The Seaboard Parish

By George MacDonald and Michael Phillips

A portrait of a minister and his family. Second in the Scottish author’s Marshmallows Trilogy following Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood.

The publication in 1868 of this sequel to Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood capped off one of George MacDonald’s most productive years with a third major fiction work following Robert Falconer and Guild Court. Set in the Cornwall seaside town of Bude and inspired by a MacDonald family holiday a few years earlier, this novel continues the leisurely pastoral pace of minister Harry Walton’s family. Like Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood, it was first written for “Sabbath reading” in the Sunday Magazine. Almost taking the form of a “family diary,” A Seaboard Parish is yet rich with spiritual insight and wisdom.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9780795352690

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

The Seaboard

Parish

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): 978-0-7953-5269-0

www.RosettaBooks.com

The Cullen Collection

of the Fiction of George MacDonald

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

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

CONTENTS

Foreword to The Cullen Collection

Introduction to The Seaboard Parish

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.Homiletic

2.Constance’s Birthday

3.The Accident

4.The Sick Chamber

5.A Sunday Evening

6.God’s Baby

7.My Dream

8.The New Baby

9.Another Sunday Evening

10.A Plan for Theodora

11.An Important Letter

12.Connie’s Dream

13.The Journey

14.A Walk with Wynnie

15.Kilkhaven

16.The Old Church

17.Connie’s Watchtower

18.My First Sermon at the Sea

19.Another Sunday Evening

20.Niceboots

21.The Blacksmith

22.The Lifeboat

23.Mr. Percivale

24.The Shadow of Death

25.At the Farm

26.The Keeve

27.The Walk to Church

28.The Ancient Castle

29.The Old Castle

30.Joe’s Trouble

31.A Small Adventure

32.A Harvest Sermon

33.A Walk with My Wife

34.A Walk at Low Tide

35.   Our Last Shore Dinner

36.A Pastoral Visit

37.The Art of Nature

38.The Sore Spot

39.The Gathering Storm

40.The Gathered Storm

41.The Shipwreck

42.The Funeral

43.Lazarus and His Sisters

44.Changed Plans

45.The Studio

46.Home Again

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 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 to the original Bethany House series of novels. The thirteen realistic novels among these (including this one) 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, 2019

INTRODUCTION

1868

Portrait of a Family

While Robert Falconer and Guild Court were running simultaneously in their respective magazines (the Argosy and Good Words), during the summer months of 1867, the MacDonalds, now complete with their eleven children, traveled to the north Cornwall seaside in late July or August for a holiday. Accompanied by Octavia Hill, they rented two cottages near the sea in the resort town of Bude. *

Dealings with the Fairies (three reprints from Adela Cathcart and two new fairy tales) and Unspoken Sermons had probably just been published. The Disciple and Other Poems and Annals of a Quiet Neighbour-hood would also be released that year. MacDonald was no doubt breathing the sea air with satisfaction that he had completed a stretch of good work. The holiday would give him the chance to concentrate on his sequel to Annals, not surprisingly chronicling a minister’s family on holiday in Cornwall. It would be called The Seaboard Parish.

Not surprising in the midst of a period of such incredible productivity, MacDonald had so many commitments backed up that it took all the focus and concentration he could muster to keep pace. He was lagging behind in finishing up Guild Court, though its installments continued to run every month. The Seaboard Parish was scheduled to begin serialization before year’s end. And there were the pending changes to Robert Falconer before it appeared in book form the following year.

So it may have been a holiday for the children. But no mother of young children—especially one who had just given birth a few months before—ever gets a true holiday. And besides preaching in the village of Kilkhampton four miles inland, as always MacDonald was juggling several projects at once.

