5) “The Double Admiral” by John Metcalfe
Plot:
Bishop John Charles receives a letter from an old friend, a retired admiral named Hood, inviting him up to spend a weekend at his seaside bungalow in Hampshire. John Charles hasn’t seen Hood for a while, but he’s heard rumors about him. He also knows he is in failing health and thinks he detected some hints of something more urgent than a simple request for company.
The bishop accepts the invitation. When Hood meets him, he appears none too well. John Charles hides his disappointment at finding that a man called Beverly, whom he despises as an “ineffective psychologist,” is also visiting.
Hood has asked the two men to come because an amorphous something, like the brownish island glimpsed on the horizon, is slowly draining the life from him.
Thoughts:
The island that is sometimes there and sometimes not got me thinking of the Fata Morgana phenomena, a product of the refraction of light. It has to do with distant objects—ships, islands, other items—appearing inverted and above water or flat land.
One school of thought is that this may be the origin of the legend of the Flying Dutchman—a ship doomed to sail forever and kidnap the unwary, like those skipping church. I don’t know if this is what author Metcalfe had in mind, but it rang a few bells. Aside wandering down that rabbit hole, this is a creepy story.
The bishop pooh-poohs the admiral’s fears but can’t deny his friend is doing poorly. He and (that quack!) psychologist try to do their best for him.
The surprise at the end is dreadful, but not without its cuteness. I might have had a little trouble buying into the premise, but I liked the ending.
YouTube (with obnoxious introduction): here
Bio: William John Metcalfe (1891-1965) was born in the UK. He is best known for horror and weird stories. He earned a degree in philosophy from the University of London and taught in Paris until the outbreak of WWI, then served in the British Royal Naval Air Service and Royal Air Corps. After the war, he taught in the UK and began writing. After publishing his first short story collection, The Smoking Leg and Other Stories, he wrote full-time. He taught in the UK and the US after WWII. He married American novelist Evelyn Scott.
Title: “The Double Admiral”
Author: John Metcalfe (1891-1965)
First published: The Smoking Leg and Other Stories 1925
Review of “Caterpillars” by E. F. Benson
4) “Caterpillars” by E. F. Benson
The nameless narrator recounts how he sensed something was wrong the moment he set foot in the Villa Cascana—although it was a delightful house. When he saw letters on the table waiting for him, he thought perhaps there was some terrible news, but this was not so.
The hostess has left one room unoccupied. The narrator is assigned rooms at the top of the house. Though he seldom has trouble sleeping, that night he tosses and turns. In his dreams—if they are dreams—he dresses and descends the stairs. In the unoccupied room, he sees a writhing mass of what appears to be overgrown caterpillar-like beasts. They differ from caterpillars in some notable respects—their feet have claws, for one. When they approach him, apparently aware of him, he slams the door shut and flees.
Thoughts:
This is the stuff of nightmares. Is he dreaming? Are similar sequences, when he sees danger but can only stand on the staircase landing, unable to prevent it or even call out, a description of sleep paralysis? This is executed nicely and is terrifyingly told.
All this is undercut, however, by the story’s opening lines, which tell the reader that the Villa Cascana is being torn down. Whatever the narrator once saw it’s gone. And that other casualty (or maybe two), well, those poor souls. The news of the tragedy arrives via an innocent third party, who does so without understanding the narrator’s experience, adding to the horror.
This is a very short piece and can easily be read in a single sitting.
The story can be read here.
Audiobook available here Librivox.
Bio.: E. F. (Edward Frederick) Benson (1867-1940) was a British writer now known for his ghost and supernatural stories. He also wrote non-supernatural novels, including the popular Dodo (1893), satirizing composer and suffragist Ethel Smyth. Later in life, he wrote the Mapp and Lucia series, also non-supernatural.
