The Hoofmarks of the Faun, Arthur Ransome (365 Books, Day 223)

[rushthatspeaks]

I was raised on Arthur Ransome's Swallows and Amazons books, those practical and wild and good-humored works about children who get to camp and sail and fish and play-war and climb mountains just that touch more than anyone I knew ever quite did. My father read me the entire series, when I was small, and that is probably why I enjoy camping.

When I was a bit older, I read E. R. Eddison's magnificent The Worm Ouroboros, as one does, one of the greatest of the pre-Tolkien fantasies, with its real fifteenth-century language and its heroes out of some unknown epic, and I loved it.

And when I was a bit older than that, I found out that Eddison and Ransome were friends; dear friends, close friends, friends of the heart, that Ransome was the primary manuscript-reader for The Worm Ouroboros and that as boys together they made world upon world out of sagas. I have seen Eddison's handwriting, very runic, inscribing one of the Zimiamvia books 'for Arthur', at a rare books show.

The question that immediately crossed my mind, of course, was why in the name of wonder Ransome never wrote any fantasy, then. A collection of retold Russian folktales, certainly, which is relatively famous, but that isn't quite the same, and from that day to this it has bothered me.

Thrud brought home a rare book catalog the other night, and in the midst of the various things for which I would give my eyeteeth or possibly my left kidney there was listed this book by Arthur Ransome I had never heard of, with an intriguing title. I looked it up, and while it is sufficiently obscure not to make it into, say, his Wikipedia entry, it is the same Arthur Ransome, and it exists free for download on the internet, and what do you know, the man wrote fantasy.

I feel existentially better, knowing this.

Mind you, I am not saying it is brilliant. It was very early in his writing, almost juvenilia, coming out in 1911 when he was twenty-seven, and the first of the Swallows and Amazons books not till 1929; the only thing I can find he'd published before this is a history of Bohemian life in London (1907), which I have to locate. And the five stories and one critical essay in this collection were written earlier than they were collected, as early as 1905 in one case, and oh, you can tell, you can tell.

But his prose has got the bones of the practical, flexible solidity he'd have in later life, though you can see Eddison around the edges of his adjectives, and despite a certain juvenile pretentiousness these tales are solid at the core. There are two about fauns, which are really about love disappointed, and both of them work, atmospherically and otherwise; and there's one that is a fantasy about dream-sharing which suffers from terribly purple rhetoric but has a serious emotional bite if you are familiar with a certain set of British folk beliefs. (The lyke road. He did the lyke road. I wish it were better.) The critical essay is incredibly awful, exactly the sort of thing people write when they're trying to Become Serious Critics And Influence The World-- it is winceworthy and I am very glad his later career as an investigative reporter beat this sort of dreck out of him. There's a very good not-quite-fantasy about obsession and insanity and snakes that suffers moderately from orientalism and moderately from anticlimax but indicates, and this confuses me, that if so inclined he could have turned into A. Merritt, but he didn't want to.

And then there's 'Rolf Sigurdson', which is why you should download this, because it is Arthur Ransome correctly doing Norse mythology, in the tone of the sagas, and I cannot even tell you how happy a thing that is. That is a thing I had not even expected from the book title. Just go read that one, I can't even. I suppose it is possible you have to have my emotional associations for this to be that awesome a story but it is like tying my entire childhood together and if you were raised on Ransome and Norse this is for you, this is yours.

I will certainly be trying to hunt down an accurate bibliography and the rest of his obscure works, now. This is definitely minor work but it makes me so happy I don't care. I should know better than to trust the insides of dust jackets for a list of what a person's written.

Comments

[starlady]

Oh, fascinating. The Worm Ouroboros is one of my favorite books in its way, despite the fact that my copy has a printing error around the 2/3 mark and I never have read the missing chapter.

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Wow - first Wittgenstein on The Golden Bough and now this! Keep turning up unanticipated combinations, please.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I don't actually do it on purpose-- I just spend a fair amount of time looking through card catalogs and other reference material, and I'm good at remembering to look up things that seem odd/interesting from those-- but believe me, I will keep trying, because this has been very pleasant.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Even Arthur Ransome could not make me like camping. I adored his books, and I gave camping another try after reading them. Ah well.

I will look for the free download of this.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

The Norse bit of this had 'For Mris' written all over it.

What is it you don't like about camping-- the obvious reasons, or something else? I ask from curiosity because everyone assumes I ought to hate camping, and I don't, and my reasons are not the usual ones, so I am always interested by other people's views on the subject.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It's the, um, camping part.

