The Library of the Lost: In Search of Forgotten Authors

by Roger Dobson

  6. In Things Near & Far, Chapter Nine, writing about the mysterious process that healed the ‘horror of soul’ which descended on him after Amy’s death in 1899, Machen compared the urge to seek relief to that suffered by ‘a man with a raging toothache to get laudanum’. In ‘The Opium of the Creators: Poe and Machen’ (Avallaunius 15, Winter 1996: The Arthur Machen Society) Godfrey Brangham speculates on whether Machen experimented with the opium used to relieve Amy’s sufferings. It seems unlikely that the visions of 1899 were opium-inspired since Machen himself, unless he was being uncharacteristically disingenuous, found them inexplicable.

  7. The stationer had a real-life prototype; see Things Near & Far, Chapter Two. In his Introduction to The Chronicle of Clemendy (Carbonnek: New York, 1923) Machen remembered it as Murley’s. ‘Celestial’ alludes to the Oxford Street druggist of the Confessions (‘unconscious minister of celestial pleasures!’), who mysteriously ‘evanesced’. De Quincey first obtained his tincture of opium, or laudanum, from the druggist while an Oxford undergraduate in 1804.

  Roger Dobson and Dr Julie Speedie, ‘Dog & Duck’ weekend at 17 Bankbottom, Hadfield, Saturday July 8th 1989.

  HE WROTE OF DARK FORCES: THE WEIRD WORLD OF DENNIS WHEATLEY

  Dennis Wheatley, 1897-1977.

  Wormwood 19, Autumn 2012

  One of the numerous blights caused by the spectre of political correctness is that the extravagant but enjoyable fictions of Dennis Wheatley are frowned upon by liberal-minded modern publishers. Wheatley has become a back number, his jingoism and racial views seemingly placing him beyond the pale. One paperback house has issued at least one of his books with a caveat that Wheatley’s political and racial beliefs were not shared by the publisher: surely something unique, as his biographer Phil Baker has said. Yet in his heyday Wheatley sold fifty million books. The paperback of The Satanist, published in 1966, sold over 100,000 copies in ten days. If Wheatley was not an ‘artist in shadows’ neither was he a cynical pulp hack who churned out books like sausages. Many of his sixty-odd doorstoppers are, on the simplest level, a good read, and what is wrong with a good read?

  Various editions of The Devil Rides Out by Dennis Wheatley.

  Wheatley’s pioneering mix of the adventure thriller with occultism gripped the public imagination from the 1930s. His reputation after his death in 1977, aged eighty, has slumped along with his sales; though in recent years there have been signs of a revival. Wordsworth has published The Devil Rides Out and other of his Black Magic thrillers and omnibuses have been reissued. Some of Wheatley’s language, deemed unacceptable today, has been altered. The word ‘Negro’ in The Devil Rides Out (1934), for example, has been altered to ‘African’. In 2006 BBC 4 adapted The Haunting of Toby Jugg as The Haunted Airman. Professor John Sutherland writes about Such Power is Dangerous (1933), though not uncritically, in Magic Moments (2008), which charts life-changing encounters with books and films. Wheatley’s books, he writes, ‘always contained one daring “hot” scene (you could locate it easily; the book always fell open at those well relished pages)’. The paperback of Star of Ill Omen (1952) recently featured in a newspaper advertising campaign amid a shelf of eclectic titles; though science fiction was not Wheatley’s forte.

  Interviewing him on BBC 2 in 1977, just before his eightieth birthday, Robert Robinson said Wheatley’s books combined ‘the improbabilities of Batman with the style of Daisy Ashford’: a clever but cruel barb: Wheatley is no Henry James but he told a good yarn.

  Wheatley’s estate is now controlled by the media group Chorion, which administers the copyrights of Agatha Christie and Georges Simenon. There is a proposal to adapt Wheatley’s plots and characters for young readers: a strange idea but whatever weans children away from PlayStation and video games is doubtless worthwhile.

  As Phil Baker comments in his fine biography The Devil is a Gentleman (2009), Wheatley has ‘joined Sax Rohmer and John Buchan in moving from being dated to positively vintage’. He still commands a loyal legion of followers, and a comprehensive website and conferences are devoted to him and his work (www.denniswheatley.info).