Title: “Caterpillars”
Author: E. F. (Edward Frederick) Benson (1867-1940)
First published: The Room in the Tower and Other Stories (Collection), 1912
Review of “The Beckoning Fair One” by Oliver Onions Halloween Countdown
Plot:
Forty-four-year-old novelist Paul Oleron rents the first floor of a house to finish his novel, Romilly Bishop. He has fifteen chapters. He needs a quiet, pleasant place to concentrate. The house needs a bit of sprucing up. He hires people to paint and then moves in some furniture he has in storage that his grandmother left him. Everything is perfect.
…except he can’t concentrate. Too much noise comes in from the street. He goes for walks. He’s made no progress, though his funds are finite, and his publisher is expecting a new book by fall.
The dripping tap distracts him. He hears a rhythm in it. He hums a tune with the same rhythm. The housekeeper tells him it’s an old ditty called “The Beckoning Fair One” that he doesn’t know.
An old friend, Elsie Bengough, visits one day. Elsie, the author tells the reader, is “an unattached journalist of thirty-four, large, showy, fair as butter, pink as a dog-rose, reminding one of a florist’s picked specimen bloom, and given to sudden and ample movements and moist and explosive utterances.”
Oleron is in the habit of showing her his work. He trusts her judgment. “She, in return for his confidence, always kept all mention of her own work sedulously from him. His, she said, was ‘real work’; hers merely filled space, not always even grammatically,” the author says.
Hmmm…
Oleron tells her he’s thinking of rewriting the character of Romilly.
Elsie objects. When she opens a window to let in air, she injures her hand on a nail. Oleron is mortified. He thought he had removed all nails from the shut windows while renovating the house. She leaves, refusing his offers of help.
While Oleron is drowsing before a fire, thinking of the new Romilly, he hears a noise that could only be someone brushing long hair. He now believes he’s not alone in the house, and the other presence is hostile to Elsie.
When his friend next stops by, she doesn’t even enter the house. Her foot falls through the steps leading up to the porch. Again, she refuses help. She says, “I’m not wanted,” and leaves, promising to visit a doctor.
Oleron himself changes, sees fewer reasons to leave the house, and doesn’t answer reasonable questions from his publisher about the promised manuscript.
Thoughts:
This is a sad little tale. Oleron doesn’t have a perfect life but throws away what he has in pursuit of perfection. “When I have things this way, then I’ll create my masterpiece,” he seems to say. The perfect is the enemy of the good.
“Youth always thinks it knows; then one day it discovers it is nearly fifty,” he tells Elsie.
To add insult to injury, Oleron has already realized this. He realizes Romilly’s character is based on Elsie, and that if he asked, Elsie would marry him. Elsie tells him he will never finish his book in the house, despite how nicely he’s fixed it up. On some level, Elsie is aware of another presence/ghost/woman or something between the two of them, though she never articulates it.
Some reader see it as all a product of Oleron’s imagination and the tragedy that follows as a result of a psychotic break, not ghostly revenge.
Because much of it takes place in Oleron’s head, the story may strike the modern reader as a little slow. Outside of warnings about renting the house, little tells the reader of the horror to come, though it builds as Oleron slowly loses his grip on the everyday world.
This is sad, but worth a read if the reader is patient.
The story can be read here.
Listen to via Librivox here.
Bio: Oliver Onions (1873-1961) was a British writer, born Oliver George Onions. He legally changed his name to Oliver George but continued to use Oliver Onions to publish. He trained as a commercial artist. He later came to be known for his ghost stories and stories of the fantastic, often dealing with reality and perception.
Title: “The Beckoning Fair One
Author: Oliver Onions (1873-1961)
First published: Widdershins, January 17, 1911
Review of “The Ash-Tree” by M. R. James Halloween Countdown
2) “The Ash-Tree” by M. R. James
In describing the country estate of Castringham Hall in Suffolk, the narrator remarks, “The one feature that marked out the house from a score of others is gone. As you looked at it from the park, you saw [in times past] on the right a great old ash-tree growing within half a dozen yards of the wall, and almost or quite touching the building with its branches…. At any rate, it had well-nigh attained its full dimension in the year 1690.”
