Richard Dalby - Virago Book Of Victorian Ghosts

[dem bones]

Richard Dalby (ed.) - The Virago Book Of Victorian Ghost Stories (Virago, 1988)

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Proserpine

Preface - Richard Dalby
Introduction - Jennifer Uglow

Charlotte Bronte - Napoleon And The Spectre
Elizabeth Gaskell - The Old Nurse’s Story
Dinah M. Mulock - The Last House In C- Street
Catherine Crowe - Round The Fire
Mary Elizabeth Braddon - The Cold Embrace
Rosa Mulholland - Not To Be Taken At Bedtime
Amelia B. Edwards - The Story Of Salome
Rhoda Broughton - The Truth, The Whole Truth And Nothing But The Truth
Mrs Henry Wood - Reality Or Delusion?
Vernon Lee - Winthrop’s Adventure
Charlotte Riddell - The Old House In Vauxhall Walk
Margaret Oliphant - The Open Door
Lanoe Falconer - Cecilia De Noel
Louisa Baldwin - Many Waters Cannot Quench Love
Violet Hunt - The Prayer
Mary Cholomondeley - Let Loose
Ella D’Arcy - The Villa Lucienne
Gertrude Atherton - The Striding Place
Willa Cattier - The Affair At Grover Station
Mary E. Wilkins (Freeman) - The Vacant Lot
Isabella Banks - Haunted!

Notes on the authors

Dalby revived eight of the stories - by Charlotte Bronte, Elizabeth Gaskell, Amelia B. Edwards, Mrs Henry Wood, Charlotte Riddell, Margaret Oliphant, Ella D’Arcy, and Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman - for the 2006 hardcover edition of The Virago Book Of Ghost stories (the original 1987 paperback of the same title is a different selection. See HERE).

Charlotte Bronte - Napoleon And The Spectre: (Written 1833, published posthumously in The Twelve Adventurers, 1925). No sooner has Napoleon retired for the night than Piche the spectre demands he accompany him to a great hall where the living dead are engaged in much eerie revelry. Napoleon snaps out of his dream state to find he's gate-crashed the Empress Marie-Louise's private party in his nightshirt. Chortle!

Margaret Oliphant - The Open Door: (The Open Door and The Portrait: Stories of the Seen and the Unseen, 1881). As we dashed through the park, I thought I heard some one moaning among the trees, and clenched my fist at him (whoever he might be) with fury. Why had the fool of a woman at the gate allowed any one to come in to disturb the quiet of the place? If I had not been in such hot haste to get home, I think I should have stopped the carriage and got out to see what tramp it was that had made an entrance, and chosen my grounds, of all places in the world, — when my boy was ill! — to grumble and groan in. But I had no reason to complain of our slow pace here. The horses flew like lightning along the intervening path, and drew up at the door all panting, as if they had run a race.

Pentland Hills, Edinburgh. Young Roland Mortimer is confined to bed with fever, and everyone fusses that he's going to die, or at the very least, end his days a raving lunatic. But, as the boy explains to his father, there's nothing wrong with him save that he's heard a phantom voice from the ruins of Brentwood Mansion, crying for its mother. Roland feels he will not be restored to health until his father has helped the troubled soul.

Initially dubious, the Colonel interviews the old retainer and his wife who eventually ooncede that the groundsmen, gardeners, stable-hands and the entire neighboring village are aware of the haunting and leave the ruin well alone during the months of November and December. The Coloner and his butler, Bagley, an ex-soldier, investigate the Mansion that same night. Bagley is so unnerved by the experience, Dr. Simson, a skeptic in matters supernatural, fears for his sanity and cajoles Mortimer that he has an epidemic on his hands. Come the following dawn, Simson is skeptic no longer, though he still refuses to believe the evidence of his own ears - ghost's quite simply can't be; they defy the laws of science. It must be the work of a skilled ventriloquist!

