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    Gutta Percha Willie
    Gutta Percha Willie
    Gutta Percha Willie
    Ebook220 pages

    Gutta Percha Willie

    By George MacDonald and Michael Phillips

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    The story of an industrious young boy who seeks to bring goodness to the world—from the nineteenth-century Scottish author of Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood.

    While still editing the magazine Good Words for the Young, MacDonald wrote this second “boy’s novel,” unconnected with but written for a similar audience as Ranald Bannerman’s story. Inventive young Willie Macmichael turns everything about him to creative uses, hungrily learning from the grown-ups around him, prompting MacDonald’s subtitle, “The Working Genius.” Though one of MacDonald’s lesser-known titles, editor Michael Phillips comments, “MacDonald’s strongest and most eternal contribution to the world lies in the realm of spiritual practicality. Willie epitomizes the practicality of growing into one’s place in God’s general business. This story therefore deserves to be considered one of MacDonald’s memorable portrayals of that eternal imperative. I love this book!” Gutta Percha Willie was MacDonald’s only book published in 1873, released while he was on a lecture tour in America.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateNov 26, 2018
    ISBN9780795351952
    Gutta Percha Willie
    Author

    George MacDonald

    George MacDonald (1824-1905) was a popular Scottish lecturer and writer of novels, poetry, and fairy tales. Born in Aberdeenshire, he was briefly a clergyman, then a professor of English literature at Bedford and King's College in London. W. H. Auden called him "one of the most remarkable writers of the nineteenth century."

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      Book preview

      Gutta Percha Willie - George MacDonald

      Gutta Percha

      Willie

      George MacDonald

      Introductory material © 2018 by Michael Phillips

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review

      Electronic edition published 2018 by RosettaBooks

      ISBN (Kindle): 978-0-7953-5195-2

      www.RosettaBooks.com

      The Cullen Collection of the

      Fiction of George MacDonald

      1. Phantastes (1858)

      2. David Elginbrod (1863)

      3. The Portent (1864)

      4. Adela Cathcart (1864)

      5. Alec Forbes of Howglen (1865)

      6. Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood (1867)

      7. Robert Falconer (1868)

      8. Guild Court (1868)

      9. The Seaboard Parish (1868)

      10. At the Back of the North Wind (1871)

      11. Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood (1871)

      12. The Princess and the Goblin (1872)

      13. Wilfrid Cumbermede (1872)

      14. The Vicar’s Daughter (1872)

      15. Gutta Percha Willie (1873)

      16. Malcolm (1875)

      17. The Wise Woman (1875)

      18. St. George and St. Michael (1876)

      19. Thomas Wingfold Curate (1876)

      20. The Marquis of Lossie (1877)

      21. Paul Faber Surgeon (1879)

      22. Sir Gibbie (1879)

      23. Mary Marston (1881)

      24. Castle Warlock (1881)

      25. The Princess and Curdie (1882)

      26. Weighed and Wanting (1882)

      27. Donal Grant (1883)

      28. What’s Mine’s Mine (1886)

      29. Home Again (1887)

      30. The Elect Lady (1888)

      31. A Rough Shaking (1890)

      32. There and Back (1891)

      33. The Flight of the Shadow (1891)

      34. Heather and Snow (1893)

      35. Lilith (1895)

      36. Salted With Fire (1897)

      37. Far Above Rubies (1898)

      The introductions to the 37 volumes form a continuous picture of George MacDonald’s literary life, viewed through the prism of the development of his written legacy of works. While each book can of course be read on its own, every introduction picks up where that to the previous volume left off, with special attention to the title under consideration. The introductions together, as a biography of MacDonald’s life as a writer, are compiled in Volume 38.

      38. George MacDonald A Writer’s Life

      The Cullen Collection

      of the Fiction of George MacDonald

      New editions of George MacDonald’s classic fiction works updated and introduced by Michael Phillips

      CONTENTS

      Foreword to The Cullen Collection

      Introduction to Gutta Percha Willie

      NOTE: As the introductions to the 37 volumes of The Cullen Collection form a continuous portrait of George MacDonald’s life, and as many of the introductions contain comprehensive and detailed discussion and analysis of the title in question—its plot, themes, and circumstances of writing—some first-time readers may choose to skip ahead to the story itself, saving the introduction for later, so as not to spoil the story.