That year, the owner of the hall, Sir Mathew Fell, who was also the deputy sheriff, testified against Mrs. Mothersole as a witch. He said he saw her gather sprigs from the ash tree. At her execution, she told Sir Mathew, “There will be guests at the Hall.”
The Vicar visited Sir Matthew one evening shortly after Mrs. Mothersole’s death. They saw something run up the ash tree. Sir Matthew complained of squirrels. Could it be a squirrel? Squirrels should be in their nests by nightfall.
The Vicar said nothing, but he could have sworn whatever was running up the tree had more than four legs.
The next morning, Sir Matthew was found dead, his body blackened as if he were poisoned. People blamed the Catholics.
The story continues into the time of Sir Mathew’s grandson, Sir Richard, who removes the graves of the less fortunate when he expands the chapel to make for a great family pew. One of those less fortunate is Mrs. Mothersole.
Thoughts:
Part of the creepiness of this story lies in its delivery. An old friend could be talking about an odd occurrence that other day, not a growing horror and a witch’s revenge from beyond the grave over a century or so. One character, a clergyman from Ireland, says that none of his parishioners would stand an ash tree on his land.
James ratchets up the tension nicely. Things get quietly creepier. He leaves the ultimate horror for the end (which has nothing to do with Catholics, BTW) but drops little hints along the way. People stop using the room Sir Matthew died in, but what do you do if you have a house full of guests?
While this may not be one of James’ best stories, it works. I rather like it.
The story can be read here.
Bio: M. R. James (1862-1936) was a medieval scholar at Cambridge who told ghost stories to his fellow dons at Christmas. His stories tend to find the supernatural in the everyday rather than gothic tales, which focus on atmosphere—graveyards, abandoned houses, weather, etc. Among his most well-known is “Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad.”
Title: The Ash-Tree
Author: M. R. James (1862-1936)
First published: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, 1904
Review of “The Ambitious Guest” by Nathaniel Hawthorne: Halloween Countdown
This is the first of what I thirty-one reviews of horror/ghost short stories I have planned for October as a Halloween countdown. Enjoy and wish me luck.
1) “The Ambitious Guest” by Nathaniel Hawthorne
A family runs an inn in a remote area of the White Mountains of New Hampshire. They are happy. Because their cottage sits on the road between Maine on the one side and the Green Mountains and the St. Lawrence on the other, they receive a lot of traffic. The stagecoach always stops by their door, bringing news and company.
Danger lurks by their home as well; steep mountains tower over their cottage. They often hear rockslides, startling them in the night.
One night a stranger, a young man (who is never named), arrives on foot. The family makes him welcome. He feels at ease, almost as if he were family, and tells them he is on his way to Burlington, Vermont, and beyond.
After dinner, the young man starts talking about his future. He has yet to achieve anything, but he has plans. He tells the family, “But I cannot die till I have achieved my destiny. Then, let Death come! I shall have built my monument!”
There’d be no story if it worked out that way, would there?
Thoughts:
Hawthorne uses the expected florid nineteenth-century prose to tell his tale, all the stuff that made The Scarlett Letter such a slog in high school. This sad little yarn starts in a remote but happy place. The young man is at first downcast but warms to the happy family. He acknowledges his long road ahead—both the literal and the metaphorical ones—but sees this as a challenge, not a burden. Hawthorne even hints that love might spark between the visitor and the family’s seventeen-year-old daughter.
The reader sympathizes with the family and their guest, who are all good—if perhaps naïve—people. They’ve planned but cannot see all possibilities. Nature has the last word, and nature is as cruel as it is indifferent.
Hawthorne based “The Ambitious Guest” on a real-life disaster, the 1826 Willey Tragedy (The Willey Family Tragedy | Appalachian Mountain Club (AMC) (outdoors.org)), in which seven members of the Willey family plus two hired hands lost their lives following flooding and an avalanche.
