Seabury Quinn - Is The Devil A Gentleman?

[dem bones]

Seabury Quinn - Is The Devil A Gentleman? (Mirage, 1970)

David Prosser

William H. Evans - Introduction

Uncanonized
Masked Ball
Bon Voyage, Michelle
The Gentle Werewolf
The Cloth Of Madness
The Merrow
The Globe Of Memories
Is The Devil A Gentleman?
Glamour

Mark Owings - Bibliography

From the inside cover blurb:

"Before his death, on Christmas Eve of 1969, Mr. Quinn gathered together what he believed to be his best hundred thousand words and created and designed this book.

The stories range from werewolves evil - Uncanonized - to werewolves not so evil, such as The Gentle Werewolf which also offers sword-and-sorcery fanciers a look at Quinn's rich flair for action. So, too, is the adventure in The Globe Of Memories fast and suspenseful; Quinn's marvellous sense of mood and atmospheric tragedy are illustrated in The Merrow and Masked Ball. The conflict of good and evil in humanity is examined in the title story, as in Glamour, in which good and evil are never certainly identified, nor absolute, while The Cloth Of Madness needs no demonic visitations - its evil is even more horrible, coming from within ourselves."

David Prosser

A collection of the great man's non-Jules De Grandin Weird Tales from the 'twenties through to the 'forties, The Phantom Farmhouse shocking in its absence. i've not read the bulk in years, but seem to remember liking most of these stories - just not as much as I did The House Of Horror and all those other manic de Grandin extravaganza. A collection possibly best dipped into than read in one hit, especially if you're not in the mood for too many happy endings on the spin.

includes:

The Cloth of Madness is a splendid pulp yarn in which the maniacal Jamison Alvarde destroys his unfaithful wife Edith along with his flirtatious 'friend', Hector Fuller by subjecting them to his terrifying wallpaper. "Fuller is a sly old dog! Pretending misogynist that he is, always preaching the joys of an Eveless Eden. I caught him red-handed in a flirtation with some silly woman - and, I believe, a married one at that.". This would have made for an ideal Not At Night story, Seabury always seen at best advantage when his bad guys are mad as the proverbial box of frogs.

The Globe Of Memories: Mild-mannered New Yorker Albert Montague buys a crystal globe at an antique fair, takes it home, sets it on the windowsill whereupon a strange and eerie mist fills the room and something uncanny happens to his clothes. "Good Lord - this is a medieval friar's costume!" he correctly deduces. Yes, he's been transported back 700 years to Tuscany and the body of a lovesick, mischievous Monk bent on seducing the lovely Lady Flavia! As with the title story, this one fluctuates between truly icky romance and commendable unpleasantness - violent swordplay, grim dungeon fun, a public stoning to death ("The sweet white body ... had been flailed into a bloody, shapeless mess that bobbed and twitched and bounced grotesquely in its chains as men at arms and some few heartless townsmen tried their aim on it"), etc.

The Gentle Werewolf: Can't remember this at all but the illustration depicts a bloke who looks suspiciously like Errol Flynn in The Adventures of Robin Hood gearing up to plant a smacker on the eager lips of a naked wolf girl if that's any help. Title sounds iffy.

Is The Devil A Gentleman?: Set in the aftermath of the Salem Witch Trials, during the course of which a Swedish girl, Kundre, having escaped one Auto de fey in Portugal, was persecuted by bigots and unjustly burnt in New England! Kundre's undead spirit then comes to the rescue of her daughter, also Kundre, who is facing the gallows, but only after the girl's God-fearing lover relents and accepts her "evil" aid. Nasty in places, the romantic content again tends toward the gushy and the Seebs fondness for "authentic" dialogue doesn't help matters. But don't take any notice of these minor misgivings. It's a good one and i'm only peeved that it's so convoluted as to defy my mighty powers of totally crap synopses.

[andydecker]

So this is this book. I saw it often in bibliographies, but never a line-up. Thanks, dem!

I am a bit of a Quinn fan myself, even gifted the collection of the de Grandin stories a couple of years ago to myself when the dollar was down. Beautiful made books.

But you can read only so many of these stories after another, I am still stuck in vol.1 For every good story you get three lame ones, and the formula gets old real fast. There is more evil in Quinn´s Harrisonville then there ever was in Sunnydale
But sometimes he is remarkable inventive and gruesome in his plots.

[dem bones]

Is The Devil A Gentleman? has its moments, but i much prefer the De Grandins, in particular those set and written during the Prohibition era when every adventure concluded in a celebratory whiskey binge (unless the "dapper little Frenchman" was getting all maudlin about his dead bride). The favoured theme here would appear to be lovers in peril (though not in a Horror Stories/ Terror Tales/ Spicy Mystery & Co. way, more's the pity) and, as mentioned, this can make for some sickly marshmallow passages. In hindsight, there's probably an abundance of slush in the De Grandin's too, but it doesn't seem so intrusive. I'm sure Wheatley read some of the early ones!

Anyway, here are two of David Prosser's extraordinary paintings from the book; i'm not sure why i'm even troubling ph*t*b**ket with the more innocuous, but it will be interesting to see which, if either, gets pulled first.

David Prosser

Guilhen and the bewitched Lady Sylvanette enjoy a tender a moment in The Gentle Werewolf

David Prosser

Albert, in his Friar Diavolo mode, leaps to Lady Flavia's defence in The Globe Of Memories!