Alastair Gunn - Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories 8

[dem bones]

Alastair Gunn [ed.] - Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories: Volume 8 (Wimbourne, 2020)

Front cover: J. S. Le Fanu, artist unaccredited. Back; George Houseman Thomas, A Ghost Story, 1864.

Alaistair Gunn - Introduction

Anonymous - The Silver Lady
Anonymous – The Haunted Brig
Anonymous – A Night in a Haunted House
Anonymous – The Story of an Organ
Anonymous – The Sword of Mauley
Anonymous – The Miser’s Curse
Anonymous – The Alibi
Anonymous – Bolden Tower
Anonymous – Falconest
Anonymous – The Spirit’s Whisper
Anonymous – Doctor Feversham’s Story
Anonymous – The Ghost of Stanton Hall
Anonymous – A Spirit’s Tale; or Aunt Ella’s Story
Anonymous – Le Vert Galant
Anonymous – The Bridal of La Guillotiere
Anonymous – The Ghost of Aldrum Hall
Anonymous – Not Yet Solved
Anonymous – The Château de Keronel
Anonymous – The Weird Violin
Anonymous – The Last Saturday in August

Blurb:
Twenty ghostly tales from the supernatural masters of the Victorian age.
Wimbourne Books presents the eighth in a series of rare or out-of-print ghost stories from Victorian authors. With an introduction by author Alastair Gunn, Volume 8 in the series contains stories published anonymously in America and Britain between 1838 and 1895. Most of these tales are here anthologised for the very first time.

Readers new to this genre will discover its pleasures; the Victorian quaintness, the sometimes shocking difference in social norms, the almost comical politeness and structured etiquette, the archaic and precise language, but mostly the Victorians’ skill at stoking our fears and trepidations, our insecurities and doubts. Even if you are already an aficionado of the ghostly tale there is much within these pages to interest you.

Wait until the dark of the snowy night, lock the doors, shutter the windows, light the fire, sit with your back to the wall and bury yourself in the Victorian macabre. Try not to let the creaking floorboards, the distant howl of a dog, the chill breeze that caresses the candle, the shadows in the far recesses of your room, disturb your concentration.

Alastair Gunn [& Andrew Lang] - Introduction: Examines 'the cult of anonymity' which prevailed from the seventeenth through to the early years of the twentieth century. Author speculates as to the identities of contributors to the current volume, citing Ellen "Mrs. Henry" Wood as probable author of Not Yet Solved, with her alter ego, Mary E. Penn, as strong candidate for The Château de Keronel. Essay incorporates in full Andrew Lang's lengthy The Comparative Study of Ghost Stories from The Nineteenth Century: A Monthly Review for April 1885.

J. Kenny Meadows: (?)

The Silver Lady: (Frederic Mansel Reynolds, [ed.], The Keepsake, 1838). Young 'Ferdinand' insists on spending the night in the haunted tower room of Baron Bentheim's castle, where a celebrated general recently met his doom. His companions - two army officers - fall asleep, but the alert Ferdinand is favoured a visit by the beautiful, veiled Silver Lady, whom he initially takes to be the Adelaide, the Baron's daughter, walking in her sleep, so uncanny is the resemblance. He takes the opportunity to pledge his undying love, whereupon the young woman requests the ring from his finger in token.

"Never cease to remember the oath you have sworn before this altar. If you were to break it, I should be compelled to fearfully persecute you."

Horror of horrors! Like the late General before him, Ferdinand has inadvertently taken a dead woman for his bride!

It transpires that some centuries ago, the Silver Lady was falsely accused of witchcraft and swam in the Castle lake, an ordeal she did not survive. Despite this incontrovertible proof of her innocence, she was denied burial in the family mausoleum and instead interred behind a wall of the tower. Alas, for the reader, the ghost is less black than she's painted and, for all the narrator's concerns, his corpse bride, once admitted to consecrated ground, frees him of his promise, whereupon our hero is identified as the missing heir to the Bentheim estate. He and Adelaide are wed. The Baron welcomes him into the family as he would a lost son, etc. Turned out nice again.

