Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old

Review of “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell” by Edith Wharton: Halloween Countdown

29) “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell” by Edith Wharton

Plot:

After recovering from typhoid, Alice Hartley has difficulty finding another position. The ladies she applies to look at her pale complexion and her thin limbs and decline her services. Alice is at the end of her rope.

A chance meeting with Mrs. Railton, a friend of a former employer, leads her to the country house of Mrs. Railton’s niece, Mrs. Brympton, a youngish woman who is something of an invalid. Her lady’s maid died in the spring, and she’s looking for someone to replace her.

Mrs. Railton warns Alice, “[I]t’s not a cheerful place I’m sending you to. The house is big and gloomy; my niece is nervous, vaporish; her husband—well, he’s generally away; and the two children are dead. A year ago, I would as soon have thought of shutting a rosy active girl like you into a vault; but you’re not particularly brisk yourself just now, are you?”

Her niece is an angel. All the servants love her. Alice might be bored, but she will not be unhappy.

Alice is grateful, and leaves that afternoon.

Mrs. Brympton has a visitor when she arrives, so she cannot meet her immediately. Agnes, the housemaid, shows her to her room. The light is poor, but Alice believes she sees a pale woman in a dark dress and apron. She finds it odd that the woman doesn’t speak but merely withdraws. She later sees the same woman when she’s downstairs at the servants’ tea. The woman behaves the same way. Alice figures she’s Mrs. Brympton’s nurse.

Thoughts:

“The Lady’s Maid’s Bell” is a nice little ghost story. It’s not scary, per se, but enough odd things occur that the reader knows this isn’t your average bear. The atmosphere is thick and suggestive. Everything changes when Mr. Brympton, who gives off serious tyrant vibes, shows up. Mr. Wace, the butler, spouts Bible verses habitually. The nature of his verses changes enough to make Alice wonder if such things are really in the Good Book.

Mr. Brympton is good friends with the neighbor, Mr. Ralston, who is Mrs. Brympton’s frequent guest when he’s away. The two are forever trading books and having long discussions.

The ending is dramatic but a little hard to puzzle out. What happened? I can appreciate that Wharton is trying to be delicate about such a topic as marital infidelity. Still, a bigger hint than a gentleman caller limping would be a big help.

At the same time, I like the ghost hanging out, checking out who was taking care of her mistress. If they didn’t measure up, she was happy to scare the bejesus out of them. She seems to approve of Alice, but not of everyone.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (53:55)

Bio: Edith Wharton (1962-1937) was a US writer, poet, and short story writer. She is best remembered for her novels The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, and Ethan Frome, which college literature profs like to assign. She also wrote books on travel, design, and poetry, as well as supernatural short stories. She won a Pulitzer Prize for The Age of Innocence. Her works tend to focus on the trials and tribulations of upper-class Gilded Age society.

Title: “The Lady’s Maid’s Bell
Author: Edith Wharton (1862-1937)
First published: Scribner’s Magazine, November 1902.
Length: novelette

Review of “The Invisible Eye” by Erckmann-Chatrian: Halloween Countdown

28) “The Invisible Eye” by Erckmann-Chatrian

Note: This story was first published roughly 170 years ago and, unfortunately, displays the antisemitism and misogyny of the times.

Plot:

Christian, who narrates the story, is an artist renting an attic room in an old house on Rue des Minnesängers in Nuremberg. He has a commanding view of the area, which is handy for drawing or painting.

A dealer in novelties, Toubec, regularly buys his pieces at a steady price.

Next to the house is an inn called Boeuf-Gras (“fatted ox/bull” with ties to the Mardi Gras). Most of the translations I saw use the word “auberge” (an inn in French-speaking countries). It is noisy, with all sorts of people coming and going. Across from it is a house that looks like it, but is silent. An elderly woman comes and goes from it, always alone. Christian notes she doesn’t even have a cat.

Christian decides that she must lead “an existence devoted to good works and pious meditation.”

He passes her one day, and she gives him a horrid grimace. It unsettles Christian.

