"'And He Shall Sing...'"

"'And He Shall Sing...'"
from They Return at Evening
by H.R. Wakefield


They Return at Evening is a collection of ghost stories by H.R. Wakefield.  It's his first such collection, published in 1928.  I'll be posting reactions to stories individually.

SPOILERS FOLLOW.


Synopsis:
A publisher decides to publish a collection of poetry presented to him by a Japanese man.  Immediately, strange things begin to happen, and he finally (finally) has to admit to himself that Something is Wrong Here.


My Reaction:
I read the last three or four stories in the collection without pausing to write reviews, so my memory may be a bit fuzzy-- but I think this was one of the ones I liked best in the bunch.


Tidbits:
--  It seems that the publisher was being either very thick-headed or willfully blind, because it was obvious early on that the man who presented the poems had not written them himself.  Of course, the publisher had a lot to gain through real or pretended ignorance, so it's not surprising that he might take a while to admit it to himself.

--  "'If poets are determined to inflict on a patient public the dreams they dream and visions they see, it is only fair that they should foot the bill...'" Poetry inflicted on a patient public... Yes, that's about right. ;o)

--  "Indignation brushed the poppies from his eyes..."  Never heard that expression before...

--  Don't be surprised if you come across a few things that would be deemed "offensive"-- if not outright racist-- by modern readers.

--  "'...I have always understood that even the shortest experience of publishers sharply stimulates a suicidal neurosis.'"  I'm sure the author had fun getting that little jab in.

--  The body hidden under the floorboards reminded me of "The Tell-Tale Heart".

--  The decomposing body creeping up out of the floor and taking its revenge on the murderer and plagiarist, on the other hand, reminded me of something you'd see in a modern horror movie.

--  "Distressed and nauseated, he made no attempt to go to sleep again, but read Pickwick for the rest of the night."  It wouldn't be my first choice, but I understand the impulse!

--  The ending was very tidy.  Possibly too tidy for some, but I approve.

--  I wonder what finally made up the publisher's mind to stop the publication of the book of poetry.  I can see how he might be afraid of retribution if he published it under the wrong name-- not to mention that it would be morally wrong... But why not publish it under the name supplied in the ghostly revisions?  Because he didn't know to whom to send the profits?  Or because of the violence surrounding the manuscript?  It seems a shame to keep a real work of genius in the shadows. I'd probably be too scared and superstitious to publish it, myself, if I were in his place-- but if you attributed it to the right person and donated the proceeds to a charity of some sort, it seems likely you'd be "safe".  ...Well, enough of that...

"The Red Lodge"

"The Red Lodge"
from They Return at Evening
by H.R. Wakefield


They Return at Evening is a collection of ghost stories by H.R. Wakefield.  It's his first such collection, published in 1928.  I'll be posting reactions to stories individually.

SPOILERS FOLLOW.


Synopsis:
A painter and his wife and young son take a house in the country for a few months, hoping to enjoy a riverside holiday in pleasant surroundings.  Little do they know that the Red Lodge is not the pleasant vacation spot they're expecting... (Dun dun DUN!)




My Reaction:
It has its moments.  This is one of the creepier of the stories, so far.  However, I think it's somewhat weakened by the hodge-podge of "haunting elements".  There's the mysterious green slime and the "green monkey" that apparently goes after children... Then there are the ghostly human figures people keep seeing entering and exiting rooms... Then there's the story (and apparition) of the people being driven to jump to their deaths in the river.  The "green monkey" in particular doesn't seem to have much relation to the "origin story" (of the man who arranged for his wife's death in the river-- so that he could replace her with a harem, of course.).  I guess you could draw the conclusion that the green monkey-monster-man is one of the victims of the haunting--  perhaps even the original evil husband, himself-- but why is he especially interested in children?  It lacks a certain cohesion.  That doesn't make it a bad ghost story, but it diminishes its effectiveness, in my humble opinion.

I've repeatedly seen this lauded as one of Wakefield's best works.  Maybe I'm missing something, but if this is the best, I don't know if I see what all the fuss is about...  It had a few really good moments, but as a whole was lacking that ineffable something that would have pulled it all together into a crescendo.  (The kid being terrified by the green monkey-monster-man into jumping into the river-- not enough, evidently.)  Possibly this just isn't "my" genre-- or I'm too prone to nit-picking... (Though I will insist that just because I may seem to tear a book to shreds afterwards, it doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the reading!)


