Phantastes, A Faerie Romance for Men and Women

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{The non-english portions need proofing badly! i have neglected
them for the most part. Chapter headers were italics as well and
may yet have errors? Illustrations of the hardcopy intermingle
with the text often, and so their markings are "rudely" placed
mid-sentence in this etext as well within {} marks. my use of ??
marks are spots that need to be checked with another printing or
edition as something *seems* missing but i cannot say what....
The poetry may have errors, particularly end of line punctuation.

Illustration captions removed from text but list at
front is still there because of references to them in the
preface.

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donated by Caere Corporation, 1-800-535-7226.
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PHANTASTES
A FAERIE ROMANCE FOR MEN AND WOMEN

BY
GEORGE MACDONALD

A new Edition, with thirty-three new Illustrations by Arthur
Hughes; edited by Greville MacDonald

"In good sooth, my masters, this is no door.
Yet is it a little window, that looketh upon a great world."

PREFACE

For offering this new edition of my father's Phantastes, my
reasons are three. The first is to rescue the work from an
edition illustrated without the author's sanction, and so
unsuitably that all lovers of the book must have experienced some
real grief in turning its pages. With the copyright I secured
also the whole of that edition and turned it into pulp.
My second reason is to pay a small tribute to my father by
way of personal gratitude for this, his first prose work, which
was published nearly fifty years ago. Though unknown to many
lovers of his greater writings, none of these has exceeded it in
imaginative insight and power of expression. To me it rings with
the dominant chord of his life's purpose and work.
My third reason is that wider knowledge and love of the book
should be made possible. To this end I have been most happy in
the help of my father's old friend, who has illustrated the
book. I know of no other living artist who is capable of
portraying the spirit of Phantastes; and every reader of this
edition will, I believe, feel that the illustrations are a part
of the romance, and will gain through them some perception of the
brotherhood between George MacDonald and Arthur Hughes.

GREVILLE MACDONALD.
September 1905.

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

THE MEETING OF SIR GALAHAD AND SIX PERCIVALE
SUDDENLY THERE STOOD ON THE THRESHOLD A TINY WOMAN-FORM
THE BRANCHES AND LEAVES ON THE CURTAINS OF MY BED WERE IN MOTION
I SAW A COUNTRY MAIDEN COMING TOWARDS ME
TAILPIECE TO CHAPTER III
HEADPIECE TO CHAPTER IV
TWO LARGE SOFT ARMS WERE THROWN AROUND ME FROM BEHIND
I GAZED AFTER HER IN A KIND OF DESPAIR
I FOUND MYSELF IN A LITTLE CAVE
THE ASH SHUDDERED AND GROANED
TAILPIECE TO CHAPTER VI
I COULD HARDLY BELIEVE THAT THERE WAS A FAIRY LAND
I DID NOT BELIEVE IN FAIRY LAND
A RUNNER WITH GHOSTLY FEET
THE MAIDEN CAME ALONG, SINGING AND DANCING,HAPPY AS A CHILD
THE GOBLINS PERFORMED THE MOST ANTIC HOMAGE
THE FAIRY PALACE IN THE MOONLIGHT
TOO DAZZLING FOR EARTHLY EYES
IN THE WOODS AND ALONG THE RIVER BANKS DO THE MAIDENS GO LOOKING
FOR CHILDREN
SHE LAY WITH CLOSED EYES, WHENCE TWO TEARS WERE FAST WELLING
HEADPIECE TO CHAPTER XIV
I SPRANG TO HER, AND LAID MY HAND ON THE HARP
A WHITE FIGURE GLEAMED PAST ME, WRINGING HER HANDS
THEY ALL RUSHED UPON ME, AND HELD ME TIGHT
A WINTRY SEA, BARE, AND WASTE, AND GRAY
SHOW ME THE CHILD THOU CALLEST MINE
THE TIME PASSED AWAY IN WORK AND SONG
HEADPIECE TO CHAPTER XXI
WE REACHED THE PALACE OF THE KING
I SAW, LEANING AGAINST THE TREE, A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN
FASTENED TO THE SADDLE, WAS THE BODY OF A GREAT DRAGON
I WAS DEAD, AND RIGHT CONTENT
A VALLEY LAY BENEATH ME

PHANTASTES
A FAERIE ROMANCE

"Phantastes from `their fount all shapes deriving,
In new habiliments can quickly dight."
FLETCHER'S Purple Island

