“MacDonald Month” wraps up with the first of two episodes on Lewis’ book, George MacDonald: An Anthology. Today David is joined by MacDonald scholar, Dr. Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson, to discuss the Preface.
S7E38: “MacDonald Month: George’s Anthology (Part I)” (Download)
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Show Notes
Introduction
Quote-of-the-week
This collection… was designed not to revive MacDonald’s literary reputation but to spread his religious teaching… It must be more than thirty years ago that I bought… Phantastes. A few hours later I knew that I had crossed a great frontier… What it actually did to me was to convert, even to baptise… my imagination. It did nothing to my intellect nor (at that time) to my conscience. Their turn came far later and with the help of many other books and men. But when the process was complete… I found that I was still with Macdonald and that he had accompanied me all the way and that I was now at last ready to hear from him much that he could not have told me at that first meeting. But in a sense, what he was now telling me was the very same that he had told me from the beginning. There was no question of getting through to the kernel and throwing away the shell: no question of a gilded pill. The pill was gold all through.
C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald: An Anthology (Preface)
Biographical Information
Dr. Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson first appeared on Pints With Jack back in Season 5 where she spoke about MacDonald and MacDonald’s book, “Phantastes”. Dr. Jeffrey Johnson is a George MacDonald scholar who lives in the Ottawa Valley, Canada.
She has written about him on popular blogs such as The Rabbit Room, as well as in academic journals like North Wind, Sehnsucht, and Linguaculture. She has contributed to various books on MacDonald, as well as new editions and adaptations of his works, as well as co-editing a book with Michael Partridge called “Informing the Inklings: George MacDonald and the Victorian Roots of Modern Fantasy”.
She has also spoken about MacDonald in Oxford, Cambridge, St Andrews, at numerous places in the US and Canada, as well as at various events hosted by the C.S. Lewis & Kindred Spirits Society in Romania.
Chit-Chat
- The George MacDonald Society is hosting the George MacDonald Bicentenary Conference in late May at Wheaton College.
- Dr. Jeffrey Johnson recently returned from the Conference on Christianity and Literature hosted by Trinity Western College, which had an Inklings section.
- In September, she will be attending the Southeast Christianity and Literature Conference.
- Dr. Jeffrey Johnson highlighted the Inkling Folk Fellowship that holds events throughout the year on Lewis and others close to him such as MacDonald.
Toast
- David had a Best Day Brewing Kölsch.
- Dr. Jeffrey Johnson was drinking Mayflower Hawthorne Tea.
Discussion
01. “Background”
Q. For those who didn’t catch your appearance on season five, can you tell our listeners a little more about yourself? How did you come to discover MacDonald, and how did he become an area of scholarly study?
- Dr. Jeffrey Johnson is the director of Windstone Farm Linlathen, a group that seeks to nurture relationships between the arts, ecology, and theology.
- In college, Dr. Jeffrey Johnson reread George MacDonald’s “The Golden Key”, a book she had not read since childhood. She related it to John Bunyan’s “The Pilgrim’s Progress”, a book she had read while taking a course on the author.
- Ultimately, she wrote her master’s dissertation on the educational nature of story. This drew her into J. R. R. Tolkien’s short fairy stories and Lewis’ collections of shorter essays, such as “Of This and Other Worlds”.
- Dr. Jeffrey Johnson’s PhD thesis – Rooted in all its Story, More is Meant than Meets the Ear:A Study of the Relational and Revelational Nature of George MacDonald’s Mythopoeic Art
- MacDonald interacts with other literature in an interesting way. David recently began “The Princess and Curdie”, and came across an “Isaiah” moment, described in the documentary The Fantasy Makers:
02. “Tollers on George”
Q. We’re recording this interview at the end of April 2024. Fellowship and Fairydust recently published a written interview with you. I did want to ask you about one thing you mentioned in the interview… J. R. R. Tolkien – what did he think of George MacDonald?
- Interview with George MacDonald Scholar Kirstin Jeffrey Johnson from Fellowship and Fairydust.
- Tolkien was clearly versed in MacDonald, as noted by C. S. Lewis…
Since term began I have had a delightful time reading a children’s story which Tolkien has just written. I have told of him before: the one man absolutely fitted, if fate had allowed, to be a third in our friendship in the old days, for he also grew up on W. Morris and George MacDonald. Reading his fairy tale has been uncanny—it is so exactly like what we wd. both have longed to write (or read) in 1916: so that one feels he is not making up but merely describing the same world into which all three of us have the entry.
C. S. Lewis, Letter to Arthur Greeves, (February 4th, 1933)
- However, when asked to write an introduction to “The Golden Key”, he becomes cranky about it, claiming to dislike MacDonald. Dr. Jeffrey Johnson attributes this to Tolkien’s frequent self-contradiction in his letters, as well as his age when he made these comments.
