Paul Faber Surgeon

By George Macdonald and Michael Phillips

Second in the Wingfold Trilogy following Thomas Wingfold Curate from one of the greatest writers of Victorian-era Scotland.

A country doctor in the fictional city of Glaston, atheist Paul Faber, encountering spiritually invigorated minister Wingfold, finds himself unexpectedly drawn into his own unwelcome quest for truth. Now it is Wingfold—assisted by Polwarth—sharing his newfound faith with both Paul Faber and Juliet Meredith, whose past secrets draw them together yet also threaten to tear them apart. Michael Phillips comments, “Of MacDonald’s unique characters, one stands alone—Paul Faber, the surgeon of fictional Glaston. He is the only skeptic, unbeliever, and atheist to take the spotlight as a featured title character. The relationship between Thomas Wingfold, the curate, and his atheist friend . . . gives us a vivid picture of George MacDonald’s perspective on how the life of Christ is most effectively communicated into an unbelieving world . . . It is conveyed by the way Christians live.”

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Nov 26, 2018
• ISBN: 9780795352096

George Macdonald

George MacDonald (1824-1905) was a popular Scottish lecturer and writer of novels, poetry, and fairy tales. Born in Aberdeenshire, he was briefly a clergyman, then a professor of English literature at Bedford and King's College in London. W. H. Auden called him "one of the most remarkable writers of the nineteenth century."

Book preview

Paul Faber

Surgeon

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): 978-0-7953-5209-6

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 Paul Faber Surgeon

NOTE: As the introductions to the 37 volumes of The Cullen Collection form a continuous portrait of George MacDonald’s life, and as many of the introductions contain comprehensive and detailed discussion and analysis of the title in question—its plot, themes, and circumstances of writing—some first-time readers may choose to skip ahead to the story itself, saving the introduction for later, so as not to spoil the story.

1. The Lane

2. At the Minister’s Door

3. The Manor House

4. The Road to Owlkirk

5. The Cottage

6. Thomas Wingfold Curate

7. Reactions

8. Mr. Drake

9. Transfusion

10. Father and Daughter

11. Nestley

12. The Garden at Owlkirk

13. The Parlour at Owlkirk

14. Mr. Drake’s New Outlook

15. Persuasions

16. Dedication at Nestley

17. Whence Comes Life?

18. Juliet’s New Situation

19. The Will

20. Juliet’s Chamber

21. Osterfield Park

22. Cowlane Chapel

23. Progressions

24. Two Conversations

25. Conscience

26. The Old House of Glaston

27. Confession

28. A Bottomless Pool

29. A Heart

30. Dorothy and Juliet

31. A Reckless Ride

32. The Mind of Juliet

33. Another Mind

34. Desolation

35. Unlikely Confidant

36. The Old Garden

37. The Flood

38. The Gate Lodge

39. Rescue

40. Faber’s Quest

41. Another Confession

42. Faber and Mr. Drake

43. Borderland

44. Empty Houses

45. Fallow Fields

46. The New Old House

47. The Coming of the Doctor

48. Waking

49. The Coming of Morning

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

The Curate and the Atheist

While not a sequel to Thomas Wingfold Curate in a strict sense, Paul Faber Surgeon is yet the second in the Wingfold Trilogy. As was the case with Malcolm and The Marquis of Lossie, there was a hiatus between MacDonald’s completion of Wingfold and the writing of Paul Faber’s story. One of the reasons he had to wait was that during 1876 and 1877, after finishing Wingfold, he was busily engaged in telling the second half of Malcolm’s story. That does not entirely explain the gap between Wingfold and Faber, however. There were other reasons for the delay. In fact, MacDonald published no books at all in 1878.*

There was certainly no let-up in his writing. Even if his published output during these years of flux and upheaval did not quite equal the torrid pace of before, MacDonald was obviously still working. And within a year or year-and-a-half of Thomas Wingfold, MacDonald found himself busily at work on Paul Faber’s story in 1877.

The most obvious reason for a temporary break in MacDonald’s published output was simply that these years held major changes for his family. Hoping that the Mediterranean climate would prove conducive to MacDonald’s health, George and Louisa gradually began to work toward a permanent move to Italy. Obviously such things take a toll, with planning, arrangements, added expenses, and the simple fatigue of packing and travel. Everything, of course, was amplified many times over with eleven children!