  Wheatley produced one inspired genre masterpiece, The Devil Rides Out, which will ensure his name will live on. In the early 1960s Christopher Lee, a friend and neighbour of Wheatley in Chelsea, persuaded Hammer Films to acquire the rights to three of the Black Magic books, and after the British censor lifted the ban on the subject The Devil Rides Out (1968) became the company’s most illustrious production. In some ways it invented the rollercoaster horror film. Time and budget restrictions meant Terence Fisher’s film could not remain wholly faithful to the original. Terrific as it is, the film does not really do justice to the book. The truncated climax, which takes place at a house in the Home Counties rather than off the coast of Greece, is the worse for it, but Wheatley was delighted with Richard Matheson’s intelligent script and sent him an appreciative letter. The Hammer film simplifies the plot: the Talisman of Set which the black magician Damien Mocata lusts after, to unleash the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse and plunge the world into Armageddon, plays no part. Simon Aron, based on Wheatley’s friend Mervyn Baron, is no longer Jewish as he is in the book, or if he is it’s not referred to. Hammer has planned a remake for years, and with the company’s revival it may become a reality one day. At least one script exists which radically alters the story, opening with an archaeological dig in the Middle East. One would have assumed that the plot was idiot-proof, but this script proves otherwise. Why bother adapting the book in the first place if it’s to be so radically reworked? The Lost Continent (1968), unfaithfully based on Uncharted Seas (1938) and the cold, if well-mounted, version of To the Devil—A Daughter (1976) left Wheatley aghast. See The Hammer Story by Marcus Hearn and Alan Barnes (1997) for his angry letter to Hammer’s executive Michael Carreras. The Satanist (1960), with Peter Cushing, was never made. Orson Welles has also been mentioned in connection with the film, presumably playing the villain. A U.S. TV series based around Wheatley’s secret agent Gregory Sallust and a Hammer TV series devoted to Wheatley’s stories, The Devil and All His Works, never made it to the small screen, just as well if one recalls Hammer’s appallingly trendy House of Horror outings in the genre, when they appear to have adopted Chesterton’s dictum ‘If a thing’s worth doing it’s worth doing badly’.

  When one is a teenager does any more enthralling book exist than The Devil Rides Out? It is the perfect page-turner, combining the claustrophobic appeal of ‘The Turn of the Screw’, where the characters are bedevilled with evil forces in domestic settings, with a widescreen continent-hopping pursuit. From the opening where the Duc de Richleau and Rex Van Ryn visit Simon Aron’s home in a St John’s Wood cul-de-sac, to find Simon has joined a sect of devil-worshippers led by Mocata, an unfrocked priest, the book hardly relaxes its iron grip. Few readers could put down the book after the early scene when de Richleau and Rex return to Simon’s house and, after discovering magical texts such as the Clavicule of Solomon and the Grimoire of Pope Honorius, the astral body of Mocata’s Malagasy servant materialises in the observatory. Fortunately de Richleau is carrying a protective swastika, not merely a Nazi emblem but an eastern emblem of light, and with a prayer drives the elemental back to the abyss. The swastika is simplified to a Christian cross in the film: a universal symbol audiences could readily understand. Explaining its significance would take up valuable screen time. De Richleau’s lecture to Rex on the occult arts is reduced to only a few lines in the film. Another outstanding scene from the book is missing from the film. At the sight of the Goat of Mendes materialising at the sabbath De Richleau, knowing the power of the evil that he and Rex are up against, is plunged into despair. ‘I’m afraid, Rex, God forgive me, I’m afraid.’ It’s an unexpected cliffhanger, portraying Wheatley’s heroes not as supermen but as flawed human beings. Wheatley then piles on the reader’s agony by switching to Tanith making her way to the ceremony.

  Film poster for Hammer’s The Devil Rides Out.

  One b
reakneck scene is piled on another. Perhaps deliberately, the scenario echoes Dracula’s final chapters where the Van Helsing and his fellow vampire-hunters chase the Count across Europe. Richard Eaton’s wife Marie Lou is hypnotised, with de Richleau channelling the spirit of the dead Tanith, who grows up in the foothills of the Carpathians, through her, just as Van Helsing hypnotises Mina Harker in order to trace Dracula. Wheatley’s friend James Hilton hailed The Devil Rides Out as a classic worthy to rank with Stoker’s book, and the plot parallels are presumably significant, if unconscious. Wheatley borrows some concepts from Hilton’s Lost Horizon: Hilton’s novel had appeared the previous year, and Wheatley alludes to it several times in his books. De Richleau says: ‘I give you my word, Rex, that I have talked with men whose sanity you would never question, an Englishman, an Italian, and a Hindu, all three of whom have been taken by guides sent to fetch them to the hidden valley in the uplands of Tibet, where some of the Lamas have reached such a high degree of enlightenment that they can prolong their lives at will, and perform today all the miracles which you have read of in the Bible. It is there that the sacred fire of truth has been preserved for centuries, safe from that brutal mercenary folly of our modern world.’ Rex Van Ryn says that this ‘sounds a pretty tall story’ to him, and, despite the claims of Madame Blavatsky and the wonders of theosophy, the reader’s sympathies may lie with Rex.