      1.     Who He Was and Where He Was

      2.     Willie’s Education

      3.     The Lesson of Smith and Watchmaker

      4.     Willie Serves an Apprenticeship

      5.     Willie Learns a Trade

      6.     Willie Learns to Read Before He Knew His Letters

      7.     Willie Goes to School

      8.     The Carpenter and the Waterwheel

      9.     The Priory Treasure

      10.   A Marvel of Streams and Lakes

      11.   A New Night Alarm

      12.   Some of the Sights Willie Saw

      13.   A New Scheme

      14.   Willie’s Nest in the Ruins

      15.   Willie’s Grandmother

      16.   Hydraulics

      17.   The Healing Well

      18.   Sunscout

      19.   A Talk With Grannie

      20.   A talk with Mr. Shepherd

      21.   The Treehouse

      22.   Bird Agnes’s Nest

      23.   Willie’s Plans Bud

      24.   Willie’s Plans Blossom

      25.   Willie’s Plans Bear Fruit

      "Papa seems so quietly happy."

      —Louisa MacDonald, May 4, 1872, from Deskford (near Cullen)

      "Papa does enjoy this place so much."

      —Louisa MacDonald, May 6, 1872 from the Seafield Arms Hotel, Cullen

      "Papa oh! so jolly & bright & happy…Papa was taken for Lord Seafield yesterday."

      —Louisa MacDonald, Sept. 2, 1873, from Cullen

      "Papa is very poorly. He ought to go to Cullen for a week I think."

      —Louisa MacDonald, October 5, 1873, from London

      FOREWORD

      The Cullen Collection

      of the Fiction of George MacDonald

      The series name for these works of Scotsman George MacDonald (1824-1905) has its origins in the 1830s when the boy MacDonald formed what would be a lifelong affection for the northeast Scottish village of Cullen.

      The ocean became young George’s delight. At the age of eleven, writing from Portsoy or Cullen, he announced to his father his intention to go to sea as a sailor—in his words, as soon as possible. The broad white beach of Cullen Bay, the Seatown, the grounds of Cullen House, the temple of Psyche (Temple of the Winds), Cullen Burn, the dwellings along Grant Street, Scarnose, and especially Findlater Castle, all seized the youth’s imagination with a love that never left him. MacDonald continued to visit Huntly and Cullen throughout his life, using his childhood love for his homeland as the backdrop for his richest novels, including what is arguably his greatest work of fiction, Malcolm, published in 1875.

      We therefore honor MacDonald’s unique relationship to Cullen with these newly updated editions of his novels. In Cullen, in certain respects more than in any other place, one finds the transcendent spirit of George MacDonald’s life and the ongoing legacy of his work still magically alive after a century and a half. This release of The Cullen Collection of the Fiction of George MacDonald coincides with a memorial bench and plaque established on Cullen’s Castle Hill commemorating MacDonald’s visits to the region.

      To those readers familiar with my previous editions of MacDonald’s novels, I should make clear that eighteen of the volumes in this new series are updated and expanded titles from the Bethany House series of the 1980s. Limitations of length dictated much about how those previous volumes were produced. To interest a publisher in the project during those years when MacDonald was a virtual unknown in the publishing world, certain sacrifices had to be made. Cuts to length had to be more severe than I would have preferred. Practicality drove the effort. Imperfect as they were in some respects, I am enormously grateful for those editions. They helped inaugurate a worldwide renaissance of interest in MacDonald. They were wonderful door-openers for many thousands into MacDonald’s world.

      Hopefully this new and more comprehensive set of MacDonald’s fiction will take up where they left off. Not constrained by the limitations that dictated production of the former volumes, these new editions, though identical at many points, have been expanded—sometimes significantly. In that sense they reflect MacDonald’s originals somewhat more closely, while still preserving the flavor, pace, and readability of their predecessors.