Christian mentions this experience to Toubec when he’s in his room buying pictures. Toubec tells him the woman is known as Fledermausse (“bat”) and possesses the Evil Eye. He’d better take care if she’s out for him.

Nothing much happens until one night when Christian wakes and hears “a strange harmony.” He finds it “so soft, so melodious.”

He notices a bat or a large moth flying against the window and rises to let it out. He looks down to see a man hanging from the iron stanchion that supports the signboard of the Boeuf-Gras. Glancing across the way, he sees the old woman looking down at the man with satisfaction.

Thoughts:

This little tale has a huge creepy factor and an unusual ending. If not for the complications of antisemitism and misogyny, it would be an unabashed fun read.

When Christian first sees the Fledermausse, he describes her: “her back bent into a half-circle, her chin long and pointed, her dress clinging to her limbs, an enormous basket under her arm, and one hand tightly clutched upon her chest.” He also noted “her little green eyes, her skinny, pinched-up nose, the large flower-pattern on her shawl, dating back a hundred years at least; the smile that wrinkled her cheeks, and the lace of her cap hanging down upon her eyebrows…”

She appears lonely, perhaps disabled, and Christian sees her as given over to a life of prayer (because that’s what all old ladies do?)

Toubec tells him the unfortunate man he saw hanging is the third person to hang themselves in the same place. Christian becomes convinced Fledermausse is to blame and spies on her by removing a roof tile.

I did not see the end coming, which is always nice. For the atmosphere and the didn’t-see-that-coming ending, I can recommend the story, but with some reservations.

This is a personal grumble: the anthology I read this in had a lot of annoying typos. Other stories in the same anthology have not been so plagued. Christian lived on Eue des Minnesängers rather than Rue des Minnesängers. The Fledermausse was so alone she didn’t even have “a eat,” as opposed to a cat. “Fledermausse” itself is a bit of a puzzle. The German word for bat is “Fledermaus.”

(The French word for “bat,” according to Google, is “chauve-souris,” or “bald mouse.” At least the Germans notice the mouse flies. But I digress)

Is “Fledermausse” a misspelling? An older spelling or a bit of dialect? I don’t know. I finally gave up on the blasted typos and read the story online.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (45:50)

Bio: Émile Erckmann (1822-1899) and Alexandre Chatrian (1826-1890) were French writers and playwrights who collaborated on much of their work. However, it is now believed that Erckmann wrote the novels and Chatrian largely wrote the plays.

Among the best-known supernatural works are “L’Araignee Crabe” (“The Spider Crab”), “Le Blanc et le Noir” (“The White and Black”), and “La Maison Forestière” (“The Forest House”).

Title: “The Invisible Eye”
Author: Erckmann-Chatrian
First published: in French, “L’œil invisible ou L’auberge des trois pendus”; L’Artiste, 1857; in English, first published in Temple Bar.

Review of “The Haunted Orchard” by Richard Le Gallienne: Halloween Countdown

27) “The Haunted Orchard” by Richard Le Gallienne

Plot:

The unnamed narrator tells the reader about leaving the city for the Connecticut countryside and coming across an empty “quaint farm-house,” an “old colonial,” with lilacs and “surrounded by an orchard of ancient apple trees.” He finds a broken window pane and enters the house. Why not? Perfectly civilized behavior for a gentleman trying to satisfy his curiosity.

He’s charmed by what he sees inside, particularly by what appears to be the “little intimate library of a young girl.” Half the books are in French.

After some inquiries, he finds the owners and agrees to rent the place for four months.

After about a month of living in the farmhouse, while he’s sitting in the orchard reading The Anatomy of Melancholy he hears snatches of sad songs in French. No one is around. The nearest neighbor is miles away.

He figures he’s half-asleep and dreaming.

But it happens for several days in succession.

Finally, he calls out, “Poor child! Tell me of your grief— that I may help your sorrowing heart to rest.”

He receives no response, but that night, he has a dream.

Thoughts:

The story’s prose is lush and poetic throughout, betraying its roots in the Decadent Movement. In the opening paragraph, the reader is told, “As [spring] sang to herself in the faraway woodlands her voice reached even the ears of the city, weary with the long winter.”

