Precious Bane

Webb’s fifth novel, Precious Bane (1924), is set in rural Shropshire at the time of the Napoleonic Wars. The title refers to a passage from John Milton’s Paradise Lost: “Let none admire / That riches grow in Hell; that soyle may best / Deserve the pretious bane” (I. 690–692). In Precious Bane, the story of Gideon Sarn (whose curse is his lust for gold) is interlaced with that of his sister Prudence (whose blight is her disfigurement from birth by a harelip). Precious Bane is a story of the triumph of the human spirit. It is told with the grace and simplicity that marks Mary Webb’s fervent, romantic writing at its best. Webb makes adept use of Shropshire folklore, customs, and religious beliefs of the early 1800s, deftly weaving these into her tale.

Precious Bane is retrospectively narrated by Prudence Sarn who, as a “very old woman and a tired woman, with a task to do before she says good night to this world,” recollects the incidents and tragedies of her early life at Sarn Mere (Sarn Pool). Using local dialect, Prue tells “the story of us all at Sarn, of Mother and Gideon and me, and Jancis (that was so beautiful), and Wizard Beguildy, and the two or three other folk that lived in those parts . . .” With a lyrical (almost biblical) rhythm, Mary Webb conveys her philosophical views through Prudence Sarn’s homely and moralizing digressions. Prue’s warm, rich personality—her simplicity and innocence, droll observations of human nature, and her “merry ways and her mocking ways”—permeate the book. The firstperson narrator is intuitively sensitive to nature and its changing seasons. The environment of Sarn Mere dominates and pervades the story. Webb’s descriptive prose evokes sound, smell, sight, taste, and texture in an unusually intimate and personal way.

For centuries, the Sarn family has farmed the land around Sarn Mere. Superstitious locals are afraid of Sarn Mere after dusk, because they hear church bells toll on the wind, and believe the sounds come from a village drowned in the mere’s depths. Locals also believe that the dark and sullen Sarn men have had “lightning in their blood” since the time (during the religious wars nearly two hundred years earlier) when Timothy Sarn was twice struck by lightning. Growing up on an isolated farm with a loving nature—and unaware that her cleft palate is considered the physical manifestation of a curse, Prue gradually becomes painfully conscious of the locals’ conviction that she is a witch who changes into a hare at midnight.

Gideon Sarn, Prue’s brother, has rare gifts of physical and mental energy. However, Gideon is consumed by an obsession for wealth. When Father Sarn dies of a stroke (in a fit of anger at his son), seventeen-year-old Gideon ignores the superstition that Sin Eaters are irretrievably doomed. He eats bread over his father’s coffin (thus ritually taking on the sins of his father in the tradition of the Sin Eaters of old) in exchange for his mother’s promise of undisputed possession of the farm. Gideon intends to make “a mort of money” out of Sarn by working the land. With his fortune, Gideon plans to purchase a fine house in Lullingford, and to pursue both ambition and power among a wider circle of men. Gideon extracts an oath of service from his sister: “I promise and vow to obey my brother Gideon Sarn and to hire myself out to him as a sarvant, for no money, until all that he wills be done. And I’ll be as biddable as a prentice, a wife, and a dog. I swear it on the Holy Book. Amen.” In exchange, Gideon promises an operation to repair Prue’s hairlip: “I swear to keep faith with my sister, Prue Sarn, and share all with her when we’ve won through, and give her money up to fifty pound, when we’ve sold Sarn, to cure her. Amen.” So that she may keep the farm accounts, Gideon arranges for Prue to learn to read, write, and cipher from the Wizard Beguildy. Prue joyfully learns to write and practices each Sunday by chronicling the week’s events at Sarn Mere in her handmade, calico-covered book.

