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Wingfold and the Wiggle: The Root of Puddleglum’s Famous Speech?
As Narnian trivia goes, one of the more curious pieces to come to light is the real-life inspiration for Puddleglum. This loveable pessimist was a man called Fred Paxford, C. S. Lewis’ gardener at the Kilns; so it seems only right to do a bit of digging in his honour, and see what more we can unearth about the The Silver Chair’s froglike hero.
Since we know the model for his character, let us see if we can find one for his famous speech—that speech which, despite his doubts, shows him squarely on the side of Aslan and Narnia. This passage from Thomas Wingfold, Curate (the first book of George MacDonald’s Wingfold Trilogy) is one that Lewis certainly read, and while we cannot say for sure that he borrowed from it, we see here a clear foreshadowing of the Wiggle’s defiant words:
Even if there be no hereafter, I would live my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true if it is not…if these be not truths, then is the loftiest part of our nature a waste. Let me hold by the better than the actual, and fall into nothingness off the same precipice with Jesus and John and Paul and a thousand more, who were lovely in their lives, and with their death make even the nothingness into which they have passed like the garden of the Lord. I will go further, Polwarth, and say, I would rather die for evermore believing as Jesus believed, than live for evermore believing as those that deny him.
This passage seems the more likely to have inspired Lewis when we consider that Thomas Wingfold, Curate is quoted twelve times in his George MacDonald Anthology (making it, along with two of his favourites, Wilfrid Cumbermede and Annals of a Quiet Neighbourhood, the most quoted of all the English novels: only the Scottish novels Sir Gibbie and What’s Mine’s Mine are quoted more.) Strangely, however, the above speech is NOT included as part of that dozen. Perhaps Lewis did not consciously recall it, but the seed was buried somewhere in the soil of his mind, to resurface when he was writing his fourth Narnian adventure.
At any rate, it has long been hidden from the majority of Lewis-readers, and its omission from the anthology leaves us the freer to discover it for ourselves. This would doubtless have pleased Lewis, for his collection of excerpts was intended as a gateway book, not as a place to hang our hats: and MacDonald encourages the same sort of thing in Wingfold’s sequel, Paul Faber, Surgeon:
It is well enough known that if you dig deep in any old garden…ancient–perhaps forgotten–flowers will appear. The fashion has changed, they have been neglected or uprooted, but all the time their life is hid below.
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Digging a little deeper, we find another piece of trivia in the last book of the trilogy. Though serendipitous for this blog, as it brings us back to Puddleglum, I do not place any undue weight on it: it is simply that the hero of the novel has webbed hands and feet!
And so, with a quote from There and Back, I rest my spade–only stopping to mention, as a further “fun fact,” the likeness of its title to that of Tolkien’s The Hobbit…
‘You cannot prove to me that you have a father!’ says the blind sage, reasoning with the little child.‘Why should I prove it?’ answers the child. ‘I am sitting on his knee! If I could prove it, that would not make you see him; that would not make you happy like me! You do not care about my father, or you would not stand there disputing; you would feel about until you found him!’
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