Review of “The Willows” by Algernon Blackwood

31) “The Willows” by Algernon Blackwood

Plot:

The narrator and his friend, known only as the Swede, take a canoe trip along the Danube. They plan to ride the river from its source in the Black Forest to the Black Sea. The narrator and the Swede have made similar trips in the past, but as the narrator tells the reader, “but the Danube, more than any other river I knew, impressed us from the very beginning with its aliveness.”

Things go well until after they pass “Pressburg” (Hungarian, Poszóny, the narrator helpfully tells the reader)—that is, present-day Bratislava in Slovakia—into Hungary. A Hungarian officer warns them against continuing. With the river in flood, they may take a side channel that dries up and leaves them in the middle of nowhere. With no farms or towns for miles, they could very well starve. They buy extra provisions but don’t worry about the flooded river. They go ahead.

The river flattens out, even in the flood stage where it is now, creating and destroying little islands in its wake.

The wind picks up, and the two find an island to camp on. The island is about an acre in size, with stunted willows growing around it. They have plenty of provisions and set their tent up in a broad depression, out of the worst of the wind.

While they gather driftwood for firewood (“willow bushes drop no branches,” the narrator informs the reader), they glimpse what appears to be a drowned man rolling in the river’s current. After it dives, they decide it was an otter—a big otter.

Thoughts:

From the beginning, Blackwood describes the Danube in terms of a living being. He depicts canoeing on it as being carried on the river’s shoulders. It plays with them roughly sometimes but remains friendly (until it doesn’t). They hear it singing to the moon at night.

The description is lovely, and the writing is enchanting, creating a palpable atmosphere. When things go south, it is all the more intense. The wind howls all night.

Having camped in wind strong enough I opened my eyes to find the tent’s walls a few inches from my nose, I was right there with the narrator and the Swede. How did they manage to eat? The wind blew my plate over. We had to sit in the car, which these guys didn’t have.

Even with the wind howling, the narrator hears things—the patter of little feet and something dropping onto the tent. He sees things—smoke or something rising from the willows. The Swede sleeps undisturbed.

In the morning, they find their canoe has been slashed. An oar is missing, along with some provisions—even though they are alone on the island. And there is a faint sound like a gong.

This is creepy and atmospheric. It takes a while, and not everything makes sense, but this is a nice scary tale when you’re alone with a cup of hot tea and the weather is cold and maybe stormy.

This story can be read here.

This story can be listened to here.

Bio: Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951) was an English writer, playwright, journalist, and broadcaster. Much of his fiction deals with ghosts and the supernatural. He wrote approximately 200 short stories, plus essays, plays, novels, and some children’s works. During WWI, he volunteered as an ambulance driver but served in Switzerland as a spy.

His interests in Eastern philosophy and religion, as well as occult studies, influenced his writing. H. P. Lovecraft was a fan. Blackwood influenced many other writers, including William Hope Hodgson and Ramsey Campbell.

Among his best-known writing are the two novellas, “The Wendigo” and “The Willows.”

Title: “The Willows”
Author: Algernon Blackwood (1869-1951)
First published: The Listener and Other Stories, 1907

Note: Wow, what a trip theses reviews have been—a lot of work but a lot of fun. I’m glad they’re done. I hope people have enjoyed them or have found a good read or two. Happy Halloween!

Review of “The White People” by Arthur Machen Halloween Countdown

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.

Review of “The Upper Berth” by F. Marion Crawford Halloween Countdown

29) The Upper Berth by F. Marion Crawford

Plot:

This is a club story, that is, framed as a tale told by a member of a gentlemen’s club. (In the nineteenth century, it meant a private place where men hung out, smoked and drank. It didn’t mean the present-day sense where men hang out smoke, drink and watch women dance and take their clothes off.) The stories can relate accounts of adventure, derring-do, or, as in the present example, old-fashioned yarns of tangles with the supernatural.

