Reign of Terror Volume 4 Edited by Michel Parry

[Johnlprobert]

Michel Parry (ed) - Reign Of Terror: The 4th Corgi Book Of Victorian Horror Stories (Corgi, 1977)

Les Edwards

Rudyard Kipling - The Strange Ride Of Morrowbie Jukes
Rosa Mulholland - The Haunted Organist
Grant Allen - The Beckoning Hand
Hume Nisbet - The Demon Spell
Mrs. Henry Wood - A Mysterious Visitor
Sir Gilbert Campbell - The Lady Isobel
James Platt - The Witches' Sabbath
Agnes MacLeod - The Skeleton Hand

One last cover scan if you please, Mr D!

Rudyard Kipling - The Strange Ride Of Morrowbie Jukes. I've read this one before a couple of times - in The Penguin Book of Indian Ghost Stories that I bought from a market stall in Calcutta, and in Gollancz's Fantasy Masterworks Volume 50 - The Mark of the Beast et al. I remember it feeling like a cross between The Prisoner and a George Romero movie but by Rudyard Kipling (naturally) but I'll write more when I've read it again

[Johnlprobert]

Ok so yes - the Kipling. Morrowby Jukes, feeling a bit under the weather while in India decides to go for a ride on his horse and finds himself trapped in place reserved for the undead. Unfortunately this doesn't mean zombies but instead refers to those hindus who have awakened from comas or recovered from near death experiences and are thus no longer living in the eyes of their people (according to the story here). After meeting the evil Gunga Dass, eating a few crows and finding escape pretty much impossible the story ends abruptly with Jukes being rescued, which is a bit of a shame, actually - almost as if Kipling got completely stuck and didn't know how to end the story.

Rosa Mulholland- The Haunted Organist : I love musical horror stories and here's a good one. A rather unpleasant chap gets cursed to play a church organ until he dies but his spirit lives on to possess others. Fantastic ending with a bricked up room that could have gone further but is still pretty bleak.

[cw67q]

I read the Grant Allen tale years ago in a Hugh Lamb anthology of "forgotten stories". I remember thinking at the time that it was an appalling piece of Victorian rascism that was perhpas best forgotten.

I don't feel like this very often about stories, I can make allowances for differences in attitudes across the generation. I'm not one for grafting modern ideas of PC values onto the past. In fact I think this is the only instance that comes to mind where a story chosen for a re-print anthology has caused me to consider that the offensive content outweighed any merits in the actual tale (I didn't think the tale of much merit anyway, but my opinion may have been biased by my distaste). The rascism in this tale isn't casual or peripheral, it is the centrepiece of the story, the reason why the tale was told. At the time I read it, it struck me as far worse than HPL's "Medusa" story.

I wouldn't want the past sanitised, but thena again I'd not be in a rush to reread this one.

- Chris (who knows he has just made this story more interesting :-))

[dem bones]

Apr 3, 2009 12:11:36 GMT cw67q said:

- Chris (who knows he has just made this story more interesting :-))

Put it this way: i've set it aside for a re-read

I used to get distressed over Dennis Wheatley's less salubrious moments but even at my most PC, it was never to the point where i thought they should be excised from his novels - in the case of Gateway To Hell, there'd be little left you could make head or tail of. Weird Tales and the Not At Night's published some jaw-droppingly offensive stories between them - The Beckoning Hand is a blank to me but not so Arthur Woodward's Lord Of The Talking Heads (originally Weird Tales, December, 1931) reprinted in
Grim Death .....

On a far happier note:

"Sir and madam, I am here. I am come to play your organ.'
'The organ!' gasped Mistress Hurley.
'The organ!' stammered the squire.
'Yes, the organ!' said the little stranger lady, playing on the back of a chair with her fingers, as if she felt notes under them."

Yeah, i love the Rosa Mulholland horror story-cum-Victorian fashion show! I've a novel of hers, The Girls of Banshee Castle (Blackie, 1925, originally 1895: "Told with grace and brightened by a knowledge of Irish folklore, making it a perfect present for a girl in her teens" - Truth), which i've never got around to. It certainly looks frightfully jolly hockey sticks and there's a sweet little bat on the spine so i dare say i'll have a go at it some day.

I'm with you on the Kipling story, John. When I first read it, i found it incredibly exciting but, Jesus, is that ending limp. Mind you, he redeems himself in The Mark Of The Beast, nigh on as nasty a story as you could reasonably ask for outside the pages of a Richard Stains snuff novel.

[Johnlprobert]

The Grant Allen is a loooooong story that really hasn't got anywhere yet despite my using it to pass the time as I had my hair cut today. The central character comes across as a bit of a hopeless rich buffoon who lives on his yacht and can't resist the allure of the ladies but it's an awfully dull affair so far. Maybe it'll pick up in its last 12 pages (!)

[cw67q]

Maybe I was thinking of the wrong story nervous laugh...

[dem bones]

Apr 3, 2009 14:49:24 GMT Johnlprobert said:

The Grant Allen is a loooooong story that really hasn't got anywhere yet despite my using it to pass the time as I had my hair cut today.

Funnily enough, i had twenty minutes to spare while I was having my pedicure, so thought to give Rosa Mulholland's The Haunted Organist a quick scrutiny.

Lewis Hurly, rich young heir, dashing rake, etc., is a big knob in 'The Devil's Club' whose spiteful pranks are notorious in Hurlyburly and environs. The local community can tolerate the occasional abduction or graveyard desecration as youthful exuberance, but master Hurly goes too far when, during a funeral, he commandeers the church organ and belts out a ribald tune, his mates joining in on the chorus. The clergyman, understandably, curses the insufferable Hooray Henry with gusto. From henceforth, no-one but Hurly shall be able to extract a note from the organ, and he'll be compelled to play it for all eternity.

