I was just wondering if any of you weird fiction connoisseurs out there are familiar with H. R. Wakefield's ghost stories. I understand that he is sadly oft-overlooked, but represents a major player in the tradition of the classic ghost story. I have also read that he is comparable to M. R. James.

Anyway, I have just had the good fortune to snag his best of volume (edited by Richard Dalby, 1978 ed.) for dirt cheap, and I'm very curious about what I'm in for (alas, I must wait for it to come in the mail!). I am reasonably familiar with Le Fanu, James, Blackwood, and Benson--how does Wakefield stack up against them? I have the story "Old Man's Beard" in an anthology, and will probably read it tonight for a taste of what's coming. What do you all think of him?

And since this is a CAS forum, did Smith ever read Wakefield, and if so, what did he think of him? I know he read James, and thought highly of his work.

In a letter of January 1934 to H. P. Lovecraft, CAS wrote: "...I hasten to thank you for the Wakefield loan and the gift...of the book on Beddoes. I have read one of the Wakefield stories last night--'He Cometh and He Passeth By,'--and found it excellent, especially in the suggestion of the diabolic Shadow."

I don't know if Derleth made a habit of sending CAS new Arkham House titles as they were publish'd, but I think it likely that CAS read the superb 1946 volume, THE CLOCK STRIKES TWELVE. I have both it and STRAYERS FROM SHEOL and find these spectral tales extremely good--and the latter title has a rather remarkable Introduction by ye author.

"I'm a little girl."
--H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.

I have the Wakefield volume that you mention, K_A_. It contains some excellent stories--my favorite is "Look Up There" (I am a little surprised that Lovecraft did not make more of a fuss over this tale, as it is a masterpiece of subtle, ambiguous, inferential horror)--but Wakefield, in my view, is not in the LeFanu/M.R. James class.

Wakefield is a superbly elegant stylist, and has a marvelous macabre imagination, but his tales sometimes seem a little rushed, and they tend to lack in atmosphere or development. A fine writer, and well worth reading, but hardly a "major player".

In the CAS letter that mentions Wakefield, CAS goes on mostly to discuss Aleister Crowley and his possible inspiration for the character of Clinton.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 21 Aug 11 | 04:51PM by Absquatch.

Thank you both for the info! If CAS enjoyed Wakefield, I am sure he is plenty good enough for me. As for him not being in the James/Le Fanu ranking, I had heard as much. Still--this does not bother me in the least. I don't think Benson is rated so highly, and I enjoy his ghost stories immensely. His story "And No Bird Sings" is particularly memorable!

I am especially excited to read "Look Up There." I had the idea to write a story about a sinister apparition in the clouds long ago (never actually wrote it), so am curious to see how it is handled by Wakefield.

Being that I have already read James and Le Fanu, I am excited to delve into a new author!

Does anyone know any other lesser known ghost story writers that are especially worthy of investigation? I have heard that Edith Wharton's ghost stories are worthy of a read. These writers are, after all, the forerunners of modern weird fiction (and by modern, I mean CAS and HPL's heyday).

Quote:

If CAS enjoyed Wakefield, I am sure he is plenty good enough for me.

Well, we know that he enjoyed that one story....


Here's a favorite non-fictional quotation of mine from Wakefield. CAS would have endorsed it wholeheartedly, I think.

Quote:

We have to remember and face the fact that we have not, and cannot have, any acquaintance with, let us say, more than a millionth part of what is loosely called 'reality', or the final truth about the universe, which may be, indeed, from our point of view, fundamentally irrational. Remember that we can see only one octave of all the myriad wavelengths. We are almost totally blind. It is said that bees can see infra-red rays. If so, they are a little less blind than we are, and they see an entirely different world from ours. We can see only what we are capable of seeing, and our minds have nothing more than their sensory data to work with. Therefore we can understand so much and not more, for our whole apparatus of cognition is utterly inadequate to grasp the whole. We see perhaps only one octave of the rays of reality....

Very interesting quote, Absquatch. I wonder--where did you find it? I definitely agree with Wakefield, and all the other people who have realized the same thing. I think the best we can do for now is simply to realize how blind we really are. Beyond that--it is fun to speculate. Such is the playground for weird fiction. Truly, it is somewhat egotistical to think that because we only have five senses, there are only five sorts of things to sense. Still, if there were many more things to sense out there, wouldn't careful observation of other lifeforms with senses beyond our own have yielded a clue? But then, I suppose we cannot expect their senses to cover the full range either... Theoretically, I suppose there may be thousands of senses--we simply cannot know. One could argue, I suppose--and I'm sure many have--that the barkings of dogs seemingly at nothing is evidence of them sensing something wholly outside our range; and who knows what bizarre hidden truths might be yeilded by a careful observation of bees? I smell a weird story coming along...or do I sense it through some other inexplicable mechanism?

Wakefield can be a bit uneven ("Used Cars" with its anti-Semitism and laughable American gangster slang is pretty awful), but he can also be quite good. Dalby's selection contains several classics, as well as a few odditiies:

"The Red Lodge" - excellent. The same house reappears in "Blind Man's Buff", also included in this collection as well as the excellent "Frontier Guards", the very good "The Alley", and the rather kooky but intermittently chilling "Ghost Hunt".

"'He Cometh and He Passeth By' " - excellent take on MRJ's "Casting the Runes"

"Professor Pownall's Oversight" - perhaps a better as a character study than a ghost story, but still quite good

"The Seventeenth Hole at Duncaster" - interesting in concept, but it does not hold up to rereading for me.

" 'Look Up There' " - excellent
"Blind Man's Buff" - excellent - in both of these stories, Wakefield excels at revealing just enough details to make our flesh crawl.

"Day-Dream in Macedon" - excellent
"Damp Sheets" - conventional but good
"A Black Solitude" - seems a bit stale to me, though the characterization is good.
"The Triumph of Death" - quite good
"A Kink in Space-Time" - OK
"The Gorge of the Churels" - the dynamics between the characters are well-handled
" 'Immortal Bird' " - one of his late, quite bitter stories
"Death of a Bumble-Bee" - interesting, but like the quite odd "Animals in the Case", this seems to be more an attempt to handle personal issues through metaphor than a bona fide supernatural story.

A few more favorites of mine, which are absent from this collection include (not already noted above):

"The First Sheaf" - what does it take to produce a successful harvest?
"Mr. Ash's Studio" - one of his most atmospheric tales - a haunted artist's studio with moths forming images on an incomplete canvas
"Old Man's Beard" - a young woman victimized by the spirit of a lecherous old man. Some of the descriptions of auditory phenomena in this story are superb.
"Death of a Poacher" - rather nasty conflation of elements from Le Fanu's "Green Tea" and "Squire Toby's Will".
"Lucky's Grove" - what is wrong with the Christmas tree?

There are more (the late posthumous collection from Ash-Tree contains a few gems), but I will leave it at that.

Jim

Jim, thanks very much! Very thorough. From what you say about "Death of a Poacher," I think I should really like to read that one if ever I acquire a volume containing it (Wakefield's stuff, as I'm sure you know, is difficult to acquire these days. I myself went the Amazon route...snagged an 'acceptable' copy for $4 n' change...as long as it's readable, I'm happy.)

You are welcome, Mr. Opperman:

One of the easier ways to encounter much of Wakefield's better work is through the two best-of collections he gathered himself - GHOST STORIES (Jonathan Cape, 1932; reprinted by Arno/Books for Libraries as part of their Short Story Reprint series) and IN GHOSTLY COMPANY (Jonathan Cape, 1932 - unfortunately not reprinted).

Contents are as follows:

GHOST STORIES (only a few duds in this one) -
"Messrs. Turkes and Talbot", "A Peg on Which to Hang", "Used Car", "Damp Sheets", "The Cairn", "Blind Man's Buff", "Look Up There", "The Frontier Guards", "Mr. Ash's Studio", "Nurse's Tale", "A Coincidence at Hunton", "The Red Hand", "An Echo", "Day-Dream in Macedon", "Knock! Knock! Who's There?", "Epilogue by Roger Bantock", "The Last to Leave", "The Central Figure", "Old Man's Beard", "Present at the End", "A Jolly Surprise for Henri".

IN GHOSTLY COMPANY (a much more mixed bag than the earlier volume, unless you do not already have the contents of THEY RETURN AT EVENING) -
"And He Shall Sing", "Death of a Poacher", "He Cometh and He Passeth By", "A Fishing Story", "The Seventeenth Hole at Duncaster", "Or Persons Unknown", "The Inevitable Flaw", "That Dieth Not", "The Red Lodge", "Professor Pownall's Oversight", "The Third Coach", "Corporal Humpit of the 4th Musketeers".

The Ash-Trees are all excellent (the last volume is not duplicated anywhere at present), but some of them have become even more expensive than the first editions by now.

Jim

P.S. I cannot remember if John Metcalfe had been mentioned on this group or not. His THE SMOKING LEG was also reprinted by Arno/Books for Libraries, and I heartily recommend it. JUDAS AND OTHER STORIES and a smattering of uncollected stories are also well worth your while, though the ones Derleth picked up for AH anthologies are less consistent in quality. Ash-Tree's collection, NIGHTMARE JACK, is missing just a few stories, but is one of my favorites among their many fine collections. Rumor has it that Mr. Joshi is compiling a large collection of Metcalfe's work for someone (Centipede?), but I do not know any details about that proejct.

Helpful as always, Jim! And I wonder--how did you know I was a mister? How do you know my name is not, say, Kristin, or Katherine, or Karen? Ha ha, just a bit of sport! Yes, I'm a mister alright.

But enough of that! I find your info very helpful, Jim, and someone else out there may appreciate it as well. It can be a frustrating task, trying to figure out the best route for collecting the most of an author's stories. You have done the internet, and Mr. Wakefield, a great service. Unfortunately, I don't expect to get my hands on either of those volumes any time soon. They are rare, and monetary resources almost equally so. But someday...

In case anyone here is interested, I know of one--and only one--Wakefield story which can be read for free on the net--"The Frontier Guards." It can be read here:

[thenostalgialeague.com]

A few others, such as "Old Man's Beard," are occasionally encountered in anthologies. Other than that, rare tomes must be sought out--for much of his work, as I understand it, remains under copyright.

And Jim, I am for the nonce unfamiliar with Metcalfe's work--I will try to seek him out. Thanks much for the lead.

And now I have some poetry to be typing up...



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 22 Aug 11 | 01:43AM by K_A_Opperman.

Thanks - a shot in the dark loosely based on the conteext of some earlier messages, not that this is all that accurate a method of determining gender. Thought this might be less awkward than K_A.

Ha ha, yes, I suppose it is a bit awkward to address someone with two letters and nothing else! (When I send in a fiction/poetry submission to some places, they are often forced to address me that way![in the rejection letter:( ]) The underscores make 'K_A_' look especially ridiculous--I only wrote it that way because I had recently joined another forum which wouldn't let me use periods for some reason, forcing me to resort to the underscore. I stupidly assumed this forum would be the same--I'm no genius when it comes to computers and the internet. I would have changed it, but it wouldn't let me--oh well. I use K. A. Opperman as my pen-name--I guess it's supposed to have a sort of 'dignity' to it, in the H. P. Lovecraft sort of way. I make it a point to conceal my first name so internet searches on my real name don't lead to my writings--I don't want potential employers, etc., seeing the bizarre stuff I write! As long as I keep my first name secret, I can deny everything! Just a sort of thin veil to hide behind. Mr. Opperman is a fine way to address me, Jim. But it certainly is interesting how we make gender assumptions based on text alone.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 22 Aug 11 | 06:56PM by K_A_Opperman.

Quote:

But it certainly is interesting how we make gender assumptions based on text alone.

It's actually also the result of pretty sound probabilistic reasoning. I can think of a total of two women whom I've ever seen posting here over the years, both long since departed from the forum. Of course, others could be lurking, or not identifiable via their posts, but, sad to say, this seems to be very much a male-dominated forum.

Yes, I had gotten that impression...

One of our girls is busy finishing up her degree at Johns Hopkins - I am sure she still checks on the postings - very bright and talented kid - we have exchanged many emails. Besides, it is easy to tell gender as a rule, even in classical piano the most brilliant women are easily distinguished in playing the same work from a man - not better or worse - just a difference in modality and touch -

In my experience, gender can also be guessed at with some accuracy through examination of handwriting (of course, this method is by no means foolproof). As far as I've seen, females tend to have larger, rounder, neater handwriting--mine, in contrast, is small, drawn out horizontally, and often difficult to decipher (for people other than myself). I simply found it interesting that my gender was guessed through my commentary/syntax/word choice alone--I'm sure males employ a different frequency of certain types of words than females. Must be some sort of subconscious process going on.

But to get back on topic...I read H. R. Wakefield's "Old Man's Beard," and found it penetratingly weird. The main horror of the story is pretty original (excepting the closeness of the hair theme to a certain James story). I value originality very, very highly in weird fiction (I just read a minor Lovecraft revision, "The Trap," which is painfully similar to a lesser known Blackwood tale, whose name I cannot recall at the moment). The story, like many of James', is very mundane in setting and tone, and the shocks particularlly sharp because of it. The only major gripe I had with "Old Man's Beard" was that it was very slow to start up, dwelling excessively on characterization where some sort of action should have been mixed in--but once it got going, it quickly progressed into a rather weirdly delicious tale. (If I was a magazine editor, and Wakefield sent me that tale, I would get very excited--but demand something be done abut that intro--nothing whatever of a hook is present).



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 23 Aug 11 | 04:37PM by K_A_Opperman.

Jim, if you're out there, which of the stories in H. R. Wakefield's collection "Ghost Stories" were the few duds you earlier alluded to? And if you care to elaborate, which are the highlights? I might possibly acquire this volume in the near future, and I'm weighing the pros and cons...

Any illumination you might provide would be greatly appreciated, as there's no easy way to ascertain such info...

Ka,

"Used Car" is laughably bad. "Knock! Knock Who's There?", "The Red Hand", and "A Coincidence at Hunton" are not bad, but either ordinary/predictable in theme or a little disappointing in development.

"Nurse's Tale" is one about which people I know are divided, and I feel differently about it on different readings. The situation and setting are clearly inspired by M. R. James, but the prose, development, and characterization are just as clearly Wakefield's. Some find this jarring, some refreshing. I like it though I cannot help wondering how James or one of the writers more closely associated with him may have developed it.

Jim

Thanks Jim!--but some further interrogation (if you'd be so kind to submit to it): in your opinion, is the volume worth acquiring--for around 20 bucks? And how does the volume as a whole stack up against the 1978 Best Of volume edited by Dalby? On the one hand, it is rare--always alluring!--but the quality of the stories is an important factor as well...

As a side note, I read "The Red Lodge" last night. Not bad, really--certainly entertaining--but not the best story I've ever read--nowhere near the worst, though! I suppose being a poet makes me slightly biased against prose which isn't gushing with vivid description. Still, there were some passages that I liked--this one in particular stayed with me:

"With the dusk came that sense of being watched, waited for, followed about, plotted against, an atmosphere of quiet, hunting malignancy." It is not particularly poetic--and yet it says exactly what it needs to say. That, I can appreciate. Very economical, very effective. It also has a claustrophobic quality, being so deft a passage, which is highly appropriate.

Overall, Wakefield gives me a very Jamesian impression--a good thing. And the business of "the green monkey" echoes a certain Le Fanu tale of which I am extremely fond, and which actually frightened me a bit, unlike most supernatural fiction, which merely entertains (Lovecraft has accomplished this for me too, at times--a great accomplishment. To frighten with mere words is not easy...)

But I am rambling!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 31 Aug 11 | 06:23PM by K_A_Opperman.

Definitely worth acquiring for that price or any other price you consider reasonable. I think it is equal in worth to Dalby's volume. I think all of the collections are worth reading, if you can find them in libraries or inexpensively use. The least successful of the collections, as a whole (the best stories tend to be reprinted in other collections - "The Central Figure", "Day-Dream in Macedon"; "Frontier Guards","Epilogue by Roger Bantock", "Damp Sheets") is the evocatively titled IMAGINE A MAN IN A BOX, which includes some science fiction and a fewer lighter pieces, none of which (for me) aged very well.


The prose in "The Red Lodge" is a little crude perhaps, but I think the story as a whole is very effective - pacing, imagery, atmosphere. This scared the wits out of me when I first read it, at about 13 or so, in MORE TALES TO TREMBLE BY. At his best Wakefield works at almost a subconscious level, which lends a slippery, queasy quality to some of the late ambiguous tales - like seeing something out of the corner of the eye that does not quite make sense yet still gives us a visceral sense of unease, bordering on panic.

Jim

Thanks, Jim. And I agree that "The Red Lodge" overall is a success, and certainly effective--but in reading Wakefield's brand of prose (at least in that story), I often feel like just a smidge more description could go a long way toward filling in the picture. Of course, staying vague regarding paranormal phenomena is a smart thing to do--as they often present themselves fleetingly and vaguely...and the way in which "The Red Lodge" is told, I suppose, is somewhat like the common man would relate it--lending a good balance of realism. There is a humorous (but necessary) irony that people who record (fictional) supernatural events are usually amazingly adept writers... Perhaps writers are especially susceptible to hauntings?

jimrockhill2001 Wrote:

> This scared the wits out of me when I first read it, at
> about 13 or so, in MORE TALES TO TREMBLE BY.