      Nineteen additional titles have been added to the original Bethany House series of novels. The thirteen realistic novels among these (including this one) have been updated according to the same priorities that guided the earlier Bethany House series. That process will be explained in more detail in the introductions to the books of the series. The final six which would more accurately be termed fantasy, have not been edited in any way. They are faithful reproductions of the originals exactly as they were first published. These six—Phantastes, At the Back of the North Wind, The Princess and the Goblin, The Wise Woman, The Princess and Curdie, and Lilith—are so well known and have been published literally in hundreds of editions through the years, that it has seemed best to reproduce them for The Cullen Collection with the same texts by which they are generally known.*

      Dedicated followers of all great men and women continually seek hints that reveal their inner being—the true man, the true woman. What were they really like? What made him or her tick? Many biographies and studies attempt to answer such questions. In George MacDonald’s case, however, a panorama of windows exists that reveals far more about his person than the sum-total of everything that has been written about him over the years. Those are the novels that encompass his life’s work. The volumes of this series represent the true spiritual biography of the man, a far more important biography than life’s details can ever tell.

      In 1911, six years after his father’s death, George MacDonald’s son Ronald wrote of the man with whom he had spent his life:

      "The ideals of his didactic novels were the motive of his own life…a life of literal, and, which is more, imaginative consistency with his doctrine…There has probably never been a writer whose work was a better expression of his personal character. This I am not engaged to prove; but I very positively assert…that in his novels…and allegories…one encounters...the same rich imagination, the same generous lover of God and man, the same consistent practiser of his own preaching, the same tender charity to the sinner with the same uncompromising hostility to the sin, which were known in daily use and by his own people counted upon more surely than sunshine." *

      Thirty years after the publication of my one-volume biography George MacDonald Scotland’s Beloved Storyteller, it now gives me great pleasure to present this thirty-seven-volume biography of the man, the Scotsman, the prophetic spiritual voice who is George MacDonald. *

      How fitting is the original title in which Ronald MacDonald’s sketch of his father quoted above first appeared, From A Northern Window. For any attempted portrait of the man George MacDonald becomes at once a window into his homeland as well.

      Therefore, I invite you to gaze back in time through the northern windows of these volumes. Picture yourself perhaps near the cheerful hearth described in the opening pages of What’s Mine’s Mine, looking out the window to the cold seas and mountains in the distance, where perhaps you get a fleeting glimpse of highlanders Ian and Alister Macruadh.

      Or imagine yourself walking up Duke Street in Huntly from MacDonald’s birth home, following in the footsteps of fictional Robert Falconer to the town square.

      Or envision yourself on some windswept highland moor with Gibbie or Cosmo Warlock.

      Or walk up the circular staircase of Fyvie Castle to Donal Grant’s tiny tower hideaway where he began to unravel the mysteries of that ancient and spooky place.

      Or walk from Cullen’s Seatown alongside Malcolm selling the fish in his creel, turning at the Market Cross into Grant Street and continuing past Miss Horn’s house and up the hill to the entrance of the Cullen House grounds.

      Or perhaps climb Castle Hill to the George MacDonald memorial bench and gaze across the sweep of Cullen Bay to Scarnose as Malcolm’s story comes to life before your eyes.

      From any of these settings, whether real or imaginary, drift back through the years and gaze through the panoramic windows of these stories, and take in with pleasure the drama, relationships, images, characters, settings, and spiritual truths George MacDonald offers us as we are drawn into his world.

      Michael Phillips

      Cullen, Morayshire

      Scotland, 2017

      INTRODUCTION

      Finding One’s Place in the General Business

      George MacDonald’s expanding reputation in the early 1870s as a writer of children’s books is a theme we have discussed in connection with several of his titles. It is a continuing story, of which Gutta Percha Willie might be considered the fourth chapter. *

      Gutta Percha Willie falls into this category as first appearing in Good Words for the Young. As we saw in the case of Ranald Bannerman’s Boyhood, however, which is in some ways its companion, the children’s label is an oversimplification.

