Allen Grove [ed.] - Valancourt Victorian Christmas Ghost 2

[dem bones]

Allen Grove [ed.] - The Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories: Vol 2 (Valancourt, Dec. 2017)

Henry Petrides

Allen Grove - Introduction: Christmas Ghosts and the Nineteenth Century

Albert Smith - A Real Country Ghost Story
Emily Arnold - The Ghost of the Treasure-Chamber
Theo Gift - Number Two, Melrose Square
Anonymous - The Weird Violin
E. Morant Cox - Walsham Grange: A Real Ghost Story
Coulson Kernahan - Haunted!
W. W. Fenn - The Steel Mirror: A Christmas Dream
Anonymous - White Satin
Alfred Crowquill - Nicodemus
Grant Allen - Wolverden Tower
Eliza Lynn Linton - Christmas Eve at Beach House
Isabella F. Romer - The Necromancer, or Ghost versus Gramarye
James Grant - The Veiled Portrait
Anonymous - The Ghost Chamber
A. S. - A Terrible Retribution; or, Squire Orton's Ghost

Blurb:
Fifteen more chilling tales of Yuletide terror, collected from rare Victorian periodicals.

Following the popularity of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol (1843), Victorian newspapers and magazines frequently featured ghost stories at Christmas time, and reading them by candlelight or the fireside became an annual tradition. This second volume of Victorian Christmas ghost stories contains fifteen tales, most of which have never been reprinted. They represent a mix of the diverse styles and themes common to Victorian ghost fiction and include works by once-popular authors like Grant Allen and Eliza Lynn Linton as well as contributions from anonymous or wholly forgotten writers. This volume also features a new introduction by Prof. Allen Grove.

Albert Smith - A Real Country Ghost Story: (Bentley's Miscellany, Jan. 1846). Shepperton Range, Chertsey, Surrey. When Florence Woodward, the undisputed village beauty, very publicly rejects his marriage proposal, a disconsolate Frank Sherbourne joins the navy to fight and die in the Battle of Cape St. Vincent. Too late, Florence realises she has humiliated the love of her life. That same winter sees her consumptive and bedridden. As the doctor sets out to attend her on Christmas night, he's forced from the road by a horse-drawn black hearse whose two pale and miserable phantom passengers he recognises as the erstwhile lovers.

"But in winter, Shepperton Range is very bleak and dreary The wind rushes down from the hills, howling and driving hard enough to cut you in two; and the greater part of the plain, for a long period, is under water. The coach passengers used to wrap themselves up more closely as they approached its boundary. This was in what haters of innovation called the good old coaching times, when "four spanking tits" whirled you along the road, and you had the "pleasant talk" of the coachman, and excitement of the "changing," the welcome of "mine host" of the posting-inn, and other things which appear to have thrown these anti-alterationists into frantic states of delight."

Anonymous - The Weird Violin: (Argosy, Dec. 1893). Prior to this evening's performance, S________, the world-famous Polish virtuoso, impulsively buys an ugly, squat antique fiddle from a music warehouse. He is particularly impressed by its scroll, skilfully carved into the semblance of a leering face whose eyes appear to follow one around the room. S________, who doesn't read enough ghost stories, performs on the instrument at that night's concert. It is possessed by the spirit of the previous owner, who murdered Ernestine the harpist on being told she could never love him.

Emily Arnold - The Ghost of the Treasure-Chamber: (Time, Dec. 1886). Tregarthlyn Castle, Cornwall. The fiery-eyed ghost of Sir Guy Trevalyn the Royalist freebooter, climbs out of his portrait to usher our young narrator, Miss Ruby Jocelyn, to a secret staircase, at the bottom of which lies the stone vault where he concealed a fortune in Spanish plunder. The family home is secured, Ruby weds Cousin Dick, and the bones of the Phantom Cavalier are laid to rest in the church with full honours. In short, everything pans out as the famous hypnotist Mr Delaware foretold when he put Ruby under trance during her ship crossing from India.

E. Morant Cox - Walsham Grange: A Real Ghost Story: (Illustrated London News, Christmas 1885). The manor house near Mudleigh, Devon, has long been considered uninhabitable on account of its ghosts — a shrieking young woman chopped down by a masked fiend as his hag accomplice made off with her baby. Just the place to hold a Christmas gathering, decides a sceptical Lieutenant Ferriers, whose brother is desperately seeking a buyer for the property.

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Coulson Kernahan - Haunted!: (Time, Nov. 1885). Seven pages of gloriously miserable melodrama. Richard Spalding stabs dead his love rival, concealing the corpse in a crevice. Haunted across Germany by the murdered man's glaring ghost, fate finally catches him up on a guided tour of the Caverns of Terrane.

Alfred Crowquill - Nicodemus: (Belgravia Annual, Christmas 1867). "It was an unmistakable apparition of a suit of clothes, long worn by the deceased miller's wife. There stood her crutch-stick, but no hand leant upon it for support; there was her shoe, but no foot in it; there was her well-worn old velvet hood, but not — hold! — was it her face? No, it was not that, but a refulgent light with a frightful — but I do not think it was ever clearly ascertained what he saw. Suffice it to say, that it was something very unpleasant, which made him tremble like a large blancmange."