Twenty years after his death (from wearing himself out playing the organ), Hurley returns from the grave, emigrates and possesses a timid young Italian, Lisa, to take over his duties at the haunted keyboard.

Mistress Hurly got ill and took to her bed. The squire swore at the young foreign baggage, and roamed abroad ... the curse of the organ was upon Lisa: it spoke under her hand, and her hand was its slave.

That'll be the erotic undercurrent that runs through Victorian horror literature, I expect. Sure enough, Lisa spends all her time playing, growing frailer by the hour until kindly Margaret Calderwood comes up with the brilliant idea of having a workman brick up the organ room ...

As mentioned above, this is top notch stuff though, what with all the female characters either swooning into the nearest available pair of arms or curtsying like crazy at everything that comes within a hundred yards of 'em, i'm not expecting to find it in The Virago Book Of Ghost Stories any time soon. Now don't get me wrong here ladies, women's lib is brilliant, but read The Haunted Organist and if you tell me you wouldn't love to go back to the good old days before that meddling Ms. Pankhurst stuck her oar in well, frankly, i won't believe you.

[Johnlprobert]

Grant Allen - The Beckoning Hand: Oh dear. Possibly the longest, dullest story in the entire four volumes. More than thirty pages and not really worth ten. Dull-witted playboy Harry Tristram falls under the spell of West Indian Cesarine Vivian, ending up married to her and taken away to the Caribbean and away from his equally dull and (considering the ending) remarkably forgiving sweetheart Irene. But oh no! Cesarine is a witch! Or rather she's mixed up in some of those devilish voodoo-type practices that British fiction of this era never seems to be any more specific about than that. More offensive for being such a dull waste of time than being overtly racist, in the hands of Robert E Howard this would at least have been action packed and with a more interesting hero but as it stands give it a miss unless you're a 'Reign' completist.

Hume Nesbit - The Demon Spell. About time we had a Jack the Ripper story - and a supernatural one to boot. An excellent palate cleanser after the previous turgid tale and worth a look.

Mrs Henry Wood - A Mysterious Visitor. But oh no! Scarcely are we back on track than along comes this overly bloated waste of space. 24 pages of 'was that noise I heard a ghost oh yes it was'. Mrs Wood may well have been able to 'realistically depict middle class characters' as stated in the introduction. But skills like moving a story on, having a decent plot and creating a central character that doesn't behave as if she needs a slap are more admirable attributes in my book, none of which Mrs Wood seems to possess.

Sir Gilbert Campbell - The Lady Isopel. Another fairly slight story but just imagine the Lady Isopel of the title played by Barbara Steele in her heyday and this one suddenly becomes a lot of fun.

James Platt - The Witches Sabbath. Hooray for James Platt! He manages to almost single-handedly save this volume with his everything but the kitchen sink tale of a knight trying to resurrect his lost love and his battle with the priest who has foresworn to try and purify the site of the Witches Sabbat where the kinght intends to resurrect his girlie. Loads of twists, an appearance by every type of monster the author could think of, and the bestest bleakest most unhappy ending I have read in months. Read it twice and then stare open-mouthed that he could have had the bravado to do that to his main characters! Bravo!

Agnes MacCleod - The Skeleton Hand. "He forced himself upon her and continued paying her the most distasteful attentions which the gentle girl did her very utmost to check, but in vain."Not quite as good as its predecessor, this is still pretty grim and a good tale to end on. Unrequited love, rotting brides and a skeleton hand that drips blood. Oh yes this is what we want.

And some final thoughts as I close the cover of the last of these little books. I haven't read a lot of Victorian horror fiction and this has been an excellent introduction, showing me that there's crude pulp to be found here along with more literary aspirant stuff as well as some stuff as dull as ditchwater and much less appealing. A bit like modern horror really. All four books would make a very nice single reprint volume if anyone's listening.

JLP

[dem bones]

I had a feeling you'd like James Platt! Shortly after reading The Witches Sabbath - like a day or so later - I found a copy of one of Michel's Mayflower Black Magic and there's another Platt story, The Devil's Debt, which is another stormer. After that i decided that i was going to get a copy every horror story he published - that was a decade or so back and i'm still stuck on two.

I think Hume Nisbet is already on the Wordsworth recommendations list but, if not, he should be. Definitely more 'crude pulp' than 'frightfully proper' and the better for it. Read his The Phantom Model again recently and was enjoying it without being knocked out ... and suddenly he pulls a knock out ending out of nowhere.

Time i rattled the editor's bones again to see how he feels about your suggestion, because I can't think of a more fitting series to be given the Wordsworth Omnibus treatment. Glad you enjoyed your rampage through all the bonnets, blood & guts, yer Lordship!

[allthingshorror]

Dem, there are six of his (Platt's) in Tales of the Supernatural (1894). Reprinted by Ghost Story Press (1994) with a foreword by Richard Dalby. 'They're not really all that horrific per se, but they are very gothic and twisted.' (Dalby's words in upcoming interview.)

Stories are: The Seven Sigils", "The Hand of Glory", "The Rabbi Lion", "The Evil Eye", "The Witches' Sabbath", "The Devil's Debt".

Would be an amazing one for Wordsworth to do as the reprinted version is now obscenely pricey.

Ghost Story Press (1994) 250 copies issued.