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Post by dem bones on Oct 7, 2008 9:57:01 GMT
Bernard Capes - The Black Reaper: Tales Of Terror (Equation, 1989) Selected and Introduced by Hugh LambIntroduction - Hugh Lamb
The Black Reaper The Thing In The Forest The Accursed Cordonnier A Queer Cicerone A Gallows-Bird The Sword Of Corporal Lacoste Poor Lucy Rivers The Green Bottle The Marble Hands The Moon Stricken The Mask An Eddy On The Floor.
Bibliography and Acknowledgements."His stories reveal the author's desperate frustration ... He also uses words in a curious way at many places, as if he were writing under the influence of drink, as perhaps he was, when one considers his basic attitude
Robert Aickman on Bernard Capes (1854-1918), as quoted in Hugh Lamb's introduction. One of the most interesting of the late-Victorian authors, unjustly neglected for decades until Hugh Lamb began resurrecting his work in the 'seventies. Capes didn't have anything published until he'd turned forty through a series of tragicomic mishaps - a failed stint as a rabbit breeder takes some doing - and the disappointment and anger at these personal disasters informs his best work. The worldview on offer in A Gallows Bird is one of gloating pessimism and, as Aickman points out, the stories often open with Capes getting what's been troubling him off his chest before they're allowed to continue. Includes: A Gallows Bird: Ducas poses as a swinging corpse to learn the location of hidden Carmelite treasure. While hanging, he witnesses the torture-murder of a fellow brigand by a priest and the 'junta of women.' He is also shot in the leg by a sadistic, corpse-kicking Holy man. Assisted by his lover, Anita, who spends much of her time disguised as a goatherd, Ducas escapes the danger of his own making, but she is discovered and hung by her thumbs. Ducas considers it fine sport to watch her tortured so. He was tiring of her devotion in any case, so he's quite relieved when she's shot dead during a crossfire .... A Queer Cicerone: The wicked Lord steps out of his portrait to lead the guided tours around the Somerset family castle, exposing their biographies as told in the guide book to be entirely fraudulent and each supposedly saintly member to be at least as unscrupulous as he. The Mask: Penn-Howard, author of Haunted Houses, a book of factual ghost stories, doesn't actually believe in the supernatural - until the affair in Hampshire involving the prematurely aged Mand Howick, a likeness of whom hangs in the family gallery. However, she is not the original, but the grand-daughter of the lady in the original, cursed by the twisted, unforgiving artist. The Thing In The Forest: In a weird rewrite of Little Red Ridinghood, little Elspet is making her way through the forest when she encounters a werewolf. Taking pity on the starving wretch, she feeds him - then realises that to do so is a mortal sin. She rushes to Father Ruhl who takes her confession and then, laughing, changes shape ... The Sword Of Corporal Lacoste: Lacoste survives an avalanche in which his men are either killed outright or fatally injured. While he is unconscious, a gnome-like Priest and his dog-faced peasant accomplice rob the corpses and slit the throat of a survivor. Infuriated at having overlooked a potential victim, the Priest leads Lacoste to an inn where he is plied with food and drink and lets slip that he is carrying much gold coin. The barmaid tries to warn him of his peril but Lacoste allows the pair to lead him through the snow and back to his company. When they are attacked by a wolf pack, the peasant reveals himself to be not only a robber, but a lycanthrope! You can download a number of Capes' stories from Horrormasters, including The Mask, The Black Reaper, A Queer Cicerone and The Vanishing House though, sadly, no A Gallows Bird as yet.
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Post by jkdunham on Oct 7, 2008 19:17:09 GMT
First encountered Bernard Capes in Hugh Lamb's Tales From a Gas-Lit Graveyard, which reprints both 'The Green Bottle' and 'An Eddy on the Floor'. Remember Lamb bigging him up as one of the great unremembered but neither story left any particular impression on me at the time. 'A Gallows Bird' sounds brilliant though and Aickman's "He also uses words in a curious way... as if he were writing under the influence of drink" comment is enough for me to want to read more.
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Post by Calenture on Oct 7, 2008 20:36:54 GMT
I could only find one Bernard Capes title which I can't see mentioned here. If you have Richard Dalby's Ghosts For Christmas, Capes' A Ghost-Child is in it.
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Post by lobolover on Nov 15, 2008 16:31:36 GMT
I ony rad his colection "At a winter's fire" ,because his evidently PD book "From door to door" isnt.Anyway,they should have put "Black Venn","The voice from the pit" and I dare say even "Dinah's Mammoth" in this colection.Im gonna do a full review of the first Capes colection too.