There has been speculation that The Silver Lady was authored by Keepsake contributor Mary Shelley, though authorities on the life and works of Lady Frankenstein are dismissive.

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Anon [John W. Gould ?] - The Haunted Brig: (Ladies' Cabinet of Fashion, Feb. 1841). "That Philadelphia brig had a red spot on the deck of her fo'castle as big as a man's head ...."

A mutiny aboard the The Rising Sun, it's captain cut down with an axe as he tends a sick seaman. When the ship next sails with a new, orderly crew, his vengeful ghost won't let bygones be bygones and soon we've another Marie Celeste situation on our hands. Excellent five pager, this one.

Author almost certainly John W. Gould, who included it in his Private Journal of a Voyage from New York to Rio de Janeiro (posthumously?) edited by his brothers, New York, 1838. The story had earlier been published in the New York Mirror, May 17, 1834.

Anna TuvStarr has identified the author of another of the stories [will add details when we come to it], so only eighteen to go.

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Anon - A Night in a Haunted House: Being a Passage in the Life of Mr. Midas Oldwyche: (Dublin University Magazine, May 1848: Current Literature, June 1889 as The Club-Footed Lady). "The apparition had been seen by the maiden-sister of Mr. Greenborn, and the shock had been so great as to derange her mind."

Recently wed Rev. Hammond takes the curacy at Wester Hilton in the North of England, leasing Mr. Greenborn's house which has become unpopular due to it's haunted reputation. The ghost is said to be that of a woman jilted on the wedding day when the groom discovered that her floor-length skirts concealed a club foot. The uneven phantom tread on the stair, horribly sad laughter and shrieks in the night are bad enough, but when the ghost climbs into bed with the mother-in-law, the Hammonds move out.

Midas Oldwyche, on hearing the story, demands to spend the night at this so-called "haunted" house, to prove that the Hammonds have been persecuted by nothing other than their own imaginations. "There are no such thing as ghosts ... let me not forget in what century I live; these are not the the dark ages." The pompous fool receives his comeuppance when a whip-wielding woman in white — who claims to be the real Greenborn Ghost — takes him for the spectre of her truant fiance. Ending strongly suggests Oldwyche has been the victim of an elaborate, and painful prank.

Le Fanu has been half-heartedly suggested as author, seemingly on the grounds that he was among the contributors to - and later, editor of - the publication in which it first appeared. Not sure anyone regards him a serious candidate.

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Anon - A Story of an Organ: (Ainsworths, July 1851; Harper’s New Monthly, Nov. 1851). On the tragic death of his brother, Lambert, during an attempt on the loftiest peak in the Tyrol, Maurice Evrard, lone witness to the tragedy, returns to England to "console" sweet Cicily Clayton, the dead man's bride-to-be. Evidently he's very good at it, as the pair are wed soon after. But as the happy couple exchange vows, Lambert's ghost strikes up a shrieking dirge on the church organ, followed by a blast of the composition he'd premiered before his beloved on the eve of the venture abroad. Maurice, exposed for the murderer he is, expires on the spot.

Anon [William Douglas O'Connor] - The Sword of Mauley (Harpers New Monthly, Jan. 1854). Author positively identified by Anna TuvStarr. Ernest, a painter obsessed with graveyards, skeletons, and big swords, denies his love for the fair Alice, fearful that he is doomed to repeat his grandfather's crime. Colonel Ralph Mauley took advantage of the Revolution to murder his sworn enemy, the Tory Isaac Bayne, in the aftermath of the battle of Bunker Hill. Alice, an orphan raised by the kindly Widow Niles, is believed to be the grandchild of said Bayne, whose bones lie at peace on Copps Hill, which is more than can be the killer. According to the neighbourhood busybody, Colonel Mauley's ghost walks his Boston mansion by night, stopping before the still-bloodied sword he plunged "through the back of the skull to the brain" of his victim. Supernatural goings-on offset by slapstick interludes. Impossibly slushy ending — the ghost atones, lovers wed, all's well that ends well, etc.