Louisa and four of the children spent the winter of 1877-78 at Palazzo Cattaneo in Nervi, Italy, using that time to scout out suitable long-term accommodations. While she was away, MacDonald was unexpectedly awarded a Civil List Pension of £100 a year by Queen Victoria (for services to literature). The queen had been so taken with Robert Falconer she had given a copy to all her grandsons. The amount of the pension doesn’t sound like much, but was probably the equivalent of £11,000 a year today—no small sum. Meanwhile, back in England MacDonald was finishing Paul Faber Surgeon.

To call one of MacDonald’s books unique is almost meaningless. Though some critics complain that MacDonald’s novels are formularistic, I would argue that they are all unique in some way. Certainly his fiction reflects repeated patterns. But when one assesses the full scope of MacDonald’s stories, the range of original characters—each with his or her own individuality and story to tell—presents a remarkable array of diverse, interesting, growing humanity. It is from MacDonald that my own authorial priority became so deeply ingrained in my psyche. To tell stories that reveal characters who are growing, changing, becoming more than they are is why I write—not to tell mere stories, as such, but to explore why and how people grow into God’s sons and daughters, and why others do not choose to grow. Human spiritual growth is the great drama of life. It is the drama I try to bring to life in my own novels.

Such was George MacDonald’s raison d’être as a writer. In Gutta Percha Willie, he set down perhaps the most succinct statement of this priority:

There are two ways of growing. You may be growing up, or you may be growing down…There are people who are growing up in understanding, but down in goodness…The great probability is, that if you are not growing better, you will by and by begin to grow stupid. Those who are growing the right way, the more they understand, the more they wonder, and the more they learn to do, the more they want to do…I don’t care to write about boys and girls, or men and women, who are not growing the right way. They are not interesting enough to write about.

C.S. Lewis created his memorable imagery of this principle by saying that an egg must be hatched or go bad. Indeed, the perceptive student of Lewis comes to recognize much of his wisdom coming straight from MacDonald.

MacDonald’s gallery of character creations is filled with images of complex men and women we cannot forget—Falconer, Shargar, Diamond, Annie, Curdie, Willie, Alister, Mary Marston, Donal Grant, Richard, Barbara, Kirsty, the Bruce, Duncan MacPhail, with Malcolm walking Cullen’s shore and Gibbie scaling Glashgar’s peak perhaps outshining them all. Of MacDonald’s unique characters, however, one stands alone—Paul Faber, the surgeon of fictional Glaston. He is the only skeptic, unbeliever, and atheist to take the spotlight as a featured title character.

The relationship between Thomas Wingfold, the curate, and his atheist friend is positively fascinating. It gives us a vivid picture of George MacDonald’s perspective on how the life of Christ is most effectively communicated and transmitted into an unbelieving world. That process does not come about by proclamation, apologetics, proof-texts, or by the activities of the church. It is conveyed by the way Christians live.

We might categorize the books of this series as MacDonald’s three-volume fictional treatise on personal evangelism, to use a contemporary phrase which will perhaps pinpoint my meaning better than any other. (The term evangelism, however, does not appear once in all three books of this decidedly apologetic trilogy.) In brief, MacDonald’s perspective, as reflected in the character of Thomas Wingfold, is that God’s men and women continually share the gospel (whether positively or negatively) all their days, consciously and unconsciously, by their lives lived.

Thus, in spite of their lengthy and engaging conversations, the Wingfold Trilogy contains no altar calls, no sinner’s prayers, no plans of salvation, no tracts, no scripture-lists.

Just life—the example of two Christian men and two Christian women (the Wingfolds and the two Polwarths) consistently trying to do what Jesus said, loving God and loving their neighbors as themselves.

Nothing more, nothing less. The evangelism of living. Faber and the others are not mission fields, they are friends. It is the evangelism of mutual respect, service, kindness, and shared humanity.

Wingfold does not press Faber to attend church. How many pastors do any of us know who do not care whether people attend church to hear them preach? Probably not many. Yet Thomas Wingfold is just such a one.

Wingfold articulates his method, so to speak, in a comment to his wife in the third of the trilogy, There and Back, after having met another unbeliever while on a walk. His wife asks Thomas how he plans to follow up the encounter.

