Robert Aickman - Fontana Ghost 2

[dem bones]

Robert Aickman (ed.) - The 2nd. Fontana Book Of Great Ghost Stories . (1966)

Alan Lee

Introduction - Robert Aickman

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Playing With Fire
Edith Nesbit - Man-Size in Marble
Robert Hichens - How Love came to Professor Guildea
Elizabeth Bowen - The Demon Lover
Sir Max Beerbohm - A. V. Laider
Edgar Allan Poe - The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar
Lord Dunsany - Our Distant Cousins
Robert Aickman - The Inner Room
Perceval Landon - Thurnley Abbey
John Metcalfe - Nightmare Jack
Ambrose Bierce - The Damned Thing
Edith Wharton - Afterward

Wasn't much taken with the Dunsany offering but this is certainly one of Aickman's best selections, showcasing some of the most horrible spectres in the literature. How Love came to Professor Guildea is one of a select few stories I refuse to re-read for fear of it not having the same effect the second time around. It has vague similarities to Oliver Onions' likewise magnificent The Beckoning Fair One but whereas Paul Olerton had a succubus to contend with, the protagonist of Hichens' novella is tormented by a retarded spook who is totally besotted with him. Also includes:

Elizabeth Bowen - The Demon Lover: Mrs. Drover returns to her boarded-up home in bomb-ravaged London in keeping with a promise she made her soldier fiance on the ever of his departure to France twenty-five years earlier. He never returned and was presumed missing in action. Mrs. Drover secretly saw this as a lucky escape - he was extremely hard going.

As the agreed hour arrives, her nerves overcome her - the letter from the “dead” lover awaiting her on the table didn’t help - and Mrs. Drover rushes into the street to hail a taxi. Even if you guess the ending, this story packs one of the creepiest endings this side of Elizabeth Jane Howard’s Three Miles Up or Burrage’s One Who Saw.

Edgar Allan Poe - The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar: "His face wore a leaden hue: the eyes were utterly lustreless and the emaciation was so extreme, that the skin had been broken through by the cheek-bones. His expectoration was excessive."

Take a fond, lingering look because that's the best author and bibliophile M. Ernest Valdemar gets to look at any point during the story. The dying man has agreed to his friend P---'s macabre request that he allows himself to be mesmerised on his death bed. It all goes far better than anybody could've reasonably have wished - seven months after his passing Valdemar is showing no sign of decomposition - but then P-- makes a fatal miscalculation. Rousing Valdemar from his trance, he asks "Can you explain to us what are your feelings or wishes now ?"

That ending. The first time I read this I laughed so hard I nearly went into a seizure. I've been back to it several times over the years and it still strikes me as one of the most cruelly funny things I ever read.

Arthur Conan-Doyle - Playing With Fire: A seance where ordinary, intelligent people unleash a zany, evil force - with terrifying results ..... London. The small party at 17 Badderley Gardens will never again realise the same success they enjoyed the night M. Paul de Duc joined them for a seance. M de Duc believes that "when you imagine a thing you make a thing" - a terrifying concept - and on this evidence, he's right. First, via medium Mrs. Delamere, a chatty spirit gives the assembled invaluable insight into the afterlife, then the Frenchman rather foolishly conducts his experiment ... and materialises a unicorn.

Which promptly goes berserk.


Perceval Landon - Thurnley Abbey: Broughton inherits the country house which dates from pre-reformation days and urgently requests that his friend Calvin pays a visit. The previous occupant, Clarke, a hermit and miser, put it about that the place was haunted by the spectre of a walled-up nun and popular local opinion has it that he was right. When Calvin sets eyes on Broughton he's struck by how rapidly his health has declined in the few months he's lived here. That night he receives a visitor in his room ...

Aickman points out in his introduction to Thurnley Abbey that full-on encounters with ghosts have fallen out of vogue, and mores the pity. Calvin's eyeball to sunken eyeball encounter with the rotting, shrunken sister is one of the most memorably horrific in the literature.

Edith Nesbit - Man-Size in Marble: Brenzett village. The church houses two statues commemorating wealthy knights of evil repute. Local legend has it that these huge marble figures rise from the slab at eleven on Halloween and walk abroad. The narrator and his timid wife Laura, whose house is built on site of the brothers’ once home, are about to discover if there’s any truth in this laughable old wives tale.

[Johnlprobert]

That's a seriously decent collection of stories which I have scattered throughout various collections. The Edith Nesbit is a goodie & I'd recommend anyone to dig out her Wordsworth collection. Apparently she had a pretty awful life that involved some bizarre sexual stuff as well so she was far more suited to the grim stuff than The Railway Children et al.

