Late Reviews Page 8

  Dunsany, Lord. Guerrilla (London: Hutchinson, 1943).

  Lord Dunsany (1878-1957) published thirteen novels during his lifetime; his fourteenth and final novel, The Pleasures of a Futuroscope, was published in 2003. The novels are of a wide range in terms of content as well as quality, with his fantasy novel The King of Elfland’s Daughter (1924) among his very best works, and his final posthumous novel among the lesser. Guerilla, his tenth novel, is an oddity in a number of ways.

  In one sense, Guerrilla is war-time propaganda. During the First World War, Dunsany wrote propaganda while he worked for MI7B, a short-lived British military intelligence unit comprised of writers (his work was collected in Tales of War and Unhappy Far-Off Things in 1918 and 1919 respectively). While Guerilla was not commissioned propaganda as were the earlier two volumes, it is clearly of the same impulse. Basically, it tells of a small town of men in The Land (Greece) who fight in the hills to defend their town against Hitler’s occupying force. Specifically, the story follows one boy Srebnitz from the murder of his parents and his joining with the resistance, the men of Hlaka, to their rescue by the Americans. It has some of Dunsany’s magic, and the simplicity of the telling works to the advantage of the story. It is perfectly readable and enjoyable, but it is not among Dunsany’s best works. It is perhaps telling that when the publisher Hutchinson announced a contest of £1,000 for the best thriller, Dunsany wrote the book in thirty-eight days and won the contest. Interestingly, the fact that the novel was a contest winner is nowhere mentioned on the published book itself, in either the UK or US editions. Dunsany’s appointment to the Byron Chair of English Literature at Athens in 1940-1941 doubtless contributed to Dunsany’s portrait of The Land and its people in Guerrilla.

  Dunsany, Lord. The Pleasures of a Futuroscope (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2003).

  Lord Dunsany’s final novel, The Pleasures of a Futuroscope, was written in 1955, two years before Dunsany’s death. It remained unknown and unpublished until 2003. Perhaps it should have remained so.

  The Pleasures of the Futuroscope tells of the wayward way a man uses a futuroscope, after having borrowed it from an inventor friend. The futuroscope is a device which peers into the future, showing it via an illuminated disc controlled by dials that alter time and location. The narrator in Kent, having seen the near future destruction of London by an atomic blast, has settled into watching the daily struggles of one primitive family some five or six hundred years in the future. He watches how they survive from various threats, including a roving band of future gypsies. The prose is very repetitive and only rarely engaging. The plot is minimal. This may be Dunsany’s worst novel.

  Dupont, Inge, and Hope Mayo (eds). Morgan Library Ghost Stories (New York: Fordham University Press, 1990). Wood engravings by John De Pol. Reprinted from the limited edition published in the same year by The Stone House Press of Roslyn, New York.

  A collection of seven original tales, plus an introduction by Hope Mayo—the results of a ghost-story writing competition, the conditions for which being that the stories be in the style of M.R. James, and that they be in some way related to the J. Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City. The connection with M.R. James is facilitated by the fact that James (from Cambridge) worked on the cataloguing of the large number of medieval manuscripts and early printed books from the years 1902-1907, before the collection made its way across the Atlantic.

  The seven stories, one of which is in verse, were all written by people associated at some time with the Morgan Library, or who were then professional librarians at other institutions. As a result, it is not surprising that the stories, while mostly competent and amusing, are not particularly original or in any way outstanding. The most interesting item in the volume (outside of the excellent illustrations) is the “Introduction,” which tells the story of the beginnings of Morgan’s Library, and of M.R. James’s connection with it. We learn that Belle de la Costa Greene, who was for many years in charge of Morgan’s library, exchanged letters with James (some of which are quoted in the book). She was also a fan of James’s ghost stories, and even requested new ghost stories from his pen. In 1933, James wrote her that “I am afraid that the vein of ghost stories has run rather dry.” After James’s death, the manuscript of “A Warning to the Curious” was purchased and presented as a gift to the Morgan Library in 1942, where it remains to this day.

