"When I and my memory are gone and all my generation, who will remember these roads? I suppose it will not matter. They will lie sleeping, deep under tarmac, those old white roads, like the stratum of a lost era for which nobody cares. But who cares aught for the past? That pin-point of light called the Present, dancing through endless night, is all that any man cares for." -- from The Curse of the Wise Woman (p. 118)
Although he gets name-checked by all the right people (Howard, Machen, Lovecraft, et al), I always had a perception of Lord Dunsany's influential fantasies as a bit precious and self-conscious for my taste. Eventually, though, I knew I'd need to give him a fair shake, and when I learned that he'd written a 1933 historical novel railing against industrialization and the ravages of progress, I knew I'd found the winner. I do have a theme going, although to be fair, I didn't know how much that would be a part of The Ladies' Paradise when I started it.
With his father on the run from a politically-motivated death threat, the narrator, young Charles Peridore, has the run of an estate deep in the Irish countryside. This enables him to do what he most wants out of life, which is hunting. Now, there are few subjects I have less intrinsic interest in than hunting and shooting, and a large percent of this slim volume is spent describing the joys of the sport, with a lengthy fox hunt, and numerous expeditions after various wood fowl. But the narrator's almost mystical attitude toward the sport and the landscapes it takes place in are rendered with surprising, staggering beauty.
As in The Ladies' Paradise, set in a world that is different in almost every way, the destructive side of progress -- embodied in an industrial concern that plans to strip-mine the bog for peat, which all agree will "tear the very soul out of the bog" (145) -- appears inevitable. Here, though, the changes are openly mourned by many, and actively fought against by Mrs. Marlin, the elderly wise woman of the title, who has the reputation of a witch and considers herself the protector of the bog.
The men who are busy building roads and factories near her cottage in the wild behave with realistic modernity. One of the locals admits "She might curse their souls a bit ... but they'd think more of business" (117), and when questioned, the foreman lightly dismisses the idea that her mutterings might have any effect: "She's only enjoying herself. They know she means no harm by it" (158). Nonetheless, alone against "huts and machinery and so much Progress ... all the blight that there was in civilization," the wise woman may in fact be in touch with "a power ... that is hid in the heart of the bog, that is against all their plans" (104).
The whole novel, framed as the recollections of a much older man working in a foreign country, far from home, is colored with melancholy. Looking back on lost friends, and a youthful romance, both entwined with lore about Tir-na-Og, a mythic land of eternal youth and beauty, he vividly recalls "the belief which we both held firmly, that this radiant youth of ours would be with us always, and that the longings our hearts had then would never pass away. Time was then a grey spectre that other people had seen, like the phantom told in a ghost story before a pleasant fire, but not a power whose lightest finger had touched us, or of whom we had any fear" (74).
Along with those poignant subplots, there's a whole interesting thread about the events befalling the narrator's father, starting with the Christmas Eve assassination attempt that kicks off the story proper. The boy is matter-of-fact about hired killers turning up on his doorstep, and later lies readily to the police about his ability to identify them, accepting without angst that doing so would only lead to his own murder. Over time, he develops a bond with one of these men, who had once been willing to kill him, if necessary, but comes to be a sort of background guardian angel to him. This all comes across as uniquely realistic, that over time, loyalties can change, and people are complicated.
Now I'm hugely interested in reading more of Dunsany! I have to give kudos to Valancourt Books for their (as usual) beautiful paperback edition of this book, which has an introduction by my fellow Friend of Arthur Machen, Mark Valentine.
Dunsany, Edward J. M. D. P, and Mark Valentine. The Curse of the Wise Woman. Richmond (Va.): Valancourt Books, 2014.
Although he gets name-checked by all the right people (Howard, Machen, Lovecraft, et al), I always had a perception of Lord Dunsany's influential fantasies as a bit precious and self-conscious for my taste. Eventually, though, I knew I'd need to give him a fair shake, and when I learned that he'd written a 1933 historical novel railing against industrialization and the ravages of progress, I knew I'd found the winner. I do have a theme going, although to be fair, I didn't know how much that would be a part of The Ladies' Paradise when I started it.
With his father on the run from a politically-motivated death threat, the narrator, young Charles Peridore, has the run of an estate deep in the Irish countryside. This enables him to do what he most wants out of life, which is hunting. Now, there are few subjects I have less intrinsic interest in than hunting and shooting, and a large percent of this slim volume is spent describing the joys of the sport, with a lengthy fox hunt, and numerous expeditions after various wood fowl. But the narrator's almost mystical attitude toward the sport and the landscapes it takes place in are rendered with surprising, staggering beauty.
As in The Ladies' Paradise, set in a world that is different in almost every way, the destructive side of progress -- embodied in an industrial concern that plans to strip-mine the bog for peat, which all agree will "tear the very soul out of the bog" (145) -- appears inevitable. Here, though, the changes are openly mourned by many, and actively fought against by Mrs. Marlin, the elderly wise woman of the title, who has the reputation of a witch and considers herself the protector of the bog.
The men who are busy building roads and factories near her cottage in the wild behave with realistic modernity. One of the locals admits "She might curse their souls a bit ... but they'd think more of business" (117), and when questioned, the foreman lightly dismisses the idea that her mutterings might have any effect: "She's only enjoying herself. They know she means no harm by it" (158). Nonetheless, alone against "huts and machinery and so much Progress ... all the blight that there was in civilization," the wise woman may in fact be in touch with "a power ... that is hid in the heart of the bog, that is against all their plans" (104).
The whole novel, framed as the recollections of a much older man working in a foreign country, far from home, is colored with melancholy. Looking back on lost friends, and a youthful romance, both entwined with lore about Tir-na-Og, a mythic land of eternal youth and beauty, he vividly recalls "the belief which we both held firmly, that this radiant youth of ours would be with us always, and that the longings our hearts had then would never pass away. Time was then a grey spectre that other people had seen, like the phantom told in a ghost story before a pleasant fire, but not a power whose lightest finger had touched us, or of whom we had any fear" (74).
Along with those poignant subplots, there's a whole interesting thread about the events befalling the narrator's father, starting with the Christmas Eve assassination attempt that kicks off the story proper. The boy is matter-of-fact about hired killers turning up on his doorstep, and later lies readily to the police about his ability to identify them, accepting without angst that doing so would only lead to his own murder. Over time, he develops a bond with one of these men, who had once been willing to kill him, if necessary, but comes to be a sort of background guardian angel to him. This all comes across as uniquely realistic, that over time, loyalties can change, and people are complicated.
Now I'm hugely interested in reading more of Dunsany! I have to give kudos to Valancourt Books for their (as usual) beautiful paperback edition of this book, which has an introduction by my fellow Friend of Arthur Machen, Mark Valentine.
Dunsany, Edward J. M. D. P, and Mark Valentine. The Curse of the Wise Woman. Richmond (Va.): Valancourt Books, 2014.
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