Rolland Hein explains:

"MacDonald took a parish for the summer in the far west of England, in Kilkhampton. They had cottages in Bude, a village on the cliffs of Devonshire * overlooking the Atlantic. Also with the entire family were MacDonald’s stepmother and sister Jeannie, together with Octavia Hill, then a young and attractive social worker. Hill, a protégé of Ruskin, took a warm interest in Greville’s learning difficulties and undertook to teach him the rudiments of Latin grammar…Hill’s more traditional approach to understanding Latin syntax succeeded where MacDonald’s approach had not… ¹

"They fell in love with the sleepy little town. Louisa raving over the fresh, clear, pure, air…MacDonald, regimenting himself to as demanding a schedule as his health permitted, wrote tirelessly on his next novel and preached in the church at Kilkhampton. He was writing The Seaboard Parish plus readying Guild Court (which was being serialized in Good Words throughout 1867) to appear as a novel. But he found time as well to enjoy the seaside with his family…

"The summer at Bude appreciably invigorated him…

MacDonald fictionalized many of his experiences in the novel. ²

Though saying that his father rarely took time off for fun, Greville makes clear that when he did, he played with gusto.

"At Bude George MacDonald wrote hard and took but little pleasure…The breakwater was our joy, especially at high tides…My father, happy as his boys in dodging these drenching smotherers, would, with Maurice and Bernard, ages three and two, one under each arm, race across it to the Chapel-rock, and sometimes half up to his knees in the foamy water. The fascination of the sea’s terror and loveliness must have been as strong as in his student days…

Those days at Bude remain in my mind as the happiest of all my childhood’s holidays; and chiefly because our father, in spite of his indefatigable writing, took more share in our romps and adventures than I ever remember. ³

When the summer drew to a close, the press of the schedule was nipping at MacDonald’s heels. The Seaboard Parish was due to begin running in Alexander Strahan’s more sedate magazine suitable for Sabbath fare, the Sunday Magazine.

George and Louisa’s eleventh child, George MacKay, had been born the previous January. Everywhere they went, they were continually outgrowing their accommodations. Prior to leaving for Cornwall they had rented a house on the Thames in Hammersmith in greater London. It was much larger than anything they had occupied previously, with space to entertain and take in strangers and orphans (of which the MacDonalds were always blessed with a steady supply), and a one-acre plot behind the house where the children could romp and play and where they were able to keep a horse and cow. It was called The Retreat. ⁴

They were due to take possession that fall. In yet another perplexing decision, George stayed behind in Bude to write, leaving Louisa to return to London with the children in September and manage the move into the new house with the help of what friends she could enlist. Not many husbands would get away with that today. MacDonald remained in Cornwall for another two months.

A frustrated letter arrived in Bude about the horrors of the arrival of the vans and their unfriendly movers demanding four times more in advance payment than she had been expecting and not starting to unload until midnight. Louisa ended the letter, I was so hideously tired I could hardly direct anyone and there were 8 men all about the house carrying things and no candles except in bottles. After the men had finally left, she concluded, I had some whisky which did me good. ⁵

Commenting on the serializations then in progress in the two magazines, and his frustrations on the literary front, MacDonald wrote to Louisa about a complaint Strahan had lodged, apparently prompted by a reader taking Strahan to task about something MacDonald had written. "What does Strahan mean by sending me such rubbish? If he thinks to turn me into a slave of Good Words and Good Words into a slave of such foolish people, I shall soon cut my moorings." ⁶

The enormous amount of work involved in producing both magazine and book editions was such that MacDonald did not always feel it financially worth it. "I will give him a finishing story of the vicar’s for the Sunday [the Sunday Magazine] if he likes, he wrote, but if he is going to turn goody with Good Words, it has seen the last of me. I would rather have 800 pounds for a novel not first in a magazine than 1000 pounds for one in a magazine. It is such a bore." ⁷ This brief statement reveals that just a few years after receiving a mere £40 or £50 for his early books, by now MacDonald was making big money—£1000 being the equivalent of slightly over £100,000 today. He is now talking about £1000 as a matter of course, as casually as he did £50 only five or six years earlier.

