The Vicar's Daughter

By George Macdonald and Michael Phillips

The fictional memoirs of Victorian-era housewife. Third in the Marshmallows Trilogy following Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood and The Seaboard Parish.

The Vicar’s Daughter, the 1872 sequel to The Seaboard Parish, follows the early married life of one of Harry Walton’s (fictional narrator of Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood) daughters. This third book in the Marshmallows Trilogy is representative of the rising interest women were taking in Victorian society. Written in the first person in the fictional guise of female authorship, its characterization of MacDonald’s friend and patron Lady Noel Byron is one of the noteworthy elements of the book.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: May 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9780795352713

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

The Vicar’s

Daughter

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): 978-0-7953-5271-3

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 Vicar’s Daughter

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. Introductory

2. A Conversation Between My Parents

3. Anticipating Marriage

4. My Wedding

5. Judy’s Visit

6. Good Society

7. Refuge from the Heat

8. Connie

9. Connie’s Baby

10. The Foundling Refound

11. Wagtail Comes to Honour

12. A Stupid Chapter

13. An Introduction

14. A Negatived Proposal

15. My First Dinner Party

16. A Picture

17. Rumours

18. A Discovery

19. Miss Clare

20. Miss Clare’s Story

21. Questions and Discussion

22. Lady Bernard

23. My Second Dinner Party

24. The End of the Evening

25. My First Terror

26. What Had Happened

27. Troubles

28. Miss Clare’s Friends

29. Mr, Morley

30. A Strange Text

31. About Percivale

32. My Second Terror

33. Clouds After the Rain

34. Sunshine

35.   What Lady Bernard Thought

36. Mrs. Cromwell Comes

37. Mrs. Cromwell Goes

38. Ancestral Wisdom

39. Child Nonsense

40. Double, Double, Toil and Trouble

41. Roger and Marion

42. My Thoughts About Roger

43. The Dea Ex

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

1872

Portrait of a Lady

The opening passage of The Vicar’s Daughter must surely be one of the most original, or wacky, beginnings to a novel imaginable. Is this fiction… fact…or something in between? *

My name is Ethelwyn Percivale, and used to be Ethelwyn Walton.

Whenever I write to my father I put the Walton in between, for I think it is quite enough for a young woman to have to leave father and mother behind for a husband, without leaving their name behind you also.

I am afraid of writing what I fear will be nonsense. But my father tells me that seeing things in print is a great help to recognizing whether it is nonsense or not. And he tells me too, that his friend the publisher is not like any other publisher he has ever met with before, for he is so fond of good work that he never grumbles at any alteration writers choose to make, although it costs a good deal to shift the types again after they are once set up. The other part of my excuse for attempting to write, lies simply in telling how it came about.

Ten days ago my father came up from Marshmallows to pay us a visit. He is with us now, but we don’t see him much during the day…

A few days ago, my father came home to dinner, and brought with him the publisher of the two books called The Annals Of a Quiet Neighbourhood and The Seaboard Parish. The first of these had lain by him for some years before my father could publish it, and then he remodelled it a little for the magazine in which it came out, a portion at a time. The second was written at the request of Mr. S., who wanted something more of the same sort, though at the time nothing was done.

And now after some years he had begun again to represent to my father the necessity for another story to complete what he called the trilogy.

My father objected on the basis of his advancing years and failing judgment.

Mr. S. said he owed it to him, for he had left him in the lurch, as it were, with an incomplete story, not to say an uncompleted series. My father still objected, and Mr. S. still urged.

At length my father said, "What would you say if I found you a substitute writer?"

"That depends on who the substitute might be, Mr. Walton," replied Mr. S.

The result of their talk was that my father brought him home to dinner that day. And hence it comes about that, with some genuine fear and metaphorical trembling, I am now writing this. I wonder if anybody will ever read it.

Whether we can take this passage as factual, that MacDonald had promised Alexander Strahan a Marshmallows Trilogy, or whether this is simply a fictional device, it is nonetheless intriguing. It is like nothing else in MacDonald’s writings. Though none of the three Walton books were in fact published by Alexander Strahan, no one else could possibly be the unnamed Mr. S. This unconventional opening also reveals more than might at first meet the eye about the publishing process as MacDonald experienced it—editors grumbling about author changes, edits after serialized editions, etc. In contrast to such difficulties, MacDonald lauds Strahan publicly for being so cooperative for an author to work with.