One day I WILL read that Robert Hitchens story.

[Johnlprobert]

And that day has finally come! Here I am nearly two years later picking up Fontana Volume 2 (I'd not read any of the Fontana Ghost books until a few weeks back when, inspired by Chris' recommendation of Clarimonde, I've dived into a box set I bought back in 1991!).

So, volume 6, volume 7 and now volume 2. Enough messing about, here's what I thought:

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - Playing With Fire. One of many, many medium - based stories that must have been so plentiful at the time, this is an interesting attempt to do something different, and the materialised unicorn is actually quite scary

Edith Nesbit - Man-Size in Marble. Great title, great story. Probably my favourite scene is the bit where they first come across the statues in the church.

Robert Hichens - How Love came to Professor Guildea. At last! And this doesn't disappoint. The whole idea of being followed and clung to by some idiotic lovesick thing is a great one for a ghost story, but this goes one better with its sparing use of a parrot.

Elizabeth Bowen - The Demon Lover. Very, very creepy ending and another of those stories where a woman's touch to the proceedings makes all the difference

Sir Max Beerbohm - A. V. Laider. Now this I was really unimpressed by. It appears to be a story about a man who can read palms, foretells the death of all the people in the railway carriage that he's travelling with except himself, and then reveals he made the while thing up! Did I miss something here?

Edgar Allan Poe - The Facts In The Case Of M. Valdemar. Always a goodie and I've lost count of the number of times I've read it now.

Lord Dunsany - Our Distant Cousins. Oh dear. This just doesn't belong here, or indeed in any book of ghost stories. Bloke gets in his 1920s aeroplane and flies to Mars where he finds octopus-like monsters that eat beautiful women. What on earth was Aickman thinking of?

[Craig Herbertson]

Lord Dunsany - Our Distant Cousins. Oh dear. This just doesn't belong here, or indeed in any book of ghost stories. Bloke gets in his 1920s aeroplane and flies to Mars where he finds octopus-like monsters that eat beautiful women. What on earth was Aickman thinking of?

This story juts out like a dislocated thumb. There is one marvelous thing about it that I recall. Flying out to Mars in an airplane all wrapped up in bandages to make sure your don't get a chill. There's something about that vision that makes one think of the great British amateur.

'I say folks, let's conquer Mars, I have a hamper packed and Biffo has constructed a whole set of catapults.'

[Johnlprobert]

I think he wore something akin to a goldfish bowel on his head as well.

It does conjure up images of 'Great Crap British Explorers' doesn't it? I'm sure we covered a book about them on Vault somewhere (Dem will remember). Like the chap who explored the Amazon with only a walking stick & a briefcase or the guy who tried to climb Everest by crash-landing his plane into it as high up as possible to give him a head start.

[Craig Herbertson]

That's Sebastian Snow who walked up the Amazon and Smith who did the plane thing. Absolutely brilliant the two of them. Smith had never flown before but decided to fly to India solo. Apparently he got very far up Everest too before ...well dying of cold because he was only wearing a jumper.

Snow on the other hand had a severely injured leg and decided to climb dangerously high as well - likewise with no experience or skill.

The only comparable hero the Scots have of this ilk was Mungo Park who decided to convert Africa to Christianity. His plan was - I think you've guessed - walk into Africa a very long way armed with nothing but a packed lunch and a cheery smile.

Naturally they killed him after a bit.

[cw67q]

Oh blame me, John

How Love is great isn't it?

Hichen's doesn't seem to get reprinted much, the only other tale I've seen in an anthology is the surprisingly cruel "the Return of the Soul" which made it into one of the ST Joshi Dovers (Great Tales of Terror ). A few years back I posted a review of the Hichen's collection "Return of the Soul" (Midnight Press) to alt.books.ghost.fiction. Anyone interested can read that review (complete with embarassing mention of a non-existent narrator) and some better informed responses in the google archives of that newsgroup, here:

groups.google.co.uk/group/rec.arts.horror.written/browse_thread/thread/e8b17ffc4914cf37/a7f853394b08572f?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=hichens+return+soul

Sorry, don't know how to do that mini-url thing

I'd agree with everyone about the Dunsany tale, which is truely aweful and put me off tackling any of the Jorken's books for life although I'm quite fond of some of Dunsany's other work.

I can't remember the Max Beerbohm's "A. V. Laider", but I'm a big fan of his "Enoch Soames". I'd dig out AVL for a quick look, but I gave away my Fontana's to a friend some years back and haven't repleced them yet.

I'm guessing John hasn't got to "Nightmare Jack" yet (?). Now that is an amazing little novel-in-about-a-dozen-pages romp.