When our hero arrives in the countryside, we are told:

“Nothing moves or talks, except the gentle susurrus of the spring wind swaying the young buds high up in the quiet sky, or a bird now and again, or a little brook singing softly to itself among the crowing rushes.”

The girl’s library consists of suggestive volumes: Renaissance poet Pierre de Ronsard, who wrote, among other things, love poetry to his mistresses; Romantic poet and dramatist Alfred de Musset, who wrote confessionally of his extended affair with George Sand; and Théophile Gautier’s Mademoiselle de Maupin, in which a young man falls in love with a woman dressed as a man. The young girl had none of the light reading or conventional prayer books or devotional volumes one might expect.

The ancient orchard “had the impressiveness of those old religious groves, dedicated to the strange worship of sylvan gods, gods to be found now only in Horace or Catullus, and in the hearts of young poets to whom the beautiful antique Latin is still dear.”

While a ghost may haunt “those old religious groves,” it does not frighten our hero. It is not frightening to the reader, either, only sad. She sings songs of lost love and mourning, but she doesn’t speak.

The story is dreamy, atmospheric, and sad, even with its resident ghost, but it is not scary. Nevertheless, there is a price to pay.

It is short. If such an atmospheric tale that says more than the words do appeals to the reader, this should be an enjoyable read.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (21:19)

Bio: Richard Le Gallienne (1866-1947) was a Decadent Movement British poet and writer. He is best known for his contributions to the British periodical The Yellow Book and his 1896 novel The Quest for the Golden Girl. He married three times and seems to have been romantically involved with Oscar Wilde, at least briefly. Maybe.

Title: “The Haunted Orchard”
Author: Richard Le Gallienne (1866-1947)
First published: Harper’s Magazine, January 1912
Length: short story

Review of “The Hand” by Guy de Maupassant: Halloween Countdown

26) “The Hand” by Guy de Maupassant

Plot:

Clean-shaven M. Bermutier, a judge, talks to a group of people gathered in Paris discussing the Saint-Cloud mystery. The judge notes that the women, shaking and trembling, move closer to him; they are “moved by fear and curiosity, and by the eager and insatiable desire for the horrible, which haunts the soul of every woman.”

Hmm…

Despite rumors to the contrary, the Saint-Cloud mystery involves nothing supernatural, even if it defies explanation. M. Bermutier offers an example of something that he came across some years earlier, when he was a judge at Ajaccio,* “a little white city on the edge of a bay which is surrounded by high mountains.”

An Englishman came to town and kept pretty much to himself, making everyone curious about him. “In my judicial position I thought it necessary to get some information about this man,” the judge says.

Nevertheless, he found it impossible to learn much of anything other than that he called himself Sir John Rowell. M. Bermutier finally made an excuse to make the newcomer’s acquaintance, and the two struck up a friendship. Sir John was a big man, with red hair and beard, very tall and very broad. M. Bermutier calls him “a kind of calm and polite Hercules.”

In discussing all the places and animals he’s hunted, Sir John makes the startling claim, “I have also been man-hunting.”

One day, M. Bermutier saw a mummified hand hanging on the wall: “dried black hand, with yellow nails, the muscles exposed and traces of blood on the bones, which were cut off as clean as though it had been chopped off with an axe, near the middle of the forearm. “

And: “Around the wrist, an enormous iron chain, riveted and soldered to this unclean member, fastened it to the wall by a ring, strong enough to hold an elephant in leash.”

Sir John told him, “That is my best enemy”

Some time later, his maid found Rowell strangled to death.

Thoughts:

This brief tale is unsettling and creepy. The judge tells it as entertainment, dismissing the thought of the supernatural, though the supernatural seems to be the best explanation. Rowell’s death is never resolved. Or is Bermutier just so thick-headed he can’t see the obvious?

Ambiguity runs deeply through the tale; Bermutier shows his audience one thing and tells them another. That frustrates his listeners. Should it frustrate the reader as well?

Or is it a practical joke on the reader? Is de Maupassant tweaking the reader’s nose—for they, like “the women,” can’t help but be horrified and enthralled by the macabre? He tells a tale that delivers on the horrors but refuses a satisfying ending. All is not right with the world after all.

