Algernon Blackwood - The Magic Mirror: Lost Supernatural and Mystery Stories: Selected and Introduced by Mike Ashley (Equation, 1989)
Mike Ashley - Introduction
The Early Years
A Mysterious House
The Kit-Bag
The Laying Of A Red Haired Ghost
The Message Of The Clock
The Singular Death Of Morton
La Mauvaise Riche
The Soldier's Visitor
The Memory Of Beauty
Onanonanon
The Novels
First Flight (From Jimbo)
The Vision Of The Winds (From The Education Of Uncle Paul)
The Call Of The Urwelt (From The Centaur)
The Summoning (From Julius LeVallon)
Radio Talks
The Blackmailers
The Wig
Kings Evidence
Lock Your Door
Five Strange Stories:
The Texas Farm Disappearance
The Holy Man
Pistol Against a Ghost
Japanese Literary Cocktail
The Curate And The Stockbroker
Later Stories
At A Mayflower Luncheon
The Man-Eater
By Proxy
The Voice (aka The Reformation of St. Jules)
The Magic Mirror
Roman Remains
Wishful Thinking
Bibliography and Acknowledgements.The Singular Death Of Morton: (
The Tramp, Dec. 1910). Perhaps the best-known of the "lost" on account of its revival in Richard Dalby's justly celebrated
Dracula's Brood. Travelling through the Java valley, Morton and his unnamed companion arrive at a farmhouse, where a slim and silent girl offers each a drink of milk. Morton accepts the offer. Continuing their journey, it seems the girl is following them through the trees. That night, she lures Morton from his bed. The friend eventually finds him among the tombstones in the local cemetery. Morton is not alone.
"He saw a white face with shining eyes and teeth as the form rose. The moonlight painted it with its own strange pallor. It was weird, unreal horrible, and across the mouth, downwards from the lips to the chin, ran a deep stain of crimson."
Who is the girl? What can it all mean? Morton doesn't survive long enough to find out, but his friend learns the grim history of the farmhouse and the fiendish mother and daughter who lived there from the lips of a local priest.
Lock Your Door: (Home Service Broadcast,
Stories Old & New, May 6 1946). Miss Jenkins, elderly spinster, can't sleep unless she's first locked the bedroom door behind her. Forced to spend the night at a gloomy, remote house due to a train derailment, she has every reason to be cautious. The surley host who offers her shelter is no longer of this world on account of a ghastly crime.
Japanese Literary Cocktail: A short short involving an encounter with a faceless fiend. Mike Ashley notes similarities to E. F. Benson's
The Step. My guess is they were both inspired by Lafcadio Hearn's
Mujina, the "Japanese story" Blackwood references in text and title.
The Wig: (TV Broadcast,
Young Ideas, 1935.) A very jolly, throwaway sketch for kids featuring ghost of a pilfering gnome.
Two from elsewhere on board, warts and all;
The Kit-bag:
Pall Mall, Dec. 1908). "I'm glad it's over because I've seen the last of that man's dreadful face. It positively haunted me. That white skin, with the black hair brushed low over the forehead, is a thing I shall never forget, and the description of the way the dismembered body was crammed and packed with lime into that ..."
After a ten day trial at the Old Bailey, John Turk is found not guilty of murder on the grounds of insanity. There is no celebration on the part of the defence, both William Willbraham, "the great criminal KC,"and his junior, Johnson, believing their client deserved to swing. Once the verdict is pronounced, Johnson readies himself for a Christmas vacation in the Swiss Alps. The haunting begins even before he's set foot outside of his Bloomsbury flat. In a certain light, the kit-bag he borrowed from Willbraham takes on an uncanny resemblance to a human face - one in particular.
Didn't really get along with
The Magic Mirror, Jack Adrian's compilation of Blackwood's "Lost Supernatural & Mystery Stories" (Equation, 1989), but
The Kit-bag was an exception (awarded it a red asterisk denoting 'good' during tragic marking phase), and am pleased that it still does it for me, even if Johnson's unpleasant experience is the result of a convenient unlikely mix-up. Needless to say, it's not one of his nature rambles. You'll also find it in Richard Dalby's
Ghosts for Christmas (O'Mara, 1988: Headline, 1989) and Robert Westall's
Ghost Stories (Kingfisher, 1993, 2004).
Roman Remains: To escape the London Blitz, pilot Anthony Breddle continues his convalescence at the home of his surgeon brother on the River Wye. Fellow guests include Dr. Leidenheim, a keen student of Roman archaeology, and an inscrutable nurse, Nora Ashwell, to whom Breddle takes an instant dislike. Breddle's brother half-jokingly informs him of a little glen, Goat Valley, shunned by the locals, which boasts a ruined temple to Silvanus. Queer things are said about Goat Valley, and it's now being blamed for the recent spate of monster births in the district. None of which bothers Nora in the slightest as she has already fallen under the deity's spell ...
Blackwood evidently didn't think much of this effort (or perhaps he was using reverse psychology) as he sent Derleth his only copy and advised him to tear it up should he agreed that it was unusable. When Derleth duly found
Roman Remains a home at
Weird Tales, Blackwood wrote again, thanking him for placing "my somewhat questionable story" which he now hoped to develop "into something really worthwhile" at a later date. (source: Mike Ashley,
The Blackwood-Derleth Correspondence in Simon Gosden's
Out Of The Woodwork #1, 1986)
