What do you think?
Rate this book
(Ashe of Rings, and Other Writings (Recovered Classics)) [By: Butts, Mary] [Sep, 1998]
Includes a preface by Butts' biographer Nathalie Blondel. In the newly reissued classic first novel of modernist English writer Mary Butts, a drama reverberating with visionary energy, "Ashe Of Rings" enacts a struggle of rightful succession to the guardianship of site of sacred mystery. While World War I rages in the background, a young Englishwoman summons her band of friends to confront treachery and to fight her disinheritance from her mother.
Hardcover
First published July 1, 1998
2 people are currently reading
175 people want to read
About the author
Mary Butts
41 books24 followersMary Francis Butts was a modernist writer whose work found recognition in important literary magazines of the time, as well as from some of her fellow modernists, T. S. Eliot, Hilda Dolittle, and Bryher. After her death, her works fell into obscurity until they began to be republished in the 1980s.
Butts was a student of the occultist Aleister Crowley, and as one of several students who worked with him on his Magick (Book 4) in 1912, she was given co-author credit. She was married to poet, publisher, and pacifist John Rodker from 1918 to 1927; their daughter, Camilla, was born in 1920.
Butts was a student of the occultist Aleister Crowley, and as one of several students who worked with him on his Magick (Book 4) in 1912, she was given co-author credit. She was married to poet, publisher, and pacifist John Rodker from 1918 to 1927; their daughter, Camilla, was born in 1920.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
October 20, 2024
Mary Butts was one of the great, unique, eccentric prose masters of the Modernist period. She has been pretty much unread since her early death in 1937.
This edition brings together her first novel and some other bits and bobs, though it is the former that most deeply impressed.
It is a novel on the damage of war, on a desperate, imagination-driven turn to Nature for redemption, it is about cruelty and self-obsession, and about failure to truly communicate.
It could, perhaps, be placed close to works of Kavan or Cooper Powys, though it is very much its own thing.
Here are the first few pages, not in italics as that makes them easier to read:
***********
"RINGS lay in a cup of turf. A thin spring sun painted its stones white. Two rollers of chalk down hung over it; midway between their crest and the sea, the house crouched like a dragon on a saucer of jade.
In the walled garden behind the house, the air was filtered from the sea wind, and made a mixing bowl for scents, for bees, coloured insects and noisy birds. A gardener, picking gooseberries, straightened his back to spit. The great drive, up which the countryside crawled like flies, swerved to the right where a stream ran into the sea. There the cliffs parted, and the hurrying surf beat into a round cove full of rocks. The waves rang within earshot of the lodge. In storms they covered it with spray. There Rings ended and the world began.
The station fly ground round the corner by the shore. Anthony Ashe poked his head out of the window and smelt his strip of beach. Half-way up the avenue he stopped the cab and got out.
"That will do, Houseman, thank you. Good afternoon."
He passed under the trees whose quickening buds broke the light, and walking fast, took a footpath across the park.
The house has a thousand eyes.--He turned his head to the sea under their scrutiny, till a straggled wood of black pines hid him, and the path turned red.
Anthony Ashe of Rings remembered that he should have insured the driver's silence. But he could not think what to say, and to a squire even of the last century tongue slitting had gone out of fashion. The house would know already--a small child was running up the drive with the news. It did not matter.
It is said of this place that in the time of Arthur, the legendary king of Britain, Morgan le Fay, an enchantress of that period, had dealings of an inconceivable nature there. Also that it was used by druid priests, and even before their era, as a place for holy and magical rites and ceremonies. A battle of the Danes and Saxons was fought there. To-day the country people will not approach it at night, not the hardiest shepherd. There is a tradition that in the barrow above the earthworks is placed a box of bright gold.
So much for the County History.
The first Ring raised its thirty feet of turf. A ribbon of chalk path ran along its crest, a loop a mile round. Inside was a second wall and within that a third. On the plateau above them was a round barrow, irrelevantly placed, and a dewpond, full of mud. Behind the pond and the barrow, there was a grove, ragged trees, exceedingly tall, pines and beeches, knit at the feet with hazel and bramble and fern. On its skirt a pleasant wood; its centre was a soggy thicket full of white marsh grass. Year in, year out, the wind rang in its crest with the noise of a harp.
From these rings and this grove depended the fantastic house, and the generations called Ashe, which were born there and pattered through its hall and bright passages like leaves. Its triple circle was the sole device on their shield, represented from the hatchment of their dead to the coral and bells each baby chewed and shook. An old drawing represented the Rings, come down from their hill and sitting like an extinguisher upon the house. It had been calculated that, allowing for all projections, the house would fit exactly into the inmost ring.
