. The better poets are—that is, the more original they are—the less there is in them to compare."

There and Back was serialized in The Sun during 1889 and 1890. MacDonald lectured in England in May and June of 1890. Hein states that MacDonald worked on the proofs for the book edition during that spring and summer in the midst of his travels. ² (It does seem, however, that he must not have gone over these proofs with a great deal of care not to catch the two Arthurs and repeated chapter titles.) The bound edition from Kegan Paul was not released until 1891. It was the last of MacDonald’s books to be published in a three-volume triple decker edition.

Rolland Hein comments on the release of the book.

"When There and Back finally appeared in April 1891, The Athenaeum observed the author’s purpose was ‘Miltonic, as ever; nothing less than to justify the ways of God to men,’ and felt it would therefore be distasteful to many readers. ³ Curiously, the reviewer chose to commend MacDonald’s portraits of several of the minor characters as the most noteworthy and thus, by silence, reflected adversely on the major ones. But Richard and Barbara, because they are shown as developing into MacDonald’s ideal, rather than possessing it before the story begins, may be viewed as among the most real and convincing characters he drew over his long career. His not introducing the religious themes until the story is well underway also gives the imagination time to become acquainted with the characters before attention is called to the religious argument." ⁴

Of particular interest in the publication of the U.K and U.S. editions is the toning down and removal of profanity from the U.K. edition in the Lothrop/Routledge U.S. editions. Obviously this was not a case where the same plates were used, but a completely revised U.S. edition was produced.

The following parallel passages yet again raise the intriguing question for which we have no answer—who made these changes, MacDonald or an unknown editor working for one of the American publishers, careful over the more sensitive ears of American readers?

From Kegan Paul’s one-volume U.K. edition:

The rascal will be too many for me. . .Damn it. . .

Damn the rascal! I never wronged his mother. . .

Mrs. Manson told me. . .damned liar she always was!. . .

You were so damned ugly. . .

Oh, give them the cheque and be damned to them. . .

Oh, damn your conscience. . .

Why, damn it, boy! don't you understand. . .

Oh, rot Mrs. Manson! she told you a damned lie!

But from Lothrop’s U.S. edition:

The rascal will be too many for me. . .Curse it all. . .

What do you mean, rascal! I never wronged your mother. . .

Mrs. Manson told me. . .like the liar she always was!. . .

You were so infernally ugly. . .

Oh, give them the cheque and be hanged to them. . .

Oh, hang your conscience. . .

Why, hang it, boy! don't you understand. . .

Oh, rot Mrs. Manson! she told you a lie!

We noted exactly this distinction in Castle Warlock, and the question such passages raise about the order of writing and publication. Such edits are not always made without requiring other rewordings. Though the differences between the U.K. and U.S. editions are relatively minor, nothing on the scale of Castle Warlock and Donal Grant, they are yet sufficient as I look at them for me to think they came at MacDonald’s own hand. In that case, however, the perplexity of the two Arthurs remains all the more puzzling.

Finally, I must admit to delight in reading, yet again, MacDonald’s prophetic look a century ahead at my own work analyzing his texts, and trying to get into his head about the whys of his changes and edits, and the sequences of various edition. He obviously did exactly the same thing with his favorite authors. In describing Richard’s textual analysis, he is clearly describing himself!

The volume in which Richard had first read the story had come into his hands as one of a set his father had to bind. It belonged to a worshipper of Coleridge, who had possessed himself of every edition of every book he had written, or had had a share in writing. There he read first the final form of The Rime as it appeared in the Sibylline Leaves of 1817. But when he came to look at that in the Lyrical Ballads, published in 1798, he found differences many and great between the two. He also found in the set an edition with a form of the poem differing considerably from the last as well as the first. He had brought together and compared all these forms of the poem, noting every minutest variation—a mode of study which, in the case of a masterpiece, richly repays the student. It was no wonder, therefore, that Richard had almost every word of it on the very tip of his tongue.

MacDonald dedicated There and Back to his son Ronald, who, less than twenty years later would write one of the warmest and most human reminiscences of his father that has been left to posterity. ⁵

Michael Phillips

Cullen, Morayshire

Scotland, 2017

---

1 George MacDonald, Victorian Mythmaker by Rolland Hein, Star Song Publishing, Nashville, TN, 1993, pp. 376-77.

2 Hein, Mythmaker, p. 375.

3 The Athenaeum, April 25, 1891, quoted in Hein, Mythmaker, p. 377.

4 Hein, Mythmaker, p. 377.

5 That 1911 tribute appeared in the collection of essays entitled From A Northern Window.

THERE AND BACK

1891

The Cullen Collection

Volume 32

NOTE

Some of the readers of this tale will be glad to know that the passage with which it ends is a real dream; and that, with but three or four changes almost too slight to require acknowledging, I have given it word for word as the friend to whom it came set it down for me.

In the sure hope of ever lasting brotherhood, I offer this book to Ronald MacDonald, my son and friend, my pupil, fellow-student, and fellow-workman.

BORDIGHERA

February, 1891 *

— One —

Bookbinder and Son

Stretching his aching muscles and straightening from his book, John Tuke rested his glance on his son Richard. A fine strong lad, Tuke thought as he observed the boy at work. And such skilled hands! Hands I never thought could produce such skill in the trade. *

But clumsiness or ugliness in infancy is sometimes promise of grace or beauty in manhood. In Richard’s case, the promise was fulfilled—what had seemed repulsive to some who beheld him as an infant had given place to a certain winsomeness. He was now a handsome, well-grown youth, with dark brown hair, dark green eyes, broad shoulders, and a bit of a stoop which made his mother uneasy. But he had good health, and what was better, an even temper, and what was better still, a willing heart toward his neighbour. A certain overhanging of his brow was called a scowl by those who did not love him, but it was of minor significance—probably the trick of some ancestor.

With pride—not the possessiveness of the owner, but the liberating joy of the mentor—John Tuke watched in silence as the skilful fingers of the seventeen-year-old youth moved lovingly over the volume under his care. Richard occasionally assisted his father in binding, but in general, as now, he occupied himself with his own particular devotion—the restoration of antiquity.

While learning the bookbinding trade, Richard had attended evening classes at King’s College, where he developed a true love for the best of literature, especially from the sixteenth century. He grew to possess a peculiar regard for old books, and with the three or four shillings a week at his disposal, searched about to discover and buy volumes that, for their