Wales and the East in Eleanor Sleath’s Glenowen; or the Fairy Palace (1815) Matthew C. Jones In this essay I examine the four illustrations of Eleanor Sleath’s 1815 children’s novel Glenowen as nexuses of Wales and the East in the English imagination, proprietary education, and the powers of the imagination. Welsh and eastern identities intersect in the images, which include, for instance, Welsh peasants and “fairies” in Indian shawls together, and the “fairy palace” adorned with Oriental imagery nestled within the Welsh mountains. I argue that through images that depict mollified portrayals of these hegemonic intercultural relationships for children, and framing them such that they fortify contemporary mores surrounding childhood education and imagination, Glenowen perpetuates Welsh and eastern colonialisms. Consequently, the novel also exemplifies how the relationships between cultural hegemonies and education were translated for children in word and image. In addition to considering their roles in Glenowen, this essay also brings into conversation scholarship on these major themes, and presents new avenues for explicating the interactions between book illustration, children’s literature, and British colonialisms. 1. Introduction From the moment that Rosa, the orphaned child protagonist of Eleanor Sleath’s Glenowen; or The Fairy Palace, receives her book of fairy tales, she has no question that fairies are real, and that they can impart wisdom to those with whom they come into contact. She doubts that they have the same degree of powers that the ones in the old stories did (“these, however, were probably the fairies of other countries, or of ancient days” [65]), but certainly they still exist; indeed, there were two kinds, “one benevolent, the other malignant; [and] rewards and punishments were awarded by them to the merits or demerits of those with whom they interfered” (66). Throughout Glenowen, Rosa’s convictions ring true, as she is visited and AAA - Arbeiten aus Anglistik und Amerikanistik Band 46 (2021) · Heft 1 Gunter Narr Verlag Tübingen DOI 10.2357/ AAA-2021-0004 Matthew C. Jones 74 guided by a fairy figure who gives her presents for making progress in her education and for her benevolent actions. Through young Rosa’s eyes, the myth of the fairy, who adorns herself with Indian shawls and Chinese silks, is supported by her exotic Welsh origins and eastern appearance. In these ways, Glenowen unites turn-of-the-nineteenth-century English discourses on Wales, the East, education, and the imagination, and translates important elements of each for young readers. Furthermore, it brings these themes together not only in its text, but also in four illustrations, which serve as portals through which readers can observe these ideas filtered through a child’s imagination. The novel’s stated purpose is to educate young readers in terms of virtue and benevolence, with these lessons often being ventriloquized through Welsh and oriental figures. Thus the images do not merely portray exotic, and in this case colonized, populations in benign and child-friendly ways; they reinforce these contemporary hegemonic relationships and contribute to their perpetuation by making them legible to young minds. Through the images, child readers visualize the formal and philosophical educational lessons the text delineates, and are also informed that contemporary cultural constructions of the Welsh and eastern other are not only accurate, but are worth preserving in their present hierarchical forms. Thematically, the four illustrations are a tapestry of contemporary discourses of Wales, the East, and education. I will approach these visualizations through a focus on their content: each contains a building, and, chronologically, they progress from a Welsh peasant cottage, to a church building, to the “fairy palace” (in reality a mansion in Wales), to what can be understood as an improved Welsh cottage. The viewer’s perspective expands throughout the novel, including more background geography in each successive image. This, I argue, correlates with the expanding worldly education and imaginative powers throughout the novel. Yet, despite the inclusion of more background detail in each image, they all remain very simple in design (with only a single structure and a few human figures in each), and even the details of the architecture and surrounding environment are not elaborately executed. This signals that the images themselves, as well as the novel, were designed specifically with child readers in mind. With the aid of these illustrations Sleath conveyed challenging and erudite lessons and ideas, such as the benevolent affections, the picturesque, and intercultural relationships, for young people who would likely not yet have been immersed deeply in these discourses. Indeed, the content and construction of Glenowen’s images make the novel unconventional in terms of current scholarship on the nineteenth-century novel, and thus necessitate a deeper analysis than the work has heretofore received. With these points in mind and before turning to these illustrations (in the order in which they appear in the novel), I will first provide essential contextual information on the major elements of the story. This will begin with a survey of the small amount of scholarship on Glenowen. I will then Wales and the East in Sleath’s Glenowen; or the Fairy Palace 75 provide an account of eighteenthand nineteenth-century notions of Wales, Welsh life, and their roles in the English imagination, as well as of the presences and utilizations of the Orient, such as the increasing cultural awareness and invocations of literatures such as The Arabian Nights (characters from which Glenowen recycles). Establishing the presence of these discourses serves as inroads for assessing the importance of Sleath bringing them together in a manner legible to children. However, I will first summarize Glenowen’s plot (to assist in locating the images later in my analysis), and introduce some crucial details of the material and publication histories of the novel and the book market into which it was released. The story follows young Rosa Evelynn and her older brother Charles, and begins with the death of their mother Mrs. Evelynn, who leaves them to the care of her good friend Dame Morgan, a Welsh peasant in the fictional Welsh village of Glenowen. 