Late Reviews Page 12

  Hansom, Mark. The Shadow on the House (New York: William Godwin, [1935]).

  An unambitious British commercial thriller, by the elusive Mark Hansom, under whose byline there appeared a total of seven similar books between 1934 and 1939, all published by the London publisher Wright & Brown. These titles were aimed for the lending library market, and are unusually rare today. The Shadow on the House was Hansom’s first book, published in England in November 1934. It is the only one of Hansom’s novels to have an American edition, which is made up of sheets printed in England with a cancel title. The story concerns one Martin Strange, who comes to feel that a curse is upon his family, and this family shadow murders in ways that help Martin to achieve his goal of marrying the beautiful girl, Sylvia Vernon. The plot is not particularly original, but the book is well executed for what it is.

  Hansom, Mark. The Wizard of Berner’s Abbey (London: Mellifont Press, undated but 1944).

  The Wizard of Berner’s Abbey is the second of Mark Hansom’s seven novels, all of which were published by Wright & Brown of London between 1935 and 1939. It came out in May 1935, following the November 1934 publication of The Shadow on the House, an unambitious but readable thriller. Original Wright & Brown editions of the seven Hansom novels are extremely rare, as are the seven paperback reprints done by Mellifont Press between 1939 and 1951. According to the British Museum Catalogue, at least some of the Mellifont Press reprints were abridged. Subsequent to reviewing this Mellifont Press edition, I was able to compare its text with the original edition and as I suspected the text was considerably cut, whole sentences and paragraphs frequently excised to bring the size of the text down to the standard 96 pages in the Mellifont reprints. The extensive cuts make the novel worse, but the fact remains that The Wizard of Berner’s Abbey is a considerable step down in quality from Hansom’s first novel, a descent into hackwork.

  It is the first person narrative of John Richmond, a student of medicine aged twenty-four, who comes unexpectedly to a little Surrey village to visit his cousin, Leonora, who had jilted him two years ago to marry Paul St. Arnaud, a sinister and much older figure completely absorbed in scientific inquiry. John hopes to come to understand why Leonora turned against him and towards the repellant St. Arnaud. What John discovers is that St. Arnaud believes that his own will is so great that it works in complete independence of his body. St. Arnaud, however, is soon dead and buried, though his influence over his wife, via some sort of mind control, remains. And Leonora unwittingly continues her late husband’s nebulous experiments to create life—these experiments have something to do with the murders of two young women, for evidently brain matter is an essential part of St. Arnaud’s methodology. Meanwhile John explores St. Arnaud’s library, which contains various occult books, and after reading in one of them John decides that some kind of vampirism is involved with regard to St. Arnaud’s strength of will.

  Much of this kind of exposition is padding and deflection. It turns out that St. Arnaud has faked his own death, but is in the end killed in a struggle, leaving John and Leonora to marry. The reader reaches the final page with relief that this tedious novel, poorly executed and entirely without thrills, is at last finished.

  Nothing is known of the author. It is probable that the byline is pseudonymous. Though there are many people with the last name of Hansom in England (particularly in the north), there is no “Mark Hansom” of the appropriate age to be found in the death records for England and Wales from 1938 through 2005.

  Harding, John William. A Conjuror of Phantoms (London and New York: F. Tennyson Neely, 1898).

  John William Harding (1864-1953) was born in London, and educated there and in Paris. His long newspaper career began with the role of office boy at Galignani’s Messenger, the precursor of English-language newspapers in Paris. By 1892 he was the editor of the paper. In 1894 he resigned and moved to the United States, where his first job was as foreign editor of the New York Recorder. In 1897 he joined the staff of the New York Times, where he remained until his retirement in 1949, save for a six year period from 1907 through 1913, when he left to found a short-lived popular science magazine, Discovery. Subsequently he edited the People’s Magazine in 1909-10 before returning to the Times. In 1888 he married Ambroisine Marie Reine Pierre of Paris; they had no children.