  Durand, Orson. Necromancy Street and Other Tales. (Hollywood, California: The Raven’s Head Press, 1931). Frontispiece by John Gram. Limited to 50 copies.

  This slim book, containing four stories in less than eighty pages, is a late example of American decadence. The title story concerns a man who sees a lovely woman in a mirror while drinking absinthe in a tavern. He searches for her in the streets, only to discover that she is a whore, who is struck in the face by her vile-looking madame when she returns without a client. The frontispiece, which depicts the opening scene to this story, is in the style of Wallace Smith’s illustrations to Ben Hecht’s Fantazius Mallare (1922).

  In “Tonal Anaesthenia,” the narrator dreams about his forthcoming appointment as a test subject with Doctor Hermes, who is investigating theories of sound vibrations and their physiological effects. Hermes plans to demonstrate the use of music as an anaesthetic. The narrator dreams that his arm is amputated while a musician plays a violin, but that the music does not ease his pain. The appointment with Doctor Hermes is not kept.

  “Crescendo of Fear” tells of a stranger who is attuned to the language of inanimate things, and who senses danger in the trembling of the trees. During a storm and tornado the stranger sees an apparition of a carriage drawn by black stallions. His corpse, mutilated by the marks of hooves and carriage wheels, is found the next morning.

  “Confession under Glass” consists of two parts. The first, “The Descent to Hell Is Easy,” begins as a letter written to a doctor by a glass-worker who feels guilt over killing his wife by shoving her into a cauldron of molten glass, and who takes morphine to escape from his guilt. The second section, “The Country of Glass,” continues the letter, but moves into a surreal world where the man describes being on a boat, drifting with the current of the Crystal Stream, and coming at last to the end of the world, the perilous edge of the Country of Glass. There he pursues a woman, and touching her she bursts into a million fragments, leaving only two luminescent moonstones that were her eyes, which he sees as the eyes of his murdered wife. The narrator ends his letter, “Will you have a nice pair of glass eyes, Doctor?”

  These four stories are the only known tales by Durand, and that is a pity. Though they are less concerned with plot than with mood, imagery and atmosphere, they would not have been out-of-place in some small press or literary magazines of the time. And though they are not without flaws, the stories are likely to have remained unknown primarily due to the extremely limited nature of their publication.

  Orson Durand (1901-1968) was born in Indiana but lived most of his life in California. According to the 1930 Census, he was living in Beverly Hills with his wife Bernadine. During the 1930s and 1940s he is known to have worked as a bookseller. In 1931-32, he published six small press limited editions under his Raven’s Head Press imprint. These include not only his own collection of tales but also Berenice (1931) by Edgar Allan Poe, again illustrated by John Gram, and some poetry volumes including Lunar Landscapes (1932) by Howard Cook, Poems in Black and White (1932) by Frederick McNear, Jr., and Three Poems, Including, To His Coy Mistress (1932) by Andrew Marvell. After a silence of five years his imprint re-emerged as the Press of Orson Durand to publish two titles, Non Sum Qualis Eram Bonae sub Regno Cynarae (1937) by Ernest Dowson, and Some Christmas Hymns (1937) by Charles Wesley. The experimental erotic novel Angel of the Flesh (1969) signed as by Orson Durand is not by the above writer, but was a one-time pseudonym of Charles Gorham.

  Dyahlis, Nictzin. “The Dark Lore,” Weird Tales, 10 no. 4 (October 1927): 441-458, 569-570, 572-575.

  A longish occult story by the elusive
Nictzin Dyalhis (1873-1942), whose identity and life-story is rather different from the account given by Sam Moskowitz in his essay on Dyalhis in Echoes of Valor III, edited by Karl Edward Wagner (1991).

  This story is the melodramatic tale of Lura Veyle, and of the travails of her soul, paying for the evil deeds of her life. Her soul passes through various hells, becoming “thinner” and less substantial, until the soul of her wronged sister (Lura had caused the death of her sister’s fiancé) intercedes to bring about an end to her sufferings. The story is episodic and mostly a bore, though there are occasionally a few interesting touches.

