THE STORY OF THE GLITTERING

PLAIN &

CHILD CHRISTOPHER

Wllliam Morris

WITH A NEW I NTRODUCTION BY

NORMAN TALBOT

THOEMMES PRESS

INTRODUCTION

1, THE WO RLD O F MO RR IS RO MANC E

In the last decade of hi s li fe, WiIl iam i" lor ris bcC31l1 t' onc of the most innova tive wri te rs of prose fiction in English. Quire apart fro m hi s superh work in many fields of des ig n , a rr s, c rafts a nd t he ir assoc iated techno log ies, hi s q ua si-prophetic role as a p io ll('cr ecologist and conservat io nist, and his lead ing place in Western Eu ropean socia list tho ught and anion. he had been onc of the fo remost English pocts (and a leading rra nsla ror ) fo r thirt y )'ea rs. Now, sud denly, he embraced - o r rather invented - two new, inrerlinked ca reers, as rhe printer and designer of beautiful books, and as a writer o f fantastic romance.

h is this last , least ho no ured of hi s many fields of ac hievement wh ich has been and conri nues to be the most unexpected ly innuenti al upon the imaginative life of English-speaking peoples . His A Dream of ]alm Ball and News from Nowhere esta bli shed se lf-consis tent time-travel nnd rime-constrn int conve ntio ns. M an )' hundreds of rime travel fa ntnsies have since employed them, but they also begat a di stinct line of fantasy through their innuence on the you ng H. G. Wel ls, who allied to th ei r hi slor ica l and socio logical speculat ion and ~lOal ys i s the rherorics of scientific techno logy that Morris had ca refull y avoided . Science fiC[ iona l utopian and dystopian fan tasies, as we ll as the d irect line o f

VIII Introduction

arcadian fantasy (always shot through with cultural ironies), stem from Morris's work as genu inely as from Bellamy's Looking Backward.

His first romances employed temporally recognizable settings. The narrator of News from Nowhere travels into the future and that of A Dream of John Ball to the fourteenth century. The House of the Wo/fings is set in the resistance to Roman invasion of Northern Europe, and The Roots of the Mountains similarly ce lebrates resistance, a few centuries later, to Hunnish westward expansions into Alpine Europe. Both are emphatically pre-Christian. All the range of 'historica l fantasy' is indebted to Morris because, unlike Dumas, Se on, Reade and Bulwer-Lyrron, he did not impose nineteenth-century standards of conduct and ideals of morality upon his source-period. Jeffries' post-disaster romance of restored feudalism, After London, directly influenced Morris, but his major inspiration came from three sources outside the novelistic traditions.

The first was the 'Bibles', traditional compendia of stories - especially myth and folk-tale - from many peoples and periods, created, adapted and preserved by communities rather than individuals, such as he listed with enthusiasm when the Pall Mall Gazetti asked him for a catalogue of literature that had influenced him. Among these he li sted Homer and the Beowul( poet, whom he had translated. The second was a wide range of sagas and saga-like histories, including those of Froissart which he had used so shrewdly in his early poetry and in A Dream ofJohn Ball, 'admirable pieces of story-telling' that need not be expected to be

,\ February 1886, kner 1242 in Collected Leflers, ed. Norman Kelvin, vol. 2 (New York: PrinCC:lon, 1987), pp. 546-7.

Illtroduction IX

o bjective. The third was nineteenth-century, more or less radical, analys is of history, economics, sociology and culture sllch as G rimm's Telltollic Mythology, Morga n's Ancient Society, Marx's Capital , Engels' Origins of the Family, Private Property and the State: Morris was a 'scienti fic socia li st', after a ll.

The atempora l shon ro mances, The Story of the Glittering Plain and Th e Wood Beyond the World, begin in naturalistic and hisrorically credi ble worlds akin respectivel y to Angl ian tribal serrlemenrs in the North Atlanti c, a nd mercantile ci t y states like prec ursors o f the Hanseatic League. In bo th , the protagon ist is 'called' by a decept ive version of erot ic quest to leave his society and enter a magical orher-world. He sails from medieval normality into, as it were, a medieval romance.

Child Chris topher and Gofdilind the Fair takes place enti rely in a non-magical world , bur the tiny kingdoms, thickly fores ted and th inly popu la ted by peasants and foresters (dominated by noblcs who muster armies and ha ve ready recourse to violence, and a fallib le, uncon-tested Christian church), might be those of central Europe in the tenth century, perhaps German States on wh ich no Holy Roman Empi re had ever fallen . The twO large romances, The Well at the \Vor/ds Elld and The Water of the Woudrotls Isles, arc much freer va ria -tions on this Europe tha t never was.

Magic, such as was unquest ionably believed in , fo r narrative purposes at leas t , by most Med ia eval European srorytell ers, occurs in all the romances except the twO time travel sto ries and Child Christopher, and obviously differenciates their world from a historical medieval Europe. However, it is nor co mm o n: churchmen, burgesses, scept ics and stay-a t-homes

x Introduction

doubr, or claim ro doubr, its existence, and, when forced to recognize it, are likely to interpret it as an instrument of the devil, called into the human world by witchcraft. Nonetheless, it has objective existence, independent of anyone's belief in it. It can in a moment change the lives of wanderers among the wild woods and wastes, vast lakes and mountain ranges of the romance landscape, usually very much for the better -and it is these wanderers with whom the reader identifies.