According to the narrator, Brisbane is a strong man, even stronger than he looks. He breaks walnuts with his bare hands. He’s about thirty-five years old. “His head is small, his hair is thin, his eyes are blue, his nose is large, he has a small moustache, and a square jaw.”

Much to the disbelief of his fellows, he tells them he has seen a ghost. And once he’s said this, the party is back on.

His business takes him back and forth across the Atlantic often. The Kamtschatka was one of his favorite ships, but no longer. Members of the crew know him on sight. When he announces his cabin number—105, lower berth—the steward reacts in such a way that Brisbane wonders if he was “the better for a glass.”

“I was wrong,” he tells his fellows, “and did the man injustice.”

He turns in early and finds, to his disappointment, that he has a roommate. A portmanteau, like his own, lies in the opposite corner. The upper berth has a rug and umbrella strewn across it.

When his roomie arrives, Brisbane’s in bed. He instantly looks down his nose at the stranger he watches through the slit in his curtains and declines to make his acquaintance. Sometime in the night, the roomie jumps from his berth and runs out of the cabin, leaving the door open. Annoyed, Brisbane gets up to shut it, composing a sternly worded lecture. He wakes again, feeling cold. The cabin smells of seawater. He hears someone (his roomie? Maaaaybe.) turning and perhaps groaning above him, ascribing the whole business to seasickness.

In the morning, he wakes alone in the room. News comes of a missing man.

Thoughts:

Brisbane is a skeptic. When he hears rumors that several of the former passengers in his cabin taking their lives by jumping overboard in the middle of the night, he brushes it off as a set of singular tragedies. It certainly doesn’t mean the ship is haunted because thar ain’t no such things as ghosts, ya know.

That thing with the porthole always being open? It’s the fault of an inattentive steward.

Despite receiving offers to stay in another cabin, he likes the idea that he no longer has to share and stays put. Unfortunately, he finds he’s not entirely alone.

This is creepy, with warnings from the steward and a doctor Brisbane meets during the day.

“It’s just what I call fuggly weather,” the doctor says at one point.

It’s safe to say the word “fuggly” probably had a different meaning in 1886.

There is also some humor. In the beginning, the narrator pokes fun at some of the club members’ attempts at conversation. Among them is Mr. Tompkins, of Boston, who “explained at elaborate length those working principles, by the due and careful maintenance of which the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fé Railroad not only extended its territory, increased its departmental influence, and transported live stock without starving them to death before the day of actual delivery, but, also, had for years succeeded in deceiving those passengers who bought its tickets into the fallacious belief that the corporation aforesaid was really able to transport human life without destroying it.”

This was a creepy little tale. I liked it.

The story can be read here.

An audio version is available here:

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 reviewed above.

Title: “The Upper Berth”
Author: F. Marion Crawford (1854-1909)
First published: Unwin’s Annual for 1886, The Broken Shaft: Tales in Mid-Ocean, 1885

Review of “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allen Poe Halloween Countdown

28) The Tell-Tale Heart by Edgar Allen Poe

Plot:

The narrator confesses to being nervous by nature, but he is not insane. His nervousness has increased his senses, not dulled them. His hearing is especially keen.

What first led him to do what he did? He doesn’t know. He loved the old man. The old man never insulted him. He didn’t desire his gold, But his eye—it was like a vulture’s eye. Whenever it fell on the narrator, his blood ran cold.

The narrator asks his audience to see how carefully he planned and executed his plan. Could a madman be so careful?

Thoughts:

This short tale is Poe at his best. The gore is minimal, but the sense of dread and the atmospheric horror ratchet up until the final lines. The irony is exquisite; the narrator denies he is insane. Look how carefully he planned his murder and how in control of himself he is as he relates the events. At the same time, he shows the reader in words and deeds that he is deeply disturbed.

I read this as not involving the supernatural at all. The tell-tale heart the narrator hears is not that of the old man he had just killed but his own, beating fast in reaction to stress. Of course, it is still a horror story because an innocent man has been murdered in cold blood. Poe tells the reader of the victim’s terror in his last moments.