This short read is easily finished in one sitting. My experience was not so much of horror but simple sadness.
“The Ambitious Guest” was collected in Hawthorne’s work, Twice-Told Tales.
The story can be read here. (The Project Gutenberg eBook of Twice-Told Tales, by Nathaniel Hawthorne)
YouTube: The Ambitious Guest – Nathaniel Hawthorne (audiobook) – YouTube
Librivox: Twice Told Tales by Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 – 1864): The Ambitious Guest on Apple Podcasts
Bio: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864) was an American fiction writer whose Romantic-era short stories and novels center on themes of morality and the sinful nature of humans. He was born in New England, and some of his Puritan ancestors took part in persecuting accused witches during the Salem witch trials. In his 20s, he added a “w” to his surname to distance himself from them.
He was a friend of Franklin Pierce, who later became the fourteenth president. In college, he met poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, future congressman Jonathan Cilley, and future naval reformer Horatio Bridge. After meeting Hawthorne, author Herman Melville dedicated Moby Dick to him.
Among Hawthorne’s writing are: The Scalet Letter (as anyone who went to high school in the United States knows), Twice-Told Tales, The House of the Seven Gables, and Tanglewood Tales.
Title: “The Ambitious Guest”
Author: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
First published: New England Magazine, June 1835
Review of “The Last Word: The New York Times Book of Obituaries and Farewells A Celebration of Unusual Lives” Edited by Marvin Siegel
The Stuff:
This book is a collection of approximately 90 obituaries and write-ups from the New York Times Magazine. The focus is on interesting lives, regardless of whether the person was famous or lived an everyday life. Not all are saints. One is a reputed gangster, whom one acquaintance referred to as “a nice man.”
Most selections are positive, leaving you believing the person had a good run. A few are heart-wrenching, like that of seven-year-old pilot Jessica Dubroff, who died in a plane crash with her father and flight instructor after taking off in bad weather while trying to fly across the country.
In his foreword, Russell Baker writes, “The rule here is: no giants… the nature of twentieth-century life has also been shaped by multitudes of whom most of us have never heard.” (p. vii)
Typical of the sort of person included is Anne Scheiber, though her story is hardly typical. Scheiber retired from the IRS in 1944 with some $5000 in savings. She lived quietly but invested aggressively. By the time of her death in 1995 at 101, she’d built a nest egg of $22 million, which she bequeathed to the Yeshiva University for women students. She’d never attended the school, nor had the school ever heard of her. The donation was her way of empowering women after experiencing discrimination during her time at the IRS.
There are some limits, of course. The obits are from one newspaper—The New York Times—and are from a short period of time. Most are from the 1990s, with a few from the 1980s. Most (though not all) are of white people from the East Coast. Yet what a slice of human experience!
Thoughts:
No organizing principle, either by topic or chronology, seems to order the selections. An entry for Zora Arkus-Duntov, an engineer who popularized the Corvette and died in April 1996, follows one for Fred Rosenstiel, who was independently wealthy and liked to plant gardens in New York. Rosenstiel died in June 1995.
Of course, reading this brings sadness. One sees grieving families. Even when a particular death is best viewed as a release from suffering, there is always grief for the life that was. For example, in “The Long Good-bye” (p. 411), Dudley Clendinen writes, “My cousin Florence Hosch finally died the Wednesday before Christmas about a thousand days after she wished to.” Florence, he tells the reader, was nearly ninety-three. She had ninety good years, but the last three years were wretched.
I once read an article about the current generation trying to use Windows 95 on hardware then in use. “You mean you have to turn the monitor on?” I’ve joked about the anachronistic skill I recall of being able to center text on something called a typewriter.