A British camp, but of pre-British--possible neolithic origin, used by the Romans; a refuge for Celt and then for Saxon, a place of legend and consequent aversion to the countryside ever since; it is well that so interesting an historic site should have remained in the preservation of so ancient a family.
Anthony Ashe stamped his arms on the presentation copy of these sentiments and knew better. The Rings preserved him. His son Julian had died, and that night he had gone up to them like a blind beast. After three years in the East he had come back, without mate, without heir, to present his accounts and their deficit.
He went through the gap in the first rampart, crossed the fosse and mounted the white chalk steps over the second ring, and the third. The wind ran along them shivering, and a thistle tapped his boot. He climbed the barrow, sat on it, and looked back down the valley to his house.
The Rings kept the valley head. From them a road, green, white and faint ran into a birchwood, and through the delicate trees to a door in the kitchen garden wall. Thus no one but shepherds came to the Rings except through Rings. At the valley head the road was lost in a powdering of flints.
Thick white smoke rose from two chimneys below. The fire was lit in the library and in his dressing-room. The news of his return had come. He dragged at his short beard with his hands till his chin ached. These were his thoughts. There must be children. And for that some strong girl. His name would obtain him one. What was left of his life could be given to her training. A livery sacrifice to this place. It did not matter whom. "I'd be daft to refuse him, the laird of Cockpen." An old tune. That's it. Soon to find. Easy to keep. But a stale business. What had been a duty would remain one. The carved bed frightened them. Chinese. The Imperial Court. A girl slung across the back of the chief Eunuch. Left to crawl up from the foot of the dragon-bed. Would Clavel like the job? ... All the solemn county to placate. Cruets....
Oh God! Let me see it through. Rings, it's been a labour following through the centuries your eternal caprice. Yet it comes again... I don't doubt that it will come again... I do not know what it is... To every Ashe in turn it happens... You ... sing, and singing in your glory move... Then he said aloud: "Julian--my son Julian."
It's a specialists undertaking. The things that one foregoes to set a feather in Ring's cap. You could cover a broader skull. My old head aches with you.
He wrote with his stick upon a patch of chalk. Anthony Ashe 1892. Iste perfecit opus. He said:
"I must go down and see about that child." He stood up, resetting his grey top hat. A breath fluttered through the treetops and ran through the grey hair fringes on the back of his skull. He shook his head.
"Caprice--Caprice--stop tickling my neck. I tell you one thing. Not one of the girls who want it shall have it. I'm an old man. The strain needs crossing. That's it. Dance round. Tickle my chin. So Julian wasn't your fancy.... If I stopped calling you pretty women, Lesbian-dryads--I couldn't stand it. Is that why my son died? Did he see in you what I dare not see? So that he died.... Good night, sweet prince. You were a young dog to turn up your nose at the pretty ladies of Rings Hill.
"I suppose I had better go through." He ran down the side of the barrow and walked into the wood over a light shell of turf, and springing needles. Then mud curled over the toes of his boots. A springing bramble reversed its hooks across his nose. The blood dropped through the thin skin. Another curled across his waistcoat. He loosed each hook in turn. High up the wind sang with seraphic lightness; a transparent feather fluttered onto the crown of the grey top hat. With lovely lightness the wind fell, the last sigh ran down the shafts and scattered in minute touches... He thrust on slowly into the clearing where there was a large stone.
Light women. Light women. Light things and winged and holy. He stood five minutes with greedy eyes. Then he struck through the wood, hurried over the rampart and down the rabbit-darting hill.
This edition brings together her first novel and some other bits and bobs, though it is the former that most deeply impressed.
It is a novel on the damage of war, on a desperate, imagination-driven turn to Nature for redemption, it is about cruelty and self-obsession, and about failure to truly communicate.
It could, perhaps, be placed close to works of Kavan or Cooper Powys, though it is very much its own thing.
Here are the first few pages, not in italics as that makes them easier to read:
***********
"RINGS lay in a cup of turf. A thin spring sun painted its stones white. Two rollers of chalk down hung over it; midway between their crest and the sea, the house crouched like a dragon on a saucer of jade.
In the walled garden behind the house, the air was filtered from the sea wind, and made a mixing bowl for scents, for bees, coloured insects and noisy birds. A gardener, picking gooseberries, straightened his back to spit. The great drive, up which the countryside crawled like flies, swerved to the right where a stream ran into the sea. There the cliffs parted, and the hurrying surf beat into a round cove full of rocks. The waves rang within earshot of the lodge. In storms they covered it with spray. There Rings ended and the world began.
