The Collected Connoisseur, by Mark Valentine and John Howard

 

"What we seek, and what we also half-fear, is all around us, always, had we the necessary calm intentness to discern it. "

 

9781905784202

Tartarus Press, 2010

308 pp

paperback

Over the years I've read my fair share of stories featuring supernatural detectives, and prior to starting this book, that's what I thought I had here. What I discovered was not at all what I was expecting, but something unique instead: an "aesthetical detective extraordinaire" in the form of the Connoisseur.   He is described as a

"connoisseur of the curious, of those glimpses of another domain which are vouchsafed to certain individuals and in certain places." 

The Connoisseur is a nickname given to this man by Valentine, who with the Connoisseur's consent, "dependent on anonymity and all necessary discretion," recounts "some of his encounters with this realm. "  The narrator notes that while the Connoisseur  is far from wealthy, he "supplements a decent inheritance" with "administrative work," he "shuns many of the contrivances of modern living," and is therefore able to indulge in a "keen pleasure in all the art forms."   He is a seeker of knowledge and a walking encyclopedia of the arcane; if there's something he does not know, he knows any number of people to whom he can turn for answers.  The mysteries he encounters are often  built around some sort of cultural artifact either in his possession or brought to his attention, for example, in the first story "The Effigies," the narrator is looking at a "dark earthenware jug of quite perfect form" on the Connoisseur's mantel, sparking a story about his friend's visit to its creator, Austin Blake,  renowned maker of "amphorae and delicate vessels" who had suddenly stopped producing at the height of his fame.   There are also a few occasions in which Valentine accompanies the Connoisseur and witnesses events firsthand.   

It is not difficult at all to recognize the influence in these stories of those writers Valentine notes in his introduction as "lifelong companions," and "household gods":  Arthur Machen, Algernon Blackwood, Lord Dunsany, Walter de la Mare and William Hope Hodgson.  "The Hesperian Dragon," for example, is easily recognized as a delightful sort of play on Machen's "Three Impostors."  Blackwood's finely-tuned sensitivity to the hidden awe of the natural world is reflected in "The Last Archipelago," and as in the case of our narrator throughout The Collected Connoisseur,  Hodgson's Dodgson serves as chronicler of the adventures of Carnacki.    Beyond the recognition of Valentine's "household gods", however, lies something even deeper where these authors are concerned -- in the introduction, in discussing a few other writers of the 1890s he'd read, including M.P. Shiel,  Valentine notes that 

"These then, the wondrous, the spectral and the aesthetical, were the airs floating around me when I began to think whether I could go one step further than reading, and try writing, the sort of fiction I enjoyed."

It is this sense of the "wondrous, the spectral and the aesthetical" that he and in the last few stories, John Howard capture here in a style that reflects the writing of those previously-mentioned authors who came before, but still manages to remain quite original.    Not everyone can carry off the voice of times past in his or her writing, but here it is pitch perfect.  The last six of these stories were collaborations between the two authors, and anyone who's read the work of John Howard will recognize his style immediately.  These tales are also a bit more fleshed out, with a bit more action involved, and provide a great ending to this collection.  

I loved these stories, all of which on the whole offered days of fascinating reading,   but of course and as always there were a few that stood out.   "In Violet Veils" is probably my favorite of the collection, in which an experiment in the "revived art of the tableau vivant" results in a warning by the Connoisseur that 

"such curious re-enactments were not to be essayed without some peril of affecting, in unforeseen ways, those involved: who could tell what might result from such a hearkening back to the original power of the mythological image portrayed?"

He knows whereof he speaks, having experienced firsthand an eventful, bizarre tableau vivant in the past.   "In Violet Veils" has the feel of the decadent/symbolist literature I love to read, with more than a touch of the weird that gives it an extra edge of eerieness.  In "The Craft of Arioch"  the Connoisseur relates to Valentine his strange experience during  a "walking holiday" in Sussex with his cousin Rebecca. Having left "the high roads and the dormitory towns" and traveling the "winding roads and nestling villages," they eventually find themselves at a barn where they expect to find hand-crafted rocking horses.  Let's just say after a ride on a "cross between a horse and a white dragon," and "a winged cat with preternaturally pointed ears and peridot eyes," they return from "unknown regions" and "a plane of experience different to anything we may find in this world."  "Sea Citadels," "The Mist on the Mere," "The White Solander" and "The Descent of the Fire" round out the list.   

