‘It’s our friend Francis Kilvert again: he tells us all about it in his diary, volume one,’—he riffled through the pages—‘page two hundred and seventy-nine.’ Alan quoted:
‘ “Near Capel y Ffin at the mouth of a dingle on the mountain side stood the house of Ty yr Deol (the house of vengeance). Some crime had been perpetrated on the spot and the place was accursed. When the workmen were building the house they heard a voice which seemed to fall from the air and come down the dingle, saying, ‘Move the work across the green.’ ‘For why?’ called back the astonished workmen. ‘The spot is accursed,’ said the voice solemnly. ‘For how long?’ shouted the workmen. ‘Until the ninth generation,’ returned the voice. Three attempts were made to build the house. Twice the house fell. The third time the house was built. One night in winter a young man came up the mountain to court his sweetheart who lived in the Ty yr Deol, the accursed, ill-fated house. His greyhound whined at the door, hung back and refused to enter the house, and no coaxing would induce him to come in. The young man took it as a warning and returned home. That night there was a land-slip or a snow slip, or a sudden mass of snow melted down the dingle driving the ice and water before it. The accursed house was overwhelmed and swept away and everyone in the house perished.” ’
When Alan had read this the two friends sat for many minutes in silence, gazing into the flames of the fire, each busy with his own thoughts, while outside dusk thickened in the valley and the room grew dark except for the flickering fire-light.
The Passing of the Ghost Story
by L. T. C. Rolt
(First published in The Saturday Book No. 16, 1956)
‘A SAD TALE’S BEST for winter; I have one of sprites and goblins,’ says little Mamillius in A Winter’s Tale. ‘Come on,’ invites his mother, ‘and do your best to fright me with your sprites; you’re powerful at it,’ and the child begins: ‘There was a man dwelt by a churchyard . . .’ Alas, the entrance of Leontes and his company cuts off the story at its promising beginning, but although Mamillius was disappointed the tradition of the winter’s tale has persisted.
They could not appreciate light who had never known darkness, and so the brightness of the star that shone over the stable in Bethlehem was traditionally enhanced each Christmas season by the black contrast of fireside tales about what Mrs Crowe called the ‘Night Side of Nature’. When the winter wind boomed in the chimney, generations of storytellers would, like Mamillius, do their best to fright the company, invoking not merely sprites and goblins but the Prince of Darkness himself or his more fearful myrmidons: hell hounds and werewolves, demons of hideous aspect, witches and warlocks, and damned souls breaking from their unquiet graves.
Most of us can no longer appreciate the superstitious terrors which the mere mention of such creatures was once sufficient to arouse. They have become mere turnip ghosts whose element the flick of a switch will disperse. Nevertheless, the past dies hard. Notwithstanding electric light and every other form of scientific exorcism the ghost story held its own. Until recently no Christmas annual or Christmas number of a magazine was considered complete without a ghost story. It is only within the last decade or so that this venerable branch of the storyteller’s art seems to have fallen into neglect.
Some literary critics account for the eclipse of the ghost story by maintaining that no amount of subtlety can any longer avail against the materialism and cynicism of the present time, in other words that it is an exhausted form doomed to extinction in a world of science fiction. Before jumping to the hasty assumption that the last fictional ghost has been laid, it were better to study a little more closely the history of the art and works of its past masters.
Supernatural phenomena are only the raw material of the ghost story writer. They provide him with ideas, no more. The idea is only his starting point; his own imagination must supply the atmosphere of mounting suspense and the significant and usually malign influence of the supernatural upon the natural which seldom or never exists in fact but which gives the fictional ghost story its shape and plot. The oldest and simplest of these fictional embroideries is that of the man who spends a night in a haunted chamber. Sometimes he does so wittingly for a wager or out of sheer bravado and sometimes he is the victim of a cruel experiment or hoax on the part of his host, but in either event the result is the same. If his hair turns white overnight he has had a fortunate escape; death mysterious or self-inflicted or gibbering lunacy are usually his portion. In antiquity and perennial virility the victim of the haunted chamber shares the honours with the numerous rash speculators who, singularly failing to profit from the horrid example of their famous predecessor Doctor Faustus, persistently sign contracts with the Arch Fiend or one of his cohorts.