{Below is raw OCR it has not been proofed as i cannot read it!}
"Es lassen sich Erzahlungen ohne Zusammenhang, jedoch mit
Association, wie Traume dengkeennohgneedizhusamdimenhang; jedoeh
mit und voll schoner Worte sind, aber auch ohne allen Sinn und
Zusammenhang, hochstens einzelne Strophen verstandlich, wie
Bruchstucke aus den verjschledenartigsten Dingen, Diese svahre
Poesie kann Wlrkung, wie Musik haben. Darum ist die Natur so
rein poetisch wle die Stube eines Zauberers, eines Physikers,
eine Kinderstube elne Polterund Vorrathskammer

"Ein Mahrchen ist wie ein Traumbild ohne Zusammenhang. Ein
Ensemble wunderbarer Dinge und Begebenheiten, z. B. eine
dMusNkalische Pbantasie, die harmonischen Folgen einer
Aeolsharfe, die Natur slebst.
. . . . . . . . . .

"In einem echten Mahrchen muss ailes wunderbar, geheimnissvoll
undzusammenhangendsein; alles belebt, jeder auf eineandereArt Die
ganze Natur muss wunderlich mit der ganzen Geisterwelt gemiseht
sein; hier tritt die Zeit der Anarehie, der Gesetzlosigkeit
Frelheit, der Naturstand der Natur, die Zeit von der Welt ein
entgegengesetztes und eben daruel'ndiehr Weld der Wahrheit
durehaus Chaos der vollendeten Sehopfung ahnlich ist."--NOVALIS.

~~~

CHAPTER 1
"A spirit . . .
. . . . . .
The undulating and silent well,
And rippling rivulet, and evening gloom,
Now deepening the dark shades, for speech assuming,
Held commune with him; as if he and it
Were all that was."
SHELLEY'S Alastor.

I awoke one morning with the usual perplexity of mind which
accompanies the return of consciousness. As I lay and looked
through the eastern window of my room, a faint streak of peach-
colour, dividing a cloud that just rose above the low swell of
the horizon, announced the approach of the sun. As my thoughts,
which a deep and apparently dreamless sleep had dissolved, began
again to assume crystalline forms, the strange events of the
foregoing night presented themselves anew to my wondering
consciousness. The day before had been my one-and-twentieth
birthday. Among other ceremonies investing me with my legal
rights, the keys of an old secretary, in which my father had kept
his private papers, had been delivered up to me. As soon as I
was left alone, I ordered lights in the chamber where the
secretary stood, the first lights that had been there for many a
year; for, since my father's death, the room had been left
undisturbed. But, as if the darkness had been too long an inmate
to be easily expelled, and had dyed with blackness the walls to
which, bat-like, it had clung, these tapers served but ill to
light up the gloomy hangings, and seemed to throw yet darker
shadows into the hollows of the deep-wrought cornice. All the
further portions of the room lay shrouded in a mystery whose
deepest folds were gathered around the dark oak cabinet which I
now approached with a strange mingling of reverence and
curiosity. Perhaps, like a geologist, I was about to turn up to
the light some of the buried strata of the human world, with its
fossil remains charred by passion and petrified by tears.
Perhaps I was to learn how my father, whose personal history was
unknown to me, had woven his web of story; how he had found the
world, and how the world had left him. Perhaps I was to find
only the records of lands and moneys, how gotten and how secured;
coming down from strange men, and through troublous times, to me,
who knew little or nothing of them all. To solve my
speculations, and to dispel the awe which was fast gathering
around me as if the dead were drawing near, I approached the
secretary; and having found the key that fitted the upper
portion, I opened it with some difficulty, drew near it a heavy
high-backed chair, and sat down before a multitude of little
drawers and slides and pigeon-holes. But the door of a little
cupboard in the centre especially attracted my interest, as if
there lay the secret of this long-hidden world. Its key I found.

One of the rusty hinges cracked and broke as I opened the door:
it revealed a number of small pigeon-holes. These, however,
being but shallow compared with the depth of those around the
little cupboard, the outer ones reaching to the back of the desk,
I concluded that there must be some accessible space behind; and
found, indeed, that they were formed in a separate framework,
which admitted of the whole being pulled out in one piece.
Behind, I found a sort of flexible portcullis of small bars of
wood laid close together horizontally. After long search, and
trying many ways to move it, I discovered at last a scarcely
projecting point of steel on one side. I pressed this repeatedly
and hard with the point of an old tool that was lying near, till
at length it yielded inwards; and the little slide, flying up
suddenly, disclosed a chamber--empty, except that in one corner
lay a little heap of withered rose-leaves, whose long- lived
scent had long since departed; and, in another, a small packet of
papers, tied with a bit of ribbon, whose colour had gone with the
rose-scent. Almost fearing to touch them, they witnessed so
mutely to the law of oblivion, I leaned back in my chair, and
regarded them for a moment; when suddenly there stood on the
threshold of the little chamber, as though she had just emerged