On the other hand, God, Heaven and the angels, like the devil, Hell and all other aspects of reward and punishment after death, although believed in by some characters, are the products of faith rather than its objects. Such forces can never impinge directly on human life. Death does not take people to heaven or hell, purgatory or limbo, any more than a happy ending allows them to ' li ve happi ly ever after'.

Magic itself is in and of the world, essentially natural, and those who work to understand a little about it can channel it in practical ways. There are a few places, legendary and well-nigh inaccessible, that are full of mana, created and sustained by magic, or creating and offering it, or both. Such places are the eponymous Wood, Plain and Well in three romances (though the latter is balanced by an opposing Dry Tree). In the Wondrous Isles magic is dreadfu ll y misused: two wicked sisters have trapped it in three magical objects, The Sending Boat, The Wonder-Coffer and the Water of Might, the better to exploit it. Their activities are opposed by the benevolent natural magic of the misnamed Evilshaw.

Philip Henderson's biography is representative of the generation that avoided and therefore misdescribed Morris's romances:

Introduction XI

Morris, who peopled his late romances with ideali sed young girls, and whose Story of the Glittering Plain is a land of ete rnal youth spent in the delights of free , love ... .

Henderson cites Plain here, but the three handsome young women who briefl y appear in the romance do not fit his desc ription. The Hos tage is the hero's fiancee, kidnapped as the book starts, to cause hi s journey - which is the book's story. She appears onl y at the book's end, where she is allotted just seven speeches; she seems admirably courageous and sensible, bu t hardly ideal. Her opposite, the unnamed Princess of the Glittering Plain, whose infatuation with a picture of the hero is the cause o f the kidnapping, does not appear; Hallblithe describes and quotes her, and late r sees her in a dream. The thi rd is a pretty gi rl who becomes the Sea·eagle's mistress on first meeting; she represents the lov ing and beautiful people of the Plain in her we ll - inrenti o ned affec ti o n a nd h e lp less anonymity: she does not even rate a label-name such as 'Hostage'. and has clearly forgon en her own story and kindred.

However, women are at the centre of seven of the romances. It is usua ll y women, good or evi l lore-mistresses, that employ and understand magic (except th e locative vari eti es) . Human -ta-human magic involves changes in perception; the casting of illusions or invisibility, or the projection of influence by sights, prophecies, messages and dreams (many of which are significantly inaccurate in their detai l). Perceptio n-magic in Morris's worlds is very much like that of the

Williarn Morris. His Lif~. Work and Fri~nds (N~w York: McGraw-HiII , 1967), p. 143. H~ was ammpring ro use rhe book as evidcllCc as to wherher Morris wu in love wirh Georgiana Burne-Joncs ....

XII Introduction

Norse Sagas: for example, the devices of Katla to protect her son Odd in the Eyrbyggia Saga cause his enemies to mistake him for a distaff, a he-goar, and a boar-pig. It rakes the perception-powers of Gei rrid, another wise-woman, ro detect him, litera ll y seeing through the illusions.

Minor natural magic relates to potions, healing herbs, sleeping draughts, small occult rituals, and the passing down of non-rational lore. In a more ambiguous category are luck, fare, coincidence and foresight, all of which can be stimulated by the beauty and physical prowess of heroes, of either sex. Such things are undoubtedly ' natural ': we still talk of beauty as 'charm', 'charms' or 'glamour'.

There are real differences between the time-contextable fantasies and the ahistor ical, magical romances, but the sertings of The Story of the Glittering Plain bridge the categories. All ten works correspond in general to Rosemary Jackson's Marxist and Freudian definition of fantasy:

... a literature of desire, which seeks that which is ex peri enced as absence and loss .... In this way fantastic literature points to or suggests the basis upon which cultural order rests, for it opens up, for a brief moment, on to disorder, on to illegality, on to that which lies outside the law, that which is outside dominant value systems. The fantastic traces the unsaid, and the unseen of culture: that which has been si lenced, made invisible, covered over and made absent.s

j Rosemary Jackson, Fa"tasy: the Literature of Subversio" (London: M(thu(n, 1981), pp. 3-4.

lutroduction XIII

It is deeply regrerrable that, with this most :lpposi rc of starting poims, J;lCksoll ha s read a lmost no Morri s.

