At the moment, I’m reading through Lord Dunsany’s Book of Wonder. The collection has been fantastic, as good as A Dreamer’s Tales, but last night I finished a story that has really stuck with me. I’m speaking of “Miss Cubbidge and the Dragon of Romance,” a remarkable story that I can’t stop thinking about.

The story seems fairly simple. A young woman in London gets snatched up by the Dragon of Romance and whisked away to a magical land where she spends the rest of her days in a sort of immortality. However, I believe there is something deeper at play.

And partly she still lived, and partly she was one with long-ago and with those sacred tales that nurses tell, when all their children are good, and evening has come, and the fire is burning well, and the soft pat-pat of the snowflakes on the pane is like the furtive tread of fearful things in old, enchanted woods

This is a beautiful sentence and makes me nostalgic for a half-forgotten childhood I never had. And I know I’m not the only one who’d find this nostalgic. Dunsany points to this deep desire we all have of stories. Miss Cubbidge still lives, but also that she is one with those childhood stories. I wonder how far Dunsany means for us to take this, however. Miss Cubbidge’s adventure is “real” enough, but how much is imaginary. Does Dunsany even distinguish between the two? Miss Cubbidge is, after all, whisked away by the Dragon of Romance

Romance:

A medieval tale based on legend, chivalry love and adventure, or the supernatural a prose narrative treating imaginary characters involved in events remote in time or place and usually heroic, adventurous, or mysterious an emotional attraction or aura belonging to an especially heroic era, adventure, or activity.

Dunsany continues

If at first she missed those dainty novelties among which she was reared, the old, sufficient song of the mystical sea singing of faery lore at first soothed and at last consoled her. Even, she forgot those advertisements of pills that are so dear to England; even, she forgot political cant and the things that one discusses and the things that one does not, and had perforce to content herself with seeing sailing by huge golden-laden galleons with treasure for Madrid, and the merry skull-and-cross-bones of the pirateers, and the tiny nautilus setting out to sea, and ships of heroes trafficking in romance or of princes seeking for enchanted isles.

What is more indicative of the modern world that pills and politics, perhaps even more so now? Miss Cubbidge forgets about the modern world and contents herself with ships of heroes trafficking in romance. There’s that word again. Heroes aren’t part of romance tales; no, they traffic in romance. Among the many beautiful lines of Dunsany, this one feels especially poignant.

Dunsany then tells us how the dragon kept Miss Cubbidge in this magical realm.

It was not by chains that the dragon kept her there, but by one of the spells of old.

Spells of old… what spells are older than the spells of storytelling? When entranced by a story, what even is time? Miss Cubbidge especially understands the feeling.

But whether the centuries passed her or whether the years or whether no time at all, she did not know. If anything indicated the passing of time, it was the rhythm of elfin horns blowing upon the heights. If the centuries went by her the spell that bound her gave her also perennial youth, and kept alight for ever the lantern by her side, and saved from decay the marble palace facing the mystical sea.

This this real? Was Miss Cubbidge really whisked away to a faraway land never to return? Ask anyone who has been sucked into a story; they’ll know. Dunsany nearly admits as much

If it was all a dream, it was a dream that knew no morning and no fading away. The tide roamed on and whispered of mastery and myth

I can’t recall the number of stories I’ve finished only to suddenly realize I’m back in the physical world, usually with a twinge of sadness. But to be in a dream, a dream that knows no morning and no fading away. As a kid, that was always the goal. Dunsany isn’t finished yet. He ends the story with something special.

And only once did there ever come to her a message from the world that of old she knew. It came in a pearly ship across the mystical sea; it was from an old school-friend that she had had in Putney, merely a note, no more, in a little, neat, round hand: it said, “It is not Proper for you to be there alone.”

I’m probably too much of a romantic (in the old sense of the term), but this ending brought a wistful smile as I read it. Miss Cubbidge isn’t chastised for leaving London and staying in the mystical realm, but simply told that she shouldn’t be there alone. There is no cry for her to come back, no wondering at where she could be

It’s a crime we didn’t study Lord Dunsany in British literature.