There isn’t much to say about the purely
supernatural element, which includes fairies, a magical white horse and a small
dragon.
The ‘real people’ in the book include a
policeman, a grocer who is also Mayor and some ladies from a charity committee.
They are mainly caricatures or stereotypes, and most of them don’t inspire much
in the way of commentary either.
The characters who are of particular interest
are a witch, a wizard and someone who is neither magical nor a completely real person.
This article covers the two practitioners of
magic, Richard the Wizard and Angela the Witch.
Richard the Wizard
We first learn about Richard from what his
mother says about him. She says that he isn’t like other women’s boys. He
cannot read or write; he disappears without explanation. The servants are all
gone because they can’t stand him and his ways.
Living Alone was first published in 1919; one
hundred years later, some of the things that we are told about Richard could be
taken as a description of someone with mild autism or something similar.
Richard’s mother tells Angela the Witch:
“Do you know, I have only once
seen him with other boys, doing the same as other boys, and that was when I saw
him marching with hundreds of real boys ... in 1914.... It was the happiest day
I ever had, I thought after all that I had borne a real boy... He
deserted twice—pure absence of mind—it was always the same from a child—'I
wanted to see further,' he'd say...“
We
are told that Richard seems to have none of the small skill in details that
comes to most people before they grow up. He does everything as if he were
doing it for the first time.
Sometimes
he does the opposite of what most people would do. He is fond of making elaborate
and unnecessary productions while neglecting to acquire skill in the more usual
handicrafts. He is forever asking others to do things that he should and
probably could do for himself, but he always tries to do things that he cannot and
need not do at all.
Richard is a young soldier on leave.
He is also a wizard who knows a lot about magic and knows his way around the Enchanted Forest in the Parish of Faery.
Richard is a young soldier on leave.
He is also a wizard who knows a lot about magic and knows his way around the Enchanted Forest in the Parish of Faery.
He is the owner of the House of Living Alone.
Angela the Witch
The House of Living Alone, the combined
lodging house and general shop for local people, is managed by a young woman
who is a witch.
She says that people may call her Angela, although
that is not her name. She doesn’t tell anyone her true name - if she has one -
and she often invents new names for herself.
Angela is not much like any of the fictional
witches who have been featured in previous articles. I can’t imagine where Stella
Benson got her from. Perhaps she is completely a product of the imagination.
Angela may hurt people inadvertently, but she
is thoughtless and uncomprehending rather than malevolent like many witches.
She likes to dispense happiness. The locals call her a good fairy and a saint.
She may use her magic on people without their
knowledge and consent, but she does this to help them.
Angela lives in a different world from that
of the real people. She is as the book puts it, "A
strange and rather interesting mixture of naïveté and power.“
She sings and dances spontaneously and unselfconsciously,
like the child that Stella Benson says magic people are and like the fairies in
the Parish of Faery.
She is mortal; she can be injured, but she
knows how to heal herself quickly with magic.
She hears with more than her ears.
Angela acts on impulse without taking other
people into account. She does not know what tact is. She does not know what she
is supposed to say and do to fit in and behave appropriately, although she does
sometimes try to act like a real human being:
“To the magic eye, magic alone is
commonplace, everything else is unknown, unguessed, and undespised.”
She receives a salary but is often penniless;
she frequently asks others to lend her small sums of money, usually for food.
She is often very hungry.
It is difficult to know what to make of
Angela. What Stella Benson tells us describes rather than explains her. She has
a touch of the fairy or elemental about her; she may even have a touch of
Stella Benson herself.
Performing their magic
The two magic people operate in very
different ways.
Richard’s magic is obvious and unsubtle.
Claps of thunder announce his arrival. He travels by flashes of lightning.
He performs stunts and tricks, levitating the
food, spinning the dinner table like a roulette wheel and calling up a blizzard
of butterflies for example, as part of a ‘supernatural orgy’ when he comes home
on leave.
Some of his manifestations remind me of scenes
in Diana Wynne Jones’s Charmed Life - and there is a small dragon in that book
too - but the motivations were very different. Richard was just enjoying
himself and letting off steam after bottling his magic up for a long time while
in the army, while the witch Gwendolen Chant was trying to
impress the magician Chrestomanci and make him notice her and acknowledge her
powers.
Angela operates very differently from Richard.
She uses powders and potions. She makes up little paper packets of magic drugs.
She sprinkles them in sandwiches and throws them into the fire to generate
fumes that make people feel good. Her motives are benevolent, unlike those of
the evil witch in C. S. Lewis’s Silver Chair, who throws green powder in the
fire to enchant people for her own purposes and prevent them from thinking
clearly.
Still more to come
There is another main character and the topic
of the House of Living Alone still to be discussed. There is also something to be said about
the effects that the magic people have on the people around them.