  The Devil Rides Out is a treasure trove of occult lore. The reader learns about Walpurgis Night, numerology, witchcraft, vampirism and lycanthropy, necromancy, Tarot cards and water-divination. We are told that the occult secrets of the ages were held by the Albigenses, Christian Rosenkreutz and the Knights Templar, which is unlikely to be entirely accurate but who cares about such details when one is thirteen? Decades before Dan Brown came on the scene to lower the tone Wheatley was enthralling readers with esoteric lore. When one is an uncritical teenager, his dialogue seems unmatched. ‘These are facts I’m giving you, Rex facts, d’you hear, things I can prove by eye-witnesses still living. Despite our electricity, our aeroplanes, our modern scepticism, the power of Darkness is still a living force, worshipped by depraved human beings for their unholy ends in the great cities of Europe and America to this very day.’ Is it any wonder Rex’s face grows pale beneath his tan? The book even turns into a ghost story at some points. Tanith’s gipsy mentor Mizka and her dead mother appear to her as the girl makes her way to the sabbat on Salisbury Plain.

  De Richleau, Simon Aron, the American Rex Van Ryn and Richard Eaton are the ‘Modern Musketeers’. Wheatley’s characters are modelled on Dumas’s heroes: de Richleau is the crafty Aramis and Rex the mighty Porthos. The great set-pieces of the book come in the Walpurgis Night sabbat held on Salisbury Plain and a night of terror when our heroes are subjected to Mocata’s psychic attack at Cardinals Folly, Richard Eaton’s venerable manor house in Worcestershire. Protected in a pentacle against the powers of evil, the friends are menaced by an Ab-human thing from the pit, adapted like the dread Sussamma Ritual, based on the Saaamaaa Ritual from William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki the Ghost-Finder (1913), that can only be uttered when the soul is in peril. The elemental was unimaginatively demoted to a giant spider in the film, much to Richard Matheson’s chagrin, Ab-human creatures being notoriously camera-shy. Wheatley is a master here of tightening the screw. Just when the reader breathes a sigh of relief that the night of dread that has endured for several chapters is over, and the friends have confronted the Angel of Death, who claims the heroine Tanith as a victim, we discover that Mocata has kidnapped the Eatons’ daughter Fleur. It is admittedly a technical hole in the plot that Fleur is left in her bed ‘between Mr Edward Bear and Golliwog’ (an allusion that escaped the thought police, says Charles Beck of the Wheatley website) and excluded from the protective pentacle. This enables Mocata to send an elemental into the library masquerading as Fleur, but we just have to accept the inconsistency. Fleur is made to utter some frightfully banal dialogue (‘Fleur’s not to be frightened of anyfink, Mummy says’) but the reader’s heart is in his or her mouth at her abduction by Mocata. Then our heroes are off on the villain’s trail to Paris in Richard Eaton’s light aircraft. Simon is rescued from a satanic temple and then the police turn up to arrest de Richleau on an old charge of taking part in a crusade in the 1890s to restore the French monarchy, events recounted in The Prisoner in the Mask (1957). The climax occurs in the crypt of a ruined monastery at Yanina off the Greek coast where the Talisman of Set is hidden. Mocata is about to sacrifice Fleur on the monastery’s altar and the Goat of Mendes that had earlier appeared at the sabbat manifests again. The chapter ends with another cliffhanger: ‘Half crazy with fear they saw Mocata pick up the knife and raise his arm above the little body, about to strike.’ In the last moment Richard’s wife, Marie Lou, recalls some words of power from a dream she had about The Red Book of Appin, and one of the Lords of Light turns up to save the day. Mocata is claimed by the Angel of Death, time is reversed and the friends find themselves back in the library at Cardinals Folly. It’s a happy ending all round since Tanith is miraculously restored to life. De Richleau explains that for the past few days they have lived in the fourth dimension, outside time.

  All this bears not the slightest relation to literature but it’s all a gloriously exciting romp, and one can only admire the skill in which Wheatley never allows the reader to relax for an instant. Reading the book is akin to eating a box of chocolates: there is little nutritional value but sometimes only chocolate satisfies.

  Wheatley added a solemn author’s note to his book warning readers of the perils involved in practising magic:

  I desire to state that I, personally, have never assisted at, or participated in, any ceremony connected with magic Black or White. . . .

  Should any of my readers incline to a serious study of the subject, and thus come into contact with a man or woman of Power, I feel that it is only right to urge them, most strongly, to refrain from being drawn into the practice of the Secret Art in any way. My own observations have led me to an absolute conviction that to do so would bring them into dangers of a very real and concrete nature.