I first read this story when I was about eleven (so long ago, the story was hot off the press…). It scared the bejesus out of me, though I couldn’t tell you why, other than maybe I was reacting to the increase in tension.

The story is remarkably compact. Everything leads up to the climax at the end. For a good horror read, it’s hard to beat.

This story can be read here.

The story can be listened to here, read by Christopher Lee (14:32)

Bio: Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849) wrote poetry and what some consider the first modern detective story, “The Murders in the Rue Morgue.” The Rue Morgue story detective, C. Auguste Dupin, was an inspiration for Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. The work that made Poe well-known in his time was the poem “The Raven.” Nevertheless, he struggled financially for most of his life and also struggled with alcohol. He died in Baltimore in a manner that still is not understood. According to the Poe Museum, there are more than twenty-six published theories.

Title: “The Tell-Tale Heart”
Author: Edgar Allen Poe (1809-1849)
First published: The Pioneer, January 1843

Review of “The Striding Place” by Gertrude Atherton Halloween Countdown

27) The Striding Place by Gertrude Atherton

Plot:

Weigall, “continental and detached,” has tired of grouse shooting. He finds the company at his host’s estate boring and the women “a dull lot.” What’s really bothering him is that his friend, Wyatt Gifford, a guest on a neighboring estate, has been missing for two days.

This angers Weigall more than anything else. Gifford likes to pull pranks. The two friends met in college. There, a mutual friend went mad and had to be confined to a hospital, where he later died. The mutual friend’s experience inspired Weigall and Gifford to discuss the nature and destiny of the soul.

Weigall eventually goes out to look for his friend, unadvisedly at night and in the rain. He comes to a part of the River Wharfe known as the Strid. Here, the river narrows, almost to the point where an adventurous person can leap across it. The rocky, slippery banks are undercut, trapping air-breathing animals beneath them, making any leaping quite dangerous.

It all gives Weigall the willies. He’s about to turn away when he sees something white in the water—a hand thrashing. At the wrists are cufflinks Weigall recognizes as belonging to his friend Gifford.

Thoughts:

This is a sad, spooky little tale. The shock ending contrasts nicely with the bored young man in the beginning.

Atherton gives the reader some nice atmospheric build-up along the way—the woods at night are mysterious and conceal the daylit world—the danger Weigall experiences of slipping on the wet rocks around the river’s edge—the revulsion he feels at the slimy water.

The Strid is a real place along the River Wharfe and just as dangerous as the story makes it out to be. It is in a scenic walking area.

The dangers have been known for centuries. Stories of people drowning date from medieval times.

I can recommend this story as a quiet little horror story.

The story can be read here.

The story can be listened to here via Librivox:

Bio: Gertrude Atherton (1857-1948) was born in San Francisco, California. On her mother’s side, she was a descendant of Benjamin Franklin. She published about 50 books over her lifetime, plus short stories and articles. Her first fantasy novel was What Dreams May Come: A Romance (1888) under the pseudonym Frank Lin. In addition to supernatural tales, she published novels and what might now be considered creative nonfiction about her family. The latter scandalized her husband and mother-in-law when they realized she was the anonymous author.

Title: “The Striding Place”
Author: Gertrude Atherton (1857-1948)
First published: First published as “The Twins” in The Speaker, June 20, 1896

Review of “The Shadows on the Wall” by Mary E. Wilkins Halloween Countdown

26) The Shadows on the Wall by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman

Plot:

“Henry had words with Edward in the study the night before Edward died,” Caroline Glynn tells her sisters.

Caroline and her two sisters, Rebecca Ann and Mrs. Stephen Brigham, are preparing for the funeral of their youngest brother, Edward, who lies in the house. They regret their brothers’ argument, but of course, Henry couldn’t have known that Edward was so near his end.