When the town's sainted idol pilfers her legacy to the church, the widow's ghost threatens to "throw a light phosphoric" upon the thieving swine when least convenient for him. Will Father Nicodemus repay all, or dare he risk public exposure for the blackguard he truly is?

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Anonymous - White Satin: (London Society Christmas number, 1875). "I wish you a good night, Mr. Woolner!" in a soft, quiet voice, curtseyed low and gracefully, glided to the door and was gone."

Roxley Hall, 1715. Heroics of Lady Lisley in the immediate aftermath of the failed Jacobite rebellion, with her husband, Sir James, in hiding and Woolner, the Magistrate, commandeered her home. Terrified for her husband's safety, our heroine dresses in flowing white gown to masquerade as the resident ghost, nightly emerging from the secret passage to seek out the incriminating documents that, if discovered, would cost Sir James — and rash young Dick — their heads. All seems lost when Woolner, who has long craved Roxley for his own, unearths three damning letters, but —

Fun and very charming with likeable cast and hissable villain.

We've only recently met many of the rest, three via the same anthology ......

William Wilthew Fenn - The Steel Mirror: A Christmas Dream: (Routledge's Christmas Annual, Dec. 1867: Alastair Gunn [ed.] - The 12th Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, 2022). Her reflection in the glass portends a death in the family.

Theo Gift - Number Two, Melrose Place: (All the Year Round, Dec. 1879: Alastair Gunn [ed.] - The 12th Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, 2022). Ghosts? Here? What nonsense! Just keep your nose out of the summer house.

James Grant - The Veiled Portrait: (London Society, Christmas 1874: Strange Secrets Told by A. Conan Doyle & Others. 1889). A bigamist is confronted by the wife he deserted in Indian mutiny melodrama. Existence is a bleak meaningless Hell, etc.

Eliza Lynn Linton - Christmas Eve at Beach House: (Routledge's Christmas Annual, Dec. 1870: Alastair Gunn [ed.] - The 12th Wimbourne Book of Victorian Ghost Stories, 2022). Cornwall Gothic.

Grant Allen - Wolverden Tower: (The Illustrated London News, 23 Nov. 1896; R. C. Bull [ed], Perturbed Spirits, 1954; Hugh Lamb [ed.], Victorian Tales of Terror, Richard Dalby [ed.]. Ghosts for Christmas, 1988). Now it's been rebuilt, a willing human sacrifice is required to 'fast' the tower against evil spirits. Folk horror novella.

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Isabella F. Romer - The Necromancer, or Ghost versus Gramarye: (Bentley's Miscellany, Jan. 1842). Palermo, Sicily. On the eve of his wedding, the Marchese Gaetano Sammartinovanishes, presumed abducted by pirates, never again to be seen alive. Three years on with his intended, Marchesina Lucrezia Parisio, still holding out hope of his deliverance, Felice, the missing youth's brother, turns to a phoney medium for help. If this Waldkirch can persuade Lucrezia that Guetano is dead, she will surely accept Felice as her husband. The Necromancer duly fakes a manifestation of Gaetano's waterlogged corpse. The ruse works. Lucrezia, after a respectable period of mourning, agrees to wed her loved one's brother and for a dreadful paragraph or three we face the very real threat of a happy ending until a skeleton dressed in the robes of a Grey Penitent gatecrashes the wedding banquet to denounce a murderer!

Anonymous - The Ghost Chamber: (Ainsworth's, Jan. 1853). A father realises on his deathbed that his favoured youngest son, the golden boy who can do no wrong, has poisoned him against his firstborn, the disinherited black sheep whose only crime was to put love above riches. More leftover morality play than ghost story, but we are so overjoyed to have experienced Ms Romer's wonderful Gothic hangover that we can overlook the odd duff one.

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Last one for Vol 2.

A. S. - A Terrible Retribution; or, Squire Orton's Ghost: (Bow Bell's Supplement, 6 Dec. 1871). "If you were master of Orton, Sydney, this hand should be yours at once." Goaded by Florence Bradlaw, the village beauty, Sydney murders his rich uncle, Squire Orton, disposing of the corpse in Fellbrig Pit. The Squire dies cursing his killer, promising to haunt him to madness and death. He is good as his word. Sidney is never free of the gloating spook, and, worse, far worse, sweet Susie Mayfield — the girl he now realises he loved all along — can see it too! Although Susie swears never to betray Sidney's sin, neither will she ever speak to him again! Florence, the new mistress of Orton Hall, has no such scruple. When the Squires ghost is reported floating above the chalk pit, she cheerfully denounces her husband as the killer. Story really should end there. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

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Sept 16, 2023 16:38:38 GMT dem bones said:

A. S. - A Terrible Retribution; or, Squire Orton's Ghost: (Bow Bell's Supplement, 6 Dec. 1871). [...] Story really should end there. Unfortunately, it doesn't.

It's definitely occurred to me that an anthology could be made of Victorian ghost stories that have been edited or rewritten in ways that improve them.