from its depth, a tiny woman-form, as perfect in shape as if she
had been a small Greek statuette roused to life and motion. Her
dress was of a kind that could never grow old- fashioned, because
it was simply natural: a robe plaited in a band around the neck,
and confined by a belt about the waist, descended to her feet.
It was only afterwards, however, that I took notice of her dress,
although my surprise was by no means of so overpowering a degree
as such an apparition might naturally be expected to excite.
Seeing, however, as I suppose, some astonishment in my
countenance, she came forward within a yard of me, and said, in a
voice that strangely recalled a sensation of twilight, and reedy
river banks, and a low wind, even in this deathly room:--

"Anodos, you never saw such a little creature before, did you?"

"No," said I; "and indeed I hardly believe I do now."

"Ah! that is always the way with you men; you believe nothing the
first time; and it is foolish enough to let mere repetition
convince you of what you consider in itself unbelievable. I am
not going to argue with you, however, but to grant you a wish."

Here I could not help interrupting her with the foolish speech,
of which, however, I had no cause to repent--

"How can such a very little creature as you grant or
refuse anything?"

"Is that all the philosophy you have gained in one-and-twenty
years?" said she. "Form is much, but size is nothing. It is a
mere matter of relation. I suppose your six-foot lordship does
not feel altogether insignificant, though to others you do look
small beside your old Uncle Ralph, who rises above you a great
half-foot at least. But size is of so little consequence with
old me, that I may as well accommodate myself to your foolish
prejudices."

So saying, she leapt from the desk upon the floor, where she
stood a tall, gracious lady, with pale face and large blue eyes.
Her dark hair flowed behind, wavy but uncurled, down to her
waist, and against it her form stood clear in its robe of white.

"Now," said she, "you will believe me."

Overcome with the presence of a beauty which I could now
perceive, and drawn towards her by an attraction irresistible as
incomprehensible, I suppose I stretched out my arms towards her,
for she drew back a step or two, and said--

"Foolish boy, if you could touch me, I should hurt you. Besides,
I was two hundred and thirty-seven years old, last Midsummer eve;
and a man must not fall in love with his grandmother, you know."

"But you are not my grandmother," said I.

"How do you know that?" she retorted. "I dare say you know
something of your great-grandfathers a good deal further back
than that; but you know very little about your great-grandmothers
on either side. Now, to the point. Your little sister was
reading a fairy-tale to you last night."

"She was."

"When she had finished, she said, as she closed the book, `Is
there a fairy-country, brother?' You replied with a sigh, `I
suppose there is, if one could find the way into it.'"

"I did; but I meant something quite different from what you seem
to think."

"Never mind what I seem to think. You shall find the way into
Fairy Land to-morrow. Now look in my eyes."

Eagerly I did so. They filled me with an unknown longing. I
remembered somehow that my mother died when I was a baby. I
looked deeper and deeper, till they spread around me like seas,
and I sank in their waters. I forgot all the rest, till I found
myself at the window, whose gloomy curtains were withdrawn, and
where I stood gazing on a whole heaven of stars, small and
sparkling in the moonlight. Below lay a sea, still as death and
hoary in the moon, sweeping into bays and around capes and
islands, away, away, I knew not whither. Alas! it was no sea,
but a low bog burnished by the moon. "Surely there is such a sea
somewhere!" said I to myself. A low sweet voice beside me
replied--

"In Fairy Land, Anodos."

I turned, but saw no one. I closed the secretary, and went to my
own room, and to bed.

All this I recalled as I lay with half-closed eyes. I was soon
to find the truth of the lady's promise, that this day I should
discover the road into Fairy Land.

CHAPTER II

"`Where is the stream?' cried he, with tears. `Seest thou its not
in blue waves above us?' He looked up, and lo! the blue stream
was flowing gently over their heads."
--NOVALIS, Heinrich von Ofterdingen.

While these strange events were passing through my mind, I
suddenly, as one awakes to the consciousness that the sea has
been moaning by him for hours, or that the storm has been howling
about his window all night, became aware of the sound of running
water near me; and, looking out of bed, I saw that a large green
marble basin, in which I was wont to wash, and which stood on a
low pedestal of the same material in a corner of my room, was
overflowing like a spring; and that a stream of clear water was
running over the carpet, all the length of the room, finding its
outlet I knew not where. And, stranger still, where this carpet,
which I had myself designed to imitate a field of grass and
daisies, bordered the course of the little stream, the grass-
blades and daisies seemed to wave in a tiny breeze that followed
the water's flow; while under the rivulet they bent and swayed