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Post by dem bones on Nov 29, 2011 22:05:11 GMT
Good news for you online shoppers. Coachwhip Publications have recently published two Bernard Capes paperback collections, the 400 page Dancing Shadows: Tales of the Supernatural and the companion Twists and Turns: Tales of Mystery, Adventure, Crime, and Humor. Bernard Capes - Dancing Shadows: Tales of the Supernatural (Coachwhip, June , 2011) The Moon Stricken Dark Dignum The Vanishing House A Voice from the Pit An Eddy on the Floor The Black Reaper The Sword of Corporal Lacoste William Tyrwhitt’s “Copy” The Accursed Cordonnier The Face on the Sheet The Foot of Time The Lady-Killer The Devil’s Fantasia The Green Bottle A Ghost-Child Poor Lucy Rivers The Ghost-Leech The Jade Button John Field’s Return The Corner House The Hamadryad The Voice Tony’s Drum A Danse-Macabre A Queer Cicerone Sub Specie The Accident The Apothecary’s Revenge The Blue Dragon The Closed Door The Dark Compartment The Footsteps The Glass Ball The Marble Hands The Mask The Pétroleuse The Queer Picture The Shadow-Dance The Thing in the Forest The Van on the Road The White HareBernard Capes - Twists and Turns: Tales of Mystery, Adventure, Crime, and Humor (Coachwhip, June, 2011) A Lazy Romance Black Venn Dinah’s Mammoth Jack and Jill Plots The Widows Clock Lot 104 The Lost Notes A Gallows-Bird Jack the Skipper The Five Insides The Strength of the Rope Bullet-Proof Priscilla Pipkin The Man Who Had Dined Too Well The Poison Bottle A Cure for Consumption An Apostolic Catspaw Cox’s Patent Deus Ex Machina Gun Practice Joy-Homicide Once Too Often Providence
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Post by cw67q on Nov 30, 2011 17:48:13 GMT
Superb news! Thanks so much for posting this Dem - Chris
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Post by dem bones on Dec 12, 2011 10:19:44 GMT
For those who've yet to sample the strange delights of Bernard Capes, his 1899 collection, At A Winter's Fire is available to read online at Hot Free Books. The Moon Stricken Jack And Jill The Vanishing House Dark Dignum William Tyrwhitt's 'Copy' A Lazy Romance Black Venn An Eddy On The Floor Dinah's Mammoth The Black Reaper A Voice From The Piti've not yet found an additional lifetime to run through their entire catalogue but another to grab the eye is Robert Barr's collection of stories culled from the pages of The Strand, The English Illustrated Magazine, McClures & Co., Revenge! (Chatto & Windus, 1896: subject matter self-explanatory). Hugh Lamb has revived several, most notably in the Equation Chiller three-author anthology Stories In The Dark, though he'd been drifting them into his collections long before. Also of note, In Court and Kampong - Being Tales and Sketches of Native Life in the Malay Peninsula (Grant Richards, 1897) which gave the world the story usually reprinted as The Ghoul, though here it features under it's original title, A Night Of Terror.
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Post by H_P_Saucecraft on Dec 12, 2011 12:05:05 GMT
Perhaps It's time to give Capes another chance. I did borrow The Black Reaper from the library once, but didn't really get on with his style, at the time.
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Post by dem bones on Dec 22, 2011 7:26:35 GMT
Perhaps It's time to give Capes another chance. I did borrow The Black Reaper from the library once, but didn't really get on with his style, at the time. His fondness for local dialect can be frustrating, but he's is worth the effort. Here's a short, bizarre and surprising nasty sampler you might like to try to get acclimatised. Attachments:
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Dec 22, 2011 11:00:05 GMT
Good story and an excellent illustration
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Post by dem bones on Dec 24, 2011 11:20:22 GMT
Good story and an excellent illustration it's one of Sydney Cowell's, a regular contributor to Pall Mall, Pearsons and similar late Victorian magazines, and rediscovering it has determined me to knuckle down to another outstanding project in the new year. Back in the 'nineties, there was a gent at the local flea market sold bound volumes of Victorian-Early Edwardian magazines for a few quid a time, so there's a random assortment mouldering on my racks, odd numbers from The Windsor, Pearsons, The Strand, Cassells, Harmsworths, English Illustrated Magazine, All The Year Round & Co. They're mostly the size of paving slabs, and i've never summoned sufficient resolve to index or even pick the juiciest bones from them, but what a treasure trove of macabre artwork and weird photography just waiting to be plundered! There are also several, mostly familiar ghosts and horror stories scattered throughout too, by the likes of Capes, Conan-Doyle, Erckmann-Chatrian, E. Nesbit, Mary Braddon, J. A. Barry, and Anonymous. Between them, Hugh Lamb and Richard Dalby have resurrected the very best in their anthologies, but there's sure to be a discarded scrap or two of interest. As a taster, here's a gorgeous Thomas Maybank illustration for E. F. Benson's compulsory-euthenasia-for-the-useless science fiction outing, The Superannuation Department AD 1945, from The Windsor Windsor Magazine January 1906. The skeletal postman/ skid row santa i used for your story Gift is another Maybank, lifted from the same source!
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Post by Craig Herbertson on Dec 24, 2011 13:35:12 GMT
Illustration was superb. These Victorian drawings and engravings with their melancholic obsession with death and God are the bees knees
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Post by helrunar on Apr 28, 2017 11:45:02 GMT
Thanks, Dem, for pointing me at this thread. There's a lot to chew on here, so to speak.
I believe that it is indeed The Black Reaper which is scheduled for digitized "Kindle" release this October, in Hugh Lamb's edition.
Nice to see there are a couple of PDFs so I can get a preliminary sense of his work.
cheers, H.
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Post by ripper on Dec 27, 2017 5:07:07 GMT
I have owned a copy of The Black Reaper for many years and have made several abortive attempts to read it. For some reason I find his style to be rather heavy going and I have been reduced to infrequent dips. Consequently, although I have probably read around half the stories I can remember little about any of them, the title tale being the one that I have retained the best.
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Post by monker on Jan 3, 2018 14:08:50 GMT
I went on a tiny binge several years ago but have since forgotten what prompted be to do so; I remember loving his style, it gave his stories a period flavour that is now well and truly extinct. It's a bit of a double-edged sword, however, as there is a bit of an obtuse quality to his plots, not in their comprehension, but in their reasoning. Contrast that with someone like E.F. Benson who doesn't really muck about. I think Capes is technically the better writer but wouldn't call him a better 'horror' writer. Of the three I read (I told you it was a 'tiny' binge) I'd say 'The Mask' was the better horror story while 'William Tyrwhitt’s “Copy”' had the best atmosphere, 'The Green Bottle' was good but was one of those quirky stories that end up being more novel than frightening.
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