The station fly ground round the corner by the shore. Anthony Ashe poked his head out of the window and smelt his strip of beach. Half-way up the avenue he stopped the cab and got out.
"That will do, Houseman, thank you. Good afternoon."
He passed under the trees whose quickening buds broke the light, and walking fast, took a footpath across the park.
The house has a thousand eyes.--He turned his head to the sea under their scrutiny, till a straggled wood of black pines hid him, and the path turned red.
Anthony Ashe of Rings remembered that he should have insured the driver's silence. But he could not think what to say, and to a squire even of the last century tongue slitting had gone out of fashion. The house would know already--a small child was running up the drive with the news. It did not matter.
It is said of this place that in the time of Arthur, the legendary king of Britain, Morgan le Fay, an enchantress of that period, had dealings of an inconceivable nature there. Also that it was used by druid priests, and even before their era, as a place for holy and magical rites and ceremonies. A battle of the Danes and Saxons was fought there. To-day the country people will not approach it at night, not the hardiest shepherd. There is a tradition that in the barrow above the earthworks is placed a box of bright gold.
So much for the County History.
The first Ring raised its thirty feet of turf. A ribbon of chalk path ran along its crest, a loop a mile round. Inside was a second wall and within that a third. On the plateau above them was a round barrow, irrelevantly placed, and a dewpond, full of mud. Behind the pond and the barrow, there was a grove, ragged trees, exceedingly tall, pines and beeches, knit at the feet with hazel and bramble and fern. On its skirt a pleasant wood; its centre was a soggy thicket full of white marsh grass. Year in, year out, the wind rang in its crest with the noise of a harp.
From these rings and this grove depended the fantastic house, and the generations called Ashe, which were born there and pattered through its hall and bright passages like leaves. Its triple circle was the sole device on their shield, represented from the hatchment of their dead to the coral and bells each baby chewed and shook. An old drawing represented the Rings, come down from their hill and sitting like an extinguisher upon the house. It had been calculated that, allowing for all projections, the house would fit exactly into the inmost ring.
A British camp, but of pre-British--possible neolithic origin, used by the Romans; a refuge for Celt and then for Saxon, a place of legend and consequent aversion to the countryside ever since; it is well that so interesting an historic site should have remained in the preservation of so ancient a family.
Anthony Ashe stamped his arms on the presentation copy of these sentiments and knew better. The Rings preserved him. His son Julian had died, and that night he had gone up to them like a blind beast. After three years in the East he had come back, without mate, without heir, to present his accounts and their deficit.
He went through the gap in the first rampart, crossed the fosse and mounted the white chalk steps over the second ring, and the third. The wind ran along them shivering, and a thistle tapped his boot. He climbed the barrow, sat on it, and looked back down the valley to his house.
The Rings kept the valley head. From them a road, green, white and faint ran into a birchwood, and through the delicate trees to a door in the kitchen garden wall. Thus no one but shepherds came to the Rings except through Rings. At the valley head the road was lost in a powdering of flints.
Thick white smoke rose from two chimneys below. The fire was lit in the library and in his dressing-room. The news of his return had come. He dragged at his short beard with his hands till his chin ached. These were his thoughts. There must be children. And for that some strong girl. His name would obtain him one. What was left of his life could be given to her training. A livery sacrifice to this place. It did not matter whom. "I'd be daft to refuse him, the laird of Cockpen." An old tune. That's it. Soon to find. Easy to keep. But a stale business. What had been a duty would remain one. The carved bed frightened them. Chinese. The Imperial Court. A girl slung across the back of the chief Eunuch. Left to crawl up from the foot of the dragon-bed. Would Clavel like the job? ... All the solemn county to placate. Cruets....
Oh God! Let me see it through. Rings, it's been a labour following through the centuries your eternal caprice. Yet it comes again... I don't doubt that it will come again... I do not know what it is... To every Ashe in turn it happens... You ... sing, and singing in your glory move... Then he said aloud: "Julian--my son Julian."
It's a specialists undertaking. The things that one foregoes to set a feather in Ring's cap. You could cover a broader skull. My old head aches with you.
He wrote with his stick upon a patch of chalk. Anthony Ashe 1892. Iste perfecit opus. He said:
"I must go down and see about that child." He stood up, resetting his grey top hat. A breath fluttered through the treetops and ran through the grey hair fringes on the back of his skull. He shook his head.
