Amyas Northcote - In Ghostly Company

[dem]

Amyas Northcote - In Ghostly Company (Wordsworth Editions, 2010: originally John Lane, 1922)

Nathan Clair

Contents *

Brickett Bottom
The Downs
The Late Mrs Fowke
Mr Kershaw and Mr Wilcox
In the Woods
The Late Earl of D.
Mr Mortimer’s Diary
The Picture
The Governess’s Story
The House in the Wood
The Young Lady in Black
Mr Oliver Carmichael

Blurb:
Introduction by David Stuart Davies

‘A grey cloud formed on the summit of the altar, diminishing, thickening and turning into a Shape, a shape of evil and fear. The silent group by the fire once more broke forth into wild gesticulations and cries, Stella prostrated herself, the Form on the altar grew clearer and with a cry of horror Mr Fowke turned away and rushed madly across the moor’.

Amyas Northcote’s In Ghostly Company is a rare and splendid collection of strange and disturbing tales from the golden age of ghost stories. His style is akin to that of the master of the genre M.R. James: it is measured and insidiously suggestive, producing unnerving chills rather than shocks and gasps. Northcote’s tales make the reader unsettled and uneasy. This is partly due to the fact that the hauntings or strange occurrences take place in natural or mundane surroundings - surroundings familiar to the reader but never before thought of as unusual or threatening. Long out of print, this book remains an enthralling and chilling read.

Not seen a copy yet (it should be available from July according to the Wordsworth site), but to the best of my knowledge the thirteen stories that comprise In Ghostly Company represent Amyas Northcote's entire contribution to supernatural fiction, so will be surprised if contents differ significantly from the above. Probably the best known is Brickett Bottom, the story of a young woman's disappearance at a house which was torn down seventy years earlier. It's probably just the period setting but this one has always put me in mind of a small scale Picnic At Hanging Rock in the English countryside.

includes:

Brickett Bottom: "Don't be afraid of me, my dear. I like to see young ladies about me and my husband finds their society quite necessary to him." Reverend Arthur Maydew and his daughters Alice, 26, and Maggie, 24, temporarily exchange parsonages with elderly clergyman Mr. Roberts of Overbury. The elder girl becomes fixated by a red brick house in the nearby glen at Brickett Bottom and, her sister indisposed with an ankle injury, takes to snooping on the elderly lady who tends the rose garden. Eventually the old woman, Mrs. Paxton, waves her over and invites her to tea with she and her husband, a retired Indian Colonel. When Alice informs her sister of this development, Maggie is unaccountably worried, while her father wonders why Mr. Roberts made no mention of the Paxtons who are effectively his next door neighbours. When Alice fails to return from her appointment the following afternoon, her father organises a search party, but although he hears his daughter calling to him, she can't be found, and neither can the house.

The Late Mrs. Fowke: High drama at the Parsonage. The Reverend Barnabus Fowke could hardly believe his luck when Stella Farnleigh accepted his marriage proposal and it never occurred to him to find out more about his bride to be. Stella, as locally unpopular as she and her mother were back in Hungary, is given to putting up at an inn of ill repute on certain nights and is not about to change her routine over such a trifling matter as marriage. The Reverend follows her on one of these excursions ... and is horrified to discover that she is High Priestess of a Black Magic cult! How can he stop this Devil-worshipper and her hooded cronies?

Quite possibly the inspiration for Frederick Cowles's Terrible Mrs. Greene.

The Downs: The narrator, a Londoner holidaying at a farm, learns that walking the Branksome Downs after dark is not without its perils. Especially this night when the restless dead rise up from the earth.

[cw67q]

This is a very fine collection of nicely varied tales, well worth picking up and unmissable at Wordsworth prices.

Like Rolt's "Sleep No More", the book is considerable more varied in theme than one might expect from its "Jamesian" reputation (not that there is anything wrong with things Jamesian). The opening tale "Brickett Bottom" is the clear stand out tale, (IMHO) one of the best ghost stories ever written, but the rest of the collection is eminently readable.

- chris

[Dr Strange]

Just started this last night. It's only about 140 pages, with each story only running to about a dozen pages, so it probably won't take me long to finish. I really like the cover.

Brickett Bottom – While Rev. Maydew and his two daughters are holidaying in Overbury, Maggie gets laid up with a sprained ankle, leaving Alice to explore the surrounding countryside alone. Father and sister become worried one evening because Alice hasn’t come home from her walk; and those worries increase when they learn there are no houses in Brickett Bottom, despite Alice having told her sister she was visiting an old couple there… [I’ve definitely read this one before, but I can’t remember where. It’s all rather too genteel for my tastes, and nothing very much actually happens (or what does happen, happens off-stage).]

