6 June: Boreham on George MacDonald

The Making of a Citizen
It was on June 6, 1867, that George MacDonald completed the manuscript of "Robert Falconer." Of all MacDonald's sturdy characters, Robert is the most satisfying and the most memorable. He represents in his own person the indispensable ingredients of good citizenship? Robert was a giant in stature; but that was the least notable of his characteristics. There was something about his massive form, his lithe and upright figure, his open countenance and his lustrous black eyes that inspired confidence and even affection. He did not domineer, or lecture, or preach; yet he somehow radiated an impression of genuine goodness and drew to himself, by a subtle and indescribable magnetism, men and women who felt that the pressure of life was too great for them. On one occasion, Hugh Sutherland, the tutor who tells the story, was at his wits' ends. Instinctively he turned to Robert Falconer, who, by the magic of his towering personality, quickly ironed out his difficulties. All through the long night-journey that followed, the wheels of the train seemed to be beating out a sentence that Hugh had read in one of the ancient prophets: A man shall be as a hiding-place from the wind; as rivers of water in a dry place; as the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. With life-like fidelity, the words seemed to present a full-length portrait of Robert Falconer.

They were intended so to do. They were designed, that is to say, to establish the fundamental qualifications of high citizenship. The first phrase depicts an enormous rock standing in the path of the oncoming simoom. Under the lee of this huge mass, a group of travellers, surprised by the storm, huddle together. They almost feel the immense boulder tremble as the hurricane beats upon its farther side. They see the clouds of hot dust sweep by on either hand; but under the protection of this granite shield, they are safe and calm and unafraid. The best citizen serves a similar purpose; Thackeray shows how. In his "Four Georges," he describes the degradation that overtook English life and manners during the reign of George IV, and then he mentions four men who, with their wives, set themselves to live their home life purely and sweetly and unselfishly in defiance of the ghastly fashion of the period. He sings the praises of Walter Scott and his Charlotte, of Robert Southey and his Edith, of Cuthbert Collingwood and his Sarah, and of Reginald Heber and his Amelia. These four homes stood, like the boulder in the desert, against the drift; they preserved a beautiful tradition which, in a later day, all men aspired to follow;. they set an example that others, taking courage, sought to emulate. And who shall say what this meant to England and to history?

Judged Not By Products, But By Capabilities
The second picture is a very different one. The ideal citizen shall be like rivers of water in a dry place. A dry place is not of necessity a desert. A desert is the emblem of sterility; a dry place may be the essence of fertility. Sir Henry Lefroy, the Premier of West Australia, used to say that if only an earthquake could smash the Australian continent, leaving a range of snow-capped mountains right across the centre, the streams of water pouring down from those glittering heights would transform the so-called desert of Central Australia into a vast wheatbelt. The point is that the Australian desert is not a desert at all in the African and Arabian sense. It is just a dry place. It needs streams of water, and, if it had them, it would rejoice and blossom as the rose.

As an emblem of the finest type of citizenship, the significance of all this is unmistakable. There are thousands of people whose lives produce nothing worth while, nothing of service, nothing of value to the community. It is not because they are inherently incapable of such fertility. They are not deserts; they are merely dry places. If the right influences were brought to bear upon them they would immediately respond. The ideal citizen—the man of the Robert Falconer type—will so move the minds and consciences and emotions of these passive people that they will produce the best of which they are capable. The world is full of deserts that are only deserts because no streams of water flow through them; it is full of bad people who are only bad people because nobody has taken the trouble to lure from them something better. They merely await the friendly touch of some good man whose influence upon them would be like rivers in a parched but fertile land.

The Restfulness Of True Gentility
The ideal citizen is, in the best sense of the word, a Gentleman. That is the obvious conclusion to be drawn from the third picture etched in the phrase that beat itself into Hugh Sutherland's brain in the railway train. A man shall be like the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. The setting is neither the wind-swept desert of the first scene nor the burnt-up garden of the second. It is a rough place, a place of cliffs and chasms, a place where the going is hard and slow—a tiring place, an exhausting place, a weary place. And to those who find life a place answering to this description, the ideal citizen—the person of the Robert Falconer type—is like a cool shadow in which the tired traveller can find respite from the glare, rest from the fatiguing struggle, and quiet refreshment by the way.

Literature abounds in striking and eloquent symbol of the delicacy of gentleness—the gentleness of a gentleman. One writer speaks of the gentleness of the snowflake; another of the gentleness of the down on the breast of a mother bird; a third of the gentleness of the dewdrop. But nothing is as gentle as a shadow—the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. The snow crushes trees and buildings; the breast of the bird has been known to suffocate her offspring; whilst even the weight of the dewdrop imposes a strain on the strength of the tenderest blade. But a shadow! A shadow causes no feather to flutter, no leaf to rustle, no blade to bend. As he journeyed northwards in the train, Hugh Sutherland felt that this represented all that Robert Falconer had been to him. The incident portrays high citizenship as in a cameo.

F W Boreham

Image: George MacDonald