Gideon spares neither himself, his sister, nor his mother in his obsessive drive for material prosperity. After a few years of hard labor and thrift, their barn begins to fill with corn. Gideon has fallen in love with his childhood neighbor Jancis, the lovely daughter of Wizard Beguildy. Jancis returns Gideon’s affections, and the two are betrothed. It is at a “love spinning” (where neighborhood women gather to donate a day’s work to the bride-to-be) that Prue first meets the itinerant weaver, Kester Woodseaves. Prue immediately recognizes him as “a man to die for” but, with her harelip, never considers that he could return her love. Prue Sarn’s fervent love for Woodseaves is the secondary theme of Precious Bane, and contrasts with Gideon’s fanatical pursuit of riches. Prue, although she is painfully shy, is as generous and self-giving as her brother is grasping. She is a fine, upstanding woman who does a man’s work in the fields. When Wizard Beguildy (as part of his “Raising Venus” trick) orders his daughter Jancis to appear naked in front of a local squire, Jancis recoils, being afraid that Gideon will disown her if she does so. Prue kindly takes Jancis’s place, and is “crucified in nakedness” as she is made to hang by ropes in the rosy light of Beguildy’s room. Prue is mortified to see that both Squire Camperdine and Kester Woodseaves are in the room for the Wizard’s demonstration:

Did ever Fate play such a trick? Here was the one man out of all the world that I must hide from, since already I loved him so dear, and so must never hurt him with my grief. And there he was, so close in the small place that two strides would have fetched him to me. He was leaning forrard like the young squire, and he made to hold his arms out and then drew back and gave a sigh, and I know now that the desire of woman was stirring within him. It came on me then with a great joy that it was my own self and no other that had made him hold out his arms. For in that place he could not see my curse, he could only see me gleaming pale as any woman would . . . And as I saw the squire’s shoulders stooped forrard with the weight of his longing I knew for the first time that, whatever my face might be, my body was fair enough. From foot to shoulder I was as passable as any woman could be. Under the red light my flesh was like rose petals, and the shape of me was such as the water-fairies were said to have, lissom and lovesome . . . I hadna cared so much nor been so dismayed, at playing this foolish game afore a stranger. But now I was all one blush from head to foot, and cold as ice as well. Every second was an hour, and I was shamed as if I had gone whoring. Yet I couldna but rejoice to have given my body in this wise to the eyes of him who was maister in the house of me for ever and ever.

When life events become too difficult to bear, Prue finds a place of refuge in the attic among the stored apples. Kester Woodseaves uses the same attic as the place to do his weaving. It is in the attic, where Prue comes weekly to write in her journal, that she experiences a mystical intuition:

. . . a most powerful sweetness that had never come to me afore. It was not religious, like the goodness of a text heard at a preaching. It was beyond that. It was as if some creature made all of light had come on a sudden from a great way off, and nestled in my bosom. On all things there came a fair, lovely look, as if a different air stood over them . . . I cared not to ask what it was. For when the nut-hatch comes into her own tree, she dunna ask who planted it, nor what name it bears to men. For the tree is all to the nut-hatch, and this was all to me.

Prue recognizes that her harelip is her “precious bane,” and realizes “how all this blessedness of the attic came through me being curst.” Gideon sacrifices his fiancée to his ambitions and, despite her protests, puts off marrying Jancis. Gideon maintains that Jancis and any babies would be more mouths to feed, delaying his goal of becoming wealthy. Encouraged by the newly-enacted Corn Laws, Gideon places even more of his land under cultivation. Wizard Beguildy apprentices Jancis as a dairy maid, and sends her away for three years to a remote farm. Prue writes love letters—ostensibly sent from her illiterate brother Gideon to his equally-illiterate but lovely fiancée Jancis. Jancis seeks out the weaver to read these letters to her, and Kester Woodseaves comes to appreciate Prue’s lovely spirit. Unknown to Prue—and caring little about her cleft palate—he grows to love her.

Eventually, Jancis is so miserable in servitude that she runs away and throws herself upon Gideon’s mercy. Forgiving Jancis her sin of forfeiting her wages, Gideon agrees to marry his fiancée a week after the upcoming harvest—so long as the harvest yield is good. As the golden stalks are gathered in, it seems as if Gideon’s fortune is made. Contented at last, and choosing not to wait the few days until his wedding, Gideon takes Jancis to his bed. Tragically, in the hour of his apparent success, the prize for which Gideon had sacrificed so much is snatched from his grasp. Jancis’s enraged father, the Wizard Beguildy, punishes Gideon by setting fire to his newly-harvested crop. All is lost.

Incensed, Gideon rejects Jancis:

All he’d felt for her had died in the fire that night of September, and the sin of the father was visited upon the poor girl. For when Gideon’s eye fell on her, he saw his burning ricks, and in her blue glance there were the red reflections of fire, as you will see on some clear morning the last wild smoulderings of the thunderstorm. That was all she meant to him now.