On the other hand (so to speak…) Rowell seems to enjoy killing an awful lot, as if he had nothing better to do with his time than to snuff out the life of various game animals. It’s hard to feel much sympathy for him. Yet did he deserve the violent death? His (French) servant weeps for him, perhaps shocked by the degree of mayhem it took to end his master’s life.

I found this story intriguing, if a bit ghoulish, rather than enjoyable per se.

* The capital of Corsica, a French island in the Mediterranean Sea, and the birthplace of Napoleon.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here:

Bio: Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) studied law and served as a private during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), an experience that inspired the short story, “Boule de suif” (“Ball of Fat”) (1880), which people who know such things regard as his best.
Other well-known stories of Maupassant’s include “The Horla” (1886/1887) and “The Necklace” (1884).

In his twenties, Maupassant realized he’d contracted syphilis and spent the rest of his life privately agonizing over his health. His later stories deal with madness. He attempted suicide by slitting his throat in 1892 in the wake of his disabled brother’s death. As a result, he was committed to an asylum, where he died, a month shy of his forty-third birthday.

Title: “The Hand”
Author: Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893)
First published: in French in 1883 in Le Gaulois, a rework of an earlier story. “La main d’écorché” (“The Flayed Hand”) published in L’Almanach. First published in English under the title “The Englishman” in a 1903 collection of de Maupassant’s works.
Length: short story

Review of “For the Blood is the Life” by F. Marion Crawford: Halloween Countdown

25) “For the Blood is the Life” by F. Marion Crawford

Plot:

The unnamed narrator of this story owns a sixteenth-century tower on the west coast of Calabria, built to keep off Barbary pirates. The tower stands at the extremity of a curving, rocky promontory that forms a small but safe natural harbor at the southern end of the Gulf of Policastro, just north of Cape Scalea. According to local legend, Cape Scalea is the birthplace of Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Jesus of Nazareth with a kiss.

When our hero goes to the tower, he takes a couple of sailors with him, one of whom is a decent cook. When he is away, he leaves it in the charge of a “gnome-like little being who was once a miner.”

Visiting our hero is his friend, Scandinavian artist Holger. Because of the heat, they are dining on the roof. At twilight, Holger notices something in the distance.

“It’s strange,” he says. “Do you see that little mound just on this side of the boulder?”

“Yes,” [the narrator] says and guesses what is coming.

“It looks like a grave,” observes Holger.

“Very true. It does look like a grave.”

“Yes,” continues [the narrator’s] friend, his eyes still fixed on the spot. “But the strange thing is that I see the body lying on the top of it.”

Holger isn’t content to observe from afar. He walks down and inspects the mound, no longer seeing the body. He walks onto the mound.

Still on the roof, the narrator sees the Thing wrap its arms around Holger’s legs, as if to pull itself up using his body. Holger appears oblivious.

“Come along!” [the narrator] shouts. “Don’t stay there all night!”

Holger comes back. When the two settle in, the narrator tells him the story.

Thoughts:

The long, sad backstory of the vampire involves a love triangle, theft, murder, ill-gotten gains, two innocent people, and the bravery of a man named Antonio and a priest.

This story is not modern in the sense that the action is more in revelation than accomplishment. The horror is genuine. Stakes (heh…) are high for both the vampire and her victim(s).

The setting is different from the usual vampire haunt, though the story still harkens back to the ancient. The vampire is an object not only of horror, but pity.

I can recommend this story for someone looking for a leisurely read.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (57:57)

Bio: F. Marion Crawford (1854-1909) was born in Italy to American parents. His father was the sculptor Thomas Gibson Crawford, who died while the author was a toddler. Crawford’s first novel, Mr. Issacs (1882), depicted Anglo-Indian life with an added touch of Theosophy, perhaps reflecting his time in India studying Sanskrit. It was successful, though today, he is best known for his story “The Upper Berth.