6

Worse, she na ively accepts Srephcn Prick err's gro uping of Morri s's work with severa l diss im1i ar falltasles / largely Christian, quoting,

''' the high fantasy" of Cl world too rich and complex to be contained by the convenllons of Victo ria n naruralism.' Yet this metap hor of height betrays thc c riti c 's transcendentalism. Twentieth ce ntur y romancers and crit ics have sustained these Victorian fa nrasisrs' repressive creations. (po 153)

Transcendenrali st the critic may be, but that does nor make the author so! The accusing 'repressive' leads to even worse misrepresentation:

Behind the 'h igh' bntasy of Kingsley, Macdonald , Morri s, Tol kien, Lewis, etc., the re is

XIV I1ltroduction

Obviously, Rosemary Jackson's credulousness about Prickett's term has equated the epithet ' high' with so meth ing like ' H igh Church'. Morris's radical fa ntasies, all written well after his embrace of socialism a nd largely designed for a futu re socia li st audience, have nothing in common with the 'avoidance' she identifies in this kind of fanrasy.

First, the heightened language of 'both narration and d ialogue, and the opaci ty of the tale· telling convention, d istance the stories from the 'slice-of-life' restric tions of novels by Morris's more natura li stic contemporaries. T he romances positively invi te hea rers and readers to rel ish the beauty, the luck and the relative ly ethical choices of the passionate young lovers w ho are the protagon ists, and consequently to develop expecta tions of a happy ending (though always at some cost). Since Hallblirhe cou ld only be ' bl ithe' in his own hall, wedded to his own berrorhed, we feel sure even rhe immortal king of the Glittering Plain wi ll fail to frustrate his love-quest.

Second, no transcendental or spiritual compensation is offered for the frustrations, sorrows and brevity of fleshl y, morta l life. Monkish or eremitical lives are a dreadfully impoveri shed response to hopeless love or physical inadequacy. Magic is rea l, palpable and often efficacious, but miracles and Heaven are impalpable asse rtions, even sentimenta l fic tions: real pu rposes are in th is world, not any posited next. .

Third , women are largely disqua li fied from the successful use of violence, whether in open combat or in the ownership of the means of production, exchange and d istribution of goods, a nd therefore often despised, . underestimated or themselves converted inro goods or objects by the worst and least perceptive of males. On

l"troductio" xv

the other hand, women can be magical, have quite as much cou rage, discernment, passio n a nd ethical vigour as males, and €slla ll y see thro ugh the se lf-deceptive facades of the socia l system more clearly than males. There are wise o ld men and perceptive lads, but far mo re wise o ld women and clear-headed maids.

Appendix A d isc usses in detail the ways in which Child Christopher and Gold;t;l1d the Fair alters the fahula of Havelok the Dane, a poem torall y committed [Q the di vine right of mo narchs and the sacredness of the royal body, into a tale acceptable to repub lican socialists. l oyal Victorians argued tha t people born to kingship are preferab le in the job to those who stri ve for it, but on the few occasions when he to lerates a si ngle ruler or a royal fami ly as positive elemen ts in his romances, Morris converts this weak compromise to a narrative logic in which bad rule rs, whether stri ve rs or ' ri ghtful rulers', stOOp to anxious a nd unprincipled plot[ing, employing more or less desp icable instru-ments. And always the subject is the judge of the ruler, never the reverse.

Christopher and Gold ilind incorporate fo lkta le prior-ities in their duties: though leadership and a lliance are important, their mutual love over rides both. It is this love wit~ ra tifies them, showing they ca n be trusted with their inheritance, and in the crucial bedchamber scene (chapter XXX IV, pp. 246-7) they doff the clothes that make them royal and enter the higher estate o f lovers, new Adam a nd new Eve, equal as they were 'upon the dewy grass of Li trleda le'. JU St as in the folktale tradition, the lovers' faith and generos ity in love is the measure of how they ra te as mo na rchs. Their rule is both fec und an d conduc ive to good -fellowship.

XVI Introduction

On rhe other hand, The Story of the Glittering Plai" offers a paradise kingdom with a magically splendid king, so wise, compassionate and non-violent, so benev-olent, powerful and beloved, that any arrempt to overthrow him would be stupid and certain to fail. Yet the hero has a genuine case against king and paradise, escapes both, and alienates from them the Plain 's major defensive unit, rhe tribe called the Ravagers. The success of Hallblirhe's defiance is assured when the Ravagers' wisest counsellor argues that they should support him specifically because,

ye shall not forget that he is the rebel of rhe Undying King, who is our lord and master; therefore in cherishing him we show ourselves great-hearted, in that we fear nOt the wrath of our master. (pp. 3 11-2)

This ever-smiling king's immortality and inhuman, unearthly beaury are those of a lord of the Sidhe, an elven-king, coldly detached even as he exercises his benevolence upon subjects who dare nor even say his name, though they believe 'there is nought but good in him and mightiness'. Compare these descriptions o f the first sight of a ruler:

His face shone like a star; it was exceeding beauteous, and as kind as the even of May in the gardens of the happy, when the scent of eglantine fills all the air. When he spoke his voice was so sweet that all hearts were ravished, and none might gainsay him. (p.260)

His hair was dark as the shadows of twilight, and upon it was set a circlet of silver; his eyes were grey as a clear evening, and in them was a light like the light of stars. 8

• Tho: fim i$ rhe King of rhe Glifle-ring Plain, rhe- SC"cond rhe- el"e-n·lord Elrond in The- /'o,d of ,ht Rmgs (Tilt Ftllowship of tht R"'8, p. 2391.