Side Notes:
--  This habit of renting out other people's homes and living in them for months at a time seems to be fairly common in British literature (at least, of a certain period).  It feels strange to me.  Renting a cabin for a week or so seems more normal.  I just can't imagine staying in someone else's home for three months!  I wouldn't feel comfortable-- and I'd miss my own things at home-- and it would be far too much trouble to bring them all with you-- and I certainly couldn't bear the thought of renting out my own home!  Of course, in this instance, I guess the lodge's owner wasn't living there, so it was more like renting a (very nice) cabin than living in someone else's home...

--  The narrator decides not to talk to his wife about the creepy experiences, yet, because "it was conceivable that these phenomena were perceptible only to [himself], being half a Highlander".   Highlanders are/were susceptible to paranormal activity, I guess?  (g)

-- "'The green monkey won't get me, will it, Mummy?'"  Ha ha ha.  Sorry, but that just makes me laugh.  "Well, now, sonny, that depends on how you behave...  I wish I could tell you that the green monkey wouldn't get you, but if you're a bad little boy, there may not be anything I can do about it."

--  The neighbor's dream was shuddery.  "'...a certain dream which recurs with curious regularity.  I find myself standing at the end of the lane and watching the river-- always in a sort of brassy half-light.  And presently something comes floating down the stream.  I can see it jerking up and down, and I always feel passionately anxious to see what it may be.  At first I think that it is a log, but when it gets exactly opposite me it changes its course and comes towards me, and then I see that it is a dead body, very decomposed.  And when it reaches the bank it begins to climb up towards me, and then I am thankful to say I always awake.  Sometimes I have thought that one day I shall not wake just then, and that on this occasion something will happen to me, but that is probably merely a silly fancy of an old gentleman who has concerned himself with these singular events rather more than is good for his nerves.'"  --The "brassy half-light". I wonder if that's the same beautiful pinkish light that we sometimes get at twilight... --The log-turned-body reminds me of a similar instance in The Willows.  --I think I would suffer from serious insomnia if I had a recurring dream like that and seriously suspected that one day I wouldn't wake up...

--  There were a few odd mentions during the course of the story: 

--  First, Sedgewick's The Use of Words in Reasoning.  (He even quotes from it...)

--  Second, "an article... on a glorious word 'Jugendbewegung', the 'Youth Movement', that pregnant or merely wind-swollen Teutonism!  How ponderously it attempted to canonise with its polysyllabic sonority that inverted Boy-Scoutishness of the said youths and maidens.  'One bad, mad deed-- sonnet-- scribble of some kind-- lousy daub-a-day.'  Bunk without spunk, sauce without force, Futurism without a past, merely a Transition from one yelping pose to another."

--  After indicating that he wouldn't abandon his family, however terrified he was:  "Such things aren't done by respectable inhabitants of Great Britain-- a people despised and respected by all other tribes.  Despised as Philistines, but it took the jaw-bone of an ass to subdue that hardy race! Respected for what?  Birkenhead stuff.  No, not the noble Lord, for there were no glittering prizes for those who went down to the bottom of the sea in ships.  My mind deliberately restricting itself to such highly debatable jingoism... [blah blah blah scary stuff monsters&ghosts]."  ...What?  This was written in the 1920s, I think.  What does he mean about the British being "despised" at that point in history?  Later-- It just occurred to me... Maybe he was referring to colonialism/imperialism?  Clearly this is not one of my (many, many) areas of expertise... ;o)

"The Third Coach"

"The Third Coach"
from They Return at Evening
by H.R. Wakefield


They Return at Evening is a collection of ghost stories by H.R. Wakefield.  It's his first such collection, published in 1928.  I'll be posting reactions to stories individually.

SPOILERS FOLLOW.


Synopsis:
[in the flattest deadpan voice] Oh boy.  Yet another frame story. [end deadpan]
A golfer who routinely plays on a green neighboring a lunatic asylum befriends one of the doctors.  Because apparently there is no such thing as doctor-patient confidentially, ethics, etc., the doctor treats his golfing buddy to a little light reading-- the strange and very slightly supernatural tale of one inmate's prior life, which he feels compelled to write and rewrite.  


My Reaction:
Well, it was weird.  It felt like a long way to go for not much of a wow.  Of course, my view of this story is undoubtedly influenced by the fact that I'm getting a little tired of this author's particular hangups-- to the point that I barely bothered to take any notes at all, on this one.  There was the same misogyny... ("My mother was a good-tempered slut... Apart from her good temper and her thirst [for alcohol], there is nothing to record concerning her.") ...Also the same grimy layer of crime, hatred, violence, filth, and general crud that seems to encrust the world in most, if not all, of these stories. 


