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Healing Springs and Baptismal Water
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WATERWHEELS, HEALING SPRINGS
AND BAPTISMAL WATER: GEORGE MACDONALD'S GUTTA PERCHA WILLIE:
THE WORKING GENIUS
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Michael Düring
True, I have not set forth at Large the Excellent
nature and Quality thereof, nor can that so be done by Pen or
Tongue of Men or Angels.
John Bunyan - The Water of Life.
George MacDonald's Gutta Percha Willie was
first published in book form in 1873, although it had appeared in
serial form in Good Words for the Young in 1872, when
MacDonald was editing this journal. He had published a boy's adventure
story, Ranald Bannerman's Boyhood in 1871, but otherwise
his writing for children up to that time had been confined to his
very successful modern fairy tales, particularly At the Back
of the North Wind (1871) and The Princess and the Goblin
(1872), both first published in Good Words for the Young.
For his story of Willie, who wants to participate
in the "general business of the world" (51), MacDonald
again turns towards a more conventional tale, in which the reader
waits in vain for the approach of supernatural beings. He endeavours
to make do without much help from the fantasy approach, just as
in his "realistic" novels for adults. The book could be
said to be the equivalent in his repertoire for children of his
adult novel Robert Falconera novel of development which
ends with the hero loving his neighbour more than himself. To write
a work of this sort which does not adopt the form of a traditional
book of instruction for children demands a measure of wonder, and
the reader too must have an aptitude for wonder: "There are
people who the more they understand, wonder the less; but such are
not growing straight; they are growing crooked" (37). These
lines lie programatically at the beginning of the story suggesting
a maxim for growing up. During the course of the story it is the
constant questioning, wondering and posing of questions which finally
makes Willie Macmichael a renowned medical practitioner.
As in MacDonald's earlier children's books, there
is a wise advising grandmother figure who sits at the spinning wheel
telling her story "with the needle and thread of her imagination"
(11). As with Irene's grandmother in The Princess and the Goblin,
the reader does not discover the content of most of Mrs Wilson's
tales, and she does not directly interfere with the plot. But one
tale which is very different from her usual fine stories is
summarised and, as a consequence of Willie's righteous indignation
at this tale, Mrs Wilson is obliged to teach Willie how to
knit, which, metaphorically, allows him to take up the threads of
imagination himself.
At first sight the story seems to be very simply
structured. Williealways whole-heartedly friendly and keen
to helpacquires the most varied skills in order to be useful
and find his place in society. To begin with, from the already mentioned
knitting, through making shoes and smithying, he extends his craft-skills
to the construction of a water wheel, watering systems and a tree
house. Ultimately, through chemical experiments and physiological
healing, he becomes a renowned doctor. Nevertheless, this apparently
simple plot-structure proves to be varied and complex. The book
invites the reader to a way of observing that goes beyond the literal
Victorian imagination to encompass the scientific and technological
imagination. The latter imagination especially is brought into connections
with other aspects of MacDonald's thinking. MacDonald potentises
his fantasy romances, children's books and novels in such obscure
symbolic ways that it has been difficult for critics hitherto to
decode all their signs, especially one of his favouriteswater.
He was attracted all his life to its enlivening wetness. Water thus
takes central place in the present study, where some extraordinary
physio-chemical properties of water will be examined. MacDonald's
scientific bent can be followed right into the laboratory of Justus
von Liebig, and how it manifests in Gutta Percha Willie will
be shown. A further section shows how, in the Victorian context,
water was given a special, primarily religious role, and how this
found its way into literature. The last two sections witness to
the healing effect of water and to the mechanical component of this
source of energy and life.
1. Streams of Life
I am a bubble upon thy ever moving, restless sea.
Line of verse written by MacDonald at Broadlands,
1877.