Introduction XVII

When crossed, the king is far colder than the lovely stone images of him:

the King was angry, tho' he smiled upon him; yer so coldly, rhat the face of him froze the very marrow of HalJblithe's bones .... (p. 269)

Bur since his previous benevolent promises had been mere equivocation, Hallblithe is perfectly entitled ro consider him 'this King of lies'. A paradise that confines soon becomes a prison, a nd a paradise ruled by an unassailable king is the most confining of all. The fact that it is so privileged in its peace enables most of its people to forget thar irs interests a re defended by destroyers and enslavers of the innocent like the Ravagers of the Isle of Ransom. In this (though admit-tedly not in much else) it resembles the lives of upper-class England in the British Empire of Morris's day.

This monarchy, though by no means despicable, is deeply equivocal, unlike Oakenrealm and Meadham in Child Christopher. Many are worse: in House the Emperors of Rome live in an abomination of a city and send out insane military machines. The Queen of the Wondrous Isles is an absolute monarch no better than robber baron s like the Red Knight (in Water) and Gandolf of Urrerbol (in Well); all use their power to expand their own cruelty and twisted appetites. The Lady who rules The Wood Beyond the World identifies herself with sadism, as personified by her Dwarf, and is imitated by the king's Son she is tiring of: her physical beauty and her pastoral amour with the hero should not mislead us!

The latter is darker and less glowing. since his world is an island rt'sist ing a flood of evil, and his pcoplc's days on Middle·carth arc numbered, but they have similar elven beauty.

XVIII J"troduction

Morris saw nothing to recommend contemporary monarchy. There can be no doubt of his dislike for 'the Empress Brown', Victoria, in whose reign his whole life was passed. He described the Queen's Jubi lee as a parade of 'vulgar Roya l Upholstery' , and reflected indignantly on

th e hund reds and thousands of slaves and slave holders who turned out into the streets to witness the sy mbo lic p'rocession of the triumph of Official Dishonesty.9

His eloquent Jubilee year comparison between tradi-tiona l kings and queens and modern 'constitutional mona rchy' consti tutes Appendix B.

Morris wou ld not have been surpri sed at the official preservation of the monarchy a century after hi s death, or at its convers ion into a more or less cynically presented entertainment fo r the popu lar media. He would recognize the amalgamation of the Privi lege of Capital with the Privilege of Public Relations (incorpo-rating advertising, orchestrated public debate, and play-news, 'infota inment').

In Child Christopher the setting is medieval, as the term is loosely applied to this century's sword-and-sorcery fiction . Most of Morris's descendants employ a mona rchic social structure, as here, with protagonists at the highest level of power and responsibility, so their constraints and actions always make an externa l, narrative diffe rence, or at least readers expect they wi ll. Protagonists who are young lovers may play either an ironic pa rt (Love corrupted ) or a tragic part (Love ratified as sacrifice) in the contest between patterns of power, but far more common in the medieval setting is

, Cornrnonwt'al, vol. 4, no. 104 (7 January 1888), p. 4.

Introduction XIX

the high romance or romamic comedy role, in which the lovers heroically survive both internal and ex ternal tests and ordea ls, and their 'happy ending' represents the renewa l of the whole society. Thi s renewed society may resemble either an id yll ic (Ga rden of Eden) or a commu nal (New Jerusa lem) structure, and Morris always prefers the la tter.

Chi ld Christopher seems to have been accorded his ki ngship by nature and by his fe ll ows:

whiles folk in merry mockery ca ll me Christopher King; meseems because I am of the least aCCO llnt of all caries. As for what else I am, a woodman I am, an outlaw, and the friend of them ... though needs must they dwel l aloollrom kings' courts and baro ns' ha ll s. (p. 179)

Just as the lowly birth of Jesus inspi red many of the rebels in, for exa mp le, the Peasa nts' Revolt , so the imegrity of the bl ameless outcast 'Christopher King' and his woWs-head Iriend s ra tifies his kingship in quality long befo re he becomes the procla imed king 01 Oakenrea lm. At a deeper leve l, however, it is the Wood woman of Oakenrealm, tutelary goddess of forest and country, that appears in a drea m to tempt Marshal Ro ll's unprovoked a ttempt to have C hri sto ph er murdered, which is why he is a wood man, a 'sack less' outlaw, and out in the wi ldwood to meet the queen he will ma rry!

But Morris makes clear on the penultimate page of th ~, his only even vaguely monarch-friendly romance, what social structure could be specifica lly celebrated as superior to monarchy. Gold ilind has been implored to return to Meadham as queen, and reconciled with Earl Geoffrey:

xx Introduction

But a seven days hence was the AlImen's Mote gathered [0 the woodside without Meadhamstead, and thronged it was: and there GoldJind stood up before all the fo lk and named Sir Geoffrey for Earl to rule the land under her, and none gainsaid it, for they all knew him meet thereto. (p. 261)

Such a popular Mote, held out of doors and in full view of all the people, has been cunningly led up ro during the srory, in stages that derive from aspects o f 'Ancient' and 'Feudal' socie ty as Morris and E. Belfort Sax had outlined them. lO In primitive culrures,

the unit of society was the Gens, a group of blood-reiarions at peace among themselves, but which group was hosr iie (0 al l other groups; within the Gens wealth was common to a ll its members, withour it wealth was prize of war.

