by Gafford, Sam
Magic and Circles of Protection
Magic incantations, protective circles, and mysterious ancient books of arcane lore figure prominently in both stories. Though these elements are not uncommon in stories of the period, the similarities are again striking.
Blackwood learned his magic honestly; he joined the International Theosophical Society as early as 1899, but seemed dissatisfied and the next year joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. The purpose of this organization “was to study the occult sciences, especially Hebrew magic and the Kabbala” (Ashley 110). He was particularly interested in the power of sound vibrations and incantation (developed more fully in his 1910 novel The Human Chord), and lifted a passage from the Golden Dawn ceremonial book almost verbatim into “Smith” (Ashley 116). The medical student in the story owns a volume of kabbalistic magic, which he does not seem to have studied in depth, though he does teach Smith how to pronounce certain words of power, and Smith borrows this book later. I suspect Blackwood got the idea of circles of power and protection from his magical studies as well.
Hodgson may have been inspired by Blackwood’s story in developing his circles and pentacles of protection, or perhaps he picked the idea up independently in his personal reading and research. R. Alain Everts, who worked from information he received from Hodgson’s family members, reports that in the early years of the twentieth century Hodgson “read every book he could get his hands on . . . on the supernatural, the occult, spiritualism, and contemporary phantasy [sic] and horror writers” (10). Hodgson’s interest in magic tended toward the scientific, as shown by Carnacki’s use of cameras, recording devices, and electric tubes. In “The Hog” Hodgson introduces an elaborate system of color magic as well, with various mystical properties assigned to specific colors of neon tubes, controlled by switches. Benjamin Szumskyj has traced the inspiration for this “color organ” to late Victorian sound and color machines (37–38).
Another interesting parallel detail is the “possession” of the victim. In “The Hog” Bains, when unconscious, utters grunts and squeals in response to the same unearthly sounds coming from out of the deep. The climax in “Smith” is too short for much possession detail, so we have to go to Blackwood’s masterpiece from 1907, “The Willows,” where the unearthly forces encountered are similar to that in “Smith.” In this story, the character of “the Swede” is rendered unconscious and hums uncontrollably in synchronicity with the mysterious atmospheric humming that surrounds the two adventurers on their island.
Encounters with the Ab-human
I would also suggest that Blackwood even nibbled at the edge of the ab-human. The term was coined by Hodgson to characterize the bizarre beings with which his heroes do battle. Leigh Blackmore and Neal Alan Spurlock describe the ab-human, and by extension, the ab-natural, in the previous incarnation of this journal (Sargasso 1, No. 1, 2013). I think Blackmore got it best, and most simply, as follows: “just as the word ‘abnormal’ means ‘deviating from what is normal or usual, typically in a way that is undesirable . . . ab-human’ implies ‘deviating from what is human’” (182). One can assume that this deviation is also undesirable, at least from an anthropocentric point of view.
When Blackwood’s medical student finally encounters the beings that have been conjured up by Smith, he goes to great pains to describe them not as from a higher plane, or the underworld, but as “some form of life wholly unknown to me both as to its essence and its nature” (200); and later:
That I had caught a momentary glimpse of living, intelligent entities I can never doubt, but I am equally convinced, though I cannot prove it, that these entities were from some other scheme of evolution altogether, and had nothing to do with the ordinary human life, either incarnate or discarnate. (210)
Here, with typical economy of phrase, Blackwood has suggested what Hodgson explained in great detail in the epilogue of “The Hog.” These are not ghosts, disembodied spirits, or even demons, which are, after all, just one step removed from humans, but truly ab-human beings of immense power. These types of entities are rare in Blackwood’s work. He usually deals with spirits of humans and the super-natural (or preterhuman and preternatural as discussed by Blackmore [183]). Only here, and in “The Willows,” do his protagonists encounter forces that are so far outside of human ken.