  The mysteries of Dyalhis’s life are far more captivating than this piece of fiction.

  Dyllington, Anthony. The Unseen Thing (Boston: John W. Luce and Company, 1910).

  The Unseen Thing, the second of four novels by Dyllington, is basically a romantic thriller. In London, Guy Hilmour is engaged to marry the beautiful Grace Strange, but after he causes a riding accident that leaves Grace lamed, his curious hatred of any kind of ugliness leads him to abandon Grace. Though he repents soon afterwards, she will no longer have him. Guy retreats to one of his parent’s mansions in southern France, where he learns of his family’s shameful secret: Guy has a deformed older brother who is kept secluded in a tower, and whose existence has blighted his parent’s lives. Guy fears his own life will thereafter be similarly ruined. When both his parents die, Guy shirks the responsibility of caring for his brother, whom he has never seen. He runs away, believing that he has left his brother to die. Guy is increasingly haunted by his crime, and feels he is pursued by his brother, an Unseen Thing, seeking revenge.

  Nothing strictly supernatural happens in the book, and the plot twists are woven together nicely to make for an unexpected ending, But aside from some atmospheric descriptive passages, there isn’t much that is special in this book, and it never rises above the level of a competent thriller.

  Anthony Dyllington was the pseudonym of an unknown female writer (because of privacy concerns, the name on the publishing contracts cannot be divulged). Four novels were published in England over a span of about four years: The Green Domino: A Comedy (London: John Lane, dated 1909 but published in October 1908); The Unseen Thing (London: T. Werner Laurie, [August 1909]); Pretty Barbara (London: Stanley Paul, [February] 1910); and The Stranger in the House (London: T. Werner Laurie, [December 1912]). Only The Unseen Thing also appeared in an American edition.

  Of Dyllington’s other novels, The Green Domino is a sunny romance that concerns a mysterious minstrel, with a masked pianist, during a summer season on the Isle of Wight. (The author’s pseudonym, Anthony Dyllington, is an unusual but historical name associated with a manorial estate on the Isle of Wight; perhaps the authoress has some local connections.) A short review in The Observer described Pretty Barbara as “tragic with a natural unforced tragedy, full of action, and escaping melodrama.” Barbara herself is “a highly dubious lady of mature years,” and we are told that “her story is not a pretty one, but it is quite free from anything objectionable and well worth reading” (13 February 1910). Perhaps the most interesting of Dyllington’s novels is The Stranger in the House, whose titular character is an evil spirit that unlawfully enters into a body newly vacated by its own human spirit. The Observer claimed that the “whole story is ‘out to thrill’ and succeeds in thrilling. . . . Mr. Dyllington is becoming an artist in shudders” (9 February 1913).

  E

  Egan, Beresford. Pollen (London: Dennis Archer, 1933).

  Pollen is the first of three novels by [Patrick] Beresford Egan (1905-1984), noted artist, illustrator, actor and writer. Egan was born in London, but raised in South Africa, where his family moved in 1910. In 1926 he returned to England and remained based in London for the rest of his life.

  Pollen is a very curious novel. It tries to be several things at once—cynical, decadent, philosophical, transformational—but in the end the mix is unsatisfying. Yet throughout the book the writing style is brilliant. Frequently one is startled by epigrammatical observations in the prose (e.g., “sincerity in art is a modern contradiction in terms,” page 152; “the desire for eternal affection is probably at the root of all our unhappiness,” page 162). The writing style, and its witty cynicism, is one of the primary attractions of the text.

