There and Back

There and Back

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): 978-0-7953-5218-8

www.RosettaBooks.com

The Cullen Collection of the
Fiction of George MacDonald

1. Phantastes (1858)

2. David Elginbrod (1863)

3. The Portent (1864)

4. Adela Cathcart (1864)

5. Alec Forbes of Howglen (1865)

6. Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood (1867)

7. Robert Falconer (1868)

8. Guild Court (1868)

9. The Seaboard Parish (1868)

10. At the Back of the North Wind (1871)

11. Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood (1871)

12. The Princess and the Goblin (1872)

13. Wilfrid Cumbermede (1872)

14. The Vicar’s Daughter (1872)

15. Gutta Percha Willie (1873)

16. Malcolm (1875)

17. The Wise Woman (1875)

18. St. George and St. Michael (1876)

19. Thomas Wingfold Curate (1876)

20. The Marquis of Lossie (1877)

21. Paul Faber Surgeon (1879)

22. Sir Gibbie (1879)

23. Mary Marston (1881)

24. Castle Warlock (1881)

25. The Princess and Curdie (1882)

26. Weighed and Wanting (1882)

27. Donal Grant (1883)

28. What’s Mine’s Mine (1886)

29. Home Again (1887)

30. The Elect Lady (1888)

31. A Rough Shaking (1890)

32. There and Back (1891)

33. The Flight of the Shadow (1891)

34. Heather and Snow (1893)

35. Lilith (1895)

36. Salted With Fire (1897)

37. Far Above Rubies (1898)

The introductions to the 37 volumes form a continuous picture of George MacDonald’s literary life, viewed through the prism of the development of his written legacy of works. While each book can of course be read on its own, every introduction picks up where that to the previous volume left off, with special attention to the title under consideration. The introductions together, as a biography of MacDonald’s life as a writer, are compiled in Volume 38.

38. George MacDonald A Writer’s Life

The Cullen Collection

of the Fiction of George MacDonald

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

CONTENTS

Foreword to The Cullen Collection

Introduction to There and Back

1. Bookbinder and Son

2. Brother and Sister

3. Simon Armour

4. A Lost Shoe

5. The Library

6. Alice

7. Mortgrange

8. Barbara Wylder

9. Mrs. Wylder

10. Barbara and Her Critics

11. The Parson’s Parable

12. The Rime of the Ancient Mariner

13. The Beginning

14. Wingfold

15. Far From Home

16. A Sister

17. Barbara and Lady Ann

18. Alice and Barbara

19. Barbara Thinks

20. Wingfold and Barbara

21. The Shoeing of Miss Brown

22. Vixen

23. Barbara’s Duty

24. The Parson’s Counsel

25. Lady Ann

26. Dismissal

27. The Wylders

28. London

29. Nature

30. A Drunken Disclosure

31. To Be Redeemed, One Must Redeem

32. A Door Opened in Heaven

33. Doors Opened on Earth

34. Death the Deliverer

35. The Cave in the Fire

36. Duck Fists

37. Baronet and Blacksmith

38. Revelation

39. The Bookbinder’s Heritage

40. Stepmother

41. Flight

42. Gone

43. Uncle-Father and Aunt-Mother

44. A Meeting

45. Wylder Hall

46. Miss Brown

47. Wingfold and Barbara

48. The Will

49. The Heir

50. Wingfold and Arthur Manson

51. Richard and His Family

52. Heart-to-Heart

53. The Quarrel

54. Baronet and Blacksmith

55. The Funeral

56. The Packet

57. Barbara’s Dream

“Papa seems so quietly happy.”

—Louisa MacDonald, May 4, 1872, from Deskford (near Cullen)

“Papa does enjoy this place so much.”

—Louisa MacDonald, May 6, 1872 from the Seafield Arms Hotel, Cullen

“Papa oh! so jolly & bright & happy. . .Papa was taken for Lord Seafield yesterday.”

—Louisa MacDonald, Sept. 2, 1873, from Cullen

“Papa is very poorly. He ought to go to Cullen for a week I think.”

—Louisa MacDonald, October 5, 1873, from London

FOREWORD

The Cullen Collection

of the Fiction of George MacDonald

The series name for these works of Scotsman George MacDonald (1824-1905) has its origins in the 1830s when the boy MacDonald formed what would be a lifelong affection for the northeast Scottish village of Cullen.