1 We follow the children through key moments of their formal and extracurricular educational developments. That is, at the same time that their arrival and tutelage at the local school is explained (the English origin of Rosa’s teacher being emphasized), we also witness their growth as individuals in terms of their benevolent affections. Rosa, for instance, becomes the social protector and close friend of a classmate of a more lowly economic and social status (named Jessy), and Charles offers financial assistance to an indigent traveler. As a reward for her progress at school Rosa is given a book of fairy tales, the contents of which she begins to graft onto the world around her. On the second anniversary of their mother’s death, Charles, Rosa, Jessy, and Dame Morgan visit her grave to lay flowers (this being described as an indispensable Welsh ritual). At the graveyard they observe an elaboratelydressed woman in Indian silks visiting the same grave. With no explanations regarding the unknown woman’s identity, Rosa concludes that the figure is a benevolent fairy. Soon after this, Rosa, Charles, and Dame Morgan receive anonymous and exotic gifts, followed swiftly by the benevolent fairy appearing at Dame Morgan’s cottage, whereupon she is named “Peribanou” (inspired by Rosa’s reading of Arabian Nights). She offers to have the children over to visit her mansion, and while there they are overwhelmed both by the size of her domicile and by the wealth of exotic material artifacts and curiosities with which it is populated. This leads to the home being identified by Rosa as Peribanou’s eponymous “fairy palace”. Throughout this time Peribanou indulges Rosa’s fancies and allows her to believe that she is indeed a benevolent fairy. The story closes with Peribanou identifying herself as Mrs. Macdonald (formerly Mrs. Appowen), a widow who was once betrothed to the children’s father, and who has inherited immense wealth from her husband’s ventures in India. It concludes 1 An exact location within Wales is not confirmed, but multiple references are made to Caernarfonshire in northwest Wales, the location also of Snowdonia and thus a charged locus of Welsh tropes for Romantic-era authors and readers. Matthew C. Jones 76 with Mrs. Macdonald adopting the children, and rewarding Dame Morgan for her previous guardianship thus: “‘…and here is something… with my signature’ (giving a written paper into her hands) ‘which will immediately entitle you to an income, more than sufficient for your comfort: added to this, your cottage is your own. It is the just reward for your fidelity’” (190). The rather uncomplicated and unornamented plot complements the presentation and publication of the book itself. The book was published by the noted children’s literature publisher John Harris in 1815 2 , and was advertised in The British Review and London Critical Journal in the “List of New Works published from July 10 to October, 1815” as such: “Glenowen, or the Fairy Palace, a Tale. By Eleanor Heath [sic]; illustrated with Engravings. 18mo. Half-bound 3s” (572). Its modest price stands out even among the non-illustrated works that accompany it in this catalog (which includes not only novels and poetry but other categories such as “Philology”, “Politics, and Political Economy”, and “Theology, and Theological History”). Around 1800, novels were often printed in three volumes that tended to cost five to six shillings a volume and fifteen to eighteen altogether, placing Glenowen, printed in a single volume, significantly below the mean of the time (with Glenowen only slightly predating the sharp increase in cost around 1821, associated with the novels of Sir Walter Scott, to 10s 6d per volume and thus 31s 6d altogether) (Eliot 2020: 291). What this means is that, through Glenowen, Sleath was making the multifaceted themes accessible to a far wider audience than most novels were being allowed to reach at the time, and was even doing so with illustrations. 2. Sleath’s Glenowen Glenowen has not previously been studied in detail, despite passing scholarly references, which testify to its potential, for instance through its synthesizing of discrete genres and forms. 3 Grenby (2011: 510) discusses Glenowen in terms of its bringing together children’s and gothic literatures: Some authors were even prepared to attempt children’s fiction in modes widely deemed unsuited for the young… Eleanor Sleath, author of The Orphan of the Rhine (1798), … was responsible for a more coherent attempt to introduce the Gothic to children. Her Glenowen, or The Fairy Palace (1815), … tells of two young orphans abandoned in a picturesque Welsh village. A ghostlike stranger is seen; mysterious gifts appear; the children are summoned to an eerie mansion. Eventually, all is explained as the ministrations of a benign lady, once 2 See also Glenowen’s entry in Moon (1976) (entry 806). 3 What little scholarship there is has often focused on her 1798 novel The Orphan of the Rhine, which is one of the “seven horrid novels” referenced in Northanger Abbey. For an introduction to Sleath, see Czlapinski and Wheeler (2011). Wales and the East in Sleath’s Glenowen; or the Fairy Palace 77 betrothed to the children’s father, who has encouraged their belief that she is a fairy so that she may aid them anonymously. In another short reference, Townshend (2013: 32) situates Glenowen as a vehicle for making a more specific claim regarding Sleath as a pioneer of redirecting the gothic for young readers from adults: Sleath’s … highly imaginative fiction for children vacillates deftly between Gothic in its lighter and darker, sportive and terrible manifestations; suggestions of ghosts and hauntings effortlessly combine with a celebration of the fanciful powers of the unfettered imagination. The point to be made, though, is that, with Sleath, the earlier tendency in Wollstonecraft, Barbauld, and Edgeworth to reserve the Gothic exclusively for adult readers is no longer in operation… Townshend’s statement shares with Grenby’s the suggestion that in Glenowen Sleath unifies the Gothic and children’s literature in original ways. These summaries constitute the extent of any exegesis of the novel, its noteworthy originality notwithstanding. Yet, despite their inextricable roles in the plot, the uses of the Orient and Wales in the story are not probed. Indeed, as we shall see, the gothic is not manifested in “ghosts and hauntings”, but in Rosa seeing the world through the lens of eastern literatures and cultures. Thus, where Glenowen is invoked in support of theses regarding Sleath’s bringing together of children’s and Gothic literatures, the overt eastern elements of its story have not been considered. The significance of its Welsh setting is overlooked throughout. 