April 2024 Dare to Believe - Writing Fantasy Before Tolkien Made it Cool by Fran Joyce
In honor of Fantasy month, I’ve selected two authors who helped bridge the gap between folklore and fairy tales, and the modern Fantasy ge
John Ruskin’s short story, “The King of the Golden River,” (1841) and Hope Mirrlees’ novel, Lud-in-the-Mist (1926) predate the works of JRR Tolkien.
This is what fantasy was like before J.R.R. Tolkien decided to send a Hobbit to save the world.
John Ruskin (1819 – 1900) was born in London, England. He was a writer, art historian and art critic, philosopher, and polymath of the Victorian era. A polymath is a learned individual whose knowledge encompasses several subjects. They have the ability to use their knowledge to solve complex problems. He wrote on varied subjects such as literature, geology, botany, political economy, education, architecture, ornithology, and myth. Ruskin wrote in several literary forms including treatises, essays, poetry, travel guides, manuals, and a fairy tale.
He became the first Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford where he established the Ruskin School of Drawing. William Morris was one of his students. Ruskin favored the beauty of nature exactly as it appears, imperfections and all, instead of romanticized versions of nature.
When Ruskin was twenty-one, he wrote a fairy tale for a family friend, Effie Gray, who was twelve at the time. “The King of the Goden River,” was written in 1841; however, it was not published until 1851. Ruskin never intended it to be published, and it was published without his knowledge or consent.
According to the tale. The resources of a once beautiful valley are depleted by two selfish brothers, Hans, and Schwartz, who mistreat the Southwest Wind known as Esquire. Esquire uses its powers to cause flooding which turns the valley in barren red sand. No longer able to be farmers the brothers become goldsmiths. Their greed becomes so overwhelming that they melt their little brother Gluck’s prized possession, a gold mug with a bearded man’s face. This releases the king of the river who pours out of the mug and takes the shape of a golden dwarf king. The king tells the brothers they can turn the river to gold for one person only by climbing to the highest point of the river and adding at least three drops of holy water. Each person will only be allowed one chance. If they fail, they will be turned into black stones. Hans and Schwartz fight, and Hans ends up going first. He steals the holy water from a church. He gets thirsty climbing and drinks the holy water careful to save at least three drops. Along the way he meets an old man, a child, and a puppy who are dying of thirst. Hans chooses to save the water for himself. When he throws the flask into the river he is turned into a black stone.
Schwartz tries next. He buys holy water from a dishonorable priest. He ignores the old man, the child, and the puppy. He makes no attempt to try to revive his brother Hans, and he also becomes a black stone.
When Gluck tires, he gives water to the old man, the child, and the puppy even though it means he will not have the three drops for the river. The elf king appears and tells Gluck his brothers perished because their greed made the holy water unclean. Gluck’s generosity has reversed his brother’s deeds. The elf king shakes three drops of dew from a lily plant into the flask and throws it into the river before evaporating. The river and the valley are restored. The lands belong to Gluck who spends the rest of his life making needy people welcome in his valley. The two black stones (known as the Black brothers) remain at the base of the river for all too see and be warned about selfish acts.
Ruskin’s fairy tale is a story about kindness as well as a warning about the need to conserve the beauty and resources of our world.
It was inspired in part by Ruskin’s travels through Europe where he saw some of the old architecture of Europe being allowed to decay with no attempts at preservation or restoration. Often it was being replaced by modern structures with no historical significance or aesthetic value.
When Effie Gray became an adult, Ruskin’s and Gray’s families pushed for the two to marry. The marriage was an unhappy one which was annulled six years later because it was never consummated. There was an inappropriateness to Ruskin’s relationships with women although there is no evidence that Ruskin was ever physically inappropriate with girls or women. Until 1875, the age of consent in the United Kingdom was twelve for females. In 1875, it was raised to thirteen in Great Britain and then sixteen throughout the UK in 1885. Because of this, biographers are cautious about making assumptions about relationships during the Victorian era. Still, it raises some red flags about Ruskin.
Later in life, Ruskin considered marriage a second time to a woman almost thirty years his junior. He had tutored her in art when she was ten years old. When she was 21, Rose agreed to marry him if their union could remain unconsummated. Ruskin was fine with that arrangement, but feared his reputation would be harmed if it became known he had entered into a second sexless marriage. Ultimately, they did not marry.
Selected works by John Ruskin:
Poems (1835-46) – published in 1850
The Poetry of Architecture (1837) serialized in The Architectural Magazine 1937-38 I released in book form 1893
Letters to a College Friend (1840-45) published in 1894
The King of the Golden River, or the Back Brothers. A Legend of Stiria (written in 1941 – published in 1850)
Modern Painters (5 volumes published between 1843-1860)
Praeterita: Outlines of Scenes and Thoughts Perhaps Worthy of Memory in My Past Life (3 volumes between 1885-1889)
Hope Mirrlees (1887-1978) was a British novelist, poet, and translator. She is best known for Paris: A Poem (1920) – a 600-line Modernist poem published by Leonard and Virginia Woolf’s Hogarth Press and Lud-in-the-Mist (1926), an influential fantasy novel. Mirrlees was born in Kent. She was raised in Scotland and South Africa. She attended the Royal Academy for Dramatic Art before studying Greek at Newnham College, Cambridge.
While at Cambridge she developed a close relationship with her tutor, Jane Ellen Harrison. They eventually moved in together and remained close until Harrison’s death in 1928.
They traveled abroad learning new languages and studying foreign cultures. Mirrlees went on to translate several Russian and Spanish works of literature.
In 1948, she moved back to South Africa where she wrote the first volume of her biography of Sir Robert Bruce Cotton. The second volume was never published.
Poems of Moods and Tensions was privately published while she was in South Africa.
Mirrlees was a friend of Virginia Woolf. Her circle of friends included T.S. Eliot, Bertrand Russell, Ottoline Morrell, and Gertrude Stein who mentions Mirrlees in Everybody’s Autobiography.
Lud-in-the-Mist was the third and final novel written by Mirrlees. For her third novel, Mirrlees continues the theme of exploring the meaning of Life and Art started in her first two novels. However, Mirrlees creates an imaginary world for her characters in Lud-in-the-Mist. In this novel, the reserved and law-abiding citizens of Lud-in-the-Mist must deal with an influx of fairy fruit that comes with the fantastic beings who previously inhabited the nearby land of Faerie. The citizens attempt to preserve their rational and predictable way of life, but the spontaneous adventurers from Faerie bring temptations too strong to be resisted. The mayor, Nathaniel Chanticleer is the most upstanding member of the community. He eventually gives in to flights of fancy and comes to realize the only path forward is a compromise that will bring fun back to Lu-in-the-Mist and some order to the Faeries.
Neil Gaiman identified Lud-in-the-Mist as one of his top ten favorite books of all time. He has referred to it as, “one of the finest [fantasy novels] in the English language.” Calling it “ a little golden miracle of a book.”
Other Works by Hope Mirrlees:
Madeleine: One of Love’s Jansenists (1919)
The Counterplot (1924)
Poems: Cape Town, Gothic
The Nation and Athenaeum – “Listening in on the Past” 1926
- “The Religion of Women” 1927
- “Gothic Dreams” 1928