Between the lines of this letter we also see another hint that Alexander Strahan indeed may have been buying MacDonald’s copyrights, then selling them elsewhere. For whatever reason, Hurst and Blackett was out of the picture, increasing the likelihood that in some fashion Strahan may have been calling some of the shots. Yet inexplicably, neither Hurst and Blackett nor Strahan published The Seaboard Parish. Instead, the unknown Tinsley Brothers came on the scene.

Nevertheless, MacDonald speaks of Strahan as the man to whom he owes a finishing story of the vicar’s, not Tinsley Brothers. It is a very confusing mix of publishing relationships, and Strahan seems to be the power-broker in the middle of them all. (Assuming this role of Strahan’s as a middle-man, however, is merely implied, but not positively confirmed by documentary evidence.)

In any event, it is eye-opening to see this very human side of George and Louisa as they reveal their frustrations and annoyances, even MacDonald’s somewhat petty-sounding sarcasm about his friend Strahan. I’m not sure I would like some of my outbursts to Judy about publishers being preserved for posterity!

Although his novels were now commanding high prices, the family always seemed financially stressed. No more money to send my little woman at home, MacDonald lamented on one occasion. She must hang on as well as she can for a day or two and let me know when she can’t any longer, and I will contrive something. ⁸ At another time he assured Louisa that he would write Strahan for an advance of ten pounds to enable her to meet their obligations. This is an altogether strange comment alongside his talk of £800 and £1000 payments as apparently now being the norm—all the more so when we consider that he was publishing more than one book a year!

Yet Rolland Hein makes it sound as though MacDonald was still dogged by poverty: Sheer financial need forced him to maintain a vigorous schedule of lecturing. He would take publisher’s proofs with him and work assiduously on them, while continuing his writing when he could. ⁹

Strahan’s serialization of The Seaboard Parish began in October of 1867 and ran through August of 1868. As noted in the introduction to Guild Court, during the first months of that year, MacDonald had three books in serialization at the same time.

Seaboard was published by Tinsley as a triple decker late in 1868. Very quickly one-volume editions were released. It may be that MacDonald’s (or Strahan’s) agreement with Tinsley Brothers was that they would publish the triple decker only, leaving Strahan free to arrange for subsequent editions.

This is where Routledge enters the picture. We spoke of this publishing giant—who would eventually become MacDonald’s primary U.S. publisher—in the introduction to Annals. But Routledge’s co-published version of Annals with Strahan was not released until 1871. The Seaboard Parish was, in fact, Routledge’s inaugural MacDonald publication.

The sequence of the one-volume editions is uncertain at this point. John Malcolm Bulloch’s 1925 bibliography of MacDonald’s works lists a Routledge one-volume release of The Seaboard Parish in 1868, followed by a Strahan edition in 1869. I have not seen or been able to corroborate any details about this highly significant first printing of Seaboard by Routledge in 1868—whether the date is accurate, and whether it was a co-published edition with Strahan or Routledge’s own independent printing.

Strahan’s first two one-volume editions of The Seaboard Parish (Second Edition and Third Edition, both dated 1869) were published by Strahan alone. Then after the Strahan-Routledge co-published edition of Annals in 1871, the two publishers issued a co-published edition of The Seaboard Parish in 1873.

Not only do the shared names of the two publishers (one in the U.K., the other in the U.S.) appear on the title page of the two books (1871 Annals and 1873 Seaboard), their cooperative effort is confirmed by the use of the same plates. Routledge’s subsequent U.S. editions of the two titles reproduce precise facsimile copies of every page identical to the Strahan editions, including British spellings and minor printing anomalies. ¹⁰

If Strahan’s arrangements with Routledge indeed did not begin until 1871, and if the 1868 date is accurate for Routledge’s first Seaboard printing, then Routledge’s entry into MacDonald’s world may have been with an edition pirated from Tinsley’s triple decker. On the other hand, that Routledge’s later publications made use of the U.K. plates gives credibility to the possibility that so did their 1868 edition, indicating cooperation between Strahan and Routledge from the beginning. Until a copy of the 1868 Routledge edition referenced by Bulloch surfaces (if indeed it does exist), the mystery will continue.