The ocean became young George’s delight. At the age of eleven, writing from Portsoy or Cullen, he announced to his father his intention to go to sea as a sailor—in his words, “as soon as possible.” The broad white beach of Cullen Bay, the Seatown, the grounds of Cullen House, the temple of Psyche (“Temple of the Winds”), Cullen Burn, the dwellings along Grant Street, Scarnose, and especially Findlater Castle, all seized the youth’s imagination with a love that never left him. MacDonald continued to visit Huntly and Cullen throughout his life, using his childhood love for his homeland as the backdrop for his richest novels, including what is arguably his greatest work of fiction, Malcolm, published in 1875.

We therefore honor MacDonald’s unique relationship to Cullen with these newly updated editions of his novels. In Cullen, in certain respects more than in any other place, one finds the transcendent spirit of George MacDonald’s life and the ongoing legacy of his work still magically alive after a century and a half. This release of The Cullen Collection of the Fiction of George MacDonald coincides with a memorial bench and plaque established on Cullen’s Castle Hill commemorating MacDonald’s visits to the region.

To those readers familiar with my previous editions of MacDonald’s novels, I should make clear that eighteen of the volumes in this new series (including this one) are updated and expanded titles from the Bethany House series of the 1980s. Limitations of length dictated much about how those previous volumes were produced. To interest a publisher in the project during those years when MacDonald was a virtual unknown in the publishing world, certain sacrifices had to be made. Cuts to length had to be more severe than I would have preferred. Practicality drove the effort. Imperfect as they were in some respects, I am enormously grateful for those editions. They helped inaugurate a worldwide renaissance of interest in MacDonald. They were wonderful door-openers for many thousands into MacDonald’s world.

Hopefully this new and more comprehensive set of MacDonald’s fiction will take up where they left off. Not constrained by the limitations that dictated production of the former volumes, these new editions, though identical at many points, have been expanded—sometimes significantly. In that sense they reflect MacDonald’s originals somewhat more closely, while still preserving the flavor, pace, and readability of their predecessors. Nineteen additional titles have been added. The thirteen realistic novels among these have been updated according to the same priorities that guided the earlier Bethany House series. That process will be explained in more detail in the introductions to the books of the series. The final six, which would more accurately be termed “fantasy,” have not been edited in any way. They are faithful reproductions of the originals exactly as they were first published. These six—Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin, The Wise Woman, The Princess and Curdie, and Lilith—are so well known and have been published literally in hundreds of editions through the years, that it has seemed best to reproduce them for The Cullen Collection with the same texts by which they are generally known.*

Dedicated followers of all great men and women continually seek hints that reveal their inner being—the true man, the true woman. What were they really like? What made him or her tick? Many biographies and studies attempt to answer such questions. In George MacDonald’s case, however, a panorama of windows exists that reveals far more about his person than the sum-total of everything that has been written about him over the years. Those are the novels that encompass his life’s work. The volumes of this series represent the true spiritual biography of the man, a far more important biography than life’s details can ever tell.

In 1911, six years after his father’s death, George MacDonald’s son Ronald wrote of the man with whom he had spent his life:

“The ideals of his didactic novels were the motive of his own life. . .a life of literal, and, which is more, imaginative consistency with his doctrine. . .There has probably never been a writer whose work was a better expression of his personal character. This I am not engaged to prove; but I very positively assert. . .that in his novels. . .and allegories. . .one encounters. . .the same rich imagination, the same generous lover of God and man, the same consistent practiser of his own preaching, the same tender charity to the sinner with the same uncompromising hostility to the sin, which were known in daily use and by his own people counted upon more surely than sunshine.” *

Thirty years after the publication of my one-volume biography George MacDonald Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller, it now gives me great pleasure to present this thirty-seven-volume “biography” of the man, the Scotsman, the prophetic spiritual voice who is George MacDonald. *

How fitting is the original title in which Ronald MacDonald’s sketch of his father quoted above first appeared, From A Northern Window. For any attempted portrait of the man George MacDonald becomes at once a window into his homeland as well.

Therefore, I invite you to gaze back in time through the “northern windows” of these volumes. Picture yourself perhaps near the cheerful hearth described in the opening pages of What’s Mine’s Mine, looking out the window to the cold seas and mountains in the distance, where perhaps you get a fleeting glimpse of highlanders Ian and Alister Macruadh.

Or imagine yourself walking up Duke Street in Huntly from MacDonald’s birth home, following in the footsteps of fictional Robert Falconer to the town square.

Or envision yourself on some windswept highland moor with Gibbie or Cosmo Warlock.

Or walk up the circular staircase of Fyvie Castle to Donal Grant’s tiny tower hideaway where he began to unravel the mysteries of that ancient and spooky place.

Or walk from Cullen’s Seatown alongside Malcolm selling the fish in his creel, turning at the Market Cross into Grant Street and continuing past Miss Horn’s house and up the hill to the entrance of the Cullen House grounds.