with every motion of the changeful current, as if they were about
to dissolve with it, and, forsaking their fixed form, become
fluent as the waters.

My dressing-table was an old-fashioned piece of furniture of
black oak, with drawers all down the front. These were
elaborately carved in foliage, of which ivy formed the chief
part. The nearer end of this table remained just as it had been,
but on the further end a singular change had commenced. I
happened to fix my eye on a little cluster of ivy-leaves. The
first of these was evidently the work of the carver; the next
looked curious; the third was unmistakable ivy; and just beyond
it a tendril of clematis had twined itself about the gilt handle
of one of the drawers. Hearing next a slight motion above me, I
looked up, and saw that the branches and leaves designed upon the
curtains of my bed were slightly in motion. Not knowing what
change might follow next, I thought it high time to get up; and,
springing from the bed, my bare feet alighted upon a cool green
sward; and although I dressed in all haste, I found myself
completing my toilet under the boughs of a great tree, whose top
waved in the golden stream of the sunrise with many interchanging
lights, and with shadows of leaf and branch gliding over leaf and
branch, as the cool morning wind swung it to and fro, like a
sinking sea-wave.

After washing as well as I could in the clear stream, I rose and
looked around me. The tree under which I seemed to have lain all
night was one of the advanced guard of a dense forest, towards
which the rivulet ran. Faint traces of a footpath, much
overgrown with grass and moss, and with here and there a
pimpernel even, were discernible along the right bank.
"This," thought I, "must surely be the path into Fairy Land,
which the lady of last night promised I should so soon find." I
crossed the rivulet, and accompanied it, keeping the footpath on
its right bank, until it led me, as I expected, into the wood.
Here I left it, without any good reason: and with a vague feeling
that I ought to have followed its course, I took a more southerly
direction.

CHAPTER III

"Man doth usurp all space,
Stares thee, in rock, bush, river, in
the face.
Never thine eyes behold a tree;
'Tis no sea thou seest in the sea,
'Tis but a disguised humanity.
To avoid thy fellow, vain thy plan;
All that interests a man, is man."
HENRY SUTTON.

The trees, which were far apart where I entered, giving free
passage to the level rays of the sun, closed rapidly as I
advanced, so that ere long their crowded stems barred the
sunlight out, forming as it were a thick grating between me and
the East. I seemed to be advancing towards a second midnight.
In the midst of the intervening twilight, however, before I
entered what appeared to be the darkest portion of the forest, I
saw a country maiden coming towards me from its very depths. She
did not seem to observe me, for she was apparently intent upon a
bunch of wild flowers which she carried in her hand. I could
hardly see her face; for, though she came direct towards me, she
never looked up. But when we met, instead of passing, she turned
and walked alongside of me for a few yards, still keeping her
face downwards, and busied with her flowers. She spoke rapidly,
however, all the time, in a low tone, as if talking to herself,
but evidently addressing the purport of her words to me.

She seemed afraid of being observed by some lurking foe. "Trust
the Oak," said she; "trust the Oak, and the Elm, and the great
Beech. Take care of the Birch, for though she is honest, she is
too young not to be changeable. But shun the Ash and the Alder;
for the Ash is an ogre,--you will know him by his thick fingers;
and the Alder will smother you with her web of hair, if you let
her near you at night." All this was uttered without pause or
alteration of tone. Then she turned suddenly and left me,
walking still with the same unchanging gait. I could not
conjecture what she meant, but satisfied myself with thinking
that it would be time enough to find out her meaning when there
was need to make use of her warning, and that the occasion would
reveal the admonition. I concluded from the flowers that she
carried, that the forest could not be everywhere so dense as it
appeared from where I was now walking; and I was right in this
conclusion. For soon I came to a more open part, and by-and-by
crossed a wide grassy glade, on which were several circles of
brighter green. But even here I was struck with the utter
stillness. No bird sang. No insect hummed. Not a living
creature crossed my way. Yet somehow the whole environment
seemed only asleep, and to wear even in sleep an air of
expectation. The trees seemed all to have an expression of
conscious mystery, as if they said to themselves, "we could, an'
if we would." They had all a meaning look about them. Then I
remembered that night is the fairies' day, and the moon their
sun; and I thought--Everything sleeps and dreams now: when the
night comes, it will be different. At the same time I, being a
man and a child of the day, felt some anxiety as to how I should
fare among the elves and other children of the night who wake
when mortals dream, and find their common life in those wondrous