At the beginning of "The Secret Stars" The Connoisseur in conversation with Valentine notes the following:

"What we seek, and what we also half-fear, is all around us, always, had we the necessary calm intentness to discern it."

 The Connoisseur's "rare glimpses" are the very heart and soul of this book.

The Collected Connoisseur is one to read curled up in your favorite reading space, hot cup of something or other in hand.  Like the Connoisseur, I am quite partial to Qimen/Keemun tea; I  am also one of those people described on the back cover blurb -- "the lover of esoteric mystery and adventure fiction. " More to the point,  I am also in complete awe of Valentine and Howard's visionary writing here and elsewhere.    Every reader of the weird, the fantastical, and of the occult  should have The Collected Connoisseur sitting on his or her shelves.  No collection would be complete without it. 

The King in the Golden Mask, by Marcel Schwob. I loved this book. Absolutely loved it.

9781939663238
Wakefield Press, 2017
originally published as Le roi au masque d'or, 1892
translated by Kit Schluter
188 pp

paperback

The other day I decided that I really ought to read this book since it's been just sitting on my shelves sort of being neglected.   I grabbed the hardcover edition (Carcanet New Press, 1982; Iain White, translator) that I've been holding on to forever, and then I picked up this edition from Wakefield to see if there were any differences between the two before I started reading.  I chose the Wakefield over the Carcanet because translator says here that

"Although Iain White has translated a brilliant volume of Schwob's selected stories under the title of The King in The Golden Mask -- first published by Carcanet Press and recently updated and reissued by Tartarus Press -- White's selection includes roughly half of the original 1892 collection of that title.  As such, the book in your hands marks the complete publication of Schwob's original King in the Golden Mask in English. "

 Back went the Carcanet edition onto its shelf.  Why would I only want to read half a book?

from Abe Books

The titular first story sets the tone and the main theme that carries through this collection of stories.  Before that begins, however, there's Schwob's own preface that will clue readers in to what they're about to experience:

"There are, in this book, masks and covered faces: a king masked in gold, a wild man in a fur muzzle, Italian highwaymen with plague-wracked faces, and French highwaymen with false faces, galley slaves under red helmets, little girls aged suddenly in a mirror, and a singular host of lepers, embalming women, eunuchs, murderers, demoniacs, and pirates, between which I pray the reader belive I take no preference, as I am certaint hey are not, in fact, so various. And in order to demonstrate this most clearly I have made no effort, throughout their masquerade, to yoke them together along the chain of their tales: for we find them linked by their similarity or dissimilarity."

and, perhaps more importantly for the purposes of this book:

"To an observer from another world, my embalming women and my pirates, my wild man and my king, would possess no variety."

Schwob goes on to say that this "observer from another world"  would have "the blinkered view of the artist and the generalization of the scientist," which would help to shape his perspective; this "superior observer" would say that "all in this world is but signs and signs of signs."   Masks, he would say, are "signs of faces."

In an interview at The Paris Review, Translator Kit Schluter says that Schwob's book is "all about the way identity is a mask over our 'true' selves,"  and in the book's "translator's afterword" section, goes on to explain that the mask functions

"both literally and figuratively by turns, to represent the impossibility of attaining truth, be it of identity or narrative, or even of belief" 

 and is presented here in different ways, both physical and

"in the way many of the stories' narrators doubt or are uncertain of, what what they see for example -- there is an ambient paranoia throughout that narrative, even the most neatly 'historical' is only a mask laid over the inaccessible truth of the event..."

Both the author's preface and the translator's afterword lend themselves quite nicely to a discussion of semiotics if anyone's interested.   In terms of this book, quoting Schluter once again, The King in the Golden Mask

"suggests time and again that one's true identity comes to light only in the crucible of a struggle so intense that it bares him of any privilege or nicety behind which he could otherwise hide."

Schwob is known to have combed through all manner of  literary, historical, and biographical works as source material.  While the author is well known for his disbelief in "originality," Mr. Schluter notes that he

"made fiction new by making it deeply diachronic, indebted to history..."