Despite this, Simson can't bring himself to allow the Colonel to brave that dreadful ruin alone, and volunteers to accompany him again the following evening. The local cleric, Dr. Moncrieff, ia man so ancient that death holds no fear for him, listens to the Colonel's woes with great interest, bones up on the rite of exorcism. These three set off at eleven . Simson, now back to his old self, is not keen to have Moncrieff along on the caper - "If there are to be any spells, you know, I'll cut the whole concern" - but soon has good reason to be grateful for the minister's presence ....

Rosa Mulholland - Not To Be Taken At Bedtime: (All the Year Round Christmas, 1865). A reclusive stranger, dubbed Coll Dhu ('Black Coll') by the locals on account of his nasty face, builds a house in the Connemara Mountains. His solitary companion at this "Devil's Inn" is an equally secretive old gumster, although he is all but forgotten once the action starts.

One day Coll inadvertently rescues his sworn enemy, Colonel Blake, who is lost on the mountainside in treacherous fog. Blake's father persuaded Coll's to gamble his estate on a game of cards, resulting in the ruination of the family, the early death of Coll's mother and his old man's suicide. Colonel Blake must be slain to settle the score. But one glimpse of Blake's beautiful daughter, decides Coll that there's no point in being hasty, perhaps he could let bygones be bygones if the peerless Evleen will become his bride. Unfortunately, Evleen detests him on sight and her loathing only increases with every moment spent in his company.

So Coll consults Pexie, a local witch, about the 'burragh box', a love-charm fashioned from a strip of skin peeled from a dead man's skull and placed around the neck of the desired. The "yellow faced hag," notorious for her grave-robbing exploits, extracts a small fortune from him before agreeing to help. The burragh box, she assures him, will either work like a dream or drive Evleen to lunacy. When Coll angrily protests that a raving mad wife is of no use whatsoever, Pexie assures him that she was only joking, everything will be fine, trust her ....

[dem bones]

Catherine Crowe - Round the Fire (Seventh Evening) : (Ghosts and Family Legends, 1858: You can download a clean text version of the entire book via Project Gutenberg). Mrs. Crowe and like minded spook-spotters share their authentic friend-of-a-friend ghost stories. The Chevalier de La C. G. relates the tale told him by Count P., whose insistence on spending the night in the 'haunted room' of a Polish castle almost cost he and Dido the bulldog their sanity.

Dinah Mulock - The Last House in C- Street : (Fraser’s Magazine, Aug, 1856). Teenage love Victorian style and a premonition of doom. As an eighteen year old, Dorothy Thwaite was the day's equivalent of Miss Bath and attracted the eye of Edmond Everett, a junior lawyer. Everett's fledgling career obliged him to spend much of the year at Temple Bars, so he invited his fiancee and her parents to spend a week with him in London and take in the day's big shows. This places a strain on Mrs Thwaite, who is heavily pregnant. Rather than spoil everyone's fun, the good lady heads home to the West Country a day early while the others remain behind for an all-star production of Hamlet at The Haymarket. Dr. Thwaie, who has not spent a night apart from his beloved 'Dotty' in twenty years, is greatly agitated by this, the more so when wife's ghost appears in his hotel room clutching their new-born ...

Gertrude Atherton - The Striding Place: (The Speaker, June 20, 1896). Mr. Weigall abandons a grouse shoot on the Yorkshire Moors to search for his best friend, Wyatt Gifford, who vanished two days ago. There is no reason to suspect murder, even less suicide, as Gifford is full of the joys having recently captured the heart of pretty Aveline. Gifford is notorious for practical jokes, though if this is another of his pranks, it's not up to his usual standard. Eventually Weigall arrives at the slimy banks of the River Wharfe, and the treacherous spot known as the Strid which has claimed countless lives down the centuries. He wonders when last a foolhardy fellow attempted to leap across?