MacDonald grew up in Huntly, a small town in Aberdeenshire
on the rivers Deveron and Bogie. The latter river had "no small
share in inspiring the lads of Strathbogie" (Greville MacDonald
20). MacDonald at one period wished to become a sailor, writing
to his father that "the sea is my delight" (qtd. in Greville
66). Waterthe rivers and the seabelong to the childhood
loves which continued to provide him with joy his whole life long.
In Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood his hero calls these "infantile
predilections" and observes: "I never get rid of [them],
and to have once enjoyed making a mud bridge was to enjoy all bridges
for ever" (9).
Through the eternally flowing water, MacDonald
believes he is nearer to the spirit of love in a religious sense,
and, moreover, to participating in eternal life and in the eternal
goodness of the Creator. These thoughts are revealed in lines from
a poem which he gave as his wedding present to his wife Louisa in
1851, and subsequently included in Within and Without.
Love me beloved: for both must lie
Under the earth and beneath the sky;
The world be the same when we are gone;
The leaves and the waters all sound
on;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
The sea, the lordly, the gentle sea,
Tell the same tales to others than
thee;
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . .
And thou shalt be mine, my spirit's
bride
In the ceaseless flow of eternity's
tide
(Poetical Works Bk. 1. 79).
MacDonald was advised to visit the seaside often
because of his lung diseases, and he testifies to the strengthening
effect of the water and sea air in several letters to his family.
In 1880 the family moved to Bordighera on the Italian Riviera for
the sake of his health and that of some of his children. He spent
every winter there until 1904 when, two years after his wife's death,
he returned to England where he died in 1905.
2. The miracle of Water
Given MacDonald's strong connection with the sea
and the positive effect of water upon his health, it is not surprising
that Willie Macmichael uses the healing power of water for his patients.
But what is it about water from its physio-chemical aspect which
makes it such a remarkable substance and causes it to inspire a
writer like MacDonald? Thales of Milet believed that water is the
primal substance, out of which everything arises and in which everything
ends. He knew 2500 years ago that it is the only substance found
in nature in all three states: solid, liquid and gaseous. The water
molecule consists of two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygenH2O.
Consequently its structure is similar to Tellurium hydride, H2Te;
Selenium hydride, H2Se; and Hydrogen sulphide H2S. One would expect
the densest of these four, Tellurium hydride, with a molecular weight
of 129, to have the highest boiling and freezing points. But it
boils at -4 deg. C and freezes at -51 deg. C. As might be estimated
from this, Selenium hydride, with a molecular weight of 34, boils
at -61 deg. C and freezes at -82 deg. C. Yet water, with a molecular
weight of only 18which should boil at around -80 deg. C and
freeze at around -100 deg. Cactually boils at 100 deg. C and
freezes at 0 deg. C. Thus it can appear naturally in all three states.
Still more astonishing is the fact that frozen
water floats. The general rule states that a substance, regardless
of its state, reduces its volume (i.e. contracts) as it cools. Water
follows this rule down to 4 deg. C. Yet then the density steadily
reduces till 0 deg. C is reached where the expansion leads abruptly
and drastically to freezing point with an increase in the volume
of about 9%. Burst pipes and road potholes are a well known consequence
of this phenomenon. But if water froze from below upwards, aquatic
life could not exist.
Water is also unique in its high specific heatthe
amount of heat required to warm a given mass of a substance by a
given amount. It can dissolve a remarkable number of other substances.
Its power of hydrationthe ability to bind other substances
to itselfis also remarkable. A moment's reflection will show
how crucial all these unique properties are to the existence of
life.
MacDonald studied natural science at Aberdeen University.
It was his wish in 1845 to travel to Gießen to continue his studies
in chemistry there in the famous laboratory of Justus von Liebig,
but financial circumstances prevented this.
Liebig's investigations demonstrated the take-up
of chemical substances in plant growth, using his knowledge of osmosis
(exmosis and endomosis), a process dependent on the properties of
cohesion and adhesion of water. He not only recognised that plants
have essential minimum mineral needs for growth, but he was able
to synthesise these mineralsthe NPK (Nitrogen, Phosphorous,
Potassium) and other minerals of present-day artificial fertilisers.
