THE SUPERNATURAL OMNIBUS (5 page)

William Harrison Ainsworth proudly confessed in his earliest, and by no means his least successful romance,
Rookwood
(1834), that he was bold to tread in the footsteps of Ann Radcliffe — she had died but eleven years before, and actually her posthumous romance,
Gaston de Blondeville
, had only preceded
Rookwood
a twelvemonth in publication. I have not the opportunity here to appraise Ainsworth as he deserves; that has been excellently done by Mr. S.M. Ellis, who well writes that in
The Lancashire Witches
, for example, Ainsworth "achieved a masterpiece . . . for this . . . is the greatest of all romances dealing with the occult and the combined influences and 'atmosphere' of wild and suggestive scenery." I had wished to include some example of Ainsworth's work in this collection, and I had intended to give
The Legend of Owlarton Grange
, told by old Hazelrigge in
Mervyn Clitheroe
and
The Haunted Room
from
Chetwynd Calverley
, one of the later (1876) and lesser known novels. Both stories are related with singular power and effect, but upon consideration it was plain that in both cases the incidents were so bound up with the thread of the whole romance that they would essentially lose by being read in the form of separate chapters, and any such excerpts would be unfair to the merits of Ainsworth as a writer.

Neither has it been possible to represent Mrs. Shelley, whom I omit with reluctance.
Frankenstein
is a classic of the occult, but it must be read entire. It seemed equally difficult to make any extract, which by itself would not appear inadequate, from her other work; although she was deeply versed in the art of shudders and fear.

Fortunately Sir Walter Scott has left us stories which may stand apart from their setting.
Wandering Willie's Tale
in
Red Gauntlet
(1824) is of consummate artistry; as also is
The Tapestried Chamber
(1829), but both are too easily accessible to be given here. I have no defence save human limitations of space if I am told that both should be included.

Few books have a greater reputation than the
Ingoldsby Legends
. There are — all power to them — Ingoldsby enthusiasts; but I question (I hope, sincerely hope, I may be wrong) whether outside this devoted band the Ingoldsby poems are appreciated and loved as they deserve. To the
Ingoldsby Legends
we may safely and literally apply the word "unique." There is nothing like them, not merely in degree but also in kind, in any literature I know. Perhaps the nearest rhymes are the maccaronics of Folengo, which again sui generis have never been excelled and hardly approached. Yet Ingoldsby is altogether different, and, when one seeks to compare any juxtaposition eludes and escapes. The witches of the
Maccaronea
are grotesque, evil, ridiculous, just as are old Goody Price and old Goody Jones; whilst Father Francis, Father Fothergill, Mess Michael, Roger the Monk, can be amply paralleled by Fra Jacopino, the village priest, "Master Adrianus, Constantius atque Jachettus."

Curiously enough, even those who know the poems of the
Ingoldsby Legends
well are often somewhat indifferent to Barham's prose, which is, in my opinion at any rate, of a very high quality. Accordingly I have included two of his stories in this collection. I hesitated whether
The Spectre of Tappington
should not make a third, but it belongs to a species of ghost story of which I disapprove: the humorous; nor is it, indeed, strictly a ghost story; that is to say, it does not introduce the supernatural, and there are Radcliffian explanations to boot. However,
The Spectre of Tappington
is the exception that proves the rule. The genius of Barham has triumphed and given us a tale of the first order, although it belongs to an illegitimate genre. There is only one other humorous ghost story which justifies itself — Oscar Wilde's fantasy
The Canterville Ghost.
This ranks with
The Spectre of Tappington
among the foremost. Yet it will not escape attention that Wilde has mingled with his brilliant wit a touch of pathos, and more than a touch of beauty, that even in his liveliest passages he gives an undercurrent of something running much deeper and touching us more nearly than mere persiflage, however exquisitely wrought and pointed.

"Death must be so beautiful. To lie in the soft brown earth, with the grasses waving above one's head, and listen to silence. To have no yesterday, and no to-morrow. To forget time, to forgive life, to be at peace." 

Hardly a disciple, but in his day certainly a rival, and a very formidable rival of Ainsworth, was G.W.M. Reynolds, whose output is equal to, even if it does not o'ertop, those of Defoe or the prolific water-poet himself. The lengthy novels of Reynolds teem with mystery and the supernatural. To name but a few of many,
Faust
, based upon the old legend but almost infinitely varied;
Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf; The Necromancer;
all have as their theme diabolic contracts and the fearful retribution that results therefrom.