Title: “For the Blood is the Life”
Author: F. Marion Crawford (1854-1909)
First published: Collier’s, December 16, 1905
Length: short story

Review of “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving: Halloween Countdown

24) “The Devil and Tom Walker” by Washington Irving (as Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.)

Note: The story reviewed is about two hundred years old and contains some racially insensitive and misogynistic language.

Plot:

In 1727, “at the time when earthquakes were prevalent in New England and shook many tall sinners down upon their knees,” Tom Walker, a “miserly fellow,” takes a shortcut through a swamp outside of Boston that most people in his village avoid. The area has history. It was once an Indian fort. On one side of the swamp is a dark grove. On the other, the land rises with large, ancient oaks. Under one of the gigantic oaks, so the story goes, Captain Kidd buried his treasure.

Tom Walker is not bothered by the spot’s bad reputation and sits down to take a breather. He uses his walking stick to probe into a piece of black mold by his feet. The staff strikes something hard; it is a skull with a tomahawk in it.

He kicks it away.

“Let that skull alone!” says a gruff voice.

He sees a “great black man.” After some back and forth, the stranger introduces himself as the Black Woodsman, though he confesses to going by various names. He also points out to Tom that the great oaks around them have the names of “some great men of the colony” scored into them. Additionally, all bear ax marks.

The Black Woodsman offers to make Captain Kidd’s gold available to Tom—for a price…

Thoughts:

This story is one in a series revolving around the idea of “money-diggers.”

A lot of tongue-in-cheek humor is imbued into the tale.

The Black Woodsman/”Old Scratch” never spells out his conditions for revealing the whereabouts of Captain Kidd’s gold, but they “may easily be surmised.” “They must have been very hard, for [Tom] required time to think of them, and he was not a man to stick at trifles where money was in view.”

Old Scratch wants Tom to use some of his money to work a trade of his choosing. At first, he presses him toward “the black traffic,” that is, the slave trade, but Tom refuses. Hey, he has some principles.

The devil next presses him into becoming a moneylender:

“You shall lend at two percent a month.”

“Egad, I’ll charge four!”

The reader is told, “Thus Tom was the universal friend of the needy.”

Tom’s wife is described as a “tall termagant,” who is as miserly as he is. She gives the devil a run for the money. They have a horse, who would sometimes lean his head over the fence and looks “piteously at the passer-by, and seem[s] to petition deliverance from this land of famine.”

The theme of greed runs throughout the tale, but it also satirizes religious “great men.” The tree that Tom sits on bears the name of a recently deceased religious leader, an old buccaneer. The leader is mourned. Old Scratch refers to the tree as “ready for burning.”

The story seems light-hearted, but it also contains casual cruelty. And the bad guy gets his comeuppance.

It inspired such tales as Stephen Vincent Benét’s “The Devil and Daniel Webster” (1936) and Wilhelm Hauff’s “The Cold Heart” (1827). I can’t help but wonder if maybe it influenced, in a roundabout way, a Charlie Daniels song from a couple of years ago, but that’s a long shot.

In sum, the story has cute moments, but it is not a modern story. I enjoyed it, but again, it has its rough edges.

This story can be read and listened to here: (39:01)

Bio: Washington Irving (1783-1859) initially trained in law by apprenticing in a law office rather than studying at a university. From 1807 to 1808, Irving, his brother, and a friend published a satirical magazine, Salmagundi, in which they referred to New York City as “Gotham” or “goat town.” It was not a compliment, but the name stuck.

Later, he moved to England to take over a failing import-export business from his extended family. After it failed, he published The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., over 1819 and 1820. The Sketchbook contains thirty-four essays and short stories, including Irving’s best-known, “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow” and “Rip Van Winkle.” These two are attributed to the fictional Dutch historian Diedrich Knickerbocker.

Irvine also served as a U.S. Ambassador to Spain and advocated for stronger copyright laws.