In his foreword, Russell Baker writes:
“Consider the multitudes who once knew how to cook in an open fireplace, how to harness a horse to a buggy, how to hand-crank a tin lizzie on a freezing morning, how to butcher a hog, how to bake a cake from scratch, how to bank a coal furnace.” (p. viii)
With the passing of generations, such ready knowledge is often lost.
The last entry was of those buried in Potter’s Field on Hart Island, unclaimed bodies and infants. A group of inmates lives there and attends to the burials.
This brought to mind the refrigerator trucks NYC used at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to hold the bodies of those lost to the disease. A distant relative of mine passed away about the same time, not to COVID, but to a constellation of conditions arising from chronic alcoholism—at the age of thirty-four!
It made the words of one of the workers burying the unclaimed bodies all the more poignant: “Ought to worry about these poor folks when they’re alive. Not now.”
No one gets out of this alive, so it’s best to try to make something of what we’ve got while we’re here—kindness to family, friends, and strangers; finding joy; and perhaps learning to bake a cake from scratch—even if we don’t get written up in The New York Times. Life is finite and thus precious.
Title: The Last Word: The New York Times Book of Obituaries and Farewells
Author: Ed. Marvin Siegel
First published: 1997
Review of “The Man in the White Suit” (1951)
Another departure from our usual monster/horror movie for Saturday night is this black-and-white satire of the idealistic individual who upsets everybody’s applecart. It brought to mind a bit of Ayn Rand’s Anthem, Rush’s 2112, and the end of the original Frankenstein movie, but added a bit of humor.
Plot:
Hapless Sidney Stratton (a really young Alec Guinness) has been requisitioning himself lab equipment at the textile mill where he works to help develop what he believes will be a revolutionary new fabric—one that never needs to be cleaned and does not deteriorate. Think of the convenience! Think of the time not spent on laundry! Or money not spent on having to buy new clothes!
His plot is soon uncovered and his separation from his employer follows one of many such separations. Through a set of unlikely circumstances, he finds himself helping to install new equipment at a rival mill. He’s not an employee yet…
He sets up a newer, bigger rig. Alan Birnley (Cecil Parker), the head of this mill, sees the virtue of what Sidney is doing. He even pays for some radioactive thorium.
After some explosions, Sidney succeeds. He has a suit made. It is bright white because the material won’t take a dye. At first, Birnley is delighted, but some of his cohorts mention that it will hurt their business if everyone starts wearing clothes that don’t need to be cleaned or replaced.
“Are you mad?” a fellow miller-owner asks. “It’ll knock the bottom out of everything right down to the primary producers. What about the sheep farmers, the cotton growers, the importers, and the middlemen? It’ll ruin all of them.”
“Let’s stick to the point. What about us?” another chimes in.
Seeing things in a different light, Birnley attempts to buy the formula from Sidney. He can’t be bought and seeks refuge among friends, the labor unionists. He’s surprised to learn they are angry about the new fabric as well. They lock him up.
Thoughts:
The movie has a great deal of silliness, beginning with Sidney’s requisitioning lab equipment for himself. Other lab workers don’t know what the machine he made is. It makes noises like a calliope and sometimes lets off a bit of steam, but to what end? Where did it come from? What is it doing? What are the charge numbers? The look on Sidney’s face while people try to puzzle these questions out is priceless.
Sidney is used to managers not hearing his crackpot ideas and firing him when he goes ahead with work on his own. An eternal optimist, he’s sure he’s on to something if only small-minded people will give him a chance.
And when the manufacturers turn against him or want to buy his formula to suppress it, won’t trade unionists and workers support him? The eternal optimist doesn’t understand until he’s told that fabric that doesn’t wear out means only one suit will be made. Workers will lose their jobs. No one besides him wants this cloth made.
Even Sidney’s landlady, Mrs. Watson (Edie Martin), snaps at him, “Why can’t you scientists leave things alone? What about my bit of washing when there’s no washing to do?”
