Another Lord Dunsany Story Filmed

"The Pirate of the Round Pond" by Lord Dunsany is not a story I would ever have expected to have been filmed. It was collected in The Little Tales of Smethers and Other Stories (1952)--if there was a previous publication, it has not been discovered. Hugh Greene reprinted it as the title story in his anthology The Pirate of the Round Pond and Other Strange Adventure Stories (1977). It is the story of three young boys who make a model pirate ship and sink other model boats at the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens.

In 2000 the story was made into a short (33 minutes) children's film, retitled The Pirates of Central Park, and reset  in New York City. Names are changed, but the essential story is kept intact. And so is the voice--the original story is narrated by one of the boys, and much of Dunsany's words are retained. The film features a young Jesse McCartney before his teen boy singing career. 

Dunsany's story is rather an uncharacteristic tale by its author, but its adaptation to a film works fairly well.  I saw it on YouTube (link here).

A Dunsany Conundrum

My Wormwoodiana post of last month, on the centenary of Lord Dunsany's novel The King of Elfland's Daughter, elicited some interesting correspondence from various friends and Dunsany collectors.  First, I can confirm that the paragraph by Dunsany I quoted from the US dust-wrapper of The Blessing of Pan (1928), did in fact appear earlier on the flaps of the 1924 US dust-wrapper for The King of Elfland's Daughter. I do not know whether it is on the 1924 UK edition dust-wrapper (but I can say it is not in that edition of the book), so if anyone out there has this dust-wrapper, or has seen it, let me know. 

I was informed about another interesting text associated with The King of Elfland's Daughter. The 1976 French translation of the book, as La fille du roi des elfes, contains Lin Carter's introduction to the 1969 Ballantine Adult Fantasy edition, translated into French, and a short text headed "The Land of Men". It appears on the next page after Dunsany's usual single-paragraph Preface. These three paragraphs are in French, though I present them here in English: 

The Land of Men

At that time, man only had a vision of the world reduced to the distance he could cover on foot or on horseback. Most were content to stay in the regions they knew and listen to the stories of wandering travelers who brought back from their odysseys descriptions of strange places where even stranger events took place. Everything they said then seemed possible and probable because no one other than them had seen these things, and deep in their dazzled eyes could always be read the twinkling of the stars and wonder.

This is how everyone had heard about the Enchanted Kingdom. In fact, many had even seen its misty shores at the ends of the Earth, but no one ever dared to approach it too closely, because everyone also knew of the special powers that elves possess. Nevertheless, the brave bourgeois of the Aulnes valley were very eager to attract the benefits of this singular magic; so that they all rejoiced when Alveric, Prince of the Alders, ventured beyond the mists and brought with him the attractive daughter of the Elf King, Princess Lirazel.

These beginnings were auspicious. Because Lirazel was not a mortal being, Lirazel was a fairy. There was no malice in her, but she could not adapt to the narrow limits of human life. No supernatural creature, no elf can be fully satisfied. And especially in the Land of Men…

Does this text ring any bells with readers? The French edition gives no source or specified copyright of this text (it also gives no source or copyright credit for Lin Carter's introduction). I do not recognize it.  I has the feel that it might be by Dunsany, and I wonder if it might have appeared on the 1924 UK first edition dust-wrapper, or elsewhere, whether it is by Dunsany or not. 

Comments welcomed.

 

The King of Elfland's Daughter (1924) by Lord Dunsany

 The 1924 trade edition

When The King of Elfland’s Daughter was first published one hundred years ago, it was Dunsany’s second novel (of fourteen, eventually, including one published nearly fifty years after his death), following The Chronicles of Rodriguez (1922; titled Don Rodriguez in the US edition), which is an oddly structured book, for Dunsany, in writing his first novel, seemed to think that all he needed to do was write a bunch of chronicles about the same character until he had enough pages to call it a novel. Dunsany learned to do much better in his second novel, which is perhaps his best, and one which has been hailed a fantasy classic for many years.

It didn’t start with that reputation. Early reviewers didn’t know who should read it. The Saturday Review of Literature said:  “Children would be delighted by the book, but adults should find it a source of unique enjoyment” (11 October 1924).  While The Outlook warned: “The King of Elfland’s Daughter cannot be read to children; it is too grown up for them; and, despite its indubitable appealing poetic quality, it is likely to seem not quite grown up enough for most grownups” (29 October 1924).