Seriously, I love hiking. I can hike all day in perfect bliss. I can have a meal on the go while hiking and not bat an eye. In fact, this was a major activity for the friends with whom Arthur Ransome was a big thing: we lived near a huge wooded park that year, and Peggy--uh, Hilary--lived on an acreage, so there were options for running about in the woods. Hiking is one of the things that I missed a lot when the vertigo was at its worst, and I'm still afraid I'll lose it again if it gets bad again.

But once it comes to the end of the day, or the beginning of the day...I wear contact lenses, and I like to wear contact lenses. This is not a trivial detail, it's a symbolic one. At the end of a day of hiking, I want a hot shower, I want a comfortable bed, and I want reliable climate control.

My (adopted) brother's gf has been hauled camping with him, and I said, "Brother mine, you have found someone who loves you more than I do." She loyally said that it was better to freeze in October than to swelter in August and the stars were Really Quite Nice. Me, I'm just glad that I'm not dating anybody...like that. Because freezing and sweltering are not options for sleeping.

I once told papersky that I bet she didn't realize we had been camping together. She had not realized. But in my family (I explained) camping is when you go all the way down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. Which we have done together. (The other sign of camping is when the hotel pool is outdoors.) Upon consideration, she decided she would be willing to camp with me again at some future date, should it be convenient.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

... that is an awesome definition of camping. It is one I totally endorse, and now I enjoy two different types of camping. Nifty.

My back is so bad that I have no more trouble sleeping on open ground than I do on any mattress known to humanity. Since I was quite young, it's been, well, I'm going to hurt when I wake up this morning, so why therefore should I have to stop hiking to go in to bed?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That makes particular sense if you're not all that sensitive to temperature variations etc. At that point, indeed, why not? I am. So it's just less fun.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

the only thing I can find he'd published before this is a history of Bohemian life in London (1907), which I have to locate

Next time you're in Newcastle, come by. I was flicking through this in the Lit & Phil just a couple of months back, adding it mentally to my I-want-to-read-every-book-in-this-library list.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Ooh. I will keep that in mind.

If I'm ever in Newcastle, I will of course let you know. It has become silly that I've never been to England. There is a vague hope of sometime in the next year.

[desperance.livejournal.com]

(And did you know he wrote a very early study of Oscar Wilde, about 1910 or so, when Wilde's name was still a hissing of the multitude?)

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

I saw that in the Wikipedia entry! And Bosie sued him for libel. I want to look up more about that whole thing.

[deliasherman.livejournal.com]

I adore Ransome. Swallows and Amazons was (to me, an asthmatic child who very seldom did anything more adventurous than walk to the corner) one of the great fantasy novels of my childhood. He didn't refer to consensual reality, he created a separate reality of his own, where children had that kind of adventure and enjoyed it and survived. The fact that he knew Eddison (who I also adore--the touchstone book of my adolescence was Mistress of Mistresses) makes perfect sense when I come to think about it. As does the fact that he wrote fantasy short stories. Which I now have to go read.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Eddison and Ransome used to sit around together as preteens at the summer house at that lake and write epics and sail. I love that fact so much I can't even tell you.

[sovay]

but indicates, and this confuses me, that if so inclined he could have turned into A. Merritt, but he didn't want to.

. . . Did it have Nergal?

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

No, but it easily could have. It had the thing where the narrative voice is hard-bitten and snarky but the characters are serious characters with psychological stuff while at the same time being blood and thunder pulp. I would have liked to see Ransome do more of that.

[sovay]

It had the thing where the narrative voice is hard-bitten and snarky but the characters are serious characters with psychological stuff while at the same time being blood and thunder pulp.

That, by Ransome, would have been fascinating.

[nineweaving.livejournal.com]

Bagged! (Well, downloaded, but thank you so much for finding this.)

And fauns! How 1911 of him. As Max Beerbohm slyly noted, "From the time of Nathaniel Hawthorne to the outbreak of the war, current literature did not suffer from any lack of fauns....We had not yet tired of them and their hoofs and their slanting eyes and their way of coming suddenly out of woods to wean quiet English villages from respectability."

The Norse mythology--just marvellous and unexpected.

Nine

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

The entire book is so 1911 I could probably have dated it just from reading it if I hadn't had the date.

[maya-a.livejournal.com]

Thank you for this fabulous information! I had no idea. I have to hunt down Hoofmarks instantly, and then Rolf.

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

'Rolf Sigurdson' is one of the stories in the collection Hoofmarks.

[larryhammer]

Snagged. Thanks!

---L.