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Anon - The Miser’s Curse. A Veritable Ghost Story: (Harper’s New Monthly, April 1857). William is his parsimonious father's favourite son, until he marries Mary, under whose influence he squanders his father's wedding gift and overspends his way to ruin. A broken William throws himself upon his dying father's mercy, only for the old man to formerly disown him anew, curse he and Mary to the doom of miserable poverty, and swear that the Devil may have his soul if he will only allow him to persecute them beyond the grave. A strong hint of premature burial sustains interest.

Anon - The Alibi (Once A Week, Aug. 1861). Holidaying in a cottage in the Cathedral town of X——, the narrator, a sceptic in matters "spirit-rapping, table-turning and all supernatural eccentricities of that nature" is lured to the local courthouse by a phantom voice while the Assizes are in progress. A scary looking chap, accused of the murder and robbery of a poor country girl, is sentenced to death on the flimsiest evidence. The accused, a travelling glazier, receives the verdict with a sneer; "Well, then, do your worst, but I am innocent, I never saw the poor girl in my life, much less murdered her," persisting with his defence that he was replacing a window in Bristol on the day she was killed.

Back in his room, the narrator recalls that he was in Bristol on the day of the murder, and that there is very familiar about the condemned man's face.

[ripper]

I have this volume, but the only story that has stuck in my mind is The Silver Lady. I do enjoy reading them, and they are good VFM, but find that few tales are memorable. Gunn's introduction and the essay culled from a periodical are usually interesting.

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Feb 23, 2022 18:13:27 GMT ripper said:

I have this volume, but the only story that has stuck in my mind is The Silver Lady. I do enjoy reading them, and they are good VFM, but find that few tales are memorable. Gunn's introduction and the essay culled from a periodical are usually interesting.

How many of these do you have, Rip? Last I looked, he was up to Volume #21 in e-books!

[ripper]

Feb 23, 2022 18:23:46 GMT dem bones said:

Feb 23, 2022 18:13:27 GMT ripper said:

I have this volume, but the only story that has stuck in my mind is The Silver Lady. I do enjoy reading them, and they are good VFM, but find that few tales are memorable. Gunn's introduction and the essay culled from a periodical are usually interesting.

How many of these do you have, Rip? Last I looked, he was up to Volume #21 in e-books!

I have 9 volumes. There are some well-known stories dotted around, but most are quite obscure--or at least I haven't heard of them! Enjoyable, but imo not really any classics, or I haven't come across any. Mr Gunn does go back pretty far to select some of his stories, so it is common to see a smattering from the 1830s/1840s.

[dem bones]

Anonymous – Bolden Tower: (Harper's Weekly, 28 Jan. 1865, as The Ghosts of Bolden Tower: The Musical Monthly & Repertoire of Literature, Drama and the Arts, July 1865). "The male spectre appeared to be dragging the other along the floor toward the window ..." When his brother, Tom, inherits the coastal tower, Jack insists he be allowed to spend a night in the haunted room, mainly to show off to Miss Violet Heronside. The haunting dates from the reign of Henry VII when, fatally, a Bolden took a Heronside as a bride against her father's orders.

Anonymous – Falconest: (A Stable for Nightmares: Tinsleys Christmas Annual, 1868). Despite his attractive qualities — wealthy, owns fine house, handsome in a rat-faced, pointy toothed Count Orlok sense — still the girls at Miss Waring's school unanimously despise Lewis Falconer as a creepy 'vampire'. Alas for Linda, one of the quietest of their number, Falconer has made up his mind that she will just about pass muster for a wife in the absence of the preferred choice, his cousin, Eva Fairlie, currently AWOL, presumed travelling the continent. This pair, perfectly matched in nastiness, had long been expected to become man and wife.