  A Conjuror of Phantoms was the third of Harding’s five novels—additionally he novelized three plays, and translated The Memoirs of Victor Hugo (1899) and two other works from the French. His first three novels were published by the F. Tennyson Neely Company out of New York. Neely was an interesting character. Initially a Chicago newspaperman, he founded a publishing company and developed an enormous business by specializing in paperbacks for the masses. Neely moved his offices to New York in the early 1890s. Most of Neely’s authors wrote only popular fiction and are long forgotten, but he did occasionally produce books that have lasted. His most notable author in terms of posterity was probably Robert W. Chambers. Neely published Chambers’s first two books, In the Quarter (1894) and The King in Yellow (1895), before Chambers moved on to more respectable and better-paying publishers.

  A Conjuror of Phantoms is a curiously schizophrenic book. Of the two main plot-lines, one is primarily decadent, while the other is simplistic pulp romance, making in the end an unsatisfying mix. The main character Archibald Danvers is a well-off young bachelor living in New York, whose parents died when he was a child. The story begins in August 1893, when Danvers meets the curious title character, Peter Zadowski, while luxuriating in the sensation of rainfall. Zadowski recognizes in Danvers a fellow connoisseur of the senses, and invites Danvers to visit his home. From this acquaintance a friendship quickly develops. From his only friend, a young doctor named Job Bangs, Danvers hears strange stories of Zadowski. Bangs says that Zadowski is “a Barnum of phantoms” who is reputed to possess some herb unknown to modern science that makes hasheesh and opium seem like vulgar narcotics. As their friendship grows, Danvers is shown Zadowski’s enviable collection of rare books, original artwork and gems, and the appreciation waxes in high style for page after page. Danvers meets Zadowski’s beautiful but blind daughter, Ruth, and their hunchbacked Italian servant Luigi, but he becomes obsessed with the thought of the herb, which he feels Zadowski is withholding from him. He sneaks in to Zadowski’s house, finding him apparently drunk, and after unsuccessfully seeking the herb, Danvers finds Ruth being assaulted by the hunchback servant, whom Danvers stabs and kills. What had been a promising set-up for a decadent novel of ideas has turned quickly into a disappointing melodrama. Ruth accepts responsibility for the killing and stands trial, but is found innocent. Her father insists that Danvers and Ruth marry, and they stand to inherit his entire fortune. Danvers presses him for the herb, but Zadowski himself takes the last bit of it and dies. The secondary plot of the novel revolves around Job Bangs helping two poor working-class women, falling in love with one of them and marrying her. A Conjuror of Phantoms is an interesting curiosity but nothing more.

  Higginson, Thomas Wentworth. The Monarch of Dreams (Boston: Lee and Shepard, 1886).

  This is basically a short story that was published as a small book. It concerns Francis Ayrault and his young half-sister Hart, who settle into an old brick farmhouse in New England, where Francis pursues his attempt to be the ruler of his own dreams. This ability first manifests in a recurrent dream Ayrault has of climbing a green slope. Sometimes it is populated by other people too, and eventually he reaches a palace which he explores only to realize that it is filled with people. Ayrault realizes these people are all versions of himself, and he comes to realize that his young sister is having the same dreams, so he sends her away. Ayrault sees that his dream-life has become a nightmare. A call for volunteers for the Civil War draws Ayrault to see he needs to pursue an active life in the waking world. He plans to join up, but he is held in his dream-sleep so that he misses the recruitment train. As a story this is under-developed, and not especially engaging.

  Thomas W
entworth Higginson (1823-1911) was a Harvard educated Unitarian minister, and an active abolitionist. During the Civil War he led the first federally authorized black regiment. Today he is mostly remembered as a correspondent and mentor to Emily Dickinson, and co-editor of her posthumously published volumes.

  I

  Inman, Arthur Crew. Of Castle Terror (Boston: B.J. Brimmer Co., 1923).

  This three-act play, evidently a vanity publication, is the only published play by poet and diarist Arthur Crew Inman (1895-1963), who achieved posthumous fame in 1985 when a selection from his seventeen million word diary, covering 1919 to 1963, was published in a two-volume set by Harvard University Press.

  Though most of Inman’s poetry has been summarily dismissed by critics, his dozen or so published volumes do exhibit old-school technical competence and some true poetic feeling, despite a rather dour tone overall. Of Castle Terror, on the other hand, is entirely lacking in interesting qualities. In the first act, the Baron brings his wife to his ancestral home, Castle Terror. They encounter the angry people of the valley, and one of the speakers from this mob tells the Baroness about the Vampire of the castle, who takes over new brides in body and soul. In the second act, the Baroness encounters the Vampire (who has the same voice as the man who warned her in the previous act), and she is bitten in her sleep, thereby the Vampire has won her body. But owing to her love of her husband (who is playing a piano off-stage), she resists the loss of her soul. In the third act, as the mob threatens Castle Terror, the baroness gives up her soul to the Vampire upon receiving his promise that he will guard her husband from harm. This bald summary actually makes the play sound more interesting than it is. The dialogue is mostly dull and amateurish.