Rather than simply regurgitate though,  he uses the material to explore what it is that makes people human. In most of these stories, it seems that he uses the potential that exists in everyone to engage in some sort of violence or cruelty as a part of his definition.


There are twenty-one stories in this volume, each dedicated to a different friend, ranging from science fiction-ish to contes cruels to the out-and-out weird.  Honestly, I loved them all, and on the whole, the entire collection is just beautiful both in terms of writing and in what Schwob is able to bring out in each story.  I won't go into them but I will share a rather eye-opening experience about myself in reading "The Plague" that sort of sideways makes the point of the book.  Consider the seriousness of the spreading of the plague  in Medieval Europe for a moment, the fear that everyone had that they would become its next victim, and at the end of this particular story, I actually had to stop and reflect on my reaction at the end when I didn't know whether to laugh or to be horrified.  That's the sort of writer he is and when a story can make me go inward to try to examine myself, well, that's power.

You could read this book in one sitting, but don't. Take the time to go through it slowly and think about it.  If you're in it  looking only  for the horror/weird shockness (I know that's not a real word but it works here) you're reading it for the wrong reason. It's definitely there, but this book is a work of art between two covers, and those don't come along every day.  Highly, highly recommended for the thinking reader,  and for people who appreciate the beauty found in the written word.  You'll certainly find it here.

You really have to love this guy: The Unfortunate Fursey, and The Return of Fursey, by Mervyn Wall

Say hello to Fursey, who really is one of the most unfortunate yet lovable characters one can possibly come across in a novel, or in this case, a pair of novels written by Irish author Mervyn Wall. Set in Ireland near the end of the tenth century, it all begins here in The Unfortunate Fursey, in which the monastery at Clonmacnoise is beset by demons

9781943910908
Valancourt Books, 2017
originally published 1946
paperback, 215 pp

after its "defences had been breached" one day.  The Abbot warns the community that "the Evil One" has made his way into their midst, and indeed, as the brethren are besieged for fifteen days of terror, they are finally able to expel the forces of darkness  with exorcisms, "the smell of incense, the splashing of holy water and the sound of the Latin language."   The demons are unable to remain anywhere in the monastery with the exception of  the cell of Brother Fursey, whose speech impediment rendered him unable to say the right words to get rid of them.  His cell thus becomes their sanctuary; to save the monastery it is decided that Fursey must be expelled.  After asking the Devil for advice, Fursey sets off for the "fine big city" of Cashel, where the first of his many adventures begins.  Sadly, for our hero, he finds himself constantly caught between the world of sorcery and the Church, and truthfully, the question here is which of the two is the most evil?  

 Jacket illustration of The Unfortunate Fursey from the Swan River Press edition, by Jesse Campbell-Brown.  From Behance

This picaresque saga is continued in the second book, The Return of Fursey, 

9781943910922

Valancourt Books, 2017

originally published 1948

paperback, 204 pp

which finds Fursey in exile in England where his quiet, cozy life as a grocer has been interrupted; he is now being sought for extradition back to Ireland.  He doesn't want to be forcefully brought back, but he does have a reason for wanting to return to his native land (which I can't reveal without giving away the show) so with the help of a crazy and bloodthirsty band of Vikings, he eventually gets there.  However, it is a very different Fursey this time around, and while the humor is still very much alive and kicking, his story takes a much darker turn in this volume.   Fursey once again finds himself "ensnared" on all sides; how he deals with the several forces contending for his soul is the meat and bones of this tale.  I think it would also be safe to say that both books reveal a man trying to come to terms with discovering his true nature, which is tested often and in many different ways.  

It's so hard to try to describe these two books without taking the spoiler route, and really, to reveal anything would be to ruin the joy for anyone who may want to read these books for the first time.  Underneath all of the humor there runs a dark streak involving the Catholic Church; aside from religion Wall also has plenty to say about politics and human nature itself.   In short, there is method to the author's madness, making for a great (and often laugh-out-loud) reading experience for people who want something well beyond today's standard fantasy fare.   One more thing: I'd advise saving Michael Dirda's excellent introduction until after finishing these novels. 

I fell in love with Fursey from the outset because he's sort of a hapless kind of guy, but as Wall brings his saga to a close in The Return of Fursey, I realized I'd grown so attached to Fursey that I was sad to see it all come to an end.  Both books are awesome silliness on one level; on another they contain a very serious tale that really got underneath my skin and will stay there for some time.  I can't recommend these two books highly enough.   To say I loved them would be an understatement. 