We have traced Alexander Strahan’s influence in MacDonald’s career in the introductions to several earlier volumes of The Cullen Collection. Strahan and MacDonald clearly had an intimate working relationship, MacDonald editing Strahan’s magazine Good Words for the Young, and having serialized three stories for it. Strahan’s publishing company was by this time MacDonald’s primary publisher, having published seven of his books, more overall titles even than fiction powerhouse Hurst and Blackett.

Speaking of his father, Greville wrote, "His financial position was now easier, and remained easier—thanks largely to Alexander Strahan, the founder of Good Words, the Sunday Magazine, and the Contemporary Review, and a most generous publisher." ¹

But as we have seen, though a visionary wheeler-dealer, one of the movers and shakers in British publishing, Strahan was not the best businessman. He paid authors too much. He placed a higher premium on quality than profit—his books were gorgeous. A man after an author’s heart!

To accomplish these objectives, however, he borrowed, then borrowed more, then brought investor-partners into his company, then mortgaged one of his magazines by signing over its copyrights to his creditors, then selling stock in Strahan and Co. He kept the plates spinning, so to speak, by always finding some new source of borrowed capital and re-negotiating past debts. It was a vicious cycle fed by vision and enthusiasm rather than financial prudence. When the going got rough, instead of pulling in the reins and consolidating his enterprises, he started yet another new venture, and talked investors into backing it. His genius for making magazines successful was his Achilles heel. He was good at what he did, but he grew his empire far too rapidly.

So with the best of motives and intentions, his publishing genius recognized by everyone in the industry, and loved by family and friends and authors, this man of vision and deep spiritual conviction built what amounted to a publishing pyramid scheme between approximately 1863 and 1871. Eventually, probably inevitably, the pyramid collapsed.

While most MacDonald biographers unfortunately obsess on MacDonald’s involvement in the Ruskin/LaTouche affair (see introduction to Wilfrid Cumbermede), MacDonald’s involvement with Alexander Strahan is far more pivotal and important in the development of his writing career. Strahan’s is a fascinating story, but in the end a sad one—to see an honorable man ultimately fail in what was a worthy vision.

As we probe deeper, we see that not only did Strahan publish MacDonald, he seems to have brokered deals with other publishers as well. We touched on this in the introductions to Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood and The Seaboard Parish. Was this because Strahan could not afford to pay MacDonald what he thought he deserved, possibly because his own publishing ventures were struggling? There seems more to it than that, because Strahan offered MacDonald a ridiculously high salary to edit Good Words for the Young, and MacDonald was paid an astronomically high advance for The Vicar’s Daughter as late as 1872 when Strahan’s world was crumbling.

MacDonald had obviously contracted with his early publishers—Longmans, Smith Elder, and Hurst and Blackett—on his own. Why at some point, if the Strahan-as-middle-man theory is accurate, did he begin to sell his copyrights to Strahan instead of working directly with these other publishers?

The whys and logistics of the MacDonald/Strahan arrangements are murky. We don’t know that Strahan was representing MacDonald’s writings to other publishers. But something involving Strahan in more publications than his own was going on. Whatever that something was, it is clear that Strahan wore many hats in the publishing industry. Therefore, perhaps in some respects he was a king-maker on MacDonald’s behalf.

If so, did Strahan receive a finder’s fee or commission for the books of MacDonald’s he took to other publishers? Might this have been one of his many revenue-scrounging schemes? Was he buying MacDonald’s copyrights himself, hoping to sell them (for more) to other publishers?

Whatever might have been MacDonald’s reasons for working through Strahan, from this opening to Vicar’s, we see strong evidence of Strahan’s being the purchasing agent, so to speak of MacDonald’s copyright for the three Marshmallows books. When Mr. S is called the publisher of Annals and Seaboard, how does this fit with the fact that Strahan was not their publisher, and with Hurst and Blackett and Tinsley Brothers as the actual publishers of the three books?

The answer may, of course, be no more complicated than that Strahan was the magazine publisher to whom MacDonald owed a trilogy—for the magazine only. *Yet it seems that Strahan’s role was somehow more inclusive, especially in that he did publish book editions of the first two titles subsequent to the initial releases by their primary publishers.

There seem to have been two opposite things going on.

One, Strahan was somehow obtaining the rights to most of MacDonald’s books between 1866 and 1871. Some of these he published, others he didn’t. Some he published in both book and magazine form, some only in magazine.

Two, other publishers (Hurst and Blackett, Routledge, Tinsley Brothers) published some of these titles apparently independently of Strahan.

