Arthur C. Clarke & Lord Dunsany: A Correspondence

Reading this correspondence has been an extraordinary experience. I was afraid that I would be embarrassed by the naiveté of my letters, but on the whole I am quite happy to see them published. In fact, there are a very few things I would wish to change, though of course the scientific developments during the last fifty — I can’t believe it! — years, have outdated some of my comments. In particular my excitement about the discovery of extra-solar planets (page 32) was about four decades premature. The 61 Cygni report was erroneous: however, in the last few years, extra-solar planets have been popping up all over the place.

I do feel slightly embarrassed by my last letter of 20 August 1951 when I was shamelessly importuning His Lordship for a plug for The Exploration of Space. He replied graciously the very next day — but I don’t remember what quotation, if any, I made up.

Though I have few recollections of my only visit to Dunstall Priory, I do recall I was carrying my first portable radio (it used vacuum tubes, of course, and ate batteries at an alarming rate.) But my clearest memory is of Lord Dunsany amending my copy of The Charwoman’s Shadow, changing the phrase “Towards Moon’s Rising” to “Beyond Moon’s Rising.” He used a quill pen and then dried the ink with a sprinkle of sand — the only time I’ve ever seen this done.

The ending of The Charwoman’s Shadow is the finest piece of pure magic I know in the whole of literature, and now that I can personally identify with the first sentence I find it almost unbearably moving:

“And there came upon him at last those mortal tremors that are about the end of all earthly journeys. He hastened then. And before the human destiny overtook him he saw one morning, clear where the dawn had been, the luminous rock of the bastions and glittering rampart that rose up sheer from the frontier of the Country Beyond Moon’s Rising. This he saw though his eyes were dimming now with fatigue and his long sojourn on earth; yet if he saw dimly he heard with no degree of uncertainty the trumpets that rang out from those battlements to welcome him after his sojourn, and all that followed him gave back the greeting with such cries as once haunted valleys at certain times of the moon. Upon those battlements and by the opening gates were gathered the robed Masters that had trafficked with time and dwelt awhile on Earth, and handed the mysteries on, and had walked round the back of the grave by the way that they knew, and were even beyond damnation. They raised their hands and blessed him.”

“And now for him, and the creatures that followed after, the gates were wide that led through the earthward rampart of the Country Beyond Moon’s Rising. He limped towards it with all his magical following. He went therein, and the Golden Age was over.”

I shall indeed be happy if this volume contributes to the rediscovery of one of the greatest writers of this century.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke, Kt, CBE
Colombo, Sri Lanka
21 April 1998