3. Wales and the East in the English Imagination, c.1800 The world of the story is Welsh. At the end of the story Peribanou reveals that “My father’s name, as you have doubtless been informed, was Appowen” (182). Dame Morgan is introduced as “belonging to almost the lowest class of the Welsh peasantry, and of course wholly uneducated”, but at the same time “a striking example of the power of a virtuous integrity to procure a high degree of esteem from those who, having had superior advantages, are destined to move in the higher ranks of society” (8). Wales is the terra firma setting of the entire story, the only exceptions being where characters describe action that has taken place elsewhere, such as where Peribanou reveals how she has acquired her Indian goods. The story ends with the promise that Rosa and Charles’s story is still remembered in Wales: “Their names are still remembered in Carnarvonshire; and it is still usual in the country, when particular blessings are desired, to say, ‘may you be as deserving, and as fortunate, as the Orphans of Glenowen’” (193). Matthew C. Jones 78 Wales was a frequent setting for English authors of this period, as well as a regular destination for tourists, who sought to replicate the experiences of such figures as Thomas Pennant and William Gilpin. 4 For novelists, poets, and travel writers of this period, to quote Morgan (1981: 100), “the picturesque was more important than the true”, meaning that these authors’ works tended to reinforce stereotypes of Wales and its people - that it was a country with great poetic and artistic potential but was populated by individuals who could not comprehend or appreciate it. Such stereotypes were given further life by the fact that virtually all of Wales was non-English speaking, even as late as the turn of the nineteenth century (Franklin 2013: 11); the Welsh sounded foreign, even if they could appear otherwise to be English. English, as the modern language of commerce and philosophy, being illegible to the “ancient” Welsh people, lent further credence to such beliefs. The Welsh language and the fact that much of Wales was monolingual played a central role in discourse in which Wales and Welsh people were, for reasons ranging from artistic to anthropological, recognized as distant both in terms of location and of stadial development. As in the case of Glenowen, they also facilitated a faraway, “fairytale” setting for children. When, soon after Rosa receives her fairy book and becomes an auto-didact of fairy life, the story’s narrator states that “Wales may, with propriety, be termed the present scene of fairy-land” (65), they are framing Wales in a way that would be acceptable to the early nineteenth-century English-language reader. 5 As a site that is both recognized as reachable yet culturally otherworldly, Wales is the ideal setting where English-speaking British children can bear witness to Arabian fairies coming to life. Indeed, Sleath contributes another dimension to these contemporary portrayals by providing illustrations of Wales’s foreignness for child readers and imbuing them with overtones of various cultures of the East. The images of Dame Morgan’s cabin and Mrs. Macdonald’s majestic fairy palace make eastern symbols more real while at the same time reinforcing a sense of Wales as a place far away. Analogous to the Welsh geographical symbolism in the story is the author’s reliance upon references to the East, associations which take both figurative and material forms: for instance, Rosa titles the “benevolent fairy” Peribanou after reading The Arabian Nights, and when Peribanou reveals that she is actually Mrs. Macdonald she also explains the Indian origins of all of her mansion’s goods and curiosities. In the case of The Arabian Nights, Sleath was tapping into cultural associations that had taken deep hold by the time Glenowen was published in 1815. As Caracciolo (1988: xvi) explains, since the original translation into English in 1706, the Nights 4 For more information on Wales’s popularity as a tourist destination at this time, see “Curious Travellers” (n.d.). 5 For more on long eighteenth-century Wales in the English imagination, see Constantine (2018), Jenkins (2002), and Jones (2019). Wales and the East in Sleath’s Glenowen; or the Fairy Palace 79 grew into what was for England “the major example” of “how the Orient served as ‘alter ego’ to the West, evoking dread as well as fascination”. When Rosa reflects on her introduction to the tale of “the Good Prince Amhed and the Fairy Peribanou” as “a kind of mental banquet entirely new” (63), her enthusiasm mirrors the contemporary influence of the tales on adults and children alike, and at the same time signals to readers which contemporary associations Sleath is invoking. 6 4. Romantic Childhood and Imagery Before commencing my analysis of the illustrations and how they present a convergence of Wales and the East and their accompanying themes of distance (in terms of culture as well as proximity), however, it is important to understand the print and cultural historical moment Glenowen was entering. The first point to bear in mind is how book illustrations at this time were received and appreciated; as Haywood, Matthews, and Shannon (2019: 2-3) explain, “Before the modern meaning of the word (a picture commissioned to appear only in a book, representing a moment or scene from the text) appeared for the first time in 1817, and became dominant in the 1830s and 1840s, the concept of a pictorial accompaniment or embellishment suggested that an image was as much a product of art and visual culture as it was of the book”. Thus, in the period in which Sleath published the novel, illustrations were still to be interpreted reflecting their readers’ lives in material terms; to quote Jung (2015: 2) in his analysis of images that accompanied James Thomson’s The Seasons, “readers