Simple basic plots such as these which stem directly from oral tradition, together with every grisly legend and superstition that memory had perpetuated were all raked up in the eighteenth century and flung into the melting pot of the Gothic novel, The Castle of Otranto and its successors. Like the witches in Macbeth, Horace Walpole and his imitators concocted a rare stew for their cauldron, but it is not one that we can stomach today. In its extreme form it was as crammed full with horrors both natural and supernatural as the most lurid of mediaeval ‘Last Judgments’, and, like the latter, it is capable of inspiring no more than morbid curiosity today. For the Gothic writers simply did not know when to stop. They subjected their audience to such an unrelieved surfeit that they defeated their own object.
Nevertheless, the Gothic novel is true ancestor of the modern ghost story, for out of that phantasmagoria there emerged two of the first great masters of the supernatural art, Edgar Allan Poe and Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. The former’s Tales of Mystery and Imagination is justly famous as a classic of the art, displaying a sombre imaginative power infinitely superior to any of his predecessors. Yet Poe stands for the most part still very much in the Gothic tradition and is reluctant to discard its paraphernalia. So it is that stories such as ‘Ligeia’ or the celebrated ‘Fall of the House of Usher’, though they do not provoke irreverent laughter, have become for us period pieces, albeit magnificent ones, which no longer haunt our minds as their author intended they should, and as any successful ghost story must do. With the better stories of Sheridan Le Fanu it is quite otherwise. Although his work is unaccountably less widely acclaimed than Poe’s, he is, when at the top of his bent—for his work is uneven in quality—a much greater master than Poe. The stage of his stories, too, is apt to be cluttered with tombstones, mouldering ruins, mantling ivy and such-like conventional Gothic properties over which the modern reader is apt to stumble. Nor is he a writer of remarkable inventive power or originality where his plots are concerned. They are for the most part old, conventional and simple, while more than once he repeats what is virtually the same story, changing only the setting and the names of the characters. And yet, despite all this, Le Fanu’s stories linger uncomfortably in the back of the mind where Poe’s are forgotten. The secret of this success and the basis of his claim to be the father of the modern ghost story is to be found in the infinitely guileful brilliance with which he conjures up his apparitions. This is a technique entirely his own to which all subsequent practitioners are indebted. If, for instance, we were to meet that foul dog in ‘Squire Toby’s Will’ we might at first suppose that there was nothing abnormal about it. So thought Charles Marston when the dog first appeared, for Le Fanu was the first to realise that the most grotesque and hideous monster ever conceived cannot be so frightening as the sudden revelation that the normal and familiar is not, after all, what it seems. From the moment when the dog is seen fawning and writhing in obscene ecstasy upon the tomb of old Squire Toby, its white body extended to a length quite disproportionate, it becomes a creature most horrible, the mere clattering of its claws in the nocturnal corridors of Gylingden Hall more disturbing in its import than the baying of all the hell-hounds of legend put together.
In the opinion of this reader, ‘Squire Toby’s Will’ is the be
st of Le Fanu’s stories, but this is a matter of personal taste, for others are hardly less successful. No matter how old and stale the plot may be it is revivified by brilliant treatment. Thus ‘A Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter’ is no more than a variation upon the Faustean theme, yet where legions of Mephistophelian bargainers are forgotten, Le Fanu’s infernal visitor has an unpleasant way of reappearing before the mind’s eye. Minheer Wilken Vanderhausen of Rotterdam is not distinguished as a species by a cloven foot or a smell of brimstone. As in the case of the dog, we at first accept as natural the strange visitor to the studio of Gerard Douw and so become horrified when certain subtle peculiarities are remarked: the dark skin; the unblinking eyes in which the whites are visible all round the iris; and a stillness in repose so profound that no motion even of breathing can be detected.