Rebecca Ann is the youngest of the sisters and weeps constantly. It becomes clear she is also terrified of something. Caroline, the eldest, is severe. She is writing letters, so neighbors have notice of the funeral. Mrs. Stephen Brigham (the author eventually gets around to calling her Emma) is sewing her funeral dress. “I can’t go to the funeral without it.”

As daylight wanes, they ask Rebecca Ann to get them a lamp. She hesitates, then puts it in a place that won’t do them much good. After she finally sets the lamp down in a satisfactory place, she runs from the room.

Emma looks up from her sewing to see an odd shadow on the wall, where one wouldn’t expect it. And it looks just like—but no, that’s impossible. When she asks Caroline if she sees the shadow, Caroline says, “I have eyes, don’t I?”

Henry thought Edward was freeloading, staying in the house without paying rent, although their parents left the house to all of them.

Rebecca Ann recounts part of the argument between the brothers she overheard. “[Edward said] that he would stay here as long as he lived and afterward, too, if he was of a mind to, and he would like to see Henry get him out.”

The siblings talk on but ignore a more sinister recollection of Rebecca Ann’s—something that might account for her tears and terror.

Thoughts:

A quick pass through this story will not serve the reader well. There are a lot of subtle and, frankly, tedious things that hide the true horror of this piece. The shadow on the wall does not move or threaten. It reminds. It haunts, and it does not look away.

The sisters know what occurred but will not acknowledge it. It’s too monstrous.

All this makes no sense until the end of the story, which is hard to pin down.

The story inspired a Night Gallery segment, “Certain Shadows on the Wall.”

The story can be read here:

The story can be listened to here via Librivox:

Bio: Mary E. Wilkins (1852-1930) began writing children’s literature as a teenager. Most of her two hundred stories for adults are realistic, such as “A New England Nun.” She also wrote ghost and supernatural stories.

Title: “The Shadows on the Wall”
Author: Mary E. Wilkins (1852-1930)
First published: Everybody’s Magazine, March 1903

Review of “Lazarus” by Leonid Andreyev Halloween Countdown

25) “Lazarus” by Leonid Andreyev

Plot:

According to the Bible story, Lazarus and his sisters Mary and Martha were friends of Jesus. Lazarus died and was buried while Jesus was in another town. He returned to find Mary and Martha in mourning, asked someone to roll the stone away from Lazarus’ tomb, and brought him back from the dead, much to the joy of his sisters. Not much is said about what happened to Lazarus after this. This story speculates about a possibility.

The story begins just after Lazarus has come back home to his sisters. He still looks like a corpse—sunken cheeks, blue lips, long fingers—and doesn’t say much. Before, he was a cheerful person who loved a joke, one of the reasons Jesus liked his company.

His friends and neighbors rejoice and dress him in the finest clothes they can find so that he looks like a bridegroom—except, of course, for the corpse-like appearance of his body, which will fade with time but never disappear.

One of the guests asks, “Why dost thou not tell us what happened Yonder?”

The party is over.

Thoughts:

The Bible story is often told as one of great joy, a precursor to Jesus’ resurrection. Andreyev turns all this on its head and offers the reader a portrait of something beyond despair. Is Lazarus sad? That’s impossible to say. People who look into the black discs of his eyes are no longer capable of joy. Lazarus says nothing about the Yonder, nor of his journey. They see it in his eyes.

Lazarus appears to experience neither sorrow nor joy.

The author tells the reader:

“For three days had he been dead: thrice had the sun risen and set, but he had been dead; children had played, streams murmured over pebbles, the wayfarer had lifted up hot dust in the highroad,—but he had been dead. And now he is again among them,—touches them,—looks at them,—looks at them! and through the black discs of his pupils, as through darkened glass, stares the unknowable Yonder.”

Interestingly enough, while most people are devastated by a glance into his eyes, not everyone reacts the same. Innocent children don’t seem bothered, nor is a particular artist.

Lazarus sits in the heat of the desert sun because he can no longer get warm. Some wounds don’t heal.

The piece is atmospheric and heavy with relentless despair.

The story can be read here.