 The 1924 limited edition

Other contemporary reviewers made interesting comments.  Forrest Reid, in The Nation and Atheneum, noted that the novel is: “Delicate, imaginative and persuasive. In the fantasy there is no hint of terror, the magic is a white magic, the enchanted light that touches both worlds is soft and benign” (5 July 1924). Edward Abbe Niles, the writer on jazz and the American promoter of the works of E.R. Eddison, found it: “A strange and beautiful book, wanting in the extremes of terror or of farce found respectively in "The Laughter of the Gods" and in part of "Don Rodriguez" but with all their sorcery; few primary colors here, but pastels, and the deep blue of the night sky” (The Independent, 20 December 1924).

The publisher, G.P. Putnam’s Sons, did an oversized edition, limited to 250 signed copies, with a frontispiece by S.H. Sime.  This came out in May 1924, while the UK trade edition (also containing Sime's frontispiece), from the same publisher, came out in June. The US edition, from the NY offices of G.P. Putnam’s Sons, came out in October. After which, the book drifted into obscurity.  It was not reissued until June 1969, an early title in the Ballantine Adult Fantasy series, with evocative cover art by Bob Pepper. This edition was successful, and was reprinted a number of times. Other Dunsany titles appeared in the Ballantine series, and Dunsany’s reputation as a master fantasist grew. 

One odd paratext by Dunsany about the novel is found not on its own dust-wrapper, but on the dust-wapper of the US edition (1928) of Dunsany’s fourth novel, The Blessing of Pan. The comment (quoted in a publisher's advertisement) does not appear on the UK dust-wrapper. It is the only hint Dunsany ever gave about his setting of the book “about a thousand years ago,” putting it firmly in this world in the past, rather than in a invented fantasy world.  The full comment appears below:

 THE KING OF ELFLAND'S DAUGHTER

Of this novel, Lord Dunsany writes:

"My Tale concerns some people living about a thousand years ago, in a perfectly ordinary village in a quite ordinary land, only not far from them, little more than one hard day's walk, lies the border of Elfland. Determining that their village and valley, which they love, should at last become well-known among other lands, they took too much interest in magic. Their traffic with Elfland brings their village that touch of mystery which they think will make it as famous as they had planned. It grows more and more magical and gets quite beyond their plans. And one day Elfland moves and passes over the village, leaving them to dream in the eternal calm of Elfland; but their village passes out of all human remembrance." 

 This tale was written, much of it, at Lord Dunsany's Castle in Ireland, the home of elves and leprechauns, and much of their quality has found its way into the pages of his book. The story is filled with all the gorgeous trappings of a super-fairy tale . . .  enchanted swords,and magic tunes, trolls and unicorns, kings and witches, a great hunter and a Princess.

Sidney Sime Exhibition

Sidney Sime is a notable figure in the field of fantastic art for his work illustrating the tales of Lord Dunsany. The two worked so well together that for one volume Sime did the art pieces first and Dunsany wrote the tales in response to them. Sime also illustrated Arthur Machen's The Hill of Dreams, and produced exuberant comical fantasies for such magazines as The Idler and Pick-Me-Up.

Many of Sidney Sime's artworks were bequeathed by his estate to a special Sime Gallery and Archive at the Memorial Hall in Worplesdon, Surrey, where he had lived, and here they have been available for some years for viewing by appointment. 

The local volunteers have been most courteous and helpful in welcoming visitors, but it would be fair to say that Worplesdon is somewhat out-of-the-way and fairly few enthusiasts and researchers have taken the opportunity to view this remarkable collection.

Now, however, some of the highlights have been made available to the Chris Beetles Gallery, Ryder Street, London, for a major exhibition of some 80 of Sime's works: 'Sidney Sime, Master of the Mysterious'. The gallery's website illustrates a generous selection of the works on display, which include both his fantastical scenes, in the Dunsany mode, and caricatures of local people.

The exhibition is on until 27 January.

(Thanks to the editors of Faunus for drawing this to my attention). 