It is also interesting that, as Spurlock points out (134), Hodgson explains in the epilogue of “The Hog” that the ab-human forces are out to “plunder and destroy to satisfy these lusts and hungers . . . And the desire of these monsters is chiefly, if not always, for the psychic entity of the human” (240). In “Smith,” when the medical student comes near to the ab-natural force, he feels psychically drained by a sort of spiritual vampirism. When first visited in his own room he feels “a growing lassitude as though the vitality were being steadily drained out of my body” (201), and when battling the forces Smith has raised he is nearly overcome by a similar weakness, as I have quoted in the synopsis above. Both Smith and Carnacki have “meddled” with dangerous, ab-natural realms indeed.
Timing
It is a relatively common assumption that Carnacki was inspired by Blackwood’s John Silence, a connected series of mysteries solved by a psychic doctor or detective (Valentine 1987 and 2008; Davies 2006, for example), though the John Silence stories do not have a consistent framing device as does Carnacki, or for that matter Holmes. In fact, according to Ashley, “[Blackwood] tells us that the stories began as separate studies of various psychic themes, but [publisher] Eveleigh Nash suggested he group them together under a common character and work on a ‘bigger canvas’” (130). Just three stories in the Silence canon have a detective theme and are narrated by an assistant, and only two are narrated by the same man. Another supernatural series more directly influenced by Sherlock Holmes and with perhaps a more obvious influence on Hodgson is the adventures of Flaxman Low, first published in 1898 by Kate and Hesketh Pritchard, writing as E. and H. Heron. Flaxman Low had built a reputation as a ghost-hunter, and clients would seek him out, as is the case with Carnacki, and Sherlock Holmes before him.
Further, I would argue that because the John Silence volume was not published until November 1908, and Hodgson had a condensation of the first four Carnacki stories published, for copyright purposes, in the United States as early as January 1910, with the first Carnacki story appearing in the Idler at the same time, thirteen months seems a rather short turnaround from idea to publication, especially early in the twentieth century. It seems more likely, then, that Hodgson encountered Blackwood in his wide reading in the supernatural field, as early as the publication of The Empty House in 1906, which contained the story “Smith: An Episode in a Lodging House,” and even The Listener in 1907, which contained “The Willows.”
Though it undermines the whole thesis of this article, I have to acknowledge R. Alain Everts’s assertion that “In fact, most of Hodgson’s horror tales were written during the early period [pre-1904], as well as his horror and phantasy novels.” He goes on to state that “All of the Carnacki stories were early as well—and Hope himself was in actuality Carnacki” (10). He cites family lore for this claim, though I have seen nothing elsewhere that supports this suggestion.
Borrowing
Anyone seeking to make a living as a writer, especially in the competitive story market of the early twentieth century, would cast about widely for ideas and inspiration and try to capitalize on trends of the day. There would be no shame in putting Hodgson in that category. Sam Moskowitz in particular cites several stories and ideas that he traced to their possible sources. A sequence in “The Gateway of the Monster” he traces to H. G. Wells’s “The Red Room,” which “is so close that it would be an affront to the intelligence of any reader to even dare to suggest that the idea came from any other source, or that its use is a coincidence” (Out of the Storm 81). In that same essay, Moskowitz points out a scene in “The Searcher of the End House” where the “resemblance . . . is self-evident” to Rudyard Kipling’s �
��They” (85). For one last example, Moskowitz, in his introduction to The Haunted Pampero, finds sequences in “Jack Grey, Second Mate” so similar to other stories that it leaves “one to wonder if Hodgson ever read The Cavalier where those stories appeared” (17). If Moskowitz had noticed the parallels between Carnacki, and especially “The Hog,” and “Smith,” I am sure he would have made a similar comment.
The Undying Mystery of the Author of “The Hog”
One can’t discuss “The Hog” without at least touching on the controversy over its authorship. It is an interesting coincidence that the story surfaced in August Derleth’s hands almost thirty years after Hodgson’s death, when he first sold it to Weird Tales for the January 1947 issue, then published it in the Arkham House edition of Carnacki the Ghost-Finder later that year. Questions have been raised because Derleth was a well-known and skilled pastichist, as shown by his Solar Pons and Cthulhu Mythos stories. Sam Moskowitz, while discussing this controversy and the extensive editing Derleth performed on other Hodgson stories, dismisses this questionable authorship by stating that “the submission records prove that a story with that title was submitted widely during and after Hodgson’s life and death” (Terrors of the Sea 23). He also is of the opinion that “a reading of it, as well as records, seem to establish that it is a Hodgson story, for the air of menace is sustained for 17,000 words, a feat which was uniquely a talent of that author” (Terrors 25).