of the poem viewing these illustrations relate them not only to the text they accompany, but also to the reading subject’s existence within a society that is reliant on visual media and symbolic forms”. In the same vein, he writes also that “illustrations added to editions serve both as intra-textual interpretive markers and as referents to an extra-textual economic and cultural world that anchors the subjects represented in the visual and material cultures of art, music, fashion, and luxury objects, as well as the practices of collecting and exhibition” (ibid). Haywood, Matthews, and Shannon (2019: 5) carry these considerations into the Romantic era, observing that “the illustration was a locus of bibliographical, commercial, ideological, and aesthetic concerns, and a portal between the text and its cultural context”. In the case of Glenowen, we must also consider that the text and images engage with its themes and convey its messages in means legible to children. Furthermore, despite the novel’s didactic ambitions, very rarely do the children’s lessons come from a traditional authority figure such as a teacher or parent. Rather, the majority of instruction is delivered by either the Welsh peasant Dame Morgan, or 6 For more on India in the British literary imagination at this time see Rudd (2013). Matthew C. Jones 80 the “fairy” Peribanou, meaning that while the novel is indeed a “locus” of these concerns, it conveys them in unconventional ways, with its images both illustrating corresponding moments in the text but also acting as points of contact for ostensibly-dissonant figures, subjects, and ideas. These points are evident in the images of Dame Morgan’s Welsh cottage in Wales and Peribanou’s exoticized mansion, which directly engage with contemporary cultural discourse and imagery of both the Welsh peasantry and of literary and material luxuries extracted from the East. As the illustrations both include children and are drawn specifically for child audiences, we must likewise consider contemporary notions of the child. The publication of Glenowen accompanied contemporaneous reappraisals of childhood and the child. Rowland (2012: 9) states that it was in this period that “the demographic and social changes affecting childhood and children were given full cultural and artistic expression”, and further that Romanticera authors “created images of children that powerfully condensed and encapsulated the new ideas of childhood that had been circulating and gaining pace over the course of a century”. The “Romantic child” is understood in this period to be “essentially an idealized, nostalgic, sentimental figure of childhood, one characterized by innocence, imagination, nature and primitivism”, with the child ultimately culminating as “a figure of the primitive” and a figure that “represents the childhood of the race as a whole”. Rowland goes on to argue that, in opposition to these conventions, “the figure of the child… carries historical associations and cultural charges and is, thus, very far from the figure of autonomy, nature and idealized innocence so often presented as the ‘Romantic child’” (ibid.: 9-10). Glenowen by and large supports Rowland’s claims: Sleath constructs Rosa and Charles such that their capacities for benevolence and imagination are immense, and frames their world in such a way that the children are rewarded for these capacities (that is, theirs are not “primitive” minds). The novel also presents us with the far-reaching implications of Rowland’s observations. On the one hand, Charles and Rosa materially benefit from the cultural hegemony into which they enter (graduating from Dame Morgan’s humble cottage and limited education to Mrs. Macdonald sponsoring their higher education with wealth acquired through Indian colonialism). On the other, they are also quietly made to understand that these forms of cultural hegemony are to the benefit of all parties involved. The novel’s ending reinforces this vexed element of the Romantic child. On the one hand, at the end of the story Rosa is demystified of her beliefs that she is in the company of fairies and other mythical entities. On the other, it is the educated and worldly Mrs. Macdonald who ultimately instructs the children and removes their childlike fantastical filters of the world around them. This action serves to save and rescue them from what is described in the novel as their “orphanhood”, but in reality is merely their upbringing under the Welsh peasant Dame Morgan, which thus equates “orphanhood” with a Welsh peasant upbringing. Indeed, when Wales and the East in Sleath’s Glenowen; or the Fairy Palace 81 Mrs. Macdonald saves Rosa and Charles, she provides salvation for Dame Morgan as well, through presenting her with a cottage, which is understood to be a material improvement over what is presented as the typical Welsh cottage she had inhabited up to that point of the story. Yet, as the images reveal, Dame Morgan’s “new” Welsh cottage looks much the same as her original one did. The text reveals that Dame Morgan is content with her new circumstances, which visually are indistinguishable from those with which she started. After being informed by Mrs. Macdonald of her allowance and cottage, we learn: “Dame Morgan’s emotions did not, for some moments, allow her to articulate. ‘May heaven preserve and bless you, my dear and honoured lady! ’ she at length uttered, and then burst into a fresh flood of tears” (191). The images confirm that her situation has not improved in any discernible way, which affirms for readers that neither her situation nor that of her analogous real-world population need to. As I shall demonstrate, the images’ content presents us with similar progressions over the course of the novel. Throughout the text, exoticized figures are the primary source of education, or provide the voices that approve of and reward the children’s good behavior. At the same time, the images buttress the implications of the text (for instance, showing how a Welsh peasant can educate young children), and ultimately fortify the social relationships upon which these exchanges are built; they assure readers that these visualizations are conducive to the educational messages of the novel. 