Post by Calenture on Oct 14, 2007 11:55:59 GMT -5
A Night on the Moor & Other Tales of Dread by R Murray Gilchrist
The Crimson Weaver
The Stone Dragon
The Lover's Ordeal
The Manuscript of Francis Shackerley
Midsummer Madness
The Return
Dame Inowslad
The Lost Mistress
Witch In-Grain
The Basilisk
The Noble Courtesan
The Writings of Althea Swathmoor
Roxana Runs Lunatick
The Grotto at Ravensdale
Excerpts from Witherton's Journal: also a Letter of Crystalla's
My Friend
The Madness of Betty Hooton
Bubble Magic
Dryas and Lady Greenleaf
The Priest's Pavan
A Night on the Moor
The Pageant of Ghosts
Appendix:
The Panicle
A Witch in the Peak
Published in Wordsworth Editions, 2006
If you are looking for a conventional horror story, in which the supernatural element is paramount, try The Crimson Weaver, Dame Inowslad, Witch in-Grain, or A Night on the Moor. If you are more taken with the psychology of the participants, often allied to a fascination with the killing of friends or lovers, then Francis Shackerley, The Noble Courtesan, Althea Swarthmore, and My Friend will be right up your street. For humour, we are offered the Peakland comedy of The Panicle or A Witch in the Peak. And when it comes to love, there are the tragic and poignant tales we might expect (The Return, The Lost Mistress, The Madness of Betty Hooton), but also the engaging and unusual Bubble Magic – a story of romantic betrayal which hints at a happy ending.
R Murray Gilchrist’s writing has been described as like ‘Aubrey Beardsley in prose.’ In fact, some of his stories first appeared in Beardsley’s legendary Yellow Book. The landscapes in which his stories take place only have a superficial resemblance to England. The people who inhabit it are usually moneyed and titled; they own mansions hidden in deep woods, sometimes neglected and falling into ruin. His villages are essentially English, but a walk into the nearby woods will bring you face to face with mythical monsters, basilisks, sirens and vampires. The women are gorgeous and intelligent, and the writing drips sensuality. It’s not for everyone; you’ll have to decide for yourself whether you want to read it. Much of it is available online, but in my opinion it’s even less suitable for reading online than other fiction.
A problem with writing these reviews is that the storytelling element is not something Gilchrist seemed particularly concerned with; rather, he seems intent on weaving atmospheric word-pictures around classic themes of love and death. These stories are Pre-Raphaelite paintings come to astonishing life. I thought they were great.
The Basilisk: In her anthology I Shudder at your Touch, Michele Slung wrote: “This lush piece of nineteenth century prose has an almost operatic quality” as Marina and her lover set out to follow a path into the marsh where she will confront the basilisk, whose stare, during her youth, has turned her to stone so that she cannot return love. Now she will undo the spell, it is a simple matter of buying and selling; and she is prepared to pay any price.
Slung continued: “But at the same time that the language infuses our senses with its eerie vegetable torpor, it seems to hide beneath a nearly overpowering gothic richness layers of even more suggestive meaning. There is little dialogue, but of what there is, note how many of the phrases vibrate with memorably weird, tantalizing eroticism.”
Deep in the forest, the two come to a great pool:
“...almost a lake, that was covered with lavender scum, where stood an isolated grove of wasted elms. As Marina beheld this, her pace slackened, and she paused in momentary indecision; but at my first word of pleading that she should go no further, she went on, dragging her silken mud-bespattered skirts. We climbed the slippery shores of the island (for island it was, being raised much above the level of the marsh), and Marina led the way over lush grass to an open glade. A great marble tank lay there, supported on two thick pillars. Decayed boughs rested on the crust of the stagnancy within, and frogs, bloated and almost blue, rolled off at our approach. To the left stood the columns of a temple, a round, domed building, with a closed door of bronze...”
This story is like every pre-Raphaelite painting you have ever seen, suffocatingly intense and atmospheric. Marvellous.
Read The Basilisk online at Horrormasters (I'm afraid this one's PDF, but printable).