  J

  Jepson, Edgar. No. 19 (London: Mills & Boon, 1910).

  No. 19 (the US title is The Garden at 19) is the second of Jepson’s Pan-soaked novels, following The Horned Shepard (1904). In No. 19 a lawyer named John Plowden moves into No. 20 Walden Road in Hertford Park, London, and observes his neighbor at No. 19, one Woodfell, periodically enacting ancient rites at night with some associates in his garden. Plowden meanwhile becomes enamored of Woodfell’s niece, and justifiably fears for her safety as monstrous entities from the Abyss threaten the quiet street. No. 19 is a fairly short novel, facile and predictable, competently done and containing material deftly handled and with good atmosphere, but it is no lost masterpiece. This book was reprinted in 2002 by Midnight House, under the US title and with an introduction by John Pelan.

  Jepson (1863-1938) was a well-known editor and prolific writer. His most memorable writings are unquestionably his autobiographies, Memories of a Victorian (1933) and Memories of an Edwardian and Neo-Georgian (1937), which contain engaging portraits of many of Jepson’s friends and contemporaries, including Richard Middleton and Arthur Machen, both of whom were with Jepson members of a literary society called the New Bohemians, which also appears in No. 19.

  Jessopp, Augustus. The Phantom Coach and Other Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, edited and with an Introduction by Jessica Amanda Salmonson, illustrated by Wendy Wees (Uncasville, CT: Richard H. Fawcett, 1998 [but published in February 1999]). Limited to 400 copies.

  A collection of four stories, and an essay, by the eccentric country parson Augustus Jessopp (1823-1914), together with a biographical introduction by Jessica Amanda Salmonson.

  The text of this book amounts to only 115 pages, set with very spacious type and hugely generous margins, and blank pages interspersed here and there around the stories and the illustrations. Merely at the first consideration of the small amount of material in this book it is a disappointment. And from there matters get worse.

  The four stories are really more like essays—short reminiscences by the author of his own experiences, or of things told to him. They are not of a very high order, and only two of them (the title piece, and “An Antiquary’s Ghost Story”) are even remotely worth reading. Salmonson’s brief introduction is also disappointing. In a few instances she mentions other pieces (not included in the present volume), and without giving any reason why they were omitted. For instance, she mentions that “An Antiquarian Ghost Story,” which she calls “Augustus’s most significant ghost story,” was “later used as the starting point for a small set of weird tales interwoven with commentaries on dreams and the weird in Frivola; Simon Ryan; and Other Papers (1896)” [sic, as to the punctuation of the title]. And she mentions that “The Phantom Coach” is the most important of five tale to which Jessopp gave the overall title “In Wonderland.” But there is no bibliographical information about the latter, and no reason given as to why the other tales, from both sequences she has mentioned, were excluded from this unambitious and overpriced collection. Surely a few more tales, even not very exceptional ones, would have helped to bulk out this slim volume and made something a little more authoritative.

  Overall, this volume is a large disappointment, in inspiration, intent and execution.

  Jolly, Stratford D. The Soul of the Moor: A Romance of the Occult (London: William Rider & Son, [1911]).

  The publisher William Rider & Son was known throughout most of the twentieth century as the foremost British publisher of books on esoteric philosophy, mysticism, astrology, psychical research, and the occult. From 1892 through 1925 the director of this publishing firm was Ralph Shirley (1865-1946), an aristocratic and Oxford-educated man who also edited The Occult Review for twenty years from its founding in 1905. The Occult Review published contributions by the leading occultists, and it regularly reviewed fiction that would be of interest to its readership. Similarly, William Rider & Son also published occasional occult-themed novels and romances, perhaps the most notable being Bram Stoker’s last novel, The Lair of the White Worm (1911), which Shirley commissioned from Stoker in hope of getting a further work along the lines of Dracula.