Title: “The Devil and Tom Walker”
Author: Washington Irving (1783-1859)
First published: Tales of a Traveler (collection), 1824
Length: short story
Series: The Money-Diggers #3

Review of “The Crime of Micah Rood” by Elia W. Peattie: Halloween Countdown

23) “The Crime of Micah Rood” by Elia W. Peattie

Plot:

In the early 18^th century, in eastern Connecticut near the Shetucket River lived Micah Rood, “a solitary soul,” who “occupied a low, tumble-down house, in which he had seen his sisters and his brothers, his father and mother, die. The mice used the bare floors for a playground; the swallows filled up the unused chimneys; in the cellar, the gophers frolicked, and in the attic, a hundred bats made their home.”

In contrast to his poor housekeeping, his garden flourished, particularly his apple trees. One tree bore amber apples with pure white interiors.

Despite his solitary nature, he liked the local children and often gave them apples from his other trees. The amber apples he sells for “siller” (silver).

On a rainy day in January, a man comes to call with papers, telling Micah he has until the first of May, but no more grace.

In the spring, Geoffry Peterkin, a well-known peddler, makes his way through the village. He stops at Rood’s place to check it out and stays the night. He’s carrying luxury items to sell and gold that customers have paid him with. He seems to know a lot about Rood’s financial situation. He’s doing everything but measuring the windows for new drapes.

Thoughts:

That spring, the amber apple tree blossoms pink. And the apples appear with a red spot in white flesh. In some, the spot is just under the skin. In others, it’s near the center.

Author Peattie is retelling an old New England legend. The apples with the flecks did exist, disappearing sometime in the mid-19^th century. They were known as Micah/Mike Roods, or sometimes just as Roods. The historical Micah Rood was born in 1653 and died in 1728. He was never tried for or convicted of murder.

In some versions of the tale, he hangs himself in the tree under which the remains of the peddler are buried. In others, the peddler is never found, or conversely, found with his skull split open the day after spending the night at Rood’s farm. So, were there some hinky goings-on? Or did the story appear to explain the odd-looking apple? Take your pick.

The author tells her story in ornate nineteenth-century prose, with “thee” and “thou” in the dialogue. However, she sets up a motive for the murder and builds the suspense nicely. Micah’s character changes. The deed haunts him. No ghost appears, but the visual reminder of the altered apples won’t let him escape.

This is a good old-fashioned horror story with a sad ending. I liked it.

This story can be read here:

I could find no readily available audio copy of this story.

Bio: Elia W. Peattie (1862-1935) was a journalist and writer who wrote travel and children’s works but is now best known for her myriad ghost stories. Her husband was also a newspaperman.

Title: “The Crime of Micah Rood”
Author: Elia W. Peattie (1862-1935)
First published: The Cosmopolitan, January 1888
Length: short story

Review of “The Case of Lady Sannox” by Arthur Conan Doyle: Halloween Countdown

22) “The Case of Lady Sannox” by Arthur Conan Doyle

Plot:

Those in the know understand that the married surgeon Douglas Stone and the equally married Lady Sannox were having an affair. That she announced she was taking the veil and would never be seen by the world again got tongues wagging.

Stone’s valet found the brilliant man one morning “with both legs jammed into one side of his breeches and his great brain about as valuable as a cap full of porridge.” He was thirty-nine, so the condition could not be the result of advanced age.

Stone had been a skilled surgeon but also something of a “sensualist.” Lord Sannox had once been something of an actor, but gave that up. He likes to garden.

One evening, when Stone was supposed to meet Lady Sannox, a man came to call and asked him to attend to his wife. The man presented a card naming himself Hamil Ali from Smyrna. As he described it, his wife fell on a poisoned “dagger of the Almohades” and cut her lip. She’s in a coma. The only way to save her life is to remove the damaged part of her lip.

At first, Stone demurred. He had a hot date. But Mr. Ali paid him one hundred pounds in gold. He could use the money to pay off some debts. He gathered some instruments and got in the cab with Mr. Ali.

Thoughts:

No supernatural elements appear in this story, but the horror is in the lengths people will go to exact revenge, a morality tale tinged with orientalism. The ending is a bit of a see-it-coming.

Although Conan Doyle writes in sparse prose, the story itself is nicely atmospheric, producing a sense of dread. It opens with a “notorious” married woman “taking the veil,” not because she’s seen the light or whatever, but for the result that “the world would see her no more.” And a brilliant surgeon’s mind has turned to mush. What happened?

