Arthur Machen: Weaver of Fantasy

by William F. Gekle

3

Machen had at last decided, and for the second time in his life, to write the Great Romance. The first time it had turned out to be The Chronicle of Clemendy, that light-hearted collection of tales having nothing whatever to do with the Great Romance he had decided to write, and having nothing in it of the loneliness of his life in London. This time it became The Hill of Dreams, and one knows in reading it that this also is not the Great Romance: for Machen could not have decided to write The Hill of Dreams any more than he could have decided to write a “Robinson Crusoe” of the soul—even though he tells us that this is precisely what he had decided to do. It is perhaps a coincidence, and a very fortunate one, that the book did turn out to be just that.

Machen was, as we have seen, a very careful man with his models. He could write in the manner of Thomas Browne, or Robert Herrick, or William Morris, or Robert Stevenson, and very carefully did he cultivate their manner. When he had perfected the manner, and made use of it, the design was there but the substance had altered. However meticulously he might labor perfecting the model, making no conscious effort to improve upon it, he could not prevent a transmutation from taking place. This is apparent even in The Three Impostors for, even though the pattern is recognizable, and even though it is studied and carefully contrived, there are elements, so strong is the triumph of mind over manner, that make it peculiarly Machen’s own and not Stevenson’s.

The new book, Machen says, was born in a phrase encountered in Charles Whibley’s introduction to Tristram Shandy. Whibley described the work as being “a picaresque of the mind.” And so Machen said to himself,“I will write a Robinson Crusoe of the soul.” This was no mere decision; it was, rather, a demonstration of the fact that there is an affinity of the mind, some minds, for an idea, some ideas. The Hill of Dreams, the picaresque of the mind, the Crusoe of the soul, was at the heart of Machen’s Great Romance. It responded to a phrase for which it had a natural affinity and so the Great Romance, The Hill of Dreams, was born.

“It was,” wrote Machen, “to represent loneliness not of body on a desert island, but loneliness of soul and mind and spirit in the midst of myriads and myriads of men. I had some practical experience of this state to help me: not altogether in vain had I been constrained in Clarendon Road and to have my habitation in the tents of Notting Hill Gate. I immediately marked down all these old experiences as a valuable asset in the undertaking of my task: I knew what it was to live on a little in a little room, what it meant to pass day after day, week after week, month after month through the inextricabilis terror of the London streets, to tread a grey labyrinth whose path had no issue, no escape, no end. I had known as a mere lad how terrible it was on a gloomy winter evening to go out because a little room had become intolerable, to go out walking through those multitudinous streets, to see the light of kindly fires leaping on the walls, to see friendly faces welcoming father, or husband, or brother, to hear laughter or a song sounding from within, perhaps to catch half glimpses of the faces of the lovers as they looked out, happy, into the dark night. All this had been my daily practice and habit for a long while: I was qualified then, in a measure, to describe the fate of a Robinson Crusoe cast on the desert island of the tremendous and terrible London.”

The writing of this book occupied Machen from the autumn of 1895 to the spring of 1897. It went very slowly. For one thing, Machen discovered that the style he had so carefully cultivated for the telling of the improbable tale of The Three Impostors had to be just as carefully destroyed and every mannerism eradicated. He had become fluent in the Stevensonian vein—now he found himself writing with uncertainty, nothing flowed easily and naturally. His pen could not keep pace with his mind and his mind was racing rapidly through the garden of Avallaunius in far-off Gwent. For The Hill of Dreams was to be about, if it was about anything, a boy’s wanderings and imaginings in a mysterious place he had found, or dreamed he had found, in the Roman ruins near Caerleon.

Chapters were written and rewritten, his day’s output varied from perhaps three lines to three folios. At last the book was finished in the spring of 1897. He had been at it, quite steadily, for almost two years, with a summer in Brittany in 1896, most of which he spent thinking of the book lying untouched in his room in London. In March 1897 Grant Richards wrote him to ask for his next manuscript. Mr. Richards, a new publisher, and anxious, no doubt, to get off on the right foot, wanted something “in the manner of The Three Impostors.” He got, instead, The Hill of Dreams. Richards returned the book along with a paternal letter pointing out to Machen the error of his ways and urging him not to jeopardize his reputation by publishing such a book. Several other publishers subsequently did the same and the book remained for years as it was, still titled The Garden of Avallaunius, and still not published. And then in 1907, after ten years, Grant Richards changed his mind and published The Garden of Avallaunius, but he insisted also upon changing the title on the plea, perhaps justified, that no one would properly pronounce “Avallaunius.” It may be, however, that The Garden of Avallaunius did appear in print before the Richards edition.

In the summer of 1901 Machen wrote to a friend, a Miss Brooke-Alder: “A certain story, translated from the English and called Le Grande Dieu Pan, is now appearing in a French review. Maeterlinck is extremely interested in it and has sent a message to the author asking him to forward any manuscripts in order that they also may be rendered into French. I am sending a manuscript called The Garden of Avallaunius which I finished four years ago, and if the great man chances to like it, I suppose I shall have the curious fate of finding myself a French rather than an English author.”

Whether or not this translation and publication ever took place, I have been unable to discover. However, the Richards edition of 1907 was the first of almost half a score that have continued to be largely out of print up until the present time.