  The Soul of the Moor, published the same year as The Lair of the White Worm, is unfortunately not very good as a specimen of occult romance. The recently wed narrator (whose name is belatedly revealed to be Harvey Langford) is devoted to his wife Lucy, who is oddly afflicted by a debilitating weakness. Langford uses occult hypnotism to put his wife in a deep sleep and to impart to her his vitality. In this deep sleep Lucy’s more knowledgeable soul is able to explain to as well as assist her husband in his various endeavors on her behalf, for she is much higher than her husband on the spiritual ladder of knowledge that everyone must climb. Lucy is haunted by a Moor, who according to Lucy is her “other self” who worships her. There follow various adventures and abductions and chases, after which Lucy is perilously close to death. The Moor suddenly transforms from enemy to loyal friend, and by his superior psychic strength he is able to restore Lucy’s health and sanity, working this miracle even after his death. The novel has some narrative drive but so much of its content is sheer silliness, when it isn’t overfilled with pompous occult explanations, that the reader is left smirking at the spectacle instead of enjoying the show as presented.

  The Soul of the Moor was the first book and only novel published by Stratford Dowker Aird Jolly (1881-1948), a Scottish born adventurer who was educated at the Glengarth Boys School in Cheltenham, and at the Westminster School in central London. He married Maud Lyndon Bateman in 1908, and served in the Royal Air Force in France from September 1917 through January 1919. His two other books include The Treasure Trail (1934), which recounts Jolly’s treasure hunting in Central and South America, and South American Adventures (1938), which is a condensation of the earlier book. After he returned to England, Jolly married a second time in 1933, settling around Liverpool, where with his second wife Eileen Margaret Stead (1901-1984) he raised two children. Jolly died in Kenya.

  K

  Kallas, Aino. The Wolf’s Bride: A Tale from Estonia (London: Jonathan Cape, 1930). Translated by Alex Matson in collaboration with Bryan Rhys.

  Originally published in Finnish as Sudenmorsian (1928), this short novel, set in the mid-seventeenth century, tells the story
of Aalo, a sheep-tending maiden who becomes the wife of Priidik the forester on the island of Hiiumaa to the west of Estonia in the Gulf of Finland. Aalo is red-haired and has a witch-mole under her left breast, two marks of Satan. Aalo hears a raiding wolf call to her and is bewitched, becoming herself a werewolf, roaming the forests at night with other wolves and preying on animals while neglecting her family. Priidik as forester is forced to deal with the plague of wolves, with inevitable results. The Satanism-vs.-good-Christian aspect in the story is tiresome, but the folklore elements are nicely done and counterbalance traditional simplifications. The writing style is raw and primitive. All in all, The Wolf’s Bride is an interesting but minor addition to werewolf literature.

  Aino Krohn Kallas (1878-1956) was the daughter of Julius Krohn, a poet, folklorist and a Professor of Finnish Literature at the University of Helsinki. In 1900 she married Dr. Oskar Phillip Kallas, an Estonian scientist, later the first Estonian Minister to Helsinki and, from 1922-34, ambassador to Great Britain. It was while in England that Kallas wrote several of her major works, including The Wolf’s Bride, and a collection of short stories The White Ship: Estonian Tales (1924).

  Keary, C.F. ’Twixt Dog and Wolf (London: R. Brimley Johnson, 1901).

  A collection of two novellas, one short story, and ten “phantasies,” all of which are literary weird fiction of a high order. Strangely, this volume has been entirely overlooked by genre authorities and bibliographers for many decades. The opening short story, “The Message from the God,” concerns Pan, and though it is interesting it seems an odd selection to set the tone as the first story in the collection. “Elizabeth,” the gem of the volume, is a subtle and Hoffmannesque tale of enchantment in medieval Germany, a strange tale of a peasant-woman who learns of her blood relation to the reputed witch Hilda, and her everyday world gives way to very strange happenings. “The Four Students” concerns four friends in Paris in the eighteenth century, who as students performed a blood invocation to some demons, and years later, during the French Revolution and under the shadow of the guillotine, one of them becomes possessed with a demonic savagery. The ten phantasies are more like dark prose poems, each having its own defined mood and scope, though some might better be called vignettes or brief narratives. The style of all these stories is subtle and meticulous, inviting re-readings for greater appreciation.