hours that flow noiselessly over the moveless death-like forms of
men and women and children, lying strewn and parted beneath the
weight of the heavy waves of night, which flow on and beat them
down, and hold them drowned and senseless, until the ebbtide
comes, and the waves sink away, back into the ocean of the dark.
But I took courage and went on. Soon, however, I became again
anxious, though from another cause. I had eaten nothing that
day, and for an hour past had been feeling the want of food. So
I grew afraid lest I should find nothing to meet my human
necessities in this strange place; but once more I comforted
myself with hope and went on.

Before noon, I fancied I saw a thin blue smoke rising amongst the
stems of larger trees in front of me; and soon I came to an open
spot of ground in which stood a little cottage, so built that the
stems of four great trees formed its corners, while their
branches met and intertwined over its roof, heaping a great cloud
of leaves over it, up towards the heavens. I wondered at finding
a human dwelling in this neighbourhood; and yet it did not look
altogether human, though sufficiently so to encourage me to
expect to find some sort of food. Seeing no door, I went round
to the other side, and there I found one, wide open. A woman sat
beside it, preparing some vegetables for dinner. This was homely
and comforting. As I came near, she looked up, and seeing me,
showed no surprise, but bent her head again over her work, and
said in a low tone:

"Did you see my daughter?"

"I believe I did," said I. "Can you give me something to eat,
for I am very hungry?"
"With pleasure," she replied, in the same tone; "but do not say
anything more, till you come into the house, for the Ash is
watching us."

Having said this, she rose and led the way into the cottage;
which, I now saw, was built of the stems of small trees set
closely together, and was furnished with rough chairs and tables,
from which even the bark had not been removed. As soon as she
had shut the door and set a chair--

"You have fairy blood in you," said she, looking hard at me.

"How do you know that?"

"You could not have got so far into this wood if it were not so;
and I am trying to find out some trace of it in your countenance.
I think I see it."

"What do you see?"

"Oh, never mind: I may be mistaken in that."

"But how then do you come to live here?"

"Because I too have fairy blood in me."

Here I, in my turn, looked hard at her, and thought I could
perceive, notwithstanding the coarseness of her features, and
especially the heaviness of her eyebrows, a something unusual--I
could hardly call it grace, and yet it was an expression that
strangely contrasted with the form of her features. I noticed
too that her hands were delicately formed, though brown with work
and exposure.

"I should be ill," she continued, "if I did not live on the
borders of the fairies' country, and now and then eat of their
food. And I see by your eyes that you are not quite free of the
same need; though, from your education and the activity of your
mind, you have felt it less than I. You may be further removed
too from the fairy race."

I remembered what the lady had said about my grandmothers.

Here she placed some bread and some milk before me, with a kindly
apology for the homeliness of the fare, with which, however, I
was in no humour to quarrel. I now thought it time to try to get
some explanation of the strange words both of her daughter and
herself.

"What did you mean by speaking so about the Ash?"

She rose and looked out of the little window. My eyes followed
her; but as the window was too small to allow anything to be seen
from where I was sitting, I rose and looked over her shoulder. I
had just time to see, across the open space, on the edge of the
denser forest, a single large ash-tree, whose foliage showed
bluish, amidst the truer green of the other trees around it; when
she pushed me back with an expression of impatience and terror,
and then almost shut out the light from the window by setting up
a large old book in it.

"In general," said she, recovering her composure, "there is no
danger in the daytime, for then he is sound asleep; but there is
something unusual going on in the woods; there must be some
solemnity among the fairies to-night, for all the trees are
restless, and although they cannot come awake, they see and hear
in their sleep."

"But what danger is to be dreaded from him?"

Instead of answering the question, she went again to the window
and looked out, saying she feared the fairies would be
interrupted by foul weather, for a storm was brewing in the west.

"And the sooner it grows dark, the sooner the Ash will be awake,"
added she.

I asked her how she knew that there was any unusual excitement in
the woods. She replied--

"Besides the look of the trees, the dog there is unhappy; and the
eyes and ears of the white rabbit are redder than usual, and he
frisks about as if he expected some fun. If the cat were at
home, she would have her back up; for the young fairies pull the
sparks out of her tail with bramble thorns, and she knows when
they are coming. So do I, in another way."

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