Within this clan sys tem, warrior leadersh ip was of especia l va lue , a nd henc e arose ch ieftains hip . Correspondingly, the first proclamation of Christopher as king of Oakenrealm takes place (chapter XXVI) in the ex tended family or gens of which Jack of the Tofrs is paterfamilias.

Though Morris and Sax do not emphasize the role of motherhood and the hearth , these too must have been prioritized in such a structure. Leadership and terri-tori al acquisition encouraged the Gens to mutate into the Tribe:

this was a larger and more artificial group, in which blood relationships were conventionally assumed. In it, however, there was by no means mere individual

10 Morris and Sax, Socialism: its Growth and Outcomt (London: Swan Sonn(nS(hcin. 1893), early ehapters; first published in seria l form in Commomul'oi, May 1886-May 1888, under the title 'Socialism from the Root Up'.

IntrodllctioN XXI

ownership . . . rhe tribe ,H large d isposed of rhe use of the bnd ,lCcording to ce ruin a rbitrary arrangements, hut did not admit owne rship of it to individual s. Under the tribal system a lso sb vcry was developed , so th ;1t class SocielY h;ld fairl y began (sic) .

The coalescen..:e o f tribes, w hiC h was aga in comilti o nal upon the pres tige of act ive warrior c hieftain s an d di spensers of jusrice, produced

XXII Introduction

No such archa ic and absolute opposition, fam il y roof against imperial ci ty, occurs in Child Christopher, but the parre rn is still detectable. The young royal couple lead all untid y straggle of e lde rs, wives and chil dren, as we ll as wa rriors, from the Tofts ~\11d the neighbouring country to the

/lItrodll cti011 XX111

(Cheaping Knowe ), clas s+ba sed fe udal monarchy (Goldburg), and sadist ic tyra nn y (the Lord of Urrerbol ). Nowhere except amo ng the shepherds does he find a community he ca n respec t, though plenty of people in most pl aces arc eager a nd b rave e nough to band rogether in a good cause once insp ired by Ursul a or himself, the Seekers for the Well.

Indeed, the inre rweaving of myt h ic a nd folkrale heroism, and heroic love, w ith issues of inregrity and social justice is at the core of all Morr is's romances, including rhe only one which centres on a mon;l]'chi st conventlon.

XX IV INtrodu ction

2. TH E STO RY OF THE GLITTERING PLA IN

This romance is a key rext for understandi ng William Morris' fi crion. The autho r recognized rh is: he chose it as the flagship, rhe first book from his Kelmscorr Press . So did May Morri s: rhe eighr volumes of the Collected Works devoted to the ten prose ro mances of his last decade begin wirh the firsr full ·length sto ry, The House of the Wo/fings (1888) and Plain, rhe fo urth , in the rexr reprinted here.

Hend erson's 'a land o f eternal you th spent in the delights of free love ... ' is represenratively misleadi ng. The hero acceprs no ' free love' , and rhe ' land of eternal yourh' becomes the pr ison he spends rhe core of the book trying ro escape - he even prefers rhe lifeless desert beyond.

T hough only nine of the book's twenry· rwo chapters a re set o n the Plain, ir is rhe foc us of the jo urneyings before, afte r and wirhin rh em. However, si nce rh e Hostage never goes ro rhe Plain , rhe parrerns of closure appro pria te to ro mance, rhe ea rned reunion of true lovers, and the release, resolution and red irecrion of commu niry energies, a re necessarily opposed ro ir. The fi ercely unwelcoming Isle of Ran som can be won over to all iance wirh rhe young lovers and their people, the kindreds of C leve la nd , whi ch mean s the Rav agers accept morral courage and reject the br ibe of rhe idy ll. T he king is deprived of rheir savage obedi ence, but intri nsically hi s regime, shaped by his own elvish will and ageless power, asks, gives and needs nothing from morra l lands; he is well rid of Ha llblirhe's passion, that chafing fo reign body that makes the ha ppy and adori ng sub jects of his G li rrering Plai n seem hardly human.

IntroductioN xxv

On the onl y other occasion that Hcndersoll quotes a romance he aga in chooses PlatJt - but if he had read it he could never have C

XXVI introduction

Bur Henderson's error is info rmative. As Roderick Marshal! has pointed our emph atica ll y, 11 the Plain is indccd paradisal, and spec ifically like the far-futu re 'Now here' Mo rri s had constructed less than a year ear lier. Similarly, while Cleveland by rhe Sea resembles a Bro nze Age Teuton ic co mmunit y, or exoga mi c all iance of gens, the Isle of Ransom is markedly simi lar to Iceland , the 'anti -pa rad ise' which Morris had found sove re ig n agai ns t hi s more dan gero us longings. H allbli th e's re jection of the dream of free love and Elvi sh im mortal ity is nor o nl y like O isin's returning from the deathless beauty of the Si dhe to a very morral Ire la nd ; i t al so rep rcsents a c leav ing to mortal community as opposed to all supposed alternatives, including o ther-worlds. In the historical Cleveland on England's North Sea coast, where the gens-based Angles were reconciled with once-ruthless Da nish invaders, the ot he r-wor ldl y sed uc ti o ns of C hri sti anity ca me to domi nate the comm unity; Morri s would nor reli sh a story in which that could happen!