Random Tidbits:
-- Alienist.  It's an old-fashioned word for psychiatrist or psychologist.

--  "He surveys me quizzingly yet wearily through a pair of rainbow eyes."  What are "rainbow eyes"?

--  "'There are drinks and Gold-flakes.'"  Are those anything like potato chips, do you think?

-- So.  If we are to believe the doctor and accept that the clergyman really was just a normal, kindly clergyman before his accident... That means that everything we read in his "memoir" was just "made up"?  Fabricated out of thin air?  And so nothing remotely supernatural even happened at all?  ...Or what?  What's the alternative?  That he... wasn't just a clergyman, even though evidently someone must've recognized/identified him... And how would you explain his head injury, if his version of the story were the right one?  It doesn't make sense.   Not even ghost-story sense!  Meh, not impressed.

"Professor Pownall's Oversight"

"Professor Pownall's Oversight"
from They Return at Evening
by H.R. Wakefield


They Return at Evening is a collection of ghost stories by H.R. Wakefield.  It's his first such collection, published in 1928.  I'll be posting reactions to stories individually.

SPOILERS FOLLOW.


Synopsis:
A man who has long suffered under the conviction that his old school rival has and will always best him, despite the rival's comparative mental inferiority, arranges to humiliate him in a chess tournament.  It doesn't go according to plan.  Instead of proving his superior chess skillz, he makes a mistake and realizes he's going to lose to his opponent when the game is continued the next day-- so naturally, to avoid the inevitable, ignominious defeat, he murders his rival that night, wins the tournament by default, and is sent on to an international competition.  Every game of the new tournament is spoiled, though, when the ghost of his old "friend" stands behind his flesh-and-blood opponent and guides his hand to the one perfect move.  Oh well!  C'est la vie!  What's a fellow to do?   He writes extensively on the matches and his brilliant strategies, arranges to have it all published several years into the future, and "disappears" himself.  The End-- or is it?


My Reaction:
Nothing strikes greater fear into the heart of man than... chess.  Or not?  It's an interesting idea-- an epic battle of wills/minds playing itself out repeatedly through time and space--  but as someone who never learned to play chess (and has absolutely zero interest in it), I found the concept of a ghostly chess opponent somewhat dull-- and maybe more amusing than horrific.  Also, the protagonist was so abhorrent that he made the whole story feel unappealing. 


Specifics:
--  "Chess has been the one great love of my life.  Mankind I detest and despise. ... Women do not exist for me-- they are merely variants from a bad model: but for chess, that superb, cold, infinitely satisfying anodyne to life, I feel the ardour of a lover, the humility of a disciple.  Chess, that greatest of all games, greater than any game!  It is, in my opinion, one of the few supreme products of the human intellect, if, as I often doubt, it is of human origin."

...Chess?  Eh... Well, ok, if you say so.  It seems kind of boring to me-- but then again, I am merely a woman, so I hardly even exist.   (Yeah, yeah, I know some people-- women included-- love chess and that I shouldn't really pass judgement until I've at least learned to play... and I enjoy some games... but... I'm sorry, I think I could-- and likely will-- pass through my entire life without feeling the slightest inclination to learn chess.)

--  "If one avoids all contact with women one can live marvelously cheaply:  I am continuously astounded at men's inability to grasp this great and simple truth."

Hm.  That actually reminds me of a specific person... and he seems like the type who might obsess over things like chess... Mr. Chess-Genius, I suspect most men find that the company of a woman is worth more to them than the possibility of living "marvelously cheaply".  Also, not all women are bottomless pits into which bundles of cash need to be endlessly thrown.  (You disgusting pig.)

--  "I feel no remorse.  My destruction of Morisson was an act of common sense and justice.  All his life he had had the rewards which were rightfully mine... If I had known him to be my intellectual superior I would have accepted him as such, and become reconciled, but to be the greater and always to be branded as the inferior eventually becomes intolerable, and justice demands retribution."

--  "I have just destroyed my chessmen and my board, for no one else shall ever touch them.  Tears came into my eyes as I did so.  I never remember this happening before."

--  Clearly, the protagonist suffers/ed from a variety of delightful psychological maladies-- but I can't bring myself to pity him.  Possibly if he felt like a real person-- a human being-- it would be easier to put yourself in his shoes... But it's only a short story, so why bother?  (I'm feeling lazy.)

