30) “The White People” by Arthur Machen

Plot:

This novelette opens with a debate between two friends, Ambrose and Cotgrave, on the nature of sin. According to Ambrose, true Sin is rare and has more in common with the sanctified than the mundane.

A murder is a terrible thing, but it is not true Sin. The murderer lacks knowledge, training, or table manners, perhaps—that leads him to murder. He should be locked up to keep society safe from his knife (were he writing in the present in the United States, he might add something about an “assault-style rifle”) in the same way society keeps tigers away from their midst. No can regard the tiger as a sinner, however.

True Sin is like sainthood in that both seek to trespass boundaries. Both seek a sort of ecstasy.

To illustrate his point, he gives his friend a diary called The Green Book, written by a young girl he knew.

In the beginning, the girl writes:

“I wanted a book like this, so I took it to write in. It is full of secrets. I have a great many other books of secrets I have written, hidden in a safe place, and I am going to write here many of the old secrets and some new ones; but there are some I shall not put down at all. I must not write down the real names of the days and months which I found out a year ago, nor the way to make the Aklo letters, or the Chian language, or the great beautiful Circles, nor the Mao Games, nor the chief songs. I may write something about all these things but not the way to do them, for peculiar reasons. And I must not say who the Nymphs are, or the Dôls, or Jeelo, or what voolas mean.”

One night, she runs into the woods and finds a special place. The passage is atmospheric, laden with pagan sights, sounds, and symbols. The girl is innocent of any understanding of wrongdoing. She understands this only in terms of stories her nurse has told her. Later, when her nurse shows her how to make clay figures, the reader understands these are intended to curse people, but the girl does not. She’s only obeying what her nurse has told her.

The Epilogue has the two friends digesting what the Green Book has to say.

Thoughts:

The white people of the title refers to beings the girl of the green book sees from her earliest years around her bed. She perceives no threat. Nor are they friends per so. They are merely there.

The girl chronicles her own seduction into paganism/witchcraft. On some level, she’s aware that what she’s doing is “wrong” because she has to keep everything secret, not even defining the occult words. Other secrets she refuses to commit to writing. However, on the surface, she sees nothing wrong. She sees her initiation into this otherworldly realm as exciting, born from the stories her nurse tells her. And, well, she’s enjoying herself.

When the girl puts her tired feet in water, the ripples “kiss” them. She lies on the grass and tells herself “terrible, delicious” things. She watches rites, including a dance between a white woman and a white man.* (hmmm… What could be going on there?)

So this is capital-S Sin? A girl going out in the woods and enjoying herself and her body without benefit of clergy? What is this world coming to?

Interestingly enough, the two friends in their epilogue do not blame the girl for the catastrophe that befalls her but blame her father, who ignored her and left her upbringing to her nurse.

One of the things that annoyed me about this story was the formatting. The Green Book section appears as a block text without paragraphs except for a few rhymes. At first, I thought this was an artifact with my Kindle, but even on Project Gutenberg, it’s page after page of black. My poor old eyes went bonkers without relief.

Plenty of people have praised this story—Lovecraft, for one. I think the device of an innocent describing her own seduction without a hint of regret is one reason. It is clever and engaging. It is novel in that the seducer or a third party is silent. The party herself is speaking.

If it weren’t for the blinding brick formatting and the two friends blathering on interminably in the beginning and end, I would have enjoyed this more, but it is certainly worth the read.


The story can be read here.

The story can be listened to here.



*The implication speaks to otherworldly creatures and has little to do with race per se.


Title: The White People
Author: Arthur Machen (1863-1947)
First published: First published in Horlick’s Magazine, January 1904.