Or perhaps climb Castle Hill to the George MacDonald memorial bench and gaze across the sweep of Cullen Bay to Scarnose as Malcolm’s story comes to life before your eyes.

From any of these settings, whether real or imaginary, drift back through the years and gaze through the panoramic windows of these stories, and take in with pleasure the drama, relationships, images, characters, settings, and spiritual truths George MacDonald offers us as we are drawn into his world.

Michael Phillips

Cullen, Morayshire

Scotland, 2017

INTRODUCTION

Everything Depends on the God You Believe In

In There and Back we meet for a third time one of George MacDonald’s most memorable characters—the former curate of the book bearing his own name, now rector of a new parish. Though one of MacDonald’s seasoned literary veterans, in this case Thomas Wingfold steps aside to occupy a supporting role. Indeed, it is some time before he appears on stage. Once he does, however, he becomes the spiritual soul and anchor of the unfolding drama.

There and Back and A Rough Shaking were probably written, if not simultaneously certainly in close proximity. Dates of publication tell only part of the story and depend on many factors, particularly MacDonald’s contractual arrangements with magazine and book publishers and their scheduling priorities. *

What we know for certain is that the two books were serialized in two different magazines from the fall of 1889 through the fall of 1890, There and Back running but one month ahead. Their book publications, however, were reversed, A Rough Shaking released by Blackie in December of 1890 or January of 1891, with There and Back following from Kegan Paul in April. All we can say for certain is that the timing of these two titles are closely intertwined and that they were the last two books written as the decade of the 1880s drew to a close.

The new decade opened with MacDonald turning his attention to “a new fantasy” he felt stirring within him, though he confessed doubts that he would be able to write it. In March of 1890 he began a preliminary draft of this “new fantasy” which he would later entitle: Anacosm,^† A Tale of the Seventh Dimension. It would, of course, evolve five years later after many more drafts, into Lilith. But this is getting ahead of the story.

Though Wingfold himself plays but a supporting (though important) role in the story, There and Back is the final installment of the Thomas Wingfold trilogy. A dozen years have now passed since the completion of the second volume, Paul Faber Surgeon. It is obvious, however, that the character of Thomas Wingfold still exercised a hold on the mind of his creator, much as had Robert Falconer earlier in his career. It took Falconer ten years to get into print from brain-child to finished book. Now Wingfold has been waiting in the wings twelve years to make his final appearance. MacDonald brings him back in another burst of creative energy that produced one final long, massive novel replete with many of George MacDonald’s signature tunes. During the previous few years, MacDonald’s books had been shrinking dramatically. Yet even as he was struggling to get underway with Lilith, suddenly here came another monster book—the ninth longest, in fact, in his entire corpus of over fifty titles.

Wingfold ages exactly at the same rate as his creator. In the story, consistent with MacDonald’s own life, exactly twelve years have passed. Thomas Wingfold (now approximately forty) and Helen (thirty-seven) and their young son have relocated to a country parish some thirty or forty miles outside London.

The theme again, as in the two previous Wingfold books, is belief. Is the Christian story true? Does God exist? If so, what kind of God is he, and what is to be our response to him?

Two new characters, Barbara Wylder (one of MacDonald’s wonderfully memorable young women—strong, energetic, feisty, determined, outspoken, hungry, fearless, and full of a heart of compassion) and Richard Tuke (a good, honest, hard-working sincere agnostic), now follow in the questioning footsteps of Paul Faber, asking what belief means, and, on a more profound level, where truth is to be found.

The people and surroundings have changed, but the essential themes have not. This third book in the trilogy concludes MacDonald’s multifaceted examination of the fundamental themes of man’s need for God, and the validity of the Christian faith.

Wingfold presses a little harder in this case than he did with Faber, forcing the imperative question, not merely whether one believes in God, but what manner of God forms the object of that belief. He makes the bold assertion that it is better to be an honest, open-minded atheist than a so-called Christian who believes in a false god.

Thomas Wingfold Curate laid the groundwork for spiritual birth, with the awakening of Wingfold himself after a long struggle to come to grips with the truthfulness of Christianity. MacDonald even uses the term “born again” in Wingfold’s case, a rarity for MacDonald who zealously avoided terms that could be associated with traditional or “evangelical” jargon. Yet he recognized the imperative of the principle involved—that there is a new birth, a new outlook, a “salvation” that must come. Paul Faber Surgeon followed as the natural outgrowth of the curate’s new faith—the spread of that faith into the lives of those around him. Now in There and Back, another conundrum is raised: The question of moral goodness.