The same may be said of the creatures that lurk in the pages of that brilliantly titled collection In a Glass Darkly. The concentrated malevolence of the little monkey-like being which ultimately drove the wretched parson of ‘Green Tea’ to take his own life and the menacing face of ‘The Familiar’ which hounded the unfortunate Captain Barton to an equally melancholy end are both, it seems, disturbingly enhanced by the mere fact of their diminutive size. And surely no vampire, no, not even the eminent Count Dracula himself, has ever surpassed Le Fanu’s ‘Carmilla’. Here again, what makes this revenant so peculiarly dreadful is the perfection of its human disguise. Almost until the fearful end the semblance of the beautiful Carmilla continues to deceive and only we, the readers, are permitted to infer the horrid truth from her morning languors and from her growing passion for her host’s ward, an unnatural lust of whose awful consummation we become so vividly aware that we long to cry a warning to the innocent victim, caught like a fly in the web of her seductions.
These three stories from In a Glass Darkly have only one fault. Each is presented as though it had been extracted from the case book of a pseudo-scientific investigator named Doctor Hesselius. This serious mistake has been perpetuated by other writers since Le Fanu, who have perhaps been influenced by detective story technique. To the latter the character of the investigator is as important as the Prince of Denmark in Hamlet, but in the ghost story he is an unwanted extra, attempting, as he must do, to rationalise and explain an occurrence which, if it is to make its full impact upon the reader, should remain as irrational and as inexplicable as a nightmare. Even the frequently employed technique of telling the ghost story at second hand must to some extent insulate the reader from the shock, knowing as he does that the narrator himself is not involved in the events which he describes. Hence, with rare exceptions, the most effective ghost stories are told in direct narrative. To cut these stories of Le Fanu’s out of the frame in which Doctor Hesselius presents them would be a simple operation from which they would benefit immeasurably. One reason why ‘Squire Toby’s Will’ excels is that it is told directly; here no calm detached voice is raised to allay our fears and distract them from that beastly dog.
A most fervent admirer of Le Fanu’s work and one who did more than anyone else to rescue it from unmerited obscurity was that most widely celebrated of all the masters of the ghost story, Montague Rhodes James. James not only hailed Le Fanu as the first of the masters but freely acknowledged his own debt to him. Certainly the stories of M. R. James represent a logical development of Le Fanu’s technique. In the creation of memory-haunting visitants and in devising unpleasant experiences for his luckless human characters, James’s power of invention is unsurpassed. Moreover, no other writer in this field has ever maintained so consistent a standard. Not one of his stories fails in its effect, and connoisseurs rarely agree when asked to name his best work. A considerable factor in his success was the academic milieu in which practically all his characters have their being. It was not only one in which he moved himself and with which he was therefore thoroughly familiar, it was also perfectly suited to the display of his particular powers, distilling as it did an atmosphere which made his singular inventions all too easily credible. James’s bookish, candlelit world, peopled exclusively by elderly Fellows of the Society of Antiquaries, Dons and Prebendaries who inhabit tall Queen Anne or Georgian rectories in the wilds of East Anglia, or enjoy the cloistered seclusion of quadrangle or Cathedral close, this world of his is, when we come to think of it, simply an ingenious variant of that Gothic gloom in which earlier and simpler writers wallowed. The difference is that whereas their characters lived in the ruins, so to speak, James’s elderly and eminently respectable scholars visit them in the spirit of archaeological inquiry. When they do so they invariably pay a high price for their curiosity. The technique, though immensely effective and capable of many ingenious twists and variations, is basically extremely simple. It could be labelled, somewhat irreverently, the Aladdin’s Lamp method. Murmur aloud the Latin inscription, study too closely the picture or the ancient book; blow that curious whistle, lay your hand upon the head of the carved figure or seek the treasure of Abbot Thomas, and you will presently find yourself in highly undesirable company. It is disconcerting to find a thin, hairy hand appearing on the desk beside your book when you are reading, or to confront a crumpled linen face in your hotel bedroom where there should only be an unoccupied bed. It is not pleasant when what you took to be a leather sack suddenly slumps forward and puts arms about your neck.