"Below the great rocks which form the walls of the Strid was believed to be a natural vault, on to whose shelves the dead were drawn. The spot had an ugly fascination. Weigall stood, visioning skeletons, uncoffined and green, the home of the eyeless things which had devoured all that had covered and filled that rattling symbol of man's mortality; then fell to wondering if any one had attempted to leap the Strid of late. It was covered with slime; he had never seen it look so treacherous."

A very white hand surfaces from the depths....

To reveal more would be too cruel.

In the short preface, Dalby reveals that the author had first submitted the story to The Yellow Book, where it was rejected as "too gruesome" to publish. It isn't, but along with The Open Door and Not To Be Taken At Bedtime, I'd rate it as an outstanding story in a particularly strong collection.

[ripper]

This is a really good collection of Victorian ghost stories, and Richard Dalby can always be trusted to provide an informative and interesting introduction.

I have never been able to make up my mind about the reliability of the Catherine Crowe tales. She was an interesting lady. Apparently, she is supposed to have had some kind of breakdown and was discovered running through the streets of Edinburgh stark naked in 1854, claiming that the spirits had rendered her invisible. She made a full recovery after treatment. Anyway, notwithstanding the accuracy of her supernatural stories, they do make good reading imho.

[dem bones]

Jun 2, 2013 14:50:02 GMT ripper said:

This is a really good collection of Victorian ghost stories, and Richard Dalby can always be trusted to provide an informative and interesting introduction.

Agreed on that, Rip. The Charlotte Bronte story is on the slight side, but it's been mostly full-on Victorian misery every since. Love your Catherine Crowe revelation, btw.

Mrs. Henry Wood - Reality or Delusion?: (Argosy, December 1868). South Crabbe, Worcestershire. Yet more gloomy melodrama, this time built around a love tiangle involving the handsome, workshy young farmer Daniel Ferrar, Maria Lease, his fiancee, and his bit on the side, Harriet Roe, French baggage, whose arrival in the village spells disaster for all. The word among the community is that Ferrar is stringing Maria along, but she refuses to believe this until she spots him canoodling with Harriet in the field while everybody else is at mass. A furious Maria takes to spying on her worthless husband-to-be and, when she catches him stealing corn from the Yellow Barn, threatens to shop him to Squire Todhetley. Johnny Ludlow - the orphan hero of a whole series of Mrs. Wood's stories - argues that he should be given a second chance, but, by the time Maria has calmed down, Ferrar has disappeared .....

Louisa Baldwin - Many Waters Cannot Quench Love: (The Shadow on the Blind & Other Ghost Stories, 1895). August, 1857. John Horton, trainee solicitor, holidays at Maitland Farm in Wandsworth. The Housekeeper, Mrs. Belt, explains that she's taking care of the property until the owner decides whether or not to sell, he and his family having recently emigrated to Australia. Young Esther Maitland was mortified at the prospect as it would mean separation from her sweetheart, Michael Winn, but it's agreed the young farmer will join them in a year. Over recent weeks, Winn has grown increasingly concerned that there's been no word from Esther since her ship arrived at Madeira.

A stormy night in Wandsworth sees the River Wandle burst it's banks and, tragically, Michael Winn is drowned. Simultaneous to this, a half dressed, slightly demented looking young woman appears in Horton's room .....

Amelia B. Edwards - The Story of Salome: (Tinsley’s Christmas Annual, 1867). Harcourt Blunt, painter and traveler, first meets Salome serving in her father's Oriental Goods shop in Merceria. His friend, Coventry Turnour, who has a habit of finding the love of his life on an almost hourly basis, has for once found one worthy of his worship, but Turnour is Christian, Salome is Jewish and this presents a stumbling block. A week on and Turnour's forgotten Salome ever existed, but Blunt can't get her out of his mind. Several months on, when next he returns to Venice, he visits the Jewish Cemetery and who should he see but Salome, looking more beautiful than ever in her melancholy. Who or what has brought her to this place? Why is she acting so creepy? Blunt takes a gondola to the cemetery every day until she tells him ....