Marsha ll 's comparison w ith Now here shows that fro m the viewpoint of the Glinering Plain Hall blithe is not a brave, dedicated qucsrcr fo r hi s love, faithful to his Vows, but a blight on innocent happiness. Already, o n Ransom, he had been ex ile and misfit, the burr of mockery and jeering mime, the begu iled victim of plots and purposes he didn't understand. On the Plain he is even more c lear ly a beautiful, cold alien, resisting bea uty, majesty a nd tenderness that he cannot begin re apprec iate . Wo rse, he is a sull en and belli gerent me nacc , psyc hot ically a ttac hed to his m urd e ro us weapons, look ing for a fight w hen every body else is

IZ \'(Idllam MorrIS alld 1115 Earthly l'arad'$l!s (\,(/ilrshin'! Compron I)r('~s, 1979), I)P. 273-9.

Introdu ctioll XXVI!

fe asting, dalll: in g ;lnd em brac in g. T he only ot he r weapon in the I.and is rhe klllg's ccrcrnoni,ll 'd(>cdlcss sword '. Thi s mclanchohc o bsesslvt' casts a gloom over the hap piness of innoce nt, lovi ng fo lk w ho never did him any harm hut (ontinuall y go our of thei r \'i

XXVIII IntroductioN

had been the un iquely successful genera l, and the other had a bandon ed his career as th e mos t brilliant rherorician and lawyer of his cu lture. Fame and glory are doubtful , hard-earned and brief, but sor row and dea rh a re sure.

Th e ir s ror y is ju st another version o f th at old chesrnut, the quest for a Promi sed Land, a Heaven on Earth. As a young poer Morris had been there and done that: his Earthly Paradise had had the biggest crirical and popular sll ccess of any long poem in English . Th e wa nderers in the frame-rale of those opulenr volumes never found resr in a land o f perennial yourh, happiness and peace, rho ugh they mer some exce llent srories. Now, in his last years, Morri s offers us th ree wishful -thinking questers who achieve their qu est , but their guide, the hero, just as grate full y escapes i[. Their quesr frames his story as a COntrast.

As his name anno unces, Hallbl ithe asks no o rh er paradise rhan home, but they cannot appreciate his cheerful and hospitable reply:

They scarce looked on him, but cried o ut together mournfull y:

'This is not the Land! This is not the Land!' (p. 212)

There a re serio-comic elements in rhi s o peni ng scene, in both the unison chanting of the obsessed quesrers and th e ado lesce nt smugness of the very young male warr ior's summary of whar life and community are all a bout. His Story scans as he is emblematically engaged in firting his male-prowess spearhead to a new shaft, and when he hears the girls coming back from seaweed-gatheri ng at the shore , he indulges in some charming adolescent posture. But his girl is not there. She has r been kidnapped by sea-raiders, and suddenly he is 'a yoke-fellow of sorrow'.

11ltroducti01l XXIX

Before Hallblithe ga llops to the rescue, he offers a memorable, self-d edicatory mime of the implaci:\bJe warnor:

As for him ht: turned hack si len tly [0 his work, and set the steel o f the spear on the new ashen shaft, and rook the hammer and smote the nail in, a nd laid the weapon on a rou nd pebbl e rh at was thereby, and clenched the nai l on the other side. (p. 21 5)

He bea rs rhis spear all th rough hi s double figure-eight journey to the Isle o f Ra nsom and the G littering Pla in, into rhe lifeless desert beyond , a nd then back through Plain and Isle, and thence back home. The spear stands for a young man's a rdour, in terms with wh ich Dr Freud has made us familiar, bu t also fo r home and loyalty, si nce we fir st see H a llblithe seated at h is hou se 's threshold, making it by his own home-taught skill s. It signifies that the man wielding it is striv ing manfully fo r home and house. As the ques t develops, though, it a lso expresses the resentment o f a figh ting-man w hose efforts are constantly frustrated, by deceit o r by lack of a physical enemy: no one seems stupider than a man looki ng for a fi ght and being ignored! Frust ration is a long spear in a short row boat, especia ll y when that infuriating psychopomp Puny Fox mocks and beguiles him by turns.