In Hodgson’s own story “The Whistling Room,” Carnacki says: “I was practically certain that this was no mere Aeiirii development, but one of the worse forms as the Saiitii, that ‘Grunting Man’ case—you know” (87–88). Though these references to other cases often allude to unwritten stories, as in Sherlock Holmes stories, in this case it seems to refer directly to “The Hog,” where Carnacki explains in the epilogue that “I had found unmistakable signs that proved the thing had indeed been a Saiitii manifestation” (234). This suggests that Hodgson had at least had an idea of some sort of porcine adventure, though, now that I think of it, this reference to a “Grunting Man case” could also have been a jumping-off point for a pastiche by Derleth, as in the Carnacki continuation stories of A. F. Kidd and Rick Kennett in 472 Cheyne Walk.
But Kidd and Kennett themselves argue in their introduction to 472 Cheyne Walk that the manuscript of “The Hog” was indeed circulated for sale by Hodgson’s sister Lissie for years, to no avail, and that the manuscript now resides in a private collection “according to Hodgson scholar Douglas A. Anderson” (xii). It would be interesting if an original manuscript were published so we could know if, and if so how much, the hand of August Derleth shaped “The Hog.”
Conclusion and Questions
So in the end this article can prove nothing, and in fact leaves us with the question that started it. Given the parallel elements of a narrative device of a storytelling session with pipes and firelight, a protagonist who readily admits his fear and trepidation, a magical adventure with mysterious books and circles of protection on the floor, and a climactic encounter with deadly forces from a realm completely alien to our own, how could Hodgson not have been influenced by Blackwood’s story?
And if we admit this direct inspiration, it leads to even more questions. Why then was “The Hog,” the story that most resembles its source, apparently the last Carnacki story written, as suggested by the increased sophistication of the magical equipment and the more elaborate development of the Outer Monstrosities Mythos? Or had Hodgson had the series going when he discovered “Smith,” and then overlaid the Blackwoodian touches on the earlier stories? Can we determine the order of composition of the Carnacki stories? Is there an internal chronology of the Carnacki tales? One certainty is suggested by all this: we will never run out of interesting byways to explore as we travel through the worlds of William Hope Hodgson’s prodigious imagination.
Works Cited
Ashley, Mike. Algernon Blackwood: An Extraordinary Life. New York: Carroll & Graf, 2001.
Blackmore, Leigh. “Things Invisible: Human and Ab-Human in Two of Hodgson’s Carnacki Stories.” Sargasso 1, No. 1 (Fall 2013): 176–97.
Blackwood, Algernon. “Smith: An Episode in a Lodging House.” In The Empty House and Other Ghost Stories. 1906. New York: Donald C. Vaughan, 1915.
———. “The Willows.” In The Listener and Other Stories. London: Eveleigh Nash, 1907.
Davies, David Stuart. “Introduction.” In Hodgson’s The Casebook of Carnacki the Ghost-Finder. Ware, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 2006.
Everts, R. Alain. Some Facts in the Case of William Hope Hodgson: Master of Phantasy. Madison, WI: The Strange Co., 1974.
Hodgson, William Hope. “The Thing Invisible,” “The Whistling Room,” and “The Hog.” In Carnacki the Ghost-Finder. Sauk City, WI: Mycroft & Moran, 1947.
Kidd, A. F., and Rick Kennett. No.472 Cheyne Walk: Carnacki, the Untold Stories. Ashcroft, BC: Ash-Tree Press, 2002.
Moskowitz, Sam. “William Hope Hodgson.” In Hodgson’s Out of the Storm. Ed. Sam Moskowitz. West Kingston RI: Donald M. Grant, 1975.