He first produced super-phosphate (a product of calcium sulphate,
calcium phosphate and water) from ground-up bones, and this was
already being used as a fertiliser by 1845. Through the intercessions
of Alexander von Humboldt, Liebig was appointed to the chair of
Chemistry at Gießen at the age of twenty one. Initially it was his
work on the cyanide dyes which made him famous, but he is now best
known as the father of agricultural chemistry.
Although unable to study with Liebig, MacDonald
was well acquainted with his work. This can be seen in Gutta
Percha Willie and Robert Falconer. Even Liebig's early
research on dyes is alluded to in Gutta Percha Willie where
"sesquiferrocyanide of iron" (Berlin Blue) is mentioned
(178). Parts of these two books are autobiographical. Although Robert
Falconer at Aberdeen University does not explicitly pursue chemical
studies, he first studies the classics and then the natural sciences
in order eventually to train as a doctor. Willie achieves the same
objective by different means, but, to judge from the syllabus he
follows, also apparently attends Aberdeen University. Anyone interested
in chemistry can form an idea of the nature of Willie's experiments
in his home-made laboratory. His eight-year-old sister picks up
names like "phosphuretted hydrogen, metaphosphoric acid,
sesquiferrocyanide of iron" (178), all of which directly
recall Liebig's discoveries.
MacDonald most likely had several scientists in
mind as models for Willie, such as Francis Bacon, the scientific
pioneer and anticipator of English empiricism, whose inductive method
for the exploration of nature was taken up by Liebig. MacDonald
suggests that Bacon was the inspirer of Willie's medical researches
(200). He must have known Liebig's Chemische Briefe of 1844,
because he adopts Liebig's attitude to the knowledge of nature and
depicts his protagonists accordingly:
Herein lies the divine in the origin of the
Christian teaching, that we are indebted for the possession
of truththe right thinking of a sublime being who is above
every worldnot to the human path of empirical research
but to a higher illumination. (Chemische Briefe 28).
In his Unspoken Sermons Vol. 3 MacDonald
offers an explanation of chemical combination which illuminates
his approach in Gutta Percha Willie:
What, I ask, is the truth of water? Is it that
it is formed of hydrogen and oxygen?That the chemist has
now another mode of stating the fact of water, will not
affect my illustration. His new mode will probably be one day
yet more antiquated than mine is now.Is it for the sake
of the fact that hydrogen and oxygen combined form water, that
the precious thing exists? Is oxygen-and-hydrogen the divine
idea of water? Or has God put the two together only that man
might separate and find them out? [. . .] Find for us what in
the constitution of the two gases makes them fit and capable
to be thus honoured in forming the lovely thing, and you will
give us a revelation about more than water, namely about the
God who made oxygen and hydrogen. [. . .] this lovely thing
itself, whose very wetness is a delight [. . .] I would have
running through my room, yea, babbling along my tablethis
water is its own self its own truth, and is therein a truth
of God (467-69).
When related to his literary works, these words
reveal MacDonald's main concernthe "divine origin,"
sometimes dressed in symbols difficult to decode. Water proves here
to be a symbol, and it carries a religious meaning in many of MacDonald's
books. What he hopes for in his Unspoken Sermons, he carries
out in his fictional works, so that in "The Carasoyn"
the hero Colin diverts a little burn so that it does indeed flow
through his cottage (218-19). Willie, too, with his friend Sandy,
the son of the carpenter, realises this dream of MacDonald's. After
they reinstate an ancient spring the small farmhouse is able to
enjoy flowing water. Willie feels that "[i]t would have been
such fun" to have it "running through the house all the
hot summer day." (91) and when with help from Sandy's father
he constructs a room for himself in the priory ruins he does have
water flowing in an open channel through the room (138-42). Next
to its practical usefulness, this flowing water certainly also bears
a symbolic religious significance which must now be investigated
in further detail.