      Young Willie’s story came at a unique time in MacDonald’s life. While writing the book early in 1872, he was looking ahead to the most adventurous lecture tour of his life, which would comprise eight months across the pond in the United States. The story began serialization in Good Words for the Young probably about the same time that MacDonald, accompanied by wife and son Greville, his future biographer, sailed for America in September of that year.

      Though Willie’s story bears no direct connection to the trip, the fact that its publication took place simultaneous with the America tour forever links the two events in MacDonald’s biography. Therefore, in placing Gutta Percha Willie into the continuum of his life, we must detour across the Atlantic with MacDonald.

      Before we do, however, a pivotal relationship must be mentioned that was in large measure responsible for the tour, and was foundational (perhaps the first) in establishing a steadily growing coterie of friends, publishers, and literary associations in America, all of whom would play important roles in MacDonald’s future writing life.

      Those many and fruitful American relationships likely began with the editor of Scribner’s Magazine of New York, Dr. Josiah Holland, and his assistant Richard W. Gilder.

      Whoever it was that initiated contact, Josiah Holland was assuredly an admirer of MacDonald’s work, with the result that Scribner’s Magazine serialized Wilfrid Cumbermede in 1870-71. Thus began what would quickly ripen into a long-lasting friendship between MacDonald and the American publisher.

      Whatever ongoing correspondence may have existed between the two men, Holland had at some point expressed high praise for MacDonald’s work. The following is a letter from MacDonald in May of 1871, halfway through the Cumbermede serialization.

      The Retreat, Hammersmith

      London, May 27, 1871

      My dear sir,

      It is indeed high time that I should answer your most kind letter. I have been and am oppressed with work…It is nearly three years since I undertook a revision of my poems for a new edition. I thought it would occupy me three months, & they are still unfinished—although now the end is within sight.

      I thank you heartily for your kind words, and I cannot but be very glad that what I have been able to write has, under your pilotage, found its way to so many sympathizing readers…I have already found that our ways of thinking are so much alike as to be to me almost amusing from the resemblance…It is to me very gratifying to read such words from… America. You are not always well represented here, & for my part I should be very sorry [if] England, Scotland or Ireland should be judged by some of those who crop to your hospitable shores. The day may come when I may have the honour of saying in person to you how much we think of you as our own flesh & blood—I find my Scotch clannishness a most elastic material, & think of it as only one form of a rudimental form of love to all men.

      My serial [The Princess and the Goblin, then running in Good Words for the Young] will & must lap over into the second year, for that is the notion of the magazine for which I am writing it here. I hope that will not interfere with your plans. I am afraid it cannot well be helped, except I were to finish it, and let you print double quantities for the rest of the volume. I would make a push to do that if you wished.

      I do think of running over to America some day, & giving some lectures. I am fond of lecturing on some literary subjects—poetry and Shakespeare chiefly. What do you, in your friendship, think of the scheme?…I have never touched a cent of American money, and when I tell you that I have eleven children, and no patrimony, you will understand that it may be something else than love of money that would make me wish to get something out of America in return for the books of mine they have printed there to a much greater extent than at home.

      By the way—if you should know of any publisher printing Robert Falconer—I think he would do so from the three vol. edition and let me make one or two slight alterations first. There are 100 pages more in that edition than in the cheap one, & and I am sorry I even consented to abridge it so far.

      Forgive my egotism. What would complete sets of your standard American poets cost me? Please let me know.

      With renewed thanks & best wishes, Yours, my dear sir

      Most truly,

      George MacDonald. ¹

      A portion of this letter was quoted in the introduction to Robert Falconer, where MacDonald laments having edited that book for its Second Edition. There are many other points of interest in the letter, not the least of which is the apparent genesis of the America tour, and MacDonald’s comment that he has never touched a cent of American money. It is an altogether strange thing for MacDonald to say in a letter to a publisher who is at that very moment running one of his books in his magazine—especially in that their letters sound more like a mutual admiration society than a business correspondence.

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