In Defence Of Chapter 1
The key to reading THE NIGHT LAND is to
start with Chapter 2. At least, that's the
advice given to all Night Land virgins.
So what happens in Chapter 1? Which
details do we miss?
The key to reading THE NIGHT LAND is to start
with Chapter 2. The first paragraph of this
chapter sums up Chapter 1 in 7 succinct lines,
telling the modern reader all that needs to be
known before we are plunged directly into the
main narrative.
At least, that's the advice given to all Night
Land Virgins. It worked for me, it worked for
many others... but like all accepted wisdoms it
deserves scrutiny to ensure this isn't a sacred
cow which needs to be slaughtered.
So what happens in Chapter 1 ? Which
details do we miss?
The Chapter begins with the first meeting
between the Narrator (let's call him X) and a
beautiful girl, at dusk in the Kentish
countryside. She is Lady Mirdath, who lives with
her Guardian, Sir Alfred Jarles, on the
neighbouring estate to the one owned by X.
X is implied to be a wealthy young
aristocrat..."much given to my Studies and my
Exercises". He's taking an evening walk,
enjoying the gathering dusk, when Mirdath calls
his name through a secret gap in the hedge which
bounds Sir Jarles's estate.
There is an instant rapport between them, and
Mirdath reminds X that they are distant cousins.
She invites X up to the house to meet Sir Jarles
when they are suddenly attacked by three men
(foot-pads) armed with knives. X swiftly
dispatches them with skill and strength and the
aid of his oak staff. Mirdath blows a whistle,
calling for help. Her three boar-hounds arrive,
along with servants. X pays "silver" to the
servants, who then punish the attackers..."I
heard their cries a good while after we had gone
away".
Mirdath formally introduces X to Sir Jarles,
"an old man...that I knew a little in passing"
who thanks him. They dine together, then X walks
out with Mirdath, in the night, across the
home-grounds of the estate.
All of the above takes place in the first four
pages of Chapter 1!
Over the following days, X often meets with
Mirdath. They discover a mutual delight in the
outdoors as it is affected by the time of day,
narrated by X in terms of the Sun eg."the
Mystery of the Evening","the Glamour of
Night","the Joy of Dawn".
One evening,"as we wondered in the
park-lands", X and Mirdath discover that they
both travelled in "strange dream lands" of their
imaginations. Mirdath states the evening is
"truly an elves-night". X replies about the
"Towers of Sleep","the Giant's Tomb","the Tree
with the Great Painted Head", and means to speak
of the "Moon Garden". Their friendship
deepens... "this was the beginning of my great
love for Mirdath the Beautiful".
X continues to meet with Mirdath,"evening by
evening". He askes her to always have her
boar-hounds with her, for protection, but
expresses irritation that she often teases him
about his concerns,"as though she would discover
how much I would endure and how far she might go
to anger me".
One night, X meets with two country-maids
emerging from Sir Jarles's wood. They pass him,
curtsy "somewhat over-graceful for rough
wenches", and he suspects the taller one is
Mirdath in disguise. He follows them to the
village dance, where they dance together. Then
the taller girl dances with a "great hulking
farmer-lout". X confronts her, tells her he sees
through her disguise and says he will take her
home. Mirdath refuses, and returns to the
"lout", dances with him again, then bids him to
escort her part of the way home. His friend
accompanies Mirdath's companion; the four of
them leave the dance. The lads set their arms
"about the waists" of the girls, and Mirdath
loses her nerve. She calls to X for help. He
hits the "poor lout" once, and throws him into
the side of the road. The second lad, having
heard X's name, "ran for his life"..."my
strength was known all about that part".
X shakes Mirdath "very soundly, in my anger",
and marches her home. Yet X feels that, despite
his anger with her, Mirdath "had no haste to be
gone from me that night".
This is all by page 7 of Chapter 1!
The next day, X asks Mirdath if her
"waywardness" is over. Mirdath appears to make
up with him. He declares his need for her
companionship, but "she denied my need",
although she sings him songs accompanied by her
harp. Even though she is escorted home by her
boar-hounds, X follows her secretly until she is
safe in her Hall.