The Horror on the Links: The Complete Tales of Jules de Grandin, Volume One by Seabury Quinn (ed.) George A Vanderburgh

9781597808934
Night Shade Books, 2017
494 pp

hardcover

I find myself in complete agreement with George A. Vanderburgh and Robert Weinberg who say that the tales in this book "might not be great literature, but they don't pretend to be." They also remark that the stories found here are "good fun" which is absolutely the case.   The Horror on the Links is the first book in a proposed five-volume set, and if the remaining four installments are even half as much fun as this one, then I'm in for a seriously good time.  Let's just say that I enjoyed this series opener so much that I already have volume two, and I've pre-ordered volume three which is supposed to be out in March.  I love good old pulp fiction, I love occult-detective stories, and I love weird tales, so I'm absolutely in my element here.  Ahhhhhhh.

Vanderburg and Weinberg refer to Jules de Grandin as "the occult Hercule Poirot," and it's really difficult not to make the comparison while reading. They also say that he shares "more than a passing resemblance" to Sherlock Holmes, with a "Dr. Watson-like sidekick, Dr. Trowbridge.  As a detective who sees himself as "a scientist; no more", Grandin is not at all quick to dismiss the possibility that there may be more going on than science can explain.  As he notes in "The Poltergeist,"

"There is nothing in the world, or out of it, which is supernatural, my friend; the wisest man today can not say where the powers and possibilities of nature begin or end. We say 'Thus and so is beyond the bounds of our experience' but does that therefore but it beyond the bounds of nature? I think not. Myself, I have seen such things as no man can hear me relate without calling me a liar..."

And indeed, in the scope of the twenty-three stories included here ranging (in order of publication in Weird Tales) from 1925 to 1928, some of the answers to these puzzling tales are definitely of this world while some are to be found in the darker realm of the occult.  The real-world solutions are actually far more frightening than the supernatural ones, for example, after "The White Lady of the Orphanage" (September 1927), I had to put the book down for a while, and I posted somewhere that this was one of the most gruesome stories I'd ever encountered.  Eek and Ick.

My personal favorite is "The Isle of Missing Ships," which is a straight-up pulp fiction story with no foot in the occult world; it is also the only one that does not follow the formula/pattern by which a solution is discovered which is found in all of the other entries in this volume; and then there's "The Chapel of Mystic Horror," because who in their right mind can pass up a story about an old abbey transported from Europe to America, former home of the Knights Templar?  

"The Tenants of Broussac" as cover art, Weird Tales December 1925. From Tellers of Weird Tales

I'll reveal the table of contents below, without annotation -- to tell is to spoil and I don't want to do that. My advice: sit back, relax, and enjoy these wonderful weird tales of yesteryear  and appreciate them for what they are -- delicious pulpy goodness.  My hat is off to the team of Vanderburgh and Weinberg for making these old stories available once again -- I had the time of my life reading this book, and I can't wait to get to Volume two!

Table of Contents

"The Horror on the Links"

"The Tenants of Broussac"

"The Isle of Missing Ships"

"The Vengeance of India"

"The Dead Hand"

"The House of Horror"

"Ancient Fires"

"The Great God Pan"

"The Grinning Mummy"

"The Man Who Cast No Shadow"

"The Blood-Flower"

"The Veiled Prophetess"

"The Curse of Everard Maundy"

"Creeping Shadows"

"The White Lady of the Orphanage"

"The Poltergeist"

"The Gods of East and West"

"Mephistopheles and Company, Ltd."

"The Jewel of Seven Stones"

"The Serpent Woman"

"Body and Soul"

"The Chapel of Mystic Horror"

The Virago Book of Ghost Stories (ed.) Richard Dalby

9781844085385
Virago Press, 2008
496 pp

paperback

"...there's awful strange things in this world."
                     --  from "The Open Door, by Margaret Oliphant.