These first two Routledge publications of Annals and Seaboard would eventually lead to more than two dozen additional MacDonald titles. Routledge would go on to become one of the major players in MacDonald’s publishing career. See the introduction to Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood for more on the Strahan/Routledge connection.

These very productive two years of 1867-68 were capped off with a book entirely different from anything MacDonald had written before. England’s Antiphon, a history of the religious poetry of England from the Middle Ages to the nineteenth century was published late in the year by Macmillan. It is remarkable to mention this book almost as a footnote. With the seeming superhuman output of fiction we have been following during these very productive years, here is a major historical literary study that obviously required enormous research. Yet we merely note it as coming between MacDonald’s more prestigious titles. As lengthy as this writer’s life is, in some ways it but scratches the surface.

That year, too, MacDonald was also awarded an honorary L.L.D. degree from Aberdeen University. ¹¹ By then MacDonald was again looking ahead, and had begun his classic At the Back of the North Wind.

Though containing profound insights and spiritual truths, The Seaboard Parish cannot be considered at the top rank of MacDonald’s more plot and character driven books. It reads more like a family journal than a page turner. ¹² Richard Reis in his excellent George MacDonald’s Fiction does not so much as mention the book in his index (which is saying something, as he does reference Guild Court). Greville, on the other hand, does not mention Guild Court. These two back-to-back titles were not among MacDonald’s most critically acclaimed.

Greville writes, "The Seaboard Parish is not one of the strong novels, neither story nor characters being very convincing." ¹³

One wonders if C.S. Lewis has this particular volume in mind when he wrote, speaking of the novels, Sometimes they diverge into direct and prolonged preachments which would be intolerable if a man were reading for the story, but which are in fact welcome because the author, though a poor novelist, is a supreme preacher. Some of his best things are thus hidden in his dullest books. ¹⁴

I strongly disagree with Lewis’s poor novelist assessment. His analysis of MacDonald’s novels is one-dimensional and emerges out of the flawed foundation that views all fiction through the limited lens of Lewis’s personal predilections.

Lewis’s point, however, is well taken. Some of MacDonald’s novels are admittedly weak in the extreme. Even so, as Lewis says, their spiritual content is welcome. Whether readers will judge The Seaboard Parish a poorly constructed work of fiction will be in the eye of the beholder. But few will doubt its enduring spiritual value.

Sales continued to be strong. Reviews, however, were varied.

William Raeper comments:

"More theological works such as Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood and The Seaboard Parish came out in the Sunday Magazine. The long sermons in the latter two books were therefore written for an audience who felt the need to be improved on the Sabbath and through the sermons of Walton, the Vicar, MacDonald rammed his points home…

"Contemporary reactions to his novels were mixed. Most reviewers favoured his sentiments above his style: ‘…it is high praise indeed to say of his works that it is impossible to read them without being benefited…’ wrote one reviewer, though the same reviewer detected ‘a slight smack of the schoolmaster’ ¹⁵ which is certainly true. J. Knight in the Fortnightly Review complained that: ‘Each succeeding volume has become increasingly didactic…there is a lamentable falling off in artistic method and purpose.’ ¹⁶…Most of these criticisms are true enough. The novels do smack of the schoolmaster and often lapse into pedantry…But MacDonald was unrepentant about his didacticism…

"What he has done in The Seaboard Parish, for example, is to press a series of sermons into a three-volume novel and use them, as he used all his novels, to address the theological and social questions of the day." ¹⁷

In a sense, the books of the Annals/Seaboard/Vicar’s trilogy represent everything that is considered wrong in MacDonald’s writing by those who judge fiction only by pace, plot, mystery, and romance, or through the C.S. Lewis lens of what constitutes good fiction, however they happen to define it. On the other hand, the first two also represent all that is unique and wonderful about MacDonald for those who judge his work on the basis of his wordsmithing power, his imaginative imagery, and his eternal spiritual insights.