(Mark Valentine)

Image: 'Beast in the Woods' by Sidney Sime.

On the Trail of an Early Lost Dunsany Publication

Lord Dunsany's first known publication was an eighteen-line poem, "Rhymes from a Suburb," which appeared in The Pall Mall Magazine for September 1897. It is signed "Edward Plunkett" because the title of "Lord Dunsany" did not pass on to him (Edward) until the death of his father in 1899. ("Rhymes from a Suburb" was republished as an attractive broadside by Pegana Press in 2009, for ordering information see here, and scroll down the page.) 

But recently I came across a new-to-me reference to what appears to be another very early publication. It comes in a letter from 1897 by Dunsany's uncle, Horace Plunkett (1854-1932), to Lady Betty Balfour. It reads:

See in the next Homestead, or September Pall Mall Magazine, p. 135, some lines by a nephew of mine, aetat 18. They are a happiness to me. If you knew the boy and his parents you would marvel at the product of his brain. He has a talent for chess and for upsetting things. He can draw a nightmare, but that he can write simple and rather musical English is a revelation which gladdens the avuncular heart. (quoted in Horace Plunkett: An Anglo-American Irishman (1949), by Margaret Digby, p. 152)

We don't have the exact date of the letter (beyond 1897), and young Edward Plunkett would have turned 19 on 24th of July 1897. Since Horace give the page number of the September Pall Mall Magazine, it was evidently already published (perhaps in August), and The Irish Homestead was a weekly newspaper founded in 1895 by Horace Plunkett (and edited by others). So, evidently the next issue after this letter was written was to have something in it by "Edward Plunkett." This would likely be circa August to October 1897. I don't have easy access presently to The Irish Homestead to look for it. Perhaps someone reading this does, and can look for whatever it is and share the result, which I'd be happy to post here. 

Laurence Housman's Early Fantasies

Along side of writing fairy-tales, Laurence Housman wrote more serious fantasies. I discussed his early fairy tales in a previous post. This makes for a companion post to the first.

Laurence Housman published three books which fit into the category of early fantasies, two short story collections, and one short novel.

The first collection was All Hallows: Seven Legends of Lower Redemption with Insets in Verse (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner and Co., [November] 1896).  It contains  seven tales, and a short preface which notes that is only a portion of a projected whole, and “it does not go more than half-way to the final realisation of its scheme, and remains so far the statement of an essentially incomplete phase of spiritual emotion.” It also contains several wood engravings by Clemence Housman, which make the book special and, in the modern sense, collectible.  Unlike Housman’s fairy tales, these stories are more mystical and often have hermits, priests or priors as characters.

Wood-Engraving by Clemence Housman

Housman sent a copy of this book to Oscar Wilde after his release from prison in the late spring of 1897. Wilde thanked him in a letter from that August, and singled out three tales as “quite beautiful”—noting that “their mysticism, as well as their meaning, touches me very deeply.” The three tales were “The King’s Evil,” “The Tree of Guile,” and “The Heart of the Sea.” Housman himself thought well-enough of “The King’s Evil” that he selected it as his best story in The Novel Magazine, June 1906, where he stated “I do not think it is an author’s business to publish criticisms of his own work, but as ‘The King’s Evil’ of all my stories is the one that I feel the greatest satisfaction at having written, I regard it as my best.” Even his brother A.E. Housman admired it, calling it “a good deal the best of this set.”

I found “The King’s Evil” to have some good aspects but it was in some ways inscrutable. The most interesting story for me in the volume was the final tale, “When Pan Was Dead,” which concerns a woodling (a tree-spirit) who sees that the nuns in a convent worship pain,  so the woodling gives them mandrake roots to make them happy. The nuns frolic for one eve, and return to the convent.  The disappointed woodling turns into a mandrake. I also especially liked “The Heart of the Sea,” which tells of an unlucky fisherman who hauls in a young babe, which is then raised by a priest to become a priest, but when the youth grows up, he goes back down into the sea to pray for the sea-dwellers. This story has some similarities with his sister Clemence’s novel, The Unknown Sea (1898).