One can’t help but feel for Sidney. He only wants to make the world a better place (and get rich). Especially disappointing is when his neighbor, the unionist Bertha (Vida Hope), locks him in an apartment for his own good. A passing child, Gladdie (Mandie Miller), helps secure his release.
The final chase scene, with both the workers and the industrialists’ muscle chasing poor Sidney through the streets, brings to mind the peasants with torches and pitchforks chasing after the Frankenstein monster.
This movie won the 1952 Top Foreign Film Award from the National Board of Review (USA). It was also nominated for the 1953 Best Writing (Screenplay) by the Academy Awards (USA) and nominated by BAFTA for 1951 Best British Film and Best Film from any Source.
The film can be watched here.
Title: The Man in the White Suit (1951)
Directed by
Alexander Mackendrick
Writing Credits
Roger MacDougall…(play)
Roger MacDougall…(screenplay) &
John Dighton …(screenplay) &
Alexander Mackendrick…(screenplay)
Cast (in credits order)
Alec Guinness…Sidney Stratton
Joan Greenwood…Daphne Birnley
Cecil Parker…Alan Birnley
Michael Gough…Michael Corland
Ernest Thesiger…Sir John Kierla
Released: 1951
Length: 1 hour, 25 minutes
Review of “Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life” by Anne Lamott
The Stuff:
This book consists of short, interrelated essays and anecdotes on writing and being a writer—being a human—grouped around larger themes. The parts are 1) Writing, 2) The Writing Frame of Mind, 3) Help Along the Way, 4) Publication and Other Reasons to Write, and 5) The Last Class.
One of the essays in the “Writing” section is titled “Shitty First Drafts.” Here, Lamott writes, “All good writers write [shitty first drafts]. This is how we end up with good second drafts and terrific third drafts.”
She then goes on to say that despite the perception that some great writers can sit down and hammer out a perfect draft, “Not one of them writes elegant first drafts. All right, one of them does, but we do not like her very much.” (pp. 21-22)
This sets the tenor for the whole book.
Thoughts:
I laughed a lot while reading this. Lamott has many good one-liners. She is not afraid to be vulnerable or show her own failings. When a newbie writing friend keeps calling to extol her sudden unexpected success (“I don’t know why God is sending me so much money this year!”), Lamott is supportive of her friend but shows the reader how jealous she is. The reader sees her trying to rid herself of that jealousy and anger. Something occurs to her to see it from a new perspective.
The idea of writer’s block also arises. She discusses this in her typical roundabout way. See it not as a block but as a well that’s gone dry. Maybe you need a change of pace. Maybe you need to remember.
While I found the book a pleasant read, I hesitate to say that it was helpful with respect to writing. Lamott is a cheerleader—nothing wrong with that. But for me, it was too amorphous and vague. It was as if she expected the reader to get her points by osmosis, as if she were saying something like:
“Now get out there and write! Yeah, it’ll suck, and you’ll want to do something more fun. Just do a little bit. And do a little more. Do what you want to do. Make what you’ve written suck less.”
Many people enjoy this book. It is indeed enjoyable. Helpful? Maybe.
Bio: Anne Lamott (b. 1954) is an American author, writer, teacher, and speaker. She is the daughter of the late writer Kenneth Lamott. Among her works are Imperfect Birds (2010) and Small Victories: Spotting Improbable Moments of Grace (2014).
Title: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
Author: Anne Lamott (b. 1954)
First published: 1994
Flash Fiction Published: “Words to Live By”
A little early for Halloween, but a flash fiction piece of mine, “Words to Live By,” was published in an online magazine titled Danse Macabre.
I always liked this silly little piece about a university professor who is friends with the ghost of a mariner from days gone by. The captain has a fondness for rum and something of a potty mouth. Unfortunately, our hero Amelia also runs afoul of a demon.
This was a lot of fun to write.
Plunder: a Poem
A curious kitten
Disappeared into the bush.
She reappeared, a leaf in her mouth and
Cobwebs over her ears.
Reviews of Old and New Stories. Mostly Old 