"Have you asked him to the rectory?"

"No."

"Shall I write and ask him?"

"No, my wife. For one thing, you can’t—I don't know his name, and I don’t know what he is, or where he lives. But we shall meet again soon."

"Then you have made an appointment with him!"

"No, I haven’t. But there’s an undertow bringing us on to each other. It would spoil all if he thought I threw a net for him. I do mean to catch him if I can, but I will not move till the tide brings him into my arms. At least, that is how the thing looks to me at present. I believe enough not to make haste. I don't want to throw salt on any bird’s tail, but I do want the birds to come hopping about me, that I may tell them what I know!"

So-called plans of salvation urged upon the unsaved, were an anathema to MacDonald. In Salvation from Sin, from The Hope of the Gospel, he wrote:

It may be my reader will desire me to say how the Lord will deliver him from his sins…The spirit of such a mode of receiving the offer of the Lord’s deliverance, is the root of all the horrors of a corrupt theology, so acceptable to those who love weak and beggarly hornbooks of religion. Such questions spring from the passion for the fruit of the tree of knowledge, not the fruit of the tree of life. Men would understand: they do not care to obey;—understand where it is impossible they should understand save by obeying. They would search into the work of the Lord instead of doing their part in it…Incapable of understanding…in themselves, they proceed…to insist upon their neighbours’ acceptance of their distorted shadows of ‘the plan of salvation’ as the truth of him in whom is no darkness. ¹

We can link many of the themes in this book to those concerning which Paul wrote, Their minds have been blinded with a veil over them, and, the wisdom of God is a hidden mystery which the world cannot know. These deep themes follow appropriately after Thomas Wingfold Curate and expand upon salvation and belief. Now that Thomas Wingfold has passed through his crisis of doubt and emerged as a growing man of God with a pastor’s heart, MacDonald focuses his attention on the village doctor and atheist, Paul Faber. This sets the stage for many illuminating discussions, in which Wingfold defends the truth of Christianity but does not argue for it.

However, MacDonald probes more forcefully than merely whether the Christian story is true or not, but deep into the essence of sin itself, man’s need, the nature of man’s heart in relation to God, and of course the cleansing power of repentance and forgiveness.

Faber represents the classic example of a good man by appearance, more kindly and compassionate and loving than many so-called Christians. He perceives within himself no need for God. Yet his very goodness is his downfall. For its darker side reveals a fierce pride which, as the story unfolds, illuminates the spiritual and even moral bankruptcy of mere external goodness. Goodness is a good thing. But without the recognition that goodness is born in the heart of our Good Father, it can never be enough. Priding himself on the goodness of his manhood, Faber judges others while keeping his own sins hidden from view. He even tries to hide them from himself. His hidden sin is a type of all mankind’s fallen nature. Eventually Faber discovers (as must we all) that he is not good after all.

Like Faber, Juliet—who shares the leading role—encounters truth and, like him, rejects it. But as memories of the past come calling, the roots of the salvation message probe deep. As Faber eventually must face the bankruptcy of his supposed human goodness, Juliet must face the emptiness of love outside the one Love which creates all other loves. She must discover that there is no love outside the one who is Love.

Not only do we discover here a parable of pride on the individual level, but on the church level as well. Faber’s perceptive, and sadly accurate, criticisms of Christians are especially disgraceful in that love and unity are the trademarks Jesus has given us to demonstrate to the unbelieving world that the gospel is true. In exploring the unbelieving heart of Faber, therefore, MacDonald also exposes the consequences of spiritual pride and division between Christians.

If this is a parable of salvation, it is equally a parable of unity in the body of Christ. Scripturally the two are intrinsically linked. The only way, according to Jesus, that the world will come to know his Father is through the love Christians demonstrate toward one another and to the world. When the world witnesses division, unbelief results. The shattering of church and doctrinal walls—a theme running through many of MacDonald’s books—provides one of the sub-themes of this story. MacDonald throws together an Anglican curate, an atheist, a Congregationalist minister, the minister’s doubting daughter, a believing dwarf who acknowledges no church allegiance, the rector of the Church of England, and a lady caught between them all, not knowing what to believe.