How did this work? Who gave permission to whom for what? Who was calling the shots, MacDonald or Strahan? During the years when his pyramid empire was growing and riding high, if Strahan had secured the copyrights (for Seaboard Parish, for instance), why was its first edition published by someone else? He published both Annals and Seaboard, but only after they had first been published by Hurst and Blackett and Tinsley Brothers. Perhaps it was simply that Strahan didn’t want to publish triple deckers, yet reserved the right (if he was indeed in the driver’s seat) to bring out his own one-volume edition.

Whatever else may have been going on, it is also clear, as mentioned in the introduction to Annals, that there was a degree of cooperation between some publishers (in spite of the rampant piracy). This fact may go a long way to explain Strahan’s involvement in MacDonald’s affairs.

A very intriguing letter dated February of 1872 to a contributing authoress of Good Words for the Young (whose name is also interesting!) highlights Strahan’s curious role. It is not clear what book MacDonald is speaking of. As the years 1871-72 were very busy, with four or five projects in the writing and serialization stages, it could have been one of several titles. Nevertheless, it may give us a window into how the MacDonald/Strahan partnership might have worked.

MacDonald speaks of having turned over to Strahan potential negotiations with the American publisher Lee and Shepherd (whose spelling was actually Shepard). That sounds very much like the role of an agent. As mentioned, it could be that MacDonald was speaking of Strahan’s involvement on behalf of the magazine rather than a forthcoming book. He mentions both, however, and Lee and Shepard was a book publisher. (It turned out that Lee and Shepard did not publish a MacDonald title for several more years, Castle Warlock being the first. ²)

In addition to this identification of Strahan’s role as a middle-man, MacDonald’s comments about money are equally fascinating. Less than a year earlier he had said to Josiah Holland (perhaps more flippantly than factually) that he had never touched a cent of American money, yet here he is speaking about what he is normally offered for books and magazines in America as if he has been receiving lucrative payments for some time.

He writes:

My dear Mrs. Cupples,

Many thanks for your kind letter…

I have told Mr. Strahan about it, & he is going to open communications with Messrs. Lee & Shepherd [sic] on the matter. I think it is possible something may be done, though I cannot tell till they make a definite offer. What they offer me for a new book is only two thirds of what I get ahead from American magazines.

It will be enough if you just say to your nephew that Mr. Strahan will for me open communications with Messrs. Lee and Shepherd [sic], & and that I am much obliged to him for sending me the message through you…

I am working very hard to get things ready for going to America in the month of Sept. with my wife & Greville—to be away six months on a lecturing tour… ³

Since we last saw Strahan in the introductions to Annals and Seaboard, he had continued to publish MacDonald’s writings. Some of MacDonald’s books he published, others he did not. Earlier, Strahan’s company published Unspoken Sermons, Dealings with the Fairies, and The Disciple and Other Poems. But when it came time for Robert Falconer and Guild Court, though Strahan had serialized both, the books were published by Hurst and Blackett. Meanwhile, Strahan continued to publish MacDonald’s books in his own name as well, with The Miracles of Our Lord, At the Back of the North Wind, the ten-volume Works of Fancy and Imagination, Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood, and The Princess and the Goblin.

And that brings us back around to the curious opening of The Vicar’s Daughter and Mr. S.

Raphael Shaberman writes:

"THE VICAR’S DAUGHTER: An Autobiographical Story…Tinsley Brothers, 1872…Serialized in The Sunday Magazine, 1871-2.

"A sequel to The Seaboard Parish, set in London and Hastings. A review in the Athenaeum, Aug. 10, 1872, described the parables as ‘dark and unintelligible.’ The publisher was Alexander Strahan, who paid MacDonald £1,o00 for the story (Bulloch, p. 48): Strahan appears in the ‘Introductory’ as ‘Mr. S’ who ‘is not like any other publisher…for he is so fond of good work that he never grumbles at any alterations writers choose to make’—a reference to MacDonald’s addiction to extensive revision. He implies that Strahan pressed him to write the story ‘to complete the trilogy, as he called it’ (p. 4), the first two parts being Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood (1867) and The Seaboard Parish (1868), which are mentioned by name on p. 3. ‘I have a weakness in the direction of the sensible’, says Mr. S (pp. 17. 18), which is consistent with Strahan’s views that Good Words for the Young had, at one time, ‘too much of the fairy element’… ‘Lady Bernard’ is a life-like portrait of Lady Byron (d. 1860)." ⁴

Bulloch confirms that the arrangements were made by Strahan, with such specificity as giving the date of the final payment:

MacDonald got £1,o00 for it from Strahan, the final payment of £100 being dated Aug. 2, 1872. ⁵

MacDonald’s words to Louisa about his magazine, I will give him a finishing story of the vicar’s for the Sunday, if he likes, ⁶ indeed indicates that it is Strahan to whom MacDonald had committed himself to write a trilogy.