These books are also intensely personal. This of course adds enormously to their interest. But this fact, while allowing us to partake of the power of his spiritual wisdom, admittedly also reveals George MacDonald as a very human man, with his own weaknesses and blind spots. While Harry Walton is clearly a fictional character, there is too much of the author himself bound up in his habits and personality and ways of looking at things not to recognize Walton as a thorough and not always entirely complimentary reflection of his creator. Notwithstanding Greville’s happy memories of the summer at Bude, we see Walton spending much of his time distanced emotionally from his family and children—participating occasionally but for the most part keeping aloof and detached. As if taken straight from MacDonald’s own biography, the younger boys are of little interest to him. Walton, like MacDonald clearly prefers his daughters, and one daughter above the rest.

Walton’s near reverence for Connie is so palpable that I find myself disquieted as I read. I realize it is fiction. Yet I am almost embarrassed for MacDonald’s sake knowing that it is not entirely fiction. I fear MacDonald suffered from the same tendency to compare his children, to prefer some over others, and to instill in those who were not among the favoured few that they were less worthy than their father’s darlings.

Poor Wynnie, who served the family with devotion, who wanted to be good, who helped tirelessly with the younger boys, labored not merely under the weight of her own spiritual doubts (hardly unusual in a young person growing into adulthood), she had to carry the added burden of knowing by words that passed his lips that she was not the apple of her father’s eye. Walton seems strangely oblivious to the continual subtleties by which he conveys to Wynnie that she can never hope to live up to her sister.

Yet what was Wynnie’s sin? Was she to be blamed for having a melancholy temperament rather than a bright and light-hearted optimistic personality like Connie’s? Instead of showing her the sympathy and understanding of a listening ear, however—embracing the normal fears and self-doubts and questions of youth as wonderful signs of dawning spiritual personhood—her father lectures and sometimes even berates her. Walton seems utterly dismissive of Wynnie’s spiritual struggles, preaching at her as if she is a lost sinner rather than tenderly opening to her a father’s heart of love and acceptance. It is a parental prescription almost guaranteed to produce guilt and resentment. No wonder Wynnie feels unworthy. And from Greville’s own reminiscences, we know that several of MacDonald’s own children felt exactly the same.

Nevertheless, it is a delightful read. MacDonald wrote The Seaboard Parish in 1867—one hundred and fifty years ago. And yet as we open its pages and begin reading, we feel his presence as author immediately. MacDonald is in the room with us, and writing for us. Nowhere is this more evident than in the opening lines of The Seaboard Parish, where he comments on that very feeling, saying that he senses our presence too.

Dear friends—I am beginning a new book like an old sermon.

As you know, I have been so accustomed to preach all my life, that whatever I say or write will more or less take the shape of a sermon in the end. If you had not by this time learned at least to bear with my oddities, you would not now be reading any more of my teaching. *

Indeed, I did not think you would want any more. I thought I had bidden you farewell. But I am seated once again at my writing table, to write for you…

Let me suppose for a moment that I am your grandfather, and that you have all come to beg for a story. Let us further suppose that, as usually happens in such cases, I am sitting with a puzzled face, indicating an even more puzzled mind. I know that there are a great many stories in the holes and corners of my brain…

Now I assume the children around me are neither young enough nor old enough to care about a fairy-tale. So that will not do. What they want, I believe, is something that I know about—something that has happened to me.

I confess that is the kind of thing I like best to hear anybody talk to me about. Let anyone tell me something that has happened to him personally, especially if he will give me a little peep into how his heart took it, as it sat in its own little room with the door closed, and that person will absorb my attention. He has something true and genuine and valuable to communicate.