While the Wizard Beguildy is in prison in Silverton for arson, awaiting trial, Mrs. Beguildy and Jancis are turned out of their house. Impoverished and reviled, they have no choice but to follow the Wizard Beguildy to the county seat.

In the dark winter months that follow, Mother Sarn (who lives with Gideon and Prue) becomes increasingly enfeebled and can no longer work for her keep. Prue seeks the help of a local girl to watch over their mother while she and Gideon replant their blighted fields. Unbeknownst to Prue, hard-hearted Gideon secures poisonous foxglove tea. He sees to it that the local girl serves a strong brew of the lethal tea to his mother, who is fatally poisoned by it.

The following summer, Jancis returns to Gideon with their love child. Even after the birth of his son, Gideon remains unrelenting. In her grief, Jancis drowns herself and the infant in Sarn Mere.

Prue comes to learn of Gideon’s poisoning of their mother, and confronts him. He does not deny it, but tries to hold Prue to her vow: “‘You swore to do as I said.’ ‘Murder cancels all vows,’ I answered.” In scenes reminiscent of Macbeth, Gideon becomes haunted by the ghosts of his mother, his lover, and his child. A broken man, Gideon finally kills himself in the same deep mere where his hardness of heart had led brokenhearted Jancis to drown herself and their illegitimate child.

Even after his suicide, Prue cannot find the heart to fully condemn her brother:

The whole of that great stretch of water wasna too much to make the grave of a man as strong as that one. The mile-long mist that lay upon the place wasna too grand a shroud. For though he was wrong, and did evil, and hurtid folks with his strength, yet he never did meanly, nor turned out bad work, nor lied.

Determined to leave Sarn Mere but concerned about the fate of the farm animals, Prue arranges to have them auctioned off at the next day’s fair. While she is there, the superstitious fair-goers turn on Prue, condemning her for the deaths at Sarn Mere; for the fire; for the drownings; and for Gideon’s suicide. The only cause the locals can see for these misfortunes is the curse of God, and Prue’s hare-shotten lip is proof to them that she is cursed. As a mob, they tie her to the ducking stool to drown her—a fitting end for a witch. Only the sudden appearance by the weaver prevents Prue’s death. Kester Woodseaves proves his love for Prue by saving her from death and then marrying her. The pair achieves “the peace to which all hearts do strive.”

Gideon Sarn’s bane—his single-minded lust for gold—costs him love and life. His physically deformed sister, who gives all she has out of love and loyalty, gets all that is worth having. Through the immense power of the written word, Prue gains the husband and the love that she thought could never be hers. Although childless, Prue is still happy, many years later, when she writes her story at the Parson’s bidding, in order to tell the truth about herself:

Ah! Those be the ways grouse laugh, and that was how I laughed in those days. But now I sit here between the hearth and the window, with the tea brewing for one that will be home afore sundown, and the clouds standing upon the mountains, and when I laugh, I laugh easy, like the woodpecker in spring. He was ever a laugher, was the woodpecker, and a right merry laugher too. He’ll fly into an ellum tree, and laugh to see it so green. And he’ll fly into an ash, and laugh to see it so bare, with only the black buds and no leaves. And then he’ll fly into an oak, and laugh fit to burst to see the young brown leaves. Ah, the woodpecker’s a good laugher, and the laughter’s sweet as a sound nut. If we can laugh so at the end of long living, we’ve not lived in vain.

Precious Bane was awarded the Prix Femina Vie Heureuse Anglais for 1924–1925, given annually for the best work of imagination in prose or verse (descriptive of English life) by an author who had not attained sufficient recognition. Upon reading the book over the Christmas holidays in 1926, Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin sent a letter of appreciation to Mary Webb. (cat. 127 is Henry Webb’s dedication copy of Precious Bane containing Baldwin’s letter on 10 Downing Street stationery.) Baldwin’s tribute to the neglected genius of Mary Webb (paid six months after her death, at a Royal Literary Fund dinner held in April 1928) brought Webb posthumous fame. This recognition led to the publication of the sevenvolume Collected Works of Mary Webb, each volume of which became a best seller and was reprinted many times throughout the 1930s and 1940s, bringing wealth to Webb’s publisher, Jonathan Cape, and to her husband, Henry Webb, and his new wife.