SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE

Part Eight

by H. P. Lovecraft

(Copyright 1927 by W. Paul Cook)

The Gothic novel was now settled as a literary form, and instances multiply bewilderingly as the eighteenth century drew toward its close. "The Recess," written in 1785 by Mrs. Sophia Lee, has the historic element, revolving round the twin daughters of Mary, Queen of Scots; and though devoid of the supernatural, employs the Walpole scenery and mechanism with great dexterity. Five years later, and all existing lamps are paled by the rising of a fresh luminary of wholly superior order—Mrs. Anne Radcliffe, (1764-1823) whose famous novels made terror and suspense a fashion, and who set new and higher standards in the domain of the macabre and fear-inspiring atmosphere despite a provoking custom of destroying her own phantoms at the last through laboured mechanical explanations. To the familiar Gothic trappings of her predecessors, Mrs. Radcliffe added a genuine sense of the unearthly in scene and incident which closely approached genius; every touch of setting and action contributing artistically to the impression of illimitable frightfulness which she wished to convey. A few sinister details like a track of blood on castle stairs, a groan from a distant vault, or a weird song in a nocturnal forest can with her conjure up the most powerful images of imminent horror, surpassing by far the extravagant and toilsome elaborations of others. Nor are these images in themselves any the less potent because they are explained away before the end of the novel. Mrs. Radcliffe's visual imagination was very strong, and appears as much in her delightful landscape touches—always in broad, clamorously pictorial outline, and never in close detail—as in her weird phantasies. Her prime weaknesses, aside from the habit of prosaic disillusionment, are a tendency toward erroneous geography and history and a fatal predilection for bestrewing her novels with insipid little poems, attributed to one or another of the characters.

Mrs. Radcliffe wrote six novels: "The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne," (1789) "A Sicilian Romance," (1790) "The Romance of the Forest," (1792) "The Mysteries of Udolpho," (1794) "The Italian," (1797) and "Gaston de Blondeville," composed in 1802 but first published posthumously in 1826. Of these "Udolpho" is by far the most famous, and may be taken as a type of the early Gothic tale at its best. It is the chronicle of Emily, a young Frenchwoman transplanted to an ancient and portentous castle in the Apennines through the death of her parents and the marriage of her aunt to the lord of the castle—the scheming nobleman Montoni. Mysterious sounds, opened doors, frightful legends, and a nameless horror in a niche behind a black veil all operate in quick succession to unnerve the heroine and her faithful attendant Anette; but finally, after the death of her aunt, she escapes with the aid of a fellow-prisoner whom she has discovered. On the way home, she stops at a chateau filled with fresh horrors—the abandoned wing where the departed chatelaine dwelt, and the bed of death with the black pall—but is finally restored to security and happiness with her lover Valancourt, after the clearing-up of a secret which seemed for a time to involve her birth in mystery. Clearly, this is only the familiar material re-worked; but it so well re-worked that "Udolpho" will always be a classic. Mrs. Radcliffe's characters are puppets, but they are less markedly so than those of her forerunners. And in atmospheric creation she stands pre-eminent among those of her time.

Of Mrs. Radcliffe's countless imitators, the American novelist Charles Brocken Brown stands the closest in spirit and method. Like her, he injured his creations by natural explanations; but also like her, he had an uncanny atmospheric power which gives his horrors a frightful vitality as long as they remain unexplained. He differed from her in contemptously discarding the external Gothic paraphernalia and properties and choosing modern American scenes for his mysteries; but this repudiation did not extend to the Gothic spirit and type of incident. Brown's novels involve memorably frightful scenes, and excel even Mrs. Radcliffe's in describing the operations of the perturbed mind. "Edgar Huntly" starts with a sleep-walker digging a grave, but is later impaired by touches of Godwinian didacticism. "Ormond" involves a member of a sinister secret brotherhood. That and "Arthur Mervyn" both describe the plague of yellow fever, which the author had witnessed in Philadelphia and New York. But Brown's most famous book is "Wieland; or, the Transformation," (1798) in which a Pennsylvania German, engulfed by a wave of religious fanaticism, hears "voices" and slays his wife and children as a sacrifice. His sister Clara, who tells the story, narrowly escapes. The scene, laid at the woodland estate of Mittingen on the Schuykill's remote reaches, is drawn with extreme vividness; and the terrors of Clara, beset by spectral tones, gathering fears, and the sound of strange footsteps in the lonely house, are all shaped with truly artistic force. In the end, a lame ventriloquial explanation is offered, but the atmosphere is genuine while it lasts. Carwin, the malign ventriloquist, is a typical villain of the Manfred or Montoni type.

(Next month Mr. Lovecraft takes up "The Apex of the Gothic Romance.")

SIDE GLANCES by F. Lee Baldwin

Frank B. Long, Jr. has studied at New York University and Columbia College. Writing is his sole occupation and he lives with his father and mother, the former being a dentist. Long Jr. is 31.

E. Hoffman Price is 35, a World War veteran, a West Pointer, and a former cavalry officer; also superintendant of an acetylene gas machinery plant until 2 years ago. He now has a garage in Pawhuska, Okla., and writes fiction at leisure.