The Virago Book of Ghost Stories combines two of my reading passions.  First, of course, there are the ghost stories themselves, and these are, as Richard Dalby states in his preface, "arranged in chronological order,"  making for a great way to watch the development of the "form of the ghost story" over the last 150 years.  Yes -- that's correct -- 150 years.  The second thing I'm impressed with is that here, each and every story is written by a woman, some familiar and some more obscure writers whose work I've just read for the first time.   It is a superb collection and a definite must-have for the serious ghost-story aficionado, complete with little bio blurbs about each woman at the end of the book.   The only downside is that I've made a list of books to hunt down based on said bio blurbs, so there goes the wallet again.

There are thirty-one stories in this book and while some are good, there are others that are downright great and for me there wasn't one bad one in the bunch.  I suppose it's all about what people enjoy in a ghost story so I get that not everyone will share my enthusiasm, but I read them all of the time and I think it's one of the better collections I've read.

--break --

From here on I list the stories with only teensy bits about what's in them, so feel free not to read from here on, although I swear there are no spoilers whatsoever.

--back to our program --

The book opens with a short tale by Charlotte Bronte, "Napoleon and the Spectre", which is a bit comical and sort of reminded me in a way of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol," but was quite different when all is said and done.  This one is followed by one of my all-time favorites, "The Old Nurses's Story," by Elizabeth Gaskell, one which is quite well known and which I've read many, many times but still manages to provide a spine chill each time.  That's greatness right there.  Amelia B. Edwards' "The Story of Salome" set in Venice also gave me a nice case of the willies as did "Reality or Delusion" by Mrs. Henry Wood of East Lynne fame.  Next up is a short story by one of my favorite ghost-story writers of yesteryear, Charlotte Riddell, "The Old House in Vauxhall Walk," which has a twisty ending I wasn't expecting, as do most of her stories.  Margaret Oliphant is next with her "The Open Door," set in Scotland, a true page-flipper from beginning to end as a man races to save his son from what's haunting him.

 "The Old Nurse's Story," from Fiction Fan's Book Reviews

New to me is the writer Ella D'Arcy, whose "The Villa Lucienne" takes on a somewhat ethereal tone as a small group takes an "expedition" to a villa on the Riviera and gets much more than they'd expected.  That one is followed by "The Vacant Lot," by Mary E. Wilkins, an American tale in which a family decides to move when they get the bargain of a lifetime on a wonderful house -- but then come to realize that maybe it wasn't such a great deal after all.  E. Nesbit's "The Violet Car" also managed to produce hackles, as a woman comes to take on a job as nurse to a mentally ill patient, but realizes she can't tell which of the two people she's living with is actually the one needing her services.  It's a sad story, but done very, very nicely.  "The Eyes" by Edith Wharton is next, another one I've read before but still worth reading since Wharton's stories go right to the heart of human nature, as do those by May Sinclair, whose "The Token" is one of my favorites of the entire collection, focusing on a sadly-neglected wife who only wants to know if her husband still loves her.  Oh my gosh -- May Sinclair is one of my favorite authors and this story is one of her best.  That one is followed by another author who is new to me, Richmal Crompton.  Her story "Rosalind" is also a favorite and, like Sinclair's work, works on different levels requiring a second read for what's really going on here. This one is not only deliciously spooky, but very telling as well.

from Exemplore

Margery Lawrence makes an appearance next with her "The Haunted Saucepan" which seemed a bit silly for a while until I realized exactly what was going on here, at which point it wasn't at all funny.  Margaret Irwin's "The Book" is a great story, one I've read before and one which has been redone a few times by modern writers.   Oh my god -- I was on pins and needles with this one even after having already read it and that speaks volumes.  Another equally good one with more than a tinge of sadness is "Miss De Mannering of Asham," by another author I've never read, F.M. Mayor.  Another page turner,  this story is one of the most haunting tales in the entire collection about a young woman whose life is lived in solitude until that one moment when ... Yikes! Great ghostly fare here, for sure, and I absolutely must find more by this author.  That sad tale is followed by a different sort of ghost story by yet another unknown writer, Ann Bridge, "The Station Road," in which a doctor's wife going to meet a family friend at the station is herself met by one of the strangest occurrences imaginable, and that's just the beginning.  Moving on, I will say that while the next story, "Roaring Tower," by Stella Gibbons isn't the best in the book, it's yet another one that is more than meets the eye at first glance.  It's set in Cornwall (perfect place for a supernatural tale!) and finds a woman looking back on her self-absorbed adolescence to a time when strange things found their way into her life.  I'm not a huge Stella Gibbons fan in the first place, but there's a definite undercurrent to be unearthed here.  Following this one we get back into the ethereal zone with Elizabeth Bowen's "The Happy Autumn Fields," about which I can say nothing except it deserves a double reading and is quite good.