On the following evening, X goes to meet
Mirdath at the gap in the hedge, and discovers
her talking to a "very clever-drest man, that
had a look of the Court about him". X is jealous
and physically lifts the man aside when he
doesn't make way for X. Mirdath reacts to this
with anger, calls X "uncouth and brutal to a
smaller man" and assures X she has no love for
him.
X admits to himself that he could have shown
some courtesy, makes an apology, and leaves them
"to their happiness".
X avoids Mirdath for a week, but after that,
returning to the hedge-gap, he spots her walking
with the man, and that "she suffered his arm
around her, so that I knew they were lovers". He
stays away for a month, hurt in pride and love,
then returns to the hedge-gap. X but does not
see Mirdath, only one of her boar-hounds who is
friendly towards him.
Two weeks after that, X resolves to go up to
the house of Sir Jarles. He discovers a dance
taking place in the grounds, with many people
dressed in a "quaint" manner. He fears this is
the wedding feast of Mirdath and her young man,
but then remembers that she was twenty-one that
day, and this must be her birthday celebration.
Mirdath is there, but X's rival is absent,
although he "burned with a fierce and miserable
jealousy" as he watches "the other young men
about her".
X creeps away, and avoids her for three
months.
Finally, he returns to the hedge-gap "because
I could not bear the pain of my loss". He hears
Mirdath singing a "broken love song", wandering
in the dark alone, save for her great dogs.
They meet, reconcile, kiss and then "walk
homeward through the woods" together.
X asks her about the "man of the Court" and
Mirdath takes him into the great hall,
introduces him to a lady who sits, embroidering,
and X recognises her face as that of the person
he thought was the "man of the Court"! Mirdath
explains that her friend Mistress Alison had
been dressed in the Court suit to play a prank
for a wager with a certain young man who would
be a lover to her. X had come along, jumped to
the wrong conclusion, and Mirdath's anger was
because he had put his hands upon her friend.
After that, the girls met every evening at the
hedge-gap to punish him, and get their revenge.
Mirdath admits that she was in love with him,
even then, and half-regretted her action.
X makes up with Mirdath, and after that,
"Mirdath and I could never be apart".
A further incident nearly causes Mirdath's
death, when, as they walk together in the woods,
one of Mirdath's boar-hounds goes mad, and leaps
at X in a brutal attack. Mirdath casts herself
at the dog, to save X. She is bitten as she
strives to hold him off from X. X holds the
boar-hound by the neck and body, and kills the
beast with his bare hands. Throwing the dog
aside, X draws the poison from Mirdath's wounds,
then takes her in his arms, and runs the long
and weary way to the Hall, where he burns the
wounds with hot skewers. The doctor comes later,
and states that X has saved her life.
After a long time, Mirdath recovers fully from
her wounds, and X and her are married.
This takes us nearly to the end of Chapter 1,
still only a mere 17 pages.
The final part of the text jumps to the
present of the narrator, when Mirdath lies dying
after childbirth.
X relates that "I had no power to hold Death
backward from such dread intent". X brings their
baby to his dying wife, then returns it to the
Nurse, to be alone with Mirdath in the room.
Taking her in his arms, they lie together on
the bed. Mirdath calls him by "the olden Love
Name that had been mine through all the utter
lovely months of our togetherness".
X begins to tell her of his love, that should
pass beyond death, and at that moment Mirdath
dies.
That is how Chapter 1 ends, a total of 19
pages written to set the scene, before the main
narrative of THE NIGHT LAND.
The modern reader must remember that THE NIGHT
LAND was first published in 1912, and one of
Hodgson's greatest influences was H.G.Wells, and
his novel 'The Time Machine'. In common with
many stories of the scientific romance,
including 'The Time Machine', the story first
begins with an introductory section which
welcomes the reader into the world of the
imagination, acclimatizes the reader to the
characters in the more mundane world, and
perhaps slowly introduces the reader to the
fantastic concepts which follow. Wells does this
by the Time Traveller arguing the case for Time
Travel with his sceptical friends; Hodgson does
this by giving the reader the full background to
the main characters in THE NIGHT LAND (X and
Mirdath), but sets them in the Kentish
countryside attending village dances, walking in
the woods, encountering foot-pads and farm boys.