WEIRD WHISPERINGS by Schwartz and Weisinger

Seabury Quinn has been so busy with his magazine, Casket and Sunnyside, that he hasn't written a story since last September—which is bad news for the Jules de Grandin enthusiasts.... Jack Holt will star in a weird picture of voodooism, taken from the story "Haiti Moon," and titled for screen purposes, "Black Moon".... Donald Wandrei will break into print in Weird Tales again with "The Destroying Horde".... His brother Howard, who is also an excellent illustrator, is due in Weird also with "The Vine Terror".... Elliott O'Donnell's weird ghost stories are broadcast every Wednesday evening over the WEAF NBC chain.

H. P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, though living on opposite sides of the continent, are intimate friends.... Incidently, one of the characters in Lovecraft's bizarre "Whisperer in Darkness" was named Klar-Kashton.... Eli Colter, popular weird author, is a woman!... And Mary Elizabeth Counselman, Weird's new sensational author is only 19!... C. L. Moore, who is creating a hit with the 'Northwest' Smith stories in W T, is also a woman!... There have been three unsuccessful attempts to plagiarise Arthur J. Burks' "Vale of the Corbies," an old Weird Tales yarn of his.... Incidentally, Burks' "Bells of Oceana," the recent Weird reprint, is actually based on the tingling of bells that Burks heard on one of his trans-Atlantic voyages.

Robert E. Howard sustained some very painful injuries, severe cuts, crushings and wrenchings in an auto accident a few months ago, when he and two friends ran into a dark-painted and almost invisible flagpole in the center of a poorly lighted village square. It would have killed anybody less tough than Howard, but what with his iron-clad constitution, our favorite slaughter specialist has recovered from his injuries and is virtually as good as ever.... Hugh Davidson, author of the recent Weird Tales serial, "The Vampire Master," is the pseudonym for a well known WT author who has had more than 30 stories published there!... Paul Ernest's forthcoming serial in Weird describes a journey thru space that takes millions of years, and tells what the time travelers find here on their return.

Seabury Quinn got $17 for English reprint rights to his "House of Phipps".... But didn't get a cent for his most famous story, "The Phantom Farmhouse," published in WT when they were bankrupt.... August W. Derleth's recently published novel, "Murder Stalks the Wakely Family" was written on a bet that he couldn't write it in seven days.... He did!... Edmond Hamilton's own favorite stories are "The Monster-God of Mamurth" and "Pigmy Island".... David H. Keller's is "The Thing in the Cellar".... H.P. Lovecraft chooses "The Colour Out of Space".... Clark Ashton Smith picks "The Double Shadow".... And Donald Wandrei maintains that "The Red Brain" is his best.... Williamson cops the June WT cover.... "Trail of the Cloven Hoof" gets the July cover.... We'll be back next month....

YOUR VIEWS

"Mr. Lovecraft has stated very lucidly and succinctly the essential value and validity of the horror story as literary art, and there is no need to recapitulate his conclusions. It has often occurred to me that the interest in tales of horror and weirdness is a manifestation of the adventure impulse so thoroughly curbed in most of us by physical circumstances. In particular, it evinces a desire—perhaps a deep-lying spiritual need—to transcend the common limitations of time, place, and matter. It might be argued that this craving is not, as many shallow modernists suppose, a desire to escape from reality, but an impulse to penetrate the verities which lie beneath the surface of things; to grapple with, and to dominate, the awful mysteries of mortal existence. The attitude of those who would reprehend a liking for horror and eeriness and would dismiss it as morbid and unhealthy, is simply ludicrous. The true morbidity, the true unhealthiness, lies on the other side."—Clark Ashton Smith

"Down through the ages from the birth of romance, and the first emergence of story-telling, comes the horror tale. An inheritance from the age of the birth of romance, a legacy from our savage forefathers whose lives were saturated with spirits and beings, is our attraction to the horror tale. I do not think that people read them because they are an art; the reading public's first desire is to be entertained, and in many cases, this is the first and last aim of reading them. Entertainment!—of the same sort their forefathers had who crouched around primitive fires, surrounded by invisible conflicting elementals and unearthly personalities—a heritage from the past! First of all it must be entertaining, and to be truly entertaining, it must be 'genuine' and 'powerful', as Mr. Lovecraft says, and in this sense it will be classified as an art."—J. Harvey Haggard

"I should say that weird fans who have a taste in liking the outre in literature have a superior taste, rather than a morbid one, a sign of an inquiring mind, that is not satisfied with Wild West, Gangster, or sickly mediocre love stories. But to explore the hidden corners of things, whether it be the universe, the mind, or the supernatural, is proving that one's mind is not smug or narrow. If this be madness, insanity, or morbidity, glory in it, you weird and fantasy fans."—Natalie H. Wooley

"There are at least three weird story authors I could list as my favorites ... Merritt, Lovecraft, Smith. The only way I can settle the problem as to which of these three is my favorite is to say that I choose Clark Ashton Smith because of the quantity of consistent high-quality stories he puts out. His stories are readable, and I might go so far as to say, livable. The quality of making his yarns livable to the reader is an outstanding one."—Kenneth B. Pritchard

We would like to know your views on any phase of weird fiction. After all, this is your magazine and we want your opinions to be put before other fans. However, we must ask you to limit your comments to less than 100 words, due to the small space available.