from The Daily Mail

Dalby's included a story by another favorite writer here, "The Mistress in Black," by Rosemary Timperley, which takes place in a small school where a young teacher was fortunate enough to find a position last minute, then comes to learn why.  Very nicely done, but then again, Timperley is a fine, albeit sadly-neglected author.  Next up is Celia Fremin's "Don't Tell Cissie" in which two women looking at retirement plan a weekend ghost hunt but don't want their friend to find out what they're up to.  This one is somewhat humorous when all is said and done.  That one is followed by a story by Antonia Fraser, "Who's Been Sitting in My Car?" another that needs attention between the lines but is just downright creepy.  Ruth Rendell is next with her "The Haunting of Shawley Rectory," which centers on a house in a small village that is only haunted some of the time, as the two people who stay there soon discover.  And you thought she only wrote mystery novels. Oy.  This is a good one, for sure. A.S. Byatt's entry, "The July Ghost" may be the saddest story in this book, one that offers a variant meaning of "haunted."   Next up is "The Dream of Fair Women," by A.L. Barker, the ending of which brings everything back full circle to its beginning, and that's all I'll say because to tell here would definitely be to spoil.

Borley Rectory, from The Harry Price Website

Coming to the end of the book, we find Penelope Lively's "Black Dog," which is by no means an average ghostly/supernatural tale; like many of the tales in this volume, there's much more going on under the surface than on it. I will say no more.   Following that one comes Rosemary Pardoe's "The Chauffeur," in which a woman discovers that her friends' home has its very own ghost and goes out seeking answers.  This one is okay, not great but still worthy.  Next up is a story with more of a Caribbean feel, "Diamond Jim," by Lisa St. Aubin de Teran, and it is truly an old-fashioned ghost story -- you know, the kind that should be read at night during a loud thunderstorm with rain and lightning while you're safely wrapped in a blanket. "Ashputtle: Or, the Mother's Ghost" by Angela Carter follows that one, and it is one of Carter's best short stories. Again, to tell is to spoil, so ... Elizabeth Fancett's "The Ghosts of Calagou" is another old-fashioned, shuddersome tale set in the "haunted hills of Calagou," where there are legends of dead men "jealously guarding their treasure." One man is about to check it out for himself.  Joan Aiken's "The Traitor" joins the ranks of the other sad, poignant tales, related by a a middle-aged "lady librarian" turned lady's companion who finds herself back in the home of her childhood quite by circumstance.  Last, but absolutely by no means least, is "Redundant," by Dorothy K. Haynes, about a man who "had always taken jobs that nobody else wanted" and the one he has here is likely the most surprising of them all.  Great ending on this one.

So that's it -- I cannot recommend this book highly enough, and as I said, it's a definite must-have for people like me who have a passion for ghost stories over the centuries, especially those written by women.  Absolutely delightful it is indeed, and now it's time to hunt down the other Virago volumes of ghost stories.

The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories, ed. Tara Moore

9781943910571

Valancourt Books, 2016

291 pp

hardcover

" ... What is their use; what good ever comes from these departed souls' revisiting the glimpses of the moon, and by sights, signs, or sounds, holding converse with us of the visible world?" 

                                               --  W.W. Fenn, "The Haunted Rock," 200

Fenn poses a very good question here, one that is answered in different ways throughout this collection of Victorian Christmas ghost stories,  a mix of thirteen (of course!) tales. The Valancourt crew has outdone itself with this book, and editor Tara Moore should also be given major pats on the back for her outstanding work here.  Each story begins with a brief introduction to the author, along with a brief note or two as to where his or her story first appeared in print.  And for people like me who are afflicted with full-on geekiness, every now and then there's the added bonus of footnotes providing references for further study. 