It is a recipe for an argumentative, doctrinal, spiritual, psychological free-for-all, or an opportunity for unity to work its grand miracle. When the walls between different individuals and groups begin to crumble and unity begins to flow, many are swept into the tide of a redemptive current.

This very uniqueness and strength of the book might for some also represent a drawback. Some of the discussions are very lengthy, detailed, and often tedious. Though there is no Scots dialect, in its original Paul Faber Surgeon is heavy going in places. Even condensed somewhat, this dense discussionary fare may not be to everyone’s taste. I found this a very difficult book to update. It was hard to retain my focus through page after page of almost impenetrable sequences of obscure ideas, held together by confusing and arcane language, syntax, and linguistic constructions. This no doubt explains MacDonald’s difficulty in getting the book published.

Not only are MacDonald’s authorial asides and digressions long and numerous, the dialogue between the characters are often seem to be excuses for MacDonald to enclose his own sermonettes between quotation marks. Much of the dialogue thus drifts into lengthy theological monologue.

In one sentence of 178 words from Faber’s mouth, I counted three colons and nineteen semi-colons. Then Juliet replies back in 150 unbroken words which MacDonald sprinkles with fourteen semi-colons.

No one talks like that! It is a completely unreal conversation—a hopeless tangle of confusion. People don’t talk in semi-colons. Here were thirty-one in two sentences of hopelessly stilted speech between the two main characters. Thirty-one semi-colons!

Several of the characters, too—while as I say representing the wonderful diversity which is a MacDonald trademark—I found tiresome in their selfishness, immaturity, thick-headedness, and judgmentalism. Of course MacDonald is giving us a portrait of unbelief, so to speak, and how it works as a drag on the development of character. But I wearied of Juliet’s pettiness and rudeness to those who serve her. Is anyone really that clueless?

Even Mr. Drake, whom I love (what an example not to wait until after the blessing to be grateful—a lesson Judy and I have often been reminded of, and each time our thoughts turn to dear Mr. Drake) presents a confusing picture of depression, pessimism, selfish reactions, and temper, in the midst of a heart eager to give and serve. He is the Puddleglum of the story.

Now it can be said that some of MacDonald’s characters in other books are too good, and reform too quickly. It may therefore be that these men and women in Paul Faber are among his most true-to-life characterizations. However, I find this novel less bright and uplifting—especially alongside the other novel released the same year, Sir Gibbie. For all these reasons, I could not help wondering if MacDonald did not spend as much time going over this manuscript as carefully as he did others. His renaming Rachel Polwarth from Thomas Wingfold, who now becomes Ruth, I can only conclude to be a goof. (I retained Rachel as what I assume to be her correct name.)

In the mix of this turbulent and sometimes perplexing character stew, Mr. Bevis surely stands out as the best-supporting-actor of the cast!

As in all MacDonald’s books, we are presented truth in many layers. Here we observe a parallel between the four soils of the sower parable (Mark 4) and the five featured characters of the story—Juliet, Faber, Dorothy, Drake, and Bevis. Though MacDonald does not make their responses so clear-cut as does our Lord in his parable, we nevertheless see contrasting elements of receptivity and growth in the gospel seed when it comes into contact with the multifaceted human heart.

Paul Faber Surgeon may have provided the germ for Thomas Hardy’s classic published twelve years later, Tess of the D’Urbervilles. Except for the endings, the plots are remarkably parallel.

Another interesting sidelight reveals MacDonald’s fascination with the medical procedures in the story—some of which were experimental and controversial. MacDonald himself had toyed with a medical career years before. At the time of this writing his eldest son Greville was living out that dream by preparing for his own future as a physician.

We can tell that Paul Faber is interesting to MacDonald because, as he said in Gutta Percha Willie, he is growing in the right way. When MacDonald shook Paul Faber’s hand, so to speak, as Curdie was able to tell the direction another was growing after his hand had been thrust into the rose-fire, it seems that MacDonald felt the hand of childness growing within Faber despite an outward crust of skepticism. MacDonald was thus satisfied to leave Paul Faber’s future in God’s hands.

