The First Artist

[wolfinthewood]

An interesting post by papersky on Sunday inspired a number of reflections I was feeling too ill to type up at the time. One of the things she mentioned in passing is the fact that Tolkien is widely viewed as the ‘first artist’ or originator of fantasy fiction.

Now me, I was a Tolkien kid. I came across The Fellowship of the Ring in the library at the age of eleven; for months I wondered what was going to happen next, while I waited impatiently for the other volumes to be returned. Eventually I discovered our local branch library did not actually have them. My mother found out why I was so gloomy, explained about inter-library loans, then kindly shelled out the money to pay for this. After the library had got the books in, I was lost to the world for days.

When I was thirteen, I won a fiver as second prize in a children's poetry competition, and had no doubt what I wanted: my very own set, quite pricey at 25s. a volume. I still have them; they are rather battered these days. Between then and the time I went to university, I read them over and over again. Middle Earth was a refuge that helped to keep me sane.

And I began to explore Tolkien's sources: Gawain and the Green Knight, of course, which he edited (also translated, though I didn't know that then; I began with the Penguin translation and moved on to Tolkien's edition of the Middle English text); Beowulf in the Penguin Classics translation; Anglo-Saxon poetry (again, a translated selection in the Penguin Classics series); the Middle English poem Sir Orfeo; Malory’s Le Morte D’Arthur; whatever I could get hold of on Norse saga and legend. It was Tolkien who first got me interested in English place-name etymologies, once I realised that the made-up names in his books, like ‘Wetwang’ and ‘Mitchel Delving’ and ‘Hornburg’, all meant something and often used English place-name elements. I also found that some of the things that appear at first sight to be pure invention on Tolkien’s part, like the great murderous old willow tree, turn up in English folk-lore.

I soon began to understand that Tolkien, though still a great original, was also a borrower on a massive scale, and that there was immense pleasure to be had, a greater pleasure even than reading his books, from tracking him through European epic, legend, saga, romance and folk-tale. And on the way wandering into all kinds of other areas of ancient and medieval literature: such as the Scots Chaucerians, whom I don’t think Tolkien ever uses directly, though I am sure he read them somewhere along the way.

I didn’t get a chance to read widely in earlier modern fantasy fiction for adults until I went to university. On the whole, the books simply weren’t available to borrow or buy. The main exception was T. H. White’s The Once and Future King, which became widely available in paperback after the success of the musical Camelot. But in any case White was Tolkien’s contemporary, and not a source or influence.

The big influence Tolkien himself acknowledged was, of course, William Morris. As a student I read Morris’s romances, the adult novels of George MacDonald, Lud-in-the-Mist by Hope Mirrlees, some James Branch Cabell (whom I did not much like), some E. R. Eddison (ditto), some Lord Dunsany (good in parts), The Crock of Gold by James Stephens (ditto), all of these and more in the paperback adult fantasy series from Ballantine Books edited by Lin Carter. Every week or so, as I recall it now, I would drop into Heffers Paperback Shop and find there was a new book in the series. I still have some of them, though over the years I have jettisoned a few, replaced others with hardbacks or new paperbacks; never without a small pang of loss, mainly for the oddly compelling cover art by Gervasio Gallardo.

The ‘first artist’ of European fantasy is Homer, especially in the Odyssey, a text that has certainly left a mark on Tolkien’s oeuvre: what else is Eärendil, the mariner who sails on an endless quest for his home, but a version of Odysseus? The Odyssey is the second oldest European text that has survived (the Iliad, of course, being the oldest). Homer is where it all begins.

The ‘first artist’ of modern heroic fantasy in English is William Morris. It was Morris who borrowed a landscape from Mandeville’s Travels and Malory and Huon of Burdeux, a style from Malory and Huon (the echo of which can be heard in Tolkien’s more sonorous passages), characters and situations from romances and sagas and folk-tales and his own deeply socialist imagination, and wove them together into something that was both old and very new.

Among the things that arrive with Tolkien were a) the Gnostic dualism and apocalypticism that has plagued fantasy fiction ever since b) the marginalisation, to the point of near-exclusion, of female characters c) the systematic peopling of his world with non-human as well as human characters. (However, Morris makes a sparing use of some non-human magical characters, such as the Wood-woman in The Water of the Wondrous Isles, and there are fairy characters, and fairy kingdoms, in other Victorian fantasies.)

*

Presently as they rode they had before them one of the greatest of those land-waves, and they climbed it slowly, going afoot and leading their horses; but when they were but a little way from the brow they saw, over a gap thereof, something, as it were huge horns rising up into the air beyond the crest of the ridge. So they marvelled, and drew their swords, and held them still awhile, misdoubting if this were perchance some terrible monster of the waste; but whereas the thing moved not at all, they plucked up heart and fared on.