The story can be listened to here via Librovox.

Bio: Author Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919) was born in the city of Orel, located about 229 miles (368 km) outside Moscow. While working as a police court reporter, he published a few poems which came to the attention of Russian literary great Maxim Gorky, who encouraged him to pursue literature. Among Andreyev’s best-known works are the 1908 novella The Seven Who Were Hanged and 1915 play He Who Gets Slapped. His horror short story works, published in translation in Weird Tales, influenced H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, the creator of Conan the Barbarian.

Title: “Lazarus”
Author: Leonid Andreyev (1871-1919)
First published: First published in Russian in 1906; in English in 1918 in the anthology I Lazarus / The Gentleman from San Francisco; translator Abraham Yarmolinsky

Review of “Out of the Deep” by Walter de la Mare Halloween Countdown

24) “Out of the Deep” by Walter de la Mare

Plot:

Jimmie’s Uncle Timothy has left him the house he grew up in as a neglected and unwanted child. After exhausting all alternatives, Jimmie moves in. He has no happy memories of living there. Relegated to an attic room without heat or light, he was reassured by his Aunt Charlotte that he could ring for Soames, the butler, for anything he needed. The self-righteous Soames (perhaps an out-of-wedlock or unfortunate relative of Uncle Timothy) enjoyed boxing Jimmie’s ears when no one was looking.

Presently, the only other person in the house is “his one funny charwoman,” Mrs. Thripps, who goes home at night.

Half-asleep in the same bed his uncle once used, he pulls the bell rope. An unobtrusive valet—a young man—appears. He appears the next morning as well. Jimmie refers to him as Soames Jr.

Later, a young girl appears, bringing the bowl of primroses Jimmie requested. He verbally abuses her and throws the bowl over the railing, smashing it. Mrs. Thripps is unable to find a trace of it in the morning.

Soams Jr. and the young girl are not the only members of the “Night Shift”—as Jimmie calls them—who appear when he pulls the bell rope.

Thoughts:

The reader sympathizes with Jimmie. He grew up sleeping in an unheated attic room with no lights, terrified of the unseen things that came out in the dark, yet even more terrified of calling for help from Soames.

Yet, when he spoke, I wanted to slap him. In selling some of the items from the house, he asks for a price well below their worth, like a thief. He says to the dealer (“nicely slurring his r’s,” the reader is told):

“Really, Mr. So-and-so, it is impossible. No doubt the things have an artificial value, but not for me. I must ask you to oblige me by giving me only half the sum you have kindly mentioned. Rather that [sic] accept your figure, you know, I would—well, perhaps it would be impolite to tell you what I would prefer to do. Dies irae, dies ila, and so on.”

Jimmie still has trouble sleeping, though he is no longer the little boy who lay awake at night terrified of the things in the dark, and those who abused him are dead. Mrs. Thripps asks him to allow her to call a doctor, but he brushes her off, sweetly.

While there are no great moments of terror or jumps, the horror is always present, like the memory of an abusive childhood, perhaps. Jimmie cuts himself off from all his former friends for reasons he doesn’t quite understand. He just wants to be alone.

This takes a bit of close reading. I had to read it a couple of times.

This story can be listened to here:

Bio: Author Walter de la Mare (1873-1956) worked as a clerk in the Department of Statistics for Standard Oil. Upon retirement, his pension allowed him to write full-time. He wrote fantasy primarily for children but also some works for adults. Among his most well-known works are the children’s fantasy poem, “The Listeners” and the novel, Memoirs of a Midget. He was influenced by the Christian fantasy writer George MacDonald.

Title: “Out of the Deep”
Author: Walter de la Mare (1873-1956)
First published: The Riddle and Other Stories, May 1923

Review of “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady” by Vernon Lee Halloween Countdown

23) “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady” by Vernon Lee

Plot:

Prince Alberic grows up as the heir and ward of his grandfather, Duke Balthasar Maria. The Prince is closer to his nurse than to the Duke. In his room, he has a faded tapestry that he barely understands, but he’s intrigued by the border. The nurse tells him the names of some of the plants and flowers. She also tells him those animals are called “rabbits.” The couple in the center are his ancestors, Alberic the Blond and the Snake Lady Oriana. They seem very much in love.