3. The religious meaning of streams, baths and springs
There flowed over the Victorians a flood of unbeliefa
"flood of infidelity," as Charles Kingsley calls it (Water
100)called up through the discoveries in the realm of natural
science. MacDonald recognised that there is a great danger in exploring
individual things because in the attempt one can lose all recognition
of the complexity of the creation with the Creator at its centre.
His concern is expressed in a quotation from The Miracles of
Our Lord: "The miracles are mightier far than any goings-on
of nature as beheld by common eyes, dissociating them from a living
Will; but the miracles are surely less than those mighty goings
on of nature with God beheld at their heart" (4).
Many of MacDonald's contemporaries were concerned
to renew the spiritual climate of the age. J. H. Buckley argues
that the motif of a spiritual birth is connected to baptismal rites
of the most varied forms: "Everywhere throughout nineteenth-century
England, the virtues of water as an agent of purificationin
every sense of the wordwere sung with strenuous insistence"
(99). Taking Kingsley's The Water Babies as an exemplary
children's book, Buckley shows the cleansing and regenerative effects
of a symbolic baptism. Cleaned and purified, the former chimney
sweep Tom emerges out of the sea and is allowed to go homewards
(heavenwards) with Ellie on Sundays.
In the Curdie books especially, MacDonald
uses complex water symbolism, but it cannot be pursued in detail
here. Princess Irene undergoes a face-washing (12), a foot-washing
(64) then a cleansing and enlivening bath like Tom's (124-25).
After the death of Irene and Curdie the kingdom falls. All
that remains is a river meandering through the ruins of the once
rich and happy countrya river such as we know from the closing
parts of The Pilgrim's Progress. The MacDonald family's deep
connection to Bunyan is mentioned by many biographers. It is thus
no surprise that many of MacDonald's stories describe a pilgrim-path
similar to that of Bunyan's Christian. Thus it ought not to be a
surprise that The Princess and Curdie ends with a great river
flowing through a desert of crumbling ruins.
Willie has a dream of renewing water. He sees his
teacher and friend, the shoemaker Hector Macallaster, in a bed surrounded
by water in one of an endless row of chambers, each with its sleeping
patient surrounded by flowing water (201). From one aspect, the
river flowing through the row of chambers and expressing endlessness
is the river of death, beyond which lies what Bunyan calls "the
celestial city." The idea of death is thus freed from all fear
and Willie can bear the thought of the death of his friend without
fear and anguish. When Hector first comes to know Willie he explains
to the boy that only that which dies starts to live properly. Speaking
of the seed sown into the ground he tells him that: "When it
dies it growsand not till then" (53). As Bunyan says
in his allegory using the words of the New Testament (Rev. 22.1):
"The Water of Life springing up in us into Everlasting Life"
(70). Willie's dream more powerfully calls up the image of the river
of life. In MacDonald's as in Bunyan's world of imagination, the
"Water of Life" witnesses to the sublimity of the goodness
of God. "The Grace of God is compared to Water, for that it
is which causeth fruitfulness. Water causes fruitfulness, want of
Water is the cause of barrenness, and this is why the whole world
is empty of Fruit to God-ward" (Water 9).
MacDonald uses water as a symbol for eternal life
without misusing the children's book as a preaching text. At the
same time, waterthe primal element of which the Bible says
in the creation story "darkness was upon the face of the deep.
And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters" (Gen.
1.2)also serves him to point towards the increasing spiritual
dryness of modern life and the consequent need for spiritual balm.
For MacDonald, as well as for Bunyan, literature offered itself
alongside his sermons as a suitable medium to propagate a spiritual
new birth and to contribute to the healing of humanity.
Willie decides to follow in his father's footsteps
and study medicine. Yet he is not completely decided and discusses
the matter with their neighbour, the parson Mr Shepherd. This name
will hardly fail in its symbolic effect, and it points again to
the spiritual relationship with Bunyan. Thus it is no surprise that
in the discussion Willie expresses the wish also to be able to heal
spiritually. Symbolically this aspect is later realised through
his marriage with the parson's daughter Monaa wedding of religion
and science. Willie the physician will also heal sick souls.