Mr Kershaw and Mr Wilcox – Lacking the capital necessary to develop his invention, Mr K secured a loan from his wealthy next-door neighbour, Mr W. Now Mr W is calling in the loan and Mr K will lose everything. In a rage, Mr K enters the house of Mr W and strangles him; then, next morning, a stranger arrives to tell Mr K that he will find it “greatly to his advantage” if he calls on Mr W… [This one builds quite nicely, very reminiscent of a “Tales of the Unexpected”, but I found the ending rather weak and disappointing.]

In The Woods – A lonely and unhappy 17-year old girl becomes enthralled by the fir woods near her home. But “enthralled” can mean the same as “enslaved”, can’t it? [Very much in the mould of Algernon Blackwood, this one is certainly well-written, with nice descriptions of both the woods and the girl’s mental processes; unfortunately, though, it was always going to come off second-best in any comparison with Blackwood’s nature-based stories.]

[Dr Strange]

The Late Earl of D. – Did the previously disreputable Sir Charles really become “an earnest and sincere Christian gentleman” when he inherited the title (and family fortune) after the death of his invalided older brother? The reflection in the window of the room where the two men met for the last time has a story to tell… [This one has a distinct Jamesian feel, but the story is narrated in such an unemotional and matter-of-fact manner that it’s actual impact is, alas, very slight.]

Mr Mortimer’s Diary – Mortimer, a much-respected professional antiquarian, apparently chose a very unusual method to commit suicide. In his diary, however, he claims to have been under sustained psychic attack from a dead man whose ideas he had stolen… [Another Jamesian tale (it has more than a passing resemblance to Casting The Runes) and, I think, the best story so far – perhaps because using the diary as a plot device meant that Northcote had to describe his character’s emotional responses in detail, something he seems more often to have preferred not to do.]

The House in the Woods – Two travellers in North America are forced to seek shelter in a remote house occupied by a family of squatters. One of the travellers is carrying a large sum of money, which the squatters would like to relieve him of… [An utterly conventional ghost story, totally lacking in tension – or any other emotion. The weakest story so far, which is saying a lot. I think I may have read this one before too… or it might just seem familiar because it is so generic.]

The Steps – A young woman believes she is being haunted by the footsteps of a man she rejected, and who was then killed in action in the Great War. [Again, a very conventional ghost story, which started to look like it could get interesting with the introduction of a physician who dabbles in hypnosis, but then ended before he could actually begin his treatment of the girl. Disappointing.]

[dem]

Aug 5, 2010 7:58:37 GMT Dr Strange said:

Brickett Bottom [I’ve definitely read this one before, but I can’t remember where.

Montague Summers's The Supernatural Omnibus? looks as though you're not having such a good time with In Ghostly Company, Dr. S? First time i read Brickett Bottom was in my teens and it was another story i never intended to return to for fear of it not living up to fond memories. i eventually relented for the purpose of this thread and still loved it - though not so much because sadly, it no longer gave me the same sense of dislocation.

[Dr Strange]

Aug 6, 2010 13:06:57 GMT dem said:

Aug 5, 2010 7:58:37 GMT Dr Strange said:

Brickett Bottom [I’ve definitely read this one before, but I can’t remember where.

Montague Summers's The Supernatural Omnibus?

No. Or, yes, but I read it somewhere else too (more recently). It's a long time since I read Summers - but I did have the two Penguins with tiny writing (or that's how I seem to remember it) when I was a kid.

Aug 6, 2010 13:06:57 GMT dem said:

looks as though you're not having such a good time with In Ghostly Company,

Well, the stories are all just a bit too "slight". And "genteel". Those are the two words that keep coming to mind. Short though, and easy to read. Which is nice.

From the intro, this was his only collection of stories and he died just 18 months after they were published. There's definitely talent there (more than I have for writing fiction, that's for sure) and if he had lived he might have been capable of something much more interesting, who knows? One thing though, the "Jamesian" tag really doesn't fit for most of them - there are no hairy things with teeth or flapping shapes or the like (so far). Just the sorts of ghosts that look like ordinary people, or footsteps you hear but which don't seem to belong to anyone. So that cover (which I really like) also seems to be a bit misleading.