A contemporary of Reynolds, who was as prolific indeed as he, but who has been almost entirely forgotten, was Thomas Preskett Prest, the author of
The Skeleton Clutch; or, The Goblet of Gore; The Black Monk, or, The Secret of the Grey Turret; The Rivals, or, The Spectre of the Hall; Varney the Vampire, or, The Feast of Blood
, and many more. This latter, although of inordinate length, is powerfully told, and has hardly, I think, been excelled even by the famous
Dracula.

It is impossible to name a tithe of these writers who dealt with the supernatural in its most terrible manifestations. Lengthy bibliographies might be compiled of fiction alone which had the vampire and the werewolf as its themes. Of vampire tales we might instance Le Fanu's
Carmilla
; Bram Stoker's
Dracula
, mentioned above; E.F. Benson's
The Room in the Tower; Mrs. Ammorth
in
Visible and Invisible
; F.G. Loring's
The Tomb of Sarah
; F. Marion Crawford's
For the Blood is the Life
(Uncanny Tales); Conan Doyle's
The Parasite
; E. and H. Heron's
The Story of Baelbrow
; Victor Roman's
Four Wooden Stakes
; X.L.'s
The Kiss of Judas
; Eric Count Stenbock's
The True Story of a Vampire
; and a score beside.

The werewolf boasts an almost richer library. There is Captain Marryat's fine tale from
The Phantom Ship
; Mrs. Crowe's
A Story of a Weir-Wolf
; H. Beaugrand's
The Werwolves
; Saki's
Gabriel
; Ainskallas'
The Wolf's Bride
; Fred Whishaw's T
he Were-wolf
, Eric Count Stenbock's
The Other Side;
Charles Severn's
Were Wolf
; Ambrose Bierce's
The Eyes of the Panther
; "cum multis aliis quos nunc perscribere longum est," as the old Latin Grammar has it.

Reynold's
Miscellany
contained not a few well-told tales of the supernatural, and this magazine gave rise to many more which flourished exceedingly for the last half of the nineteenth century. Edwin J. Brett was a wholesale purveyor of these ephemera, and one may remark that latterly he concentrated almost entirely upon boys' books. The history of boys' books, which is of extraordinary interest, has yet to be written. Thus running through
Boys of the Empire
, vol. ix., 1892, I find a really thrilling serial,
Doctor or Demon?
, a romance of the
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
type.

At the same time as Reynolds, Prest and others were writing, one of the supreme masters of English fiction, Charles Dickens, was showing his keen interest in the supernatural, which lurks in the background of, and sensibly informs, some among his finest works. Moreover, as Mr. S.M. Ellis has well said in his essay,
The Ghost Story and its Exponents (Mainly Victorian)
:

"In
Household Words
and
All the Year Round
, both under Dickens's editorship, are to be found some of the best ghost stories ever written." 

I have not, of course, failed to include in this collection of tales by Amelia B. Edwards, Rosa Mulholland and Charles Collins, who were all contrihutors to these periodicals.

It was for
All the Year Round
that Dickens asked Bulwer-Lytton to furnish a serial, and this resulted in
A Strange Story
(1861). Andrew Lang was of opinion that "There is no better romance of the supernatural than
A Strange Story
; and perhaps a kind of sketch for it,
The Haunted and the Haunters
, is at least as good." The only reason I have omitted to give this latter tale, which I immensely admire, is that it has been very frequently reprinted. It is said to be founded upon the succession of noises and apparitions that so disturbed the haunted mill at Willington when the Procter family, serious and devout members of the Society of Friends, resided there. This is one of the best known veridical histories in all psychic lore. There were legends of earlier troubles at Willington in 1806, and there were poltergeist vexations in 1823, but it was not until January, 1835, that the actual hauntings at the mill itself assumed serious proportions. In 1847 the Procters moved to Newcastle, but as late as 1867 and 1870 tenants who wished to reside at the mill were driven out by supernatural alarms.