Cheers - Chris

[Dr Strange]

First time I read "Guildea" I really didn't get it - I thought it too light and frothy, too much about "love", and there was way too much of the sanctimonious priest... Then I read it again (years later) and couldn't believe it was the same story, somehow it really got under my skin the second time round. Very subtle, but really quite disturbing.

[monker]

I'll give it another go but I didn't really get it either. Minor spoilers ahead...


Now, if Guildea, being embittered, had actually been oddly open to the idea without having the slightest inkling of what he was truly in for, then it may have worked for me the first time around. That scenario could be very powerful, indeed. However, I was like "huh?" That may be my failing and not Hitchens', however, or just a case of different things effecting different people.

[Dr Strange]

Had to read it again to decide which of my ever-changing opinions to settle down with. Actually... I think I like it even more now. Still don't like that priest though.

Now, I am sure this is completely wrong... but maybe it was that damn priest that brought this thing to his friend's door? Could it be the ghost of the idiot woman who took a fancy to him, and then trailed him to Guildea's house? Probably not, but, as I've said... I don't like that damn priest.

[monker]

Oh...it probably just shows where my heads at but maybe I have a preconceived idea of how these sort of stories should go. It wasn't the story I wanted it to be. I'll elaborate (Spoilers again) - Guildea is an embittered old sod (my version, not the real one) says he doesn't like or need women but underneath we get the inkling that it's all bluff (I thought that's where the story proper might have been going but that was inconclusive at best). Phantom women (or...things) that adore him alone, that's a different story and oddly appeal to his id. Goes with it but is torn because his better self comes to realise how freaky it all is, etc. Kind of a different point entirely, I guess and not what Hitchens was after, obviously, oh well.

[Dr Strange]

Well, that's one of the things I like about the more subtle horror story - it's open to multiple interpretations, even by the same reader. Seriously, I really don't think what I said above is what Hichens intended at all - I suspect (unfortunately) that monker is much closer to his intention.

Maybe it just shows where MY head is at that I see Guildea as happily living his life, hurting no-one (and possibly doing a lot of good with his scientific research)... until he makes the mistake of befriending a dodgy priest, who can't bear to see a man who can be happy without the need for religion or "society". You see, in MY version it's the priest who is bitter and deluded, and he is ultimately to blame for what happens to Guildea.

<Later add>
Actually, I am in danger of starting to believe my own theory: I've just realised that the priest is specifically described as an Anglican, but belonging to an order "which forbade him to marry"... Why not just make him a RC priest? Doesn't that seem to suggest that the priest also has "a poor opinion of women"? Not really sure where I am going with this, but it seems to be an interesting detail that I never really noticed before.

[monker]

Yes, but my version is in my head alone - I just personally think it's a pity that I don't believe that's what Hitchens wrote - my problem, not his.

[Johnlprobert]

Robert Aickman - The Inner Room. Aickman does the old Doll's House routine in his own inimitable way and it's a cracker. Our heroine gets bought a dilapidated old doll's house from the kind of junk shop that might be run by Albert Steptoe ("he wore a fading grey suit and carpet slippers") when she's a little girl and, as the front doesn't come off she has to peer through the windows at the gloriously tatty and rotting insides, complete with dolls, some of whom have their backs to her. One disturbing dream and thirty years later she finds herself lost in the rain-washed countryside but what's that up ahead? Looks like a familiar house. From her nightmares. Typical Aickman & I really liked it. The description of the house interior, all shredding gilt, burst overstuffed cushions and crumbling furniture is a ghoulish joy.

Perceval Landon - Thurnley Abbey. One of those story within a story within a story episodes that I would have cheefully edited to pieces but no matter - as Mr D says above the ghost, when it finally arrives, is great, but the hero's method of 'despatch' is even better - he smashes it to bits and jumps up and down on the bones. Doesn't work of course but it's a refreshing course of action in these stories compared with the usual gibbering.

John Metcalfe - Nightmare Jack. I must confess to having a bit of a problem reading stories written in vernacular, and there's a lot of this in Nightmare Jack that had my head spinning trying to fill out all those apostrophosised words. But this is a good story, kind of Clark Ashton Smith crossed with Robert E Howard and also reminscent (?) of Clive Barker's How Spoilers Bleed. That should give you a good idea of what it's about but basically it's a riff on the old 'villains raid a temple and get more than they bargained for' routine

[Jojo Lapin X]

At some level, "How Love came to Professor Guildea" is undoubtedly about homosexuality, a subject in which Hichens seems to have taken an interest. (His best-known work is THE GREEN CARNATION, a roman-à-clef about the relationship of Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas.) Or, perhaps, specifically about being the object of unwanted homosexual attraction.