[Johnlprobert]

Oh dear - I don't mind 'genteel' at all, but the slightness of these tales suggest I might give them a miss, although the price of the Wordsworths almost makes you want to buy them anyway just to encourage them.

Is Brickett Bottom in a Fontana Ghost collection by any chance? I seem to remember reading something with a very similar plot quite recently.

[dem]

Chetwynd-Hayes used it in Fontana Ghost 16, but other than Summers' massive collection, i'm struggling to think of anywhere else it turned up.

[jonathan122]

At Wordsworth's prices, I feel I should buy it for the cover alone, but maybe that's why I struggle to pay my rent bill every month. I've certainly enjoyed the few Northcote tales that I've read, but I suspect it's possible that they could work better in anthologies, rather than en masse. Still very excited about Wordsworth's Oliver Onions collection though.

[Dr Strange]

Aug 6, 2010 23:06:17 GMT jonathan122 said:

...they could work better in anthologies, rather than en masse.

I think that's right - if they were used to give some breathing space between reading longer, heavier stories that would probably play more to their strengths. They are not bad, just a bit "Oh, is that it?"... Still a few to go, though, and there might still be something more interesting lurking (I've got quite high hopes for The Late Mrs Fowke, based on the description at the start of this thread).

[Dr Strange]

The Young Lady in Black – The eponymous lady wants the narrator, an artist, to paint her portrait; but she refuses to pose for him, instead leaving him with a drawing torn from a sketch-book to work from… [Another fairly conventional ghost story, this time greatly weakened by unconvincing interactions between characters and enormous holes in the plot.]

The Downs – A man crossing the lonely Downs late at night finds he has company… [Here’s a turn up: I liked this one! It made me think of Aickman’s Ringing The Changes transposed to a rural setting (though I also have a vague feeling that I may have read this story before).]

The Late Mrs Fowke – The timid Rev. Fowke learns that his new wife practises a religion that is very different from his own… [This one deals with witchcraft and demonology, rather than ghosts, and features a scene very reminiscent of one in Wheatley’s The Devil Rides Out – given that this story predates Wheatley’s, I’d rate it as one of Northcote’s better efforts.]

[dem]

Hugh Lamb, Richard Dalby and Brian Netherwood would both agree with you on the merits of The Downs and The Late Mrs Fowke, Dr. S. To the best of my knowledge, after Brickett Bottom, these are the only two to have been anthologised which perhaps tells its own story. Judging from your comments The Late Mrs. Fowke is atypical of In Ghostly Company which is disappointing - i'm going to give that a reread later as either The Devil Rides Out bit went over my head or my memory is even more shot than i thought!

[Dr Strange]

Only managed one more of these last night (I decided to re-read Joseph Pumilia's Instrument of Darkness from the 3rd Mayflower Book of Black Magic Stories for a bit of contrast!) -

The Picture – Hungary, 1848: a revolutionary mob storms the castle of ‘wicked count W’, but it seems he has already fled. Many years later the granddaughter of the man who led that mob takes a job in the castle; and when she sees a portrait of the count she recognizes him as the man she once saw in a vision, and whom she is destined to marry… [This is quite an interesting story, which I could easily imagine filmed as a gothic Hammer horror. The plot sometimes seemed a bit over-complicated, but all-in-all I enjoyed this one.]

Still two more to go, but I have to say that the last few stories seem to have been much more to my taste than the one's at the start of this book.

[monker]

Your not just saying that as compensation for the fact you poo-poo'd most of the others?

Anyway, I can imagine why even the likes of Brickett Bottom could be underwhelming to quite a few readers. However, there are a few subtleties in the climax of that one that raise it slightly above the average. Anyway, that's one Wordsworth I've ignored simply because most, if not all, of the stories are available online and are a quick read.

[Dr Strange]

Aug 11, 2010 2:18:17 GMT monker said:

Your not just saying that as compensation for the fact you poo-poo'd most of the others?

I can assure you, sir, that the pooh-poohing was purely circumstantial.

Aug 11, 2010 2:18:17 GMT monker said:

Anyway, I can imagine why even the likes of Brickett Bottom could be underwhelming to quite a few readers. However, there are a few subtleties in the climax of that one that raise it slightly above the average.

I just prefer my ghosts to be a bit more Jamesian (like the one on the cover). And the bit in Brickett Bottom where they hear the voice reminded me immediately of an Ambrose Bierce story I read years ago. I think that's probably the biggest problem - so many of Northcote's stories seem to be so derivative of stories by other authors that they almost come across as pastiches. Maybe that's to be expected of a first collection though.