They are mostly old people that can do so. Not that young people have nothing happen to them, but it is only when they grow old that they are able to see things right, to disentangle confusions and make righteous judgments about those things. Things which at the time appeared insignificant or wearisome later give out the light that was in them, and show their truth, interest, and influence. They are at last far enough off to be seen. It is not when we are nearest to anything that we know best what it is.

How I should like to write a story for old people!

The young are always having stories written for them. Why should not the old people come in for their fair share? A story without a young person in it at all! Nobody under fifty admitted…

I have been talking—to my reader is it, or to my supposed group of grandchildren? I remember—to my companions in old age…

Now, readers in general, I have had time to consider what to tell you about and how to begin. This time my story will be more about my family than myself.

What a great opening. It is actually longer than this! It feels perfect for the Sabbath reading of Strahan’s magazine.

As MacDonald thus sets a reflective mood, I find myself in no hurry for the story to begin, for the plot to seize me and whisk me away at breakneck speed. I am content to move slowly. I know MacDonald is opening his heart and mind to me as I read.

Michael Phillips

Cullen, Morayshire

Scotland, 2018

NOTE ON FOOTNOTES: For the reader’s ease in referencing frequently quoted titles, I have dispensed with the scholarly ciphers, more mystifying than helpful for the average fiction reader. These books will therefore be noted in the footnotes below as follows, rather than with the formal notations of op. cit., loc. cit., ibid., etc.

Greville, Biography—George MacDonald and His Wife by Greville MacDonald, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1924.

Hein, Mythmaker—George MacDonald, Victorian Mythmaker by Rolland Hein, Star Song Publishing, Nashville, TN, 1993.

Lewis, Anthology—George MacDonald: An Anthology, C.S. Lewis, Geoffrey Bles, 1946.

Raeper, MacDonald—George MacDonald by William Raeper, Lion Publishing, Tring, England, 1987.

THE SEABOARD PARISH

1868

The Cullen Collection

Volume 9

— One —

Homiletic

Dear friends—I am beginning a new book like an old sermon.

As you know, I have been so accustomed to preach all my life, that whatever I say or write will more or less take the shape of a sermon in the end. If you had not by this time learned at least to bear with my oddities, you would not now be reading any more of my teaching. *

Indeed, I did not think you would want any more. I thought I had bidden you farewell. But I am seated once again at my writing table, to write for you—with a strange feeling, however, that I am in the heart of some strange and curious acoustic contrivance, by means of which the words which I have a habit of whispering over to myself as I write them, are heard by multitudes of people whom I cannot see or hear. I will favour the fancy that, by a sense of your presence, I may speak more openly and truly, as man to man and author to reader.

Let me suppose for a moment that I am your grandfather, and that you have all come to beg for a story. Let us further suppose that, as usually happens in such cases, I am sitting with a puzzled face, indicating an even more puzzled mind. I know that there are a great many stories in the holes and corners of my brain. But I must find a suitable one. It is a fine thing to be able to give people what they want, if at the same time you can give them what you want. To give people only what they want, would sometimes be to give them poison. To give them what you want, might be to set before them something of which they could not eat a mouthful. What both you and I want, I think, is a dish of good wholesome story-food.

Now I assume the children around me are neither young enough nor old enough to care about a fairy-tale. So that will not do. What they want, I believe, is something that I know about—something that has happened to me.

I confess that is the kind of thing I like best to hear anybody talk to me about. Let anyone tell me something that has happened to him personally, especially if he will give me a little peep into how his heart took it, as it sat in its own little room with the door closed, and that person will absorb my attention. He has something true and genuine and valuable to communicate.