  Pollen tells the story of an artist, Lance Daurimer. It begins in London around 1929, when Daurimer is in his late twenties. At best, Daurimer is a cad—running out of his money he finds a privileged place to live in the home of Anna Beryl Foster, known familiarly as Cleontine, who lets him a flat on the promise that he pay what he can for it, as he can. In Cleontine, Daurimer finds a similar-minded friend and plaything. Under her influence Daurimer’s art languishes and he spends most of his time actively pursuing the corruption of young women. He picks out Marylyn Irriscourt, the daughter of Lord Heatherbridge, as his next victim. Melodrama ensues: after a fling with Cleontine’s servant while Cleontine is temporarily away, the servant commits suicide. Daurimer flees to Paris, not knowing, meanwhile, that Marylyn is pregnant. In Paris, Daurimer returns to his art, and after meeting a Jesuit priest, Daurimer has a hallucinatory vision wherein he believes he is painting Cleontine as Lucifera, Lady of Dreams, but afterwards sees he has merely painted the Jesuit. This hallucination is the only fantasy in the book, and it is a powerfully realized scene. From this point the novel begins to fall apart. Daurimer’s fervent conversion to Catholicism is unconvincing to the reader. He feels he must marry Marylyn for the sake of the unborn child, but Marylyn has learned Daurimer’s old ways all too well, and while she marries him, she continues relations with other men right under her husband’s watchful eyes. The pollen of Daurimer’s life experience has completely infected Marylyn. The novel closes with Daurimer’s return to Cleontine, having learned that life has little use for extremes, good or bad, and he feels that he should give tolerant indifference a chance. Cleontine agrees, noting that it is the only way “if you want to have a moment’s peace and happiness. It’s just crazy to repress all decency in the effort to be wicked, and all human feeling to be good—crazy and futile” (page 311).

  Pollen is illustrated with ink drawings by Egan, all in that curious decadent and twisted style, developed from Beardsley, which Egan executed so well. The drawings are immediately attractive, but their surrealism seems at times in contradiction to the realism of Egan’s prose. Oddly, the initial copies of the book were published in what is supposed to be a special binding—quarter-bound in a rough cloth, colored with cloudlike shapes ranging from reddish-pink to brown, and a green cloth spine. As with other aspects of the book, the effect is discordant with the contents. Egan was clearly multi-talented and ambitious, but save in his art alone he seems never to have found a workable balance between his aims and his methods of execution. Egan’s third and final novel. But the Sinner Triumph (1934), is a prequel to Pollen, telling of Cleontine’s life before she met Daurimer.

  Egbert, H.M. The Sea Demons (London: John Long, 1923).

  This is the book version of a serial published in the pulp magazine All-Story (1 to 22 January 1916) as by “Victor Rousseau,” the main pseudonym of Victor Rousseau Emanuel (1879-1960). It is really a sad production, exhibiting a number of pulp story clichés, from the eccentric but good professor and his evil mad scientist rival, to the plucky young hero (a lieutenant in the Royal Navy) and his obligatory love-interest, the latter of whom fills the obligatory role of damsel-in-distress and becomes the obsession of the evil scientist (it was love at first sight of her for both the navy lieutenant and the scientist). These clichés are strung together by an outlandish and illogical plot, involving invisible undersea demonic creatures, led with a hive-like control by a ghostly and improbably human-looking queen (who dotes over the navy lieutenant, another apparent case of love at first sight). The creatures attack England (the threat is so great that the World War is cancelled), and the duplicitous mad scientist negotiates a plan to lead the creatures away. The reader of this extended nons
ense gratefully reaches the last pages to find that all the creatures die because their lifespan is somehow linked with the thirty-day life-span of the queen. This is one of the worst books, on multiple levels, that I have ever read.

  Ellis, T.E. Children of Don (London: Edward Arnold, 1912).

  This poetic drama by Thomas Evelyn Ellis (1880-1946), better known as Lord Howard de Walden, is only a portion of a complex opera in three parts, with music by Joseph Holbrooke. The three dramas comprise Children of Don (1912), Dylan: Son of the Wave (1918), and Bronwen, the latter of which was published only in the privately printed omnibus with the first two dramas, as The Cauldron of Annwn (1922). Besides the music composed by Holbrooke, the sets (at least for Children of Don in 1912) were designed by the artist Sidney Sime (1865-1941), who also provided cover designs for some of the librettos, as well as an excellent unsigned frontispiece in photogravure which can be found in some (but not all) copies of Children of Don. (This frontispiece can be seen at wormwoodiana.blogspot.com.)