"Caprice--Caprice--stop tickling my neck. I tell you one thing. Not one of the girls who want it shall have it. I'm an old man. The strain needs crossing. That's it. Dance round. Tickle my chin. So Julian wasn't your fancy.... If I stopped calling you pretty women, Lesbian-dryads--I couldn't stand it. Is that why my son died? Did he see in you what I dare not see? So that he died.... Good night, sweet prince. You were a young dog to turn up your nose at the pretty ladies of Rings Hill.
"I suppose I had better go through." He ran down the side of the barrow and walked into the wood over a light shell of turf, and springing needles. Then mud curled over the toes of his boots. A springing bramble reversed its hooks across his nose. The blood dropped through the thin skin. Another curled across his waistcoat. He loosed each hook in turn. High up the wind sang with seraphic lightness; a transparent feather fluttered onto the crown of the grey top hat. With lovely lightness the wind fell, the last sigh ran down the shafts and scattered in minute touches... He thrust on slowly into the clearing where there was a large stone.
Light women. Light women. Light things and winged and holy. He stood five minutes with greedy eyes. Then he struck through the wood, hurried over the rampart and down the rabbit-darting hill.
February 27, 2024
Ashe of Rings was Mary Butts's first novel, written while she was in her mid-twenties, and it's a stunner--as good as The Taverner Novels that would follow. The story forms a triangle, with a person at each point and a sacred place in the center. Others are drawn into the drama and have their roles to play, but the plot is primarily fueled by the psychic energy crackling between those three characters. Butts called the book a 'War fairy-tale' and that's as good a shorthand description as any. World War I certainly forms the backdrop and wields a heavy hand of influence among the characters, but there is also a greater power of mystery exerting a strong effect. Permeated by tension and driven by deeply drawn, compelling characters, as a debut novel it is a testament to Butts's extraordinary nature and talent.
The novel comprises the bulk of the book, and it was the highlight for me (hence the four-star rating). I didn't care for the novella, which is the epistolary tale of a love affair. The remaining three pieces are essays, all of which speak to the underpinnings of Butts's fiction in one way or another. I mostly skimmed these, as they weren't what I was seeking here. However, Butts was very knowledgeable as well as passionate in her beliefs and opinions, so other readers might find the essays of more interest than I did.
The novel comprises the bulk of the book, and it was the highlight for me (hence the four-star rating). I didn't care for the novella, which is the epistolary tale of a love affair. The remaining three pieces are essays, all of which speak to the underpinnings of Butts's fiction in one way or another. I mostly skimmed these, as they weren't what I was seeking here. However, Butts was very knowledgeable as well as passionate in her beliefs and opinions, so other readers might find the essays of more interest than I did.
July 29, 2019
The main title is completely bonkers, like the Taverner novels there are stretches of tedium mixed with startling moments of weirdness. "Imaginary Letters" is interesting, and doesn't hang around too long. But the real hidden treasure here is the non-fiction. "Warning To Hikers" is unabashed elitism and snobbery decrying the advance of proles into the countryside, but it has a sense of the strangeness of landscape and unpeopled places, which gets taken up in the magnificent "Ghosties And Ghoulies". The latter should be essential reading for anyone interested in "folk horror", "weird fiction", and "extro-science-fiction" and the modernist antecedents of ideas percolating in more recent cultural theory. "Traps For Unbelievers" is good as well, capturing the state of religious decline and examining it from different angles than we're used to.
After reading this I am convinced Mary never truly died and her spirit dwells in the psychic folds of Hidden England, our metaphysical Queen in between matter and time. Stet.
After reading this I am convinced Mary never truly died and her spirit dwells in the psychic folds of Hidden England, our metaphysical Queen in between matter and time. Stet.
Read
July 4, 2022In WWI Britain, a precocious young woman grapples with a loveless mother, self-destructive lover, and a patronymic supernatural demesne. In theory I quite enjoyed Butts’ use of fantasy as a medium to explore personal and societal concerns. The writing is complex if uneven, and it was fun to imagine an alternate reality in which the genre grew up around more relatable tropes than Tolkien’s staid love of rural England and a bloodless Christ. But it was also one of those self-indulgent books where the protagonist is really obviously the author, and the romance in question a thinly veiled reworking of some previous relationship, the whole text obviously intended as a missive to an unfaithful partner. I guess I liked it less than I’d have liked.
September 6, 2022
wrote an essay on 'speed the plough' and honestly couldn't tell you anything about it other than its title. probs my memory's fault not mary's tbf
October 3, 2013
I couldn't finish it. AMAZING imagination, but the prose is not so hot.
February 15, 2015
What the FLIP is this book about...
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews