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Title: Arthur Machen: Weaver of Fantasy

Author: William Francis Gekle

Release Date: April 12, 2022 [eBook #67820]

Language: English

Produced by: Tim Lindell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at
             https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ARTHUR MACHEN: WEAVER OF
FANTASY ***






[Illustration: ARTHUR MACHEN

_After the Hoppe photograph_]




                                 ARTHUR
                                 MACHEN

                           _Weaver of Fantasy_

                          WILLIAM FRANCIS GEKLE

                            MILLBROOK, N. Y.
                            ROUND TABLE PRESS
                                  1949

                           COPYRIGHT, 1949, BY
                          WILLIAM FRANCIS GEKLE

     _All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
      any form, except by a reviewer, without the permission of the
                                author._

                            ROUND TABLE PRESS
                            MILLBROOK, N. Y.

             _Manufactured in the United States of America._




                                   for
                                  VERNE




PREFACE


It was, I suppose, during the closing months of the First World War
that an urbane and witty gentleman, writing in the Confederate city of
Richmond, set down these words in the course of one of his interminable,
and witty and urbane, monologues: “I wonder if you are familiar with that
uncanny genius whom the London directory prosaically lists as Arthur
Machen?”

Since there was no reply, as indeed none was expected, the amiable
Charteris chatted on about Arthur Machen and, oddly enough, Robert W.
Chambers, for some moments, and then he concluded with this statement....
“But here in a secluded library is no place to speak of the thirty years’
neglect that has been accorded Mr. Arthur Machen; it is the sort of crime
that ought to be discussed in the Biblical manner, from the house-top....”

That thirty years’ neglect has almost doubled—and indeed one might say
with perfect truth that Arthur Machen has suffered a lifetime of neglect,
_and_, in perfect truth, it must be added that the loss has been the
world’s which so blindly accorded neglect to the uncanny genius of Arthur
Machen.

This is the sort of crime, as Mr. James Branch Cabell suggested back in
1918, that ought to be discussed in the Biblical manner—and it is my
intention to do so.

At this point there will be voices raised in protest ... dim voices
trained to the librarian’s whisper, voices that echo in the vaults of
university libraries and in the reading rooms of Memorial Collections.
There will be other voices—the amiable, all-inclusive voice of the
anthologist and the rasping roar of the reprint editor. There will be
the excited exclamations of the cultists and the happy burblings of the
bibliographers as they pounce upon another Machen item. And of course we
may expect to hear the calm and cultured tones of the collectors, the
excavators and the discoverers, who have pointed with smug satisfaction
to their rows of faded bindings and their “obscure little pamphlets.” As
for the horror boys, happy with their harpies and hieroglyphs and wild
hallucinations, they will probably croak and sibilate in unholy glee and
rush down to start their presses—reprinting madly all they can find of
the magical tales of that wonderful Welshman, Arthur Machen.

It will appear that I anticipate a renewed interest in the works of
Arthur Machen. I do. It may even become apparent that I expect the
publication of this book to work the miracle—to right the wrong of sixty
years of neglect. I do. Nor is this to be attributed to egotism, nor to
a vast respect for my powers of persuasion. A number of literary men, of
small stature and great, have written well and passionately of Arthur
Machen, only to have their effusions produce a magnificent calm. It
is simply that there are signs and portents (of which more anon) that
the time is now. And then of course there is always the bare hope that
my admiration for Arthur Machen and my enthusiasm for his work may be
contagious enough to result in another Arthurian revival. That would be
an event to rival a genuine miracle at Glastonbury itself.

I spoke of the voices that will be raised in praise and recognition
of Arthur Machen. It may occur to some that there was bitterness in
what I said, and in the way I spoke of collectors and cultists, and of
bibliographers and bibliophiles, and of anthologists and of the zealots
of the pulp press. I daresay it is true that I am inclined to be bitter
over the neglect accorded Arthur Machen. Of course the blame for that
neglect cannot be fixed or fastened—but it must rest somewhere between
the publishers of limited editions and the reprinters of almost unlimited
editions, between the alpha and the omega, and the buying and reading
public. That covers a lot of territory. One cannot indict the publishing
world from top, literally, to bottom, literally. One cannot indict, to
paraphrase a much quoted statement of Edmund Burke’s, an entire reading
public. One can, to make a concrete proposal, attempt to do something
about it.

The interest shown in the prospectus announcing this book has been
gratifying, but it does not, to my mind at least, dismiss the charge of
neglect. It merely indicates that there are others who bear witness to
the crime and who wish to see justice done.

The book has been announced as a critical survey—and it will be that.
Many of the stories, written in that decade of the delicate decadents,
will be re-examined and re-evaluated. Mr. Machen will sometimes be spoken
of as a “Gothick novelist”—a thing he has said he is not. The stories
of the “Great War,” as he called it, are seen in a new perspective, as
anyone must know who has re-read them, especially _The Terror_, in the
past few years.

Many of Machen’s articles and essays, and such works as _Hieroglyphics_
and _Doctor Stiggins_, offer food for thought to those who may think,
for example, that Mr. James Farrell has settled literary criteria, once
and for all, in his book, of a few years ago, _The League of Frightened
Philistines_.

This book is, then, the result of some twenty years preparation; at least
half of them spent in planning to “do something about it.” The book has
grown slowly, with many interruptions before, during and since the war.
The opening chapter or Prologue, called “Conversation Piece,” was written
a dozen or so years ago. It was scheduled for publication in one of the
ephemeral magazines of the day. This particular one proved to be more
ephemeral than most ... to paraphrase a rather famous line, “it sank from
sight before it was set.” However, the piece is here presented as it was
written some twelve years back. I believe now, as I did then, that there
was need for a book about Arthur Machen. I hope this book will fill that
need.

At least one chapter, the ninth, may seem to some a philippic, a
potpourri of purely personal preferences and prejudices, having little
to do with Arthur Machen and his works. Needless to say, I believe it
extremely relevant.

                                                                  —W.F.G.




ACKNOWLEDGMENTS


I cannot recall whether it was James Branch Cabell or Vincent Starrett
who first directed me to the works of Arthur Machen. I am deeply grateful
to both, not only for this, but for their encouraging letters concerning
my book.

To Montgomery Evans and Paul Jordan-Smith for their enthusiasm and
interest, their intimate sketches of Machen, and for facts not available
elsewhere. To Carl Van Vechten and Robert Hillyer for their articles on
Machen, parts of which are quoted herein.

To Joseph Kelly Vodrey and Paul Seybolt for their informative and helpful
letters, and to Nathan Van Patten whose bibliographical labors lightened
my own. To Meyer Berger for his notes on the Mons affair, and to
_Harper’s Bazaar_ for permission to quote from them. To the late Alfred
Goldsmith and his delightful reminiscences of Machen. To all of these I
am deeply grateful.

To Alfred A. Knopf for permission to quote from the Machen books bearing
the Borzoi imprint, and for having published them in the first place. To
Robert McBride & Co. for permission to quote from _The Terror_, and to
Dodd, Mead & Co. for permission to quote from _More Authors and I_.

To Hilary Machen for his courtesy in handling my proofs at Amersham and,
finally, to Arthur Machen for the ‘plenary blessing’ he gave this book.




CONTENTS


    PREFACE

    PROLOGUE: Conversation Piece                 1

    CHAPTER

      One: Far Off Things                       14

      Two: The London Adventure                 37

      Three: The Weaver of Fantasy              58

      Four: A Noble Profession                  72

      Five: The Legend of a Legend              90

      Six: The Yellow Books                    112

      Seven: Machen’s Magic                    128

      Eight: The Pattern                       144

      Nine: The Veritable Realists             161

      Ten: Things Near and Far                 178

    EPILOGUE                                   197

    BIBLIOGRAPHY                               199




ILLUSTRATIONS


    FRONTISPIECE
      _Drawing made from the Hoppe Photograph_

    SOME MACHEN ITEMS
      _A photograph showing one of the famous Knopf
       Yellow Books and several title pages_           facing page 112

    THE MACHENS IN LONDON
      _A photograph taken in London in 1937,
       Courtesy of Mr. Montgomery Evans_               facing page 178




_Prologue_

CONVERSATION PIECE


“And what,” asked the younger man, “are they?” He pointed to a long
row of books plainly bound in yellow with faded blue and almost
indecipherable titles. The Host felt a warmer glow than the brandy alone
could have produced. “They are,” he said reverently, “my Machens.”

“Your whats?” asked the younger man absently. He had caught sight of a
promising looking volume, enticingly entitled _Aphrodite_, on a lower
shelf. The Host intercepted the glance, recognized the symptoms of
failing interest and, with skill born of experience, drew his chair
before the _Aphrodite_ and pulled out a lapfull of the yellow books.

The younger man, not too obviously disappointed, concentrated on his
small globular glass of _Asbach Uralt_. “Who,” he asked in tones that
matched his look, “is Machen?”

“Arthur Machen,” began the Host in a voice that matched _his_ look, “he
is the ... he’s, well ... look!” He gestured to the shelves. “Fifteen
books, and there are more, and you’ve never even heard of him. Fifteen of
the most wonderful books in the English language, and you ask who he is!”

“Well,” said the young man with pardonable irritation, “just who is he?”

The Host settled back in his chair, fighting hard for composure and
coherence. “Arthur Machen,” he began again, and with every evidence of
a strong determination to speak calmly, “is the man who has written
more fine things than any dozen living authors you may care to mention.
That may strike you as a rather broad and rash statement, but I am in
a mood to shoot the works. And there are others, Highly Connected and
Well Thought Of Persons, who have indicated much the same opinion.
Arthur Machen has been appreciated by some of our best known composers
of ‘literary appreciations.’ Unfortunately, this sort of praising is
often akin to, and almost as effective as, burying. To the popular mind,
a writer who has been appreciated by a duly accredited appreciator is a
pet of the pedants, a delight of the dilettantes and nothing more. And,
indeed, the titles found on some of the books containing these little
essays in literary appreciation are often suggestive of archeological
exploration rather than of due honor to a living author. I have in mind,
specifically, two books whose titles seem to connote research into a
particularly distant past. _Buried Caesars_ and _Excavations_, those two
books you see there; they would tell you in a much more literary style,
and with considerable technical flourish, just who and what Arthur Machen
was and is. But I am not minded to ask you to read them at present.

“I think,” resumed the Host generously gesturing toward the decanter
and his friend’s glass, “that the time has come for a new and revised
estimate of Arthur Machen. Would that I had the time, talent and/or
the temerity to undertake the task! Let us, meanwhile, acknowledge but
pass by these appreciators of Machen, at least for the moment. He has
attracted the attention and been subject to the discussion of Vincent
Starrett, Carl Van Vechten, James Branch Cabell and others. He has even
attracted the notice of such literary titans as Tiffany Thayer and Burton
Rascoe. He has been crowned by that arbiter elegantiarum of American
manners, morals and mentality, Walter Winchell, who once described Arthur
Machen as ‘tops among the literati.’ This last, I fear, is not a critical
estimate per se, but an indication of a vogue in certain quarters.

“Despite the fact that Mr. Machen has been ‘discovered’ by at least two
of our most indefatigable bolster-uppers of literary reputations and
revealers-of-lights-under-baskets; despite his having been exhumed and
placed on exhibition upon a platform built for two, Machen remains yet to
be properly appreciated and honored by a wider public. Perhaps he never
will be, and perhaps it is best so. Machen once wrote that if a great
book is really popular it is sure to owe its popularity to entirely wrong
reasons. And I, for one, tremble to think of what Hollywood might do to
Machen.” The Host paused briefly for replenishment.

“Far too often these appreciations have degenerated into what I have in
my more bitter moments mentally called _Match-Machen_. An execrable pun,
I grant you, but concerning a matter that is, to my mind, as offensive.
I refer to the practice of certain appreciators who, in the execution of
their self-appointed duties find it, for some reason or other, necessary
to devise improbable genealogies to demonstrate their own wide literary
knowledge and their conception of the subject of their labors. We find,
for example, _Mr. X_ in the act of appreciating a book by _Mr. Y_.

“How does he go about it? Why, he merely tells you that _Mr. Y_ is the
literary son of _A_ out of _B_, whose maternal grandmother was _C_, and
whose second-cousin is _D_. Another trick is to pretend that _Mr. Y’s_
work is a play ... with music by _R_, scenery by _S_, costumes by _T_
and lyrics by _W_. In short, you come away without the slightest notion
about _Mr. Y_. But you have learned that _Mr. X_ knows a great deal,
apparently, about the doings of _Messrs. A, B, C, D, R, S, T and W_. Do
you follow me?”

“But slightly,” confessed the younger man with that candor born of brandy.

“I will try to make myself clear,” said the Host selecting a volume from
the shelves.

“Here we have an essay about a man called, let us say Blank. The author
of this little essay will tell you that a passage of Blank’s prose
suggests one of the more poignant episodes out of de Maupassant, set to
music by Tchaikowski against a background of Gaugain’s Tahitian belles.
Have you any idea what Blank’s prose is like?”

“No,” said the young man morosely.

“Good! Listen then to this. It is Vincent Starrett on Machen: ‘Joris Karl
Huysmans, in a thoroughly good translation, perhaps remotely suggests
Machen, both are debtors to Baudelaire.’ Now, does that tell you anything
about Machen?”

“No, it does not!” said the young man. “But then, neither have you!”

“Quite true,” nodded the Host affably. “I am often carried away. But we
have ably demonstrated my contention.” The younger man looked decidedly
restless. “Um!”

“Know then,” said the Host relishing the sound of his voice, “that Arthur
Machen, born in 1863, the son of a Welsh clergyman, first swam into the
public ken early in the last decade of the last century—a fact which the
public largely failed to appreciate until some years later. His earlier
works were translations of the _Heptameron_, the _Memoirs of Casanova_,
and several other large and, I should think, rather dull old works. But
the most important were two remarkably unique books called _The Anatomy
of Tobacco_ and _The Chronicle of Clemendy_.

“Most of Machen’s best work was written before 1901—and in that year he
temporarily deserted literature for the stage. Machen’s most productive
period then, from 1890 to 1901, affords a curious and striking contrast
with what was assumed to be the important literature and the important
literary group of the time. The 1890’s in England were celebrated,
although few people grow festive about it now, for the Yellow Book Boys,
that delightful coterie of delicate decadents who glorified the carnation
and the pansy. But after the maddest music had died away, and the
reddest wine had been drunk, Cynara and Dorian fluttered to the shelves
and Oscar and Hubert and Adelbert retired into a certain pastel-shaded
obscurity from which they emerge from time to time as a new volume of
memoirs is published. The period still commands a certain amount of
academic attention—and yet the best books of that period were written
not by these ‘Men of the Nineties,’ but by Arthur Machen. A chap named
Muddiman, whose book you see there, wrote his history of these fellows
and mentions Machen but briefly: ‘Arthur Machen, in those days, belonged
to the short story writers with Hubert Crackanthorpe, who was the great
imaginative prose writer of the group.’ Alas, poor Hubert! Who knows him
now! Holbrook Jackson and Richard Le Gallienne ignore Machen completely.
And perhaps rightly so. Machen was not of the group, nor of the period.
But here I wish to digress briefly....

“These delicate contemporaries of Machen derived from the French
Symbolistes, who derived from Mallarme and Baudelaire, both of whom were
admittedly influenced by Poe. It has been said that Machen was also
influenced by Poe. The difference, if you will credit me, is that Poe’s
influence, in as far as it exists, came to Machen direct. When it came to
the others of the group it had been filtered through Gallic gravel and
Symbolistic sand.

“So much for Machen’s literary history. No one could possibly tell it
better than he has in _Things Near and Far_ and _Far Off Things_—his two
autobiographical collections. Nor is any literary history as simply told.
It is not one of your tremendous collections of anecdotes concerning
‘literary figures of the day.’ It is the story of a lonely man who
wanted, more than anything else, to write. And then—you must read Machen.
All of him. I know of no other writer whose entire output can be so
heartily recommended.

“You will realize, as you read, that when people use such names as Poe,
Stevenson, Blackwood, and Henry James, they are but vaguely gesturing
in the general direction of Machen’s own weird landscape. It is a land
as strange as the misty mid-region of Weir where lies the dank tarn of
Auber, the measureless caverns where runs the sacred river Alph. But
it is like none of these. The young man of Gwent has created his own
landscape, a strange country spread out under a sky that glows as if
great furnace doors had been opened, bordered by tall grey mountains,
traversed by streams that coil their esses through silent woods. It is
my fancy to think I have a picture of that country, painted by another
genius. You see that Van Gogh hanging there?” The Host indicated a large
framed print of writhing cypresses under a swirling sky. “On quiet
November nights I sit here and look into it, half expecting to see young
Meyrick or Lucian Taylor come down the hillside.

“It is curious to go over some of these former estimates of Arthur
Machen. One first reads them through in a fine enthusiasm at finding
someone else who has read Machen and found him good. But even those who
praise him the most, fail to express, or even to hint at the ‘quiddity’
of Machen. They seem to find him so far beyond their powers to praise
that they often resort to picayunish criticism. Thus we find Vincent
Starrett mildly complaining about an absence of cloud descriptions in
Machen. Or about a lack of humor. True, you’ll find no Maxfield Parrish
sky castles, no James Gould Fletcher touches, no rotogravure alto-cirrus
formations. But if ever a man could imply clouds without using the very
word, Machen can. And although Machen has not yet introduced a pair of
jolly grave-diggers to coax us back into our seats or cajole us into
combing back our bristling hair, you will find he has humor.

“There does exist, however, a problem in classifying Machen—it seems
to exist only a necessary evil. Essentially, I suppose, Machen is what
might be called a Gothic novelist. He has been linked so often with the
recognized practitioners of the Gothic style and tradition. You’ll find
no ivy-covered ruins, no deserted abbeys, no ravens, no baying mastiffs,
not even a sinister monk—and we must rule out those jolly tosspots, the
monks of Abergavenny. I daresay Machen would prefer to be known as a
Silurist. His ruins are those of an older time, older even than the ruins
of the golden city of the Roman legions.

“Vincent Starrett calls Machen the Novelist of Ecstasy and Sin—making
him sound rather like a Messalinaen Lady Novelist. Mr. Van Vechten too,
at least in his decadent novel _Peter Whiffle_, seizes upon Mr. Machen
from much the same viewpoint, and makes Machen an asset in the character
of his precious Peter. And all too frequently, in discussing Machen, the
spirit of Baudelaire raises its ugly head. Novelist of Sin, forsooth!
‘Evil, be thou my good!’ What rot! And there are those, apparently, who
would classify some of Machen’s tales as ‘erotica.’ Baudelaire, bosh! As
well point out the resemblance between a lane in Gwent and a lupanar in
Paris! No—Machen is neither a Gothic novelist nor a writer of delectable
indelicacies. Machen’s tag must be sought for in hieroglyphics of his own
devising.

“The ‘quiddity’ of Machen, the one quality that pervades all his work,
is that of ‘ecstasy.’ It is not the ecstasy of the lyric lady-novelist.
Mr. Starrett seems to think it is a technical device, since he finds it
is ‘due in no small degree to his beautiful English style.’ Mr. Machen’s
own idea of this quality is that it is ‘a removal from the common life.’
And that brings me to _Hieroglyphics_, a book that should be a text-book
in all our Universities. But perhaps not—no, surely not. Because in
this book of Machen’s you will find set forth, once and for all, the
difference between reading matter and fine literature. And such a book
cannot fail to make enemies, nor to create false ideas even among its
friends. Mr. Starrett says: ‘It is Arthur Machen’s theory of literature
and life, brilliantly exposited by that cyclical mode of discoursing that
was affected by Coleridge. In it he suggests the admirable doctrine of
James Branch Cabell that fine literature must be, in effect, an allegory
and not the careful history of particular persons.’ Mr. Cabell, who is,
according to Mr. Starrett, Machen’s literary son, set forth his literary
credo in _Beyond Life_ some seventeen years after the publication of
_Hieroglyphics_. In it, Mr. Cabell expresses admirably, and with his
famed urbanity, many of the truths he learned at his father’s knee. One
is as pleased with Cabell’s literary progenitor as with his prose.

“Just one more quotation. It is my favorite quotation to end quotations
about literary credos or the mechanics of creation. Mr. Machen, in _The
Three Impostors_ says: ‘... I will give you the task of a literary man in
a phrase. He has got to do simply this—to invent a wonderful story, and
to tell it in a wonderful manner.’

“In his novels, _The Three Impostors_, _The Hill of Dreams_, _The
Secret Glory_, _The Terror_, _The Great Return_, and in many of his
shorter stories: _The Great God Pan_, _The White People_, in all his
creative work, Machen has shown himself the master of his own precept.
In _Hieroglyphics_ Machen noted the difference between reading matter
that related facts about a character or a group of characters, and fine
literature that symbolizes certain eternal and essential elements in
human nature by means of incidents. You will find, then, that these
wonderful stories are not merely startlingly original conceptions of
heroes and heroines taking part in unusual events. That many of these
plots and inventions are uncanny and fantastic does not place them in the
‘thriller’ class—having nothing more to say than the latest detective
story. It would be absurd to think of _The Great God Pan_, for example,
as merely a story about the discovery that Pan is not dead, or that
Priapic cults may still flourish. No, it’s not so simple as that. There
are other elements present, and chiefest of these is that quality of
ecstasy. There are symbols and representations of a higher order, no
cheap mysticism, no spiritualistic clap-trap. And finally there is in
these stories an element of something that prompts belief.

“_The Great God Pan_ is a story much more improbable, more fantastic than
_Frankenstein_ or _The Strange Case of M. Valdemar_. And it is not a
mere pseudo-scientific story—it is believable. You do not believe that?
Yet Machen wrote a story more fantastic still. A story with no possible
explanation, scientific or otherwise, in short, nothing less than
miraculous vision could have explained it. And that story was, and still
is, widely accepted as true. The tale of the _Bowmen_ at Mons, a simply
written story, no flourishes, no elaborate atmosphere; yet with that
quality of ecstasy, that quiddity of Machenism, has won belief. Quite
recently, in a shop, I came across a volume that was an anthology of
Myths, mysteries, visions and the like, and in it appeared the story of
the Bowmen. It was not Machen’s story, however, and there was no mention
whatever of Arthur Machen. It had been set down as an authentic legend,
documented and sworn to by this one and that one who claimed to have been
there. I daresay it will, in time, join such distinguished company as
the Walls of Jericho and Joshua’s obedient sun.

“Yes, you must read Machen. All of him. It has been implied that there is
a sameness about Machen’s work. But do not imagine that you will read the
same story, told and retold. You will come to realize that there is in
Machen a definite pattern. He has said that most men, as well as writers,
are men of one idea. And most writers create tales that are variations on
one theme, that a common pattern, like the pattern of an Eastern carpet,
runs through them all. And Machen’s pattern? You will see, when you read
him, that literature ‘began with charms, incantations, spells, songs of
mystery, chants of religious ecstasy, the Bacchic chorus, the Rune, the
Mass.’ And Machen has taken as his symbol and pattern the devices and
signs of ecstasy, of the removal from the common life. The dance—the
maze—the spiral—the wheel—the vine, and wine, these are the outward signs
of ecstasy, the patterns of Machen.

“One book in particular you must read—_The Hill of Dreams_, without
a doubt one of the finest novels ever written. From the first grand
sentence a spell is laid upon you. It has never failed to thrill me—it is
like the master theme of a symphony—it is as magical as the opening notes
of the _Good Friday_ music in _Parsifal_. But there—I have fallen into
the ways of those whom I have derided. And I have kept you quite later
than I intended.”

The Host rose, stretched, and poured out a brace of nightcaps. The
younger man, who had listened patiently to this lengthy monologue,
gratefully accepted his brandy, sipped rather too avidly, for listening
is also a thirsty business, and said, “Why do you suppose Arthur Machen
is so little known? I mean, he sounds marvelous—but, after all, people
can’t help it if they don’t know about him.”

“That,” responded the Host sadly, “is one of the Mysteries of Mysteries.
Perhaps Machen writes too ‘circumvolantly’ as Cabell says, for our
critics. Or perhaps, as Van Vechten says, ‘one only takes from a work of
art what one brings to it—and how few readers can bring to Machen the
requisite qualities.’ Perhaps our critics are more apt to be impressed
by clever young men who go about swimming classical streams, fishing for
tarpon, or fighting in the fashionable war of the moment. The general
public, unfortunately, knows Machen, if at all, through the inclusion
of several of his stories in anthologies of mystery and horror stories.
Which is about on a par with using Shelley’s _Indian Serenade_ as a
filler in a pulp confession magazine.

“A short time ago in London there was a dinner party in celebration of
the seventy-fifth birthday of a writer. The guest of honor made the
customary speech—but it was such a speech as has seldom been heard from
a feted author. It was tragic, it could have been, and should have been,
bitter—but all was gently said. After toiling in the fields of literature
for over forty-two years, after having produced eighteen volumes of rare
quality, he had earned but £635. That man was Arthur Machen.”

“He is still living?” asked the young man.

“Yes,” replied the Host gravely. “I should like to make a pilgrimage
to his home. But you must go. Take these with you. Read them. I fear
I have told you little about Arthur Machen. Nor am I the only one has
confessed such a feeling of inadequacy to cope with Machen. But I find
comfort in what a very capable writer once said of another remarkable
writer of Gothic Tales. It will be, I promise you, my final quotation of
the evening. Dorothy Canfield once wrote, in a preface to _Seven Gothic
Tales_: ‘The person who has set his teeth into a kind of fruit new to him
is usually as eager as he is unable to tell you how it tastes. It is not
enough for him to be munching away on it with relish. No, he must twist
his tongue trying to get its strange new flavor into words, which never
yet had any power to capture colors or tastes.’ And now, mind the step
going out. It’s rather darkish.”




_Chapter One_

FAR OFF THINGS


1

One might devote a great amount of time and give a great deal of thought
to the opening paragraph of a book about Arthur Machen. It is not merely
that one is faced with the usual problem of where to begin: in Caerleon
or London, in Richmond, Virginia or Newark, New Jersey or, for that
matter, wherever one first heard of or first read Arthur Machen. Nor is
it simply a matter of how to begin: with a quotation—there are a number
of very appropriate quotations—or with a review of a controversy raging
in the London newspapers in 1915, or with a few paragraphs taken from
_Peter Whiffle_, a rather outré novel published in New York some years
ago. Nor is it even a matter of when to begin: with the Nineties, the
Twenties, or only yesterday. The problem is one of selection, for one
might pick up the line of the legend of Arthur Machen anywhere along the
course of the last three quarters of a century. More than that, it is
also a matter of the personal history of almost anyone who might attempt
the task.

Most people will remember, I think, when it was and how it was, they
first became acquainted with the work of Machen. And in most cases, I
believe, it will be a rather strong and vivid memory. Whether one was
introduced to Machen by Cabell or Starrett or Van Vechten, or made the
discovery for one’s self becomes a matter of some importance, at least to
those who have come to know Machen and who regard him, as I do, as one of
the greatest living writers in English literature. Yet it might seem that
these personal recollections and this high regard, however deeply felt,
are not quite reason enough for a book about such a man, nor significant
enough to serve as an introduction to such a book.

Of course there are facts and figures. Many a book gets under way with
an impressive array of figures, or with the clever juxtaposition of two
facts which, by their very contrast, seem to promise an unrelenting
interest and an unrelaxing grasp upon the reader, or it may start out
with a simple statement of fact. Such figures as, for example, these:
Arthur Machen’s works have appeared in anthologies which run to fabulous
numbers of copies, and one of his stories has been published in an
edition limited to two copies. Or a juxtaposition of facts, as for
example: Arthur Machen has been praised by Oscar Wilde, the arbiter
elegantiarum of the 1890’s, and by Walter Winchell, equally arbiter
elegantiarum of the 1930’s.

Or a simple statement of fact, supplied, stiffly and on crackly paper
by the British Ministry of Information: “Arthur Machen, the Welsh
novelist, was born in Caerleon-on-Usk in 1863.” His Majesty’s Ministry
or representative thereof, concludes with the intelligence that further
information may be found in a certain book which may be obtained from a
certain publisher.

Be it said, then, and to the everlasting glory of His Majesty’s Ministry
of Information, that Arthur Machen _was_ born at Caerleon-on-Usk. And in
the year 1863. A long time back.


2

Somerset Maugham once wrote something about the unhappy accidents of
birth that often place a man amid scenes that must seem forever strange,
and among men who must seem forever strangers. When such a person,
after years of painful adolescence, dramatic conflict, moving tragedy
and innumerable vicissitudes, finally arrives by some happy accident at
some other spot upon this planet he feels, in the words of more than one
sympathetic novelist, that he has “come home.” And then, presumably,
the conflict and the tragedy and the vicissitudes begin all over again.
In actual life writers, and artists of other sorts, are particularly
susceptible to this form of cosmic accident—or at least many of them
prefer to think so. It is, somehow, heartening to meet one who was
pleased with the place of his birth.

“I shall always,” wrote Arthur Machen, “esteem it as the greatest piece
of fortune that has fallen to me, that I was born in that noble, fallen
Caerleon-on-Usk, in the heart of Gwent.... For the older I grow the
more firmly am I convinced that anything which I may have accomplished
in literature is due to the fact that when my eyes were first opened in
earliest childhood they saw before them the vision of an enchanted land.”

There is no doubt that the simple fact that Arthur Machen was born in
Caerleon-on-Usk has had a tremendous influence upon his style, his
thinking, his writing, his philosophy and his life.

Caerleon-on-Usk, lying within the fabled land of Gwent and close to the
Welsh border, would have fascinated Arthur Machen even if he had not been
born there—just as it must fascinate everyone who has ever read Machen
and anyone who ever will read him. “Little, white Caerleon,” he calls it,
an island in the green meadows by the river, was once the headquarters of
the Second Augustan Legion, one of the farthest outposts of the sprawling
Roman Empire. The Romans originally called it Isca Silurum, evidently
for its situation on the river Usk. Later Latin writers called it Urbs
Legionem, a translation of the Welsh Caer-Leon.

Caerleon knew the hardened legionnaires, the men who crossed the Channel
other conquerors failed to cross. It knew the tread of men who followed
the eagles, and it knew the patricians who came with the Pax Romana in
the wake of the legions. Caerleon knew also the gallant companions of
the Round Table, for it was, in those times, a seat of Arthur the King,
and many a summons brought the knightly riders within its walls and many
a quest sent them off across the meadows where the river wound in great
esses toward the dark forests hanging along the mountainside. Nennius
places the scene of at least one of Arthur’s battles at Cairlion. As for
Gwent, it is now called Monmouthshire, but in those days it formed the
eastern division of the kingdom of South Wales, and some identify it
as one of the three divisions of Essyllwg, the country of the Silures.
Caerleon itself is the very stuff of legend, and yet it exists today, as
it did in the middle nineteenth century, a small and sleepy town not far
from the equally legendary Severn.

In this place and in the year 1863, Arthur Machen was born—the son of a
clergyman who had the poor “living” of Llanddewi Rectory. His father was
John Edward Jones, who afterwards added his wife’s surname to his own,
so that his son’s full signature became Arthur Llewelyn Jones Machen.
Daniel Jones, Machen’s grandfather, was Vicar of Caerleon-on-Usk and his
great grandfather was David Jones, Curate of St. Fagans, Glamorgan. It is
not the present writer’s intention to compose a biography, “fictionized”
or otherwise, of Arthur Machen. There will be none of your happy little
phrases about what the “little Arthur” did, or what the “young Machen”
or the “boy Machen” thought. Nor will the reader be asked to “imagine
the young Arthur growing up amid the storied stones of Caerleon,” or to
believe that “undoubtedly the young Arthur was influenced by the wild
Welsh countryside,” or even to “assume that the boy Machen made many
trips to the legendary shrines in and about Caerleon.”

Such a biography may one day be written, but one cannot refrain from
hoping that it will not be. Machen has written his own biography in at
least three of his books, and perhaps in all of them. The two frankly
autobiographical books, _Far Off Things_ and _Things Near and Far_ tell
most of the facts of his early life ... and they tell them with more
meaning than even the most skilled and sympathetic biographer could.
His novel, _The Hill of Dreams_, does more with the material suggested
in these notes of a lifetime than the most gifted novelist of our day
could attempt. The story of Lucian Taylor and his adventures, mental and
physical, mystical and spiritual, in the invented town of Caermaen, _is_
the story of Arthur Machen, beautifully told as no one else could tell
it. To these books the reader is referred and, fair warning, he will be
referred to them again and again!

To be sure, Machen _did_ make those little trips about the legendary town
in which he lived; he _was_ inspired by the storied stones of Caerleon
and he _was_ influenced by the wild Welsh countryside. He was an only
child and he lived in that solitude which is so often the lot of an only
child. He often accompanied his father on his “parish calls” and thus he
came to know every farm and every lane, every hill and every valley in
the heart of Gwent along the roads that led from the rectory at Llanddewi.

When he was eleven he went away to school, passing each term as a sort of
“interlude among strangers” until he could come home again to Caerleon.
Was he happy or unhappy at school? Was he fond of games or of mooning
about—the two alternatives, apparently, of English public school life?
That story is told in _The Hill of Dreams_ and again in _The Secret
Glory_. Machen’s schooldays were the schooldays of Lucian Taylor and
Ambrose Meyrick ... to their stories we must again refer the reader. For
conjecture and invention are beyond the scope of this study and Arthur
Machen is seventeen when he really enters into our particular field.

For in his seventeenth year Arthur Machen went up to London. There was
a very practical purpose behind this first visit to London—he was to
come up before the examiners for entrance into the Royal College of
Surgeons. Whether or not the actual purpose of this visit was of great
importance to Machen is one of the conjectural matters upon which we
shall not speculate. The matter had been arranged and decided by family
and friends—it was the necessary preliminary to a career in medicine or
in surgery. Machen prepared for it by walking some three or four miles
several times a week to the Pontypool Road Station to obtain copies of
the London papers. These he studied with great care, devoting special
attention to the theatrical pages. Not that he had ever given any
particular thought to the stage or to the theater, or that he was, in
the phrase of today, “stage-struck”; it was simply that the theater was
typical of what London was, and of what Caerleon was not. At any rate, on
a day in June 1880, he went up to London with his father. And thus began
The London Adventure.


3

The examiners found something Machen already knew—he had no head for
figures, either arithmetical or anatomical. And apparently Machen had
not the interest or the ability to acquire, within a period of time
agreeable to the examiners, a proficiency in either. It must not be
assumed, however, that Arthur Machen had already decided upon a career in
letters, to be pursued amid the pleasures of London. He had not. Years
later Machen wrote that he had no idea, when first he went to London, of
a career in literature. Indeed, he had _never_ thought of it as a career,
but as a destiny.

However, he had not been in London a month before he began to write.
There is nothing particularly prophetic about this, nor anything
especially startling. Most young men, at one time or another, try to
write. And usually their creative efforts are turned in the direction of
the epic, the heroic, the classic. A young man, trying to write, almost
never permits himself to indulge in a fancy for the light essay, the
brief episode. It is epic or it is nothing, usually the latter. Doubtless
the Freudians have an explanation for this. It would be, one supposes, a
very long and very complicated explanation.

Machen had his own explanation—for his own case. He attributes it to his
Celtic blood. Not that Machen thought the Celt, or the Welsh Celt at any
rate, had contributed much to the world’s literature. Indeed, Machen had
advanced the idea that “all impartial judges will allow that if Welsh
literature were annihilated ... the loss to the world’s grand roll of
masterpieces would be insignificant.” Yet he concedes a certain literary
feeling that does not exist in the Anglo-Saxon ... an appreciative
rather than creative faculty, lacking, perhaps, in the critical spirit
but still, a delight in the noble phrase ... the music of words. And
so—Machen tried, as a young man will, to write.

He wrote verses, of course. “Every literary career,” says Machen, “which
is to be concerned with the imaginative side of literature begins with
the writing of verses.” So Machen confirms, some sixty years before
it was conceived, the opinion expressed above. He had written verses
before, while still at the Hereford Cathedral School. They were concerned
somewhat with matters derived from the _Mabinogion_ and were probably
composed in the heroic manner. This set of verses was, as is the custom,
rejected.

He filled notebooks with “horrible rubbish—rubbish that had rhymes to
it.” Much of what he wrote was greatly influenced by Swinburne’s _Songs
Before Sunrise_. “Influenced” seems a mild sort of word to set alongside
Machen’s own “cataclysmic.” At any rate, writing what he describes
variously as rubbish and drivel, Machen tried, at the same time, to pass
his examinations for the Royal College of Surgeons. His examiners now
arrived at their decision regarding Machen’s arithmetical ability and the
career as a surgeon came to a close. Machen returned to Caerleon and the
writing continued, mostly, of course, after the family had retired for
the night.


4

A printer named Jones, who lived in the cathedral town of Hereford,
one day received in the post a manuscript accompanied by a request to
print one hundred copies of the poem. It was a poem. The title of the
poem, _Eleusinia_, probably conveyed nothing to Mr. Jones, stationer,
bookseller and printer of Hereford. As he struggled with the text,
written in a large sprawling hand on both sides of ordinary letter
paper, Mr. Jones might have wondered what our young people were coming
to. Certainly the subject matter of the poem was vastly different from
the Bibles, Prayer Books and Pitman’s Shorthand Manuals with which his
shelves were stocked.

Fortunately for Mr. Jones, the poet pretended no knowledge of
book-making. He specified no typographical niceties, he pleaded for no
ornaments, he indicated no preference in paper or in binding. His one
modest request, that the Greek phrase _Oudeis Muomenos Odureta_ to appear
on the title page, be set in Greek type, was withdrawn when Mr. Jones
wrote him that Greek type would be extra. And so the phrase appeared in
English, and with a typographical error, at no extra charge.

Mr. Jones presumably knew the young poet—remembered him as a purchaser
of letter paper and note books. The Llanddewi Rectory address was, in
a way, reassuring. His bill would probably be paid, but Mr. Jones must
have thought the usual thoughts about “minister’s sons.” As for the
poet—he preferred anonymity, the comparative anonymity of “By a Former
Member of the H.C.S.” For when a sixteen page pamphlet bearing the
title _Eleusinia_ and concerning itself with the Eleusian Mysteries, is
published by a Former Member of the Hereford Cathedral School it must be
admitted that such anonymity is, at best, comparative. Generations of
readers of novels about English public schools will realize that every
other former member of the H.C.S. would know at once that the book could
have been written by none other than “old Machen.”

Of course the edition of one hundred copies guaranteed that the anonymity
would still remain comparative—especially since it seemed unlikely that
the former membership of the H.C.S. at large would be interested enough
in poetry to purchase sixteen pages of it ... and without wrappers! It is
not known, exactly, what happened to ninety-nine copies of _Eleusinia_.
Henry Danielson in his _Arthur Machen: A Bibliography_ (1923) says that
his collation was taken from what is probably the only copy extant.

The text of this first work of Arthur Machen is, naturally, as little
known to the general reader as a transcription of the Rosetta Stone
... and so it is likely to remain. What is it about? Machen says of
it, “this is a horrible production.” He wrote it, he adds, by turning
an encyclopedia article on _Eleusis_ into verse, “some of it blank,
some of it rhymed, all of it bad.” This is Machen’s estimate of it in
the notes he wrote for Danielson’s _Bibliography_. Nathan Van Patten
lists, _Beneath the Barley. A Note on the Origins of Eleusinia_ (1931).
Whether this explains the poem or the mysteries is known only to those
who have seen one of the twenty-five copies that were printed. However,
in a letter written in 1945, Machen says: “It is less than nothing, but
perhaps it might have suggested the entertaining question—‘Here is a boy
of seventeen who is interested in the Eleusian Mysteries: what the devil
will happen to him?’”

Well, Machen’s poem was published, and whatever he may have thought of
it in 1923 or in 1945, his relations, in 1884, thought well enough of it
to decide that journalism was the career for Arthur. It is amazing, in a
way, that a pleasant little group in a country rectory should decide over
a little pamphlet written “about” the pagan rites at Eleusis, that their
youthful relative was destined for a career in journalism. Of course,
relatives are proud of one’s books and equally proud of one’s pamphlets,
even if they do not read them. And so, perhaps, the rector and his family
never bothered too much about the contents of the rarest Machen item
of them all. Doubtless more than one of the ninety-nine copies slowly
disintegrates in a Welsh garret to this very day.


5

In the summer of 1881 Machen was back in London in quest of a career.
This one too, although it had nothing to do with figures, did not quite
come off. For some time he had thought about journalism as his relatives
advised, but he did not actually follow their advice until some years
later. Meanwhile, he lived in an old red-brick Georgian house in Turnham
Green where he wrote furiously in one manner or another. That Celtic
appreciation of the fine phrase and the glorious sound of words was
strong within him, for almost everything he read struck a responsive
chord, and he would begin at once to compose an epic in the manner of the
author or the book he was currently reading.

Thus there was a long heroic poem in the manner of William Morris, whose
_Earthly Paradise_ he had just purchased with his tea and tobacco money.
Then there were innumerable verses in the manner of Robert Herrick. Now
and then there would be a strong Swinburnian resurgence. And while all
this furious creation was going on he worked in what was called the
“editorial” department of a publishing house.

There are many tasks a literary man might do in serving his
apprenticeship and Machen did most of them—or most of the ones current
in the ’Eighties. He had assisted in the “grangerizing” of many old and
odd volumes and he had composed “Shakespearean” calendars, selecting
appropriate quotations from “The Bard” for each of the three hundred and
sixty-five days. These and other more or less literary matters occupied
his days and earned for him the sum of about a pound a week. At Turnham
Green he wrote feverishly and planned prodigiously and read ravenously
... and almost every book he came upon set him off on another venture of
his own.

There are some writers, and there are certain casts of mind, requiring
exercises of this sort. It is rather odd that these should turn out to
be the more imaginative writers after all. Yet it does seem that they
have to work out for themselves theories of composition and devote much
of their time and talent and energy to perfecting the technicalities
of the trade of writing. Poe, of course, comes to mind, and Coleridge
and Hawthorne. They first developed theories, seemingly so rigid. They
devised formulae, seemingly so mechanical. And then they created tales
and poems, not from their observations and experience, based not on
facts, but on fancy. And they composed them, apparently, with little
regard for the formulae and systems of their own devising. They seem to
leap from the frankly imitative to the fearlessly imaginative, without
ever taking any of the intermediate steps they themselves had postulated,
or calling into use any of the technical and mechanical aids with which
they had practiced their trade.

Machen in 1881 might recognize and respond to a pattern or formula in
Swinburne, in Burton, in Morris, in Herrick, in Stevenson, in Balzac, in
Rabelais. This is not to imply that Machen merely developed a style “in
the manner of Swinburne,” or of Stevenson or of any of them. To each of
these he brought something of Machen—and as he learned his craft, the
technical tricks, the automatic alliterations and the polished phrasing
were fused into something, a way of writing, no one else has ever had, no
one but Arthur Machen.

Meanwhile Machen discovered that he disliked his labours at the
publishing house in Chandos Street. The business of composing cultural
calendars to be hung in London kitchens and country parlours did not
interest him, nor did he see why it should interest anyone. He therefore
resigned his position—and in the face of a raise to twenty-four shillings
a week! He then became, of all things, tutor to a group of children,
teaching them, of all things, mathematics! His head for figures seems to
have improved considerably for, on going over the Euclid he was supposed
to pass along to his charges, he found that it did make sense of a sort.

He had moved from Turnham Green to Clarendon Road—a street destined to
become, one day, as well known as Baker Street, Cheyne Row and many
another London street of literary fame. Machen was already existing on
that famous and fantastic diet of “green tea, stale bread and great
quantities of tobacco.” Fortunately, at first, his tutorial position
entitled him to dinner with his pupils. Later his pupils changed, and
with them his menu. The noon hour was spent in wandering about Turnham
Green or Holland Park, with a pause for biscuit and beer at a convenient
tavern.

These wanderings became a habit, and through the spring of 1883
Machen went further afield into the green suburbs to the north and
west of the city. It was on these lonely outings that he first began
to formulate one of his literary theories—that “in literature no
imaginative effects are achieved through logical predetermination.”
Now this theory—so demonstrably true in his own case—was arrived at by
no logical predetermination but by sheer pedestrianism. It came about
on these solitary walks when, as so often happened, the roads that led
so invitingly to green and open country plunged suddenly into a row of
horribly new brick houses or, more startling still, a vast and sprawling
cemetery.

To the countryman, whose ideal landscape proceeds logically from
valley to hill, from stream to pond, from crossroads to village, from
fence to house and stile to pasture, these monstrous outcroppings of
civilization, these sudden and terrible interruptions of what was and
should have continued to be a pleasant prospect, are more horrible even
than a factory belching smoke from seven stacks.

And so these pleasant saunters that so often ended before a hideous row
of red-brick houses, the quiet lanes that terminated abruptly before
a vast pile of bricks and boards, created in Machen the beginnings of
that doctrine of the strange and terrifying things that lie so close to
the surface of the quiet and the commonplace. The hideous face at the
window in a story written years later is but a reflection of the sudden
apparition of a raw, new suburb at the end of a quiet lane leading north
out of London.

For the present these were but things seen and felt, they sank quietly
below the surface and floated deep down in the well of the unconscious.
Tutoring and Turnham Green and the twisting roads of Notting Hill were
sufficient unto the days. The nights in his small room in Clarendon Road
were more urgent—more filled with magic. For here there was not the
sudden sight of a street hastily hacked into a hillside, nor the mounds
and monuments of a cemetery, but great books and greater magic flowing
from the majesty of Gothic cathedrals or the Arthurian romances or the
Divine Comedy. He read by night, lighting candles when the gas meter
clicked off, and passed for a time into the “Middle Ages, walking in
the silvery light with the Masters of the Sentences, with the Angelic
Doctor, listening to the high interminable argument of the Schools.” Out
of these books and studies, and a great deal out of Burton’s _Anatomy of
Melancholy_ came a book that was to be called _The Anatomy of Tobacco_.

The book was sent to a publisher who, as it happened, liked it and who
was prepared to publish it, after “certain preliminaries” were attended
to. These preliminaries entailed a visit to Caerleon and called for
another conference in the parlour at the Rectory. The family and the
relations, remembering the pamphlet of a few years ago and encouraged by
the news that the new book would contain many times more than sixteen
pages, attended to the preliminaries.

In due course, in the year 1884, George Redway of London published _The
Anatomy of Tobacco_. And a very handsome book it was, in its cream
parchment boards and brick-red lettering on the spine. The author of
this study of smoking, “Methodized, Divided, and Considered after a New
Fashion” was one “Leolinus Silurensis, Professor of Fumical Philosophy in
the University of Brentford,” in whom we may recognize our old friend,
the former Member of the Hereford Cathedral School.

This is the book Machen calls “The Anatomy of Tankards” in his _Far
Off Things_. There you may read the whys and the wherefores of this
amazing composition, and the devious means by which Burton and tobacco
and divers other curious books entered into its making. So convincing
is his account of his investigations and research into the matter of
taverns and tankards and such matters that quite a few collectors have
spent considerable time, and were prepared to spend considerable sums,
to acquire a copy of _The Anatomy of Tankards_. Meanwhile, Machen
had quitted the six-by-ten room in the Clarendon Road and returned
to Caerleon and a normal diet. Throughout the winter of 1884 he had
worked on the proofs of the _Anatomy_ and then upon an assignment from
Redway for another book. This was a translation of the _Heptameron_ of
Marguerite of Navarre. Machen blithely undertook the task, despite his
own sworn statement that upon leaving Hereford School he could not have
conjugated the simplest, and most popular, of French verbs.

The merrie and delightsome tales of the French Marguerite occupied him
through winter and spring in Gwent. Once more he walked in the deep lanes
about Caerleon and alternately missed London and revelled in the luxury
of not being in Clarendon Road. By the time June came to Caerleon he had
sent off the last batch of his translation and Redway had written him
and offered him a job. It did not seem too hard a thing to return to
Clarendon Road with a job, a real one, in the City. He was to catalogue
books—and such books! There were books on Alchemy and Magic, on Mysteries
and Ancient Worship, on the occult sciences and Rosicrucians and all
sorts of wonderful and baleful and mystic and incredible matters.

Machen became the cataloguer of these curious volumes—and he came
very close to being that wonderful phenomena of the twentieth
century: a publisher’s advertising man! As a matter of fact, Machen
did achieve something few, if any, publisher’s advertising men have
accomplished—either before or since. Two of his catalogues have become
highly prized collector’s items. They were published in 1887 and 1888
respectively.

Working in a book-filled garret in Catherine Street, Machen produced one
catalogue which pops up from time to time in Machen bibliographies: _The
Literature of Occultism and Archeology_. Then it occurred to him to
paraphrase a chapter in _Don Quixote_, the one in which the Curate and
the Barber examine the Knight’s library. This chapter was written in a
manner calculated to entice the wary or unwary book collector into buying
the books discussed. The catalogue was issued under the title _A Chapter
from the Book Called The Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de la Mancha_.
The other catalogue, issued in the following year, bore the title
_Thesaurus Incantatus, The Enchanted Treasure or, The Spagyric Quest of
Beroaldus Cosmopolita_.

It will do little good to look for copies of these catalogues. Vincent
Starret, the fortunate possessor of at least one of them, in his
collection of Machen’s tales, _The Shining Pyramid_ (Covici-Fried,
Chicago, 1923) has included two pieces called _The Priest and the Barber_
and _The Spagyric Quest of Beroaldus Cosmopolita_. These are taken, of
course, from the catalogues in question. As to whether you will find the
Starret volumes readily available—well, they are worth the search.

Well then, here was Machen in a hot-bed of the occult and the devilish,
surrounded by books of all sorts, especially the strange, the weird
and the curious. His room in the Clarendon Road held as many books as
it could accommodate along with its occupant—the overflow was stacked
between the rungs of a ladder on the landing outside. He was busy with
notebooks once more, and writing furiously as ever—but in despair rather
than the fine frenzy and high spirits of a few years before. For now
he was deep in Rabelais and Balzac—and these books cast a spell upon
him. They were warm, glowing books in which life was full and rich and
lusty—there were great eaters and drinkers and lovers in those days. They
offered too great a contrast to the cold, lonely room in Clarendon Road
and the diet of tea, tobacco and bread.

Machen was under the spell of a landscape bathed in a warm sun, with
ruins standing close to roads, and wine flowing from vineyard to bottle
to parched throats all within a few yards of enchanted space. This was a
contrast indeed to the deep lanes of Gwent, the lonely ruins that stood
in the shade and shadow of great hills and forests, and although Machen
had spoken glowingly of the greenish-yellow cider of that land, still, he
rather favored, in his mind at least, the wines of Touraine.

By night there was this magic of old books and by day there were the
old books of magic, for the garret in Catherine Street was crowded with
old and odd books of every sort, a collection that “represented that
inclination of the human mind which may be a survival from the rites of
the black swamp and the cave.” These studies did induce a frame of mind
that might tend toward the strange and unusual. Living in this strange
mixture of a glowing, gargantuan landscape and the dark labyrinths of the
mediaeval mind, Machen tried, and sometimes desperately tried, to write.

“A man has no business to write,” said Machen many years later,
“unless he has something in his heart, which, he feels cries out to be
expressed.” And he had nothing to say—had only the urge to write, the
vice of writing for writing’s sake—_cacoethes scribendi_—he called it!
But then Machen has had time to reconsider his pronouncement of 1923,
and to revise his opinion regarding men who wrote—and why they write.

In a “London Letter” to the _New York Times Book Section_, Herbert W.
Horwill wrote, in September 1935: “A curious literary problem is posed by
that veteran author, Arthur Machen, in John o’ London’s Weekly. Imagine
a man marooned on a desert island, and certain that he would remain
there for the rest of his life. Imagine, moreover, that he possessed the
literary faculty, and had salvaged pens, ink and paper from the wreck or
else had devised home-made substitutes for them. Would such a man write,
knowing that whatever he wrote would never be seen by any eye but his own?

“Mr. Machen tells us that he once heard this question discussed among a
group of friends. Some answered yes and some no, and, when pipes were
knocked out for the night, the problem was no nearer solution, though,
to the best of his recollection, the ayes were in the majority. He voted
with them himself, and, after further reflection, he still believes
he was right. The hypothetical Crusoe might have no better implements
available than quills of parrots’ feathers, paper made out of the bark of
the guru tree and ink obtained by macerating the root of a certain plant.
But, granted his possession of the literary faculty, he would possess
also the literary impulse. He would write because he liked writing, apart
from whatever fate might be in store for the thing written. The true
spring of imaginative literature, Mr. Machen reminds us, is the delight
of the creator in creation.”

In the desert island of Clarendon Road, all through the summer of 1885,
Machen wrote. He wrote because he had to, because he was under the spell
of a master of gargantuan languages, because he was enamoured of the
sound of words and because he had an ear for the rich and rolling phrase.
And, of course, he wrote because he had the literary impulse. The pound
a week he was paid by Redway could not afford him the rich living, the
pleasures of Touraine. But then, after despair and after much almost
pointless scribbling, he came at last upon the idea for the Great Romance.

It was to be a book in which Rabelais and Gwent were mingled ... and
thus began the “History of the Nine Joyous Journeys ... in which were
contained the amorous inventions and fanciful tales of Master Gervase
Perrot, Gent.” Machen had prepared for this great undertaking by
purchasing his ruled quarto paper, his pen points and his penholders.
Quite possibly he envisioned a plaque on the door of his little cell
at 23 Clarendon Road, announcing that Here Had the Great Romance been
Written! There was, however, this difficulty—the vision of the great
romance declined to be more specific. There were no hints as to plot, no
guidance as to characters. He began, at any rate, a Prologue, written in
a flowing and flowery 17th Century manner.

But now his cataloguing in Catherine Street had come to an end, and
with it his pound or thereabouts per week. Nevertheless, he wrote on,
even though he knew that his composition of the Great Romance might
be abruptly terminated some three or four days in the future. Then,
presumably, he would return to Caerleon, in all probability on foot. As
it happened, he returned hurriedly by train. Just as he had come to the
end of his tea and tobacco and rent money, he had word that his mother
was dying. Aunt Maria thoughtfully sent his fare with the summons.

Later, he returned to the “great romance,” writing once more in the
familiar room in the rectory where the fire burned and the winds howled
down from Twyn Barlwyn and tossed the branches and beat upon the door.
He wrote late into the morning, long after his father had knocked out
his last pipe and gone upstairs. So passed the winter of 1885. Through
the days he walked in the lovely Gwentian hills and looked down upon the
white farm houses standing in the midst of encircling trees. At night
he worked in that room where he had, as a boy, first read de Quincy and
Scott and the other writers who had helped to bring about the “renascence
of wonder.” And in the following year he was alone. His father died that
spring.

This was the John Edward Jones whose homecoming from Jesus College,
Oxford, is described in the opening pages of _Things Near and Far_. Now
Machen was more truly alone than ever. His father had been to him a good
companion in his earliest rambles about the countryside. It had been his
father’s hope that Arthur might one day return to Gwent to live, buy a
small newspaper and settle down to a quiet career in country journalism.

There were certain inheritances that might help, when they came through.
For Machen’s father seldom thought of the good these inheritances would
do for him in his struggle to make ends meet at Llanddewi Rectory. But
now he had gone and then, ironically, the long-lived Scottish relations
went too, and the Scottish lawyers began to look through family Bibles
for the next of kin.

Through these and other circumstances Machen at length came into
money—smallish amounts which, shrewdly invested or even conservatively
invested, might have stretched themselves out for a score or more years.
This economic policy did not suggest itself or, if it did, was quietly
ignored. The simple expedient of living modestly and comfortably, and
dipping into a box for coins, when coins were required, seemed much the
better plan.

In 1887 Machen returned to London, to live in Bedford Place, and to
arrange for the publication of the Great Romance, now called _The
Chronicle of Clemendy_. This was accomplished, with perhaps a deeper
plunge into the box of coins, and the book was published that year. It
was printed at Carbonnek, “for the society of Pantagruelists.” And it
did, apparently, quite well. The nine joyous journeys and the merry monks
of Abergavenny pleased Machen and his fellow Pantagruelists—which, in the
year 1888 or 1948, is almost as much as can be asked of any book.




_Chapter Two_

THE LONDON ADVENTURE


1

In the late 1880’s Arthur Machen had, as he said, “Rabelais on the
brain.” He had been for some years under the spell of the gargantuan
tales and of Balzac’s _Contes Drolatiques_—and perhaps even more under
the spell, literarily if not literally, of the Holy Bottle and the magic
of Touraine and whatever it is about the land of France that so beguiles
the young of the Anglo-Saxon peoples.

It was under the Rabelaisian influence that Machen had written his “great
Romance,” _The Chronicle of Clemendy_, and made his translation of the
_Heptameron_. And finally he had undertaken to translate and publish an
even more difficult and bizarre book—_Le Moyen de Parvenir_ by Beroalde
de Verville.

This book, rather highly prized by collectors of at least two sorts,
is incredibly dull. No fault of Machen’s certainly, although he might
have permitted it to remain untranslated. Still, he was at the stage and
of an age when this sort of thing had an appeal. And so he translated
and published it in not one, but two editions. There was a large paper
edition and an “ordinary” edition—both preceded by a very small edition
(four copies) of a portion of the book under the title _The Way to
Attain_.

Now of course every Machen bibliography lists this title, and many a
Machenite has wished he might obtain a copy. Actually, it is one of
the least important of Machen’s works. For this is merely a portion
of _Le Moyen de Parvenir_—and very probably not an important part at
that. Bibliographers, bibliophiles and bibliomaniacs are at liberty to
go quietly mad in their quest for this queer little item. For queer it
is—Machen himself cannot quite explain its existence. The four copies
were issued in 1889, presumably by the Dryden Press who were to publish
the complete work. A dispute over something or other arose and the
project was dropped—at least by the Dryden Press. All four copies,
apparently, are in the safe-keeping of Danielson, or they were at one
time.

The other two editions were privately printed at Carbonnek in 1890 under
the title of _Fantastic Tales_. There have been other editions, de luxe
if not luxurious, for what is sometimes known as “the trade.” It may be
assumed that the writer holds no very high opinion of this work. But then
neither does Machen. He has described the book as being somewhat like a
cathedral constructed entirely of gargoyles—as plain a warning as any
ever given by an author regarding one of his works.

This fantastic collection of “discourses ... on Reformation politics
... many tales, some pointless, a few amusing” while it may provide
puzzles, pleasure and profit for bibliophiles, is important only in
that it marks the finish of the Rabelaisian influence upon Machen. Not
that this influence was ever “Rabelaisian” in the usual sense ... it
was rather like that of various French poets and novelists of several
generations over still other generations of English and American writers.
During certain periods our younger writers and “intellectuals” would have
Verlaine on the brain, or Baudelaire in their bonnets, but eventually
they would go back to writing stark novels about Sussex or Sauk Center,
or Wales or Wisconsin or the moors of the Missouri.

The extent of this enthusiasm and the depth of this influence may be
estimated from the following rhapsody delivered by Ambrose Meyrick in
_The Secret Glory_. “Let me celebrate, above all, the little red wine.
Not in any mortal vineyard did its father grape ripen; it was not
nourished by the warmth of the visible sun, nor were the rains that
made it swell common waters from the skies above us. Not even in the
Chinonnais, earth sacred though that be, was the press made that caused
its juices to be poured into the _cuve_, nor was the humming of its
fermentation heard in any of the good cellars of the lower Touraine.
But in that region which Keats celebrates when he sings the ‘Mermaid
Tavern’ was this juice engendered—the vineyard lay low down in the south,
among the starry plains where is the _Terra Turonensis Celestis_, that
unimaginable country which Rabelais beheld in his vision where mighty
Gargantua drinks from inexhaustible vats eternally, where Pantagruel is
athirst for evermore, though he be satisfied continually. There, in the
land of the Crowned Immortal Tosspots was that wine of ours vintaged,
red with the rays of the Dog-star, made magical by the influence of
Venus, fertilised by the happy aspect of Mercury. O rare, super-abundant
and most excellent juice, fruit of all fortunate stars, by thee were we
translated, exalted into the fellowship of that Tavern of which the old
poet writes: _Mihi est propositum in Taberna mori!_”

Well, it was quite a thing while it lasted ... but the Rabelaisian vein
petered out and Machen began to perceive that he was of Caerleon-on-Usk
and not a townsman of Tours or a citizen of Chinon, and that the old
grey manor-houses and the white farms of Gwent had their beauty and
significance, though they were not castles in Touraine.

Meanwhile he was back at his old trade of cataloguing. He had switched
employers for, when York Street would yield little more than a pound a
week, Leicester Square would give thirty shillings. So back he went to
cataloguing ancient books. Not that he was much good at it, nor that
he preferred it above all other forms of employment. As a matter of
fact he rather disapproved of the whole business and issued what almost
amounts to a Manifesto to Collectors: “I don’t care two-pence,” he wrote,
“whether a book is in the first edition or in the tenth; nay, if the
tenth is the best edition, I would rather have it ... the only question
being: is the book worth reading or not?”

Nevertheless, cataloguing seems to have been a rather flourishing trade
at the time, and a profitable practice—for the publisher at any rate. For
this was a remarkably literate era, and publishers pandered profitably
to the popular taste ... they were busily at work discovering rare
books, improving some with plates borrowed from others, issuing new and
enlarged editions at the drop of a folio, and discovering the pleasures
and profits to be derived from making translations—particularly from
the French. In the same building occupied by Machen’s employers were
the offices of Vizatelly, the publisher who was even then bringing
out translations of Zola’s works. At about the same time Machen was
working there, Havelock Ellis was editing the Mermaid Tavern Series of
Elizabethan Dramatists for Vizatelly. Ellis notes in his _Autobiography_
that he was paid the sum of three guineas per volume—an amount he
considered rather small. This may indeed have been a small amount—but he
had a better deal of it than Machen who was asked, at about this time, to
do a translation of the memoirs of Casanova.

The manner in which this undertaking came about was rather curious and
very casual. One of the Brothers for whom he worked, and whom he does not
otherwise identify in _Things Near and Far_, came to him one day with
an old volume and asked Machen to translate from the place marked with
a slip of paper. Machen set to work and about a year later he completed
his translation of the twelve volumes of _Casanova’s Memoirs_. The place
marked fell in about the fifth volume, and Machen simply translated
through to the twelfth, began again at the first and worked through to
the place in the fifth volume—which was “where he came in” as one says at
the movies.

This monumental work, and the best translation to date of the _Memoirs_,
was thrown in, as it were, with the cataloguing at thirty shillings a
week. Machen simply remarks that he believes the cost to the firm to
have been “strictly moderate.” Much more moderate than the three guineas
per volume paid to Ellis for his editing. However, Machen was eventually
offered an opportunity of profiting from his work. A few years later
when the translation was about to be published, Machen was granted the
privilege of investing a thousand pounds in the venture. One of the
Brothers suggested that, as he was now an _interested_ party, he might
wish to revise the manuscript.

Of course publishing was not quite the same game it is today ... there
were publishers then who were, if not actually unscrupulous, a trifle
careless in their accounting and possibly slightly unethical. Vizatelly
was prosecuted and jailed as a result of his translations of Zola. Machen
has remarked upon the irony of the situation—for even while Vizatelly
was in jail, charged with circulating obscene literature, Zola was
being well received on his trip through England. When Vizatelly died
shortly thereafter the Mermaid Tavern series was taken over by another
publisher without so much as a by-your-leave. Ellis’ name was removed
from the volumes, and that, apparently, settled that. Ellis treated the
affair with a silence he knew would not be taken as a sign of contempt.
One gathers that publishers in those days were not very thin-skinned.
However, in his autobiographical sketches describing these events, Machen
offers not the slightest criticism of the Brothers but he did, shortly
thereafter, quit the publishing business.


2

For almost a decade Machen had been in London, and for most of that time
he had been writing. But he had written rather imitatively; he had, as
he says, “been wearing costume in literature. The rich, figured English
of the earlier 17th Century had a peculiar attraction....” Whether
this was unnatural affectation or natural affinity, he wrote in this
fashion—essays, verse, tales, epistols dedicatory. He even kept, for many
years, a diary written in this manner. _The Anatomy of Tobacco_ was an
“exercise in the antique,” the _Chronicle_ tried to be mediaeval, _Le
Moyen_ was in the ancient mode, the _Heptameron_ a mere finger-exercise
in the composition of a period piece. At this point Machen decided to
write in the modern manner.

In 1890 Machen began to make an approach to journalism. His Welsh
relations were probably gratified when his pieces and stories began to
appear in the Globe and the St. James Gazette. He was still a long way
from adopting journalism as a profession or career, but he had decided to
do some writing in “the modern manner” and the papers seemed to offer an
outlet.

Journalism was then, as it is now, a wonderfully agitated world in which
editors knew what their readers wanted and were determined to see that
they got it—whether they liked it or not. Oddly enough, an editor’s
staff never seems to have this happy faculty of knowing what the readers
want, but they do know what their editors want—and so everyone is mildly
unhappy about it excepting the editors—and it is questionable whether an
editor is ever really happy, or ever deserves to be.

At any rate Machen wrote, on an average, about as much drivel as the
average journalist must, and about as many silly stories as most
journalists have to. Of course it was not as bad as it might have been,
or as bad as it became later, for, according to Machen, editors in the
1890’s presumed a certain standard of education and culture in their
readers. This tendency has been overcome, however, and along with certain
other technical improvements the press as it existed during Machen’s time
was much as it is today.

His success at writing for the Globe and an acceptance by the St. James
Gazette started him on short stories. These appeared mostly in the
Gazette whose rate of payment was commendably higher than the Globe’s.
The connection did not last too long for one of the stories created quite
a stir.

Reading it now one wonders at that, and when one remembers a few of the
tales that were to flourish in the decade to follow, Machen’s little
story of _The Double Return_ seems harmless enough. The tale is rather
reminiscent of _The Guardsman_—you will remember the success of the Lunts
in that play on the stage and on the screen. Machen’s tale lacked the
amorousness or even the intent of _The Guardsman_, it merely told of a
man returning home after three weeks in the country.

“Back so soon?” asked his wife.

“I’ve been in the country for three weeks,” said he, rather put out.

“I know,” she said, “but you returned last night.”

“Indeed not, I spent last night at Plymouth on my way back from the
country,” said the husband.

Whereupon his wife accused him of being playful and showed him his
cigarette case he had left behind him when he left the house this very
morning. Well, the husband had lost the cigarette case in the country
some days before, and he _had_ spent the night in Plymouth on his way
back to London, and so he couldn’t have returned on the previous night.
There had been a man at his hotel or inn who rather resembled him and so
on. The upshot of it all was that shortly thereafter the husband went to
America, which seems to have been the thing to do in such cases. A rather
harmless little story, not even a boudoir scene or a hint of one. But
_The Double Return_ aroused as much interest in the nineties as the most
daring double entendre might today.

Oscar Wilde, no amateur at arousing the public, said to Machen, “Are you
the author of that story that fluttered the dovecotes? I thought it very
good.” Well, flutter the dovecotes it did, and one did not flutter the
dovecotes with impunity, at least so far as the St. James Gazette was
concerned. Machen no longer appeared in its august pages. This may or may
not have caused Machen concern. He was also doing stories for some of the
“society” papers and wrote in this same year _The Lost Club_, so very
similar to Stevenson’s story of the Suicide Club, _A Wonderful Woman_ and
others.

The year 1890 happens to be a year of some significance generally, for it
opens the decade of the delicate decadents, sometimes known as the Yellow
Book Boys.

Among the many books that have been written about the Eighteen Nineties
is a small and, on the whole, less pretentious volume than most. This
is Bernard Muddiman’s _Men of the Nineties_. In it one finds this brief
mention of Machen: “Arthur Machen, in those days, belonged to the short
story writers with Hubert Crackanthorpe, who was the great imaginative
prose writer of the group.”

Alas, poor Hubert! Who knows him today as a great imaginative prose
writer? Who, for that matter, knows poor Hubert at all, save for those
who may look into the bound volumes of the Yellow Book to be found
occasionally in the Public Library (under the somewhat bewildering though
accurate classification of “Magazines”)?

The 1890’s was perhaps the most widely and well publicized decade in
history, surpassing, in this respect at least, the ’Twenties of our own
century. The 1890’s spawned geniuses where the 1920’s only discovered
genius. The analogy between these decades can be carried to even greater
lengths and indeed it will be, in a later chapter, for the ’Twenties also
rediscovered Arthur Machen.

But for all poor Muddiman’s eulogy of Hubert in his slender volume
eulogizing the men of the Nineties, the late Mr. Crackanthorpe was _not_
the great imaginative prose writer of the group. Nor was the prolific
Henry Harland, whose contributions to the Yellow Book were in the New
Style—with French phrases popping up half a dozen to the page and
French women putting in appearance among the good English spinneys, and
representative members of the New Woman being forthright and outspoken
for all their “flutter of curls at the brow” and garden hats and “merry
peals of laughter.” Mr. Harland sprinkled his prose with French phrases,
giving them a naughty air (just as, in the Twenties, French phrases
were used to give novels a sophisticated air) and his heroes were made
“interesting” rather than solid or adventurous or empire building. They,
the “interesting” chaps, thought of women as “handsome” or “good-looking”
rather than beautiful or lovely. Such words were reserved for inanimate
things—things animal, vegetable or mineral, but never the feminine. They
further thought of women in terms of “what a _woman_ she is!” Like that,
with an air of invincible surprise. No, it was not Hubert, nor yet Henry,
who was the great imaginative prose writer of the group—it was Arthur
Machen. But then Muddiman may have been right after all, for Machen was
not truly of the group of writers who practiced the purple phrase, who
wrote in pastels and who composed pastiches in praise of practically
nothing.

It may come as something of a surprise to many admirers of Machen to know
that he was a contemporary of the Yellow Book crowd. Perhaps it will
come as something of a relief to know that Machen was not a member of
the group, despite the fact that his first book of stories appeared in
this period, issuing from the Bodley Head with a title page by Beardsley.
Machen never wrote for the Yellow Book. But for that matter, neither did
Wilde. Still, yellow bookery was rampant at the time and since it is
sometimes said that a man is the product of his age, it might be well to
skirt along the well travelled path trod by the delicate decadents, their
critics and appraisers and appreciators.

Osburt Burdett, Holbrook Jackson, Richard LeGallienne and other more
talented and serious students have gone over the period with admirable
thoroughness. The magnifying glass has been placed over every one of
Beardsley’s drawings and even the most moribund of the minor poets has
been the subject of at least one monograph. Still, it will be interesting
to review briefly what has been said of the men of the Nineties, if only
because it may be applied, with certain changes and reservations, to the
Twenties and, for that matter, to the period which we are about to enter.
For the birth of the Atomic Age, for all its violent and destructive
debut, cannot have been more shocking, in some respects, than the impact
of the coterie of the green carnation upon the Victorianism of the
Nineties.

The group known as the Yellow Book boys, or the men of the Nineties,
or the delicate decadents were, as Donald Davidson has remarked,
“time-conscious” to an intense degree. They were nearing the end of a
century, just as the men of the Twenties lived through the end of an
epoch and the men of the Forties enter a new one. There is still, you
see, this strange analogy between the “Tragic Generation” as the men of
the Nineties called themselves, and the “Lost Generation” as the men of
the Twenties called themselves. Whether or not there will be a continuing
analogy between the three decades is an interesting speculation, but
quite beyond the scope of this study. Or is it?

The men of the Nineties were time-conscious to an intense degree and
they were self-conscious to an even greater degree. Being young men, for
one thing, and acutely aware of the Victorianism of their Victorian age
for another, and rather preoccupied with the importance of being earnest
and alive in the closing years of a century for still another, they were
rather more self-conscious than most young men.

Now it is an odd thing, when one considers it, that the young and
self-conscious members of the Anglo-Saxon races, in whatever age,
discover in themselves a remarkable affinity and a positive predilection
for the culture and customs of France. This happens time and again, and
whenever it does happen it is accompanied by a profound contempt for the
Anglo-Saxonishness of their Anglo-Saxon contemporaries and compatriots.
No doubt there are excellent reasons for this. It is a strange thing, but
it is by no means unusual, since it has happened with something very much
like regularity ever since William the Norman crossed the Channel—and
perhaps even before that.

The Saxon nobles who set themselves apart from the peasantry were
probably the first to adopt the manners and language of the Norman court.
Almost any intrigue current at the time, or for the next few centuries,
seemed the more likely to succeed if it acquired a dash of the Gallic.
Even in that most English of all English periods, the age of Elizabeth,
the young blades and the intellectuals felt the more dashing and,
presumably, the more intellectual for a smattering of French oaths and a
short time spent in the courts or chateaux of France, or the alleys and
marketplaces of Paris.

Well, then, the men of the Nineties acquired their smattering of French
and their translations of Baudelaire and Verlaine and felt the better for
them ... much as our men of the Twenties rode the cattle-boats to the
Left Bank and wrote the “only American literature” of their day. Little
magazines sprang up in the Nineties, verse grew steadily more _libre_,
and there was little difference, spiritually at any rate, between the
Bodley Head in 1890 and the Shakespeare Head in 1920 or thereabouts.
Another lost, tragic generation of self-conscious Anglo-Saxons had “found
themselves”—and France.


3

To return to the Nineties. There were those, even then, who suspected
that something was up in the state of English literature. Grave and
scholarly men analyzed the state of affairs and speculated on causes
and results. If the young men were pleased with themselves there were
others who were not. There was a certain looseness of thinking and of
phrasing that was not universally approved. The burden of such critical
attitudes is a familiar one—it is the one that attends all new movements
in literature, following change as the night follows the day.

The first and best expressed of these critical appraisals appeared in,
of all places, the first volume of the _Yellow Book_ itself. Advocating
“Reticence in Literature,” Arthur Waugh wrote: “During the last quarter
of a century ... the English man of letters has been indulging, with
an entirely new freedom, his national birthright of outspokenness, and
during the last twelve months there have been no uncertain indications
that this freedom of speech is degenerating into license which some of us
cannot but view with regret and apprehension.” A familiar note, an old
refrain!

“The writers and the critics of contemporary literature have, it would
seem, alike lost their heads; they have gone out into the byways and
hedges in search of the new thing, and have brought into the study and
subjected to the microscope mean objects of the roadside, whose analysis
may be of value to science but is absolutely foreign to art.”

Mr. Waugh then proceeds to make the point that every great productive
period of literature has been the result of some internal or external
revulsion of feeling, some current of ideas. The great periods of
productivity had been those when the national mind had been directed to
some vast movement of emancipation, the discovery of new countries, the
defeat of old enemies, the opening of fresh possibilities. But, Waugh
remonstrates, the past quarter of a century had been sterile of important
improvements, there had been no new territories and no new knowledge.
Because of this sterility the minds of writers had been thrown back upon
themselves and the most characteristic literature of the day had become
introspective.

“Following one course,” says Waugh, “it has betaken itself to that
analytical fiction which we associate primarily with America; following
another course, it has sought for subject matter in the discussing of
passions and sensations, common, doubtless, to every age of mankind,
interesting and necessary, too, in their way, but passions and sensations
hitherto disassociated with literature.”

It will be noted that Waugh attributes a certain regrettable trend to
American sources, but then he later says that the tendency for literary
frankness had its origins in Swinburne. Despite the accuracy of many
points made by Waugh, it must be noted that the world in 1890 was not
quite the uneventful place it seemed to him. There had been, it is true,
no wars of any consequence for a fortnight or two, no Armada threatened,
no European paranoiac gazed balefully across the Channel and regicide
was, for that moment, happily unthought of. Such things were, so long as
Victoria sat on the throne, unthinkable—especially the latter.

But Darwin’s _Origin of the Species_ had been written some years
before, and Karl Marx, who also had something of a London adventure,
had written a book with the stodgy title _Das Kapital_, and the Webbs
and the Socialists and the Fabians were quietly preparing their various
ideologies. Things were brewing, even though under the surface, and
no one paid them much heed, least of all the “irresponsibles” of the
Nineties.

These things meant little to Waugh, apparently, and seemed of no
particular consequence. They seemed of even less consequence to the
delicate decadents who were staging a well publicized literary rebellion
of their own. It is not our intention to go further into the matter nor
to list the peculiarities of these practitioners of pastel prose, nor to
relate the peccadillos of its precocious and precious poets. We content
ourselves with observing that Arthur Machen had little to do with them,
either as individuals or as a group.


4

From that day in June 1880 when he first walked in the Strand with his
father, Arthur Machen was fascinated by London. He did not always love
the city, nor was he ever moved to apostrophise London as young writers
have frequently written of Paris. Anyone who reads _Things Near and
Far_ and _Far Off Things_ will wonder, perhaps, why he returned to the
city time and again, and why he spent so much of his life there. One
is appalled by the dismal history of those years, by the portrayal of
the lonely days spent in damp basements and musty garrets pouring over
old books for the endless catalogues, and by the lonelier nights in
that small room in the Clarendon Road. The long walks through obscure
quarters of London and the endless explorations of the suburbs were
often the last refuge of desperation and depression. The encounters and
experiences with publishers and employers were disillusioning enough, the
friendlessness of London was an even greater hardship. You will find all
of this in these two books of sketches and reminiscences—but they are
only incidentally there. For though Machen plainly states his loneliness
and relates the hardships and disillusionments he endured, he neither
emphasizes nor dramatizes them, and if this seems to us a sad story it is
merely that we are appalled by it, and not because Machen has said, “See
how wretched were my days, how lonely my nights!”

Why then had Machen come to London, again and again? Why had this shy and
retiring scribbler left the orchards and fields of Gwent, the pleasant
rectory in Caerleon, to live in the great stone city on the Thames?
Perhaps it was because his Welsh blood stirred within him and drove him
to see the White Tower under which, centuries ago, they had buried the
head of Bran, facing to the sea to guard against invasion. Perhaps it
was to see the city that had been a city even before the legions came,
the city fortified by King Llud, brother to Caesar’s great opponent,
Cassibelaunus, for whom the city was called Caer Llud and later Caer
London and then Londinium and Londres by the foreigners; that king who
was buried at the gates still called Ludgate in his honor. Or perhaps
it was because in London one could walk into a book shop and ask for
Swinburne’s _Songs Before Sunrise_ as casually as one might walk into the
Hanbury Arms in Caerleon and ask for ale.

For London was first and always a fascinating city to Machen. It is
apparent in every page of his books. This countryman who could never
forget his beloved country, delighted in the twistings and turnings of
the streets and roads that led through London and eventually emerged from
straggling suburbs into open fields. He notes with pleasure the streets
whose crossings and corners he knew in the ’eighties and ’nineties; he
misses them when, thirty years later, they have been absorbed by some
great block of buildings. He remembers the facades, if such edifices
could be dignified by the term, of the raw, red-brick villas that were
then springing up all about London. He remembers the restaurants and even
the menus, the taverns and the dwellings in the older sections of London,
and the queer individuals and even queerer incidents he encountered over
several decades.

London was for many years (and perhaps it still is) a city in which
anything might happen. Strange encounters, mysterious strangers—these
seemed to abound in the backwaters and byways of London. The city became
to Machen a sort of Stevensonian Bagdad-on-the-Thames ... and he found in
its streets and lanes, its Inns and Courts, the materials that went into
_The Three Impostors_, _The London Adventure_, _A Fragment of Life_ and
many another story.

This was true of Machen, and it was true of other writers in that
decade. Despite the great calm postulated by Waugh, and in spite of the
tremendous vacuum in which Waugh and other eminent Victorians fondly
believed England and the world existed, there were great things stirring
... and the stirring was mostly centered about London. Being neither
pamphleteers nor journalists, the writers of that day did not boil and
bubble nor forecast trouble as they might today. To be sure, there was
considerable pother about the New Woman, and the New This and That. But
for the most part they did not try to portray their times. The poets were
quite unaware of the peasants and “bourgeoise” was merely an epithet to
be tossed at an unsympathetic critic on one of the more conservative
journals. Time-conscious they most certainly were, but they aimed only
slightly this side eternity. The delicate decadents, the most prolific
and the best publicized group of that time, scarcely bothered to mention
the undercurrents, but their very activity, their prodigious outpourings,
were one of the manifestations of the stirrings beneath the surface. Then
too, there was but one Shaw for every score of sonnetteers, one Wells for
every dozen dilettante novelists, one Machen for every daring dramatist
of the moment.

The beginnings of social-conscience and the vanguard of scientific
thought were there, obscured for the moment by the lurid vapors given off
by the writers of the purple phrase. There was, in short, a renascence of
wonder, not another revival of mediaevalism or of neo-Gothicism, but of
the wonder of things that existed behind the veil and seethed beneath the
surface.

This was reflected as much by the lack of reticence in literature as
in the development of new kinds of fiction ... fiction looking to new
horizons. Shaw had already begun to puncture the balloons of Victorian
complacency, Wells was writing of things that might come, things beyond
our time and beyond our world. Machen began to postulate the existence
of things behind the veil of common appearances. If Wells looked
forward, Machen looked backward. He created a past as strange and as
fearful as the future on some Wellsian planet. He was interested in the
strange sciences of yesterday as Wells was in the sciences of tomorrow.
Machen had read the treatises on alchemy, occult sciences, hypnotism,
spiritualism—and in all of these he found a grain of truth. Alchemy,
especially, interested him. The search for the basic power of the
universe, the power and the ability to transform metals ... he could not
dismiss completely the possibility. Machen was no scientist but he had,
like Wells, a vast respect for the potentialities of science, and a keen
instinct regarding probabilities. These men, at least, were not bringing
in “the mean objects of the roadside” and subjecting them to the cold
stare of the microscope.

Certainly we cannot afford to overlook the development of the detective
story by Conan Doyle, whose Sherlock Holmes was presented not as a member
of the existing force of law and order but as a radical departure from
it. Holmes substituted cerebration for mere procedure. There was then, in
London in the nineties, a small band of adventurers ... men who ventured
to hold new beliefs, who sought for adventure in social as well as
scientific fields, who looked forward (or backward) for strange worlds
to visit. Note how they title their tales—each chapter, each episode is
captioned in the Stevensonian manner as “The Adventure of the Speckled
Band” or “The Novel of the Black Seal.” They searched farther afield than
Paris for their magic—to the South Seas, to India, to the very Poles
themselves—even to America.

Whatever was new and strange was usable. About this time London began to
hear tales of the Mormons, and of the band called the Destroying Angels.
Stevenson had them in mind when he wrote _The Dynamiters_, Doyle used
them for his _Study in Scarlet_, and Machen used them as the genesis of
an episode of _The Three Impostors_.

Wonder was in the air—whether it was expressed by a minor poet in terms
of languishing eroticism or by Sherlock Holmes in the cataloguing of
endless varieties of cigar ash. Something was stirring and it stirred
most vigorously in London. Behind the facade of London lurked who knew
what marvels or horrors. Behind the faces of Londoners lurked who knew
what good or evil? London was filled with groups and clubs in search
of the unusual. There were suicide clubs, freak clubs, cults of the
horrible, Hellfire clubs and many others. Man, wondering about his future
and his world, wonders also about himself. The word psychology was used
hardly at all, but men were becoming aware of their minds and its quirks.
Who was there among a group, a club, who might not have been another
Jekyll?

This, then, was London in the 90’s ... a city on the threshold of still
another century. Machen could not have forgotten that it had been Caer
Llud, that the Romans had been there, and before them the Cymry. The very
stones might burst into bloom, the pavements might ripple and surge and
become as soft under foot as turf, the fogs and vapors of its chimney
pots might become clouds of fragrance as in an orchard, or of incense as
in a great cathedral.




_Chapter Three_

THE WEAVER OF FANTASY


1

In 1890, although he had begun to write in the modern manner and had
even “fluttered the dovecotes” and startled the readers of the _St.
James Gazette_ with his stories, the Rabelaisian enthusiasm was still
upon Machen. It had, it is true, abated somewhat of late, but when his
translation of _Le Moyen de Parvenir_ came from the bindery, all brave in
blue and cream and gilt lettering, Machen still felt the spell strongly
enough to set out, finally, for Touraine.

Actually, he had already determined to leave London before _Fantastic
Tales_ came out. He had been living in Soho Street in two rooms where
took place the grim battle of the fleas. London seemed to pall and to
pale after that and he arranged to take a cottage in the Chiltern Hills.
He had already written some of the tales in his most famous manner; _The
Shining Pyramid_, _The Iron Maid_ among them; the idea of _The Great
God Pan_ had been born and the country seemed the place to allow it to
mature. There were certain alterations and repairs to be made on the
cottage and he decided to go to France in the interim. It seemed, one
must suppose, the thing to do—when one has a handsome set of new volumes
one has translated from the French.

Much has been said herein, and sometimes somewhat slightingly, of the
amazing effect of La Belle France upon the literate Anglo-Saxon. It has
been intimated that Paris has always been something of an occupational
disease among writers and minor poets. And here is Machen, off to France,
like any puerile poetaster upon the publication of his first “slender
volume.” To those who feel some word of explanation is due, some apology
for an opinion seemingly shattered, it will be noted that Machen went to
the South of France, to the countryside—and not to the northern cities
and carefully manicured meadows and pompadoured pleasure-grounds of the
Bois.

Moreover, and this is important, Machen went to a land that never was.
For when he arrived at last in the land of Rabelais, of Beroalde, of
Balzac—he was greatly disappointed. “The fact was,” he says, “that I
had taken for granted Dore’s wonderful illustrations.” He had supposed
that the enchanted heights, the profound and somber valleys, the airy
abysses of these amazing plates had reprinted, as faithfully at least as
a Chamber of Commerce brochure, the veritable scenery of Touraine.

The actuality was, alas! pitifully inadequate. Nevertheless Machen did
what all sensible tourists do when the lands of enchantment fail to
live up to the four-color posters—he visited the local taverns. This
has always seemed to offer consolation and compensation in such cases.
At any rate, the “Faisan d’Or” and “Le Caveau de Rabelais” provided
noteworthy compensation for Dore. It took Machen a few days to get over
his disappointment—but it was not too long before he could sit at his
little table in the courtyard at the Faisan and say to himself, “This
night I have had as much good red wine as ever I could drink.” And this
was one of the great moments of his visit to Touraine. It encouraged him,
moreover, and despite his disappointment over Dore, to return to Touraine
every summer for the next ten years or so.

The landscape of Touraine and the vintages of the Vouvray pleased Machen,
as Paris pleased the poetasters and absinthe appealed (in theory at
least) to the young men who burned with a “hard gem-like flame” and who
wore their passions and their shoes to tatters in their feverish quest
for _la vie_. He discovered that there are, here and there, gardens that
address the heart and spirit and not the florist—as Poe well knew.

In the autumn of 1890 Machen returned to London and, the cottage in the
Chilterns still lacking thatch or drains or some other matters, he took
rooms in Guilford Street. Now it was in Guilford Street, by one account,
that he was struck by the idea for _The Great God Pan_. It was, he says,
on a dark and foggy afternoon, and with no delay he proceeded to lay
out the story. In another place, however, he relates that it was in the
summer of 1890 that he wrote the first chapter of _The Great God Pan_.
Whichever it was, the tale was completed before he went to his cottage
in the country. It appeared in _The Whirlwind, Vol. ii_ for 1890, which
also carried _A Wonderful Woman_, _The Lost Club_ and an almost entirely
unknown item—_An Underground Adventure_. Another story, _The Red Hand_,
is of this period for it appeared in the Christmas number of _Chapman’s
Magazine_ under the title, _The Telling of a Mystery_. These matters
attended to, Machen retired to the Chilterns early in 1891.

Of his stay in the country we know remarkably little. He spent two years
there and, when he returned to London in 1893, he reported that he had
“found it nothing.” However that may be, he did accomplish a certain
amount of work. He wrote a number of his best stories there and completed
two books which he promptly destroyed. The contents of these books have
not been entirely lost however, for much of what was in them came to
light another day. At any rate, it was in the Chilterns that he wrote
_The Inmost Light_.

This famous story was written to a special commission, one of the few
he received in his life. His stories for the _Globe_ and _St. James
Gazette_ had attracted, as has been noted, considerable attention, and a
Miss Bradden wrote Machen, asking him to contribute a tale to an annual
she was getting out. _The Inmost Light_ was written for Miss Bradden and
packed off to her from the cottage in the hills. The affrighted lady
returned it after what must have been one of the most rapid readings on
record.

At any rate, in 1894, when “yellow bookery was at its yellowest,” John
Lane of the Bodley Head published these two tales under the title _The
Great God Pan_ as Volume V of the Keynote Series. There was a title
page decoration by Aubrey Beardsley—this, and the imprint of the Bodley
Head, indicated that the book was, as one might say today, “aimed at a
particular market.” Presumably it hit the mark, for the tale achieved a
fame that has lasted to this day. For this is the best known of Machen’s
stories and—even though Machen deprecatingly remarks that the book had
“made a storm in a tiny tot’s tea cup”—there was a considerable tempest
aroused. _The Manchester Guardian_ went on record as feeling that Machen
had “succeeded only in being ridiculous.” _The Lady’s Pictorial_ found
it “gruesome, ghastly and dull.” The _Westminster Gazette_ decided that
it was “an incoherent nightmare of sex.” Nevertheless, the book was well
received and gained considerably more of a readership for Machen than
had his previously published exercises in the antique. One wonders what
the Boston reviewers thought of it—for the book was published by Roberts
Brothers of Boston in the same year.

The _Manchester Guardian’s_ reviewer, a staunch fellow with advanced
ideas, had refrained from saying more about _The Great God Pan_ “for
fear of giving such a work advertisement.” This did not prove to be
particularly effective for the Bodley Head was compelled to bring out
a second edition in 1895. There were other editions: Grant Richards
included the tale in _The House of Souls_ in 1906, and again in 1913. It
was translated into the French in 1901, and reissued again by Simpkins,
Marshall in 1916. Knopf brought it out in 1924, and the story has been
included in numerous anthologies.

The story of _The Great God Pan_ is simple enough—but it has the touch
of magic. There is a doctor with strange theories and strange knowledge.
He performs an operation on the brain of a simple country girl—an
operation which permits her to see, for a moment, the great god Pan, with
results that were in accordance with the ancient and traditional legends
concerning what might follow such a vision.

Of course we are all prone, today, to interpret literature according to
our own lights, and we employ, with facility if not always felicity—the
great gift of hind-sight. We may, in 1948, judge the tale neither
as startling nor as horrifying as any one of a score or more pulp
masterpieces. We may find Machen’s doctor not too much unlike Stevenson’s
Dr. Jekyll or Wells’s Dr. Moreau.

It may even be that _The Great God Pan_ doesn’t stir us a bit—although
that cannot be credited. But in 1894 the story was an amazing one—and
even the comfortably righteous reviewer on the _Manchester Guardian_
might have pondered, in the depths of the night, this passage: “Suppose
that an electrician of today were suddenly to perceive that he and his
friends have merely been playing with pebbles and mistaking them for the
foundations of the world; suppose that such a man saw uppermost space
lie open before the current, and words of man flash forth to the sun
and beyond the sun into the system beyond, and the voices of articulate
speaking men echo in the waste void that bounds our thought.”

Well, our young Manchester guardian of the public welfare very probably
cried, “Bosh!”—and went resolutely back to sleep.

Machen, having written it, couldn’t sleep on it. In 1924, in a book
called _The London Adventure_, Machen quotes the above passage and says,
“It seems to me that the passage from _The Great God Pan_ is a distinct
prophecy of ‘wireless’; and what would logic have said to it, in 1890,
when that chapter was written?”

And what, for that matter, says logic in 1948—for we have perceived
again, in another way, that we have been playing with pebbles and
mistaking them for the foundations of the world. For now we think not
only of sending sound to the outermost reaches of space—but man himself,
and at speeds greater than the speed of sound.

There is another thought that might have bothered the young man of
Manchester. A character in the story has quoted Oswaldus Crollius, “In
every grain of wheat there lies hidden the soul of a star.” Now in 1894
the reviewer, any reviewer, even the Bostonian, would have muttered
something about “muddled mysticism” and skipped over the sage utterance
of Oswaldus to get along into the “incoherent nightmare of sex.” What
Machen thought of this in ’94 we do not know—but in 1923 or thereabouts
he wrote that he thought this a wonderful saying; “a declaration, I
suppose that all nature is one, manifested under many forms; and so far
as I can gather, modern science is rapidly coming around to the view
of this obscure speculator of the XVII century; and, in fact, to the
doctrine of the Alchemists.”

Now this was a brave thing to say—even in 1923. The muddled mysticisms
of the ’90’s is today’s theorum—as has been amply demonstrated. The most
fantastic fable or the most ingenious fiction of one decade may become
the newest discovery in the laboratory of today.


2

The sojourn in the Chilterns was not as unproductive as Machen has
implied. He had written perhaps more than we shall ever know—most of his
stories lived with him for years before they were written, and a book or
two destroyed did not cease to exist. Many of his best tales were born
and others matured in the Chiltern cottage. Still, two years in the
country seemed quite enough.

When Machen returned to London in 1893 he was a man of property or, if
not property in the Galsworthian sense, of substance in his own. For the
various legacies from deceased Scottish relations that might have meant
so much a few years earlier, had been coming through and accumulating,
and there were now between three and four thousand pounds in the bank.
The days of Clarendon Road, of green tea and stale bread and tobacco,
were over and there were rooms in Great Russel Street and later in Gray’s
Inn. There was Benedictine in the buffet and a growing circle of friends
and companions.

The possession of several thousand pounds presented problems—at least
the semi-important one of how to invest it. After looking about for
a “good thing,” in a characteristically casual way, Machen thought
of the Brothers—that courteous pair under whose benevolent auspices
he had translated Casanova in a basement. They had, as Machen knew,
a proposition now and then, and he thought perhaps they might have
suggestions. They had, as it happened, an excellent one. The _Memoirs
of Casanova_, which he had translated some years before, was about to
be published. A thousand pounds invested in the project might be a good
thing indeed. Machen had at least that much confidence in the Brothers,
or in his own work—at any rate, he invested. It was then that one of the
Brothers, the more benevolent of the two no doubt, suggested that he
might, since he was now financially interested, wish to polish up here
and there.

Machen was content, however, to limit his contribution to the
translation and the thousand pounds, and let him polish who so desired.

The monumental memoirs came out in 1894. Machen’s translation was the
first in the English language and, I believe, the only complete one to
this day. So it is likely to remain until some unsuspecting scholar may
once more be imposed upon, or some highly solvent professor or richly
subsidized fellow undertakes the task.


3

Mrs. Robert Louis Stevenson, Fanny to her friends and Scheherezade to
her husband, shared or perhaps inspired her husband’s view of London as
a fabulous Bagdad of the West, a city of encounters in which all things
were probable—even such things as might rival the tales of the Arabian
Nights Entertainment.

Stevenson, that prince of story tellers, who knew as well as any man
how to invent marvelous tales and to tell them in a marvelous manner,
occupied himself and Fanny during an illness by creating _The Dynamiter_.
The book was published in 1885 and came to Machen’s attention at some
time before or during his retreat to the Chilterns.

Machen had been under the Stevensonian influence for some years. In 1890
he published a story, _The Lost Club_, which exhibits marked family
resemblance to one of the early adventures in the _New Arabian Nights_.
At any rate the _Three Impostors_, Machen’s next book, is derived from
Stevenson’s _Dynamiter_, and was written somewhere in this period when
_The Great God Pan_ was creating a stir. The manuscript was sent, late in
the winter of 1894, to Heinemann who expressed interest, enthusiasm, and
then, unaccountably, regrets. The reader in the publisher’s office had
been wonderfully encouraging and gloriously flattering. It was better,
said Heinemann excitedly, than Stevenson’s best. Even a man as modest
as Machen marveled at his artistry—and marveled still more when, early
in 1895, the House of Heinemann returned his manuscript with the usual
regrets and the usual phrase about being unable to use the enclosed
manuscript.

And so, later that year, _The Three Impostors_ was issued by John Lane,
once again in the Keynote Series and once again with the title page
decoration by Beardsley. It failed, Machen says, to set Fleet Street
afire—but it is, of course, one of his best stories.

Once again, as with so many of Machen’s stories, there were those who
wrote to inquire whether there was not some foundation of fact, some
basis of truth upon which the tale had been built. So willing are men to
suspend their disbelief! People were forever asking him if his stories
were not based upon some legend current in his part of the country and,
of course, there were those who were willing to relate incidents and
occurrences which closely paralleled the fantastic fictions of Machen’s
inventions.

_The Three Impostors_ combined a number of popular elements. There
was, first of all, a portrait of America, or the American West, as
rugged and rough and uncouth as any Briton could desire. It rivaled
and even surpassed, in some respects, Stevenson’s Western episode in
_The Dynamiter_. The Stevenson story had also served as a model for the
Mormon episode in Conan Doyle’s _A Study in Scarlet_. The resemblances
here are even more marked than in Machen’s tale. As a matter of fact,
Christopher Morley has suggested (in the Saturday Review late in 1947)
that Doyle found the Mormon episode in his occiput following a reading
of _The Dynamiter_ on a rainy evening in 1885. However this may be, _The
Three Impostors_ is a remarkable and absorbing story, even if it did not
do as well as _The Great God Pan_—but it has done remarkably well in the
fifty-odd years since it was written.

Back in 1923 Knopf published _The Three Impostors_ in the famous
yellow binding, and again in 1930 in a Borzoi Pocket Edition. In his
introduction to the latter book Machen wrote:

“In the course of a quarter of a century, I have received a good many
letters of serious enquiry about _The Three Impostors_. My correspondents
ask me in various terms and turns of phrase whether there is any
foundation for the strange circumstances and tales narrated in the
book.... I began to get them pretty soon after _The Three Impostors_
was published in 1895. Then, on the whole, I was rather displeased
than pleased at the question.... I was strongly inclined to resent the
implication that I had embroidered rather than invented.”

Machen pointed out that the events described in his book not only did not
happen, but could not have happened. That, at least, was his attitude
just after he had written the book. In later years he changed his mind,
for in the Nineteen-twenties he wrote, “I have had experiences which
debar me from returning the absolute negative of earlier years....
These experiences of mine were trifling enough, but they suggest the
possibility of far greater things and far more extraordinary things for
those with the necessary qualifications.... I am inclined to urge that
the things which I have known may suggest the probable existence of a
world very far and remote from the world of common experience.

“It may turn out after all that the weavers of fantasy are the veritable
realists.”


4

Just why _The Three Impostors_, certainly not the most sensational story
published in that sensational year, should have inspired such widespread
belief, or at least so much willing suspension of disbelief, is not too
difficult to understand. The story concerns itself largely with matters
having to do with superstitions and, even if the superstitions involved
were not familiar ones, they had something of the common quality of all
superstitions based on folk-lore.

The story is told through a series of episodes, in the manner made
popular by Stevenson and Doyle. Certain episodes are represented as being
taken from the journals of some of the characters concerned; others
are set forth in lengthy interviews with still other interested (and
interesting) characters. The story is not overburdened with machinery and
technical tricks, it manages to hang together without evident strain.

Some of the episodes could stand by themselves as tales in the Gothic
genre—indeed, some of them have so appeared in anthologies and
collections. It is in the telling of these tales that Machen’s skill as
a story teller becomes evident. There is no one manner, but several, and
each is peculiarly Machen’s own—with clever overtones and undertones of
parody and satire. The satire, be it noted, is directed always at the
manner and never the matter of the tale.

As for the subject matter, _The Three Impostors_ concerns the Little
People and strange powers that have persisted until this very day and
other speculations. If we accept, as did William Gregg, F.R.S., who
figures in one of the stories, the theory that much of the folk-lore of
the world is but exaggeration of things that really happened, we are well
on our way to accepting _The Three Impostors_ as wholeheartedly as did
the people who wrote Machen such curious letters back in 1895. Such is
Machen’s magic, moreover, that we are easily persuaded into accepting
almost anything.

_The Three Impostors_ also introduces one of the most engaging figures
in English literature. Mr. Dyson is not as well known, perhaps, as Henry
Ryecroft or Stephen Daedalus or Charteris, but he has, it may be, as fine
a future as they.

Mr. Dyson (if he had a first name, I cannot recall ever having read
it) is a “man of letters” who, in pursuit of his quiet profession (the
chase of the phrase, he called it) does a great deal of wandering about
odd quarters of London. He stumbles into and out of the most amazing
adventures, none of which appreciably affect his composure and seldom
indeed is he startled out of his pompous pedantry.

Dyson’s companion in adventure and the recipient of his pronouncements
is a Mr. Charles Phillips. Phillips is somewhat younger than Dyson, but
they shared a certain gravity of character and pomposity of manner that
made them mutually acceptable. They met frequently in each other’s rooms
or in the tobacco shop in Queen Street where “their talk robbed the
tobacconist’s profit of half its charm.” Dyson exalted the claims of pure
imagination, while Phillips insisted that all literature ought to have a
scientific basis.

This precious pair, who shared silence as amiably as they conversed,
wander sedately enough through the astonishing episodes involving the
Young Man With Spectacles, Miss Lally, the sinister Mr. Davis and others.
They are encountered in several other tales of this period. Dyson is
actually an old acquaintance. He first made his bow, and a very courtly
gesture it was, in _The Red Hand_ or _The Shining Pyramid_, whichever
tale, in truth, came first; but it is in _The Three Impostors_ that we
really came to know him. We shall meet again.




_Chapter Four_

A NOBLE PROFESSION

    “_I reflected, then, on my want of prospects, and I determined
    to embark in literature._”

    “_Really, that was strange. You seem in pretty comfortable
    circumstances, though._”

    “_Though! what a satire upon a noble profession!_”


1

This bit of dialogue takes place in one of those chance encounters with
which several of Machen’s tales begins. It might well have ensued between
Machen and some compatriot of far-off Gwent as they met in a London
street early in that daringly decadent decade.

For Machen, having served an apprenticeship in grangerizing and
cataloguing, having composed calendars and made translations “on the
house” and having written a story that fluttered the dovecotes and
published a book that stirred up a tempest in a tiny tot’s teacup, was
definitely a literary man—or at least he pursued the practice of letters.
He had cause, in later years, to give the choice more serious thought
than he had in the 90’s. He had cause to reflect upon it, but never did
he regret the choice—if choice it was. For if ever a man’s destiny lay in
the art and the practice of letters, that man was Machen. And of course
he knew this—he knew it in the lonely room in Clarendon Road and in the
downstairs parlor at Llanddewi. And he knew it years later when, in
computing his earnings for twenty-odd years labor, he found the sum to be
not in excess of £635. And of course he knew it even when he wondered, as
he some times did, if he had failed in his art.

Machen had in him, besides the seeds of his destiny, more than a bit
of that delightful fellow Dyson whom he created somewhat to his own
image and likeness. Dyson, you will recall, was “a man of letters, and
an unhappy instance of talents misapplied. With gifts that might have
placed him in the flower of his youth among the most favored of Bentley’s
favorite novelists, he had chosen to be perverse; he was, it is true,
familiar with scholastic logic but he knew nothing of the logic of life
and he flattered himself with the title of artist, when he was in fact
but an idle and curious spectator of other men’s endeavors. Amongst many
delusions, he cherished one most fondly, that he was a strenuous worker,
and it was with a gesture of supreme weariness that he would enter his
favorite resort, a small tobacco shop in Great Queen Street, and proclaim
to anyone who cared to listen that he had seen the rising and setting of
two successive suns.”

But this isn’t Machen! Of course it isn’t! Nor am I suggesting that Dyson
is a portrait of the artist as a young man. But if you will recall for
a moment Machen’s obvious fondness for his creature, Dyson, his almost
paternal acceptance of Dyson’s pomposities and his benevolent air in
setting down Dyson’s latest preposterous formula, you will realize, I
think, that Machen was the model, and that he rather relished poking a
bit of fun at himself, his younger self at any rate.

Well then, early in the 90’s Machen had his trip abroad and his cottage
in the country and his gradually accumulated legacies. And now he was, at
last, about to have his rooms in Grays Inn and his summers in the south
of France. He was indeed a man of letters!


2

_The Three Impostors_, even though it failed to set Fleet Street afire,
did add to Machen’s stature. It gave him something of a reputation
in certain quarters which, if not exactly fashionable at the moment,
were not on the side of the Philistines. The failure, if it was one,
of _The Three Impostors_ Machen attributes to a contemporary crisis in
literary circles. “There were,” he says mildly, “scandals in ’95—which
had made people impatient with reading matter that was not obviously and
obtrusively ‘healthy.’”

The several tales or episodes that make up _The Three Impostors_, while
they may be neither obviously “healthy” nor obtrusively “healthy,”
were much less unwholesome than most of the literature that was then
circulating in London. Based for the most part on early Celtic folk-lore
and legends of the Welsh border, they developed the theme of primitive
races, of “little people” who have, in some out of the way places,
managed to survive to the present day.

The nature of the tales does indeed tend toward the horrific and even
the “unhealthy,” but the manner of their telling and the presence of the
almost “deadpan” Dyson in most of these episodes results in a rather
curious blend of pedantry and unpleasantness. Moreover, so faithfully did
Machen follow a Stevensonian pattern that even the Marquis of Queensbury,
had he not been otherwise occupied at the moment, could have taken no
offense. It would seem, then, that it was this almost sedate treatment
that failed to set the bookstalls ablaze. A less restrained publisher
than John Lane would have had Beardsley do the illustrations for the
book—with quite predictable results. There are those, Grant Richards and
George Bernard Shaw among them, who suggest that Lane was rather afraid
of Beardsley—and not without reason. For Beardsley was an unpredictable
and vindictive chap. He was once criticized for having drawn a Pierrot
for a cover design of the “Savoy”—it was not the sort of thing, he was
told, that would appeal to the British public.

A sketch of John Bull was substituted, accepted and sent out to
subscribers. It was then discovered that Beardsley had taken his revenge
by subtly indicating that John Bull was in a condition in which no Briton
would willingly appear in public. For such sophomoric shenanigans Lane
had given Beardsley the sack. There was never any question of Beardsley
illustrating _The Three Impostors_, nor could there be any question of
the result. Nevertheless _The Three Impostors_ rates perhaps third among
Machen’s works, and has been frequently reprinted.

The story did cause publishers, from time to time, to ask Machen if he
had something else in “the manner of _The Three Impostors_.” This was not
as flattering to the author’s vanity as might seem. Having gone through
the tale once Machen had no wish to “re-cook the cabbage which was
already boiled to death.” Nevertheless, one doesn’t speak thus bluntly
to publishers—even when they solicitously seek manuscripts. There was
another and, on the whole, very attractive proposition. Two gentlemen,
obviously with an eye for such things, proposed a new weekly paper for
which, they further proposed, Mr. Machen and a Mr. Wells should do a
series of stories—and in their familiar manner, of course. Thus Mr.
Machen was to do a series of horror stories in the manner of _The Three
Impostors_ and Mr. Wells was to do stories in the manner of _The Time
Machine_.

_The Time Machine_ had appeared about the same time as _The Great God
Pan_. While Machen’s story was stirring up its teacup tempest, a young
gentleman named H. G. Wells had made a very real, and a most deserved
sensation with a book called _The Time Machine_. Mr. Wells had written
his story at a time when he was living from hand to mouth as a journalist
at lodgings in Kent. And so the new paper, to be called the _Unicorn_,
was to feature the works of these two young men who had recently created
something new and exciting and not, as was too often the case in those
days, unfit for general circulation.

Machen admitted that he was cheered and elated at the prospect ... until
he began to re-cook the cabbage. Possibly Mr. Wells felt the same way,
for the _Unicorn_ ceased to exist before a single one of Machen’s tales
(he wrote four of them) appeared in it, while Mr. Wells contributed but
one story, called _The Cone_.

Machen realized that the Stevensonian had been done to a turn—and so
he had done with it—there would now be something new. He had already
written _The Shining Pyramid_ for _The Unknown World_, edited by his
friend A. E. Waite, and one or two other tales—but now, once again—and
this time there was no doubt about it—_The Great Romance_.

Once again there was the question—what was it to be about? Machen labored
mightily over the beginnings of this new book. He sat at his Japanese
bureau in his rooms at Grays Inn, he roamed the deserted streets and
squares of Bloomsbury and pondered at great length the problem—what would
it be like?

I suppose Dyson would have sympathized deeply with these soul searchings
and solitary soliloquies—for Dyson, too, had often wondered what his
books would be like, and Dyson had _his_ Japanese bureau. At any rate,
and before too long, Machen had the idea. His book would be “a Robinson
Crusoe of the mind” ... and for such a book, Machen had traveled well.


3

Machen had at last decided, and for the second time in his life, to write
the Great Romance. The first time it had turned out to be _The Chronicle
of Clemendy_, that light-hearted collection of tales having nothing
whatever to do with the Great Romance he had decided to write, and having
nothing in it of the loneliness of his life in London. This time it
became _The Hill of Dreams_, and one knows in reading it that this also
is not the Great Romance: for Machen could not have decided to write _The
Hill of Dreams_ any more than he could have decided to write a “Robinson
Crusoe” of the soul—even though he tells us that this is precisely what
he had decided to do. It is perhaps a coincidence, and a very fortunate
one, that the book did turn out to be just that.

Machen was, as we have seen, a very careful man with his models. He could
write in the manner of Thomas Browne, or Robert Herrick, or William
Morris, or Robert Stevenson, and very carefully did he cultivate their
manner. When he had perfected the manner, and made use of it, the design
was there but the substance had altered. However meticulously he might
labor perfecting the model, making no conscious effort to improve upon
it, he could not prevent a transmutation from taking place. This is
apparent even in _The Three Impostors_ for, even though the pattern is
recognizable, and even though it is studied and carefully contrived,
there are elements, so strong is the triumph of mind over manner, that
make it peculiarly Machen’s own and not Stevenson’s.

The new book, Machen says, was born in a phrase encountered in Charles
Whibley’s introduction to _Tristram Shandy_. Whibley described the work
as being “a picaresque of the mind.” And so Machen said to himself,“I
will write a Robinson Crusoe of the soul.” This was no mere decision;
it was, rather, a demonstration of the fact that there is an affinity
of the mind, some minds, for an idea, some ideas. _The Hill of Dreams_,
the picaresque of the mind, the Crusoe of the soul, was at the heart
of Machen’s Great Romance. It responded to a phrase for which it had a
natural affinity and so the Great Romance, _The Hill of Dreams_, was born.

“It was,” wrote Machen, “to represent loneliness not of body on a desert
island, but loneliness of soul and mind and spirit in the midst of
myriads and myriads of men. I had some practical experience of this
state to help me: not altogether in vain had I been constrained in
Clarendon Road and to have my habitation in the tents of Notting Hill
Gate. I immediately marked down all these old experiences as a valuable
asset in the undertaking of my task: I knew what it was to live on a
little in a little room, what it meant to pass day after day, week after
week, month after month through the _inextricabilis terror_ of the London
streets, to tread a grey labyrinth whose path had no issue, no escape,
no end. I had known as a mere lad how terrible it was on a gloomy winter
evening to go out because a little room had become intolerable, to go out
walking through those multitudinous streets, to see the light of kindly
fires leaping on the walls, to see friendly faces welcoming father, or
husband, or brother, to hear laughter or a song sounding from within,
perhaps to catch half glimpses of the faces of the lovers as they looked
out, happy, into the dark night. All this had been my daily practice and
habit for a long while: I was qualified then, in a measure, to describe
the fate of a Robinson Crusoe cast on the desert island of the tremendous
and terrible London.”

The writing of this book occupied Machen from the autumn of 1895 to the
spring of 1897. It went very slowly. For one thing, Machen discovered
that the style he had so carefully cultivated for the telling of the
improbable tale of _The Three Impostors_ had to be just as carefully
destroyed and every mannerism eradicated. He had become fluent in the
Stevensonian vein—now he found himself writing with uncertainty, nothing
flowed easily and naturally. His pen could not keep pace with his mind
and his mind was racing rapidly through the garden of Avallaunius in
far-off Gwent. For _The Hill of Dreams_ was to be about, if it was about
anything, a boy’s wanderings and imaginings in a mysterious place he had
found, or dreamed he had found, in the Roman ruins near Caerleon.

Chapters were written and rewritten, his day’s output varied from
perhaps three lines to three folios. At last the book was finished in
the spring of 1897. He had been at it, quite steadily, for almost two
years, with a summer in Brittany in 1896, most of which he spent thinking
of the book lying untouched in his room in London. In March 1897 Grant
Richards wrote him to ask for his next manuscript. Mr. Richards, a new
publisher, and anxious, no doubt, to get off on the right foot, wanted
something “in the manner of _The Three Impostors_.” He got, instead,
_The Hill of Dreams_. Richards returned the book along with a paternal
letter pointing out to Machen the error of his ways and urging him not
to jeopardize his reputation by publishing such a book. Several other
publishers subsequently did the same and the book remained for years
as it was, still titled _The Garden of Avallaunius_, and still not
published. And then in 1907, after ten years, Grant Richards changed his
mind and published _The Garden of Avallaunius_, but he insisted also upon
changing the title on the plea, perhaps justified, that no one would
properly pronounce “Avallaunius.” It may be, however, that _The Garden of
Avallaunius_ did appear in print before the Richards edition.

In the summer of 1901 Machen wrote to a friend, a Miss Brooke-Alder: “A
certain story, translated from the English and called _Le Grande Dieu
Pan_, is now appearing in a French review. Maeterlinck is extremely
interested in it and has sent a message to the author asking him to
forward any manuscripts in order that they also may be rendered into
French. I am sending a manuscript called _The Garden of Avallaunius_
which I finished four years ago, and if the great man chances to like it,
I suppose I shall have the curious fate of finding myself a French rather
than an English author.”

Whether or not this translation and publication ever took place, I have
been unable to discover. However, the Richards edition of 1907 was the
first of almost half a score that have continued to be largely out of
print up until the present time.


4

Well, then, the Great Romance was completed in 1897—and they would have
none of it. And so it remained for another ten years, more or less, in
one of the spacious compartments of the Japanese bureau.

Machen was, at this time, living the literary life, not quite as it was
lived by the swish young men who were then breaking into print and whose
names appeared in the more sensational evening papers and on court writs,
but still, it was the literary life and still—a noble profession.

The Japanese bureau, its cubbyholes and compartments jammed with notes
and notebooks and scraps of paper, had yielded up many tales and articles
that appeared in this or that journal. Machen had already written _The
Holy Things_, _Psychology_, _Witchcraft_, _The Rose Garden_, _The
Ceremony_, _Midsummer_ and many other. He was becoming well known as the
author of a number of rather strange, rather clever stories. Sometimes
they were called “nasty” or “disagreeable” stories by outraged critics
who were quite likely to view them with an eye jaundiced by too careful
perusal of _The Yellow Book_. The Keynote Series sold quite well and
Machen’s _The Great God Pan_ and _The Inmost Light_ in Volume V, _The
Three Impostors_ and _The Iron Maid_ in Volume XIX had wide circulation.
_The Memoirs of Casanova_, published in the same year as _Pan_, though
limited to a thousand copies, brought him some reputation and recognition
on a more scholarly plane. Still, he made no fortune on these books,
then—or ever. And that was beginning to matter. He was even moved, in
1895, to enter an American short story competition. His entry, _The Red
Hand_, written for the competition, won no prize but it did appear in the
Christmas issue of _Chapman’s Magazine_ for that year.

It was a quiet life. He had, in those days, few friends and few
acquaintances. His life was in reading books and in writing them.
That no one seemed to be publishing them was, for the moment, quite
unimportant. He describes his daily routine in _Things Near and Far_:
“Every morning after breakfast I read over what I have written the night
before, correcting here and there and everywhere, generally convinced
that the passage which had pleased me so much as I wrote it was, after
all, not magnificent. I took the bulldog for a walk from twelve to one,
and another half hour walk in the afternoon. Then two cups of tea without
milk or sugar at four, and the rigor of the literary game till seven, and
again after dinner till eleven. It was a life of routine, and all its
adventures, difficulties, defeats and rare triumphs were those of the
written page.”

This was the literary life far removed from the rarified atmosphere of
the Cafe Royale and merry, mad circle of poets and artists of the Dowson,
Beardsley, Conder, Crackenthorpe set who were usually contemplating Soho
or suicide or both. It was the literary life of a recluse, of a Dyson, or
of the brilliant monologist of _Hieroglyphics_. In the course of these
long and thoughtful evenings when the pen scratched and the bulldog
dozed and page followed page into the cubbyholes or into oblivion,
Machen formulated many of the theories of art and literature which were
expounded by the recluse of Barnsbury. Writing of this period some years
later Machen says that literature “is one of the many ways of escaping
from life, to be classified with Alpine Climbing, Chess, Methylated
Spirit and Prussic Acid.” But this was written in 1915 or thereabouts, in
1897 he was less inclined to a mellow cynicism. For it was then not only
an escape from life, but a means, perhaps “the only means of realizing
and shewing life, or, at least certain aspects of life.”

This preoccupation with literature extended even to his employment,
for through 1898 Machen worked on the staff of “Literature,” a weekly
paper published by the Times. This seems to have been not too happy an
association, for he says he had been harassed and worried for a whole
year in the office of “Literature,” and that he was in high spirits in
May 1899 when he was released from this bondage.

Besides, there were a great many important things to be done. There was,
of course, another Great Romance. Like its predecessors this one did not
quite come off, or it was never quite finished. What there was of it was
eventually published as _The White People_. There were other irons on
the hearth, and one of these had been heated and re-heated many times
before; but it was never quite forged or beaten into shape.

This is the story we know as _A Fragment of Life_. It is, in its present
state, a mere fragment of a great work. Machen had lived with the idea
for ten years or more, for the story was born in another tale published
in the Globe or the Gazette or some other paper in 1890 under the title
_The Resurrection of the Dead_, which was not quite what Machen intended
when he originally called it _Resurrectio Mortuorum_.

This story is about a man who one day recovered his “ancestral
consciousness.” The idea had long fascinated Machen, perhaps because he
was forever on the verge of recovering his own “ancestral consciousness,”
or perhaps because he had never quite lost it. At any rate, it was always
close to him, it greatly influenced his daily life because he never
became used to the contrast between “raw London suburbs and the old gray
houses under the forest near the river” in Gwent.

This, and _The White People_, seemed to have been of the greatest
importance to him. Neither was finished in that century—nor were they
ever completely finished. Yet in this time he wrote and completed one
of the best of his books, and one of the finest books of our time.
_Hieroglyphics_ was finished in 1899 and it joined the fragments and the
beginnings of the Great Romances that had been written and put aside in
that repository of Great Romances—the Japanese bureau.

Of _Hieroglyphics_ we shall have much to say later, for it is of greater
significance in this twentieth century than in the nineteenth century in
which it was written.


5

Now we are come to the end of the year 1899—the turn of the century.
This was, as has been previously noted, an intensely time-conscious
era. The birth of the twentieth century was awaited with perhaps more
interest and excitement than had attended similar events in the past.
For one thing, everyone was conscious of the enlightenment of their age,
progress was almost as much a byword in the Nineties as it became in
the Nineteen-Twenties and the early Nineteen-Forties. And, of course,
there was the minor satisfaction of knowing that it was quite likely
to be the only turn of the century within the memory of living man.
Prophets of doom had their say and their day along with those who
proclaimed new glory and new heights and new horizons. It was, to be
sure, a well-heralded and eagerly awaited event. That a mere clock should
unemotionally tick so momentous a second!

The more memorable men of the notorious Nineties were, for the most part,
either dead or dying, visibly decaying or decently interred. They passed,
most of them, mercifully before the significant second struck.

This was a year of great significance in the life of Arthur Machen. For
in this year “a great sorrow which had long been threatened fell upon me;
I was once more alone.” And in another place, he writes, “... and then my
life was dashed into fragments. I ceased to write. I travelled.”

Again and again he refers to this event, in his two autobiographical
books and in several of the forewords and prefaces he later wrote for
re-issues of his earlier books. Always the references are veiled in
mystery or followed by a recital of strange experiences and a cloud of
mysticism that conceals, as it was intended, the shattering event.

What was this event? There are a few who know, but they are not likely
to reveal what they know. As recently as 1947, less than a year before
he died, Machen wrote in a letter, “Even now it is painful to recall. I
would rather you did not refer to it.”

Since this is not intended as a biography, nor a Life, we shall not
pursue the matter. There is this much more to be said, that may give some
clue to the events of the year 1900. Machen wrote in _Things Near and
Far_,

“I can set down the facts, or rather such of them as I remember, but I
am quite confident that I am not, in the real sense of the word, telling
the truth; that is, I am not giving any sense of the very extraordinary
atmosphere in which I lived in the year 1900, of the curious and
indescribable impression which the events of these days made upon me; the
sense that everything had altered, that everything was very strange, that
I lived in daily intercourse with people who would have been impossible,
unimaginable, a year before; that the figure of the world was changed
utterly for me—of all this I can give no true picture dealing as I am
with what I called facts. I maintained long ago in _Hieroglyphics_ that
facts as facts do not signify anything or communicate anything; and I
am sure that I was right, when I confess that, as a purveyor of exact
information, I can make nothing of the year 1900. But avoiding the facts,
I have got a great deal nearer the truth in the last Chapter of _The
Secret Glory_, which describes the doings and feelings of two young
people who are paying their first visit to London. _I_ never bolted up to
town with the house master’s red haired parlour maid; but truth must be
told in figures.”


6

Back in 1880, while his family were making plans for him, plans involving
the Royal College of Surgeons, Machen used to walk to the Pontypool Road
station to pick up the London papers. On his way back he would rest for
awhile, (it was an eight mile walk) under the hedges and turn to the
theatrical pages which seemed to him by far the most interesting parts of
the paper, and the stage the most fascinating part of the Fabulous City
of the West. And so, in a sense, he followed the bright lights to London,
and then, having arrived there, set to work in the dark caves (HERE DWELL
PUBLISHERS) of Chandos Street, Leicester Square and Catharine Street.

There is not the slightest bit of evidence that Machen ever thought
longingly of footlights and grease paint or, for that matter, that he
ever even thought of them at all after he arrived in London. Yet here
in 1901 he dons buskins or whatever and prepares to tread the boards,
and in a travelling company. His first engagements were with the Benson
Shakesperean Company and with them he travelled the length and breadth of
England for several season. He seems to have enjoyed it all tremendously,
although it does not seem to have affected or influenced his later work.
As a matter of fact, with the exception of a brief chapter and a half in
one of his autobiographical books, he does not refer to his career on the
stage at any great length. Sufficient unto the days....

And then one day, perhaps when the trees were beginning to put forth,
Machen resumed the London Adventure. In 1902, and without fanfare of any
sort, Grant Richards brought out a remarkable book with a strange title.
It was called _Hieroglyphics_, and it was subtitled _A Note Upon Ecstasy
in Literature_, by Arthur Machen. The book was born, as so many books
are, while the author was reviewing books for a weekly journal. It was
written in the happy period following his release from “the detestable
office life” and as a perfectly normal reaction against it, and it
remains to this day one of the best, and the least known and the most
sadly neglected books of English criticism.

A noted publisher once told Machen that _Hieroglyphics_ had “influenced
the whole standpoint of English literary criticism.” One wishes it had!
At any rate, Machen read proofs of the book while playing in “The Varsity
Belle,” and he read reviews of it while playing in “Paolo and Francesca.”
And then, when _Hieroglyphics_ seemed unlikely to set Fleet Street afire,
or even to start a small blaze in one of the University debating clubs,
Machen began once more to write and to publish.

His old friend, A. E. Waite, a distinguished writer in the field of the
occult and the mystic, began to publish Machen’s stories. Waite, who
was also manager for Horlick’s Malted Milk, had managed to persuade
the malted milk magnate to sponsor or subsidize a magazine. This was
certainly the strangest commercial venture on record, for the magazine
published material concerning the occult and mystical topics that
appealed to Waite. Horlick was, presumably, happy to see his name on the
cover and on the masthead of the magazine. It was in this esoteric little
journal that some of Machen’s work first appeared ... _The White People_,
_A Fragment of Life_ and, at long last, _The Garden of Avallaunius_.

Machen remarks, somewhere, that he did not know that the sale of Malted
Milk was unfavorably affected by the publication of these tales. As a
matter of fact, the stories were quite well received. Such things get
around and, in 1906, Grant Richards collected the best of them, plus
_Pan_, _The Inmost Light_, _The Red Hand_ and published them in a book
called _The House of Souls_. Richards had changed his mind about Machen,
but apparently with reservations, for in 1906 another Machen book, _Dr.
Stiggins_, appeared, but under the device of a little-known publisher.
This book is, in effect, an amplification of some views set forth in the
Preface to _The House of Souls_. Mr. Richards wouldn’t touch this, but he
did bring out _The Hill of Dreams_ in the following year.

And then there was another change in Machen’s life. He fell into
journalism ... something that had once been devoutly wished for by the
dear, dead folk of Caerleon.




_Chapter Five_

THE LEGEND OF A LEGEND


1

When the Allied armies achieved the break-through at Saint Lo some few
years ago in that war we call Second, our armored columns fanned out
over the Brittany peninsula and thrust deep into the river valleys of
France. Most of us watched the drive for Paris, shook our heads over that
nasty business at Avranches, and breathed more freely when Paris fell.
From then on it was largely a matter of following, as closely as the
security blackout permitted, Patton’s progress toward the Rhine and the
star-shaped forts at Metz.

Few of us were then aware of the column under Hodges that began first to
probe, then to thrust northward into Belgium. At the time it was briefly
noted that our push to the Belgian border was even more rapid than the
German drive southward in 1940. And so our entry into and beyond Mons
passed almost unnoticed. Even the Germans were not too well aware of it,
apparently, for it was outside Mons, you will recall, that German tanks
were waved on by American MPs and obligingly clanked into bivouac areas
with the General Shermans and the half-tracks of the American First Army.

There were, if I remember correctly, and I am sure that I do, one or two
references to the Angel of Mons incident of the last war, but these were
merely notes in passing. The mere mention of Mons meant Machen to me, and
I suppose that, like many another Machenite, I waited with something like
bated breath for a sign of some sort, or a sequel to the legend that had
been born just thirty years ago that very month of September.

And, I suppose, devout Machenites the world over re-read in that
September of 1944, the invented tale of the wonderful Welshman, the
tale that was at first called simply, _The Bowmen_ and which came to be
called, by popular demand, _The Angels of Mons_.

It was one of the strangest stories of that first World War and a story
pure and simple it was. But it so captured and fired the imagination
of all Englishmen, and of the world, that people were unwilling for it
to remain merely a magical tale by a Welshman writing strange tales in
the city of London. People must have their miracles, and so Machen’s
invention of the Bowmen became one of the hallowed legends of the war.
You may remember the story, for you must have heard it, in one version or
another, even if you had never even heard of Arthur Machen.

_It was during the Retreat of the Eighty Thousand_, the tale begins.
The English were in danger of annihilation. At a particularly important
point in the line the German guns had thundered and shrieked all morning.
Finally, their numbers greatly reduced, the English saw a tremendous
host moving against them. German infantry—as far as the eye could see.
Well—the English fought on. One of the riflemen, who happened to know
Latin and other useless things, recalled a motto he had once seen in
a restaurant, _Adsit Anglis Sanctus Georgius_, which motto he said,
uttered or shouted. As he did so he felt “something between a shudder
and a shock” and behold! the roar of battle died down to a gentle murmur
and a great voice and a shout louder than the thunder cried, “Array,
Array, Array!” This was followed by other battlecries in English and in
French—cries to Saint George. And then he saw, “beyond the trench, a
long line of shapes, with a shining about them. They were like men who
drew the bow,” and their arrows flew toward the German host. Who, as it
happened, were stopped in their tracks.

Now this invention served its purpose, no less than any inspirational
tale or legend or truth or half-truth. But it became a matter of great
controversy because, as it happened, Arthur Machen, when questioned about
it, blithely revealed that there was not an ounce of truth in it. The
story was pure invention, a piece of fiction which was not, he added,
entirely to his satisfaction as a writer.

This discrediting of a miracle soon got abroad, and there was a great
hue and cry and indeed a notable hullabaloo about the matter. Machen was
taken to task ... the clergy thundered against him and many a pulpit
was pounded by many a pudgy ecclesiastical fist. Gentle ladies began to
produce “evidence” that the event had actually taken place—that they had
had it from a soldier who was there. A great many witnesses, once or
twice removed, were found and quoted. The controversy grew and with it
the legend.

As for Machen, he finally wrote a preface to a new American edition
to _The Bowmen_, now called _The Angels of Mons_, published by G. P.
Putnam’s Sons in 1915. In it he wrote:

“This was in last August, or to be more precise, in the last Sunday of
last August. There were terrible things to be read on that hot Sunday
morning between meat and mass. It was in the _Weekly Dispatch_ that I saw
the awful account of the retreat from Mons. I no longer recollect the
details, but I have not forgotten the impression that was then made in my
mind. I seemed to see a furnace of torment and death and agony and terror
seven times heated, and in the midst of the burning was the British
Army. In the midst of the flame, consumed by it and yet aureoled in it,
scattered like ashes and yet triumphant, martyred and forever glorious.
So I saw our men with a shining about them, so I took these thoughts with
me to church, and, I am sorry to say, was making up a story in my head
while the Deacon was singing the Gospel.” Well—that is the genesis of
_The Bowmen_ or, if you insist, _The Angels of Mons_.

It was murmured and hinted and suggested and whispered in all sorts
of quarters, Machen says, that before he wrote the tale he had “heard
something.” The most decorative of these whisperings was this: “I
know for a fact that the whole thing was given him in typescript by a
lady-in-waiting.” And, presumably, as is the custom with all popular
legends, most everyone had a cousin or a brother-in-law who had been
there. By the time the story had been reprinted in parish periodicals and
spread by word of pulpit, it began to seem to Machen that he had failed
in the art of letters. There began to be variations on the theme—such
as one in which the German dead were found to be punctured with arrow
wounds. The occultists next had a go at it, then the scientists began to
talk learnedly of “mass hallucination.”

The legend was then translated into several languages including, at any
rate, the French. The shining figure of St. George became, variously,
St. Michael the Archangel and St. Joan of Arc. The Germans, for security
reasons no doubt, offered no opinion or explanation of their abrupt
halt or of the tale. However, as Machen observes, “Other versions of
the story appeared in which a cloud interposed between the attacking
Germans and the defending British. In some examples the cloud served to
conceal our men from the advancing enemy; in others, it disclosed shining
shapes which frightened the horses of the pursuing German cavalry. St.
George, it will be noted, has disappeared—he persisted some time longer
in certain Roman Catholic variants—and there are no more bowmen, no
more arrows. But so far angels are not mentioned; yet they are ready to
appear, and I think I have detected the machine which brought them into
the story.

“In _The Bowmen_ my imagined soldier saw ‘a long line of shapes, with a
shining about them.’ And Mr. A. P. Sinnett, writing in the May (1915)
issue of _The Occult Review_, reporting what he had heard, states that
‘those who could see said they saw ‘a row of shining beings’ between
the two armies.’ Now I conjecture that the word ‘shining’ is the link
between my tale and the derivative from it. In the popular view shining
and benevolent supernatural beings are angels and nothing else, and so, I
believe, the Bowmen of my story have become ‘the Angels of Mons.’ In this
shape they have been received with respect and credence everywhere, or
almost everywhere.”

Pamphlets were published, as is usual in such cases. The Theosophists
published an “answer to Mr. Arthur Machen.” Another worker in the
field collected “numerous Confirmations, Testimonies, Evidences of the
Wounded” and other materials in an “authentic record” of the event. The
furore died out after the war and the Angels of Mons rested in legend
with only sporadic appearances in the pages of the Sunday supplements.
Within a few years the legend had graduated to the sphere of science or
pseudo-scientific study.


2

In 1930 there was published in London a book called _The Mystery and
Lore of Apparitions, with Some Account of Ghosts, Spectres, Phantoms and
Boggerts in Early Times_ by Harold Shaylor, an investigator in various
fields of the marvelous.

The Frontispiece of this comfortably plump volume is “from a Drawing
by A. Forestier, reproduced by kind permission from the Illustrated
London News.” The sketch shows eight or nine soldiers in a trench in
the foreground firing at advancing hordes of Germans. To the right and
standing above the parapet of the trench are three gigantic bowmen,
helmeted and with swords at their sides, launching arrows (visible in the
sketch) at the Germans. A fourth bow and part of an arm are visible at
the extreme right. The Germans are falling in great numbers, at least one
is visibly pierced by an arrow.

Within the book, among the many marvels, we find this:

“Considerable discussion took place in the Press during the autumn of
1914 and the early part of 1915, with respect to the phenomena said to
have been seen at the Battle of Mons.

“The publications of these stories brought forth many others of a similar
character, the veracity of which appears to be unquestioned, and it will
be found interesting to compare them with some of the accounts of phantom
armies told in the preceding pages” (of Mr. Shaylor’s collection).

There follows then a story told by a non-commissioned officer who was
in the retreat from Mons on or about August 28th, 1914. The weather was
hot and clear and, between eight and nine in the evening, this officer
was with a group of others on guard duty. An officer came up and asked
if they had seen anything “startling.” Two men were sent forward to
see if they could discover what the officer meant. They returned with
nothing untoward to report. The officer then came back and, “taking me
and some others a few yards away, showed us the sky. I could see quite
plainly in mid-air,” says the non-commissioned officer, “a strange light
which seemed to be quite distinctly outlined and was not a reflection
of the moon, nor were there any clouds in the neighborhood. The light
became brighter and I could see quite distinctly three shapes, one in
the center having what looked like outspread wings, the other two were
not so large, but were quite plainly distinct from the center one. They
appeared to have a long, loose, hanging garment of a golden tint and they
were above the German line facing us. We stood watching them for about
three-quarters of an hour. All the men with me saw them, and other men
came up from groups who also told us they had seen the same thing. I
remember the day, because it was a day of terrible anxiety for us. Later
on the Uhlans attacked us and we drove them back with heavy losses.
It was after this engagement, when we were dog-tired, that the vision
appeared to us.”

Thus the story of the non-commissioned officer as told to Mr. Thompson.
Another account of spectral figures is recounted by a private of the
Lancashire Fusiliers. He is supposed to have given an account of his
experience to a Sister in a hospital. “It’s true, Sister, we all saw it.
First there was a sort of yellow mist like, sort of rising before the
Germans as they came to the top of the hill. Come on like a solid wall
they did. The next minute comes this funny cloud of light and when it
clears off, there’s a tall man with yellow hair in golden armour, on a
white horse, holding up his sword and his mouth open. The men knew it was
St. George. Hadn’t they seen him with his sword on every ‘quid’ they’d
ever seen?”

Thus the Lancashire Fusilier in Mr. Thompson’s 1930 account. Machen
encountered him just as the Putnam edition was on the presses in 1915.
In a Postscript to that edition of _The Bowmen_, Machen refers to an
article called _The Angelic Leaders_ written by a Miss Phyllis Campbell.
Miss Campbell relates that she was a nurse in France where there came
into her care a Lancashire Fusilier (the same one presumably, mentioned
by Thompson). He said he had seen St. George on a white horse, leading
the British at Vitry-le-Francaise, when the Allies turned. His story was
corroborated by a wounded R.F.A. man who was present. The R.F.A. man said
he saw a tall man with yellow hair, in golden armour, on a white horse,
holding his sword up, and his mouth open (as if, comments Machen, he was
saying, “Come on, boys! I’ll put the kybosh on the devils!”) This figure
was bareheaded and the R.F.A. man and the Fusilier knew that he was St.
George, because he was exactly like the figure of St. George on the
sovereigns. “Hadn’t they seen him with his sword on every ‘quid’ they’d
ever had?”

The difference between having a quid and seeing one may be significant.
At any rate, Machen makes a rather telling point concerning his
Lancashire Fusilier. The soldiers are said to have known it was St.
George by his exact likeness to the figure on the sovereign. This
strikes Machen as being odd because the apparition is described as being
bareheaded and in armour while the St. George on the sovereign or quid is
just the reverse, since he is quite naked except for a short cape flying
from the shoulders and a helmet. So—the evidence of the quid they’d
either had or seen scarcely presents sufficient identification of the
saint.

A final vision is presented in C. J. Thompson’s book—this one by a
soldier in an artillery battery in a letter dated June 26th, 1915. He
describes a being like an angel with outstretched wings surrounded by
a luminous cloud which appeared between the advancing Germans and the
British. The artillery man further states, “with regard to the stories
which you have heard about angels and spirits, they may be right but of
course you must remember that trench work is mind-straining as well as
nerve-racking and that may account for a lot of these stories.”

And indeed, Mr. Thompson ascribes most of these visitations, visions and
miracles to nerve strain or mass hallucination.

It will be noted that the legend had, by this time, divorced itself
completely from its creator. Mr. Thompson makes no mention of Arthur
Machen, either as the reporter or creator of this astonishing event. Nor
do Thompson’s _Acknowledgments_ or _Index_ contain any mention of Machen,
Arthur; or of his published works. Of course the tale of _The Bowmen_ was
first published in a newspaper, the London _Evening News_ for September
29, 1914, for which paper Machen was then a reporter. Mr. Machen may have
been included in Mr. Thompson’s inclusive word “Press.”


3

However, the curious turnings and twistings of legend are not yet
finished. The miracles of 1915 became the mass hallucinations of 1930,
and the creator of the slight story of _The Bowmen_ had been quite
forgotten in the furore attending each of them. But by far the most
curious circumstance in the whole curious affair is contained in the
most recent, to my knowledge, mention of the Mons legend. It occurs in
an article by Meyer Berger, entitled _Legends of the War_, published in
_Harper’s Bazaar_ in January, 1944.

Mr. Berger is an extremely competent correspondent for the _New York
Times_. As a matter of fact, it was out of respect for Mr. Berger’s worth
as a correspondent that I saved from salvage the magazine in which his
article appeared. Early in the spring of 1944 I was cleaning out the
winter’s accumulation of magazines and newspapers and readying them for
the next paper pick-up. The baroque _Bazaar_ is not, usually, to my
taste, but seeing Berger’s name over an article I placed the magazine to
one side and took it up to read some nights later.

The article concerns _legends_ of the war. Mr. Berger remarks, sensibly,
that war nurtures in the soldier some dormant sense that opens the door
to superstition, to mysticism, and to visions of the supernatural. He
then outlines the various legends of the White Lady on various fronts,
the Christ in Flanders legend and, of course, the Angel of Mons. Mr.
Berger uses the singular, and so one supposes, there is an Angel of Mons
legend as well.

Mr. Berger outlines the legend briefly, explaining that there was no
earthly reason for the Jerries to have stopped the pursuit, but stop they
did—and the wherefore of this astonishing halt forms the basis for the
story.

“Arthur Machen said later,” continues the Berger article, “that he
conceived the legend of the Angel of Mons as he daydreamed in church over
the news of the German’s miraculous halt.” This is not quite what Machen
said, of course. Machen explained that he conceived the story of the
Bowmen as he brooded in church over the news of the British _retreat_.
Berger goes on to relate that when Machen’s story appeared in the London
_Evening News_ as fiction it was, to his (Machen’s) astonishment, taken
up and spread all over the world as something that actually happened.
“There is no reason,” remarks Berger, “to question his explanation.”

On the other hand Berger spoke in France with Tommies who swore that,
Machen or no Machen, they saw the Angel at Mons, though not as he
described it in his piece. “The Machen story said that when the British
were hardest pressed at Mons, there appeared in the heavens, above
the battlefield, an unusual cloud formation. This changed into a giant
likeness of St. George, flanked by rows of medieval English bowmen whose
flights of arrows killed virtually all the German horde. When the bodies
were examined there was no sign of a wound.”

Whatever this may be, it is _not_ the Machen story. Machen has no cloud,
no giant St. George ... only “a long line of shapes with a shining about
them.” Mr. Berger also talked with a Sergeant Coombs of the King’s Royal
Rifles at an English base hospital in Trouville. Coombs swore he had seen
the Angel of Mons and Berger had reason to believe him, “if only because
he wore the Mons Star.” Coombs describes “a kind of triple cloud” ... a
large center cloud with two clouds at either side. They had no particular
shape at first but they gradually became a great angel ... “the two
smaller clouds were enormous wings, and the angel spread its wings as if
it were signalling the jerries to stop where they were.”

This seraphic semaphore is a refinement that had not previously
appeared in any of the many versions of the legend. One of the legend’s
variations, writes Berger, “has a faintly humorous side.” It appeared in
the _North American Review_ in August, 1915.

“It told of a soldier, hard-pressed with the rest at Mons and ready to
drop, who found himself murmuring, ‘Adest Anglis Sanctus Georgius.’ He
knew no Latin and he didn’t know what moved him to the utterance. Even
as it came to his lips, he recalled that he had seen it lettered on a
plate in a vegetarian restaurant in London, before he was called up
to service. It means, roughly, ‘May St. George be a present help to
England.’ Something like an electric shock convulsed the soldier and
his shock-packed ears dimly heard men around him shouting, ‘St. George
for Merrie England.’ From that point, the story followed the Machen
pattern—archers appeared in the sky and the Germans dropped by thousands.”

Now this version, with the “faintly humorous side,” which appeared
according to Mr. Berger in the _North American Review_ in August,
1915, _is_ the Machen story. Whether or not the North American Review
version was written by Machen I have been unable to discover. There
are differences, of course, even in the very condensed portion offered
by Berger. The _North American’s_ soldier knew no Latin ... he merely
recited, incorrectly at that, and at a very propitious moment, a motto
he had seen in a vegetarian restaurant. Machen’s soldier, although he
had apparently patronized that very same vegetarian restaurant, did know
Latin “and other useless things.”

And so the legend of the legend of the Angel or Angels of Mons continues
to grow out of Arthur Machen’s tale of _The Bowmen_.


4

In 1915, possibly because he was then writing _Far Off Things_ and was
in a mood reminiscent, Arthur Machen declared that he had failed in the
art of literature. Most good writers have felt, at one time or another,
a similar sense of failure—or at least of mild frustration. Presumably
they have a particular instance in mind, certainly Machen had his. It was
simply because his tale of the Bowmen had been accepted as truth.

Now it may seem to many a triumph of art that one’s work is held to be
so life-like and so real that it is generally accepted as the truth, the
whole truth and nothing but the truth. Our realists, for example, are
said to feel that way. They consider the verdict of veracity the highest
critical success. They have mirrored life and that, so help them, was
what they had set out to do!

Machen felt differently about it. His invention, his creation, was not
only accepted as being true, but his inventiveness and creativeness
were denied him. His magic had been judged mere journalism and that, to
Machen, or to any other creative artist, meant failure. However this may
be, Machen did not fail in his other legends of the war. Possibly because
he called some of them legends—perhaps because the public felt their
“willing suspension of disbelief” already supported too great a load—at
any rate Machen’s further inventions were permitted to remain inventions
and he was accorded a considerable, if not fanatical, amount of praise.

These other tales, _The Soldier’s Rest_, _The Monstrance_, _The Dazzling
Light_, had in them the very elements that should have appealed to those
who make legends of inventions. They offered much in the way of tradition
blended with mysticism, a mixture that should have drawn credence from a
much less tradition-loving people than the British. Perhaps there was too
much mysticism in these tales—anything less subtle than a warrior saint
might not appeal to the Church Militant.

But surely _Drake’s Drum_, or the tale called _Munitions of War_ had
the stuff of legend in them, and tradition too. Layed on, as a matter
of fact, with the trowel. _Drake’s Drum_ should have become one of the
glorious legends of the sea-girt Britons, the race of mariners. This is
the tale that relates the events that took place off Scapa Flow, when the
British Navy awaited the German High Fleet in November, 1918 to accept
their surrender. There were rumours that the Germans might possibly fight
and the crews of the British ships stood at “Battle Stations.” Then, as
the first German ship appeared through the mist, a drum began to beat in
the “Royal Oak.” And it beat and it rolled from then until the entire
German Fleet was encircled and helpless. Of course the unauthorized
drumming was investigated, but with all hands at Battle Stations, and
especially upon such a momentous occasion, it was hardly possible, and
highly improper, that there might be anyone aboard ship with the time and
the inclination to beat a drum. However, neither drum nor drummer were
located and there was no choice but to believe that what everyone had
been hearing was Drake’s Drum—“the audible manifestation of the spirit
of the Great Sea Captain, present at this hour of tremendous victory of
Britain on the Sea.”

Now this is certainly a tale that should have appealed to the Britons, as
indeed it did, but they refused to raise it to the status of a legend.
Then too, the story appeared in 1919, by which time England had less
urgent need of legends. In any case, the perfidious Teutons had by that
time scuttled their ships at Scapa Flow.

_Munitions of War_, a story published in 1915, also has the stuff of
legend, but somehow it never caught, never quite made the grade. Oh, it
was successful enough as a story, but it never became a legend. Which,
on the whole, pleased its creator. It tells of a traveller who went to a
seaport in the West of England and how he was awakened in the night to
hear vast oaths and burly voices heaving and ho-ing as they loaded ships.
The language used by these stevedores had an other-century quality and
the watcher in the night could only conclude that these men had loaded
Nelson’s ships before Trafalgar. Had this story been written in 1942
or 1943 instead of 1915 it might have been printed in the “Welders and
Steam-Fitters Gazette,” or some other house organ, and it may even have
been legendized by England’s defense workers and winners of the coveted
“E” award—or its British equivalent.


5

One of the longest, and by far the best, of Machen’s stories of the war
period is one that made no appeal whatever to the legend-loving instincts
of a people at war but which contained, as we may see in this post-war
year of ’48, something of the nature of prophecy.

_The Terror_ was first published in 1917. It was obviously inspired by
the reception accorded the tale of the Bowmen combined with more of
Machen’s creative magic. In the opening chapter Machen refers to the
rumours and legends current in the early years of the war—the Bowmen,
and the Russians who traveled through Britain by night on their way to
some great push or other. These absurdities, Machen points out, depended
upon the newspaper for their dissemination. The events described in _The
Terror_ had been held in strictest secrecy and no word had been given to
the Press. For reasons of security all events connected with the Terror
had been hushed up.

However, continued Machen, in a “now-it-can-be-told manner,” these were
the reasons why “almost two years of war had been completed before the
motionless English line began to stir.” The story of the Terror is, then,
purported to be the secret of the long inactivity of the British Army.

Things were happening all over England ... very strange things. An
airman had been killed under mysterious circumstances. The circumstances
appeared to have been obvious enough—he seemed to have been attacked by
a flock of birds, a rather mysterious matter in itself. There were other
happenings here and there, and rumors of many more. After a few strange
events had been reported in local papers there were no further accounts,
and sometimes there was no local paper thereafter. Few people would have
connected these events in any case. An airman is killed. A child chases
a butterfly and is seen alive no more. There are strange stories about
munitions works and fiery clouds and bees and horses and dogs. But none
of these may be written up in the papers.

Well, at long last and with Machen’s usual circumambience and magic the
story reveals that the mysterious deaths and strange events are being
caused by animals—by cows and sheep and dogs and horses and bees and
birds and moths. The explanation? Machen writes—

“... The source of the great revolt of the beasts is to be sought in a
much subtler region of inquiry. I believe that the subjects revolted
because the king abdicated. Man has dominated beasts throughout the ages,
the spiritual has reigned over the rational through the peculiar quality
and grace of spirituality that men possess, that makes a man to be that
which he is. And while he maintained this power and grace, I think it
is pretty clear that between him and the animals there was a certain
treaty and alliance. There was supremacy on the one hand, and submission
on the other.... ‘Spiritual’ signifies the royal prerogative of man,
differentiating him from the beast. For long ages he had been putting
off this royal robe ... he had declared, again and again, that he is not
spiritual, but rational, that is, the equal of the beasts over whom he
was once sovereign. He has vowed that he is not Orpheus but Caliban. But
the beasts ... perceived that the throne was vacant—not even friendship
was possible between them and the self-deposed monarch. If he were not
king he was a sham, an impostor, a thing to be destroyed.”

But before these mysteries are resolved there is much talk of German
spies, of mysterious rays, of all sorts of things that attempt to link
the chain of horrors with the Germans. And in the course of these
attempts to implicate the Germans in the Terror, Machen creates several
hypotheses which seemed the very stuff of fiction in 1917—but which in
our time must seem like prophecy.

It was in 1944 that the Viking Press issued a volume of its Portable
Library devoted to _Six Novels of the Supernatural_. Machen’s tale of
_The Terror_ was one of the six. Thus it happens that I re-read _The
Terror_ at about the time our forces were capturing the platforms
from which the robot bombs were launched at London. Now _The Terror_
has always pleased me as a tale, a diversion and, as with most of
Machen’s magic, something to think about when the world is quiet and
mysterious—say a midnight in October, or three o’clock of an August
afternoon. Nothing is inconceivable at such times, I think, and anything
can happen—or seem to happen. A long, long look at a tree or a hedge or
a hillside might give rise to disturbing thoughts—and one often finds
oneself looking hastily away before something actually _does_ happen.

But to return to _The Terror_. I had read it several times before and
I thought I knew it quite well. But reading it in 1944 it seemed quite
new. I had not remembered some things, perhaps because they seemed only
incidental to the plot. They were the sort of thing one skipped over
rapidly to see what would happen next, or when and where the Terror would
strike again.

Well along into the story a Mr. Merrit, one of Machen’s more talkative
characters, is explaining to a group of friends that “the Terror” is all
part of a German plot, that there are, indeed, Germans established in
England who are doing these things. And this, according to Merrit, is how
it was done:

“The scheme had been prepared years before, some thought soon after
the Franco-Prussian War. Moltke had seen that the invasion of England
presented very great difficulties. The matter was constantly in
discussion in the inner military and high political circles, and the
general trend of opinion in these quarters was that at the best, the
invasion of England would involve Germany in the gravest difficulties,
and leave France in a position of the _tertius gaudens_. This was the
state of affairs when a very high Prussian personage was approached by
the Swedish professor, Huvelius.”

Professor Huvelius, according to Merrit (or Machen) was an extraordinary
man. He was personally an amiable individual who gave every penny he
owned to the poor, who dissipated his salary on charity and kindness. He
starved himself in order to help the needy. And he wrote a book called
_De Facinore Humane_, which book proved the infinite corruption of the
human race.

The amiable Professor preached a cynical philosophy, the main tenets of
which have a familiar sound. He held that human misery was due, by and
large, to the mistaken notion that man was naturally well-disposed and
kindly. Murderers, thieves and other abominable creatures are created
by the false pretense and foolish credence of human virtue. And he goes
on to say that kings and the rulers of people could decrease the sum
of human misery to a vast extent by acting on the doctrine of human
wickedness.

“War,” says the mild Professor, “which is one of the worst of evils, will
always continue to exist. But a wise king will desire a brief rather than
a lengthy war, a short evil rather than a long evil. And this not from
the benignity of his heart towards his enemies, for we have seen that the
human heart is naturally malignant, but because he desires to conquer,
and to conquer easily, without a great expenditure of men or of treasure,
knowing that if he can accomplish this feat his people will love him and
his crown will be secure. So he will wage brief victorious wars, and not
only spare his own nation, but the nation of the enemy, since in a short
war the loss is less on both sides than in a long war. And so from evil
will come good.”

This philosophy sounds more and more familiar as Merrit goes on to
expound what he knows of the works of “Professor Huvelius.” The wise
ruler will assume that the enemy is infinitely corruptible and infinitely
stupid, since all men are so. The ruler then makes friends in the very
council of his enemy and among the people of his enemy, bribing the
wealthy and offering opportunity for still greater wealth, and winning
the poor by swelling words. “For,” says the Professor, “it is the wealthy
who are greedy of wealth, while the people can be gained by talking to
them of liberty, their unknown god.”

At any rate, this Huvelius sold his plan to the Germans. His philosophy
too, apparently, and presumably he donated the moneys thus obtained to
his favorite charity. The Germans accordingly proceeded to buy lands in
certain suitable places in England, secret excavations were made and in
a short time there was a subterranean Germany in the heart of England.
The Germans, having made themselves as secure as Crusoes, waited for “the
Day.”

This, then, was the plot outlined by Machen as he carefully prepared
the background for his story. It seemed not too incredible in 1915 as
he worked on the book, for there were rumors even then of emplacements
ready for guns discovered by British troops in Belgium and in France, and
certain caves along the Aisne seemed to have been made ready for cannon.

Now all this imagining in 1915 and 1917 comes pretty close to the events
of 1940. Whether the Germans had read Huvelius or Machen in the years of
the Long Armistice, or confined their reading to _Mein Kampf_, which
seems the more likely, they had certainly covered the ground from Eben
Emael to Quisling.

At any rate, _The Terror_ is first rate reading at any time, and
certainly a Machen “must.” It is too lengthy to be included in the usual
bibliography—but it is readily available in Viking’s “Six Novels of the
Supernatural.”




_Chapter Six_

THE YELLOW BOOKS


1

It would be unflattering indeed to imply that Arthur Machen’s books
were quickly discarded by their owners, or that they had ever crowded,
in any considerable numbers, the shelves of the second-hand book shops.
Nevertheless it is a fact that for some years, especially in the late
Twenties and early Thirties, the shelves, counters and sidewalk tables of
Fourth Avenue were high-lighted for browsers by the bindings that blazed
forth the magic of Machen.

[Illustration: SOME MACHEN ITEMS: Showing one of the famous Knopf “Yellow
Books,” title pages of Knopf edition and Pocket Book, Putnam’s 1915
edition of “The Bowmen” and several rare items.]

Mr. Alfred Knopf who undertook in the Twenties to introduce, or to
reintroduce, Arthur Machen to American readers elected, perhaps for
obvious reasons, to issue the odd-sized books in a bright yellow binding.
For this, as well as for his work in bringing Machen across the Atlantic,
Mr. Knopf is to be thanked; but whoever designed the books, having
specified an unmistakable color for the cloth binding, decided also upon
a dark blue paper label with gold lettering—a combination that became, in
a reasonably short time, completely indecipherable. There was, however,
no mistaking a Machen—even when it turned up in the darkest corner of
the most unassuming hole-in-the-wall in Fourth Avenue, Twelfth Street
or lower Lexington Avenue. The adept Arthurian merely looked for the
unmistakable yellow binding with its dark and indecipherable patch. It
must be admitted that the production manager or book designer for Knopf
planned better than he knew, for it seemed that time could not dull,
nor dirt disguise, nor grime diminish the yellow of those bindings.
The experienced browser could spot one at thirty feet in the dimmest
corner of the dingiest shop, sandwiched though it might be between _V.
V.’s Eyes_ and _The Conquest of Fear_ or buried under a pile of Edgar
Rice Burroughs’ Martian romances. A recent convert might, for a time,
respond to the lure of the yellow only to find, on closer inspection,
something about a eunuch by a man named Pettit, or an early Ben Hecht,
or some other ordinary book bound in yellow; but in time he learned to
distinguish that one especial hue. He came to know it, however faded, for
it seemed to fade predictably.

Thus the yellow books issued by Knopf became the most eagerly
sought-after books along Fourth Avenue. It was not too long of course,
before they became scarce. Soon they were taken from tables and stacked
reverently on shelves, and before very long they were behind glass doors
or in the shelves behind the proprietor’s desk, or even in that holy of
holies—the back room.

Today they have disappeared from Fourth Avenue. You may find, now
and then, one of the Martin Secker editions, or perhaps one of the
deluxe editions of the Heptameron—or even a set, fabulously priced, of
the Caerleon edition. For the most part, however, the book shops are
Machen-less, a condition that might be remedied, and profitably, by some
enterprising publisher, or even by Mr. Knopf.

The House of Knopf, however, seems remarkably disinterested in its
valuable property, and a valuable property it is, for not only did the
series include almost all of the best of Machen, but almost every volume
contained a preface or a foreword written especially for these editions
by Mr. Machen. These comparatively recent Machen items are worth a volume
of their own, a proposition warmly advanced by Mr. Joseph Vodrey but
received coolly enough, thus far at least, by Mr. Knopf.


2

Machen had first appeared in print in America in 1894 when Roberts of
Boston published _The Great God Pan_. There were several other Machen
items published in this country prior to the Twenties. Dana Estes brought
out _The Hill of Dreams_ and _The House of Souls_ not long after the
Richards editions and in similar format. Putnam published _The Bowmen_ in
1915 while the controversy over the legend was still raging. There were a
few others, but the Machen boom was still to come. Mr. Cabell’s tribute
to Machen in _Beyond Life_, published a few years later, undoubtedly did
much to create a body of readers eager for Machen.

Just how and when Mr. Alfred Knopf became interested in Machen as
a literary property I do not know, one does not with impunity ask
publishers why they seek out certain authors. Certainly Mr. Knopf was of
the opinion that the Twenties was ripe for Machen—anyone who remembers
that era would, even today, vindicate Mr. Knopf’s judgment. Yet somehow,
Machen did not catch on as well as might have been expected. Or perhaps
he did—for the Twenties. For this was certainly a prolific period,
genius was hailed weekly and books sold by the thousands. Perhaps
Machen’s books did sell quite well by the standards of the Twenties.
The Knopf printings seem to have been exhausted within a remarkably
short time and very rapidly disappeared from book stores until their
reappearance on second-hand stalls in the Thirties. Arthur Machen is not
remembered too well as one who was popular in the Twenties, but then all
too few of the writers of the Twenties are remembered at all.

Who were they? Critics and commentators of the times hailed book after
book, they acclaimed name after name—but most of those names are seldom
mentioned in the current revival of interest in the Twenties. The “best
seller” lists of the day hardly indicate that John Dos Passos, Cabell,
Van Vechten, etc., etc., were what all America was reading. Scott
Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis and one or two others are notable exceptions,
but the real best-sellers of the time would sound unfamiliar even to
students of that era. Most people were reading _The Sheik_, _If Winter
Comes_, _Black Oxen_, _The Green Hat_ and _So Big_. Zane Grey and Ibanez
were more widely read than Sinclair Lewis, even though _Main Street_ had
created a stir. There were outlines of history and of philosophy and even
the “art” of thinking was popularized. There were books about China and
Africa and India—and some of them even became the centers of controversy.
Storms raged over books whose very titles are unremembered today, while
the books we now consider “typical” of the Twenties sold slowly—and in
small editions. One discovers that Eleanor Wylie, Ellen Glasgow, Floyd
Dell, E. E. Cummings and most of the others who, even though they
were hailed on alternate Tuesdays and Sundays as “new stars of great
magnitude in the literary firmament,” were not too widely read, despite
the assistance some of them received from the newly formed book clubs.
Nor are they recalled nowadays with even fond recollection by very many.
It is, therefore, not surprising that Arthur Machen remains one of the
more obscure writers of the American Twenties, as well as of the English
Nineties.

Interest in Arthur Machen was stirring even before the Twenties, but it
was principally among writers and literary people. James Branch Cabell,
whose _Beyond Life_ was first published in 1919, was perhaps the first to
mention in print the name of Arthur Machen and something of his work. In
one of his lengthy monologues, speaking through the amiable and erudite
Charteris, he says, “I wonder if you are familiar with that uncanny
genius whom the London directory prosaically lists as Arthur Machen? If
so, you may remember that in his maddening volume _Hieroglyphics_ Mr.
Machen circumvolantly approaches to the doctrine I have just voiced—that
all enduring art must be an allegory. No doubt, he does not word this
axiom quite explicitly: but then Mr. Machen very rarely expresses
outright that which his wizardry suggests.”

It was about this time that Starrett discovered Arthur Machen, perhaps
through Cabell whose work he was among the first to praise. Starrett it
was, along with Paul Jordan-Smith, who tried to popularize Arthur Machen
even before the famous Knopf “yellow books” were issued. A small group
gathered about Starrett and Jordan-Smith to try to prove to publishers
that Machen _was_ important and that his books _were_ being collected.
In 1919 Smith wrote to several publishers about Machen, but they were
not interested. The group then made every effort to have Machen’s first
editions rise from nothing to ridiculous heights.

They succeeded all too well in this, for as Jordan-Smith says, “There
were only a few of us then, but we seemed to be many, for we were bidding
against one another in a hundred shops all over Britain. We did not
expect the publishers to enter the rare book field. We merely wanted them
to publish new books and reprint old ones by Machen. Instead they made
limited editions and spoiled the whole business.”

Mr. Starrett, who is one of the most enthusiastic of Machen’s admirers,
finally did something about it on his own. In 1923 he published, with
his friend Covici, a collection of Arthur Machen’s stories and essays
under the title _The Shining Pyramid_. This book was published in an
edition limited to 875 copies. It contained, besides the title story, a
number of pieces that had not previously been published in book form, and
many of which have not since been reprinted. This is one of the better
collections of Machen material which deserves reprinting today. In the
following year Starrett published another collection under the title _The
Glorious Mystery_. This, too, contained much new material and much that
has not appeared elsewhere.

At the same time, perhaps even before Starrett was preparing to publish
his collections, Alfred Knopf became interested in Arthur Machen and
wrote him with an offer to publish anything of his he could find.
Apparently Knopf’s negotiations coincided, in point of time at any rate,
with Starrett’s plans. In 1925 Machen published in London a collection
called _The Shining Pyramid_. The book was published simultaneously in
New York by Alfred Knopf. It contained an introduction in which Machen
wrote: “_The Shining Pyramid_ is the result of a collaboration. Two years
ago an American man of letters, full of industry, rummaged in old papers,
magazines and manuscripts owing their origin to me, and produced as a
result of his labors a volume published at Chicago, called _The Shining
Pyramid_. The American gentleman, I may say, did not disturb my peace by
consulting me as to the content of the book in question. Then, in 1924,
pleased, I suppose, with the results of his toils, he rummaged a little
more, and, using the same methods, produced a second volume of scraps
and odds and ends from my workshop. This book he entitled _The Glorious
Mystery_.”

Knopf had, by this time, published quite a number of Machen’s earlier
books. Three books were published in 1922, four in 1923, four in 1924 and
four in 1925, of which _The Shining Pyramid_, with its introduction, was
one. The “yellow books” were finding their way to the more discriminating
and discerning readers in America.

The publication of two books bearing the same title, one issuing from
Chicago, the other from London and New York, stirred up a controversy.
How far this went and how it terminated is not public knowledge. In
April of 1924 Knopf circulated to the trade a letter on the Alfred A.
Knopf-Arthur Machen versus Covici-McGee-Vincent Starrett controversy.
According to Paul Jordan-Smith the whole thing was the result of a
misunderstanding. “This much I know. Starrett had been given the
manuscripts of two or more books to get published as he could, at a
time when publishers were shy of Machen. Years ago I saw them and at
least one letter advising Starrett to do what he thought best about
publishing them. Then Knopf came along with an offer to publish anything
of Machen’s he could find. How Machen answered this I do not know, but
he did give the rights to Knopf. But in the meantime Starrett had made
arrangements with Covici, his Chicago friend and former book seller. It
was unfortunate, and I fancy Machen’s poverty and Knopf’s established
position made Machen want to transfer to him. Both were rather bitter.
But as I recall the matter over the years I was impressed with the fact
that both had acted in good faith until Knopf’s money made Machen jump. I
think he would not have embarrassed Starrett if he had not been utterly
lacking in money and had not had two small children to feed.”

Apparently the whole matter was settled amiably, for one of the
subsequent Knopf editions is dedicated to Vincent Starrett. The
“controversy,” such as it was, is not a matter to be revived, nor is it
my intention to do so. Machen, and all who know him, owe too much to both
Mr. Knopf and Mr. Starrett.

Another early worker in the Machen field was Carl Van Vechten. Besides
making Machen a sort of intellectual “prop” for his precious _Peter
Whiffle_, Mr. Van Vechten wrote some of the earliest appreciations of
Machen. I must confess that there was a time when V. V.’s eyes seemed
to me a trifle jaundiced in his estimate of Machen, and there was
a time when I rather hotly resented the implications of the title
_Excavations_. But time mellows most of us, Machenites especially, and
I have come to regard and to welcome Mr. Van Vechten as a trail-blazer.
It is true that I cannot accept some of his estimates of Machen, and I
dare say I have often thought that he liked Arthur Machen for all the
wrong reasons. However, let the student of Machen the Silurist decide
for himself. _Excavations_, containing reprints of Van Vechten’s earlier
reviews and articles, was published by the alert Mr. Knopf in 1926.

Vincent Starrett’s study of Machen is, I think, more in sympathy, or
at least more to my taste. The title of the book in which his essay
on Machen appears is _Buried Caesars_—it enraged me no less than
_Excavations_, and at one time I regarded these books as two voices in a
chorus that had come not only to praise Machen but to bury him in rather
extravagant prose.


3

There has been little news of Arthur Machen or about Arthur Machen since
the late 1920’s. He enjoyed a certain popularity for perhaps five years,
a popularity that lingered much longer in more literary circles. For
the most part Machen had disappeared from the world of literary figures
just as his books had disappeared from the bookshops. That he is still
read today we know, and we know too, that he has been slowly gaining
new readers through the years. In 1933 Machen published his last novel,
_The Green Round_. This has not yet been published in this country,
although it is scheduled for publication this year by August Derleth’s
“Arkham House.” In 1936 there were published in London two collections
of his stories, most of which were reprints of earlier stories with
the addition of some new pieces. These books are _The Children of the
Pool_, published by Hutchinson, and _The Cosy Room_, published by Rich
and Cowan. Within the past few years Machen’s stories have appeared in
anthologies put together by Dorothy Sayers, Somerset Maughan, Phillip Van
Doren Stern, Will Cuppy and, of all people, Boris Karloff!

August Derleth, the youthful sage of Sac Prarie, has been more active
than anyone else in recent years in his efforts to spread the magic of
Machen. Back in 1937, in the November issue of Ben Abramson’s “Reading
and Collecting,” Derleth published an article on Machen, to which
was appended a bibliography by Nathan Van Patten. Derleth’s article,
the first to appear in almost a decade, followed the pattern of most
previous articles about Machen. But Derleth has gone beyond prose. He
has, from time to time, included Machen’s more macabre pieces in his
various collections of supernatural stories. He has also published, or is
planning to publish, reprints of several Machen books.

The late H. P. Lovecraft was an admirer of Arthur Machen’s work and a
foremost exponent of the Machen manner in modern fiction. It is difficult
to apply the epithet “pulp writer” to Lovecraft, but that is, after all,
what he was. Recent appraisals of his work, and the publication in book
form of his stories, have done much to raise him out of this category. It
was Lovecraft who introduced Machen to August Derleth and to who knows
how many thousands of other readers. In his essay, recently republished
by Ben Abramson, _Supernatural Horror in Literature_, Lovecraft supplies
one of the most up-to-date, if perhaps one-sided, appraisals of Arthur
Machen’s work. Lovecraft concentrates his attention, naturally enough, on
Machen’s tales of horror and the supernatural. The result is a valuable
piece of Machenania but one that should be approached only by an adept.
The chance reader or the casual reader would receive a rather specialized
view of Machen.


4

More than one observer of the literary scene has drawn the obvious
parallel between the 1890’s in England and the 1920’s in our own country.
Both periods were characterized by a sharp break with tradition. In both
periods the younger writers found themselves voluntary exiles from their
own country and both groups selected the same European city as the scene
of their exile. There are other parallels, ... the flood of “little”
magazines, the cultivation of the “continental” attitude, the revival of
the art for art’s sake tradition and a general letting down of the bars
once again. Mr. Waugh, the 1890 Mr. Waugh, might well have written his
_Reticence in Literature_ for the benefit of the new generation of bold,
bad, young intellectuals.

Peter Munro Jack, writing in Malcolm Cowley’s symposium _After the
Genteel Tradition_, called this the “James Branch Cabell Period,” and
Alfred Kazin, in _On Native Ground_, refers to the writers of the
Twenties as “The Exquisites,” while “All the Lost Generations” seems to
him a suitable chapter heading to cover a brief history of the Twenties.

Mr. Jack credits it all to Cabell’s _Jurgen_ and to novels by Carl Van
Vechten and Eleanor Wylie. “These books,” says Mr. Jack, “brought to
our shores the very spirit of Rabelais and Voltaire, Balzac, Anatole
France and Horace Walpole, Pater, Wilde, Machen, Max Beerbohm and Aldous
Huxley ... and converted a barbarous literature over-night into an
airy dance of verve, irony and Gallic sophistication.” Mr. Kazin also
begins with _Jurgen_, which apparently ushered in “a vogue of elaborate
decadence and enthusiasm, very wicked, world-weary and ornate.” Kazin
goes on to indicate that “just as the pale, imitative exoticism of the
late Nineties had marked not merely the beginnings of revolt against
the old parochialism but a leisure-class psychology in an America that
had finally attained a leisure class, so that the new literature of
sophistication that came in with the James Branch Cabell School was
fundamentally the ambitious baroque luxury of a period that had finally
obtained a self-conscious splendor of its own.”

Mr. Kazin writes from the vantage point of 1942, and anything can happen
to a critic, a book, or a period in a dozen or more years. Hindsight
used to be considered superior, in some ways, to foresight—but such is
the condition of the world today that this is no longer particularly
true. Mr. Kazin, writing in the heyday of the four evangelists of modern
American fiction—Don Passos, Hemingway, Farrell and Steinbeck, looks
back upon the era of “baroque luxury” and “self-conscious splendor”
with anything but nostalgia. Malcolm Cowley, contributing an essay on
Dos Passos to his own symposium, an essay which preceded Kazin’s book
by five years, and to which Mr. Kazin is somewhat indebted, remarks
that Dos Passos had entered college in those olden baroque days, “at
the beginning of a period which was later known as that of the Harvard
aesthetes.” This is noted with an almost, but not quite, imperceptible
touch of pride—or of snobbishness. These young Cantabrians, our boy Dos
Passos among them, are reported to have acted in a manner befitting the
Elizabethans, or least the men of the Nineties, or any other generation
that felt it was living in a Golden Age. They read, Dos Passos still
among them, Pater and _The Hill of Dreams_, and they explored the
slums of Boston—which must have seemed to them at least as romantic as
Cheapside or Houndsditch.

At any rate Machen was accepted and more or less widely hailed as one
of the more important importations by some of the little magazines
that began to spring up at this time. “The Reviewer,” one of the most
important of the new journals, published Machen along with Ellen Glasgow,
Joseph Hergesheimer, Ernest Boyd, Ronald Firbank, Ben Ray Redman, Edwin
Muir and others. His public and enthusiastic acceptance by Van Vechten,
that inveterate organizer of torchlight parades, was quite enough to
launch Machen successfully with the intellectuals who, in those halcyon
days, had scarcely an ideology among them.

It has been said that the writers of this period, motivated no doubt
by the cynicism they either created or absorbed, or both, tended to
escape from this world they never made and produced in the process of
escaping some of the most exciting and readable books ever written in
America. Of course neither Mr. Cowley nor Mr. Kazin draws exactly these
conclusions—they are rather scornful of the Twenties and of the books
produced in the Twenties.

They are both, Mr. Kazin more than Mr. Cowley since he came in later, in
rather a hurry to get on to the Thirties when the Four Horsemen of the
Apocryphal were beginning to gallop madly down the back-country lanes and
through the congested streets of cities and the back-yards of milltowns.
Nevertheless it must be apparent to even the most ideological reader of
these weighty volumes that, for all their efforts at deprecating the
self-conscious splendor of the period, both Mr. Cowley and Mr. Kazin
manage to make the Twenties sound vastly more entertaining than the dull
period to follow, when the leftist interpretation of literature placed
black Marx against every novel that showed signs of having been written
for the sheer pleasure of writing, or the desire to create a character or
to tell a story.

This seems to be the great fault that is found, by such men as
these, with the novels of that era. They were not so judged in the
Nineteen-Twenties. The sentiments expressed by Arthur Machen in
_Hieroglyphics_, and echoed in Cabell’s _Beyond Life_, were rather widely
accepted at the time, not only by a large portion of the reading public,
but also by members of the more critical profession. Dyson, however
much he may have fussed with his pipes and his pencils, his notes and
his notions, expressed what was the literary credo of the day; “I will
give you the task of a literary man in a nutshell—to create a wonderful
story and to tell it in a wonderful manner.” And so Cabell and Wylie and
Fitzgerald and Hume and Wilder and many others created wonderful stories.
In this time of man and to this manner of writing Machen was admirably
suited.

People who found New York in the Twenties as fabulous a city as Machen
and Stevenson found London in their day, were delighted with the
yellow-bound books that came out under the Borzoi imprint. For many a
speakeasy in the mid-Forties, or in the Village, offered possibilities as
extraordinary as Stevenson’s _Suicide Club_ or _The Lost Club_ of Machen.
Indeed there are undoubtedly those who can recall when their favorite
haunt disappeared over-night and then, as if by magic, reappeared in the
brownstone house across the street. The city parks, as yet uninhabited
by muggers, were magical places after midnight and lonely as the sunken
lanes of Avalon. Those who delighted in the doings of Dyson and the
adventures of the Young Man in Spectacles were enchanted by the curious
byways of London, and they shared the satirical views of the dyspeptic
Doctor Stiggins and the Hermit of Barnsbury. It pleased immense numbers
of people who tired of Dreiser to find, in _Hieroglyphics_, this perfect
reflection of their own attitude: “Imagine having to spend twenty years
with _such_ people.”

The crash in the fall of 1929 was followed by a stunned silence—and
presently one began to hear the hoof beats of the four frightening
Horsemen and the voices of the economical evangelists crying, and
wreaking, havoc.

The realists began to be heard because realism seemed to be what people
wanted—politically, at any rate. The polemics disguised as novels began
to appear in greater and ever-increasing numbers. It has since become
obvious that realism of this sort was a one-way street to despair—and it
was the realists, not the now-silent “romanticists,” who were called,
in their own time, “The Irresponsibles.” But with the rise of the
proletarian novel, the heroic mill-hand and the long, dreary lines of the
unemployed, the period came to an end. Machen, along with the others,
ceased to be read except by those who re-read him, or discovered him in
the dusty bookshops where the yellow binding gleamed from the darkest
corner.




_Chapter Seven_

MACHEN’S MAGIC


1

Of recent years there has been a tendency to regard the novel as
something it has become rather than what it should be. Most novels
that do not fall neatly into one of several categories created by the
critics and reviewers are judged to be poor novels indeed. As a matter of
fact, the whole of fiction, as well as of poetry, has come to be judged
according to standards which, while they may be excellent standards when
applied to journalism or the so-called “documentary,” serve fiction
rather poorly. It has become the custom to label all stories, novels
and poetry that may fall outside the special categories set up by such
standards as “escapist.” It is a convenient enough classification, and
it is an apt enough description, but the word has come to be used in a
rather derogatory sense.

Now it may be demonstrated by an application of these very standards
that almost every one of the world’s great books, and every one of the
world’s heroic poems, is “escapist.” And that is, after all, what they
were intended to be. But we are concerned with the telling of a story
and the manner of its telling. To tell a wonderful story in a wonderful
manner, this, says Arthur Machen, is the function of the writer. There
is another equally fine description of the writer’s task, this time by
James Branch Cabell, another story teller of some eminence.

There is in almost all great stories a certain magic that becomes
apparent from the first sentence. One picks up _Moby Dick_ and reads:
“Call me Ishmael.” There is a quality of strangeness in the name and
abruptness of introduction that serves to set a mood, a mood that
persists through the entire book. Many of Poe’s stories have this same
strangeness and this same quality. One finds it too, in many of Machen’s
stories. The opening sentence, for example of _The Hill of Dreams_: “The
sky glowed as if great furnace doors had been opened.”

The magic of Machen depends as much upon his style as it does upon
the magical things of which he writes. His finest stories appeal to
an essential and basic desire for “escape” from the common life. They
depend for their effect upon that willing suspension of disbelief of
which Coleridge wrote (and for which Coleridge is known by far too many
who would turn its meaning to their own uses), a suspension of disbelief
which it is Mr. Machen’s happy fortune to bring about almost at will.

And yet, apparently, there is much more to it than the mere suspension
of disbelief—it is rather a desire to accept such matters as may be set
forth, whether or not they challenge belief—simply because they make an
appeal to _instinctive belief_. One doesn’t have to try very hard to
believe in the existence of certain powers, especially those which cannot
be, or have not yet been, explained as any known existing force. From
this point onward the development of a story by Machen may hinge upon
the manner of telling as well as upon the selection of the materials for
the tale. There must be no fumbling of the matter, no crude effects, no
creaky props, no bolstering up by the shabby tricks and melodramatic
artifices of the penny dreadfuls. Machen’s magic is very simply achieved.
In each of his tales an improbable, but not implausible, theme is stated;
usually one that is based upon something involving an instinctive belief,
for example: the existence of “little people,” the continuance of some
ancient power under certain circumstances, and in explaining certain
occurrences or events for which no rational explanation exists. Folk
tales, superstitions, local legends and mythology, most of these embody
certain elements in which most of us have at least an instinctive belief.
Then, too, a great deal of Mr. Machen’s own particular magic is achieved
through his ability to see things and to present things that are “removed
from the common life.”

Most of Machen’s characters are not unusual people, they are not
especially “peculiar” in any accepted sense except as they may be
affected by certain occurrences in the earlier development of the story.
For example, the young man in _The Novel of the White Powder_, the boy
in _The Novel of the Black Seal_, and the Vaughan girl in _The Great God
Pan_. But for the most part his characters are, or were, very ordinary
people; ordinary, that is, in the sense that Dyson and Phillips, and even
Lucian Taylor, are quite ordinary people. Indeed the very ordinariness of
some of these people becomes the starting point of an entire sequence of
extraordinary events. Just as it was the ordinary qualities of a young
married couple visiting relatives of a Sunday night in a dull, stodgy,
respectable suburb of London that resulted in the strange story called _A
Fragment of Life_.

Machen’s characters are completely believable, whatever events may occur,
simply because of their very ordinary qualities. Lucian Taylor, the
“hero” of _The Hill of Dreams_, an introvert we would call him today,
was a normal school boy who did not conform too well to the rigors of
the Public School System, and whose solitary home life conditioned him
to react as he did to the strangeness of his environment and to succumb
to the influences, real or imagined, of the Roman ruins near his home.
To the development of such a simple and ordinary character, in this
particular story, must be added one very important magical element—the
influence of landscape upon character.

For the peculiar potency of Machen’s magic owes much, if not most of its
force, to landscape and to the subtle influence of the weird topography
of his stories. Many of Machen’s most telling effects are achieved
through the mere portrayal of a brooding landscape, the sombre background
of mountains, the deep, rutted lanes that run along between head-high
hedges, solitary hilltops shimmering in heat waves, old grey houses that
sit somberly at the edge of the forest and rivers that coil in slow esses
through forests and skirt the walls of mountains. There is no doubt that
the wild Welsh countryside had this effect upon Machen himself.

Machen’s first book, it will be remembered, was written by one “Leolinus
Silurensis”—and Machen frequently calls himself a “Silurist.” For Gwent,
in the old days, the days before Arthur and before the Romans, was the
home of the Silures, one of the three great tribes in this last corner
of the West. The Silures seem to have been more Iberian than Celtic—they
dwelled in the Black Mountains and along the estuary of the Severn. It
was, then, this dark and ancient land that formed the background of
Machen’s life and most of his work. Machen explains, and illustrates, the
influence of his homeland in _Far Off Things_:

“This, then, was my process: to invent a story which would recreate
those vague impressions of wonder and awe and mystery that I myself had
received from the form and shape of the land of my boyhood and youth;
and as I thought over this and meditated on the futility—or comparative
futility—of the plot however ingenious, which did not exist to express
emotions of one kind or another, it struck me that it might be possible
to reverse the process. Could one describe hills and valleys, woods and
rivers, sunrise and sunset, buried temples and mouldering Roman walls so
that a story should be suggested to the reader? Not, of course, a story
of material incidents, not a story with a plot in the ordinary sense of
the term, but an interior tale of the soul and its emotions; could such a
tale be suggested in the way I have indicated? Such is to be the plan of
the great book which is not yet written.”

But of course this book was written, not once but over and over again.
One finds its content in almost everything Machen ever wrote. One
discovers too, the influence of landscape upon Machen and his work. One
notes the feeling for landscape as much in his work as in the work of
Poe or Coleridge or Hawthorne. One day, no doubt, a learned scholar
will write a lengthy monograph upon what might be called _The Influence
of Landscape Upon the Creative Imagination_. There are already many
footnotes available for such a work.

Machen recognized this influence, it became apparent to him as he walked
in the land of the Silures and as he read in the evenings in the drawing
room at Llandewi. This snug, old fashioned “parlour” in the Rectory was
the treasure house of the Machens. Here were their china and silver,
and here the books gathered by the Rector and his forebears. It was
here that Arthur Machen, on his vacations from school at Hereford,
discovered the wonders of Waverly and DeQuincy. Here, too, was Parker’s
_Glossary of Gothic Architecture_. This book initiated Machen into the
spirit of Gothic and, as he says, “that is one of the most magical of
all initiations.” Gothic meant to Arthur Machen “the art of the supreme
exaltation, of the inebriation of the body and soul and spirit. It is
not resigned to dwell calmly, stoically, austerely on the level plains
of this earthy life, since its joy is in this, that it has stormed the
battlements of heaven. And so its far-lifted vaults and its spires rush
upward, and its pinnacles are like a wood of springing trees. And its
hard stones, its strong based pillars break out as it were into song,
they blossom as the rose; all the secrets of the garden and the field and
the wood have been delivered unto them.”

Machen early developed this sense of wonder in the land. In his reading
he discovered, in the age of Coleridge and Wordsworth, the “renaissance
of wonder.” His taste for Scott and DeQuincy and Coleridge and Poe and
Hawthorne and Parker; his taste, in short, for the “Gothic,” supports
and explains this. For landscape and its influence are important
elements in that which we have come to call “Gothic” ... and it is this
Gothic-ness that is also one of the elements in Machen’s magic.


2

And then of course there is the final test of the story-teller’s magic.
Mr. Machen’s inventions have frequently been taken for truth. The tale
of the Bowmen at Mons is the classic example. Machen has told how he
received letters following the publication of some of his books—letters
in which the writers sought explanations of the stories, letters which
were undoubtedly prompted by a belief in some basic truth on which they
suspected the story had been built.

Many years ago Vincent Starrett wrote, in his preface to the Chicago
edition of _The Shining Pyramid_, that there were three Machens—Machen
the Saint, Machen the Sorcerer and Machen the Critic. It is, of course,
Machen the Sorcerer whose work is most popular, or shall we say, the
best known. Machen himself once wrote: “Sorcery and Sanctity, these are
the only true realities.” We might interpret these to mean religion and
science—although it is doubtful if all of the admirers of Arthur Machen
make this interpretation. At any rate it is the works of Machen the
Sorcerer that have been most widely anthologized. These are the stories
one finds classified under such headings as “supernatural stories, tales
of terror, horror stories” and the like.

Let us admit that supernatural fiction, supernatural tales, have quite
a respectable lineage. It must not be imagined, as some intellectuals
do, that the tale of terror is something to which only the readers of
pulp magazines are addicted. The supernatural tale has been the subject
of several excellent studies. One has only to mention the work of such
admirable scholars as Dorothy Scarborough, Edith Birkhead, Montague
Summers and Eino Railo.

It has been said by some of these scholarly investigators that almost
every English writer of any importance has, at one time or another,
written at least one story or novel that fits somewhere into one of these
categories. And then, of course, the scholarly investigators proceed to
give reasons for the interest in such stories, and they point out that
the interest as well as the belief in such matters is always in direct
proportion to the ruggedness of the terrain. And they also list, as
evidence of the extent of their research, the means whereby the best
effects may be achieved in this particular field. Basically these have to
do with landscape, architecture, antiquity and a whole collection of odds
and ends, of props and stage settings that form the background for the
venerable school of Gothic literature started many years ago by Horace
Walpole in _The Castle of Otranto_.

One thing all of these tales have in common is, naturally enough,
strangeness. A strangeness in landscape, a strangeness in character.
Basically too, one supposes, these stories are written about, and because
of, men’s fears. That is why they are called ghost stories, or horror
stories, or tales of terror. This fear is not merely a fear of the
dead returned, but of the past. For these stories concern themselves,
even when not with actual ghosts, with past glories, past powers, past
civilizations, and ancient ceremonies.

It is not that man seeks to frighten himself that he reads these stories
and is fascinated by them. Psychologists, of one sort or another, have
said that the popularity of ghost stories and mystery novels can be
traced to a desire to enjoy vicariously the precarious situations in
which characters in these tales find themselves; and that by substituting
themselves for the characters involved the readers may obtain a certain
stimulation which is lacking in their humdrum, calm and civilized lives.
This, it seems to me, is not particularly true. It is rather because the
past _is_ the past—simply that and nothing more. For the past is the
one thing man can never alter, although it has become fashionable for
us to try even that. The present is here, the future is attainable and
forseeable and it may even be influenced. The past is unattainable and
will always remain so, therefore man remains fascinated by it. The more
shrouded in the mists of time and of antiquity, the more fascinating. Man
does not read of the past to frighten himself any more than he drinks
in order to experience a hang-over. Nor does the average reader of
supernatural stories identify himself with primitive men’s fears any more
than he identifies himself with the abstract forces for good or evil when
reading detective stories. Man is a curious creature and his curiosity
leads him into strange places. His curiosity concerning his amazing
curiosity leads him to even stranger conclusions.

This preoccupation with the Past is part of man’s eternal preoccupation
with Time; is now, and always shall be, world without end; from the
days of the early Greeks, who knew that Chronos was the father of
great Jupiter himself—the parent of the father of the Gods. Many years
ago J. W. Dunne wrote a strange and tantalizing book, _An Experiment
with Time_, a book much remarked by critics and book reviewers in the
practice of their trade, but seldom quoted beyond a mere mention of its
title. This is an extraordinary book, perhaps out-dated now, in this
age of the supersonic and the expanding universe and the expanding ego.
Nevertheless, H. G. Wells and Kipling have been influenced by it; and
many another creator of the marvelous and the wonderful. One may read
many strange and wonderful books, one may even read strong and powerful
and significant books—but one never forgets such books and plays written
about the Time theme as _The Time Machine_ and _Berkeley Square_,
Priestley’s _I Have Been Here Before_, Ford Madox Ford’s _Ladies Whose
Bright Eyes_ and many others.


3

The magic of Machen is due no less to his wonderful style than to his
wonderful material. In these days when one can scarcely speak of style
without being considered stuffy and perhaps even pedantic, to praise a
writer for his style is almost to damn him with faint praise. This is
undoubtedly because we have had no stylists for the last several decades,
for which, on the whole, we may well be grateful! It is possible that
stylists fell into disrepute because so many of them, in the past,
concealed a tremendous vacuum and a cavernous nothingness beneath and
behind a facile facade of fluency.

Yet Arthur Machen has a distinctive style, the perfection of which,
while it appeals to the pedantic and soothes the scholarly, must be
apparent even to the readers of those horrendous anthologies which have
reprinted Machen while the scholars were busily interring him in their
fascinating mausoleums. This matter of style is rather a tricky one. It
is the sort of thing of which one might say, as some have, and when all
definitions fail, “Either one has it, or—one hasn’t!” However feelingly
and with whatever academic finality this axiom may be delivered—style
is obviously more than that, and more than the man. More, too, than
words and a certain way of putting them together, and much more than a
mere choice of words or dexterity in manipulating them. We have come to
think that many of these things _do_ constitute style. Indeed, a certain
publisher recently hailed a new book (one of his own, of course) as being
in the “tradition of the English Stylists.” Simply because the writer
employed, here and there, a compound-complex sentence, composed with a
certain felicity and manufactured of polysyllabic words or those with a
certain antique charm. It is felt, then, that a matter of phrases makes a
Fielding—which is no more the case than that the use of a quotation from
Donne makes a writer one to stand with the Elizabethans.

Style is, like so many other things, more apparent in the breach than
in the observance, which comes perilously close to the didactic dictum,
“Either you have it, or—you haven’t.” But not quite. To be sure, every
written word or group of words has style, even roadsigns, notices of
trespass, mayors’ proclamation, editorials in the Daily Worker, even
soap operas have style. The most popular writers of pot-boilers have a
style—and many of them have so pronounced a style that they can be and
have been recognizably parodied.

It might be said of a good style that it is one that cannot be parodied.
An examination of Machen’s style would indicate that it is, in his case
at least, quite true. For Machen’s style is a blend of many things; of
words with magic connotation, of sentences that create moods, of passages
that suggest, subtly and almost unconsciously, the exact atmosphere for
which they were intended. Mr. Machen is a master at evoking the willing
suspension of disbelief, and he does it without employing any of the
stock properties listed by Coleridge and other authorities as having
the proper connotative value for the creation of a “Gothic” mood or
atmosphere.

When all is said and done, however, it must be admitted that Machen’s
style is merely a reflection of his faith in the credo of a literary man
as set forth by the admirable Dyson. And here, of course, we come to the
crux of the matter, and as close as we may to an explanation of Machen’s
magic which cannot, after all, be appraised in rational terms. In that
wonderful book called _Hieroglyphics_ Machen poses a series of questions:

    “Explain, in rational terms, The Quest of the Holy Graal. State
    whether in your opinion such a vessel ever existed, and if you
    think it did not, justify your pleasure in reading an account
    of the search for it.”

    “Explain, logically, your delight in color.”

    “Estimate the value of Westminster Abbey in the avoirdupois
    measure.”

    “Faery lands forlorn. Draw a map of the district in question,
    putting in principal towns and naming exports.”

Machen agrees that one cannot express art of any kind in the terms of
rationalism, and that “If literature be a kind of dignified reporting, in
which the reporter is at liberty to invent new incidents and leave out
others, and to arrange all in the order that pleases him best; then, let
us have as much “common sense” and “rationalism” as you please ... but
if literature is a mysterious ecstasy, the withdrawal from all common
and ordinary conditions ... [we had better] confess that with its first
principles logic has nothing to do.... For if Rationalism be the truth,
then all literature ... is simply lunacy.”


4

There are, sometimes, certain superficial resemblances between the
works of imaginative writers that are outside the province and beyond
the charge of plagiarism. An age produces a culture, a culture produces
works of art, and all the while the individual consciousness, or
sub-consciousness, feeds upon and is nourished by the raw materials
and the basic elements of the culture. For in any age there are bound
to exist certain individuals in whom combinations of common experience
develop along certain lines and who may be expected to react in almost
predictable patterns to identical stimulae ... just as certain identical
combinations of chemical elements may be expected to react in identical
manner under identical circumstances. Which is, after all, no major
discovery but merely a restatement of the obvious fact that lies behind
the continuity of any culture, or even, on a smaller scale, of any
literary movement, or on occasion, of something less significant than a
literary movement.

This fact also lies behind the periodical resurgence of certain ideals of
culture or revivals of interest in certain abstractions such as realism,
naturalism, romanticism and the like. And it explains, in individuals,
the influence one writer may have over another, or the appeal of certain
types of material to certain similar individuals.

Superficial resemblances are a common manifestation of spiritual
relationships. Some years ago a rather clever critic of music wrote a
book called _Music for the Man Who Enjoys Hamlet_. Now, the resemblance
between people who enjoy Hamlet no doubt extends to a great many things
other than the stage and Shakespeare and music, and, for all we know,
it might even be established that such people have a mutual preference
for a specific cocktail or a certain brand of cigarette. Our critic did
not attempt to prove this, he contented himself with discussing music of
a type to soothe the Hamlet-enjoying intellect. And so the superficial
resemblances between Poe and Coleridge and DeQuincy extend far beyond a
need or addiction, accidental or otherwise, to stimulants of one sort
or another. The lines that connect and link these individuals, feature
for feature, element for element, with an incomplete analogy here, and
a broken chain there, would no doubt resemble a physicist’s laboratory
model of the atomic structure of the very newest isotope of the most
recently discovered element.

Perhaps individuals themselves constitute the electrons and protons of
a cultural atom. We might link individuals of a certain sort, the men
who enjoy Hamlet, for example, or Poe, DeQuincy, Hawthorne, Coleridge,
and find isotopes here too—Brockden-Brown, Walter Scott, Tieck, Machen,
Sheil, Stevenson, Wells and so on and so on. And we would find that
these elements or individuals had certain affinities, certain properties
in common. They are not alike merely in that they wrote in a certain
fashion, or that they wrote about more or less similar ideas, or that the
moods they created were more or less identical. There are certain other
qualities, perhaps insignificant, but revealing.

Poe, like Coleridge, was fond of designing title pages and planning
magazines and journals of a very literary sort. We find that Poe and
Coleridge shared a facility for creating exotic and quite unreal
localities. For example Coleridge’s Pleasure Palace of Kubla Khan and
Poe’s Domain of Arnheim are very similar in conception. The conception
of tremendous wealth appealed, in a most impractical way, to both Poe
and Coleridge. And, finally, both shared a great liking for names of
Oriental origin ... there is no distance at all, on the literary map,
between Xanadu and the kingdom by the sea; and the River Alph or one of
its tributaries, empties into the tarn of Auber. Machen’s own landscape
is not too far removed. It was first peopled by the dark people who came
from Defrobani, which is to say the City of the Golden Domes, far to the
east on the shores of Marmora. And Machen’s eternal preoccupation with a
Great Romance is akin in many ways to Poe’s grandiose schemes for epic
compositions no less than it is to the complete unpublished works of
Coleridge.

There was magic in these men and in their manner of telling a tale.
There was, in each of them, an ability to create that which made its
strongest appeal to that love of strangeness in most men’s minds.

DeQuincy, alone in London; Hawthorne, so solemnly settled in Salem,
Coleridge surrounded by blue-stockings and blue lakes; Poe in his erratic
course from salon to saloon ... these men made magic of a sort no realist
could ever devise. Machen’s magic is of this sort.




_Chapter Eight_

THE PATTERN


1

Toward the close of the first quarter of this century Mr. Alfred Knopf,
being ready to reissue _The Anatomy of Tobacco_, asked Arthur Machen to
write a new introduction for the volume. The _Anatomy_ had been written
some forty-three years before and it seemed time a new edition and a
new introduction were called for. The _Anatomy_ is a slight book, and
a rather dull and pretentious one, turned out as a sort of sophomoric
exercise under the influence of Burton and other pedantic antiquarians.
Machen had no objection to writing a new introduction to the book of
“Leolinus Siluriensis” and so he sat down at once to do so.

Most of Machen’s work, and certainly all of the best of it, had already
been written and published ... there was no Great Romance on the fire
just then. Several years before he had written his memoirs, or come as
close to writing them as he ever would. _The Confessions of a Literary
Man_ appeared serially in the London Evening News through several months
of 1915. Secker issued the _Confessions_ in 1922 as _Far Off Things_.
A year later Machen wrote _Things Near and Far_; another two years
later came _The London Adventure_. These three books are Machen’s
autobiography, although it has been said that almost everything he ever
wrote was, to a great extent, autobiographical. At any rate, Machen
saw the books in print and occupied himself with journalism, which he
detested, and with thinking over the books he had written which, on the
whole, he rather enjoyed. And so when, in the 1920’s, he began the New
York Adventure, Machen sat down and wrote not one but a whole series of
new introductions. There is no nonsense about these introductions, and no
“graceful writing.” The introduction to the new edition of the _Anatomy_
begins quite simply:

“It struck me once, during a long meditation on literature, that every
man who has written has had but one idea in his head. To the best of my
recollection, the particular example in my mind at the time was Edgar
Allen Poe, who executed a wonderful series of variations on one theme.”

Now this idea had been in Machen’s mind for a great many years. A year or
two before completing his introduction for Mr. Knopf he had been engaged
in writing a book called _The London Adventure_. The book contains much
material that is found in neither the _Confessions_ nor in _Things Near
and Far_. While writing the book he became intrigued with some old note
books he had kept many years before. In reading them he was reminded of a
story by Henry James, _The Pattern on the Carpet_, in which is expressed
the notion of a man of letters who had written many books and was quite
surprised to find that one of his admirers had failed to recognize that
all these tales of his were variations on one theme; that a common
pattern, like the pattern of an eastern carpet ran through them all.
In the story the novelist died suddenly without revealing the nature
of the pattern. Nor does Henry James, in whose works one might also
trace a common pattern. He too leaves it to his readers to discover for
themselves the mystery of this one design, latent in a whole shelf of
books.

Machen himself has such a pattern, and such a theme. It occurs again and
again in all of his works, in his short stories as well as in his novels:
in the slightest of his essays as well as in _Hieroglyphics_. This theme
he defines in several places quite briefly and simply. It is, he says,
“The sense of the eternal mysteries, the eternal beauty hidden beneath
the crust of common and commonplace things: hidden and yet burning and
glowing continuously if you care to look with purged eyes.”

We have noted, several times over, Machen’s preoccupation with a Great
Romance. Many years ago he wrote, “There is a great book that I am hoping
to write one of these fine days. I have been hoping to write it, I may
say, since 1898, or ’99, and somewhere about the later year I did write
as many as a dozen pages. The _magnum opus_ so far conducted did not
wholly displease me, and yet it was not good enough to urge me forward
in the task. And so it has languished ever since then, and I am afraid
I have lost the manuscript that contained all that there was of it long
ago. Seriously, of course, it would not have been a great book if it had
been ever so prosperously continued and ended; but it would have been at
least a curious book, and even now I feel conscious of warm desire at the
thought of writing it—some day. For the idea came to me as follows:

“I had been thinking at the old century end of the work that I had done
in the fifteen years or so before, and it suddenly dawned upon me that
this work, pretty good or pretty bad, or as it may be, had all been the
expression of one formula, one endeavor. What I had been doing was this:
I had been inventing tales in which and by which I had tried to realize
my boyish impressions of that wonderful magic Gwent.”

Now this great book was not only written but it was rewritten under
various forms, in entirely different ways, and with no surface
similarities at all. For almost sixty years he had written purely to
please himself, nor did he hesitate to publish, at his own expense, the
books he wrote for his own pleasure. It was his feeling in this that
there was no reason why a beginner should not be willing to pay his own
way. And yet, as he says, it is a queer pleasure when one does write to
please oneself. For, as Machen says,

“I wrote purely to please myself; and what a queer pleasure it was!
To write, or to try to write, means involving oneself in endless
difficulties, contrarieties, torments, despairs, and yet I wrote on, and
I suppose for the reason which I have given, the necessity laid upon most
of us to create another and a fantastic life in order that the life of
actuality may be endurable.”

In these excerpts from Machen’s autobiographical sketches one encounters
over and over again certain keywords: ‘escape,’ ‘common life,’ ‘eternal
mysteries,’ ‘removal’ and so on. And these same key words are, of course,
the underlying themes of every story he ever wrote. They constitute the
criteria by which he judged the literature of past and present as well.


2

Machen had been brought up on Scott and Coleridge, Hawthorne and Poe and
all the authors one would naturally expect a school boy to encounter
in an English public school in the 1880’s. In addition to these there
were the books he found in the rectory at Llanddewi. These included one
especially significant book by Parker on Gothic architecture.

We have already noted that Machen early became aware of the beauty
of the Gothic and that he was all of his life more or less under its
influence. His conception of the Gothic was not quite the same as Horace
Walpole’s. It stemmed rather from Parker and from Coleridge, from whom
he learned that there is “in the spectacle of external nature something
much more than mere pleasantness or sensuous beauty.” The rugged terrain
of the land of the Silures would seem to offer little of pleasantness or
sensuous beauty ... yet it did act upon Machen in much the same way that
such a landscape had acted upon the imagination of such a lyrical poet
as, for example, Wordsworth.

As a matter of fact, Machen did not hesitate to refer to Walpole’s “sham
Gothic,” and he assumes that Walpole had a sort of “vague idea that there
was something in a particular architecture of a particular era which was
somehow or other curious and admirable.” Machen further remarks that one
cannot possibly compare the school of Coleridge in its appreciation of
nature with the school of Walpole in its appreciation of the Gothic. And
then, he poses a question in which there lies the answer to his own and
to many another writer’s problem. “May it not be that Coleridge and his
fellows were but the forerunners of a new doctrine which was not fully
revealed to them.”

We have remarked that Machen employs none of the traditional trappings
of the Gothic tale. There are no clankings and bumpings and ghosties in
the night. There are no ruined castles, no hermits in caves. Instead we
find deserted houses in Lambeth and in Clerkenwell, and sometimes the
houses are not even deserted. Nor are they occupied by monks or knights
or old families in whose closets lurk the most deplorable of skeletons.
The typical Gothic “hero,” either the sardonic Byronic or the melancholy
Manfred type is never encountered. Machen’s heroes, if such they be, are
rather ordinary young men like Lucian Taylor and Ambrose Meyrick, or
perhaps you may wish to call the ever-present Dyson and the companionable
Phillips heroes. There are, of course, sinister characters in Machen.
Mr. Davies, outwardly ordinary, is as black a villain as can be found
anywhere in the whole school of Otranto. Miss Lally, or Miss Leicester,
are as horrific in their own quiet way as any harpy or hag encountered in
the novels of Radcliff.

Arthur Machen is much more closely related in his work to Hawthorne and
Poe than he is to his English contemporaries and predecessors. As Paul
Elmer More has noted, Hawthorne and Poe are the only two writers in
America who have won almost universal renown as artists, and that these
two are each, in their own manner, a sovereign in that strange region of
emotion which we name the weird. Their achievement, as Mr. More points
out, is not at all like the Gothic novel introduced by Horace Walpole.
There is little in them of the revival of medieval superstition and gloom
which marked the rise of romanticism in Europe.

The unearthly visions of Poe and Hawthorne were not the results of
literary whim or unbridled individualism but, according to Mr. More, were
deeply rooted in American history. Now this is a rather strange matter,
for there is nothing nationalistic in the nature of the work of these
American writers. It follows a well established tradition, but it is not
the tradition of the English school of the Gothic revival. It was greatly
influenced by Germanic mysticism, just as Coleridge was influenced
by Teutonic theory. These American writers seem to have missed the
dilettantism that was associated with the Gothic revival in England. In
this they are very close to Machen and his work. Both these writers were
greatly influenced by their surroundings and by the influence of their
own native landscape. The personal alchemy of each one transmuted the
elements of that landscape and created a time and place that never were.

Poe especially, and to a far greater extent, was affected by landscape
not only of his native Virginia but of every place he ever visited. Some
years ago John Cowper Powys, a visiting, but much more sympathetic than
usual, Englishman commented upon this aspect of the writings of Poe:

“For myself, as a traveller for a score of years between all of Edgar
Allen Poe’s particular cities, and knowing the country round them a good
deal better than I know my own, I confess—though it may be because of
a kindred sensibility toward the ghostly, the weird, and the horror
hinting: I have found even in those districts, though of course far
more in the deeper south, elements here and there that correspond with
disturbing closeness to the frightening things in his imaginary landscape.

“But it is not from those pine haunted woods and those morasses and those
treacherous estuaries and those Lethean wharfs that the darker vistas and
more troubling visions of Poe’s inspirations comes.

“They are conjured up from the symbols of pre-incarnate tremblings that
we all find written on the nerves of our race—though only a few abnormal
individuals can render articulate these hieroglyphics of holy terror.

“... We all conceal within us, inherited from an immemorial past, a
secret yearning to enjoy by some magical shortcut the hidden potencies of
nature. A responsive pulse begins to beat irrepressibly within us when
Faust makes the sign of the Macrocosm, for there is not one among us for
whom the idea of forbidden joys and an unnatural power over the forces of
nature has not got a seductive appeal.”

Machen made this comment in a letter on the subject of the Gothic novel.
“The fact is, I believe, that all the Gothic romances are sham Gothic
romances. I mean that the people who put back their period into the
middle ages, had hardly the faintest notion of what life in the middle
ages, in a Gothic castle was really like. This, let me note, is nothing
against their books as literature or else we should be laughing at a
highly esteemed writer for supposing that ninth century life at Elsinore
had the remotest resemblance to the life which is depicted in _Hamlet_.”


3

The books of Arthur Machen which have gained the greatest amount of
attention are, naturally enough, the more sensational stories in which
he touches upon themes that approach what is, or what has been in the
past, forbidden territory. It seems odd that Arthur Machen, whose works
have been so generally neglected, should have been scolded on occasion
by various critics for his use of sexual themes. Actually there is no
sexuality as such in any of Arthur Machen’s books. It does enter into
some of the stories through the medium of mythology, Roman or Celtic,
and sometimes aboriginal. And yet, such a critic as the gentle A. E.
Houseman, could write of him, “Mixing up religion and sexuality is not a
thing I am fond of.” Mr. Houseman, had he possessed something of Machen’s
scholarship, would have perceived that religion and sexuality were not
mixed up by Arthur Machen but rather by his own Celtic or Teutonic or
Scandinavian ancestors. It is the more surprising, however, that such
opinions as that expressed by the later great poet have not resulted in
greater popularity for at least some of the work of Arthur Machen.

By far the most important elements in the pattern that runs through
Machen’s work are the very ones he himself expressed many years ago, “The
sense of the eternal mysteries and the eternal beauty hidden beneath the
crust of common and commonplace things.”

The reputation of Arthur Machen undoubtedly rests most securely on a
single book, _Hieroglyphics_, and on perhaps a half dozen of his essays.
His definition of what constitutes fine literature is, even today, beyond
dispute. His thoughts on realism, or naturalism, a movement that was only
just beginning to be felt in his youth have been admirably expressed in a
passage in his book _The Secret Glory_.

“Of course, he said, (Ambrose Meyrick) I take realism to mean absolute
and essential truthfulness of description, as opposed to merely
conventional treatment. Zola is a realist not—as the imbeciles suppose
because he described—well, rather minutely—many unpleasant sights and
sounds and smells and emotions, but because he was a poet, a seer;
because, in spite of his pseudo philosophies, his cheap materialisms,
he saw the true heart, the reality of things. Take _La Terre_, do you
think it is realistic because it describes minutely, and probably
faithfully, the event of a cow calving? Not in the least; the local vet
who was called in could probably do all that as well or better. It is
realistic because it goes behind all the brutality, all the piggeries and
inhumanities, of those frightful people, and shows us the strange, mad,
transcendent passion that lay behind all those things—the wild desire for
the land—a longing that burned, that devoured, that inflamed, that drove
men to hell and death as would a passion for a goddess who might never be
attained. Remember how ‘La Beauce’ is personified, how the earth swells
and quickens before one, how every clod and morsel of the soil cries for
its service and its sacrifice and its victims—I call that realism.

“Of course, there may be people who think that if you describe a pigsty
well you are a realist, and if you describe an altar well you are
romantic.... I do not know that the mental processes of Cretins form a
very interesting subject for discussion.”

Frank Norris, an early apostle of realism, wrote, while he was still at
college, this analysis of realism and of Zola: “Naturalism, as understood
by Zola, is but a form of romanticism after all ... the naturalist
takes no note of common people, common in so far as their interests,
their lives and the things that occur in them are common, are ordinary.
Terrible things must happen to the characters of the naturalistic
tale. They must be twisted from the ordinary, wrenched from the quiet,
uneventful round of everyday life and flung into the throes of a vast and
terrible drama that works itself out in unleashed passions, in blood and
in sudden death.”

There are many provocative passages on this subject in Machen. Take, for
example, these thoughts expressed in Machen’s _The Art of Dickens_:

“... it is not the main point in the finest literature to draw people so
well that the reader begins to think that they must be ‘real’ people,
and that the author is a sort of journalist with supernatural means of
finding all the facts about them.”

“If we want to go to Margate, it would be idle to take a fairy barque,
and _simili modo_ it would be but faint praise of a Gothic cathedral to
say that it was quite weather proof.”

“What does it profit a painter to delineate a tree which is very like
a tree, unless it is something much more—unless it is also the symbol
and the revelation of some great secret of nature? If this were not so,
then the camera would be superior of Turner, and the shorthand writer
would look down from his desk on poor blind Homer, who talks of gods and
goddesses of fairy isles, and giants with one eye in their foreheads.”


4

Vincent Starrett many years ago made the statement that there was little
humor in Arthur Machen’s works. Of humor, in the broadest Mark Twain, or
even in the gentle Stephen Leacock vein, there is very little. But there
is in almost all of Machen a wry, dry humor with perhaps a rather bitter
taste. There are passages, even in _The Hill of Dreams_ that are as
humorous as anything by Leacock. One reads his account of the publishing
business as it was in his day with a realization that Machen is as much
at home in satire as in sorcery. His autobiographical books are filled
with humor, this time not so bitter. Many of his essays employ humor and
satire in generous doses. Shortly after the publication of _The Hill of
Dreams_ and _The House of Souls_ Arthur Machen wrote several essays on
the subject of the Holy Graal. These essays, the first of which appeared
under the editorship of A. E. Waite, aroused quite a bit of attention and
resulted in a certain amount of controversy in antiquarian circles. The
Graal legends through their association with Arthur and Caerleon had been
of great interest to Machen from his earliest years.

He knew every legend and every theory in the literature of the Graal. His
first essay was at variance with some of the new theories that were then
springing up. Chief among these was the theory that the Graal legends had
their basis in a fertility cult which persisted in Wales right up until
Norman times. Machen promptly branded this theory as absurd. “Let us
grant,” he wrote, “that the question of fertility, which is the question
of life, both for ourselves and for our cabbages, is behind everything.
If we go far back enough, it is clear that we can do nothing in this
world if we are so unlucky as to be dead: and this applies equally to
the Phallic hypothesis of the origin of everything, which can be worked
in very well with the fertility hypothesis. The whole point of a great
many of the rites in fertility ceremonies seems to be built about the
hypothesis that fertility could be enduced by certain ceremonies that
were expected to put nature in a mood to be fertile.” And then Machen
quotes from one of the experts who clung to this hypothesis, “Just as the
sailor imitates the wind that he desires by whistling for it, so did the
countrymen imitate the trees in the wood by making a mock tree called the
Maypole.”

Machen seems willing enough to accept these theories but he asks,
“What light shall we gain as to the actual emotions and intent of the
seventeenth or sixteenth century people who danced about the Maypole? I
venture to say none whatever ... they were not addressing any invocation
to the woods or anything else. They were being jolly or merry at a
certain time of the year in a traditional manner. For all I know, our
learned people may decide that the game of marbles was originally a
reminder to the spheres to keep on rolling. If I am told so, I shall not
deny the doctrine, but I shall maintain that the boys who play marbles
on London pavements know nothing of it. Granted this hypothetical origin
of marbles, it has nothing whatever to do with the game of the twentieth
century.”

The note books of Arthur Machen, as fragmentarily revealed in _The London
Adventure_, are as fascinating as are the notebooks of Hawthorne, which
as a matter of fact they much resemble. For example there are many notes
concerned with patterns—and these bear a direct relationship with the
earlier material in this chapter. Most of the notes concern labyrinths,
mazes, spirals and whorls. He asks the question: Why was this form common
to all primitive art? And then, in almost the same place in his note book
one finds the sentence: “Literature began with charms, incantations,
spells, songs of mystery, chants of religious ecstasy, the Bachic chorus,
the rune, the mass.” This sentence is the basis for _Hieroglyphics_. It
is, according to Machen, the thesis of the book fairly well summed up in
one sentence.

And this same pattern occurs in most of his stories. Among his notes
we find this, “The maze was not only the instrument but the symbol of
ecstasy; it was a pictured ‘inebriation,’ the sign of some age old
process that gave the secret bliss to men, that was symbolized also by
dancing, by lyrics with their recurring burdens, and their repeated
musical phrases: a maze, a dance, a song: three symbols pointing to one
mystery.”

It would require a thorough examination of the notebook of Arthur Machen,
if such a thing were possible, by a man with the skill and scholarship of
a John Livingston Lowes to trace and to tell the complete story of the
pattern in Arthur Machen. Yet here, in brief, and in all his works, the
pattern is everywhere apparent.

There are, undoubtedly, those who prefer Machen the essayist to Machen
the story teller. Certainly his greatest work, _Hieroglyphics_, is
sufficient reply to those who have tried to dismiss Machen as the creator
of “shockers” concerned with demonology and sensational horror stories.
The delightful pieces that appeared serially in the Lyons Mail and the
Illustrated News and the London Graphic would please even the Manchester
Guardian or A. E. Houseman, who once wrote that he found Machen not quite
to his taste. His essays on the Grail legend are authoritative without
being archeological, witty without being flippant or, what would have
been unbearable, satirical.

And yet, in the essays no less than in the stories, the pattern is there
and is recognizable. One is forever running across a phrase or a notion
one has encountered before—some where, some time, some place—and the
place usually turns out to be another Machen essay. For the pattern of
Machen’s thinking is as obvious as the pattern in the rug; as obvious,
and as simple, as the definitions supplied in _Hieroglyphics_. The
pattern is, as we know, summed up in the phrase: “removal from the common
life.” It may be simplified further in the one word: “ecstasy.”

Now the word “ecstasy” has caused some confusion in the minds of
certain of Machen’s detractors as well as among his admirers. There was
a tendency, in the Twenties, as well as in the Nineties, to give the
word “ecstasy” a connotation or a meaning similar to that employed by
the popular novelists of the time. “Ecstasy” seemed to many to be the
“ecstasy” of the pallid, perverted creatures of the Cafe Royale and,
later, a sort of Elinor Glynn-ish, sinnish quality. It was a word much
favored by the writers of romances, the practitioners of the purple
phrase. And so we encounter, at times, this “novelist of ecstasy and sin”
sort of nonsense.

It should be pointed out that _Hieroglyphics_, that excellent volume
of literary criticism having little to do with passion, in or out of
the desert, bears the illuminating subtitle: “_A Note Upon Ecstasy in
Literature_.” And _this_ ecstasy is of the mind—it is an exultation of
the spirit of men. It is, to go back to the more descriptive phrase, the
removal from the common life.

This pattern exists everywhere in Machen, sometimes it is developed by
the characters and circumstances in his tales, or again it is carried
out by argument or analysis in his essays, but always, upon closer
examination, the grand design is apparent.

One may read, for example, the essay called _The Hidden Mystery_ and
find that it is almost exactly the same as _The Mystic Speech_. And then
one reads _The Secret Glory_ and finds, once again, the same theories,
the same logic, the same figures and the same conclusions, expressed
and explained as only Machen can set them down. This may send the
casual reader, or even the amateur bibliographer, hunting from volume
to volume with pencil and reading glass, for there seems to be indeed a
hidden mystery, a mystic speech, a glorious secret in these passages and
paragraphs.

Actually, of course, one is merely becoming aware of the pattern, and one
is becoming impressed with the simplicity and the one-ness of everything
Machen ever wrote. Of course there are actual resemblances between the
essays mentioned and strong connections between them and the book. For
the essays were written years before, and one of them was actually
delivered as a lecture before the learned Quest Society of London. They
are all a part of the book that is now known as _The Secret Glory_.




_Chapter Nine_

THE VERITABLE REALISTS


1

Our modern civilization is, if nothing else, a well-documented one. No
sooner were we at war than we began to talk about the post-war world.
Our introduction to the marvels of the post-war world began very shortly
after Pearl Harbor. Prophets sprang up in every advertising agency and
began to lead us into the promised land of the push button and the
ever-present plastics—where every prospect was pleasantly postwar-ish and
only man seemed likely to remain vile, as indeed he proved by brilliantly
discovering how to smash the atom. It was significant that the art of
propaganda, perfected to the point of art by the original perpetrators
of the war, should become the means of showing us the wondrous shape of
things to come.

So well indoctrinated were our people, so thoroughly documented had we
become, that it occurred to many to venture opinions on the state of man
in this almost perfect state of the future. It was obvious, even to the
prophets, that man would engage in activities other than pushing buttons
to start and to stop things, to change climate or a record, to launch a
war, a ship or a new hydro-electric plant. It seemed obvious, even to
the prophets, that there might be malice in this wonderland.

Man, with more leisure than ever before, would undoubtedly manage to stir
up more trouble than ever before. And while we certainly were not going
to sell apples on street corners, we knew enough, we said, to look for an
increase in crime, a new wave of disillusionment and, most certainly, a
new point of view.

We were quite resigned to these things. We were prepared to usher in a
brave new world to the tune of some fantastic Gotterdammerung in the
Bavarian Redoubt. The suicide of the Austrian Corporal was anti-climax
indeed, since everyone knew, had known for years, that he had it in him.
Things shuddered to a slow halt in Europe and the post-war world seemed
about to be launched with nothing more stupendous in the offing than
the truth about V-1, 2 and 3. The atom’s howl at Hiroshima came as the
cataclysmic climax.

Well, then, once again we had fought in a great war and once again had
emerged comparatively victorious. Because victors always anticipate
a certain course of events which, we have yet to learn, never follow
victory, we had already anticipated the cynicism that was to follow. At
least we have learned to anticipate the cynicism, and that of course is
an achievement. It represents, one must admit, progress. In developing
and enlarging upon our visions of the push-button world we had not
neglected to include the conception of push-button wars. This could be
called the crowning cynicism—and a less disillusioned world might well do
so.

But it is probable that our cynicism is really not quite so bitter as
it was the last time, because one isn’t really cynical at discovering
that what one never believed in does not exist. At any rate we felt, and
perhaps we still do, that there was a pattern to be followed. We have had
some prior knowledge of the pattern—it was becoming familiar to us. There
might be, of course, some slight variations here and there. For example:
in tracing out the pattern before, our cynicism resulted in an escape
into realism—and this time it might result in an escape from realism.
Cynicism in 1947 or 1948 might very well be an isotope of uranium 235,
with a few unknown qualities but with a predictably high escape-velocity.

The post-war era seems to be fairly familiar. The political scene
conforms in a great many respects—but our reactions do not. That we will
do exactly the same thing about exactly the same problem is not only
unthinkable, it is extremely unlikely. Blunder we very probably will, but
we will have found new ways of blundering. After all, we do progress. And
this time we can blunder with no more effort than is required to push a
button. It might be argued, then, that it is extremely unimportant to
ponder about the sort of things that will be written in this postwar
world—escapist or realist. But that one may predict, in the face of this
reality, an escape from realism seems at once probable and inevitable—and
there are certain indications that seem to favor the inevitable.

Superficially we might consider that a number of critics and writers
have remarked upon certain similarities between the late Forties and
the early Twenties. And, so linked have the two decades become, a
mere mention of the Twenties leads inevitably to a rediscovery of the
Nineties. The Modern Library, which was more than just a publishing
venture in the 1920’s, began its series of reprints with Oscar Wilde’s
_Dorian Gray_. One of the first in a recent cycle of films developed
about psychological themes was a somewhat sinister version of _Dorian
Gray_. A recent theatrical season featured simultaneous presentations of
a play about the Twenties and of several about the Nineties. Indeed, _The
Importance of Being Earnest_—a likely title that!—gave fashion its first
really fashionable color since before the war. Yellow, said a foremost
fashion magazine was _The Color_. To be sure, these are only superficial
similarities. That Wilde was revived in the Twenties and in the late
Forties is a manifestation without much meaning in itself. That Yellow
became a favorite color of the season was perhaps no more than a reaction
to our khaki consciousness of the war years ... but there were other, and
more significant, indications.


2

There have been, this past year or so, a number of articles appearing
in various literary journals, and even of late in the more popular
magazines, the burden of which seems to be something between a call for a
new estimate of literature and a prediction that such an estimate is in
the making. Certainly the recent years, during which more books were read
by more people than at any time in history, have given practicing writers
the wider audience they had, for centuries dreamed about. The writers
for small cliques have had every opportunity to expand their cliques.
The writers for the masses had such a market as even the most popular
of them had never imagined. The Big Names ran to bigger printings than
even a publisher had dreamed of. That we were in the midst of an almost
world wide paper shortage seemed at least the most obvious result of this
promiscuous reading and writing. But what have been its literary effects?

Have the realists gained in favor as they predicted, and had been
predicting for years, that they would? Have the proletarian novelists
grown in stature now that, at long last, the proletariat were not only
reading but buying books? Have the multitudinous novels about the Common
Man, the Little Man, the Man in the Street, been widely accepted by the
Common Man, the Little Man, the Man in the Street? In this, the Century
of the Common Man, such a conclusion would seem to have been foregone.
The writers for the Common Man, spurred on by the foregone-ness of their
conclusions, became commoner and commoner—but the Common Man began to
show that he had developed a few rather uncommon tastes indeed. Aside
from the comic books, which he consumed by the shipload (and they can
scarcely be called realistic), he has done all sorts of queer things. He
has granted the greatest gift in his power, sales running to a million
or more, to a book about a lady and an egg, and to a group of the most
outrageously escapists novels that have ever cluttered up a publisher’s
list. Historical novels which were neither good history nor good novels,
became the new opium of the masses. Lusty rogues and busty wenches went
through their amorous routine with a dream of empire in their roving
eyes. The Common Man went in heavily for mediaeval glamour and colonial
swashbuckling. This may be explained on the always convenient grounds
that the popular taste is lamentably lacking in it.

What about the intellectuals? They have shown a remarkable predilection
for mystery novels with overtones of Kraft-Ebing and undertones of
Freud. The “psychological” novel has enjoyed a vogue on a grand scale,
and most popular novelists have had a shot at it themselves. Several
novelists of a generation or two ago have been revived. Henry James has
been the subject of half a dozen serious studies and most of his novels,
the less boring ones, have been republished, re-reviewed and hailed as
masterpieces by the Sunday reviewers. Trollope, too, has undergone the
full treatment. The 1920’s have been rediscovered once again, this time
complete with cartoons and photographs. We may anticipate that Charles
Dickens will shortly become the subject of an intense and enthusiastic
revival.

The _Saturday Review_ has called for new gods. _Life_ magazine demands
to know whether or not fiction has a future, thinks not. The ladies’
fashion magazines, progressing rapidly in the opposite direction, present
a gallery of “Significant writers” with photographs only slightly less
rococo than their elegantly gowned caryatids, including one precious
young fellow in a checkered weskit and the most engaging bangs.

In short, the Little Man, having digested an overdose of reading matter,
seems about to form certain dietary preferences, and they are not going
to be along the anticipated lines. Now this is not to be greatly
wondered at. In any period of intense literary activity (and we must use
the term very loosely), when, in short, “publishers will put covers on
almost anything,” two things are bound to happen. The more popular novels
set new records for sales and for bad writing. New writers are rushed
into print before they’ve bothered to become good, and old established
writers are tempted and inevitably, invariably and immediately succumb to
the lure of mass sales. They are tricked into competing on the commonest
possible grounds with the homesteaders. The more intellectual writers
from their peaks in Darien gaze down upon ever widening horizons and
find it difficult to focus upon anything of significance. They, too, are
tricked into deserting their small, comfortable cliques and finally,
after preliminary castings about, fall back upon the reliable old
revival, or they hail with delirious delight some new master. Then, when
this stage has been reached, a reaction sets in.

The awesome sight of so very many bad novels shocks even those who had
succeeded in shocking themselves into insensibility. The critics are
appalled by the flood they have helped to loose and, while waiting
for the waters to abate, they keep themselves dry and in fairly good
spirits by chanting a litany composed of the names of Tolstoy, Zola,
Dostoievski, Gorki, Swift, Proust, Stendahl and a number of traditional
but largely unreadable masters. Now and again they discover a sort of
Cardiff Giant and exhibit it reverently to the masses. Books are written,
critical studies composed, translations arranged for, editions planned.
Critics, scholars, publishers and others solemnly take part in the usual
ceremonies attendant upon the presentation of a new writer named, let us
say, Smerv.

Alois Smerv is, or was, a Montenegran mystic. Comparatively little is
known about his work, most of it has never been published, none of it
can be readily understood. Nevertheless his name finds its way into
practically every review devoted to anything but juveniles. Smerv seems
to have been obsessed by most of the commoner manifestations made famous
by various Viennese psycho-analysts. It is said that his books, had they
ever been published, would have attracted the unfavorable attention
of the fascist authorities and would undoubtedly have resulted in his
expulsion from his homeland or his installation in a concentration
camp. This, of course, is pure supposition, all that we know for
certain is that Smerv died of acute myopia in 1942 in an obscure town
in the Balkans. His note books, scrap books, ration books and a mess
of mss. found their way into the sympathetic hands of an international
litterateur—with the inevitable result. This, then, is one of our latest
literary idols.


3

And now we come to the point of conceding that Arthur Machen is not
and never has been a “naturalist,” that is, he has never written in
the manner which we have come to call naturalism or realism. A great
deal of modern American and English fiction over the past forty or
fifty odd years has been of this sort. It stemmed, following one of the
periodical Anglo-Saxon reversions to the Gallic, from Zola, the father
of naturalism. One need hardly wonder what Machen might say today of
naturalism and Zola, he said it some fifty years ago in _Hieroglyphics_
and again in _The Secret Glory_. And Machen was saying _then_ a great
many of the things the critics of today are just beginning to discover.

To take an excellent example; we have the case of one of our best known
and most highly regarded novelists; one whose realism has begun to
transcend reality so much that his last book has been called an allegory.
His characters are so super-real as to be almost “arch types,” and they
may eventually come to be regarded, unless they are entirely lost in the
shifting of values, as sketches worthy to stand in a Dickensian gallery
along with Micawber and Pickwick.

For this is assuredly the direction of our drift—we are not only turning
away from naturalism and realism, we are beginning to wonder why we ever
turned to them at all. For literature as a removal from the common life,
or art as an interpretation rather than a portrayal of life, has little
to do with either naturalism or realism. It may be that, within this very
decade, we will decide that the whole trend of the past thirty or forty
years has been up a dead-end street inhabited by the dead-end kids of the
literary world, whose greatest talent was to shock each other with the
words they chalked up on the walls and fences of their realistic little
slum.

It has become increasingly obvious, even to the more advanced critics,
that there had come to exist but a very narrow line between the
realistic-naturalistic novel and the journalism of the day. Not so long
ago it was considered the highest praise to call a novel “a significant
social document.” Now it is becoming more fashionable to refer to a
novel as a rather poor novel _as_ a novel, _but_ a significant social
document. We are, it would seem, about half-way round the circle. Mr.
Sinclair Lewis wrote a book a year or two ago which is also a case in
point. Although the critics were unanimous in pointing out that it was
a very bad novel, they admitted that it was significant. So too, the
flood of books about alcoholism, insanity, race prejudice and other
social problems. Most of these books defy honest criticism on almost any
grounds, since almost everyone is more or less opposed to the same things
these books are against.

Of course these problems do exist, and they are urgent problems indeed;
but they do not necessarily constitute the stuff of great or even good
literature. Nor should the importance of the problem automatically confer
importance or significance upon any writer, good, bad or indifferent, who
chooses to deal with it. Today’s tabloid may be as raw a slice of life as
today’s top ranking best seller—but no one calls it literature. As for
the revolt against “the genteel tradition,” it was a natural reaction
against stuffiness, Victorian morality and overly “nice” novels—but
the course taken by those who rebelled against these things was not
necessarily the right one. It was, or soon became, quite as stuffy and
even more unreal. Still, there is much to be said on the subject, for
realism, by which we _can_ mean honesty, cannot be, and should not be,
eliminated entirely as a literary force.

It cannot be said that Dickens, that eminent Victorian, was not a realist
or that he was not realistic. No Hemingway he, to be sure, but still,
no Harold Bell Wright. Nor can we say of many a writer relegated to
oblivion by the realists that they were not realistic. John Galsworthy
wrote as realistically of the upper-middle classes as John Steinbeck
writes of paisanos—and Soames Forsyte is as much a person, a _real_
person, as the youth with the acne. Now this is a very close to the heart
of the matter, for the realists, and the naturalists, have claimed that
writers like Galsworthy are not realists—and of course their point would
be that Galsworthy wrote of Soames Forsyte and Steinbeck wrote of bums
and vagrants, of the dispossessed and the youth with the acne.

It would seem, then, that they quarreled rather with Soames than
with Galsworthy—that Soames was, for some reason or other, less real
than, for example, an earnest young picket-line marcher. Indeed,
it has been almost a prime principle, that the realists write of
the so-called “underprivileged,” and all that was needed to earn a
reputation for a book was a fairly accurate portrayal of life in the
less-desirable quarters of any city or town. If a few scenes of drunken
quarrels, beatings by cops (classically called Cossacks) and tableaux
in which oppressed mill-workers were being violently oppressed, so
much the better. Of course not all realists wrote exclusively about
the underprivileged. Many wrote of the upper classes, for this was
considered realism too—but only if the upper classes were portrayed in
an unfavorable light. So it becomes apparent that almost the whole of
realism has been a social rather than a literary movement. For a time,
and under special conditions, this seemed reasonable enough, but there
are indications that it is in the process of being rejected as the only
literary criterion.


4

Of the novelists whose names have formed a sort of literary litany this
past decade or two: Hemingway, Dos Passos, Farrell, Faulkner, Caldwell
and Steinbeck—the work of Steinbeck offers most in the way of material
for analysis according to the lights of both realists and romanticists.
For Steinbeck has been hailed as a great realist, and it was he who
first seems to have transcended reality, and certainly he comes closest
to approaching the “removal from the common life” postulated by Machen
as the prime requisite for the creative writer. _The Grapes of Wrath_
was and is a wonderful book—as great a piece of journalism as has been
produced in an age that specializes in that peculiar literary form—the
documentary; and it was saved from being mere competent journalism, or
even inspired journalism, by characterization alone. Here again we must
look to Machen for, if not a direct reference to Steinbeck, at least an
applicable parallel.

For Steinbeck’s characters, the Joads, the Paisanos, the Hermit with his
dogs, the bums in _Cannery Row_—these are all figures of such proportion
and created in such a perspective as that described by Machen in his
essay on Dickens. Machen points out that Dickens was a symbolist ...
no such persons as Pickwick or Micawber ever walked the earth. “They
are creatures,” says Machen, “of the world of vision, of that other
world which is beside us always, which transcends the sight of unpurged
eyes.” And then Machen goes on to define the “true realist” as one who
symbolizes “by means of phenomena, eternal verities.”

This deftness of Steinbeck’s in drawing portraits has led him into
trouble with his devoted critics for whom, apparently, realism can be
carried to extremes. A case in point is the Colonel in _The Moon is
Down_. This German, if not Nazi, officer, it will be recalled, was quite
a controversial figure back in the war days when the book was published.
Now the Colonel had every right, actually and literarily, whether as an
actual person or an imagined one, to act as he did. It may have been a
none too happy choice for Steinbeck—he could have given us the Eric Von
Stroheim figure we all expected of him, but he gave us instead the Major
Stanhope type. This was not a very popular choice with the ardent and
articulate admirers of Mr. Steinbeck’s realism.

Then there was the matter of _Lifeboat_, a motion picture shown during
the war. Mr. Steinbeck did the script, or worked on it, or did whatever
it is established writers do in Hollywood. At any rate Steinbeck was
taken to task by at least one film critic and not a few columnists who
stepped out of their roles long enough to have a look at the films. The
story, a Hitchcock natural, involved a group of people thrown together
in a lifeboat. Among the group was a German submarine officer—perhaps
the Captain. The thing that angered the erstwhile admirers, confounded
the critics and dismayed the defenders of Democracy, was that the German
was portrayed as the most capable man aboard the lifeboat. Not only
did he show qualities of leadership which were found to be detestably
proficient, but other members of the crew, all Allies of one sort or
another, were shown to be a confused and sometimes cowardly lot. This
outrageous invention by a man with a reputation for realism upset the
critics and the columnists. No less an authority than the American Sybil
cried out against the extravagance of the invention in which an officer
and a seaman was permitted to exercise both authority and seamanship.
Of course most of these outcries may be attributed to the fact that we
were then at war with both the confoundedly charming Colonel and the
confoundedly capable Captain.

Nevertheless everyone breathed easier when _Cannery Row_ was announced
as a return to the “early Steinbeck” even though, by this time, realists
everywhere had become aware of a chink in the armor, and the left-wing
critics took a decidedly dim view of the light-hearted way in which
Steinbeck’s social outcasts took their social ostracism.

When _The Wayward Bus_ rattled onto the literary scene the critics
scanned the faces of the passengers as eagerly as relatives waiting at
the depot. Sure enough—there were cries of recognition from several
groups. One crowd hailed the youth with the acne—Johnny had come marching
home again to swell the ranks of the realists. Others, remembering the
Colonel and the Captain, recognized at least a lineal descendant in
the girl who sat in wine glasses. She was, for a girl who sat in wine
glasses, sufficiently incredible to belong to the gallery of allegorical
figures set up for the specific purpose of puzzling the proletarians.
And so the bus pulled in with apparently the right character for almost
everyone waiting at the depot.

This somewhat didactic digression, while it seems to have no direct
bearing upon either Arthur Machen or his works, is offered in explanation
of some of the theories expressed in _Hieroglyphics_—under the subtitle,
if you wish, of _The Ultimate Fate of a Realist_.


5

We have arrived at a point in our literary history (or, if you prefer,
our social progress, our ideological advancement, our cultural
development) when there is need for a new estimate of the task and aims
of our modern literature or at least the re-establishment of certain
values and standards previously set aside.

We must once again divorce literature from life, if by that we will
understand that literature is not, and never was supposed to be, a
mirror held up before our common life. We must discard the so-called
“true-to-life” standard by which our critical attitudes have been
governed for so many years. Above all, we must renounce the propaganda
psychosis, and we must admit that even good propaganda is never
literature and that even great literature is seldom propaganda. We have
those, of course, who will rise to point out that such and such a book
or novel or play was excellent propaganda for such and such a cause
or event. To which we may answer: it was not so conceived. For the
glibness with which the word propaganda is used is rivalled only by the
glibness of the propagandists themselves. To make a case for any work of
literature as a bit of effective propaganda for any cause is to distort
and debase the purpose for which it was created.

There is much too much to do with literature today that has nothing
to do with literature at all. We must learn again that the weavers of
fantasy are, after all, the veritable realists. For it must be admitted
that we have at hand ample evidence that this is so.

There is realism in great literature, but realism alone does not make
great literature. The writer, or observer, who sees an event or an
occurrence, however rare or moving an event it may be, who is moved to
write about it merely to describe, with minute realism, what he had
observed is no more creating literature than the earnest New Englander
who writes to the Times or the Globe to report the first robin. But
Arthur Machen has said these things before—and said them better.

You will find, in the closing pages of _Hieroglyphics_, this passage,
which seems an excellent closing passage for this digressive chapter:

“Have you noticed how many of the greatest writers, so far from desiring
that compliment of ‘fidelity to life,’ do their best to get away from
life, to make their books, in ordinary phraseology, ‘unreal.’ I do not
know whether anybody has compared the facts before or made the only
possible inference from them; but you remember how Rabelais professes
to derive his book from a little mouldy manuscript, found in a tomb,
how Cervantes beginning to _propria persona authoris_, breaks off and
discovers the true history of _Don Quixote_ in the Arabic Manuscript of
Cid Hamet Benengeli, how Hawthorne prologizes with the custom-house at
Salem, and lights, in an old lumber-room, on the documents telling him
the story of _The Scarlet Letter_. _Pickwick_ was the transcript of the
‘Transactions’ or ‘Papers’ of the Pickwick Club, and Tennyson’s _Morte
d’Arthur_ shelters itself, in the same way, behind the personality of an
imaginary writer. There is a very profound significance in all this, and
you find a trace of the same instinct in the Greek Tragedies, where the
final scene, the peripeteia, is not shown on the stage, but described by
a ‘messenger.’ The fact is that the true artist, so far from being the
imitator of life, endures some of his severest struggles in endeavoring
to get away from life, and until he can do this he knows that his labor
is all in vain.”




_Chapter Ten_

THINGS NEAR AND FAR


1

The original outline for this book included a chapter to be called
“Hieroglyphics.” This was to be composed largely of what other writers
had said or written about Arthur Machen. It seemed a good title and a
sound enough notion, and certainly there has been enough said and written
about Machen to compose a fine chapter indeed.

And then it occurred to me that there was a rather cynical note being
struck here, that the use of that particular word in such a connection
might imply (and I am quite sure that at one time it was meant to imply)
a certain lack of respect for some of the material to be grouped under
that heading. Much has been written about Machen, not as much, certainly,
as one would like to see; and some of it, unfortunately, is the sort of
thing with which one cannot agree. As, for example, the views of the
anonymous Manchester guardian, the reviews of some of the early books as
they appeared in London newspapers, and the estimates of Miss Dorothy
Scarborough in her otherwise excellent book about the supernatural
elements in English literature.

[Illustration: THE MACHENS IN LONDON: Photo taken by Holbrook Jackson in
1937. Left to right, Montgomery Evans, Mr. and Mrs. Machen and Bertram
Rota before whose bookshop photo was taken.]

On the other hand: one cannot always agree with the idolizers and the
cultists. These are, at times, even more annoying and sometimes rather
embarrassing.

The admirers of Arthur Machen are probably as heterogeneous a collection
as one is likely to find anywhere outside the membership lists of the
Book of the Month Club, the Literary Guild and a distinguished After
Shave Club. There are, among the more ardent Arthurians, poets and
pedants, dilettantes and divorcees, men of letters and three-letter
men from the universities, reviewers and romanticists, critics and
connoisseurs, columnists and collectors of every description—a rare
assemblage that numbers sincere admirers, warm friends, not a few dreads
and some drolls. Mr. Machen’s works are known to the Librarians at Yale
and at Stanford. They are known also to the librarians at Liggetts and
Walgrens—for recently several anthologies have appeared on the forty-nine
cent table and several Machen stories have made the grade in the corner
drug store through the medium of the quarter pocketbooks. This is passing
strange company for a man whose first editions were published in Vigo
Street under the Sign of the Bodley Head and whose American triumphs were
under the auspices of the aristocratic Borzoi.

Mr. Machen’s published works have fared as variously. His stories have
appeared in anthologies whose sales have run into thousands, and there is
noted in Van Patten’s bibliography a small work published in an edition
of two copies.

How does one decide upon an edition of two copies? It must be admitted
that, to his fervent admirers at least, the peddling of Machen to the
millions along with the malteds and lunches at Liggetts is to be
preferred to the arch-conservativeness that confines a Machen item to a
very limited edition of two copies. It may cause shudders to run up and
down the arthritic vertebrae of many a venerable Machenite to suggest
such a thing, but I find myself wishing that Winchell would one day give
Machen “the works.” And who knows but that he may? With realism and the
realists in disorder, if not retreat, in disarray if not utter rout,
with realism seen from a rapidly shifting focal point, with reviewers
suggesting that the work and the world of our realists may be, after all,
allegory—who knows but the Sunday Night Sage may not admonish Americans
from coast to coast to demand from their bookseller a copy of _Dog and
Duck_, or the _Anatomy of Tobacco_ (LSMFT) or even _Hieroglyphics_?

Such unscholarly suggestions may seem unworthy, may even draw the fire
of many Machenites who will deeply resent such facetious flippancy—but
they are offered merely as an antidote to the equally absurd and equally
unworthy tactics of some collectors who come to praise and to bury Machen
in the same devout breath.

I must confess that, while I envy certain men and mausoleums the
possession of many a Machen item, I am pleased beyond measure to find
_The Great God Pan_ or _The Cosy Room_ or _The Novel of the White Powder_
in the gaudiest, grizzliest anthology of horror stories displayed for the
delight of the drug store trade.

However, to return to the Arthurians, whether of the cultivated or the
common garden variety. The response to a prospectus describing this
volume when it was in its projected state was enlightening. There
were letters on fine paper bearing the crests of famous colleges and
libraries, there were scribbled notes from, obviously, “stfans” in Kansas
City, Dallas, Scranton and the Coast. These letters did affect the
construction of this book in one important respect. I determined then to
add to the book a bibliography that would direct the reader of Machen to
the stories and essays of Machen wherever they may be found. The scholars
and the specialists know in which vaults the more valuable manuscripts
are under lock and key. Let them rest in peace. One day, perhaps, they
will be released and they will be read as it was intended, by the man who
wrote them, that they should be. Meanwhile it may be amusing to compile
a list of the unlikely and out of the way corners of literature in which
there are mentions of Machen—and to the true Machenite the mere mention
of Machen is rewarding.

We’ve wandered from Wilde to Winchell, but there are many more unexpected
encounters awaiting the ardent Arthurian. For example, Tiffany Thayer,
_enfant terrible_ of the late Twenties and early Thirties, whose books
were rather lurid things, made use of Machen in certain passages. We
find, if we dredge deep enough, a passing reference to Machen, and one
that might conceivably outrage the true believer.

An even more strange, and not too flattering, reference is found in one
of the books of William Seabrooke. Mr. Seabrooke, who visited strange
places and saw strange things, once visited, as a client, and I violate
no confidence, an asylum. Since Mr. Seabrooke wrote a book about his
experiences therein, any hesitation on my part would be a needless
delicacy.

Mr. Seabrooke’s mention of Machen is even given a title: Self-Portrait
of a Dementia Praecox Case on First Reading the works of Machen. The
“self-portrait” follows: “Sweet spirits of my own dementia praecox!
womb-wailing guide calls reechoing throughout sub-cavernousterraneous!
fuga, fugae. Corncopios fugalations in depths arbeitung
verstaltheight.... I have just read _The Hill of Dreams_! By the brazen
buttocks of that brimstone bellona who lolls in lakes of lava, never
in my life have I read or even imagined that such a piece of escapist
literature existed. He is superior to Dunsany and to Algernon Blackwood
who though almost not an escapist may be classed with them. The book
is filled with black magic. The man’s powers of psychotic invention
are almost unbelievable and his familiarity with certain phenomena of
abnormal psychology is creepy. Are you acquainted with Tchaikovski’s
scherzi? especially the waltz-scherzo of his Fifth? It moves in this same
weird, uncanny way. Now I wish I were dead....”

Seabrooke’s d.p. exhibits astonishing lucidity toward the end, is
apparently versed in intellectual small talk, and displays a familiarity
with the works of James Joyce as well.

It is sometimes fascinating to compare different reactions to certain of
Machen’s tales. Basil Davenport writing in the _Saturday Review_ some
years ago noted: “... there are some stories which portray a non-moral
fall into a moral gulf; someone’s foot quite innocently slips, and there
is no stopping above the bottom of hell ... that is what makes Mr.
Arthur Machen’s stories supreme of their kind ... and such a story of
irrational, irresistible temptation as Mr. Machen’s _The White People_
... about a little girl whose nurse happens to be a witch, and who
becomes a devil-worshipper without the least idea of what she is doing.”
Carl Van Vechten says of this same story: “Was ever a more malignantly
depraved story written than _The White People_ (which it might be
profitable to compare with Henry James’s _The Turn of the Screw_?).”

Mr. Carl Van Vechten’s _Peter Whiffle_ probably did as much to popularize
Arthur Machen in the Twenties as any score of reviewers, but it also
had the effect of rarifying Machen and conditioning him for a specific
audience. It was Mr. Van Vechten’s (or rather, Peter’s) audience more
than it was Machen’s. It was this audience, I think, that prompted Walter
Winchell to report, breathlessly, that Arthur Machen was “tops among the
literati.” Peter was a delightfully “naughty” character—there were so
many of them in the Twenties! When he spoke of Machen he was speaking
mostly about Peter. Nevertheless he was an able press agent. Said Peter,
in part, and to paraphrase a phrase, we quote:

“It is a byword of the day that one only takes from a work of art what
one brings to it, and how few readers can bring to Machen the requisite
qualities, how few readers have gnosis! Machen evokes beauty out of
horror, mystery and terror. He suggests the extremes of the terrible,
the vicious, the most evil, by never describing them. His very reserve
conveys the infinity of abomination.... But his expression soars so high,
there is such ecstasy in his prose, that we are not meanly thrilled or
revolted by his necromancy; rather we are uplifted and exalted by his
suggestion of impurity and corruption, which leads us to ponder over the
mysterious connection between man’s religious and sensual natures.” From
this point on Peter’s bizarre rhapsody over Machen includes references to
so many Florentine painters, Arabian necromancers, Asiatic messiahs and
French Symbolistes that the average Machenite loses sight of his idol in
the confusing blaze of intellectual pyrotechnics.


2

And then we have the testimony of C. Lewis Hind, a sort of literary
journalist who once saw Machen plain. Mr. Hind did essays and sketches
of literary people about London and collected them into books called
_Authors and I_ and _More Authors and I_. He remembers having met
Machen once at a dinner given for Sir Frank Benson and members of his
Shakespearean Repertoire Company; he also recalls having seen Machen
“slouching through the interminable corridors of the Evening News.”

An article on Machen, published in one of his collections, he credits
to a letter from Vincent Starrett. Mr. Starrett’s enthusiasm apparently
moved Hind to do a piece on Mr. Machen. The encounter described in the
article was, apparently, a chance encounter of the sort in which Machen
himself delighted.

Mr. Hind had gone, one evening, to call upon an acquaintance who lived
in one of the London Inns of Court. While he was peering at the names
inscribed on the oak door the door was opened—by Arthur Machen! “My
friend was not in, but the author of _Hieroglyphics_ and I had some
good, rapid talk. He is an admirable monologist when in the mood (see
_Hieroglyphics_). For some reason or other I have a vivid recollection
of that brief encounter—the open door, the snug room beyond, the books
and a lamp, warmth and stillness, and Arthur Machen standing in the
passage—smiling and talking, ready to talk but also ready to go back to
his folios.”

Machen was, according to Mr. Hind, “a heavily built man, with a large
genial, yet brooding, clean-shaven face; a good companion, I think, but
one who keeps many of his thoughts to himself.” Mr. Hind was, in short,
charmed and impressed, but he obviously did not consider Arthur Machen a
V.I.P. It would be interesting to read Machen on Hind.

One of the most curious estimates of Machen is made by Professor
Cornelius Weygandt in his _A Century of the English Novel_. Professor
Weygandt admires Machen somewhat for his essays, and classifies him as
a “lesser late Victorian” along with Baring-Gould, Quiller-Couch, Marie
Corelli, Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, Walter Pater
and others—a very curious group indeed!

The professor devotes a full page to Machen, which is not at all bad, and
well above the average, for lesser late Victorians! Machen’s great fault,
the professor finds, is that he is not a story-teller, he has not taught
himself the craft. He has little sense of the creation of character
and his own life is, obviously, very narrow. As an essayist, however,
concedes the Professor, Machen is often a bringer of delight. _The Hill
of Dreams_, on the other hand, is saved from futility only by some good
writing. So sayeth Professor Weygandt.

Wagenknecht, in his _Cavalcade of the English Novel_, is much more to
my taste than the austere professor. He introduces Machen as “one of
the most remarkable examples of sustained devotion to creative work in
literary history.” He finds that Machen reveals a gift for breathless
narrative to match LeFanu’s, but he feels that this quality is lacking in
the book generally regarded as Machen’s masterpiece—_The Hill of Dreams_.
Nevertheless, Wagenknecht considers Machen “important,” he rates him with
Blackwood and de la Mare, and has included Machen’s _The Terror_ in his
collection _Six Novels of the Supernatural_ published a few years ago by
Viking.


3

The student of Machen is not content to have read everything Machen has
ever written (and there are few who have), he must also read everything
that has ever been written about Arthur Machen. He may begin, naturally
enough, with a study of the period in which Machen first appears.
There have been quite a few books written about the Nineties, these
unaccountably yield but little material on Machen. Richard LeGallienne,
Holbrook Jackson and Osburt Burdett, whose studies of that period are
very carefully written and copiously annotated, scarcely mention Machen
at all.

One then moves on to memoirs and biographies of the men who lived and
wrote in this period, and even consults the critical studies on the whole
vast subject of English literature. One picks up dozens of such books and
soon develops the habit of examining them from the back cover forward,
for a glance at the index reveals whether the book is worth while, from
this viewpoint, or not. Too often one finds mention of Macaulay, Lord;
MacCarthy, Desmond; MacLeod, Fiona; even Mackenzie, Compton—but few are
the mentions of Machen.

One finds too that the index of a book can be a very revealing thing
indeed. We have before us, for example, the memoirs of a Literary Figure
of, let us say, the 1890’s and the early 1900’s. The index indicates
that our man knew everyone worth knowing. We find Shaw and More, Shelley
and Kelley, Shakespeare, Rossetti and Donne, Keats and Yeats, Whistler
and Wilde, Moore and Hardy and a generous sprinkling of the nobility. It
would seem, from the index, that our man lived a very full and eventful
life, that he was close, as they say, to the heart of things.

The book itself is rather likely to be pretty dull stuff—mostly about
our man’s preoccupation with his public school and his dislike of games,
the amazing and discouraging tenacity with which his great aunt in Bath
clung to life, the duplicity of publishers and the simply astonishing
things that can and do befall an Englishman in Naples, Nice or Florence.
Throughout the book, however, one encounters reports of what Whistler
said to Pennell or Pater or both; what G.B.S. wrote to the brash American
journalist and how Lord Lymph responded to a quip tossed out by Lord
Lissom. Hence the index. One can only conclude that reviewers, and
possibly publishers, read the index more carefully than the book itself.

Occasionally, however, the slow unrewarding progress through the shelves
of the public library does yield a choice bit or two and these, be it
noted, more frequently in books by Americans than by Englishmen.

Mr. Grant Richards who wrote in 1895 to Arthur Machen asking if he had
anything he would care to have published, has written at least two books
of his experiences as one of England’s most enterprising publishers.
Neither of them contained a single mention of Arthur Machen although
Richards published several of Machen’s books, and at a time when Machen’s
name was certainly an asset to any publisher’s list.

The index of Richards’ book about A. E. Housman (Oxford, 1942) arouses
hope. There are three references to Machen. The first of these is
contained in a letter from Housman to Richards. The context, in full,
follows: “I don’t think Machen ought to drink port on the top of
Burgundy.” One may wonder, one is tantalized, by the implications of
that brief note. Does it imply that Machen did drink port on top of
Burgundy—or that he merely contemplated doing so or sought advice on the
advisability. If he did, were the results memorable, and in what respect?
Does it imply that Housman is a purist in these matters? A Tory in
tippling? Does it hint at “an incident”?

Another reference is even more brief and profoundly unimportant. “We know
too that Housman read Arthur Machen and Frederick Baron Corvo.” The most
significant entry is this, from another Housman letter: “Thanks to you,
I believe I possess Machen’s complete works. He is always interesting
(except in the _Evening News_) and to some extent good. Mixing up
religion and sexuality is not a thing I am fond of, and in this book the
Welsh element rather annoys me. The imitation of Rabelais is very clever.”

We know, at any rate, that Housman read Machen, quite a bit of him. He
was not fond of the Welsh, nor of mixing religion and sexuality nor, for
that matter, of mixing port and burgundy.

What we would like most to know from Mr. Richards, I think, is why it
took him ten years to change his mind about _The Hill of Dreams_, and why
he changed it when he did. Of this, unfortunately, we have no hint.

The Machen revival of the Twenties lasted through to the end of the
decade and, to some, to the end of an era. Machen appeared at rare
intervals in public life, preferring the countryside of Wales and the
company of his friends, a great many of them Americans. Paul Jordan-Smith
and Robert Hillyer and Montgomery Evans have given us sketches of Machen
through this period. For the most part, however, his work was done. In
the early Thirties Machen wrote a novel, _The Green Round_. It has not
yet been published in this country nor is it very well known. Machen says
it is “sorry stuff.” As for _Tom O’Bedlam_, it was an essay “written to
order of an American.” Machen never saw the book in print.

In 1936 there was a brief revival of interest in Machen occasioned by
the publication of two collections of his stories and essays. Hutchinson
brought out _The Children of the Pool_ in which there appeared seven
stories not previously collected. Rich and Cowan brought out a collection
called _The Cosy Room_, consisting of essays and stories collected over
a period from the late 1880’s to the late 1920’s. Each of the pieces
included in this collection is given a date—apparently the year in
which it was written. Some of the dates supplied, presumably by Machen,
give rise to bibliographical speculation. Most of these pieces had been
published elsewhere although some of them, obviously “the wreckage of
discarded and abandoned books,” appeared in print for the first time.

The dust-jacket of Hutchinson’s _Children of the Pool_ carried an
“Appreciation” of Machen, one of the finest and most admirable I have
ever encountered. To find it on, of all places, a dust-jacket! This
is no publisher’s blurb but an analysis that deserves to be included
in this or any book about Machen. The author of the following tribute
is unknown, to me at least: “Mr. Machen creates his own world. This
world is a fusion of the world that is accepted in every day reality—in
which events and their causes are explicable by traditional and humdrum
interpretations—and one that is distinguished not only by the weird
and extraordinary effects. The author does not try to present a state
of affairs so topsy-turvy and bizarre that you are intrigued merely by
its very madness. The supernatural insinuates itself subtly into these
stories. They have an air of common reality until the author develops
their mystical undercurrents. And in this blending Mr. Machen’s art is
supreme. It has an infinite capacity for producing what E. J. O’Brien
describes as “a willing suspension of disbelief” [_this fine phrase
has also been attributed to Dr. Canby, Bennet Cerf and, of course,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge_]. That Mr. Machen’s faculty in this direction
can extend beyond the circle of sympathetic readers and convince
masses has been proved by the fact that his imaginative treatment of
a very famous occasion was accepted by thousands of men and women as
literal description. These stories offer varied excursions into realms
simultaneously unfathomable and alluring, and on that account alone they
are memorable. But there is also Mr. Machen’s craftsmanship, and his
style which is a delight to read. A character in the book says: ‘A man
must know the grammar of his business, whatever it is; the rest, if it is
to be the first order, must be the work of the hidden flame within.’”

Now and then Machen did an introduction or preface for a book or
collection, none of them are of particular importance as Machen
“items.” In 1937 Hutchinson brought out Philip Sergeant’s _Witches and
Warlocks_ with a preface by Machen. The book was, according to the
publisher, suggested to Sergeant by his old friend Arthur Machen. In
his introduction Machen quotes some of the theories expressed in _The
White People_ and _The Great God Pan_. He hints, in other words, and in
justification of his friend’s labours, that there are more things in
heaven and earth than mere hawks and handsaws.


4

In the years since the publication of the “yellow books” by Knopf and the
attendant enthusiasm for his works, Arthur Machen has been very little
in the public eye. The Machen vogue of the 1920’s seemed to exhaust
itself almost as soon as the Knopf editions were exhausted. The Caerleon
Edition, published in 1923 by Seeker in London, quickly disappeared, and
we entered once again upon a lengthy period of “neglect”.

Actually, Machen has not been as neglected as we might suppose. It is
true that he has not been accorded the recognition that is his due, but
there are hundreds, possibly thousands, who have never neglected nor
forgotten Machen. The late Alfred Goldsmith, one of New York’s most
amiable booksellers, wrote me, a year or two ago, that there is and
always has been a constant, if small, demand for his books. Ben Abramson
of the famed Argus Book Shop has his North Wall addicts who are always
eager for Machen items. August Derleth, the one-man wonder of mid-western
publishing circles, knows the value of a Machen story in a collection
issuing from Arkham House. A new generation of booksellers on New York’s
Fourth Avenue know Machen by reputation, even though many of them have
never seen one of the eagerly sought-after books.

Machen himself went into retirement some years ago. For years there
were gatherings at his home in St. John’s Wood, gay parties attended by
writers and theatrical people and journalists—and Americans. Machen has
always had a tremendous appeal for Americans—possibly because of our
Hawthorne and Poe, and possibly because we managed to avoid the stagy
school of the Gothic novelists which he so disliked. And Machen liked
Americans, too, as Robert Hillyer related in his _Atlantic_ article.
It pleased Machen that the majority of the letters he received about
his works were from Americans. On one occasion he told Hillyer he would
consider it a compliment to be taken “into the fold as a fellow American.”

Later, when Machen retired to Wales, there were picnics on the cliffs
overlooking the sea. Robert Hillyer has given us an amusing account of
one of these festive occasions in his recent article on Machen. With the
coming of the war these visits were impossible, of course. Montgomery
Evans, late of the U. S. Army, member of the Salmagundi Club and resident
of Greenwich, was the last of Machen’s visitors before the war.

Evans had known Machen since 1923. It was his pleasant practice to give
parties with the Machens on such American occasions as the Fourth of July
and Thanksgiving. These parties promoted Anglo-American understanding
with “American food and French wine” and such guests as Augustus John,
Holbrooke Jackson, Tommy Earp and others. Evans happened to be again in
England when World War II broke out. Machen had written an introduction
for a book Evans was about to publish. Book and introduction went to the
bottom of the North Atlantic with the torpedoed _Athenia_ as Evans was
bound for home when the war was only a few days old.

Throughout the dark years of the war Machen corresponded with his
American friends—Evans, Jordan-Smith, Goldsmith and others. These were
unhappy days: Machen’s health was poor, his eyesight was failing rapidly,
his son Hilary was in a German prison camp, letters were few and far
between and Machen too old to contrive legends as he had done in the
darker days of 1915.

After the war Machen was placed on the King’s List—the result of a
movement instituted largely through the efforts of Montgomery Evans. In
a letter to Robert Hillyer Machen wrote: “Our gracious Sovereign, King
George the Fifth, out of his great bounty and kindness, has awarded me a
pension.”

Mr. Hillyer’s reflection at this news is worth repeating here: “I had a
vision of the fine old man in Bardic raiment, receiving a bag of gold
from a mediaeval monarch clad in ermine and silks and with a golden crown
on his head.”

Machen’s Street Fleet days were over now, he no longer appeared, a
Johnstonian figure, in the streets of London, nor was he ever again to
impersonate the great Doctor in pageants. There were occasional articles
in magazines and one last book, _The Holy Terrors_, published in 1946.

With the close of the war, correspondence was resumed on a more regular
schedule. Machen was failing badly, his eyesight was almost gone, his
hand had lost its grace but his letters were, as Montgomery Evans notes,
“as charming and Johnstonian as ever.” Hilary had been released from
the Germans and returned home. Scarcely had the family been reunited
at Amersham, however, when another blow fell—Machen’s wife died. This
“ample, easy-going, good natured woman,” as Hillyer describes her, meant
much to Machen and their two children. She was, she must have been, a
woman of great understanding and of infinite patience. She accepted
poverty, hoping always for the recognition she felt was her husband’s
due. And of course she knew, as well as he, that what he wrote might
interest, at most, comparatively few. After her death Machen declined
rapidly. His letters had to be written by his son, but the mind that
composed them was still that of “the greatest master of English prose
in our time.” Then, in the closing days of the year 1947, in a private
hospital in Beaconsfield, Arthur Machen died at the age of 84.

Machen’s passing was not unnoticed. _The New York Times_ (Dec. 16, 1947)
printed his photograph and an obituary under the heading: “Author of the
Story That Led to ‘Angel of Mons’ Legend Dies at 84—Won Success at 60.”
A few other papers in the country carried similar stories—there were no
bulletins, no eulogies by electronic commentators. Subscribers to the
_Atlantic Monthly_ probably recalled Robert Hillyer’s article on Machen
in the May issue. Letters passed between friends expressing regret for
there were, as Nathan Van Patten wrote, “some who mourn.”

Chief among these, perhaps, are the members of the Arthur Machen Society.
This Society was formed early in the spring of 1948 by Nathan Van Patten,
Vincent Starrett, Paul Jordan-Smith, Carl Van Vechten, Montgomery Evans,
Robert Hillyer (all names that will long be associated with Machen) as
well as August Derleth, Joseph Vodrey, Ben Abramson, James T. Babb,
William P. Wreden, Frederick Coykendall, Cyril Clemens, Gilbert Seldes,
Ashton Stevens and a score of comparative newcomers in the great society
of the admirers of Arthur Machen.

This is an informal group which hopes, in the words of its president, Mr.
Van Patten, to stimulate an interest in Arthur Machen’s work. There is to
be an exchange of information and privately printed Machen material, with
possibly an annual or quarterly publication.

In the summer of 1948 Alfred Knopf issued _Tales of Horror and the
Supernatural_, the largest and the best collection of Machen’s stories
ever published. Edited by Philip Van Doren Stern, it included a reprint
of Hillyer’s _Atlantic_ article. The book was reviewed with interest by
Orville Prescott and John Dickinson Carr in the _Times_. _The Nation’s_
reviewer thought the atmosphere of the tales did not “compensate for
his failure to explain the inexplicable.” Mr. Knopf’s ad-men, applying
modern techniques, exhorted readers to “remember Machen, it rhymes with
crackin’.”

The Arthur Machen Society has already begun to make good its promise to
stimulate interest in Arthur Machen:

Mr. Joseph Kelly Vodrey of Canton, Ohio, a specialist in Machen
bibliography, has printed and distributed to the members of the Society a
booklet: _There Are Some Who Mourn_, written by Nathan Van Patten.

Mr. Van Patten, a distinguished professor of bibliography at Stanford
University and dean of Machenites, has printed a handsome booklet,
limited to fifty copies, of Arthur Machen’s _The Gray’s Inn Coffee House_.

There will be others. At long last something is being done to right the
wrongs of which Mr. Cabell wrote so many years ago.




EPILOGUE


One might devote a great amount of time and give considerable thought to
the final pages of a book about Arthur Machen. It is not easy for anyone
who admires Machen to leave off talking or writing about him.

This book was planned and begun while Arthur Machen still lived. He
knew of its creation, its aims and its purpose, and he gave the book
his “plenary blessings.” The early chapters were sent in galley form to
Amersham. Machen read the proofs or, his sight failing badly, had them
read to him by his son Hilary. The proofs were returned with a little
note and sometimes with comments or corrections written in the margins.

I have hoped many things for this book—that it would arouse more interest
in Machen, that it would bring about a great revival of reading his
books. He has been sadly neglected as a writer, we all feel that, and
yet Machen writes: “I question whether what you call the neglect of my
work is due to any fault of publishers or public—the real cause of it,
I believe, is the fact that I have been interested as a writer in a
variety of things which only interest a few people. This is a matter of
individual constitution: it is incurable.”

We who are incurable, and we are not few, can only hope to interest many
people in the variety of things about which Arthur Machen wrote.


FINIS




BIBLIOGRAPHY

    “_I am sure that Bibliography is a capital game, but it is not
    my game._”—_Arthur Machen_

    “_I don’t care two pence whether a book is in the first edition
    or in the tenth, nay, if the tenth is the best edition I would
    rather have it._”—_Arthur Machen_


A complete and comprehensive and correct bibliography of the works
of Arthur Machen would be a wondrous work indeed. It would include
such important matters as colors of cloths and types of bindings, the
number of pages and the presence of prefaces and plates. It would, one
hopes, clearly indicate such dates as were of importance and many other
fascinating facts to delight and bedazzle the bibliographer.

There is no such bibliography of the works of Arthur Machen in existence,
nor does this one pretend or propose to fill that need. What is also
needed, however, and by readers rather than collectors, is a complete
listing of the works of Machen, together with notes on their appearance
in print and clues to their possible location. Such a listing presents
certain typographical problems which I have tried to work out without
having to resort to the cabalistic symbols common to certain catalogues
and all time tables.

It is my belief that people who like to read Machen like also to read
about Machen, therefore I have added a listing of books and articles
in which there appears more than a mere mention of Arthur Machen.
Furthermore, since I feel that I have not listed all of these, nor all
the Works for that matter, I have provided several blank pages for the
use of the eventual owner of this book. Such additional information as
he may gather may be entered on these pages under the general heading of
“Notes.”

This then is the purpose of the unconventional bibliography that follows:
to lead and direct the general reader to the work of Arthur Machen, and
to direct him to certain books and sources in which may be found material
of interest to the admirers of Arthur Machen.


_THE ESSAYS_:

The Essays of Arthur Machen are listed alphabetically below. Machen was,
for many years, a practicing journalist, writing for many papers and
journals. Obviously not all of his pieces, nor even all of the best of
his pieces, have appeared in book form. Obviously, too, it is impossible
for anyone to obtain copies of the many papers for which he wrote, or
even of the various journals and magazines listed herein. This listing is
therefore far from being complete—it lists only those pieces which are
available, or should be, or have been, in print. Many of these pieces are
undated, except as having appeared between dates that may be a decade
apart. This is, unfortunately, unavoidable. There is little we can do
about it, except to suggest that someone establish a Fellowship for the
sole purpose of investigating and excavating the complete published works
of Arthur Machen.

    ADELPHI, FAREWELL! an essay first published in the _LYONS
    MAIL_, appears also in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, London, 1924 and
    Alfred Knopf, New York, 1924.

    ADVENTURE OF THE LONG LOST BROTHER, an essay first published
    in the London _GRAPHIC_, appears also in _DREADS AND DROLLS_,
    Secker, London, 1926 and Knopf, New York, 1927.

    APOSTOLIC IDEAL, THE, an essay, first publication (?), appears
    in Starrett’s _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Covici-McGee, Chicago,
    1924.

    APRIL FOOL! an essay first published in the _LYONS MAIL_, also
    in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924 and Knopf, 1924.

    ARS ARTIUM, an essay, first published (?), appears in
    Starrett’s _THE SHINING PYRAMID_, Covici-McGee, Chicago, 1923.

    ART OF DICKENS, THE, an essay, first published (1910?), appears
    in _THE WAVE_, Chicago, 1922. Also in Starrett’s _THE SHINING
    PYRAMID_, Covici-McGee, Chicago, 1923.

    ART OF UNBELIEF, THE, an essay written for the _LYONS MAIL_ but
    rejected. Appears in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924 and Knopf, 1924.

    BEFORE WEMBLEY, an essay written for the London _GRAPHIC_,
    appears also in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf,
    1927.

    BOWMEN AND OTHER NOBLE GHOSTS, THE, a group of essays relating
    to the story, _THE BOWMEN_, appears in the Simpkins, Marshall
    1915 edition, of which there were two issues, and the Putnam
    1915 edition.

    CAMPDEN WONDER, an essay written for the London _GRAPHIC_, also
    in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    CASANOVA IN LONDON, an essay written for the _GRAPHIC_, appears
    in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    CEREMONY ON THE SCAFFOLD, an essay written for the _GRAPHIC_,
    also appears in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf,
    1927.

    “CHARACTERS,” an essay written for the _GRAPHIC_, also appears
    in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    CHIVALRY, an essay written for the _GRAPHIC_, included in
    _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    CHRISTMAS MUMMING, an essay written for the _LYONS MAIL_,
    appears also in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924 and Knopf, 1924.

    CONCERNING COCKTAILS, an article written for _BOOK NOTES_,
    London, April, 1928.

    CONJURING TIME, essay, first published (?), appears in
    Starrett’s _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    “CONSOLATUS” AND “CHURCH MEMBER,” an essay, first appearance in
    Vincent Starrett’s _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    CUSTOM OF THE MANOR, an essay written for the _LYONS MAIL_,
    included in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924 and Knopf, 1924.

    DARK AGES, THE, an essay, first appearance (?). Appears in
    Starrett’s collection, _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    DEADLY NEVERGREEN, an essay written for the London _GRAPHIC_,
    also included in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Seeker, 1926 and Knopf,
    1927.

    DISSENTING LOGIC, an essay, first appearance (?). Included in
    Starrett’s _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    DOG AND DUCK, an essay and a punch made famous by Machen. Also
    title of a collection of essays originally written for the
    _LYONS MAIL_. Published by Cape, London, 1924 and Knopf, New
    York, 1924.

    DOUBLES IN CRIME, an essay written for the _GRAPHIC_, included
    in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    ECCLESIA ANGELICANA, (I-II), essays first published (?),
    included in Starrett’s collection, _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_,
    Chicago, 1924.

    EDUCATION AND THE EDUCATED, an essay, first published in
    Starrett’s _SHINING PYRAMID_, Covici-McGee, Chicago, 1923. Also
    appears in Knopf’s _THE SHINING PYRAMID_, 1925.

    ENGLISH AND IRISH, an essay included in Vincent Starrett’s
    collection, _ET CETERA_, Chicago, 1922.

    EUSTON SQUARE MYSTERY, THE, an essay first published in the
    _GRAPHIC_, also included in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926;
    Knopf, 1927.

    FAITH AND CONDUCT, an essay first published (?), included in
    Starrett’s _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    FALSE PROPHETS, an essay first published (?), included in
    Starrett’s _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    FRAGMENTS OF PAPER, an essay first published (?), included in
    Starrett’s _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    GRAY’S INN COFFEE HOUSE, THE, an essay by Machen, appeared in
    “Wine and Food,” London, 1938. Published for Members of Arthur
    Machen Society, by Nathan Van Patten, Stanford, 1949.

    HAPPINESS AND HORROR, an essay first published (?) by Vincent
    Starrett in _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    HIDDEN MYSTERY, THE, an essay, first appeared in _THE ACADEMY_,
    London (1907?) Also in Starrett’s _THE SHINING PYRAMID_,
    Chicago, 1923; _THE COSY ROOM_, Rich & Cowan, London, 1936.