If so, for reasons unknown, having bought the copyright, Strahan then took the third installment of the trilogy again to Tinsley Brothers. Why would MacDonald change publishers after the huge success of Annals, especially in that after Seaboard and Vicars, Tinsley Brothers is never heard from again? And how did Strahan recoup his investment? Did Tinsley pay him more than £1,o00? Or are Bulloch’s and Shaberman’s analyses incorrect, and did MacDonald deal directly with Tinsley Brothers?

Behind the scenes of these events, we may also read into these fascinating but obscure relationships the potential beginnings of Strahan gradually drawing his brother-in-law A.P. Watt into his business, and turning over to him some of MacDonald’s business affairs, until, a few years hence, Watt became MacDonald’s full-fledged agent.

Routledge also published The Vicar’s Daughter, but in this case did not co-publish its edition with Strahan. Whether their edition was legitimate or pirated is unknown. I cannot help wondering if, drawn into the world of MacDonald’s writings by Strahan and finding it a lucrative venture, Routledge then began pirating more titles, which included Strahan’s own publications.

We can finally bring the intriguing series of events involving Alexander Strahan and the Marshmallows trilogy to completion with yet one more mystery. After paying MacDonald the huge sum of £1,o00 for the copyright of Vicar’s at a time when his own financial fortunes were on the decline, and after receiving the finishing story of the vicar’s for his Sunday Magazine, Strahan never did publish a book edition of The Vicar’s Daughter. By that time Strahan was being forced out of his own company, and his magazines were being seized by creditors, which may be the only explanation necessary. ⁷ The trilogy MacDonald had promised him, and that he had been so insistent to get, thus remained unfinished for Strahan after all.

Returning again to the book before us, even MacDonald’s creative opening fictional device, pretending to speak through Harry Walton’s daughter, cannot disguise the book as little more than a fictional diary, with no plot, and not much to recommend it other than the portrait of Lady Byron on whom the character of Lady Bernard is based. MacDonald’s friend Octavia Hill is also associated with the book in the person of Marion Clare, though it is possible to read her into most of MacDonald’s strong characterizations of women. Miss Hill was certainly involved with the MacDonald family at a deeply personal level during the time when the second two Marshmallows books were being written.

One of the most intriguing features of The Vicar’s Daughter is the very practical list of Ethylwyn’s (obviously MacDonald’s own!) child-raising principles:

First for a few negative ones.

1. Never give in to disobedience, and never threaten what you are not prepared to carry out.

2. Never lose your temper. I do not say Never be angry. Anger is sometimes indispensable, especially where there has been any thing mean, dishonest, or cruel. But anger is very different from loss of temper.

3. Of all things, never sneer at them, and be careful, even, how you rally them.

4. Do not try to work on their feelings. Feelings are far too delicate things to be used for tools…Let your feelings, not your efforts on theirs, affect them with a sympathy the more powerful that it is not forced upon them…A man’s own family has a right to share in his good feelings.

5. Never show that you doubt, except you are able to convict. To doubt an honest child is to do what you can to make a liar of him, and to believe a liar, if he is not altogether shameless, is to shame him…

6. Instil no religious doctrine apart from its duty. If it have no duty as its necessary embodiment, the doctrine may well be regarded as doubtful.

7. Do not be hard on mere quarrelling, which, like a storm in nature, is often helpful in clearing the moral atmosphere. Stop it by a judgment between the parties…

Now for a few of my father’s positive rules.

1. Always let them come to you, and always hear what they have to say. If they bring a complaint, always examine into it, and dispense pure justice, and nothing but justice.

2. Cultivate a love of giving fair-play. Everyone, of course, likes to receive fair-play…

3. Teach from the very first, from the infancy capable of sucking a sugar-plum, to share with neighbours. Never refuse the offering a child brings you…And never pretend to partake…

4. Allow a great deal of noise—as much as is fairly endurable. But the moment they seem getting beyond their own control, stop the noise at once. Also, put a stop at once to all fretting and grumbling.

