Happy Birthday Lord Dunsany!

 

“The Gibbelins eat, as is well known, nothing less good than man. Their evil tower is joined to Terra Cognita, to the lands we know, by a bridge. Their hoard is beyond reason; avarice has no use for it; they have a separate cellar for emeralds and a separate cellar for sapphires; they have filled a hole with gold and dig it up when they need it. And the only use that is known for their ridiculous wealth is to attract to their larder a continual supply of food. In times of famine they have even been known to scatter rubies abroad, a little trail of them to some city of Man, and sure enough their larders would soon be full again...”

“The Hoard of the Gibbelins”, from The Book of Wonder

On the 24^th of this month, Lord Dunsany turned 135.

Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett, 18^th Baron of Dunsany (24^th July 1878 to 25^th of October, 1957) was the inheritor of the second-oldest title in the Irish peerage and lived for most of his life at the seat of the baronetcy in Meath, Ireland, near the ancient castle of Tara. Throughout his life he wrote and published many works of fiction, including novels, short stories, plays and poems, generating a strong readership in his lifetime and greatly influencing fantastic literature from then on.

He began writing as part of the Irish Literary Revival alongside such luminaries as W.B. Yeats, Lady Gregory, Francis Ledwidge and Padraic Colum. His first published collection, The Gods of Pegāna (1905), he paid to have put into print, earning commission on sales; he never had to resort to doing this ever afterwards, his books achieving instant acclaim.

He enjoyed hunting and shooting and playing chess, once even playing Capablanca to a draw in an open exhibition. Strangely enough, he was also an outspoken activist for animal rights and a card-carrying member of the RSPCA. He was a prominent member of the Scouting movement also. During World War One he enlisted as a Captain in the Royal Inniskilling Fusiliers, having also served as a second-lieutenant with the Coldstream Guards in the Boer War. During World War Two, having moved to Shoreham in Kent, he served as a reservist and Home Guardsman in England’s most-bombed village during the Blitz. Along with his love of cricket and his extreme height (6’4”) he reads like a prototype for Dorothy L. Sayers’ character, Lord Peter Wimsey.

During the mid-point of his life, and having travelled the world promoting his writing, he left his ancestral home in the care of his only son Randal and moved to Kent, to continue his literary endeavours. It has been said that he experimented with writing forms to try and push them to their limits, before giving up and moving on to fresh challenges. His first novel, Don Rodriguez: Chronicles of Shadow Valley (1922), was criticised for being too episodic and rambling, indicating an unfamiliarity with the form in this first foray. Later novels, most notably The King of Elfland’s Daughter (1924), showed an acquired mastery of the style.

Dunsany's working process was idiosyncratic to say the least. He wrote whilst sitting on a hat crumpled on his chair. He wrote only with quill pens which he cut himself and never edited his work – all his drafts were final. His wife, Lady Dunsany Beatrice Child Villiers, typed up his manuscripts before they were sent to be published. It was said that he composed his stories whilst out hunting, gathering his family and friends around him afterwards to run his ideas by them. Incidentally, the hat was stolen by a visitor to Dunsany Castle.

For the most part, Dunsany’s tales are dreamlike and fantastic, concerned with mythical beings and fantasy lands. He did have some success however with his Jorkens books, a series of stories framed by the device of being told by Joseph Jorkens, a bibulous raconteur and mainstay of the fictional Billiards Club of London, for the price of a whiskey and soda.

In 1957, at the age of 79, Dunsany took ill whilst dining out with friends. Rushed to a hospital in Dublin, he died from what was later diagnosed as appendicitis. He was buried in Shoreham in Kent.

Lord Dunsany received many honorary degrees during his lifetime, from British and Irish institutions as well as from abroad. His influence upon the writing of the Twentieth Century is immense: J.R.R Tolkien, Robert E. Howard, Ursula K. Le Guin, Jorge Luis Borges, Jack Vance, Arthur C. Clarke, Michael Moorcock, Neil Gaiman, and Gary Myers – all have claimed to have been inspired by him and his influence is readily apparent. While on a lecture-tour of the United States, Lord Dunsany spoke before a crowd amongst whose number sat a young Howard Phillips Lovecraft and the flame of inspiration was set. HPL later said of his own works: “there are my ‘Poe’ pieces and my ‘Dunsany’ pieces – but alas – where are my Lovecraft pieces?”

Happy Birthday, Lord D.!