4. Hydrotherapy - medical use of water
As already mentioned, Willie and his friend Sandy
discover in the priory ruins an ancient spring. This chalybeate
spring has rejuvenating and healing powers, as it contains ingredients
which prevent the iron from being in any way harmful (148). If we
interpret this discovery as indicating a biblical source, then Psalm
105.41 suggests itself: "He opened the rock and the waters
gushed out; they ran in the dry places like a river." But in
the present section the religious component will be disregarded
and attention directed to water as a source of healing.
While still at university, Willie decides to transform
the priory ruinswhich lie partly in the garden of his own
home, Priory Leas, and partly in that of the parsoninto a
kind of sanatorium. (The name Priory Leas seems to be a pun on "lees"what
is left when water has drained away.) To begin with, on the basis
of the long-known medicinal properties of the spring, Willie turns
towards treatment based upon a drinking-cure. The success of the
free treatment he gives at Priory Leas to poor people who are his
patients as a student-doctor establishes the good name of the springs
at the university. By the time his studies have finished "the
reputation of the Prior's Well had spread on all sides, and the
country people had begun to visit the Leas, and stay for a week
or ten days to drink of the water" (207). Later Willie extends
the facilities offered. His father comes into partnership with him
and contributes his small savings. When the treatment brings in
enough money they build hot and cold water baths, and install "high
pressure cabins" and larger swimming pools: "They built
great baths, hot and cold, and of all kindsfrom baths where
people could swim, to baths where they were only showered on by
a very sharp rain" (212).
Cold baths were rediscovered in the first half
of the nineteenth century, whereas the mineral-water course of treatment
had been used since the Middle Ages. The popularity of both is closely
connected with the Schlesian doctor Vinzenz Priessnitz (1799-1851)
who opened a bathing establishment in Gräfernberg (today Freiwaldau).
The news of the healthy effects soon spread over the whole of Europe
and modern hydrotherapy was established. Yet the fame to have discovered
or rediscovered the healing strength of water actually belongs to
others.
A major figure was the catholic priest, water-healer,
bee-keeper, and farmer Sebastian Kneipp (1821-97). As a father-confessor
of Dominican nuns he was called in 1865 to Wörishofen in the Allgäu
where he was responsible, beside his pastoral duties, for the education
centre and school, and for the running of the monastery. Willie
can be compared in many ways with Kneipp. Both feel at home in the
most different realmsare "working geniuses",
both want to help spiritually and physically. Parallels are also
recognisable between MacDonald and Kneipp. Both were believers in
homeopathy, both were churchmen, even though MacDonald's career
as a minister came to an abrupt end. Both suffered from tuberculosis,
and financial difficulties made it difficult for both to complete
their studies.
Water as a healing medicine can already be found
with Hippocrates (460-377 BC). Durham Dunlop describes how "Hippocrates,
the father of medicine, placed Medicine on a natural and rational
basis [. . .] and acknowledged the supremacy of Nature, and appreciated
the true character of Hydropathic Agents in the treatment of disease"
(81). Consequently he can not only be called the father of medicine
but also the first known homeopathic physicianalthough it
appears uncertain whether he actually described water treatments.
MacDonald, although a confirmed user of homeopathy and friend of
famous homeopathic doctors, is careful to have his hero Willie describe
his treatments as seeming to healas an appropriate method
of healing.
Dunlop names the first inventor of shower-baths
as Asclepiades, a physician who practised around 96 BC in Rome.
His preferred prescriptions were water treatments, both internal
and external. Gaston Tissandier describes hydrotherapy as also being
used in Rome under the reign of Augustus. Both Dunlop and Tissandier
mention Antonius Musa, who gave medical advice to Augustus. He seems
also to have been a consultant to Horace. Both authors also attest
to a subsequent decline in popularity of the cold-water treatment
due to it having been used at every opportunity and during all the
stages of illness.