But the spear has a third significat ion: it ma rks him as the threa tening, obsessive, ung ratefu l al ie n - rh e potential regicide a mid the peaceable and weapon less dwellers on the Glirrering Pla in. Hallblithe is a rripl y complex hero, and narrative ironies also srem from his name. The Raven, his ho use-emblem, signifies a gens ve ry ready to defi ne itself on the battlefield, giving the beautiful young man a tough and menaci ng edge. Puny

xxx Introduction

Fox develops a ser ies o f kennings, se ri ously comic and more or less ingenio usly poetic epi thets, for rave ns; like ;1 skald he prides himself on ri ngi ng the cha nges on the ca rr ion-hird theme every time he addresses the young 'raven" and hi s offpurri ng compound of disa rming sy mp.ah y and med ici na l moc kery kee ps H a ll b lithe manipulated and mobi le.

Sti ll , ravens are not only bloodthirsty and ill-omened h;tnle-crows and ca rrion-eaters: they a re wi se, fait hful and perceptive birds, brave dwellers o n peril o us and ha rren crags. Fox's gibing serves to prepa re H a llblithe ro endure the public ridicu le and reproach of the mock-batrle in wh ich his peopl e are shamefu ll y bested, in the feast-hall on the Isle of Ra nsom. or is it a lways a bad thing to he;lr th t:> mortal warning in a raven's c roa k. Like;.\ raven, Hallblithe travels to the G li ttering Pl ai n by fo llowin g rhe dyi ng. As 'G randfather ' is carri ed wellnigh mo ri bund ro the shore, H allblithe hovers over him , looking his best and fiercest:

he stood upright in the boat, a goodly image of harrle w ith the sun fl ashing back from his hr ight he lm, his spear in his hand , hi s whi te shie ld un hi s back, and rh ereon rhe image of rhe Raven .... (p. 250)

Onc of the first th ings he nor ices about the joyous and pcacc;.1 hle inhabitants of the Glinering Plain is that any mention o f dea th is anathema to them, and 'not lawfu l fo r any man to uner here' (p. 253). At fir st he tries not ro spoil their day.

The cost of the happy, liherated li fe o f the Gl ittering Plai n, it seems, includes fea r of and revul sio n from death: a ravell is the las t rhing they want to hear, croa king above their prt'sent-rense case and pleasure. They also suffer progressive am nesia about their own

ltttroductiOll XXXI

past morrallives: 'we have noughr but hearsay of othe r lands. If we ever knew them we have forgotten them.' They cannot remember wincer! His fiancee might be on the Plain for all they know, 'For sllch as come hither keep not their old names, and soon forget rhem what they were'. Their king has absolute power over the imagination as well as memory of his subjects:

'And that King of you rs,' said he, 'how do ye name him?' 'He is the King,' said the damse l. ' Hath he no other name?' said Hallblirhe. 'We may not uner it,' she said; 'But thou shalt see him soon, that there is nought but good in him and might-iness.' (p. 254)

Hallblithe is even wary of Sea-Eagle's rejuvenation, Iraning on his spear amid this benevolent magic, 'with smiling lips and knitted brow'. Hi s ant ipathy ro changeless contentment has an ominous raven-voice:

'So it is, shipmate, that whereas thou sayesr that the days flit, for thee they shall flit no more; and the day may come for thee when thou shalt be weary, and know it, and long for the lost which thou hast forgotten.' (pp. 257-8)

This hero of gloom wanders the length and breadth of the Glittering Plain in his incessant search for his brtrothed, rather as Hamlet sta lks through Elsinorc's wedding finery dressed in funereal black, or Scrooge glowrrs through th e festive streets of London's Christmas. His physical beauty makes his obsessive intensity forgivable, until forgotten, but what is worse is that hr proves the king cannot make everyone happy. I .. this Land of Heart's Desire, one hearr at least does not desire it.

XXXII Introduction

The elven-beauteous king is splendid , an archetype of gracious and benevolent loveliness, a lways accessible to hi s 'children', his subjects, and confident that hi s power ca n gratify any wish they have. But Hallbli the is not used to kings, and resents having been decoyed and begui led into the Plain: he cannot speak to this hyper-char ismatic and adorable absolute ruler in the joyously grateful way everyone else does:

Said Hall blithe: '0 great King of a happy land, I ask nought of thee save that which none shal1 withhold from me uncursed.'

' I wil1 give it to thee,' said the King, 'and thou shalt bless me. But w hat is it which thou wouldst? What more canst thou have than the Gifts of the land ?' (p.261 )

Is it ominous that the hero talks of curses and the king, his irresistibly charismatic and deathless opponent, of blessi ngs? Well, there is no ru le in fantasy that heroes have always to be polite and soph isticated, and the king's offer is merely a series of lofty equivocations. In the last stage of Hallblithe's beguiling he has to spy demeaningly upon a beautiful, suffer ing and lovc-Iorn lady, the king's own daughter, languishing over his picture in he r illuminated book. He is ashamed, but he is also angry, fo r her so li loquy shows with the unsetf-conscious arroga nce of the rich that she has ca used the kid napp in g and a ll the attenda nt deceptions t hat brought him there:

... For I deemed that this eve at least thou shouldst . come, so many and strong as are the meshes of love which we hav e cast about thy feet. Oh come tomorrow at the least and latest, or what shall I do, and wherewith sha ll I quench the grief of my hean?