Are the two events related? How are they related?

I imagine most readers will catch on at some point and will scream at Stone, “You damn fool!” But since we already know he’s going to end up with cereal for brains, we know he’s going to go ahead and do the stupid thing anyway.

The story is enjoyable, if brutal. As for recommendation—fair to middling.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (25:55)

Bio: Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) was a British author and physician. He is best known for creating the detective Sherlock Holmes, whose deductive reasoning solved many cases that would otherwise have remained unsolvable. Holmes remains one of the most popular detectives and has become the subject of many books, plays, and movies. Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes book, A Study in Scarlet, was published in 1887. Unlike Holmes, Doyle was a believer in the supernatural. He also wrote some fantasy, such as The Lost World.

Title: “The Case of Lady Sannox”
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle
First published: The Idler, November 1893
Length: short story

Review of “The Watcher by the Threshold” by John Buchan: Halloween Countdown

21) “The Watcher by the Threshold” by John Buchan

Plot:

Our hero, Henry, a lawyer, is enjoying some vacation time out shooting (ICK, but yeah) at a friend’s estate when he receives a letter from his cousin, Sibyl, asking him to visit her and her husband in Scotland. She adds a postscript: “For Heaven’s sake, come and see us. Bob is ill, and I am crazy. Don’t bother about bringing doctors. It is not their business.”

As much as he doesn’t want to leave the comforts of the present place, he sees how desperate his cousin is and goes to see them. It is a miserable drive. Henry describes the landscape as dreary and full of “faded gentility.”

To his surprise, he finds his cousin’s husband as cheerful as ever. He looks healthy. Sibyl, on the other hand, has changed. She is pale, her pretty eyes are now mournful, and, in place of her “delightful shyness,” are “the self-confidence and composure of pain.”

Is it perhaps Sibyl who is ill, and not Bob?

At dinner, Bob seems to be unable to recall the recent past. A bust of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian is both a prominent decoration and something of a forbidden topic. Something panics Bob, and Sibyl comforts him, stroking his hair “as one would stroke a frightened horse.”

A few minutes later, Bob picks up the conversation as if nothing happened. Has Sibyl calmed him, or has he forgotten whatever it was that frightened him?

Later, when Bob and Henry withdraw to smoke cigars, Bob refuses to smoke. Sibyl has asked Henry to find out what is bothering Bob; her husband won’t tell her.

Henry tries some tactful inquiry. After some hemming and hawing, Bob says his concern involves, “The devil.”

Thoughts:

This novelette is atmospheric and sad. As much as Henry wishes nothing were wrong with Bob, there is clearly something going on. He refers to the other man as “a commonplace man, with fair talents, a mediocre culture, honest instincts, and the beliefs and incredulities of his class. … He had a kind of dull, bourgeois rationalism, which used to find reasons for all things in heaven and earth.”

Not the kind of person Henry would expect to be subject to hallucinations.

In discussing Justinian at the uncomfortable (to say the least) dinner, Bob says he recalls a story about Justinian selling his soul to the devil for laws. Sibyl tries to tell him to change the subject. A less demure woman would have kicked his shin black and blue.

Henry is concerned about his cousin as well as her husband, but he really wants to be gone.

The ending of the story I read proved unsatisfying. Apparently, it is sometimes anthologized as a fragment with an unsatisfying ending.

There is a reason for that. Apparently, the version I read is truncated. A fuller version, available at the Gutenberg Project (see below), wanders a bit but at least leaves our hero looking less like a jerk.

An unabridged version of the story can be read here:

An unabridged version of the story can be listened to here: (1:47:41)

Bio: John Buchan (1875-1940) was a British statesman, writer, and publisher, best known for his adventure stories. Among his best-known books is Thirty-Nine Steps (1915), which was adapted into the movie of the same name, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. He also wrote a biography, Sir Walter Scott (1932). In 1935, he was appointed governor-general of Canada.