    HIGHBURY MYSTERY, THE, an essay written for the London
    _GRAPHIC_ and included in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926;
    Knopf, 1927.

    HOW CLUBS BEGAN, an essay written for the _GRAPHIC_, included
    in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    HOW THE RICH LIVE, an essay appeared in the _GRAPHIC_ and in
    _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    HOW TO SPEND CHRISTMAS, an essay first published in the _LYONS
    MAIL_, included in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924 and Knopf, 1924.

    IN CONVERTENDO, an essay, first appeared in _THE ACADEMY_,
    London, 1907. Included in Starrett’s _THE SHINING PYRAMID_,
    Chicago, 1923 and Knopf, 1925. Part of the book called _THE
    SECRET GLORY_.

    INGENIOUS MR. BLEE, THE, an essay written for the _GRAPHIC_,
    included in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    INTOLERANCE, an essay first published (?), included in
    Starrett’s collection, _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    ISLINGTON MYSTERY, THE, an essay included in Starrett’s
    collection, _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_ and in _THE COSY ROOM_, Rich
    & Cowan, London, 1936. Also in _BLACK CAP_, edited by Cynthia
    Asquith.

    JULY SPORT, an essay first published in the _LYONS MAIL_,
    included in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924 and Knopf, 1924.

    LA DIVE BOUTEILIE, a fragment surviving from Machen’s
    Rabelaisian period. Included by Starrett in his collection,
    _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    LAMENT FOR LONDON’S LOST INNS, an essay written for the
    _GRAPHIC_ and included in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and
    Knopf, 1927.

    LITTLE PEOPLE, THE, an essay, first published in the _GRAPHIC_
    and included in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf,
    1927.

    MADAM RACHEL, an essay written for the London _GRAPHIC_,
    included in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    MAN FROM NOWHERE, THE, an essay written for the _GRAPHIC_,
    included in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    MAN WITH THE SILVER STAFF, an essay written for the _GRAPHIC_,
    also included in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf,
    1927.

    MANDATUM NOVISSIMUM, an essay first published (?), included in
    the Starrett collection, _THE SHINING PYRAMID_, Chicago, 1923.

    MARCH AND A MORAL, first published in the _LYONS MAIL_, appears
    also in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924 and Knopf, 1924.

    MARRIAGE OF PANURGE, an essay, first published (?), appeared in
    _THE WAVE_, Chicago, 1922.

    MARTINMAS, an essay, first appeared in the _LYONS MAIL_,
    included in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924 and Knopf, 1924.

    MATTER OF ROMANCE, an essay, first published (?) in Starrett’s
    _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    MERRY MONTH OF MAY, THE, an essay written for the _LYONS MAIL_,
    included in _DOG AND DUCK_. Cape, 1924 and Knopf, 1924.

    MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, A, an essay first appearing in the
    _LYONS MAIL_, included in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924 and Knopf,
    1924.

    MODERNISM, an essay, first published (?) in Starrett’s
    collection, _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    MORDUCK THE WITCH, an essay first published in the _GRAPHIC_,
    included in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    MORE INNS, an essay first published in the _GRAPHIC_, included
    in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    MORNING LIGHT, THE, an essay, first published (?) included in
    Starrett collection, _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    MR. LUTTERLOH, an essay first published in the _GRAPHIC_,
    included in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    MY MURDERER, an essay, first appearance in London, included in
    collection by Vincent Starrett, _ET CETERA_, Chicago, 1922.

    MYSTIC SPEECH, THE, an essay, first delivered as a lecture in
    London, between 1915 and 1920. Included in Knopf’s edition of
    _THE SHINING PYRAMID_, 1922.

    NEW LAMPS FOR OLD, an essay, first published (?), included by
    Starrett in _THE SHINING PYRAMID_, Chicago, 1923.

    OLD DR. MOUNSEY, an essay written for the _GRAPHIC_, included
    also in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    ON HOLIDAYS, an essay written for the _LYONS MAIL_, included in
    _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924 and Knopf, 1924.

    ON SIMMEL CAKES, an essay written for the _LYONS MAIL_,
    included in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924 and Knopf, 1924.

    ON VALENTINES AND OTHER THINGS, an essay published in _LYONS
    MAIL_, included in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924 and Knopf, 1924.

    ONLY WAY, THE, an article, first published (?), appeared also
    in _PUBLISHERS WEEKLY_, New York, Feb. 16, 1924 and _THE FLYING
    HORSE_, 1924.

    PAGANISM, an essay included in Starrett’s _THE SHINING
    PYRAMID_, Chicago, 1923, first publication (?).

    POE, EDGAR ALLEN, an essay, first published (?), included in
    Starrett’s _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    POLITE CORRESPONDENCE, an essay written for the _GRAPHIC_,
    included in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    POOR VICTORIANS, THE, an essay written for the _LYONS MAIL_,
    included in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924 and Knopf, 1924.

    POWER OF JARGON, THE, an essay first published in the
    _GRAPHIC_, included in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and
    Knopf, 1927.

    REALISM AND SYMBOL, an essay first published (?) in Starrett’s
    _THE SHINING PYRAMID_, Chicago, 1923.

    ROAST GOOSE, an essay first published in the _LYONS MAIL_, also
    included in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924 and Knopf, 1924.

    SAD HAPPY RACE, an essay, reminiscent of Machen’s days on the
    stage, first published (?), included in Starrett’s _THE SHINING
    PYRAMID_, Chicago, 1923.

    SANCHO PANZA AT GENEVA, an essay, first published (?), included
    in Starrett’s _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    SANGRAAL, THE, the title of at least two essays on the Grail,
    one of them a reply to Alfred Nutt’s “Reply to Arthur Machen,”
    included in Starrett’s _GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924, also
    in Knopf’s _THE SHINING PYRAMID_, 1925.

    SECRET LANGUAGE, A, an essay, part of the book that became _THE
    SECRET GLORY_, published in whole or part in _THE ACADEMY_
    (1907?) London, included in Starrett’s _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_,
    Chicago, 1924.

    SECRET OF THE SANGRAAL, THE, an essay written in 1907, possibly
    first published by A. E. Waite, included in Knopf’s _THE
    SHINING PYRAMID_, New York, 1925.

    SEVEN-B, CONEY COURT, an essay written for the _GRAPHIC_,
    included in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    SIR BENJAMIN, THE BARON, an essay written for the _GRAPHIC_,
    included in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926 and Knopf, 1927.

    SIR WALTER SCOTT, an essay contributed to W. J. Turner’s
    collection, _GREAT NAMES_, New York, 1926.

    SIX DOZEN OF PORT, an essay written for the _LYONS MAIL_,
    included in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924 and Knopf, 1924.

    SOME FEBRUARY STARS, an essay written for the _LYONS MAIL_,
    included in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924 and Knopf, 1924.

    SPLENDID HOLIDAY, THE, an essay, first published (?), included
    in Starrett’s _THE SHINING PYRAMID_, Chicago, 1923.

    SPLENDOUR, an essay written for the _LYONS MAIL_, included in
    _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924; Knopf, 1924.

    ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON, an essay written for the _LYONS
    MAIL_, included in _DOG AND DUCK_, 1924.

    STRANGE CASE OF EMILY WESTON, THE, an essay written for the
    _GRAPHIC_, included in _DREADS AND DROLLS_, Secker, 1926;
    Knopf, 1927.

    STRANGE ROADS, an essay published by The Classic Press, London,
    1923. Limited Edition, sketches by J. Simpson, R.B.A.

    STUFF AND SCIENCE, an essay written for the _LYONS MAIL_,
    included in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape, 1924; Knopf, 1924.

    TALK FOR TWELFTH NIGHT, A, an essay written for the _LYONS
    MAIL_, included in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape and Knopf, 1924.

    THOROUGH CHANGE, A, an essay written for the _LYONS MAIL_,
    included in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape and Knopf, 1924.

    THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS, THE, an essay, first publication (?)
    in _THE REVIEWER_, Richmond, Virginia, 1924.

    TREASURE OF THE HUMBLE, an essay, first publication (?), in
    _THE REVIEWER_, Richmond, Virginia, 1924.

    UNCONSCIOUS MAGIC, an essay, first publication (?) included
    in _AMONG MY BOOKS_, by H. O. Traill, London, 1898. Also in
    Starrett’s _THE SHINING PYRAMID_, Chicago, 1923.

    VICE OF COLLECTING, THE, an essay written for the _LYONS MAIL_,
    included in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape and Knopf, 1924.

    VISION IN THE ABBEY, an essay included in _CENOTAPH_, edited by
    Moult, published in London by Cape, 1923.

    WHERE ARE THE FOGS OF YESTERYEAR? an essay, written for the
    _LYONS MAIL_ and included in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape and Knopf,
    1924.

    WHY NEW YEAR? an essay written for the _LYONS MAIL_, included
    also in _DOG AND DUCK_, Cape and Knopf, 1924.

    WITH THE GODS IN SPRING, an essay, rather an autobiographical
    sketch, published along with _STRANGE ROADS_ by The Classics
    Press, London, 1923.

    WORLD TO COME, THE, an essay, first published (?), included in
    Vincent Starrett’s _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.


    _THE TALES_:

    The Tales of Arthur Machen including, of course, the novels,
    in whole and in part, are listed alphabetically below. Their
    appearance in various papers, journals, editions, collections
    and anthologies is presented as accurately as possible, in
    chronological order. It must be admitted that there are some
    matters on which even the experts differ, and some on which
    Machen himself differs with the experts. In such cases we have
    assumed an almost arbitrary attitude.

    ANGELS OF MONS, THE, the tale known also as _THE BOWMEN_, title
    used in the Simpkin, Marshall, (London) 1915 edition; also the
    Putnam, New York, 1915 edition.

    AWAKENING: A CHILDREN’S STORY, a tale in the manner of 1915 but
    written in 1930. Published in _THE COSY ROOM_, Rich & Cowan,
    London, 1936.

    BOWMEN, THE, the story of the Angels of Mons, first appeared
    in the London _ILLUSTRATED NEWS_, Sept. 29, 1914. Published by
    Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent & Co., London, 1915; Putnam,
    New York, 1915; also included in the _NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW_
    (?); in the collection _PAUSE TO WONDER_, Random House, N. Y.,
    1945, and _TALES OF HORROR AND THE SUPERNATURAL_, Knopf, 1948.

    BRIGHT BOY, THE, a comparatively recent tale, included in
    _CHILDREN OF THE POOL_, Hutchinson, London, 1936; also _TALES
    OF HORROR AND THE SUPERNATURAL_, Knopf, 1948.

    CANNING WONDER, THE, book-length treatment of the case of
    Elizabeth Canning. Published first by Chatto & Windus, London,
    1925; Knopf, 1926.

    CAPITAL LEVY, THE, a tale of the period of World War I, first
    published in Vincent Starrett’s _THE SHINING PYRAMID_, Chicago,
    1923.

    CEREMONY, THE, fragment of one of the novels, written in 1897,
    published in _THE COSY ROOM_, Rich & Cowan, London, 1936.

    CHANGE, one of the more recent tales, included in _CHILDREN OF
    THE POOL_, Hutchinson, London, 1936. Also included in _TERROR
    BY NIGHT_, Avon Publishing Co., 1947.

    CHILDREN OF THE POOL, title story of collection published by
    Hutchinson, London, 1936. Also appears in _TALES_, Knopf, 1948.

    CHRONICLE OF CLEMENDY, THE, The History of the IX Joyous
    Journeys; first privately printed in 1888, included in Secker’s
    New Adelphi Library, Vol. 28; published by Knopf in 1926.

    COMPLIMENTS OF THE SEASON, a Christmas story included in Rich &
    Cowan’s collection, _THE COSY ROOM_, 1936.

    COSY ROOM, THE, title story of Rich & Cowan’s collection, 1936.
    This story is dated 1929. Also appeared in a collection of
    “suspense” stories edited by Will Cuppy.

    DAZZLING LIGHT, THE, one of the legends of the war written for
    the London _EVENING NEWS_, also in the 1915 edition of _THE
    BOWMEN_.

    DOUBLE RETURN, A, one of the earliest tales, appeared first in
    the _ST. JAMES GAZETTE_, London, 1890; included in _THE COSY
    ROOM_, Rich & Cowan, 1936.

    DRAKE’S DRUM, one of the legends of the War, written in 1919,
    first appeared in _THE OUTLOOK_, London, 1919. Included in
    Starrett’s _THE SHINING PYRAMID_, Chicago, 1923 and _THE COSY
    ROOM_, Rich & Cowan, London, 1936.

    EXALTED OMEGA, THE, published in Hutchinson’s 1936 collection,
    _CHILDREN OF THE POOL_, also included in August Derleth’s
    anthology, _WHO KNOCKS_, Farrar & Rhinehart, New York, 1947.

    FRAGMENT OF LIFE, A, first called _RESURRECTIO MORTUORUM_ and
    published in a London newspaper in the 1890’s. Re-written
    and published in _HORLICK’S MAGAZINE_ in 1904; included in
    _THE HOUSE OF SOULS_, Grant Richards, London, 1906, and in
    _THE HOUSE OF SOULS_ by Knopf, New York, 1922. F. B. Millett,
    _CONTEMPORARY BRITISH LITERATURE_, (N.Y. 1935) mentions this
    title with date 1928.

    GARDEN OF AVALLAUNIUS, THE, original title of _THE HILL OF
    DREAMS_. First published under this title in _HORLICK’S
    MAGAZINE_, London, 1904, issued by Grant Richards in 1907. May
    have appeared in a French publication sometime between 1902 and
    1907.

    GIFT OF TONGUES, THE, a recent title (1927) included in
    _STRANGE ASSEMBLY_, edited by Gawsworth, London, 1932. Rich &
    Cowan’s _THE COSY ROOM_, London, 1936.

    GREAT GOD PAN, THE, possibly the most famous of the tales,
    first published in _WHIRLWIND_, London, 1890. Appeared in John
    Lane’s _KEYSTONE SERIES_ as Volume V, London, 1894. A second
    edition in 1895, translated into the French in 1901. Included
    in _THE HOUSE OF SOULS_, Richards, 1906 and reprinted by
    Richards in 1910. Published by Simpkin, Marshall of London in
    1916. Included in _THE HOUSE OF SOULS_, Knopf, 1922. Included
    in the _CAERLEON EDITION_, Secker, 1923. Included in The New
    Adelphi Library, Vol. 24, Secker; also appears in _GREAT TALES
    OF THE SUPERNATURAL_, Random House, 1941 and _TALES_, Knopf,
    1948. Roberts Brothers of Boston also published it in 1894.

    GREAT RETURN, THE, written in 1915 and first appeared as a
    serial in the London _EVENING NEWS_. Published by The Faith
    Press, London, 1915. Included in the _CAERLEON EDITION_,
    Secker, 1923. Also in _TALES_, Knopf, 1948.

    GREEN ROUND, THE, a novel published by Benn, London, 1933. Has
    been announced for publication by August Derleth’s _ARKHAM
    HOUSE_ for 1950.

    HAPPY CHILDREN, THE, a tale of the War period, included in _THE
    SHINING PYRAMID_, Knopf, 1925. Also in the _TALES_, Knopf, 1948.

    HILL OF DREAMS, THE, best known novel of Arthur Machen. See
    also _THE GARDEN OF AVALLAUNIUS_. Published by Grant Richards
    in London, 1907. Issued by Secker, 1916, reprinted 1922, 1924.
    Included in The New Adelphi Library, Vol. 32, by Secker, Dana
    Estes, 19-? Also by Knopf, New York, 1922.

    HOLY TERRORS, THE, Machen’s last book, published in England,
    1946.

    HOLY THINGS, THE, an early tale, written in 1897, included in
    Starrett’s _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924, also in Rich
    & Cowan’s _THE COSY ROOM_, 1936.

    INMOST LIGHT, THE, first appeared with _THE GREAT GOD PAN_ in
    the Keynote edition, 1894. Included in _THE HOUSE OF SOULS_,
    Richards, London, 1906. Knopf’s _THE HOUSE OF SOULS_, 1922,
    Knopf’s _TALES_, 1948.

    IRON MAID, THE, an early tale, first appeared in the _ST. JAMES
    GAZETTE_, 1890, published with _THE THREE IMPOSTORS_ in Keynote
    Series, Volume XIX, London, 1895. Included in Starrett’s _THE
    GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    LOST CLUB, THE, a tale in the Stevensonian manner, first
    appeared in _THE WHIRLWIND_, 1890. Included also in Starrett’s
    _THE SHINING PYRAMID_, Chicago, 1923 and _THE COSY ROOM_, Rich
    & Cowan, London, 1936.

    MARTYR, THE, a fragment of _THE SECRET GLORY_, first appeared
    in _THE ACADEMY_, London (1907?). Included in Starrett’s _THE
    SHINING PYRAMID_, Chicago, 1923.

    MIDSUMMER, a fragment of one of the Great Romances, written in
    1897, included in _THE COSY ROOM_, Rich & Cowan, London, 1936.

    MONSTRANCE, THE, another of the legends of the War, probably
    written for the London _EVENING NEWS_, included in Simpkin,
    Marshall edition and Putnam’s edition of _THE BOWMEN_, 1915.

    MUNITIONS OF WAR, written in 1915, probably for the London
    _EVENING NEWS_, included in _THE GHOST BOOK_, Scribners, New
    York, 1927. Also in _THE COSY ROOM_, London, 1936.

    N, one of the more recent tales, written about 1935. Included
    in _THE COSY ROOM_, Rich & Cowan, London, 1936. Also in
    _TALES_, Knopf, 1948.

    NATURE, a fragment written in 1897, included in _THE COSY
    ROOM_, Rich & Cowan, London, 1936.

    NEW CHRISTMAS CAROL, A, a Christmas story written in 1920.
    Appears under this title in _THE COSY ROOM_, Rich & Cowan,
    London, 1936. Appears also under the title _SCROOGE: 1920_, in
    Starrett’s collection, _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, Chicago, 1924.

    NOVEL OF THE BLACK SEAL, an episode in _THE THREE IMPOSTERS_,
    sometimes published separately as in Dorothy Sayer’s _OMNIBUS
    OF CRIME_ (1929); _THE TRAVELERS LIBRARY_, Somerset Maugham’s
    anthology, Doubleday, Doran, 1933, and Knopf’s _TALES_, 1948.

    NOVEL OF THE WHITE POWDER, an episode in _THE THREE IMPOSTORS_,
    sometimes published separately as in _TALES OF HORROR AND THE
    SUPERNATURAL_, Knopf, 1948.

    OPENING THE DOOR, a story, dated 1931, included in _THE COSY
    ROOM_, Rich & Cowan, London, 1936. Also in _TRAVELLERS IN
    TIME_, edited by Philip Van Doren Stern, Doubleday, 1947.

    OUT OF THE EARTH, a story of the “Bowmen” period, included
    in Starrett’s _THE SHINING PYRAMID_, Chicago, 1923. Also in
    Knopf’s _THE SHINING PYRAMID_, 1925 and Knopf’s _TALES_, 1948.

    OUT OF THE PICTURE, a tale included in _THE CHILDREN OF THE
    POOL_, Hutchinson, 1936. Also included in August Derleth’s _THE
    SLEEPING AND THE DEAD_, Pellegrini & Cudahy, Chicago, 1947.

    PSYCHOLOGY, a fragment written in 1897, included in _THE COSY
    ROOM_, Rich & Cowan, London, 1936.

    RED HAND, THE, first appeared in _CHAPMAN’S MAGAZINE_ as _THE
    TELLING OF MYSTERY_, London, 1895. Included in _THE HOUSE OF
    SOULS_, Grant Richards, London, 1906. Also in Knopf’s _THE
    HOUSE OF SOULS_, 1922 and 1928.

    RESURRECTIO MORTUORUM, a source of _A FRAGMENT OF LIFE_. First
    published in a “forgotten paper” in London, 1890.

    ROSE GARDEN, THE, first appearance in the _NEOLITH_, London,
    1918. Also included in Starrett’s _THE GLORIOUS MYSTERY_,
    Chicago, 1924. Knopf’s _ORNAMENTS IN JADE_, New York, 1924.
    Published in a limited edition by Nathan Van Patten, Stanford
    University. Also included in Gawsworth’s _STRANGE ASSEMBLY_,
    London, 1932. Included in _THE COSY ROOM_, Rich & Cowan,
    London, 1936.

    SCROOGE: 1920, a Christmas story included in Starrett’s _THE
    GLORIOUS MYSTERY_, 1924. See also _A NEW CHRISTMAS CAROL_.

    SECRET GLORY, THE, published by Secker, London, 1922; Knopf,
    New York, 1922. Two chapters appeared in _THE GYPSY_, London,
    1915. Other chapters and a number of essays (In Convertendo,
    The Martyr, The Hidden Mystery) appeared also in _THE ACADEMY_,
    London, 1906.

    SHINING PYRAMID, THE, a story first published in _THE UNKNOWN
    WORLD_, London, 1895. Also in Starrett’s 1923 collection, in
    Secker’s 1925 edition and Knopf’s 1925 collection of that
    title. Appeared also in _GREAT WEIRD STORIES_, by Neale,
    Duffield, 1929. Included in Knopf’s _TALES_, 1948.

    SOLDIER’S REST, THE, one of the “legends of the War,” written
    in 1915 for the London _EVENING NEWS_, included in London and
    New York editions of _THE BOWMEN_, 1915.

    TELLING OF A MYSTERY, THE, original title of _THE RED HAND_.
    Appears under that title in _CHAPMAN’S MAGAZINE_, London, 1895.

    TERROR, THE, novel first published serially in the London
    _EVENING NEWS_ in 1917. Published by Duckworth, London, 1917,
    and McBride in New York, 1917. Appeared in abbreviated form
    in the _CENTURY MAGAZINE_. Also included in the _CAERLEON
    EDITION_, London, 1923. In Viking’s _SIX NOVELS OF THE
    SUPERNATURAL_, New York, 1946. Also included in Knopf’s
    _TALES_, 1948.

    THREE IMPOSTORS, THE, published by John Lane, Volume XIX of the
    Keystone Series, London, 1895; Roberts Brothers, Boston, 1895.
    Included in The New Adelphi Library, Vol. 15, Secker, London.
    Also by Alfred Knopf, 1922. Pocket Edition, 1928. Caerleon
    Edition, 1923.

    TORTURE, a fragment written in 1897, included in _THE COSY
    ROOM_, Rich & Cowan, London, 1936.

    TRANSMUTATIONS, THE, subtitle of _THE THREE IMPOSTORS_.

    TREE OF LIFE, THE, a story included in _THE CHILDREN OF THE
    POOL_, Hutchinson, London, 1936.

    TURANIANS, THE, a fragment written in 1897, included in _THE
    COSY ROOM_, Rich & Cowan, London, 1936.

    UNDERGROUND ADVENTURE, AN, an early tale, appeared in _THE
    WHIRLWIND_, London, 1890.

    WHITE PEOPLE, THE, one of the early tales, first published in
    _HORLICK’S MAGAZINE_, London, 1899. Included in _THE HOUSE OF
    SOULS_, Richards, 1906. Knopf’s _THE HOUSE OF SOULS_, 1922 and
    1928. Also in _THE HAUNTED OMNIBUS_, edited by Alexander Laing,
    1937 and the _TALES_, Knopf, 1948. Caerleon Edition, 1923.

    WITCHCRAFT, a fragment, written in 1897, included in _THE COSY
    ROOM_, Rich & Cowan, 1936.

    WONDERFUL WOMAN, A, one of the earliest tales, written for _THE
    WHIRLWIND_, London, 1890, included in Starrett’s _THE SHINING
    PYRAMID_, Chicago, 1923. Also in _THE COSY ROOM_, Rich & Cowan,
    London, 1936.


_TRANSLATIONS_:

The translations made by Arthur Machen must certainly be listed among
his major works, although they are not the most important. All of them
are from the French, all of them were made early in his career as a
writer (and some of them under unusual circumstances). Of these, the
most important is his translation of the Memoirs of the redoubtable
Casanova. The listing that follows is not complete, I am quite sure that
_Heptameron_ and the _Memoirs_, at least, have appeared in many editions
of which I have not heard and which may not be credited to Machen.

    CASANOVA, MEMOIRS OF, translation made by Machen as part of
    his “duties” while working for a London bookseller. Privately
    published in London, 1894. Also published by L. C. Page,
    Boston, 1903; Knopf, New York, 1929.

    CASANOVA’S ESCAPE FROM THE LEADS, published in London in 1925
    and by Knopf, New York, 1925.

    FANTASTIC TALES, Machen’s translation of Beroalde de Verville’s
    “Le Moyen de Parvenir.” Privately printed at “Carbonnek” (James
    Wade, London), 1890.

    FORTUNATE LOVERS, THE, described by Machen as a “drawing room
    edition” of the _HEPTAMERON_. Published by Redway, London, 1887.

    HEPTAMERON, THE, translation of the memoirs of Marguerite,
    Queen of Navarre. Privately printed by the Dryden Press, 1886.
    Issued by Knopf, New York, 1924. There are other editions.

    WAY TO ATTAIN, THE, a portion of Beroalde de Verville’s “Le
    Moyen de Parvenir” or _FANTASTIC TALES_, published in 1889 by
    Dryden Press.

    REMARKS UPON HERMODACTYLUS, translated by Machen from the
    French of Lady Hester Stanhope. Published in 1933.


_MISCELLANEOUS_:

The man of letters, the practicing man of letters that is, finds himself
doing all sorts of things in the practice of his trade. Machen was
a working man of letters for most of his eighty-odd years. He wrote
articles and “leaders” and “turn-overs” and “fills” and many another
journalistic oddity. He composed calendars and catalogues in his time
and, I daresay, book reviews. To attempt to collect or to list all of
this material would be to display the Machen-mania in its most advanced
stages.

This classification seems to me a proper one in which to include, for
example, Machen’s first published work, the elusive _Eleusinia_, the
classic _Hieroglyphics_, the autobiographical books and the collections
of his works, certain prefaces and introductions and one or two of the
better known catalogues and “fugitive pieces,” to use a rather pedantic
term. I am being, I suppose, rather arbitrary here too, but I do not
consider that every “fugitive piece” is worthy of the chase.

    ANATOMY OF TOBACCO, THE, by Leolinus Siluriensis, published by
    George Redway, London, 1884 and Knopf, New York, 1925.

    CADBY HALL, important mostly as a curiosity, an advertising
    booklet written for a London Confectioner.

    COLLECTOR’S CRAFT, THE, written as a supplement for a catalogue
    of rare books issued by First Edition Bookshop, London, 1923.
    Afterwards reprinted in limited edition as a booklet. Appeared
    also in _PUBLISHERS WEEKLY_, New York, October, 1923.

    CONFESSIONS OF A LITERARY MAN, articles appeared serially in
    the London _EVENING NEWS_, March to June, 1915. Published by
    Secker, 1922 and Knopf, 1922, as _FAR OFF THINGS_.

    DOG AND DUCK, title of a collection of essays and sketches,
    originally written for the _LYONS MAIL_ and published in 1924
    by Cape of London and Knopf of New York. Contents listed
    separately under “Essays.”

    DR. STIGGINS, a book subtitled: His Views and Principles.
    Published by Griffiths, London, 1906 and Knopf, 1925.

    DREADS AND DROLLS, title of a collection of essays originally
    written for the London _GRAPHIC_. Published in London by
    Secker, 1926 and in New York by Knopf, 1927.

    ELEUSINIA: By a Former Member of H.C.S. This is Machen’s first
    published work, a 16-page poem written when he was seventeen,
    published at Hereford in 1881. Only one copy known to exist.

    FAR OFF THINGS, one of Machen’s three autobiographical books.
    Published serially as “Confessions of a Literary Man.” Secker
    of London issued large paper and ordinary editions in 1922.
    Later reprinted by Secker in New Adelphi Library, Vol. 2. Also
    published by Knopf in 1922.

    GLORIOUS MYSTERY, THE, a collection, published in Chicago in
    1924 by Covici-McGee. Contained material from old newspapers,
    periodicals and manuscripts. Authorized, according to Vincent
    Starrett by Machen.

    GRAND TROUVAILLE, THE, subtitled: A Legend of Pentonville.
    3-page introduction to a catalogue of rare books issued by the
    First Edition Bookshop of London, 1923. Subsequently issued as
    a pamphlet in a limited edition.

    HIEROGLYPHICS, a book, subtitled: A Note On Ecstacy in
    Literature. First published by Grant Richards in London, 1902.
    Re-issued by Secker in 1910. Published in New York by Knopf,
    1923. Later included in The New Adelphi Library, Vol. 19,
    Secker, London.

    HOUSE OF SOULS, THE, a collection of Machen’s best-known tales.
    First Published by Grant Richards in 1906, issued also by Dana
    Estes. Published in New York by Knopf, 1922, Pocket Edition by
    Knopf, 1928. London and New York collection differ in contents.

    LONDON ADVENTURE, THE, Machen’s autobiographical account
    following the pattern set by _FAR OFF THINGS_ and _THINGS NEAR
    AND FAR_. First published by Secker in London, 1924, Knopf of
    New York, 1924.

    NOTES AND QUERIES, a collection published by Spurr & Swift,
    1926.

    ORNAMENTS IN JADE, title of a collection of Machen’s essays and
    stories published in New York in a limited edition by Knopf,
    1924.

    PRECIOUS BALMS, a collection of criticisms of the work of
    Arthur Machen, collected by Machen and published in London in a
    limited edition in 1924.

    PREFACES, written especially for the Knopf editions in the
    early 1920s. Most of them are rather autobiographical, all of
    them are authentic “firsts”. The Knopf books containing these
    prefaces are: The Three Impostors, The House of Souls, The Hill
    of Dreams, Dr. Stiggins, The Anatomy of Tobacco and possibly
    one or two others. The Introduction to _THE SHINING PYRAMID_,
    which refers to the Starrett collection of the same name, was
    presumably written for the London Edition, published in London
    by Secker, 1925.

    PREFACES: Machen wrote a number of introductions, prefaces
    and forewords for various books, translations, etc. The
    professional collector and bibliographer would be inclined, no
    doubt, to treat these in a different manner. For our purpose we
    find it sufficient to list them as follows under this heading:

        GHOST SHIP, THE, by Richard Middleton, London, 1912.

        PAGEANT OF ENGLISH LANDSCAPE, G. A. Dewar, London, 1924.

        AFTERGLOW: PASTELS OF GREECE EGYPT, M. S. Buck, London,
        1924.

        ONE HUNDRED MERRIE AND DELIGHTFUL TALES, translated by R.
        B. Douglas, Carbonnek, 1924.

        HALT IN THE GARDEN, THE, by Robert Hillyer, London, 1925.

        PHYSIOLOGY OF TASTE, THE, by Brillat-Savarin, London, 1925.

        DRAGON OF THE ALCHEMISTS, THE, by Frederic Carter, London,
        1926.

        MAINLY PLAYERS: BENSONIAN MEMORIES, by Lady Benson, London,
        1926.

        HUMPHRY CLINKER, by Tobias Smollett, Modern Library, New
        York, 1929.

        CASANOVA LOVED HER, by Bruno Brunelli, London, 1929.

        OUR FATHER SAN DANIEL, by Gabriel Miro, London, 1930.

        WAY TO SUCCEED, translation of Beroalde de Verville’s _Le
        Moyen Parvenir_ by Oliver Stonor, London, 1930.

        ABOVE THE RIVER, by John Gawsworth, London, 1931.

        WITCHES AND WARLOCKS, by Philip Seargeant, London, 1936.

    PRIEST AND THE BARBER, THE, introductory matter to a pamphlet
    written for a bookseller (George Redway) of occult literature.
    Published 1887. Published in Starrett’s _THE SHINING PYRAMID_,
    Chicago, 1923. The pamphlet is also known as Don Quijote De La
    Mancha.

    SHINING PYRAMID, THE, a collection of stories and essays
    compiled and published by (A) Vincent Starrett and published by
    Covici-McGee, Chicago, 1923. (B) by Arthur Machen, differing in
    content, published by Secker in London, 1925 and (C) the same,
    published by Knopf in New York, 1925.

    SPAGYRIC QUEST OF BEROALDUS COSMOPOLITA, THE, this is an
    introduction to a catalogue of books on alchemy and magic,
    published by Wyman & Sons, London, in 1888. Included in
    Starrett’s _THE SHINING PYRAMID_, Chicago, 1923.

    TALES OF HORROR AND THE SUPERNATURAL, a collection of the best
    known of Machen’s tales, published in 1948 by Knopf. Edited and
    with an Introduction by Philip Van Doren Stern. Also contains
    Robert Hillyer’s article on Machen.

    THESAURUS INCANTATUS, title of a pamphlet, issued in 1888,
    catalogue of books sold by a London firm. Also known as the
    “Spagyric Quest” see above.

    THINGS NEAR AND FAR, title of one of Machen’s three
    autobiographical books. Published in London by Secker, 1923,
    also in The New Adelphi Library, Vol. 8; in New York by Knopf,
    1923.

    TOM O’BEDLAM AND HIS SONG, written for “an American gentleman”
    and published by the Appelicon Press in Westport, Conn., 1930.

    WAR AND THE CHRISTIAN FAITH, first appeared as articles in the
    London _EVENING NEWS_, published by Skeffington in London, 1918.


MORE ABOUT MACHEN

The admirers of Arthur Machen, as we have remarked before, will want
to read as much about him as they possibly can. There are not too many
articles or studies of Machen available. Standard reference books list
Machen, of course, but few of them present more than a brief sketch. Many
standard critical works mention Machen in connection with his period,
the 1890’s, or his genre, the supernatural tale. Book reviews have, of
course, appeared by the hundreds. These might be interesting to read
again, but they are unavailable. The general reader, meaning in this
case, the admirer of Machen, will wish to check this listing:


SPECIFIC

    ARTICLE in “The Bookman” for July, 1925.

    ARTICLE in “The Sewannee Review,” July, 1924.

    ARTICLE in “The Saturday Review of Literature” by Basil
    Davenport, “The Devil Is Not Dead,” February 15, 1936.

    ARTICLE in “Harper’s Bazaar” by Meyer Berger, “Legends of The
    War,” January, 1944.

    ARTICLE by August Derleth in “Reading and Collecting,” Ben
    Abramson’s delightful monthly, Chicago, November, 1937.

    ARTICLE in “Atlantic Monthly” by Robert Hillyer, May, 1947.

    BIBLIOGRAPHY by Henry Danielson, published in London, 1923.
    Contains sketch of Machen by Savage, notes by Machen.

    BIBLIOGRAPHY by Nathan Van Patten, appended to Derleth’s
    article in “Reading and Collecting,” Chicago, 1937.

    BIBLIOGRAPHY by Nathan Van Patten, published in Kingston,
    Ontario, Canada, 1928.

    BIBLIOGRAPHY by Paul Jordan-Smith, published in “For The Love
    of Books,” Oxford Press, New York, 1934.

    SKETCH of Machen in “More Authors and I” by C. Lewis Hind,
    London, 1922 and Dodd, Mead, New York, 1922.

    SKETCH of Machen in “Buried Caesars” by Vincent Starrett,
    Chicago, 1923.

    SKETCH of Machen in “Excavations” by Carl Van Vechten, Knopf,
    New York, 1922.

    SKETCH of Machen by Paul Jordan-Smith, in “On What Strange
    Altars,” New York, 1924.

    SKETCH of Machen in the Danielson Bibliography, written by
    Henry Savage, London, 1923.

    SKETCH of Machen by St. John Adcock in “Glory That Was Grub
    Street” and “Gods of Modern Grub Street,” London, New York,
    192-?

    SKETCH of Machen by Vincent Starrett, appears under title
    “Arthur Machen: Novelist of Ecstacy and Sin,” published along
    with two poems by Machen, Chicago, 1918. Sketch also appears in
    “Buried Caesars,” Covici-McGee, 1922.


GENERAL

    AFTER THE GENTEEL TRADITION, symposium edited by Malcolm Cowley.

    ASYLUM by William Seabrook, contains material quoted herein.

    AUTHOR HUNTING by Grant Richards, mere mention of Machen.

    BOOKS AND BATTLES, Irene and Allen Cleaton, Boston, 1937.

    BEYOND LIFE by James Branch Cabell, contains Cabell’s famous
    tribute.

    CAVALCADE OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL by Wagenknecht, contains several
    passages relating to Machen.

    CENTURY OF THE ENGLISH NOVEL by Cornelius Weygandt, contains a
    brief study of Machen and his works. Harcourt-Brace, N. Y.

    CONTEMPORARY BRITISH LITERATURE by Fred B. Millett,
    contains a brief sketch of Machen and a short bibliography.
    Harcourt-Brace, N. Y.

    CONTEMPORARY BRITISH LITERATURE by Manly and Rickert, brief
    sketch, bibliographical notes. Numerous references.

    HOUSEMANS by Grant Richards, brief mention of Machen, quoted
    herein.

    INNOCENCE ABROAD by Emily Clark, Knopf, 1931. The history of
    “The Reviewer” (Richmond) to which Machen contributed while it
    was edited by Cabell, 1924-25.

    LOST CHORDS by Arthur Rickett, contains a parody of Machen,
    “The Yellow Creeper,” London, 1895.

    MEN OF THE NINETIES by Bernard Muddiman, brief mention.

    ON NATIVE GROUNDS by Alfred Kazin, mention of Machen in the
    Twenties.

    ON THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS by Harold Begbie, an “answer” to _THE
    BOWMEN_, London, 1915.

    SMOKE RINGS AND ROUNDELAYS, edited by Wilfred Partington,
    London, 1924. Contains several contributions by Machen.

    SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE by H. P. Lovecraft,
    Abrahamson, New York, 1945. Studies of most of Machen’s works.

    SUPERNATURAL IN MODERN ENGLISH FICTION by Dorothy Scarborough,
    New York, 1917.

    OLD GODS FALLING by Malcolm Elwin, mere mention, MacMillan,
    1939.

    TWENTIETH CENTURY AUTHORS by Kuntz and Haycraft, a sketch and
    brief bibliography, New York, 19(?)

    MAINLY VICTORIAN by S. M. Ellis, mentions Machen, London, 1925.

    SOME MODERN AUTHORS by S. P. Mais, mentions Machen, 1923.

    WHEN I WAS A CHILD, anthology edited by Edward Wagenknecht,
    contains portion of Machen’s autobiography under the title:
    _BOY OF CAERLEON_.




NOTES

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