If James has a fault it is that he betrays, in some not easily definable way, a kind of impish glee, a malicious delight in his ability to frighten his readers. With infinite relish he sets about the task of freezing our blood and performs it most efficiently, but we are aware that his own blood has never cooled and that he does not believe a word of what he writes. If he is to carry his readers with him and achieve the highest pinnacle of success the writer of ghost stories must create the impression, whether it be true or false, that he himself believes that the events which he is describing could happen. If he does not do so he cannot hope to suspend his readers’ disbelief.
The ghost stories of M. R. James are highly ingenious variations upon a theme, and their key and tone colour remains the same. To change the metaphor, the basic ingredients are seldom varied and all the skill lies in the way they are mixed and seasoned. James never essayed any entirely fresh recipe for horror comparable with, to quote a classic example, The Turn of the Screw. The literary fame of Henry James is, of course, far more widely based, yet this single brilliant achievement entitles him to a place among the masters of the ghost story. The horrible idea of childish innocence deliberately corrupted and debauched by a power of supernatural evil has since been exploited by other writers and seldom fails to produce the desired effect upon the reader, but never has it been developed with such skill and subtlety as in the original. When the antiquary in an M. R. James story suffers for his insatiable curiosity or acquisitiveness we may say to ourselves ‘serve you right’. but there is something quite different and peculiarly dreadful about the notion of a small child becoming a victim of the dark powers.
Arthur Machen and Algernon Blackwood are much more uneven writers than M. R. James. Blackwood, particularly, can fail abysmally, and he sometimes introduces a tiresome successor to Le Fanu’s Doctor Hesselius, improbably named John Silence. Yet when he is at the top of his form, Blackwood is incomparable, and if I were asked to name the most terrifying ghost story ever written my answer would be ‘The Wendigo’. The strength of both Machen and Blackwood is the weakness of M. R. James; they succeed in convincing their readers that they believe their own stories. So effectually do they manage this that wisps of the sinister necromantic fog which pervades their stories seem to hang about the writers themselves. While we should, we feel, welcome as reassuring the person of M. R. James, if we met him as we walked along a high banked lane on a dark night, we might well experience a qualm upon encountering the cloaked, white-haired Machen or the cadaverous figure of Algernon Blackwood.
The background and technique of their most successful stories is totally
different from those of M. R. James. It is a paradox that whereas James, the hearty member of the trio, performs most of his conjurations indoors, Machen and Blackwood are predominantly outdoor men; they have to do with elemental things, and the particular brand of horror in which they excel is that of the worm in the bud, the terror or the rottenness that can that can lurk under nature’s mask of beauty. Upon one side the fruit can present the smooth ripe bloom of perfection, while upon the other it is already black, corrupt and crawling with loathsome creatures. With splendid skill and sensibility they shock us with the contrast between this picture and that, pointing the ancient, enigmatic contradiction between the exquisite sweetness of the music of the Pan pipes and the pitiless, pagan cruelty of those hairy flanks and cloven feet.
Space does not permit us to consider other stars in the ghostly firmament such as E. F. Benson, H. R. Wakefield and Oliver Onions. These three, like Blackwood and Machen, are not always successful, and yet, with ‘The Room in the Tower’, ‘Look Up There’, and ‘The Beckoning Fair One’ respectively, each has earned his place among the masters.
But where are the practising masters of today? That the most recent collection of original ghost stories to appear up to the time of writing received wider critical notice than previous ventures in this field is encouraging, but the quality of the book was not. With one possible exception the masters are not here. Well-known writers who should know better fall into every pitfall which can so easily entrap whoever would succeed in this minor but most subtle and sinister art. Some commit sins quite unforgivable and deadly; wax facetious or, as a writer of whodunits trails red herring clues, trick out their theme with supernatural non sequiturs the effect of which is to mystify and perplex but not to terrify. That every hint of the sinister or abnormal must be strictly relevant to the central idea is a canon of the art which cannot be flouted. But the commonest fault of these modern stories is that they are too short. The very short ghost story is rarely successful. If it is to convince the reader, the process whereby the abnormal gradually intrudes and imposes itself upon the normal cannot be hurried, and hence an attempt to apply the fashionable technique of streamlining is disastrous. It means that the story begins on a note of unreality or of tension instead of first lulling the reader into a false sense of security.
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