MacDonald amplified exactly this point, in a letter to his friend William Cowper-Temple, to whom he dedicated Paul Faber. Cowper-Temple wrote to MacDonald of his honor at the dedication, expressing his appreciation at the way in which MacDonald drew believable virtuous characters in his novels. MacDonald wrote back:

Your letter says of my books just what I try to go upon—to make them true to the real and not the spoilt humanity. Why should I spend my labour on what one can have too much of without any labour? I will try to show what we might be, may be, must be, shall be—and something of the struggle to gain it. ²

Some Christian writers would no doubt have felt compelled to get Paul Faber nicely saved by the book’s end. MacDonald, however, believed too much in God to impose artificial constraints on the movement of the human soul. Each man and woman stands before God in the silence of his or her own heart and must choose whether he will say yes or no. Each reader must decide for himself what he thinks Paul Faber’s choice will be. Even MacDonald, as Faber’s creator, cannot make that determination for the doctor. The choice remains Faber's alone.

In the late years of the previous decade, MacDonald had edited the magazine Good Words for the Young. That magazine eventually failed and gave way to Good Things for the Young, which also finally gave up the ghost in 1877. Another of Alexander Strahan’s many magazines, begun in partnership with Henry King, Day of Rest, was also edited by MacDonald between 1875 and 1878, probably without compensation. Even then, however, Alexander Strahan was still pulling the strings. Though written by his own editor, Strahan refused Paul Faber for serialization. Strahan said the story would confuse readers with things they had never thought of before—such as blood transfusions.

Paul Faber was thus MacDonald’s first novel not serialized since the early years of his career. Even though he did not want it for his magazine, however, according to Greville MacDonald, Strahan again occupied the curious king-maker role for publication of the book, exactly as he apparently had for The Vicar’s Daughter some years before.

Other than the publication of The Wise Woman and several serializations, we have not seen Strahan’s direct hand in MacDonald’s affairs for some time. By now Strahan’s brother-in-law A.P. Watt was stepping into a more prominent role in MacDonald’s negotiations.

Yet suddenly here is Strahan again (according to Greville) making an offer for the book edition of Paul Faber Surgeon. Was he making the offer on his own behalf, or perhaps representing Hurst and Blackett, who did in fact publish the book? Like Strahan’s involvements going all the way back to the Annals, Seaboard, Vicar’s trilogy, the details are conflicting and confusing. It sounds exactly like the account of The Vicar’s Daughter, where Strahan made the offer but did not publish the book. However, in this case, I have reason to doubt Strahan playing the pivotal role that is usually ascribed to him.

The information about Strahan’s offer for Faber comes from Greville MacDonald’s biography and John Malcolm Bulloch’s 1925 bibliography, which essentially repeats Greville’s account. Greville wrote:

"Strahan, though he adhered to his refusal of Paul Faber’s serial production, bought the rights for a first three-volume edition and offered my father a bill for £400, at three months…less than half the sort of price he had of late secured for his novels." ³

Greville goes on to speak of his father’s intense disappointment in the offer, belaboring the point that he was accustomed to receiving much more, and in general painting a bleak picture of his family’s finances. Indeed, this is a thematic undercurrent through Greville’s entire narrative. I cannot but think it perhaps a little overdone in order to cast his parents subtly in the martyr role. Conscious of his father’s reputation and image, obviously Greville would not want to say, "My father made a lot of money." But perhaps he allows the pendulum of objectivity to swing too far to the other side. His parents were far from paupers.

In fact, Greville’s assessment is not true at all. Wilfrid Cumbermede and The Vicar’s Daughter, as we have discussed in previous introductions, were aberrations. The offer of £400 for Faber was exactly in line with most of MacDonald’s other titles, both before and after. The financial martyr theme belabored by Greville and other biographers, even MacDonald himself at times, doesn’t entirely ring true with the facts of MacDonald’s income through the years.

And if MacDonald was so disappointed, why did he accept Strahan’s offer? At that point, Strahan’s influence both in MacDonald’s affairs and in the industry, was nothing like what it had once been. MacDonald had been dealing with Hurst and Blackett for years. Why did he not simply handle negotiations himself? If he didn’t like the offer, he could have gone to King or Sampson Low or Kegan Paul to see if they would better it.

The fact that MacDonald had handled his own negotiations for Wingfold, setting his price and terms, makes the Faber affair all the more puzzling. And if indeed by now A.P. Watt was involved, why did Watt not negotiate with his brother-in-law for a better price?