7 5. Glenowen and Its Illustrations The dedication guides readers toward a focus on the interpersonal relationships that are cultivated in the novel: “To all Parents, Guardians, and Friends of Young Persons In early Youth, the following tale, intended to encourage the pursuit of all useful acquirements, and to promote the benevolent affections, is respectfully inscribed by the author”. From the outset, readers are to focus on the discourse between children and other figures, and to deprioritize the worldly station or origin of the person with whom the child is speaking. In this cultural arena, such people as peasants from Wales and fairies from the East can convey educational messages as suitably as school teachers can, and in the novel we are introduced to this dynamic visually before we are textually. The first image is a frontispiece, and thus readers are borne into the fantastical setting wherein these themes converge before the text of the story begins (Figure 1). The frontispiece image is labeled “Dame Morgan’s Cottage Door”, and depicts the two children we will come to know as Rosa and Charles standing in the doorway while Dame Morgan sits outside, beside the door, reading to the children. 7 For more on childhood and illustration in the Romantic period see also McGovran (1999). Matthew C. Jones 82 Readers are drawn to the doorway itself, and to the fact that the focus is into the house rather than away from it. Readers are here to direct their gaze to “Dame Morgan’s Cottage Door”, rather than, for instance, merely being informed that the image is of “Dame Morgan’s Cottage”. Figure 1. From Glenowen: Or, The Fairy Palace, a Tale (London, 1815). Courtesy Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, Gainesville, FL. Throughout the story we witness how the relationships between Dame Morgan and Rosa and Charles exemplify the benevolent affections. Schmitter (2013: 202) reminds us that “affections” in the eighteenth century “had a broad metaphysical sense indicating a property, quality, or attribute”, and that they commonly served also “as a synonym for ‘passion’ in general and for a specific class of states that were refined kindly, or simply directed towards other persons”. The “benevolent affections” were by the turn of the nineteenth century generally associated with Reid, who, to quote Kroeker (2011: 123), identified them with “the love of parents for their children, gratitude, compassion, esteem, friendship, love between the sexes, and public spirit”. Dame Morgan’s doorway thus accrues a second meaning: in addition to being the literal door in the image, it also signifies the entering into a benevolent friendship between her, Rosa, and Charles. We see in the image that Rosa and Charles are already listening to the wisdom Dame Morgan is imparting, and behaving in manners associated with the benevolent affections (such as courtesy and respect). Wales and the East in Sleath’s Glenowen; or the Fairy Palace 83 We are made to understand that Dame Morgan’s relationships with Rosa and Charles exemplify the benevolent affections from the earliest moments of the story. Mrs. Evelynn’s dying request to Dame Morgan is that “You will teach them … to love God and each other”, and we are assured that “Dame Morgan promised faithfully to fulfil the injunctions of her friend and mistress” (9). In the image we see Dame Morgan following through on this promise, as it is likely her reading the scriptures to Charles and Rosa as described on page 16: Charles, though yet only eight years old, discovered an eagerness for instruction, that he might be able to read the beautiful stories in the Bible, several of which Dame Morgan recited from memory, commenting as she proceeded on the various scriptural characters, and recommending to their imitation such as were distinguished for any particular virtue. (16) We learn soon after that “In a short time even Rosa began to listen to [Dame Morgan’s] pretty stories, and was anxious to learn her letters that she might read like her brother” (18). Dame Morgan thus introduces the children to notions of virtue and Christian values regarding how to treat other people, which come to be the foundation and rudiments of what will become their fuller worldly educations and their imaginations. It is only after absorbing all of the early lessons that Dame Morgan is capable of furnishing that the children go on to school to begin their formal education, which is where Rosa receives the book of fairy tales that will nurture her imagination. In the opening pages, then, we are introduced to Dame Morgan herself in specific terms that describe her as a benevolent individual, and ultimately such that she comes to metonymize Wales in the contemporary English imagination. Once more, Dame Morgan is introduced as the children’s only friend; on her deathbed, their mother states: “you and Rosa, my love, will soon be left without any earthly friend, except your dear good nurse, Dame Morgan, who has promised to take care of, and be kind to you: you will love her for her own sake as well as for mine, she is the best and steadiest of my friends” (4-5). Throughout the early chapters of the novel, in addition to exercising the benevolent affections, Dame Morgan also embodies what was associated with the “natural benevolence” of the Welsh, such as when she is described as “a striking example of the power of a virtuous integrity to procure a high degree of esteem from those who, having had superior advantages, are destined to move in the higher ranks of society” (8). Yet we soon after learn the limitations of Dame Morgan’s tutelage: as the children’s mother was dying, she rested “well assured that, under [Dame Morgan’s] tuition, though [Rosa and Charles] might not become shining, they would at least become virtuous characters” (8-9). By limiting Dame Morgan to providing the fundamental components of benevolence and virtue, Sleath allows the children to step beyond her doorway in two ways: literally, they expand their purviews beyond their native Matthew C. Jones 84 Welsh confines, and figuratively, they open doors to expand their scientific and imaginative educations, with figures from far beyond Wales greeting them on the other side to assist in these pursuits. Rosa’s teacher at the village school being introduced and validated in national terms serves to reinforce Dame Morgan’s limitations being in part due to her Welshness: “Mrs. Haywood being, as Dame