Title: “The Watcher by the Threshold”
Author: John Buchan (1875-1940)
First published: The Watcher by the Threshold and Other Stories, 1902
Length: novelette

Review of “Wake Not the Dead” by Ernst Raupach: Halloween Countdown

20) “Wake Not the Dead” by Ernst Raupach (often attributed to Johann Ludwig Tieck)

Plot:

Walter, a powerful lord in Burgundy, marries a beautiful woman named Brunhilda. They are very much in love. Alas! Brunhilda dies, leaving Walter heartbroken. He eventually remarries a wonderful, beautiful woman named Swanhilda. They have two children, a boy and a girl.

But Walter can’t forget Brunhilda. Instead of sleeping next to Swanhilda, he goes to weep by Brunhilda’s grave in the middle of the night.

One night, as he’s weeping over Brunhilda’s grave, he cries aloud, “Wilt thou for ever sleep? wilt thou never more awake, my beloved?” That’s not all he says, of course.

A sorcerer approaches and says he can bring his dead wife back, but there are dangers. He repeats the refrain, warning Walter, “Wake not the dead.”

Walter doesn’t care. He doesn’t care about Swanhilda back home or their children, either. He wants his beloved Brunhilda back.

The sorcerer agrees. After several delays that nearly drive Walter out of his mind, he brings Walter’s beloved Brunhilda back from the dead.

And so, Brunhilda once again walks among the living, almost as if she never died. Now Walter has a bit of a problem on his hands. Two living (kinda) wives? Not really. He sends Swanhilda back to her father. The children stay with him.

Walter and Brunhilda are deliriously in love, just like when they were first married. Well, maybe not exactly like when they were first married. Walter doesn’t even notice that young people keep disappearing around the castle…

Thoughts:

The little tale is deliciously, straight-faced gothic. The affectation of using “thee” and “thou” is a bit much, but it is forgivable for the over-the-top atmosphere the author creates.

The language is evocative, as if this were indeed a play. When the sorcerer brings poor old Brunhilda back from the dead, the reader is told:

“The old man [sorcerer] now drew a circle round the grave, all the while muttering words of enchantment. Immediately the storm began to howl among the tops of the trees; owls flapped their wings, and uttered their low voice of omen; the stars hid their mild, beaming aspect, that they might not behold so unholy and impious a spectacle…”

This is all without the benefit of a Jacob’s ladder or thunder and lightning.

When the vampire Brunhilda seduces children into letting her suck their blood (Lucy Westerna, hold her beer), she induces gentle dreams:

“Then did visions of the most surpassing magnificence attend their dreams: they would fancy themselves in some garden where flowers of every hue rose in rows one above the other, from the humble violet to the tall sunflower, forming a parti-colored broidery of every hue, sloping upwards towards the golden clouds where little angels whose wings sparkled with azure and gold descended to bring them delicious cakes or splendid jewels; or sung to them soothing melodious hymns.”

An ICK warning: Brunhilda eschews drinking blood from the necks of her victims like a respectable vampire, but from their “bosoms.” Even though “bosom” can mean “chest,” it’s still pretty dang icky.

I did not realize until I did some reading on author Ernst Raupach that he lost his first wife a year or so after they were married. She died in childbirth. There is always a danger of psychoanalyzing someone, but perhaps one can see his grief and the letting go in the story.

I liked this story. I’ve come across it in a couple of different anthologies. It’s unapologetically gothic, a warning not to mourn too much, that there is a separation between the living and the dead for a reason, and mostly don’t forsake the living for the dead.

This story can be read here:

This story can be listened to here: (1:39:19)

Bio: Ernst Raupach (1784-1852) was a German dramatist and writer. He was born in Straupitz, Silesia (present-day Strupice, Poland), the son of a village pastor. He studied theology and worked for a while as a tutor in Russia with his older brother, then settled in Berlin, where he wrote plays.

Title: “Wake Not the Dead”
Author: Ernst Raupach (1784-1852) (often attributed in error to Johann Ludwig Tieck)
First published: (German) “Laßt die Todten ruhen!” Minerva: Taschenbuch für das Jahr 1823 (1822); first English translation 1823 in Popular Tales and Romances of the Northern Nations
Length: short story