In truth, Linda has no more affection toward her future husband than he has for her, but better a life of luxury than paid work as governess to Mrs. Tidey's ghastly brood. Chrissy, her best friend and confidante throughout school, is appalled at her low expectation from a marriage. "I don't think I should ever consider myself so much my husband's inferior, so entirely his property, as to be thankful if only he was such a lenient master as to be satisfied with me."

The big day arrives. The vows have just been exchanged when Eva, in full mourning attire, gatecrashes the ceremony ...

A horror story foremost with supernatural flourishes. This is the first of three stories from A Stable of Nightmares, some, or all of which, in recent years, have been attributed to Le Fanu, though not sure there is much evidence to support such claims. From Mr. Gunn's introduction:

"Seven [of the fourteen anonymous tales comprising 'A Stable of Nightmares'] ... later appeared in an American part-reproduction with the same title in 1896; with 'Le Fanu' credited on the spine. "J. Sheridan Le Fanu, Sir Charles Young, Bart., and Others" on the title page, but no author credits for the individual stories. One story in the 1896 collection is attributed to Fitz-James O'Brien (What Was It?) and another to Charles Young (A Debt of Honor) and the rest are often attributed to Le Fanu by default."

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A. Burnham Shute

Anonymous – The Spirit’s Whisper: (A Stable for Nightmares: Tinsleys Christmas Annual, 1868). A phantom voice compels Master John to take up stalking Captain George Cameron, a complete stranger to him. The adventure takes him from Brompton-road through Charing Cross to the least salubrious back alleys of Soho, where the whisperer reunites him with Mary Simms. Mary, a family servant until she was dismissed by his parents for pilfering, has fallen in with this Cameron, recently bereaved of a wife he insured to the hilt. He is certainly living a grand old life on the premium's payout! The voice is that of the late Julia Cameron, who now insists that John search a cabinet until he finds a diary. The entries contain enough incriminating evidence to see the Captain swing for her murder.

Anonymous – Doctor Feversham’s Story: (A Stable for Nightmares: Tinsleys Christmas Annual, 1868). Feversham moves in at the gloomy Collingham-Westmore mansion, near Westmorton, to tend the youngest Miss Collingham, a girl prone to fits and hallucinations. The obligatory family ghost is that of an unusually tall woman in a white robe, murdered by maniac husband who sliced off her hand as it clung to the window ledge. Whoever's shoulder the phantom severed hand should descend upon can be sure their life will shortly be visited by tragedy.

The patient falls for her handsome cousin, Don Luis de Cabral, the nicest man ever, who returns her affection with interest.

The hand prepares to pounce.

[ripper]

The Spirit's Whisper is one that has jogged my memory from when I read it.

[dem bones]

The Ghost of Stanton Hall: (New Monthly Magazine, Jan. 1868). unnamed narrator insists on spending a night in the long drawing room, haunted by a hand-wringing ghost in a "very scanty" lavender dress. The decades dead wife of Aubrey Stanton frantically roots inside a cabinet built into solid masonry, for the switch that slides aside a wall to allow access to a secret stairwell. Mrs. Stanton's treasure consists of vast sums of gold coin set aside for her son, Roger (long gone), whose own surviving child will now benefit. Miserable bits — when the haunted cabinet deliberately drops its lid on the heads of Roger's first born son and, some years later, his wife, crushing their skulls — are a good laugh, but once they are done, story drags on longer than needs be. Inevitable happy ending does nothing to improve morale.

Anonymous - A Spirit's Tale; or, Aunt Ella's Story: (Bentley's Miscellany, July 1868). "... so he wrote to this poor girl - poor Lucy as he called her. It seemed she was with another lover, for poverty, too, had taken hold on her, and the craving for bread, poor wretch! had driven her into that against which her whole soul revolted."

How, in her younger years, the saintly Ella did a good turn by the ghost of a suicide, buried in secret near the miser's grave on the cliff. Jeremiah took his own life having fast gambled and rioted away his inheritance, while poverty drove Lucy, his devoted nineteen-year-old lover, into prostitution.