So came they to the brow and looked over it into a valley, about which on all sides went the ridge, save where it was broken down into a narrow pass on the further side, so that the said valley was like to one of those theatres of the ancient Roman Folk, whereof are some to be seen in certain lands. Neither did those desert benches lack their sitters; for all down the sides of the valley sat or lay children of men; some women, but most men-folk, of whom the more part were weaponed, and some with their drawn swords in their hands. Whatever semblance of moving was in them was when the eddying wind of the valley stirred the rags of their raiment, or the long hair of the women. But a very midmost of this dreary theatre rose up a huge and monstrous tree, whose topmost branches were even the horns which they had seen from below the hill’s brow. Leafless was that tree and lacking of twigs, and its bole upheld but some fifty of great limbs, and as they looked on it, they doubted whether it were not made by men’s hands rather than grown up out of the earth. All round about the roots of it was a pool of clear water, that cast back the image of the valley-side and the bright sky of the desert, as though it had been a mirror of burnished steel. The limbs of that tree were all behung with blazoned shields and knight’s helms, and swords, and spears, and axes, and hawberks; and it rose up into the air some hundred feet above the flat of the valley.

For a while they looked down silently on to this marvel then from both their lips at once came the cry THE DRY TREE. Then Ralph thrust his sword back into his sheath and said: ‘Meseems I must needs go down amongst them; there is naught to do us harm here; for all these are dead like the others that we saw.’

Ursula turned to him with burning cheeks and sparkling eyes, and said eagerly: ‘Yea, yea, let us go down, else might we chance to miss something that we ought to wot of.’

Therewith she also sheathed her sword, and they went both of them down together, and that easily; for as aforesaid the slope was as if it had been cut into steps for their feet. And as they passed by the dead folk, for whom they had often to turn aside, they noted that each of the dead leathery faces was drawn up in a grin as though they had died in pain, and yet beguiled, so that all those visages looked somewhat alike, as though they had come from the workshop of one craftsman.

At last Ralph and Ursula stood on the level ground underneath the Tree, and they looked up at the branches, and down to the water at their feet; and now it seemed to them as though the Tree had verily growth in it, for they beheld its roots, that they went out from the mound or islet of earth into the water, and spread abroad therein, and seemed to waver about. So they walked around the Tree, and looked up at the shields that hung on its branches, but saw no blazon that they knew, though they were many and diverse; and the armour also and weapons were very diverse of fashion.

Now when they were come back again to the place where they had first stayed, Ralph said: ‘I thirst, and so belike dost thou; and here is water good and clear; let us drink then, and so spare our water-skins, for belike the dry desert is yet long.’ And therewith he knelt down that he might take of the water in the hollow of his hand. But Ursula drew him back, and cried out in terror: ‘O Ralph, do it not! Seest thou not this water, that although it be bright and clear, so that we may see all the pebbles at the bottom, yet nevertheless when the wind eddies about, and lifts the skirts of our raiment, it makes no ripple on the face of the pool, and doubtless it is heavy with venom; and moreover there is no sign of the way hereabout, as at other watering-steads; O forbear, Ralph!’

Then he rose up and drew back with her but slowly and unwillingly as she deemed; and they stood together a while gazing on these marvels. But lo amidst of this while, there came a crow wheeling over the valley of the dead, and he croaked over the Dry Tree, and let himself drop down to the edge of the pool, whereby he stalked about a little after the manner of his kind. Then he thrust his neb into the water and drank, and thereafter took wing again; but ere he was many feet off the ground he gave a grievous croak, and turning over in the air fell down stark dead close to the feet of those twain; and Ralph cried out but spake no word with meaning therein; then said Ursula: ‘Yea, thus are we saved from present death.’ Then she looked in Ralph’s face, and turned pale and said hastily: ‘O my friend how is it with thee?’ But she waited not for an answer, but turned her face to the bent whereby they had come down, and cried out in a loud, shrill voice: ‘O Ralph, Ralph! look up yonder to the ridge whereby we left our horses; look, look! there glitters a spear and stirreth! and lo a helm underneath the spear: tarry not, let us save our horses!’

Then Ralph let a cry out from his mouth, and set off running to the side of the slope, and fell to climbing it with great strides, not heeding Ursula; but she followed close after, and scrambled up with foot and hand and knee, till she stood beside him on the top, and he looked around wildly and cried out: ‘Where! where are they?’

‘Nowhere,’ she said, ‘it was naught but my word to draw thee from death; but praise to the saints that thou are come alive out of the accursed valley.’

He seemed not to hearken, but turned about once, and beat the air with his hands, and then fell down on his back and with a great wail she cast herself upon him, for she deemed at first that he was dead. But she took a little water from one of their skins, and cast it into his face, and took a flask of cordial from her pouch, and set it to his lips, and made him drink somewhat thereof. So in a while he came to himself and opened his eyes and smiled upon her, and she took his head in her hands and kissed his cheek, and he sat up and said feebly: ‘Shall we not go down into the valley? there is naught there to harm us.’

‘We have been down there already,’ she said, ‘and well it is that we are not both lying there now.’

Then he got to his feet, and stretched himself, and yawned like one just awakened from long sleep. But she said: ‘Let us to horse and begone; it is early hours to slumber, for those that are seeking the Well at the World’s End.’

He smiled on her again and took her hand, and she led him to his horse, and helped him till he was in the saddle and lightly she gat a-horseback, and they rode away swiftly from that evil place; and after a while Ralph was himself again, and remembered all that had happened till he fell down on the brow of the ridge. Then he praised Ursula’s wisdom and valiancy till she bade him forbear lest he weary her. Albeit she drew up close to him and kissed his face sweetly.

William Morris (1834–1896)

from The Well at the World’s End (1896)


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