Eddison’s prose never plays him false; it rises and falls with his subject, and is tender, humorous, sour, precipitate and terrific as the occasion warrants. How nicely the Cat-bears danced for the Red Foliot,
‘foxy-red above but with black bellies, round furry faces, and innocent amber eyes, and great soft paws … On a sudden the music ceased, and the dancers were still, and standing side by side, paw in furry paw, they bowed shyly to the company, and the Red Foliot called them to him, and kissed them on the mouth, and sent them to their seats …’
‘Corund leaned on the parapet and shaded his eyes with his hand that was broad as a smoked haddock and covered on the back with yellow hairs growing somewhat sparsely, as the hairs on the skin of a young elephant.’
‘A dismal tempest suddenly surprised them. For forty days it swept them in hail and sleet over wide-wallowing ocean, without a star, without a course.’
‘Night came down on the hills. A great wind moaning out of the hueless west tore the clouds as a ragged garment, revealing the lonely moon that fled naked betwixt them.’
‘Dawn came like a lily, saffron-hued, smirched with smoke-grey streaks that slanted from the north.’
‘He was naked to the waist, his hairy breast and arms to the armpits clotted and adrip with blood, and in his hands two bloody daggers.’
Quotation can give some idea of the rhythm of his sentences, but it can give none of the massive sweep and intensity of his narrative. Milton fell in love with the devil because the dramatic action lay with him, and, in this book, Mr Eddison trounces his devils for being naughty (the word ‘bad’ has not significance here), but he trounces the Wizard King and his kingdom with affection and delight. What gorgeous monsters are Gorice the Twelfth and Corund and Corinius. The reader will not easily forget them; nor Gorice’s great antagonist Lord Juss; nor the marvellous traitor, Lord Gro, with whom the author was certainly in love; nor the great fights and the terrible fighters Lords Brandoch Daha and Goldry Bluszco, and a world of others and their wives; nor will he forget the mountain Koshtra Pivrarcha, that had to be climbed, and was climbed – as dizzying a feat as literature can tell of.
‘So huge he was that even here at six miles’ distance the eye might not at a glance behold him, but must sweep back and forth as over a broad landscape from the ponderous roots of the mountain where they sprang black and sheer from the glacier, up the vast face, where buttress was piled upon buttress and tower upon tower in a blinding radiance of ice-hung precipice and snowfilled gully, to the lone heights where like spears menacing high heaven the white teeth of the summit-ridge cleft the sky.’
Mr Eddison’s prose does not derive from the English Bible. His mind has more affinities with Celtic imaginings and method, and his work is Celtic in that it is inspired by beauty and daring rather than by thoughts and moralities. He might be Scotch or Irish: scarcely the former, for, while Scotland loves full-mouthed verse, she, like England, is prose-shy. But, from whatever heaven Mr Eddison comes, he has added a masterpiece to English literature.
JAMES STEPHENS
1922
THERE was a man named Lessingham dwelt in an old low house in Wastdale, set in a grey old garden where yew-trees flourished that had seen Vikings in Copeland in their seedling time. Lily and rose and larkspur bloomed in the borders, and begonias with blossoms big as saucers, red and white and pink and lemon-colour, in the beds before the porch. Climbing roses, honeysuckle, clematis, and the scarlet flame-flower scrambled up the walls. Thick woods were on every side without the garden, with a gap north-eastward opening on the desolate lake and the great fells beyond it: Gable rearing his crag-bound head against the sky from behind the straight clean outline of the Screes.
Cool long shadows stole across the tennis lawn. The air was golden. Doves murmured in the trees; two chaffinches played on the near post of the net; a little water-wagtail scurried along the path. A French window stood open to the garden, showing darkly a dining-room panelled with old oak, its Jacobean table bright with flowers and silver and cut glass and Wedgwood dishes heaped with fruit: greengages, peaches, and green muscat grapes. Lessingham lay back in a hammock-chair watching through the blue smoke of an after-dinner cigar the warm light on the Gloire de Dijon roses that clustered about the bedroom window overhead. He had her hand in his. This was their House.
‘Should we finish that chapter of Njal?’ she said.
She took the heavy volume with its faded green cover, and read: ‘“He went out on the night of the Lord’s day, when nine weeks were still to winter; he heard a great crash, so that he thought both heaven and earth shook. Then he looked into the west airt, and he thought he saw thereabouts a ring of fiery hue, and within the ring a man on a grey horse. He passed quickly by him, and rode hard. He had a flaming firebrand in his hand, and he rode so close to him that he could see him plainly. He was black as pitch, and he sung this song with a mighty voice—
Here I ride swift steed,
His flank flecked with rime,
Rain from his mane drips,
Horse mighty for harm;
Flames flare at each end,
Gall glows in the midst,
So fares it with Flosi’s redes
As this flaming brand flies;
And so fares it with Flosi’s redes
As this flaming brand flies.
‘“Then he thought he hurled the firebrand east towards the fells before him, and such a blaze of fire leapt up to meet it that he could not see the fells for the blaze. It seemed as though that man rode east among the flames and vanished there.
‘“After that he went to his bed, and was senseless for a long time, but at last he came to himself. He bore in mind all that had happened, and told his father, but he bade him tell it to Hjallti Skeggi’s son. So he went and told Hjallti, but he said he had seen ‘the Wolf’s Ride, and that comes ever before great tidings’.”’
They were silent awhile; then Lessingham said suddenly, ‘Do you mind if we sleep in the east wing tonight?’
‘What, in the Lotus Room?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m too much of a lazy-bones tonight, dear,’ she answered.
‘Do you mind if I go alone, then? I shall be back to breakfast. I like my lady with me; still, we can go again when next moon wanes. My pet is not frightened, is she?’
‘No!’ she said, laughing. But her eyes were a little big. Her fingers played with his watch-chain. ‘I’d rather,’ she said presently, ‘you went later on and took me. All this is so odd still: the House, and that; and I love it so. And after all, it is a long way and several years too, sometimes, in the Lotus Room, even though it is all over next morning. I’d rather we went together. If anything happened then, well, we’d both be done in, and it wouldn’t matter so much, would it?’
‘Both be what?’ said Lessingham. ‘I’m afraid your language is not all that might be wished.’
‘Well,