They are mostly old people that can do so. Not that young people have nothing happen to them, but it is only when they grow old that they are able to see things right, to disentangle confusions and make righteous judgments about those things. Things which at the time appeared insignificant or wearisome later give out the light that was in them, and show their truth, interest, and influence. They are at last far enough off to be seen. It is not when we are nearest to anything that we know best what it is.

How I should like to write a story for old people!

The young are always having stories written for them. Why should not the old people come in for their fair share? A story without a young person in it at all! Nobody under fifty admitted!

It could hardly be a fairy tale, could it? Or a love story either.

Although I am not so sure about that. The worse of it, however, would be that hardly a young person would read it. And we old people would not like that. We can read young people’s books and enjoy them, but they would not try to read old men’s or old women’s books—they would be so sure of their being dry.

My dear old brothers and sisters, we know better, do we not? We have nice old jokes, with no end of fun in them. Only the young people cannot see the fun. We have strange tales that we know to be true, and which look more and more marvellous every time we turn them over again—only somehow they do not belong to the ways of modern times, and so the young people generally do not care about them.

There was one pale-faced boy I knew, who would sit at his mother’s feet and listen for hours to what took place before he was born. To him his mother’s wedding-gown was as old as Eve’s coat of skins. But then he was young enough not yet to have had a chance of losing the childhood common to the young and the old.

Ah! I should like to write for you, old men and old women, to help you to read the past, to help you to look for the future. Now is your salvation nearer than when you first believed, for, however your souls may be at peace, however your quietness and confidence may give you strength, in the decay of your earthly tabernacle, in the shortening of its cords, in the weakening of its stakes, in the tears through which you see the stars, you have yet your share in the cry of the creation after the Sonship.

But one thing I should keep saying to you, my companions in old age, would be, Friends, let us not grow old. Old age is but a mask. Let us not call the mask the face.

Is the acorn old because its cup dries and drops it from its hold—because its skin has grown brown and cracks in the earth? Then only is a man growing old when he ceases to have sympathy with the young. That is a sign that his heart has begun to wither. And that is a dreadful kind of old age.

The heart needs never be old. Indeed, it should always be growing younger.

Some of us feel younger, do we not, than when we were nine or ten? It is not necessary to be able to play at leapfrog to enjoy the game. There are young creatures whose turn it is, and perhaps whose duty it is, to play leapfrog—if we put the matter in that light. And for us, we have the privilege, or if we will not accept the privilege, then I say we have the duty, of enjoying watching them at their play.

If we must withdraw in a measure from our fellows as we grow older, let it be as the wise creatures that creep aside and wrap themselves up and lay themselves by, that their wings may grow and put on the lovely hues of their coming resurrection. Such a withdrawing is in the name of youth.

And while it is pleasant—no one knows how pleasant except him who experiences it—to let age come, and to sit apart and see the drama of life going on around him, while his feelings are calm and free, his vision clear, and his judgment righteous, the old man must ever be ready, should the sweep of action catch him in its skirts, to get on his tottering old legs, and go with brave heart to do the work of a true man, none the less that his hands tremble and that he would gladly return to his chair in the corner. But whatever one’s calling, the highest of all is to be a man who, using just weights and a true balance, sells good flour, and never takes a thought for himself.

I have been talking—to my reader is it, or to my supposed group of grandchildren? I remember—to my companions in old age. It is time I returned to the company who are hearing my whispers at the other side of the great thundering gallery. I take leave of my old friends with one further word: We yet have a work to do, my friends, but a work we shall never do aright if we cease to understand the new generation. Wisdom shall not die with us. The Lord hath not forsaken his people because the young ones do not think just as the old ones choose. The Lord has something fresh to tell them, and is getting them ready to receive his message. When we are out of sympathy with the young, then I think our work in this world is over.

Now, readers in general, I have had time to consider what to tell you about and how to begin. This time my story will be more about my family than myself. Even by the time of which I am about to write, I had settled into a gray-haired, elderly yet active man—young, however, compared to what I am now. But even then, though