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Dunsany has to be one of my favourite all time authors, unlike Wells and Thackery though he wasn't nearly as prolific so I'm trying to savour his remaining works for as long as I can. This means that I only buy lovely old editions of his work when I find them cheap on ebay. Recently I managed to find a beautiful, apparently signed, second edition of Fifty One Tales for £10. (Usually the reprints go for more than that.)
I have to say I think it is my favourite short story collection to date. The tales are more glimpses or thoughts than actual stories. But they are all very evocative. The stories collected here all tended to deal with death and decay, the transience of all things, particularly man and cities. There were also several stories with references to Pan, which were brilliant, though far more hopeful than the rest. There was a lovely little tale about a Puritan who tried to ban dancing because it led to sex and how the devil came and claimed him at the end and thanked him for doing his work. There was a conversation between a worm and an angel, pagan sacrifices at Stonehenge, dinner with death, mistaking fame for notoriety and so many other wonderful things. I wish I could copy it all out, but I'll just write the first story. If you've not read any Dunsany you should, he's simply rather perfect.
I have to say I think it is my favourite short story collection to date. The tales are more glimpses or thoughts than actual stories. But they are all very evocative. The stories collected here all tended to deal with death and decay, the transience of all things, particularly man and cities. There were also several stories with references to Pan, which were brilliant, though far more hopeful than the rest. There was a lovely little tale about a Puritan who tried to ban dancing because it led to sex and how the devil came and claimed him at the end and thanked him for doing his work. There was a conversation between a worm and an angel, pagan sacrifices at Stonehenge, dinner with death, mistaking fame for notoriety and so many other wonderful things. I wish I could copy it all out, but I'll just write the first story. If you've not read any Dunsany you should, he's simply rather perfect.
The Assignation
FAME singing in the highways and trifling as she sang, with sordid adventures, passed the poet by.
And still the poet made for her little chaplets of song to deck her forehead in the courts of time : and still she wore instead the worthless garlands, that boisterous citizens flung to her in the ways, made out of perishable things.
And after awhile whenever these garlands died the poet came to her with his chaplets of song; and still she laughed at him and wore the worthless wreaths, though they always died in the evening.
And one day in his bitterness the poet rebuked her, and said to her: "Lovely Fame, even in the highways and the byways you have not forborne to laugh and shout and jest with worthless men, and I have toiled for you and dreamed for you and you mock me and pass me by."
And fame turned her back on him and walked away, but in departing she looked over her shoulder and smiled at him as she had not smiled before, and, almost speaking in a whisper, said;
"I will meet you in the graveyard at the back of the Workhouse in a hundred years."