- He had openly acknowledged MacDonald’s influence in a letter published in a British newspaper, and he regularly read MacDonald to his children. Later on, he wrote “On Fairy-Stories”, modelled after MacDonald’s “The Fantastic Imagination”, and an essay that Tolkien claims was the most important work he ever wrote.
The Magical, the fairy-story, may be used as a Mirour de l’Omme; and it may (but not so easily) be made a vehicle of Mystery. This at least is what George Mac-Donald attempted, achieving stories of power and beauty when he succeeded, as in The Golden Key (which he called a fairy-tale); and even when he partly failed, as in Lilith (which he called a romance).
J. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories
To [Andrew Lang and George MacDonald] in different ways I owe the books which most affected the background of my imaginations since childhood.
J. R. R. Tolkien, On Fairy-Stories
- Perhaps it is providential that the “Golden Key” project fell through, because Tolkien went on to write “Smith of Wootton Major”, his last complete story.
03. “George MacDonald and His Wife”
Q. Let’s talk about the preface to George MacDonald: An Anthology. It begins with Lewis saying that his only sources of information about MacDonald are MacDonald’s own books and one biography. Is there anything about it which you think worth mentioning?
- In the question, David discussed the book “George MacDonald and His Wife”, written by Greville MacDonald, with an introduction by G. K. Chesterton. It is now available here. However, Dr. Jeffrey Johnson notes that his son, Greville, rather misrepresented his father in numerous instances by omitting material or altering it, due to the perception people had of George being overly provincial or debased.
- Joseph Johnson’s “George MacDonald: A Biographical and Critical Appreciation”, a book that Greville MacDonald helped edit, although later heavily criticised.
04. “Fatherhood”
Q. Lewis describes George MacDonald as having “An almost perfect relationship with his father [which] was the earthly root of all his wisdom. From his own father, he said, he first learned that Fatherhood must be at the core of the universe”. This is an inspiring statement but, as a father, I have to say it’s also rather intimidating! What was it about his father that left such a lasting positive impression on young George?
- George MacDonald’s relationship with God the Father was most likely influenced by the relationship that he had with his human Father, George senior.
He who seeks the Father more than anything He can give, is likely to have what he asks, for he is not likely to ask amiss.
George MacDonald
As a great Christian writer (George MacDonald) pointed out, every father is pleased at the baby’s first attempt to walk: no father would be satisfied with anything less than a firm, free, manly walk in a grown-up son. In the same way, he said, “God is easy to please, but hard to satisfy.”
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Book IV, Chapter 9)
- George MacDonald’s letters from his father reflect how ecumenical his father was, and how influential his words were on George’s life, as demonstrated in the poem “The Disciple”. They discuss many books, such as Charles Darwin’s “The Voyage of the Beagle”.
- MacDonald had a particular emphasis on the Father love of God, and C. S. Lewis promoted the same concept. As such, many people today view themselves as adult children of a Father God. But George MacDonald did not believe that people understood this concept deeply enough; not only is God the Father, but they must become childlike in turn. He discusses it further in his “Unspoken Sermons”; in fact the first chapter is called “The Child in Our Midst”. Dr. Jeffrey Johnson recently contributed a chapter to the book “An Introduction to Child Theology” which explores this topic.
- MacDonald repeats this concept throughout his corpus; the difference between being childish and maturing into a childlike state, and how people resist it, as seen in the little ones in “Lilith”, and Curdie in the “Princess” books.
- There is a scene in “The Great Divorce” where the character MacDonald chastized those who pleasured themselves with their book collections while refusing to read them.
“Do ye think so?” said the Teacher with a piercing glance. “It is nearer to such as you than ye think. There have been men before now who got so interested in proving the existence of God that they came to care nothing for God Himself … as if the good Lord had nothing to do but exist! There have been some who were so occupied in spreading Christianity that they never gave a thought to Christ. Man! Ye see it in smaller matters. Did ye never know a lover of books that with all his first editions and signed copies had lost the power to read them? Or an organiser of charities that had lost all love for the poor? It is the subtlest of all the snares.”
C. S. Lewis, The Great Divorce (Chapter 9)
- This same concept comes up in “The Last Battle” with Susan, who wants only to be grown up. David dives into this topic in a Half Pint episode with Kat Coffin.
“Oh Susan!” said Jill. “She’s interested in nothing nowadays except nylons and lipstick and invitations. She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown-up.”
“Grown-up, indeed,” said the Lady Polly. “I wish she would grow up. She wasted all her school time wanting to be the age she is now, and she’ll waste all the rest of her life trying to stay that age. Her whole idea is to race on to the silliest time of one’s life as quick as she can and then stop there as long as she can.”
C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (Chapter 12)
05. “Calvinism”
Q. Jack then speaks about George’s relationship with Calvinism. When you last appeared on the show, we spoke about MacDonald’s relationship with that theological system and some of the popular misconceptions about him in relation to this. Would you mind giving us a recap?