  Naturally, since some critics make a profession from contradicting authorial statements, this has been disputed. There are fanciful rumours that Wheatley was inducted into a witch coven or even was a late member of the Order of the Golden Dawn; but all manner of bizarre stories and conspiracy theories have a tendency to float around the occult world: one hears that the Necronomicon is a reality and that Aleister Crowley dated H.P. Lovecraft’s future wife Sonia.

  Charles Grey as Mocata in the Hammer film of The Devil Rides Out.

  Wheatley denied Mocata, with his baldness and mesmeric eyes, was based on Aleister Crowley; Crowley helped supply occult lore for The Devil Rides Out. Phil Baker argues that Crowley was the model for Mocata, and suggests Mocata’s needlework hobby may have stemmed from Montague Summers. Unfortunately Wheatley could not pull off the same trick twice, and despite his prolific output he remains, like Bram Stoker, essentially a one-book author. Wheatley’s other melodramatic doorstoppers are essential reading for addicts, but none of his other thrillers attains the heights of The Devil Rides Out. Fewer books and some ruthless editing might have helped.

  Admirers of Arthur Machen may be amused to learn that the early scenes at Simon Aron’s St John’s Wood house occur in an unnamed Melina Place, the cul-de-sac where Machen lived with his family in the 1920s. In To the Devil—A Daughter (1953) we learn from the villain Canon Augustus Copley-Syle that the house was located in ‘Medina Place’: a thin disguise for the real street.

  Wheatley could be infuriating. Most of his rambling books are flawed in some way. To the Devil—A Daughter only takes off halfway through when Canon Augustus Copley-Syle, based on Montague Summers (‘safely dead for the past four years’, writes Phil Baker) enters the scene. The otherwise effective Haunting of Toby Jugg (1948) is spoiled by a silly coincidental deux ex machina when a dam conveniently collapses drowning the villains
. Strange Conflict (1941) has its advocates, but the early scenes where the characters transform themselves into animals when on the astral plane are ridiculous. When the Duke de Richleau encounters Pan the scene is pantomimic rather than creepy and their dialogue risible. Gateway to Hell (1970), set in South America, is a sad performance. De Richleau is killed off in Dangerous Inheritance (1965) but is brought back for a further black magic yarn Gateway to Hell. This final adventure is packed with undigested gobbets of travel writing. Wheatley never knew when to stop where dialogue is concerned; he often seemed to forget he was writing thrillers. He addressed this criticism in his short-story collection Gunmen, Gallants and Ghosts (1943; expanded 1963). A reviewer of The Fabulous Valley (1934), set in South Africa, said Wheatley should have decided whether he was writing an adventure story or a travel guide. Wheatley accepted the criticism: ‘He had hit the nail on the head and taught me a most valuable lesson.’ But this did not prevent him from shovelling in piles of extraneous material simply because he had witnessed such scenes himself. The Devil Rides Out is an exception in that all the occult lore, however barmy or ludicrous, is at least compelling. On the topic of Tanith, the Carthaginian moon goddess, de Richleau claims: ‘Eleven words of power, each having eleven letters, twice pronounced in a fitting time and place after due preparation, and she would stand before you, terrible in her beauty, demanding a new sacrifice.’ It would be wonderful if this were true, but it seems unlikely. The reader learns that Rasputin was on the side of the powers of darkness and that he and Russia rather than Germany sparked the First World War. Rasputin was ‘the greatest Black Magician that the world has known for centuries. It was he who found one of the gateways through which to let forth the four horsemen that they might wallow in blood and destruction. . . .’ The Wheatley reader often has to take statements with large doses of salt. Purchasers of the Gregory Sallust wartime adventure The Black Baroness (1940) might assume they were reading a wartime thriller but more than one hundred pages in the reader is vainly waiting for the thrills to begin. Instead Wheatley tells us more than we need to know about the history and customs of Denmark. Oddly enough, he went on interminably because he seemed to believe that his realism and travelogue style bolstered his plots. Such Power is Dangerous, which revolves around a conspiracy of media moguls, contains a shameless plug that The Forbidden Territory (1933) would make a wonderful film thriller. Alfred Hitchcock, a friend of Wheatley, took some interest in the book but, while Hitchcock’s wife Alma wrote the adaptation, it was directed by a lesser talent, while the exotic Duc de Richleau was anglicised. In The Devil Rides Out Rex thinks Tanith resembles Marlene Dietrich, while the spine illustration depicts Tanith as a rather more well-nourished Marlene, so perhaps Wheatley had hopes of an early film.