"He Cometh and He Passeth By!"

"He Cometh and He Passeth By!"
from They Return at Evening
by H.R. Wakefield


They Return at Evening is a collection of ghost stories by H.R. Wakefield.  It's his first such collection, published in 1928.  I'll be posting reactions to stories individually.

SPOILERS FOLLOW.


Synopsis:
A canny, clever lawyer (or something of the sort) seeks vengeance for the supernatural murder of a friend.


My Reaction:
Interesting, though not really a ghost story.  It was very clearly inspired by M.R. James' "Casting the Runes".  Clinton is certainly a horrifying character.  I'm not really finding these very scary, though...  No doubt they'd be more effective at night, in a quiet, empty house. 

Specifics:
-- Describing the main character's face:  "No woman had etched lines upon it..."  Gee, how nice.  Tell me, do men etch lines upon women's faces, too?  Or is that just a one-way street?

--  As suggested above, the antagonist in this story is a 60-something (?) man named Oscar Clinton.  He is usually referred to by last name alone.  I don't know about you, but when I see "Clinton", there is only one man who comes immediately to mind, which makes for some rather funny reading, considering that Clinton is a womanizing, completely scummy "dirty old man" who dabbles in the dark arts:

--  "...Clinton was in a class by himself.  He was-- and no doubt still is-- an accomplished corrupter, and he took, and no doubt still takes, a jocund delight in his hobby."  (...Yep, sounds about right.)

--  "Clinton is highly psychic, with great natural hypnotic power."  (Explains soooo much!)

--  "[Clinton] then joined an esoteric and little-known sect-- Satanists-- of which he eventually became high priest.  And then he returned to what we call civilisation, and has since been 'moved on' by the Civil Powers of many countries, for his forte is the extraction of money from credulous and timid individuals-- usually female-- by methods highly ingenious and peculiarly his own."  (No comment.)

--  After Clinton impregnated two maids in his "friend's" home, the scandalized "friend" discovered that "he considered it was his duty to disseminate his unique genius as widely as possible, and that it should be considered the highest privilege for anyone to bear his child.  He had to his knowledge seventy-four offspring alive, and probably many more-- the more the better for the future of humanity."  *gag*

--  Of course, as usual, Wakefield's treatment of the women in the story is disgusting.  The owner of the home (Clinton's "friend") makes it clear to the pregnant maids that they will not lose their jobs and that he will even provide for the illegitimate children (since he takes responsibility for the whole mess).  The two pregnant maids are very satisfied with this arrangement-- happy, even-- and the maid who reported the incident after Clinton repeatedly-- but unsuccessfully-- tried her door, also?  "...I had the discreditable impression that the Immaculate Third would have shown less lachrymose integrity had the consequences of surrender been revealed ante factum."  ...Yeah, I'm sure that's likely.  Because most young women would jump at the chance of sleeping with some random, creepy old man.  Their chances of marriage are so much better after they've had a child out of wedlock-- and women of their time and station had so many other options open to them.  Ugh.

--  As you may have surmised from these tidbits, this story is much seamier than "Casting the Runes".  It seems to be a trend in Wakefield's tales. 

--  The bit about the pupils of the victim having drawn up into catlike half-moons?  Yes, that is creepy...

-- I had to laugh that one of Solan's areas of expertise was the short stories of P.G. Wodehouse-- and Austin Freeman, who was evidently an American basketball player. 

--  Of the lawyer's clerk:  "Not one of the devious and manifold tricks of his trade was unpracticed by him, and his income was £1,250 per annum, a fact which the Inland Revenue Authorities strongly suspected but were quite unable to establish."  Ha!

--  "...an ornate and gaudy cellar decorated with violence and indiscretion-- the work, he discovered later, of a neglected genius who had died of neglected cirrhosis of the liver."  

-- Casual mention of The Wallet of Kai-Lung.   Also W.W. Jacobs and "Night-Watchman". 

--  Clinton's speeches remind me rather forcefully of Dorian Grey and his mentor, whatever his name was.  Things like this:  "All my life I have been a law unto myself, and that is probably why the Law has always shown so much interest in me."

-- "The man of superior power-- there are no such women..."  How sweet.

-- The snuffbox-- "an exquisite little masterpiece with an inexpressibly vile design enamelled on the lid" (and filled with "white powder") also takes me back to The Picture of Dorian Grey.  And makes me happy I'm no longer reading that rubbishy novel.  Not to my tastes.