5. Favour the development of each in the direction of his own bent. Help him to develop himself, but do not push development…

6. Mind the moral nature, and it will take care of the intellectual. In other words, the best thing for the intellect is the cultivation of the conscience, not in casuistry, but in conduct…

7. Discourage emulation, and insist on duty—not often, but strongly.

Judy and I were so taken with these principles that we printed and framed them to hang on the wall of our home when our own sons were young.

Comparisons, of course, are pointless. But by any standard The Vicar’s Daughter ranks as one of the weakest of MacDonald’s novels. Yet he was paid £1,000 for it, an indication that his books were commanding serious money compared to that of his early works of £25 and £50. The same year Wilfrid Cumbermede brought him £1,200. Two of his least noteworthy books turned out to be two of his most lucrative.

Meanwhile, as MacDonald was finishing up The Vicar’s Daughter, arrangements were in progress for a major lecture tour of America to begin that fall.

As always MacDonald continued to look ahead. Working on the proofs for Vicar’s, in May he was on the train north to visit Huntly and Cullen. Another novel was brewing in his mind to be set on Scotland’s north coast in the village he so loved as a youngster. And he was at work on yet another story for young people for Good Words for the Young about an inventive boy called Willie.

As much as he enjoyed Cullen that year, renewing his affection for one of the favourite holiday sites of his childhood, the writing of his Cullen masterpiece would have to wait. By mid-1872, plans for the America tour were in full swing. While the rest of the family remained in England to be watched over by the older girls, Lilia and Mary, now nineteen and twenty, George and Louisa, accompanied by Greville, set sail from Liverpool on the Cunard S.S. Malta on September 19, 1872. All three suffering dreadful seasickness, they arrived in Boston twelve days later.

They toured America for eight months, traveling as far west as Chicago, and were enthusiastically received everywhere. The America tour will be touched on in greater detail in the introduction to Gutta Percha Willie.

About The Vicar’s Daughter, it is difficult finding a suitable means of introducing it simply because it reads, as I say, more like a diary than a story. MacDonald, however, considered it a strong effort. Perhaps his affection for the book had more to do with its dedication and portraiture of Lady Byron than its force as a work of fiction.

Nevertheless, I yet find it a worthy example of MacDonald’s continually expanding creativity that was eager to try new things. As a novelist, I realize the imperative to keep my writer’s brain fresh. I need and continually seek creative stimulation, new challenges that keep my interest on the cutting edge. If everything comes out exactly the same, book after book, the process becomes monotonous. Therefore, I set myself obstacles, explore new and different themes and places and historical eras, and experiment with writing in varying styles.

Like MacDonald, I often write in the first person and represent myself (as narrator) as both man and woman. These variations not only offer a literary challenge, each provides a distinctive viewpoint and stylistic advantages through which a different range of themes, emotions, and topics can be explored. Each also has limitations. This adds to the challenge. If you are telling a story in the first person, how do you narrate events that you, as storyteller, did not witness? How do you get inside a different character’s emotions?

The Vicar’s Daughter provides an example of one of MacDonald’s most interesting twists on the first person, autobiographical format, purporting to be written by Harry Walton’s daughter. As I have done in many books, MacDonald takes upon himself the woman’s voice. As Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood and The Seaboard Parish were both so clearly drawn from MacDonald’s own life, how much of MacDonald himself can we infer in this third volume?

My publishers constantly remind me that it is strictly taboo for an author to intrude into his narrative and speak directly to readers. However, MacDonald does so all the time. I envision him sitting at his writing table, occasionally setting down his pen in thought, then adding a brief personal reflection in the midst of the story—a personal note to me, the reader.

Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood and The Seaboard Parish were published within a year of each another, then four years went by before the appearance of The Vicar’s. Daughter. At the time of its writing, MacDonald’s daughters Lilia, Mary, and Caroline were twenty, nineteen, and eighteen respectively. Is it possible one of them contributed to the writing? Is the conversation with the mysterious Mr. S. taken from a real conversation when one of his daughters happened to be present?

One curious fact is that The Vicar’s Daughter was published in two different versions in the U.S. The most common edition from Routledge, as was the case with Annals and Seaboard, is a precise reproduction of the British edition, including British spellings and miniscule typographical anomalies. (This comparison is from much later editions, both probably published in the 1880s—Routledge’s U.S. edition and Sampson Low’s U.K. publication.) However, Roberts Publishers of Boston produced its first U.S. edition (and the first one-volume edition of the book years in advance of