According to Tara Moore, author of Victorian Christmas in Print [which you can read about here and which I would seriously kill to own but (and with sincere apologies)  at its current price that just won't be happening] writes in her introduction that 

"The season of Christmas coincides with the shortest days of the year, and for middle-class Victorians, a chance for families to reconnect in story-telling circles. Urban dwellers, disconnected from village legends, simply picked up a magazine specially made to lace children's dreams with terror. The bleak, shadow-filled walk from the story circle to one's dark bedroom presented an uncomfortably eerie space to reflect on the mental images conveyed by those grisly tales."

She also reveals that ghosts were not a product of the Victorian era  -- they had been "a staple of both periodicals and Christmas for a century before the Victorian Christmas publishing boom."  When taxes raised the price of periodicals, "ghosts resorted to starring in oral accounts." It was a tradition shared and enjoyed by the poor as well as the rich.   The 1820s and the 1830s saw the rise in popularity of the Christmas literary annual, and special periodicals began to appear, their publishers either printing "special Christmas numbers or simply tailoring their December and January numbers for Christmas reading, and that meant ghosts."    One more interesting factoid and I'll move along:  women were huge contributors to ghost-story literature, producing "between fifty and seventy percent of all ghost fiction from the nineteenth century."

On with the stories now.  True-blue fans of the Victorian ghost story will recognize the names of most of the authors whose work has found their way into this collection, and there are also four "anonymous" contributions.   While I won't go into any sort of description for any of these tales, the table of contents reads as follows:

1. "The Tapestried Chamber," by Sir Walter Scott

2. "The Old Nurse's Story," by Elizabeth Gaskell 

3. "Horror: A True Tale," by John Berwood Harwick

4. "Bring Me a Light!" by Anonymous

5. "Old Hooker's Ghost," by Anonymous

6. "The Ghost's Summons," by Ada Buisson

7. "Jack Layford's Friend," by Anonymous

8. "How Peter Parley Laid a Ghost," by Anyonymous

9. "A Mysterious Visitor," by Ellen Wood

10. "The Haunted Rock," by W.W. Fenn

11. "The Lady's Walk," by Margaret Oliphant

12. "The Captain of the Pole-Star," by Arthur Conan Doyle

and last, but certainly by no means least,

13. "The Doll's Ghost," by F. Marion Crawford

For avid readers and aficionados of eerie classic tales, this collection is manna from Victorian ghost-story heaven. 

Snuggle up with a cup of your favorite hot brew, wrap up in a cozy blanket, light a fire in the fireplace, and prepare to be transported out of this world and back through time.  This is the ultimate perfect book for Christmas reading, but it's also ideal for any other time of the year. I have the hardcover edition, but it's also available in paperback and there's a Kindle version as well.  It is a lovely book, and most definitely now a treasured part of my own personal collection.  

Shadows Gothic and Grotesque: Black Spirits and White, by Ralph Adams Cram; Tales of the Supernatural by James Platt

9781616460594
Coachwhip Publications, 2010
206 pp

paperback

I don't know how I keep finding these old books, but find them I do, and I haven't stumbled onto a bad one yet. I'm sure that day will come, but for now, I've been absolutely delighting in this collection of a dozen supernatural tales, first Black Spirits and White, by Ralph Adams Cram, followed by James Platt's Tales of the Supernatural.

Staring with Black Spirits and White, I'll digress from the book itself for a moment to offer up a very brief bio of the author, since I feel it's important to try to have at least some measure of familiarity of all the writers whose work I read.  Ralph Adams Cram (1863-1942) was a renowned architect, who in December of 1926 even made it onto the cover of Time magazine.

from Time website

While there is a ton of information about Cram all over the internet -- all you have to do is google him, Douglas Shand-Tucci has written two biographies of him:  Boston Bohemia 1881-1900 (1996) and then a study of his later years in Ralph Adams Cram: An Architect's Four Quests (2005). [Admittedly, I haven't read either, but I do think I'll try to lay hands on Boston Bohemia after the Christmas holidays.] At LambdaLiterary, writer Jameson Currier notes that in Boston Bohemia Shand-Tucci

"alleged that the architect and his circle were closeted homosexual men who demonstrated their sexuality through their designs. Cram was a well-traveled man fascinated by the supernatural, and it is possible, with many of these stories constructed of 'tales of two men agoing ghost-hunting,' to imbue a hidden sexuality to these tales in the same manner as Cram's architecture is now regarded," 

and I will say that I marked quite a number of places in Cram's book where I'm thinking the same.