Anonymous – Le Vert Galant: (Belgravia Annual, 1870). Young lovers' tryst in the courtyard ends in tragedy; an angry row, accusations, murder and suicide. Henceforth, ghostly reenactment of the girl, Susanna, working the water pump portends a death at the village inn.

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Anonymous [O. T. Drake] – The Bridal of La Guillotiere: (London Society, Christmas number, 1875: Colonel Wedderburn's Wooing, and Other Tales More Strange Than True, 1883). Author positively identified by Anna TuvStarr. A wedding party at a castle in the South of France. To the dismay of all, the gloomy portrait of Raoul de St. Victor, the groom's sinister ancestor, crashes to the floor mid-ceremony. To raise morale, the bride, Athenais de Brelancourt, suggests a game of hide and seek. It is The Mistletoe Bough all over again! Athenais is never seen - alive - again. Her husband of an hour pines into miserable premature old age and dies. The bride's heartbroken mother enters the convent.

Some claim to have seen the ghost of Athenais walking the battlements in all her finery, but the alleged sightings soon die out.

Several years later, on a visit to the now derelict castle, Max, a student at the University of Bonn, is goaded by his mischievous girlfriend into hiding from she and her friends. Entering a room on the top floor, he slides aside a worm-eaten cabinet set against the wall to reveal — the entrance to a secret room! And there, sat at a table in cobwebbed wedding gown ...

The stone panel silently closes behind him. Trapped!

Anonymous – The Ghost of Aldrum Hall: (Argosy, Dec. 1880). Phil Wentworth invites his old Rugby schoolchums, Charlie and Jack Kenyon, to holiday at his recently inherited Warwickshire property, a vast manor house with weird towers, ruined chapel, moat and fish pond. Unknown to Phil, Aldrum Hall also has a resident ghost. Each night the brothers' sleep is disturbed by phantom footsteps on the corridor and a ghastly shriek. Eventually they catch a glimpse of a golden haired girl in white by the park gate. At least she doesn't look the least harmful, but then Wentworth drops by to see how his friends are faring ...

Anonymous [Ellen Wood ?] – Not Yet Solved: (Argosy, Dec. 1875). As earlier revived by R. Chetwynd-Hayes in 13th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, 1977. Alastair Gunn believes this 'true' story to be the work of Ellen, Mrs. Henry Wood. A golden-haired ghost child in white seeking a precious Indian chain which somehow found its way into the cistern up top of the house. Footsteps on the stone staircase, a bedroom none of the family who have taken over the lease wish to sleep in, etc.

The Bridal of La Guillotiere is personal favourite to date, with The Haunted Brig a very close second.

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Anon [Mary E. Penn ?] - The Château de Keronel: A True Story: (Argosy, Nov. 1887). Les Tourelles, Lower Britteny. The great oaken door of the chapel remains locked except for the rare occasion of a funeral. Narrator Mary witnesses a phantom procession bearing a black palled coffin slowly emerging from within. Premonition of impending bereavement. Story references "British tourists of the usual obnoxious type" so evidently, boorish Brit holidaymakers abroad are not the recent phenomenon some would have us believe. Alastair Gunn suggests this one was authored by the mysterious 'Mary E. Penn', who may or may not have been Ellen Wood.

Anon - The Weird Violin: (Argosy, Dec. 1893). World famous Polish virtuoso buys a uniquely ugly violin from an antique store, the carved scroll depicting a monstrous grinning face. He insists on playing it at that night's concert, enduring demonic possession by a murderer for his trouble.

Anon - The Last Saturday in August: (Argosy, Sept. 1895). "Every night for a quarter of a century of my life I slept in a bedroom with a bloodstain under the carpet."

Is the indelible bloodstain in some way connected to the annual late summer phantom footsteps and "horrible sound" suggestive of a dragging chain? Where, if anywhere, do the two skeletons in the cellar fit in?

A low-key ending to a fascinating selection. Not every story worked for this reader, but he can certainly appreciate why the editor found them worthy of reviving. Very impressed.