Morgan observed, an English woman, and what was more, had had, according to her ideas, a lady’s education, and was therefore, in every respect, qualified to become the preceptress of her little charge” (20). But, if the children’s empirical and applied educations were to take place in ostensibly non-Welsh oases, they were able and encouraged to explore the bounds of their imaginations in Dame Morgan’s cottage. It is, of course, this same Mrs. Haywood who gives “a present of a book of fairy tales” to Rosa (63). It is at home in Dame Morgan’s cottage, however, where the girl reads the book and where her imagination takes flight. By the time readers reach the second image, of the church yard where the children visit their mother’s grave and first encounter Peribanou, they have witnessed Rosa’s imaginative powers grow (Figure 2). The children have thrived in school, and have continued to cultivate their benevolent affections. By this time, Rosa has befriended the impoverished Jessy, and provided her social haven after other girls in the school have denigrated her because of her poverty and the poor condition of her stockings, with Rosa’s deeds operating as another lesson for young readers. “Don’t cry, Jessy”, Rosa implores, and continues, “I will sit by you, Jessy; for I love you a great deal better than those young ladies, and what signifies a fine frock and sash? ” (34). Rosa goes on to learn to sew herself (under Dame Morgan’s tutelage), and knits a new pair of stockings for Jessy (59-61). It is specifically as a reward for both Rosa’s selflessness and progress in school that Mrs. Haywood gives her the book of fairy tales that comes to serve as the palette with which she constructs the world around her (Figure 2). As the plate entitled “Visit to the Church Yard” includes both Jessy and Peribanou, it serves to demonstrate for children the benefits of social benevolence (having a friend with whom to mourn), and of the complementary relationship of education and the imagination (without having done well in school, Rosa would not have received the book of fairy tales, and the woman at the graveyard would not have become Peribanou but would have remained a mysterious and nameless figure). Wales and the East in Sleath’s Glenowen; or the Fairy Palace 85 Figure 2. From Glenowen: Or, The Fairy Palace, a Tale (London, 1815). Courtesy Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, Gainesville, FL. As the image’s perspective has expanded now beyond the doorway to include the building and its surrounding environs, it also invites readers to transfer the occasional picturesque rhetoric of the text to geographic space. In the text on the page that immediately follows the image, for instance, the party has not yet arrived at the graveyard, nor has it observed the mysterious woman. The text informs readers how to understand the mood of the scene: “It was a sweet and silent hour. The song of a lonely bird, mingling at intervals with the lowing of cattle in the valley, and the sound of a distant waterfall, alternately swelling and dying upon the evening breeze, alone broke the almost universal silence that prevailed around” (45). Soon after we learn that these effects combined to overwhelm the whole party: The solemnity of the scene, and of the occasion, had arrested the agile foot of youth. Rosa, who at other times could scarcely move without a bound, kept pace with her aged attendant. The glowing smile no longer dimpled her cheek, or played about her cherry lips. A soft melancholy had diffused itself over the open, and usually animated countenance of Charles. Jessy was respectfully silent; whilst Dame, with tears of tender recollection stealing to her eyes, surveyed with mournful satisfaction the juvenile group that attended her. (45-46) Matthew C. Jones 86 Dame Morgan’s “satisfaction” signals to readers that the children are appropriately performing their sorrow based on the Christian values and virtue that she has bestowed upon them, which informs the image in two ways: it indicates to readers that the actions we see the figures taking in the image are appropriate (Charles kneeling, Rosa strewing flowers), and it complements the above points regarding Rosa’s progress in terms of her education and imagination. Readers are directed to assess the image in picturesque terms and to bring these directly into conversation with the imagination more directly only a few pages later, where the narrator declares, “Wales may, with propriety, be termed the present scene of fairy-land” (65). The reminder of the Welsh setting would directly call to readers’ minds Gilpin’s (1782: 1) Observations on the River Wye, in which he delineates the manner by which travelers can identify and appreciate the picturesque. The Observations served as a manual by which to appreciate nature in “true” ways (he writes that “observations of this kind, through the vehicle of description, have the better chance of being founded in truth”). At the same time, strong links of Wales with the mythical and otherworldly permeate the text, and remind readers of the importance of the powers of the imagination. Artifacts from the fairytale past of Wales further encourage such applications; another moment from the story reveals: “In the vicinity of Glenowen was a druidical stone, where the fairies were reported by the villagers to make rings, and perform their midnight revels”, a site where Rosa and Charles would join girls from Rosa’s school “to play and dance round it, as the fairies do, often wishing for a sight of these wonderful little elves, whom she almost believed she should sometime see” (65-66). The narrator interprets the situation for us: “No wonder then that Rosa should have believed in fairies, interwoven, as they were, with the traditions of her country” (66). Thus, the image of the churchyard synthesizes a “true” depiction of mountains, structures, and people, with an “imaginary” setting upon which children can appreciate Rosa’s flights of imagination. Within these dichotomies Rosa attempts to discover the identity of the mysterious woman “wrapped up in a large Indian shawl, and covered with a veil, which entirely concealed her face” (46). Rosa would not read the Arabian Nights and thus make the connection to Peribanou until later, but the expanding scope of the imagination’s powers begins in the