Yet Hodgson does more than this. Like a great
work of music, Hodgson starts his novel with a
prelude, featuring all the main themes of the
main work. The resonances he sets up echo
through the world of THE NIGHT LAND, giving the
reader a sense of Time Past linked to Time
Future.
This is the key to Chapter 1. By setting it
deliberately in the Past (of 1912) ie.
foot-pads, Kentish aristocracy etc, the
resonances set up by Chapter 1 instill a
stronger sense of Time dislocation for the
reader when the narration moves to the far
future in Chapter 2 than there would otherwise
be; the reader can imagine the Past of a few
hundred years ago, but not the sense of being
millions of years in the future. Yet the
'future' narration is rendered all the more
powerful as the patina of Time Displaced has
been painted over it by the resonances instilled
by Chapter 1.
The parallels are clear:
All the encounters described between X and
Mirdath are either in the evening or in the
night, giving the imagery a sense of dusk, then
nightfall, to set the reader up for the eternal
dark of the Night Land.
X first meets Mirdath when she calls his name
out of the dusk, like their first communication
in the Night Land - by 'speech' before sight-
and he saves her in fights against foot-pads,
then her maddened hound, as he does in fights
against the various dangers of the Night Land.
Mirdath is nearly fatally wounded by her
hound, and X picks her up and runs out of the
dark woods to the Hall of Sir Jarles, saving her
life. This parallels his actions at the end of
the main narrative, when he heroically carries
her to the Last Redoubt. The significance of
this image is underlined by Hodgson when a
statue of X carrying Mirdath is revealed in the
final scene of the book.
Mirdath goes to the village dance in disguise,
and the theme of monsters disguising themselves
as humans to deceive them is often mentioned in
the main Night Land narrative.
X's great falling out with Mirdath, due to his
own rashness and jealousy, is paralleled by the
despair when he believes, so many times in the
story, that Mirdath has been lost to the
monsters of the Night Land, yet he never gives
up, and continues to seek her out until he is
successful.
The mutual fancies of the imagination that X
shares with Mirdath (the Towers of Sleep, the
Giant's Tomb,the Tree with Great Painted Head)
foreshadow the terrible images seen in THE NIGHT
LAND.
X has an oak staff in a fight, as he uses the
Diskos in battle.
As has been mentioned, Hodgson covers much
ground in Chapter 1, yet he skillfully conveys
an enormous amount of information, tension,
sense of foreign Time, and characterisation into
these few pages.
X is revealed to be based on Hodgson himself.
The clue is the "Exercises" he practices and his
great strength... like Hodgson. He appears to
have everything in his world - an Estate,
wealth, aristocratic standing, youth, strength,
intelligence. He is used to striving for what he
wants, and getting it. He has never failed, so
it is significant when he states that Mirdath is
dying and he has no power to "hold Death
backward". Yet later, in his grief, he says his
love will pass "beyond death".
This sets up a second point about Chapter 1.
What follows afterwards, when X writes that he
dreams that he wakes in the future of the world,
may simply be his massive private delusion,
based on the 'real life' events of what has gone
before in Chapter 1. Hodgson has allowed for the
reader to interpret the book in this way by
detailing the parallels of Chapter 1 with the
events in the Night Land and describing X's
character as one who has never accepted failure
- the loss of Mirdath may be enough to drive him
into this delusional nightmare.
The parallels events could well explain X's
imagining that he meets Mirdath again, rescues
her, she 'dies', but THIS TIME she is revived by
the Earth Current and they are together again.
This view of THE NIGHT LAND is supported by the
ending of the book. Hodgson relates nothing of
the future life of X and Mirdath. He's merely
woken from his dream, and cannot imagine past
the point where she died in 'real' life.
On the character of Mirdath, although in love
with X, she is prepared to resist his domination
of her, and her society's, by going to the
village dance. Yet she is attracted by X's
physical strength and seems to set up situations
to provoke him into fighting on her behalf.
Chapter 1 gives an insight into Mirdath which is
lacking in the further narrative if it is not
read in sequence with the rest of the book.
In conclusion
In conclusion, we must still ask if Hodgson
could have done better: Could he have left out
Chapter 1 altogether? Ultimately, each reader
must decide for themselves, based on the
evidence provided by the text itself. Hopefully,
this essay has provided enough of a defence to
encourage readers to re-assess its place in the
book.
Night Land Virgins would still be advised to
ignore Chapter 1 on their first read, but I
believe it deserves closer attention if the
achievement of William Hope Hodgson is to be
fully appreciated in his writing of THE NIGHT
LAND.
this essay © Nigel
Brown
Send me
your comments on this essay and I'll post
them here next time I update the site.
From: Elizabeth
Counihan
Yes, very good and well argued. I'll
grant some parts of chapter one are worth
reading, especially the insight into X's
imagination. I like the idea that he was
accustomed to getting his own way and that
only Death could not be beaten.
Now let's see if either of you can find
an excuse (or even a reason) for Hodgson to
use that execrable ye olde style that doth
so to mar the whole work.
From: Trelever
I agree with Nigel that Chapter 1 is
relevant to the work as a whole - but then
why is there no Chapter 18?
To see why I say this, firstly I think
there is a strong distinction to be made
between the pragmatic and literary views of
Chapter 1. The widespread advice to start at
Chapter 2 is pragmatic - you hope the person
you are giving this advice to will thereby
persevere and get hooked enough to stay with
it despite the prose.
Well, I did get hooked - but even then
only on the second try: I started at Chapter
2 a couple of years ago and didn’t get past
a few pages. On the second attempt it was
enough to carry me along; and then later in
the book when the cringe-inducing stuff with
Naani happened there was enough momentum to
keep me going to the end (and to the great
climax).
However I then read Chapter 1. And all of
a sudden it seemed to me that I understood
some more of what the book was about - and
in particular the significance of Naani as
(essentially) the same person that X had
known in the past. I do not know (and
cannot, now) what reading the book for the
first time would be like if I had read
Chapter 1 first. Possibly the feeling would
have been stronger that there was more at
stake with Naani: she was not just someone X
empathised with, but she was someone X had
actually known and lost. I know X goes on
(and on) about Mirdath in the ‘main text’
(Chapter 2 onwards) but without having read
Chapter 1 it was more remote, like telling
instead of showing. So perhaps from a
literary point of view Chapter 1 belongs
there. WHH seemed to think so I guess, and
certainly all the prefiguring which Nigel
points out is there.
So I feel that Chapter 1 belongs there -
but have two reservations.
Firstly, we never return to the original
X: Chapter 2 onwards is presented as a dream
following the introductory Chapter 1, but X
never wakes up! In most works where there is
a journey to a secondary world the hero
returns to his or her homeland, even when
the secondary world was a dream. So in the
end, not only does Frodo return to the
Shire, but Alice returns from Wonderland,
and even Winnie the Pooh goes bump up the
stairs. So there’s definitely a lack of
closure, or something that leaves me
unsatisfied, about this in the Night Land.
If you read from Chapter 2 onwards, you
think: great story, hero leaves the Redoubt,
has big adventures, returns home triumphant
- great. If you read from Chapter 1, you
think all this, and then you think, hang on
a minute …
Secondly of course, back to the pragmatic
argument: all this is irrelevant if nobody
ever reads the book!
From: Rob Joyce
Thank you for this important observation.
Actually, I can't understand why anyone
would suggest starting the book with chapter
2. As you have so eloquently pointed out, it
sets the stage, it sets the mood, and like a
prelude it prefigures the symphony to come.
I would add, that you get a much deeper
insight into the character traits of "X" and
Mirdath. Without chapter one, you really
know nothing about "X's" strengths and flaws
until you are very, very far into the main
narrative, and even then, you wouldn't have
the whole picture of the man, nor Naani
either, without those first interactions as
they fall in love. By experiencing the
growth of the love relationship between
them, and the great loss of "X" when he is
powerless to stop death, we are ushered into
the emotional power of his absolute
necessity to go after Naani. I think chapter
one is one of the most engaging and
compelling love stories I have ever read,
while at the same time being one of the most
economically phrased.
From: Alexander Van
Scyoc
"The Night Land: In Defence of Chapter 1"
I think was written well and provided
insight into the first chapter, and
masterfully illustrated the entire purpose
of the chapter itself, to serve as a counter
point and established setting for the
entirely strange and alien future detailed
later on.
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