He’s all the more intrigued.

The Duke, however, says he wants nothing to do with the nonsense on the tapestry and replaces it with one depicting Susana and the Elders. Alberic destroys the new tapestry. Rearrangement of the furniture later reveals that the Snake Lady Oriana is part beautiful woman and part snake. Alberic doesn’t care.

The news of destruction of the perfectly good tapestry does not immediately reach the Duke, who is busy composing ballets and spending the ducal treasury on a magnificent mausoleum for himself in a grotto. When he does at last hear of what Alberic has done, he banishes the Prince to the Castle of Sparkling Waters, a ruined ancestral palace inhabited only by a peasant family.

Or so he thinks. For there, Alberic meets a snake he takes for a pet. He also meets a beautiful woman who tells him she is his godmother. She will come to him every day, but he must never tell the Duke about her.

Thoughts:

This is a fairy tale, albeit a dark one. The reader hopes for the best for the little dreamer Alberic. He’s lost his mom and dad, and he’s an afterthought to his grandfather. Even banishment doesn’t break his spirit. With the help of the *cough* godmother, he reads the classics, learns how to ride, and handle a sword. When his grandfather recalls him, he’s already quite the accomplished young gentleman.

The reader never finds out what the Snake Lady’s intentions are. Does she fall in love and want to be human, like the little mermaid? Or does she want to lead a soul to perdition?

The chapters are short, but this takes a while to get through. I enjoyed it, but it would probably appeal to a narrow audience.

Bio: Vernon Lee is a pseudonym for Violet Paget (1856-1935). Paget is best known as a writer of supernatural fiction. She was born in France to British parents but lived in Italy, where much of her fiction is set. She also wrote essays on art, music, and travel.

The story can be listened to here.

Title: “Prince Alberic and the Snake Lady”
Author: Vernon Lee (legal name: Violet Paget) (1856-1935)
First published: The Yellow Book, July 1896

Review of “The Monkey’s Paw” by W. W. Jacobs Halloween Countdown

22) The Monkey’s Paw by W. W. Jacobs

Plot:

In turn-of-the-20^th-century Great Britain, an older couple, the Whites, live in a remote area with their son, Herbert. On a stormy night, a visitor, Sergeant-Major Morris, an acquaintance of Mr. White’s, arrives and regales the family with tales of his time in India. He brings a talisman, a mummified monkey’s paw. ICK.

Morris says, “An old fakir—a very holy man—put a spell on it.” Three men can have three wishes. “He wanted to show that fate ruled people’s lives, and that those who tried to change it would be sorry.”

He says he’s gotten his three wishes, and he’s sorry. No surprise that he leaves the monkey’s paw with the White family. Mr. White wishes for 200 pounds.

Thoughts:

This is a gloomy little piece, with the bad weather around the Sergeant-Major’s arrival, his continued warnings about the monkey’s paw, and his obvious relief to be rid of it.

The greater tragedy is that the family is a happy one. They are not rich, but they love one another and enjoy teasing each other. The punishment far outweighs the crime.

So, is the point to never want more than you have? That seems a bit harsh. The 200 pounds is not an indulgence. It is the amount needed to pay off the house, that is, to get out of debt. Mr. White’s wish is not extravagant. When the family is debating what they want, he says at one point, “I have all I want.” Greed is not involved, yet the family receives a horrible punishment.

Don’t mess with fate. Be careful what you wish for because you might get it.

The story is often anthologized. It is short and can easily be read in one sitting.

The story can be read here.

The story can be listened to as a radio drama here.

Title: The Monkey’s Paw
Author: W.W. Jacobs (1863-1943)
First published: Harper’s Monthly Magazine, September 1902