Bulwer-Lytton was a serious and discriminating student of the occult, and that is why he was able to write so well and so convincingly of the supernatural.
Glenallan,
an early work, gives evidence of this; and it is made even more clear by
Zanoni
, which he enlarged and completed from his
Zicci
, published in the
Monthly Chronicle
for 1838. When
A Strange Story
appeared, "He beats one on one's own ground!" cried Wilkie Collins, a generous apprisal, which perhaps must not be pressed to the letter, for there have been few, if any, writers to excel Collins at his best. A master of detective and "mystery" fiction — and one may draw attention to the close connexion between "mystery" fiction and the ghost story — Collins has also left some fine tales of the eerie and the weird. He was a past master of the art of creating an atmosphere of Suspense and loneliness, of awe and trembling fear. He even achieved that most difficult of feats, a full-length ghost story. It is, I think, well-nigh essential for success that the ghost story should be short. Only the adroitest skill and talent of no ordinary kind can avail to keep the reader in that state of expectancy bordering on the unpleasant yet never quite overstepping the line which is the true triumph of this genre. All too frequently a tale spun in many chapters is apt either, on the one hand, to fall slovenly flat, to become banal and to bore; or else on the other to swear into crude physical disgust and end as a mere mixen of horror.
The Haunted Hotel
, however, is wrought with consummate ability.

In 1847 the famous military novelist James Grant published
The Phantom Regiment
, in which, although it be confessed that the main narrative runs rather thin, the episodes — from one of which the book takes its name — are splendidly done. The story tells of a phantom regiment, accursed and banned, doomed on each anniversary of that foul butchery to march from "hell to Culloden." Grant also has two short stories of the macabre,
The Dead Tryst
and
A Haunted Life
, which appeared in 1866.

Other full-length ghost stories to be placed in the first class are Mrs. Riddell's
The Haunted River
, whose pages are dank with a mist that is not wholly material, with shadows and doom; Lanoe Falconer's
Cecilia de Noel
, a book of real genius, in which the effect of an apparition on varying individuals is shown; Lucas Malet's
The Gateless Barrier
and
The Tall Villa
; Mrs. Oliphant's
The Beleaguered City; The White People
by Francis Hodgson Burnett.

All these are works of great beauty, and this they owe to their apprehension of the spiritual. In other phrase, to produce a flawless piece of work the writer must believe in the motive of the tale. This indeed I have emphasised before, and I will not enlarge upon the point now. I would merely add that if a ghost story has not the note of spirituality which may be beauty — a beauty not without awe — or may be horror, it will fail because of its insincerity and untruth. I do not know, and I do not care to know, how far Henry James believed in the possibility of
The Turn of the Screw
, but his genius succeeded in creating an atmosphere of spiritual dread because he realised that this was necessary to his art. I understand that actually
The Turn of the Screw
is a brilliant tour de force, but I am convinced that Henry James was less sceptic than appears.

It seems to me that it is exactly this lack of spirituality which so fatally flaws the vast majority of the tales in a series generally known as
"Not at Night,"
which has now attained six volumes of similar if slightly varying titles. If there is a note of spiritual horror, whether it be vampire horror, as in
Four Wooden Stakes
, or Satanism, as in
The Devil's Martyr
and
The Witch-Baiter
, the story is raised to another plane far higher than the rather nauseous sensationalism of fiendish serums, foul experiments of lunatic surgeons, half-human plants, monstrous insects and the like.

Not forgetting the admirable work that has been done in the last thirty years, the nineteenth century may be acclaimed as the hey-day of the good old-fashioned ghost story, even if only in view of the fact that from 1838 to 1873 was writing one who has been justly termed "the Master of Horror and the Mysterious," Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, whose place in literature has been so precisely estimated by Mr. S.M. Ellis in a fine essay in
Mainly Victorian
. Dr. M.R. James, who is, with the exception of Vernon Lee, of all writers of ghost stories to-day facile princeps, has also declared his admiration for Le Fanu, and has collected with a valuable preface and bibliographical notes some dozen or more of Le Fanu's stories in
Madam Crowl's Ghost
. Both Mr. Ellis and Dr. James are agreed that Le Fanu was the supreme master of the supernatural, and I am glad to pay my own tribute also by writing that certainly in my opinion he has seldom, if ever, been approached, and most assuredly never excelled. It should be remarked that Le Fanu had the habit of refashioning his tales, and would often develop a short story until it was of considerable length. Finally it might even attain the dimensions of a three-volume novel. I mention this inasmuch as
An Account of some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street
(1853) is the first form of
Mr. Justice Harbottle
which appeared in the volume published in 1872 under the title
In a Glass Darkly
. These stories, once difficult to procure, have of late years been reissued, but I felt that, however accessible they may be, no collection of the supernatural could go forth without the seal of Le Fanu.