The second collection, the completion of Housman’s scheme, appeared (without any inset verse, or illustrations) as The Cloak of Friendship (London: John Murray, 1905).  It contains a further seven tales. Overall the stories in this volume are more interesting than those in the first.  And “Damien, the Worshipper,” the longest story in the book, is among Housman’s best tales. It tells how Damien is forced to suffer for the sins of others.  A few other tales are intriguingly odd, one (“The House of Rimmon”) about Koshi, who reverts to his old worshipping of Rimmon, who answers Koshi’s prayers in visions, foretelling of the new god that will replace him. And in “Little Saint Michael” some peasants get an evil fire-stick, but the child Christopher does not feel its hurt, and instead sees an evil salamander.

The two books were combined (including Clemence’s engravings for All Fellows), with contents rearranged (possibly to distribute the illustrations more evenly through the volume) and one story added at the end, in All-Fellows and the Cloak of Friendship (London:  Jonathan Cape, [November] 1922). The new tale is “Inside-Out,” reprinted from The Century Magazine for August 1917. All fifteen stories are reprinted, in precisely the same order, in Housman’s late retrospective collection The Kind and the Foolish: Short Tales of Myth, Magic and Miracle (London: Jonathan Cape, 1952). 

The short novel, Gods and Their Makers (London: John Lane: The Bodley Head, [April]  1897), has child protagonists, but it is not a book for children. Peeti is a young tribal boy on some sort of tropical island (cocoa-palms and banyans are specifically mentioned).  His best friend is Aystah, who is followed around by her younger brother Daz. Peeti has devised his own god, Katchywallah, as Aystah has with her Hoosh (Peeti’s father’s god is named Glu-glu). The two children fall afoul with the priestly authorities, and are banished, put on a raft  and sent away, finding another island where old forgotten gods are sent. Daz is later banished similarly, with his god-devouring god, Champ-pum. It is an engaging story with some unconventional insight for its time.  For instance, Peeti comes to realize that “our gods are ouselves—the greedy parts of us, the lust, the cruelty, the love of evil!” And later he notes “Are we all devils that our gods have nothing but hatred and cruelty in their dwellings? Ah! It was our priests! They taught us to embody our first imagination of evil, our lust, our passion for cruelty, and to set that up, and all our lives long to worship it.”

Lord Dunsany’s The Gods of Pegana (1905) is often cited as the first story of invented gods, but Housman’s tale preceded it, having been written in 1889, and first published in 1897. One wonders if Dunsany might have read it, for the gods in his story “Chu-bu and Sheemish” seem cut from the same cloth, and Housman’s odd and slightly juvenile god-names seem to be echoed by Dunsany, even in Gods of Pegana. Interestingly, Dunsany sought out Sidney Sime as the illustrator for Gods of Pegana (and Sime did a brilliant job of it).  Sime had previously illustrated a proto-Dunsany-esque story by Laurence Housman, “The Mountains of the Moon,” in Pall Mall Magazine in May 1899.  Dunsany’s own first appearance in print was a poem “Rhymes from a Suburb” published in the very same magazine in September 1897, so Dunsany was certainly familiar with the magazine. These associations between Housman and Dunsany are tenuous, but they do feel significant. And a few other Housman tales have proto-Dunsanian feel. For instance, two tales from A Farm in Fairyland (1894), “The Green Bird” and “The Shadow-Weavers,” hint at being springboards for Dunsany’s respective later tales “The Bird of the Difficult Eye” and “How Plash-Goo Came to the Land of None’s Desire,” both collected in Tales of Wonder (1916). Tales by Housman and Dunsany appeared in the same issue of E. Nesbit's short-lived The Neolith for February 1908--Housman's tale being "Little Saint Oogh" and Dunsany's being "The Highwayman."

Each chapter of God and Their Makers is headed by a poem. When Housman reprinted the short novel, he moved all of the poetry to the end of the tale, noting that the poems have very little to do with the story, and “they are only reprinted here in order to deprive readers of nothing that they might legitimately expect in a re-issue.”  Housman also added four other interesting tales (read one of them here, a truly strange creation myth; one of the others is "Little Saint Oogh" mentioned above), retitling the book Gods and Their Makers and Other Stories (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1920).

Later on in his writing career, Housman published some further collections of fantastical stories, and I hope to cover them in the future.