Daniel McCarthy in his review of Shand-Tucci's later book at The University Bookman states that the author is on the money when he places

 "Cram's sexual, aesthetic, and religious sensibilities on the same map as those of Oscar Wilde, J-K Huysmans, and Frederick Rolfe ('Baron Corvo') ..."

Anyway, now to the book, which is a collection of six short ghostly tales, and I loved every damn one of them. Published in 1895, the original text has a postscript that reads (in part)

"There seem to be certain well-defined roots existing in all countries, from which spring the current legends of the supernatural; and therefore for the germs of the stories in this book the Author claims no originality."

The "germs" may not be original, but Cram's own take on them is very well done.  While  researching Cram after having finished this collection, I came across someone's little blurb about this book which said that setting aside "The Dead Valley," the remainder of the book consists of (and I quote) the "some-guys-stay-overnight-in-a-haunted-mansion-sing-tally-ho kind of stories," and I can tell you here and now it's much, much, much more than that. Reading carefully, one discovers that setting, landscape, and history are all very important in many of these tales, as is architecture,  which is carefully and artfully described in pretty much every single story except for "The Dead Valley," reflecting Cram's life work.

Flipflopping, I'll start with the last story, "The Dead Valley," since is likely Cram's most famous, since it's appeared in several horror/weird fiction anthologies.  It is a stand-out story in this book, noticeably different from its predecessors, and follows the "tale-within-a-tale" format, related by a man whose friend, a Swedish immigrant, underwent a horror he will never forget as long as he lives, and who came to the US in order to escape the horrific things he'd experienced. I am not going to go any further than that as far as any sort of plot description, but it is certainly an uncomfortable, squirmworthy, and haunting tale.  The rest of the stories (in order, and going undescribed here in this post)  in this volume are "No. 252 Rue M. Le Prince," where I discovered the ultimate perfect name for a reputedly-haunted house, "La Bouche d'Enfer; "In Kropfsberg Keep," which is one of the creepiest tales in this book; "The White Villa," which I also enjoyed but not nearly as much as "Sister Maddelena," which appealed due to its old, secluded convent setting and a couple of pretty evil nuns and because it turns out to be a sort of detective story; and then there is "Notre Dame des Eaux," set in Breton, another one I absolutely loved.

 And now we come to the second group of stories, Tales of the Supernatural (1894) written by James Platt (1861-1910).  The full title of this book is actually Tales of the Supernatural: Six Romantic Stories, and sadly, I am just not able to find much about the author, except that he was a contributor to the OED in the area of word etymologies, specializing in obscure words.

This book has a very old-world feel about it that resonates with some other books I've read, like Cazotte's The Devil in Love or even works by Meyrink that bring to the fore the hidden, occult underbelly of Europe, and I don't know about anyone else, but that kind of stuff just grabs me and doesn't let go.   Once again, I won't be describing the contents in any sort of detail, but in the first two stories alone, "The Seven Sigils" and "The Hand of Glory" I discovered he'd included sorcery, an alraune made from a mandrake, a golem, and a werewolf among other things, before moving onto "The Rabbi Lion," "The Evil Eye," "The Witches Sabbath", which isn't what one might think but  way better, and finally, "The Devil's Debt." There are several common threads connecting each story in this book, one very huge one being rivalries between men in love with the same woman.  Where he takes that basic idea is different in each case; suffice it to say that sometimes deals might just be needed to be made with the "fallen angel" in Hell once in a while. If I was a kid back in the 1890s reading this stuff, I'd probably have had the wits scared out of me --  Platt doesn't hold back in horror/creep factor at any point.

Potential readers should be aware that his writing style is definitely not for the faint of heart, but once into the groove, it's easy to pick up the rhythms of the writing.  The language can be downright archaic, but anyone who is truly an aficionado of older Victorian works won't have any issues.  However, it is so worth the time and energy because these are absolutely great stories.

Overall, Shadows Gothic and Grotesque is a no-miss book for people like myself who are constantly on the lookout for new-to-me obscure writers of what I'd consider quality supernatural/horror/ghostly fiction from the past. Reading happiness is right here folks, and once again it's from Coachwhip.  For me it's yet another ahhhh read where I just let myself get sucked right in and never wanted to leave.