illustration. The central subject is, as in the first image, a structure, and specifically the church itself. Now, however, we are greeted with a panorama within which the building plays a relatively minor role. It indicates how far from the cottage doorway the characters’ and readers’ scopes have expanded. We witness in the foreground the children and Dame Morgan in the active roles of decorating their mother’s grave, and slightly in the background the figure who will come to be identified as Peribanou, and still further in the background the mountains of Wales. The view expanding beyond the con- Wales and the East in Sleath’s Glenowen; or the Fairy Palace 87 fines of the cottage doorway allows for the reader to expand their perspectives in tow with Rosa’s expanding imagination. Here, this manifests in the bringing together of Peribanou’s oriental qualities with hints of the Welsh picturesque. As we shall see, the third image, of the “fairy palace”, approximates the oriental and the picturesque further, again in step with Rosa’s flourishing imagination. By this point of the story, though, Peribanou as a sentient individual adds herself as a living entity who supplements the insentient and immaterial foci of the narrative (geography, books of fairy tales). More importantly, by assuming the identity of a fairy, she rewards the children’s educations, their growing benevolent affections, and their powers of imagination. She achieves this by addressing their temporal precociousnesses as a fairy, which encourages the further cultivation of their imaginations more than if the praise were coming from an earthly figure, such as Dame Morgan or their teacher Mrs. Haywood. We first witness her reward their behavior in the anonymous notes that accompany the gifts that Peribanou sends to Rosa, Charles, and Dame Morgan. She addresses her note to Rosa with “…for Rosa Evelynn - the little girl who despises no one, and behaves well to every body”, and that for Charles with “For Charles Evelynn, - the good boy, who loves his book better than play, who is kind and obliging to every one, and whom every body loves” (86-87). Thus, contemporary philosophical notions of benevolence and affections, which revolve around how well people treat others outwardly, are put into terms that young readers can understand. They derive from an imaginary source that has already been exoticized through being couched in terms of Wales and the East. Peribanou’s approval takes place in moments of action and dialogue as well, such as when Charles offers to return a watch that Peribanou had given him because he feels he has inadequately performed his duty as his sister’s protector (after she had received a small injury from a fall): “‘Generous and most excellent youth,’ exclaimed Peribanou, in a tone of rapture, ‘the fault, of which you confess yourself to have been guilty, has served only to elucidate a principle of innate virtue, which, by increasing my esteem, renders you still closer to my heart’” (170). Here, both Charles and readers learn of how to cultivate and identify their own affections and acts of benevolence, and receive this information from a creature constructed by their imagination. Similarly, earlier in the story, when after Peribanou asks Charles if he would leave his sister to come live with her and he responds that he would never leave his sister, she answers with “What sweet affection … and how much do I admire you for this amiable disposition toward your sister” (128). These didactic moments accompany Peribanou’s indulgence of Rosa’s convictions that she truly is a benevolent fairy. Matthew C. Jones 88 Figure 3. From Glenowen: Or, The Fairy Palace, a Tale (London, 1815). Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature, Special and Area Studies Collections, George A. Smathers Libraries, Gainesville, FL. For the third image, of what is believed by the children at that time still to be Peribanou’s “fairy palace”, we witness that the structure that serves as the central focus of the image has receded even farther into the background than had the church building, and that the more panoramic view allows for richer geographic features to supplement the reader’s view of the “fairy palace” (Figure 3). As before, this widening perspective correlates with Rosa’s richer and deeper education and imaginative powers. As Rosa is able to establish a fuller rationale for how such ceremonies as dancing around druidic stones might invite the presence of a benevolent fairy from the East, readers likewise are presented with how Wales and the East can operate in a coordinated way visually. This is achieved by the images serving as complements of the harmony of Welsh and eastern allusions in the text; indeed, the image’s including the children and the buildings alongside one another serves to reinforce for readers that Wales and the East can operate together in these imaginative ways. In this image, readers are given a demonstration of how the eastern “fairy palace” fits within Welsh mountains, and how the mansion can harmonize with the picturesque surroundings. The reader is prompted to view the image in picturesque terms on the page that immediately precedes it (the page with the image appears between “and” and “those”): As they descended from the mountains, and saw spreading before them a rich and extensive vale, Charles, to whom the scene was quite new, burst out in an Wales and the East in Sleath’s Glenowen; or the Fairy Palace 89 exclamation of delight at its fertility and beauty. Woods, winding streams, and the sweetest acclivities, their gentle slopes tufted with groves or ornamented with plantations, formed indeed a decided contrast to the scenes presented to them at Glenowen, and those they had already passed. It seemed an Elysium in a wild; for what they now beheld was in the highest state of cultivation, and ornamented in some parts by the hand of taste. It appeared the land of wonders - for a new wonder awaited them. (104) In this instance Sleath imbues young Charles with a comprehensive awareness of what makes a scene picturesque (by way of terms, such as “ornamentation” and “taste”, that faithfully echo Gilpin), effectively inviting readers to receive the “new wonder [that] awaited them”, the “fairy palace”, in similar terms - despite its exterior and interior bearing no