An interesting letter when Paul Faber was in production is worthy of quoting at some length for the inside details it gives about the writing and arrangements and finances involved in both Faber and Sir Gibbie. It reveals again, contrary to popular opinion, and even contrary to comments made by MacDonald himself, that he was making substantial money from the U.S. editions of his books—"I have always got £300 for a book in America…" he writes below.

This was good money—£300 being worth perhaps as much as $50,000 today, for only the U.S. edition, to which would be added whatever he received for the U.K. copyright.

In spite of the fact that the cheap library editions were taking their toll on both publishers and authors, it is clear that by the mid-1870s, the piracy of MacDonald’s books did not tell the whole story. By then American readers were paying their fair share.

Another conflicting bit of news we glean from the following letter is that MacDonald was paid for Faber by Hurst and Blackett. No mention is made of Strahan. We also learn that they paid MacDonald extra because there was no serialization. This tells me that Greville might not have been privy to full information about the Faber situation. We continue to get mixed messages about both piracy and money, all colored by Greville’s exaggerated implications of financial hardship.

MacDonald wrote:

Porto Fino, Riviera di Levante,

July 20, 1878

My dear Mr Ireland,

It was a real pleasure to me to hear from you again…

I am pleased also that you would like me to write a story in your paper. I could not undertake it just at once. I have a book coming out in October [Paul Faber], and a story to begin in September in The G. Weekly Mail [Sir Gibbie]—a Glasgow paper, two volumes of the latter are nearly ready but the other book will take two months work over the proof. The story in the Mail will run for six months—that is, it will be over in March. I suppose it would not do to begin yours before that was finished? but you see I could not begin to print with a good start much before January and later—How dreadfully this paper has beguiled me…I like writing in a newspaper because it reaches more people who, it may help, and Mudies ⁴ can’t bind up the newspapers, as he does the magazines, and lend them instead of the book.

I do not myself think the newspaper hurts the book but for the last one Hurst & Blackett gave me £50 more because it had not been through any periodical.

The Mail pays me £300 and did so the year before last for one, which they told me themselves sent the paper up 5000 a week. Of course I should be glad some day if I could get more, but that would quite content me from you. But times are rather hard on me through the increase of my popularity in America, which has brought in the pirates. I have always got £300 for a book in America—going through a magazine first—till this last when I got only £110. They can’t give so much they say when these pirates bring out an edition at once for so many cents. I think my last was published by them for 20 cents.

Other matters may remain till I hear from you again…

With kindest regards,

Yours very truly,

George MacDonald. ⁵

All these factors lead to the conclusion that something is seriously wrong with Greville’s account, and its perpetuation by Bulloch. I am reluctant to say that they are both in error. But unless I am missing something, I do have to say that I question Strahan’s involvement in the Faber scenario. This may be a case where Greville’s memory is playing tricks on him. Given the history between MacDonald and Strahan, the events as Greville outlines them are not impossible. But given the state of Strahan’s fortunes at the time (his enterprises crumbling), Watt’s involvement, and this letter speaking of direct payment from Hurst and Blackett, the offer for Faber coming from Strahan seems highly unlikely. This may be a case where a major unintentional error has crept into the MacDonald biography through Greville and Bulloch.

As for the £110 MacDonald says he has received for Sir Gibbie, we have to read his words carefully. He is speaking of an offer made in America. (Lippincott was the American publisher of both Faber and Gibbie.) He also says that the Glasgow Weekly Mail has just paid him £300 for the newspaper rights, as they did the year before (for The Marquis of Lossie).

Suddenly we see the amounts for Gibbie and Faber mounting, and that both books were in all likelihood far more lucrative than Greville leads us to believe.

We are still left with two amounts unaccounted for in the arrangements for the finances of Faber and Gibbie to which MacDonald alludes in this letter:

The first is Lippincott’s U.S. offer for Faber. (Was it the £300 he had always got before—perhaps by Lippincott for Malcolm and Marquis—or was it the £110 he had been offered for Gibbie?)

And there are also the U.K. book rights from Hurst and Blackett (publishers of both Gibbie and Faber in 1879) to consider, for which it is reasonable to assume they paid close to the same £400.

My point is