Yes! I'm delighted to hear of someone else who had the same reaction to this long-forgotten anthology (published by THE READER'S DIGEST if I remember correctly). I must have come across it when I was eight or nine--when I was reading every spooky book in the children's section of my local library. The librarian reassured my worried mother that many children went through this phase in their reading careers, and that it probably wouldn't last too long. Hah! As you can see, she was wrong in my case.

It was about then that I first stumbled upon Smith's story THE UNCHARTED ISLE in some collection whose title, unfortunately, escapes me. I had only come across a comparable sense of dislocation in a few of Edgar Allan Poe's stories. That bewildering sense of 'wrongness' I found unforgettable, even though it was about ten years before I came across another story by CAS. (That was UBBO-SATHLA in TALES OF THE CTHULHU MYTHOS, in case you were curious).

Does anyone out there remember ALFRED HITCHCOCK'S MONSTER MUSEUM (edited by Robert Arthur), MONSTER FESTIVAL (edited by Eric Protter and illustrated by Edward Gorey) or FAMOUS MONSTER TALES (collected by Basil Davenport)?

Yes, I must admit that I'm glad to see that title again myself. That and its predecessor were among my earliest acquisitions in the field (aside from a collection of Poe and an anthology entitled Ghosts and Things, edited by Hal Cantor), when I was between eight and twelve, and yes, several of the stories in there gave me the willies. I reacquired them about six years ago, out of sheer sentimentalism, and find that they remain, on the whole, fine anthologies. (The edition I have is that put out by Whitman publishing company: Tales to Tremble By was published in 1966, More Tales to Tremble By in 1968.) For anyone interested, the contents are:

Tales to Tremble By:
"The Hand", by Guy de Maupassant
"The Middle Toe of the Right Foot", by Ambrose Bierce
"No. 1 Branch Line, The Signalman", by Charles Dickens
"Adventure of the German Student", by Washington Irving
"The Sutor of Selkirk", Anonymous
"The Upper Berth", by F. Marion Crawford
"The Judge's House", by Bram Stoker

More Tales to Tremble By:
"The Red Lodge", by H. Russell Wakefield
"Sredni Vashtar", by Saki
"Thurnley Abbey", by Perceval Landon
"God Grante That She Lye Stille", by Cynthia Asquith
"The Voice in the Night", by William Hope Hodgson
"The Extra Passenger", by August Derleth
"Casting the Runes", by M. R. James
"The Book", by Margaret Irwin

Not at all a bad selection to introduce some quality weird writing to the younger generation... if they've the attention span for it....

I have read a few of those stories...good stuff.

By the way, I am part of the younger generation (24 in a few days), and there is hardly anything in my mind besides weird literature (overexaggeration)--and, I have an invincible attention span. However, I realize that I am the exception. I almost never watch television, and read, write, and practice music daily.

Since this is an H. R. Wakefield thread, I'll mention--for whoever cares--that I finished reading "He Cometh and He Passeth By" today, and found it a thoroughly entertaining story. The prose style was much improved from "The Red Lodge." True, it is largely a ripoff of James' "Casting the Runes"--and yet, there is enough to make it original. I particularly enjoyed the tense psychic standoffs between the protagonist and the villain. A very enjoyable read! I'm looking forward to finishing the Dalby collection.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 4 Sep 11 | 01:29AM by K_A_Opperman.

Yes, I've known some quite young people who are devoted readers, even of the older (eighteenth and nineteenth century) writers, just as I've run across those who are enthusiasts of the silent era in cinema; so it isn't intended as a blanket statement, simply a qualification. After all, when I first encountered the books mentioned above, I was part of a "younger generation" which also showed little tendency for such things....

I have yet to read "He Cometh and He Passeth By," which isn't in the three volumes I have (JUMBEE, WEST INDIA LIGHTS, PASSING OF A GOD), and I'm becoming a bit frantic. I have been devouring Whitehead of late as he and his weird fiction play a key role in the book I am preparing to write. It's frustrating that so little is known of him. I was hoping for a few pages devoted to him in the Centipede Press book, CONVERSATIONS WITH THE WEIRD TALE CIRCLE, and was hugely deflated to find but a mere ten-line paragraph in the back section, "Other Voices." The few "facts" that we have concerning him seem confused and unreliable. A man of mystery, indeed.

"I'm a little girl."
--H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.

I have been clued in to why I cannot find the story I am looking for, for in my dotage I have confus'd Whitehead with Wakefield. It's sad, how things fall apart when one grows aged.

"I'm a little girl."
--H. P. Lovecraft, Esq.