resemblance to what is associated with Wales at all. 8 In essence, by guiding readers into the rhetoric of the Orient in this manner, Sleath makes the Orient picturesque. Indeed, although the “fairy palace” is set in Wales, it is never intended to be understood as a Welsh building until the very end, where Mrs. Macdonald reveals herself what led to her return to the area. It is, again, paradoxically an exotic structure nestled among the more familiar Welsh hills. She retains an air of fantasy, even as she reveals her true identity: so here I am, my dear Charles, and my pretty Rosa, no longer the Fairy Peribanou, but the comparatively humble Mrs. Macdonald. My air-blown wand has flown from my hand, and melted into its original element; my Fairy Palace is transformed into a mere ornamented villa far more fit for the residence of a private gentlewoman, than for one of those kind of semi-deities called Fairies. (188-89) The children’s fantastical flights of imagination must come to an end, but the imaginative potential inherent in the exotic and material world remains. We witness this as well in descriptions of the architecture itself, wherein we are greeted by magnificence that rhetorically matches the settings that preceded it: “The floor was of marble; - the walls were gilt and empannelled; and from the center of the ceiling was suspended, by a magnificent gilt chain, a lustre of cut glass, of various hues…” (112). But, we are reminded frequently that having entered this doorway, we are no longer in Wales but in the East (far, indeed, from Dame Morgan’s cottage): “this was a preserved eagle with extended wings, which was sitting on the dome of a shrine, in which was seated an image of the famous Hindu god, the four-faced Brahma” (113), “ornamented above and below with drapery of Chinese silk” (114), “Stands of flowers, intermingled with Indian vases, containing the most delicious sweets, filled the room with odours” (114). 8 For more on Gilpin and the picturesque see Andrews (1989). Matthew C. Jones 90 These decorations are not, of course, visible within the plane of the illustrations, but they do directly inform how the reader is meant to interpret the world inside the “fairy palace” that adorns the image. The mountains and river confirm we are in Wales, despite the eastern ornaments and the children’s imagination taking us to another world once we enter the “fairy palace”. For readers the boundless yet invisible world of the imagination is constructed in exotic terms, and is supported by the boundless and visible world of the Welsh picturesque. 6. Conclusion The final illustration does not present any new images or subjects, but rather positions the viewer to more fully observe and appreciate the image with which the story began. The image is titled “Visit to Dame Morgan’s New Cottage”, signifying the new cottage gifted to her by Mrs. Macdonald. This image, then, brings us back to the origins of the first image, but with a fuller perspective: the first image was narrowly focused on the darkness inside Dame Morgan’s cottage, complementing the children’s, and especially Rosa’s, undeveloped education and imagination; the final image is largely a copy of the third one, with the fairy palace substituted by the new cottage, complementing the children’s concurrent growth in terms of their imaginations, educations, and benevolent affections. This image retains the vistas of that which includes the fairy palace, inviting the viewer to appreciate the Welsh cottage in the same picturesque terms with which they viewed the fairy palace. This final image accompanies the closing pages of the text, where “Mrs. Macdonald and the children accompanied Dame Morgan to her new abode”. Within the world of the story, neither the material world that inspired the children’s imaginations nor the imaginations themselves diminish or disappear as their circumstances change. They retain access to Wales and to Mrs. Macdonald’s relics from the east, with the added utility of a sound education and domestic stability. For similar reasons, the image likewise serves as a fitting avenue by which to conclude our analysis. Just as the reader finishes the story with a wider and deeper view of the same subjects with which they began it, we witness how Sleath’s conscription of Welsh and eastern symbols and imagery serves to successfully augment the story’s conceit without in any way challenging the cultural practices that served as foundations for the symbols’ legibility. Glenowen translates into children’s literature contemporary tropes of Wales and usages of eastern materiality (such as The Arabian Nights), while also bringing these various themes together in the medium of printed illustration. But by invoking contemporary cultural tropes, allusions, and imagery to assist in Glenowen’s narrative’s conveyance to its happy ending, Sleath quietly supports the hegemonic dynamics that make them legible to reading audiences, or at the very least does not call them Wales and the East in Sleath’s Glenowen; or the Fairy Palace 91 into question. In these specific cases, this means that Sleath challenges neither the contemporary trends that relegated the Welsh, in stadial terms, to a distant point of cultural development, nor the social practices that glorified the withdrawal of exotic goods from colonial spaces. Indeed, the representatives of these two colonialisms, Dame Morgan and Peribanou, reward children for their intellectual progress, the novel inculcates to children an air of veneration of the hegemonic relationships as they are. This point guides us to Sleath’s true achievement in Glenowen: approximating Wales and the East, and bringing both into harmony with contemporary ideas of education and imagination in the novel’s illustrations. Acknowledgements I wish to thank Sandro Jung and Elspeth Healey for their insightful commentary and helpful suggestions, which immeasurably strengthened this essay. Works cited Andrews, Malcolm (1989). The Search for the Picturesque: Landscape Aesthetics and Tourism in Britain, 1760-1800. Aldershot: Scolar Press. Attar, Samar (2014). Borrowed Imagination: The British Romantic Poets and Their Arabic-Islamic Sources. Lanham: Lexington Books. Banham, Rob (2020). “The Industrialization of the Book Trade, 1800-1970”. 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