The origin of warm baths is equally obscure. Using
Homer's Odyssey, Dunlop comes to the conclusion that the
beginning lies more than three thousand years ago, "for [Homer]
alludes to its use in the Greek camp as an established tradition,
during the Siege of Troy, or 1194 years BC" (115). The Greeks
probably also adapted their thermal springs into great pools, providing
an architectural and technological example later taken up by the
Romans. The first Roman Emperor to open a warm public bath was Nero,
who ruled from AD 54-68. Roman baths were more advanced than nineteenth
century ones, and were unrivalled in scale and beauty:
The Baths of Caracalla (around AD 220) excelled,
in beauty, grandeur, and extent, those of all preceding Emperors.
There were theatres, temples, extensive festive halls, schools
for youth, academies for discussion, libraries [. . .] besides
the magnificent Thermae, in which nearly 2000 persons could
bathe at once" (Dunlop 128).
It is clear that MacDonald did not imagine those
baths for Willie's sanatorium, yet Willie combines the heritage
of the Greeks and Romans and gives all honour to Priessnitz and
especially to Kneipp in the building of his healing establishments
by creating a "great and admirable place" (212). His healing
and bathing institute indeed resembles those of Kneipp and Priessnitz.
5. Hydraulics
Looking again at the subtitle of Gutta Percha
Willie: The Working Genius, we will first ask wherein the geniality
of Willie Macmichael consists. MacDonald allows deeds to speak for
themselves. He draws the picture of a selfless young man whose parents
would today experience the greatest difficulty in deciding whether
in the secondary school he should specialise in science or business
or languages. He paints a humorous picture of this where Willie's
grandmother tries to lead him, in freedom, to decide what might
be the best career for him, and every career she hints at appeals
strongly to him (160-63). Willie is an all-round genius: he combines
all the positive qualities of a craftsman and a designer. He understands
how to construct his room in the abbey ruins which he later gives
to Hector. In designing and building the healing baths he epitomises
the ideal of the modern polytechnic college of translating knowledge
into practicean ideal which can be traced back to MacDonald's
mentors F. D. Maurice and A. J. Scott.
Amongst Willie's earlier creative achievements
is the construction of a miniature water-wheel. We do not know whether
MacDonald was very knowledgeable in the realm of hydraulics and
mechanics. Willie's inventions and constructions, especially in
the realm of hydraulics, however, are not only useful and relevant,
but at the same time seek harmony with nature, andas must
never be left out with MacDonaldalso a connection with God.
What MacDonald saw in Liebig's workscientific and technological
renewal which did not discard the spiritual insights of Romanticismis
with Willie expanded to include other Romantic values. Of these
it is especially the role and the valuation of the child which MacDonald
emphasises. Dreams and the subconscious also play a major role in
Gutta Percha Willie, as in all MacDonald's books.
One day, Willie's little sister Agnes wishes she
could fly like a bird in the tall trees. Willie secretly starts
to realise her wish by constructing a splendid tree-walkway and
tree-house. (He also constructed a "flying fox" for her
to fly down from the trees, but MacDonald's publisher apparently
decided against this and it was clumsily deleted, leaving several
now-meaningless fragments.) Willie's brotherly deed would not be
so very special if he had presented his work to his sister in daylight.
But he wishes to embody her wish in a dream. He climbs up the spiral
stairway he has constructed with Agnes asleep in his arms. Half-asleep
she imaginesas she tells it afterwards"that an
angel [. . .] came and took her in his arms, and flew up and up
with her to a cloud [. . .] made all of little birds. [. . .] But
then it grew dark [. . .] and the angel flew down very fast [. .
.] and laid her down in her crib" (188). There is admiration
and devotion here before the eyes of the young child. Agnes's half-awakening
high in the tree, with only the sky above, offers her, and Willie,
a view into the eternity of space and a great nearness to its Creator.