In most such stories [of someone rejecting Calvinism] the emancipated person, not content with repudiating the doctrines, comes also to hate the persons, of his forebears, and even the whole culture and way of life with which they are associated…. Of such personal resentment I find no trace in Macdonald… In this way Macdonald illustrates, not the doubtful maxim that to know all is to forgive all, but the unshakeable truth that to forgive is to know. He who loves, sees.
C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald: An Anthology (Preface)
- One person with particular influence on the MacDonald home was Thomas Chalmers, a Scottish Presbyterian minister. From a young age, MacDonald would recite several of his sermons.
- Many consider “Robert Falconer” to be MacDonald’s chief anti-Calvinist work. But MacDonald encourages readers to not view the characters as one-dimensional.
- Primarily, George MacDonald was against Christian schism…
Heartily do I throw this my small pebble at the head of the great Sabbath-breaker Schism.
George MacDonald, England’s Antiphon (Preface)
Bred in a land of religious division, his [my father’s] whole fight was against schism … He made no war upon the Church as he knew it—whether Independent, Presbyterian, or Anglican. His war was upon the faithlessness of the officially faithful, and, incidentally, only upon one or two Calvinistic and Augustinian dogmas exaggerated out of all proportion to their service.
Ronald MacDonald
This I find curiously consoling. It is at her centre, where her truest children dwell, that each communion is really closest to one another in spirit, if not in doctrine. And this suggests that at the centre of each there is a something, or a Someone, who against all divergences of belief, all differences of temperament, all memories of mutual persecution, speaks with the same voice.
C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (Preface)
06. “German Romanticism”
Q. Jack explains that when MacDonald was eighteen he spent “some months in the North of Scotland cataloguing the library of a great house”. Jack comments that it might have been there that he “first came under the influence of German Romanticism”. For those who are unaware, what is Romanticism and what kind of influence did it have on MacDonald?
- Dr. Jeffrey Johnson notes that there is little known about that library, and thus, little evidence that that is where George discovered Romanticism.
- In a letter to his wife, MacDonald talks about reading E. T. A. Hoffman’s “The Golden Pot” and loving it.
- Romanticism was a revolt against a dehumanising industrialisation, and an excessive scientism around nature. It emphasised the individual and the subjective, personal, and imaginative. Lewis took note of the good qualities of Romanticism, as well as some of the bad aspects…
It must be more than thirty years ago that I bought – almost unwillingly, for I had looked at the volume on the bookstall and rejected it on a dozen previous occasions—the Everyman edition of Phantastes. A few hours later I knew that I had crossed a great frontier. I had already been waist-deep in Romanticism; and likely enough, at any moment, to flounder into its darker and more evil forms, slithering down the steep descent that leads from the love of strangeness to that of eccentricity and thence to that of perversity.
C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald: An Anthology (Preface)
Now Phantastes was romantic enough in all conscience; but there was a difference. Nothing was at that time further from my thoughts than Christianity and I therefore had no notion what this difference really was. I was only aware that if this new world was strange, it’s also homely and humble; that if this was a dream, it was a dream in which one at least felt strangely vigilant; that the whole book had about it a sort of cool, morning innocence, and also, quite unmistakably, a certain quality of Death, good Death. What it actually did to me was convert, even to baptize (that was where the Death came in) my imagination.
C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald: An Anthology (Preface)
- Lewis’ favourite realistic novel of MacDonald’s was “What’s Mine’s Mine”, where MacDonald portrays Romanticism in conversation with rural highland Celtic life, and often criticises Romanticism in doing so.
- Lewis himself criticised MacDonald, but he found him to be a master of fantasy…
. . . the texture of his writing as a whole is undistinguished, at times fumbling. . . . What he does best is fantasy — fantasy that hovers between the allegorical and the mythopoeic. And this . . . he does better than any man.
C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald: An Anthology (Preface)
The “good” characters are always the best and most convincing. His saints live; his villains are stagey.
C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald: An Anthology (Preface)
I know hardly any other writer who seems to be closer, or more continually close, to the Spirit of Christ.
C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald: An Anthology (Preface)
- There are many characters in MacDonald’s literature that don’t remain bad people. This is shown in “Sir Gibbie” with the Unman, and Diamond in “At the Back of the North Wind”. He does this to demonstrate what we could be.
…[MacDonald’s] humour was of the kind which I like best… I liked him for his goodness.
C. S. Lewis, Surprised By Joy (Chapter 12)
Since it is so likely that [children] will meet cruel enemies, let them at least have heard of brave knights and heroic courage. Otherwise you are making their destiny not brighter but darker.
C. S. Lewis, On three ways of writing for Children
- Lewis wraps up the Preface with these words:
In making this collection I was discharging a debt of justice. I have never concealed the fact that I regarded him as my master; indeed I fancy I have never written a book in which I did not quote from him.
C. S. Lewis, George MacDonald: An Anthology (Preface)
07. “The Future of MacDonald”
Q. As we celebrate George’s 200th birthday this year, what are your hopes for the future of MacDonald studies?
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Wrap-Up
More Information
Concluding Thoughts
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