Introduction XXXIII

Or else why a m I the daughter o f the Undying Kin g, the Lord of the Treasure of the Sea? Why h3\(" they wro ught new marvels for me, and compelled the Ra vagers of the Coasts to serve Ill e, and sent false dreams fl itting o n the wings of the n ight? (p o 266)

She is in the habit of indu lging her OWII whi ms, and h;I S clearly insi sted upon her bther indu lg ing them too. Love, for her, is a crush upon a man she has never Iller, and whose lift' she is prt~par(>d to lay was te; lIor doe:o-she even mention her innocent ' ri va l', whom she has given into the hands of via lt'nt rav:lge rs habituated to rape, murder and sla ve trading.

Hallblithe is dedicated enough to find his \\';1)' our o t rhe Plain, bur the h:uren deserr heyond rhe Jll;;l g i

XXXIV Iutroduction

November to make sure the final insta lments of News (rom Nowhere were published there. Tha t splend id Utopi a is his crucial cont ri bu tion to socia list discourse and a major work in its own right.

In Plain, his next work, Morris d iscovers that he has un finished business with Now here. Though Guest visits Nowhere empowered by his own desire, a nd Hallb lithe is tr icked inro the jou rney, both find ha ppy, industrious and free- lovi ng fo lk, who retain their youth and beauty for most of a very long Jifespan. Both populat ions enjoy craftwork and outdoor labour, m us ic a nd dancing, eati ng and drinking, and especially loving th eir neig h bours, in ' d ays of peace and rest an d clea nn,ess a nd sm ili ng goodw il l'. H a mm on d says d irec tl y,

It is easy for us ro live w it ho ut ro bbing each other. It would be possible to contend wi th and ro b each other, hu t it would be ha rder fo r us tha n refraining from stri fe a nd robbery. That is in short the fou nda tion of our life a nd our happiness . l3

In Nowhere, na tu re and society provide a mply, while the k ing's w ill furn ishes the guarantee of peace and p len ty on the Plain:

in this land no man hath a lack which he may not sa tis fy wi tho ut tak ing aught from any other. I deem no t that thine heart may conceive a des ire which I shall no t fulfil fo r thee, or crave a gift which I shJI1 not give thee. (p. 26 1)

T he king wo uld of course be in tolera ble in Nowhere, bur hi s cla im is as just as O ld Ham mond's .

11 News (rom .I\'owhert'. Col/t'cted Wo rks, vul. 16, p. 80.

When H;lllblithe, thinking h is pa SSIOnate visio n of the plough ing at home in Cleveland mean s hi s death, begs permission to leave rhe Land, the king C

XXXV I Introdu ctio1l

folk; Fox accompanies them, a t lea st su ffici ently reformed (0 be able to endure being in the same room as the truth for a little while.

In this joyous and co nfident renewal, H a ll blithe becomes the blo od ·broth er of the Ravage rs. In contrast, the Pla in 's glittering pleasure thins out value, meaning and even identity. The king's subjects can onlY' endure the intensity of Ha ll blithe's rebelli ous longing beca use they start to forget him as soon as he goes away. Though the ardent Princess does recover from her agonies of longin g, she foresees in a mighty metaphor of ' the lingworm laid upon the gold ' (p. 266) the horror of extended lifespan without content, and without death.

A life worth living does not seek (0 contro l the future, nor submit itself to a ru le of death less power. ~'y1o rri s, as author, finds he prefers the vitality of human beings to 'an epoch of rest': Even the Viking li fe of robbery w ith violence, boast ing and bullying, that destroys the homes and enslaves the bodies of the helpless, seems preferable to being controlled by fear of death and the immorta l bribery of an Elvish king.

On the Isle of Ransom , Hall blithe and the Hostage prove each other's ident ity by a shared story from theiti childhood whic h uses th e em ble m of the snake· brooding on gold very d iffe rentl y, si nce their life is fl ee ting and the refore its moments are more truly treasured:

' If thou art Hallbl ithe, tell me what befell to the finger-go ld-ring that my mother gave me when we were both but little.'

Then his face grew happy, and he sm iled, and he said: 'I put it for thee one autumntide in the snake's hole by the river, amidst the roots of an o ld thorn·

Introduction XXXVII

tree, that the snake might brood it, and make the gold grow greater; bur when w inrer was over and we ca me to look for it, lo! there was neithe r ring, nor snake, nor thorn-tree: fo r the flood had washed it all away.' (p.316)

The lifesty le of Ha l1blithe a nd hi s people, like thei r long-lost 'fame' , may not be in every detai l [0 YO llr taste, but remember, the Glirrering Plain is quite as conclusivel y lost by now, for us human s_ Could any young couple, accepting time and oblivion, be ha ppier to lose the gold and its increase? An d who wou ld prefe r the slow ebbi ng away of meaning as the great snake o f eternit y en circ les ide ntit y in it s move less, ever-augmenting coi ls?

Norman Talbo r FormaJ/y of the University of Newcastle,

New SOllth \Vales, 1996

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