The Crimson Weaver first appeared in the Yellow Book Quarterly (Volume VI, July 1895). A servant and his master have wandered from their path and find themselves in the Domain of the Crimson Weaver. Warned by an old woman that they are entering a land ruled by a fiend, the master insists that he is strong enough to pass through. That night, the servant has strange dreams, and when he wakes finds his master is missing.
“The mists gathered together and passed sunward in one long many-coloured veil. When the last shred had been drawn into the great light, I gazed along the avenue, and saw the topmost bartizan of the Crimson Weaver’s palace.”
He sets out for the palace, and when he gets there, “On the terrace strange beasts – dogs and pigs with human limbs – tore ravenously at something that lay beside the balustrade. At sight of me they paused and lifted their snouts and bayed.”
Read The Crimson Weaver here, at Amalgamated Spooks.
The Stone Dragon: Lady Barbara wants Ralph Eyre to wed one of her nieces in order that his father’s dwindling fortunes should be restored. Ralph is 15 years old at the time, and the sisters are 10 and 13.
Ralph’s father is infuriated by the suggestion. The disagreement causes a complete rift in the family. But before two years have passed, Ralph finds himself in the vicinity of Furnivoux Castle and paying a visit on his Great Aunt and the nieces. Mary, the younger, is quiet and shy, while Rachel is beautiful and coquettish.
During this visit, Ralph receives news that his father is seriously ill, and rushes home to find him dead.
When Ralph returns to Furnivaux, he finds that Rachel has grown strange and temperamental. She plays grotesque tunes at the piano and wears clumsily fashioned gloves at her belt. Mary has told her that these gloves will bring her bad luck.
They have strange designs worked onto their backs, showing a dagger and a vial. They were made from the skin of a murderess who was hung after poisoning her husband.
Rachel makes a strong play for Ralph, but he wants a woman who’ll be a real partner. He goes away to think things over, and when he returns to Furnivaux Castle comes the moment of truth when he has to tell Rachel that he doesn’t love her. This sequence, and the point where Rachel realises that he has chosen her shy sister above her, is almost unbelievably intense. At this point fantasy takes on a quality of almost Shakespearian tragedy. Ralph and Mary escape to the moor, where they hold a simple ceremony, pledging their lives to one another near the stone cromlechs. Returning, they meet the haggard figure of Rachel, demented with grief, wearing the human skin gloves and carrying a dagger...
The Lover’s Ordeal: The young woman has found a letter in The Spectator in which a gentleman complains that, with the decline of chivalry, a man no longer has any means of proving his love for the woman of his choice, and suggests that she should be able to name some ordeal through which he must pass, before asking her hand in marriage.
The woman guesses that the letter has been written by her fiancé, and asks if he would be willing to accept a challenge from her. Walking in the forest around the house, she shows him a ruin on a distant hill, “...a strange, conical place covered with great trees from whose tops rose several stacks of twisted chimneys.”
The ruin is Calton Hall, Mary’s inheritance from her mother, not lived in since her folk left it eighty years ago. The place is reputedly haunted, and her fiancé’s ordeal will be to spend the night within its deserted suites. Exploring the house, he is surprised to see firelight showing from an upper room. Entering, he realises that the house is not deserted; the room is tidy and lit with lamps. And then he sees the figure of a veiled woman sitting in a high-backed chair...
Roxanna Runs Lunatick: I found it very difficult working out this curious vignette. It begins: “Amongst the May poetry in the ninety-first volume of the British Review is the following composition by Lady Penwhile, whose Roxana has shaken the town for a whole season.”
The composition might be by the Lady Penwhile, but the words are unquestionably Gilchrist’s. It appears to tell how Roxanna has left her lover to marry an older man, but then betrayed her husband. He learns of her unfaithfulness when a cast-off mistress spitefully passes him one of the lovers’ notes. The old man then lies in ambush with his death-hounds, and Roxanna hears her lover’s bloody death. Although it’s only three pages, it’s more poetry than story, and after reading it several times there are still details that I’m puzzling over.
Now don't all rush to comment on this one, will you. Sorry, I just had to do it!
