Dick Donovan - Tales of Terror (Chatto & Windus, 1899)
The Astrologer
The Cave of Blood (
Victorian Tales of Terror, ed. Hugh Lamb, 1974)
The Corpse Light (
Victorian Nightmares, ed. Hugh Lamb, 1980)
The Dance of Death
The Doomed Man (
Terror by Gaslight, ed. Hugh Lamb, 1975)
The Legend of Wolfspring
The Mystic Spell (
Gaslit Nightmares, ed. Hugh Lamb, 1988)
A Night Of Horror (
The Thrill Of Horror, ed. Hugh Lamb, 1978)
The Pirates' Treasure
Red Lily (
Crime for Christmas, ed. Richard Dalby, 1991)
The Spectre of Rislip Abbey
The Story of Annette (From Official Records): Being the Sequel to 'The Woman with the Oily Eyes' (1899) (
Vintage Vampire Stories, eds. Robert Eighteen-Bisang & Richard Dalby, 2011)
The White Raven (
Chillers for Christmas, ed. Richard Dalby, 1989)
With Fire and Death
The Woman with the Oily Eyes (
Vintage Vampire Stories, eds. Robert Eighteen-Bisang & Richard Dalby, 2011)
First editions have been known to fetch heart-attack prices, but such has been its popularity with certain anthologists that
Tales Of Terror (Chatto & Windus, 1899) is another of those books you may find yourself collecting by instalment. James (sometimes 'Joyce') E. Preston Muddock aka 'Dick Donovan' was an insanely prolific British author of historical novels, detective stories, thrillers and travel guides, who somehow found time to knock out two volumes of horror and supernatural fiction, the second,
Stories Weird and Wonderful, also published by Chatto the same year, this time as J. E. Muddock. To mark the centenary, both books were reissued in Midnight House limited editions, the debut re-christened
The Corpse Light & Other Tales of Terror for the occasion. There has since been suggestion of a Wordsworth 'Mystery & the Supernatural' collection of Dick's macabre work though i'm not sure if his relatively poor showing in the poll will have any bearing on the outcome.
It's possible that my favourite of the
Tales Of Terror, the incredibly busy
The Cave Of Blood - an everyday tale of a fortune teller's lie driving the most beautiful girl in the county to madness, catalepsy and filicide - is not Muddock's work at all, as it is damn near identical to
The Fatal Prediction, a story resurrected by Peter Haining for his
The Magic Valley Traveller which he credits to 'Ann Of Swansea' (Ann Julia Hatton, 1764-1838). Haining claims to have found the story in Ann's collection,
Deeds of an Olden Time (1826), and in this instance i'm inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt, at least until somebody assures me this was another case of the great man being a little flexible with his attributions.
The Doomed Man: Jubal Tredegar, Captain of
The Pride Of The Ocean, is prone to 'strange moods' in which he implores his God for forgiveness, raves at imaginary dead men bobbing on the waves, and gives every indication that he's about to throw himself overboard. On the long and arduous voyage from Liverpool to Cuba, it's Tredegar's further misfortune to be lumbered with our narrator, Mr. Gibling, an incorrigible nosey parker forever offering the poor bastard a sympathetic ear. After sixteen pages of constant harassment, Tredegar finally cracks and spills out his story.
Some years ago in Havana, he'd wandered into a pub of ill repute to find his old school chum, Peter Gibson, serving behind the bar. Tredegar invited him aboard ship, only for the blighter to drug him and rob the safe box. Gibson was caught and executed on Tredegar's testimony, but not before promising that from this day forth he would haunt him to his doom.
Gibling tells the captain to pull himself together and forget all this superstitious mumbo jumbo, but that's before he, too, witnesses a shapeless mass rise from the deep and resolve itself into the form of a ghastly corpse, bleeding like a shark's been at it ...
A Night Of Horror: Newly-weds Dick and Hester Dirckman land Bleak Hill Castle in the remote Welsh mountains for the usual unbelievable bumper bargain price on account of it's sinister reputation. The castle has run to ruin this past twenty five years following the mysterious disappearance of Mrs. Jones and her twelve-year old epileptic daughter. According to her husband, a perpetually miserable wretch name Greeta who'd squandered his inheritance and only married the elderly Mrs. J. for her money, the pair had taken off to London. Shortly afterwards, he too, quietly departed for the capital and that was the end of that. Until ....
Dick's friend, our narrator, immediately takes a shine to the allegedly haunted chamber and insists on spending the night there. Hester is none too pleased, the room gives her the creeps, but she is, after all only a "silly goose", so the guest has his way. His sleep is disturbed by a dreadful nightmare in which he witnesses the gory murders of Mrs Jones and her daughter by a chuckling maniac who disposes of their bones behind the wall of the vault which his stonemason accomplice smartly reseals behind them. Slit throats, screams in the night, "mouldering bones!" - in short, just the type of thing i look for in a Victorian tale of terror.
The White Raven: Daddy buys Moorland Grange on Dartmoor for his beautiful daughter, Lydia, so that she and husband-to-be Herbert Wilson will have a really out of the way place to themselves come the happy occasion of their nuptials. Fortunately, Jack Bewdley the gloomy gardener comes thrown in with the package:
"By goom miss, but you're powerful handsome! I hope as how you won't be seeing of the White Raven in th' owd Grange ... Ah, I won't be the chap to make your pretty face white wi' fright, so doan't ye ask me, please." Lydia, naturally, favours the oak chamber for her bedroom until she reads a truly abysmal poem relating to the curse carved into a wall panel. Herbert arrives home for Christmas, a date is set, and Lydia is so overjoyed, she forgets all about the curse and offers him the haunted chamber of doom! The following day he sets out with a hunting party and .... well, what happens certainly makes up for the rest of the story ...
more to follow ....