By realising his sister's dream of a bird's existence, through this
heavenward-seeking architecture of tree house and stairways, he
accomplishes Novalis's ideal of Erhebung (of potentising
to a different metaphysical level), traditionally utilising the
state between waking and sleepingAgnes asks: "Am I awake?
Am I dreaming?" (187).
When Willie had to wake at night in order to help
his frail mother in feeding Agnes as a baby, his childlike imagination
showed him "that the look of the night was what the day was
dreaming" (97). So, after he has made his water-wheel he devises
a complicated mechanism which enables it to function as an alarm
clock and awaken him at night. MacDonald uses one of his favourite
images to express this: "the wheel was thus ever working to
draw up the slide of a camera obscura, and let in whatever
pictures might be abroad in the dreams of the day, that the watcher
within might behold them" (105).
MacDonald points to the fact that what wishes to
work upon the soul only finds access through the subconscious. Willie
is in no way conscious of intent in the nightly hours he often spends
awake: "How little would he have thought that [the water-wheel-clock's]
business was with the infinite! that it was in connection with the
window of an eternal worldnamely, Willie's soul" (105).
Dreaming, as an activity of the subconscious, is in him united with
the conscious working of the technical imagination "with
all his practical tendencies, Willie was very fond of dreaming"
(97).
The water-wheel gives witness to the significance
of water for a continuously improving technology in the age of industrialisation.
From the beginning of the nineteenth century, remarkable discoveries
were made in the realm of mechanics and hydraulics. Up to the 1870s,
water was the most common energy source in all industrial areas,
even though the steam-engine was beginning to take over in England.
Willie's water-wheel is tiny and the effectiveness of a water-wheel
is greatest when the speed of the wheel's periphery is exactly that
of the water which powers it. But he does not attempt to use it
to drive anything. All his practical engineering is in the service
of the life-giving properties of water. He has no affinity with
"dull-hearted money-grubbers [. . .]mill-owners, for
instance, when they make the channel of a lovely mountain stream
serve for a drain to carry off the filth from their works"
(96). Willie builds dams and canals to irrigate his garden and soon
"there was not a garden, even on the banks of the river, to
compare with it" (95). Later, providing from the spring for
all the many water-treatments for the sanatorium involves him in
a great deal of complicated engineering. MacDonald in this story
is continuously creating connections between the technical and the
Christian sides of his imagination.
Conclusion
MacDonald endeavoured in his literary work to tackle
the problems of his time in his own way, trying to convey a message
which attempts to halt the accelerating decay of values. His approach
demands the unprejudiced view of the child or "the childlike."
Thus it is not surprising that he often turns to the young, as in
Gutta Percha Willie.
Hopefully this essay has conveyed that MacDonald,
through his powers of literary imagination, made a bridge between
on one side the strivings to impose an all-encompassing technological
outlook upon nature, and on the other a view of the world which
does not neglect the spiritual forces of the universe. The researcher,
physician and soul-physician Willie Macmichael is an exemplar of
MacDonald's ideal scientist.
Water unites both worlds. Not only is it crucial
to the scientific and technological discoveries and developments
of the Victorians, but its rich store of symbolic meanings feeds
the synthesising, creative and vital activity of the imagination.
The symbolic meanings are also relevant to the view MacDonald expresses
in "The Fantastic Imagination" that "the greatest
forces lie in the region of the uncomprehended" (319). MacDonald
is no mystagogue: by this phrase he means that these regions of
the imagination contain an inexhaustible potential which can only
be accessed by a personality like Willie, who is open to wonder.
Gutta Percha Willie shows how MacDonald takes living water-springs,
fountains and riversas "a window through which we gain
a momentary glimpse of a region whence all miracles appear"
(Miracles 434).
WORKS CITED
Buckley, J. H. The Victorian Temper. London:
Cass, 1966.
Bunyan, John. The Pilgrim's Progress. 1678.
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