———. “The Posthumous Acceptance of William Hope Hodgson.” In Hodgson’s The Haunted Pampero. Ed. Sam Moskowitz. Hampton Falls, NH: Donald M. Grant, 1991.
———. “William Hope Hodgson’s Sister: Roadblock to Recognition.” In Hodgson’s Terrors of the Sea. Ed. Sam Moskowitz. Hampton Falls, NH: Donald M. Grant, 1996.
Spurlock, Neal Alan. “Ab-Reality: The Metaphysical Vision of William Hope Hodgson.” Sargasso 1, No. 1 (Fall 2013): 117–37.
Szumskyj, Benjamin. “Outer Monstrosities: William Hope Hodgson’s ‘The Hog.’” Wormwood No. 12 (2009): 32–38.
Valentine, Mark. “Against the Abyss: Carnacki the Ghost-Finder.” In William Hope Hodgson: Voyages and Visions, ed. Ian Bell. Oxford: I. Bell and Sons, 1987. 24–28.
———. “Introduction.” In The Black Veil & Other Tales of Supernatural Sleuths, ed. Mark Valentine. Ware, UK: Wordsworth Editions, 2008.
The Shop on the Borderland
By Robb Borders
For too long had I gazed out across the mall promenade at the store opposite mine: Candy World, a store whose painfully mundane name seemed entirely at odds with the kind of feverish imagination responsible for the interior décor.
A vast mural spanned the entirety of the store’s walls, floor to ceiling, a cubic cyclorama that would have, if not for the plate glass store front, threatened to overrun the very walls of the mall itself with depictions of a literal world made of and populated by candy creations. The mural entirely lacked proper prospective, depth, and logic. The landscape was presented in places as a cutaway chocolate sponge cake or brownie earth ridden and riddled with gummy worms and their tunnel. Here and there the ground held treasures: geodes of grape amethyst, cherry ruby, lime emerald, and in one place an assortment of golden chocolate coins lay clumped together in a fool’s hoard. At the surface blades and ridges of green frosted grass were studded with clusters of nuts, like stones; copses of lollipop trees and bunches of smaller flowers spread out across the fields and over the hills. A stream of liquid—molten?—chocolate cut across the landscape from the western wall and fed into a pond where gummy frogs basked on fruit leather lily-pads that floated upon the placid waters wherein gelatinous sharks chased after darting shoals of dense, fruity fish. A village of cookie-built structures filled the east wall, a conglomeration of buildings out of scale with the anthropomorphic creatures that must have inhabited them, the smoke billowing from chimneys suggesting they were freshly baked.
Beneath the sky, they cavorted. Bears, by and large, with more of the worms and frogs to keep them company, idiotic grins smeared across their faces in seeming disregard of the glowing sheen of their translucent multicolored bodies that suggested they might be melting beneath their central star. That sun, a garish and gigantic coil of golden yellow lollipop—sans stick—shone over that bizarre world and smiled all the while like a god whose benevolent demeanor might have been little more than a mask for its ins
anity: Sol Ridiculus.
The mural itself would have been little more than an eyesore, especially to one in my profession, had it not been for the queer effect rendered upon it by the store’s other furnishings. Plastiglass bins lined the perimeter and two back-to-back rows stood in the center of the floor. The plastiglass, taking on the color of the confections within it and doubly streaked by cheap cleaner and the fingerprints of thousands of youths, warped, distorted, and lent a monstrous aspect to the capering creatures trapped behind or glimpsed through it. Glazed googly gazes became predatory; goofy grins turned to the baring of teeth in anticipation of rending and tearing flesh; wriggling worms stalked the scampering children beneath them and threatened to devour, to swallow whole and dissolve their bodies as they traversed from head to tail where they would issue forth in a steaming pile of bleached and slime-dripping bone. The screams of children would, after nearly two years, occasionally give me cause to turn quickly, as I looked for the source out of fear that one of the grotesques might have fallen upon one of the children in a reversal of the natural order of candy being eaten.
