Post by Calenture on Feb 7, 2013 13:22:38 GMT
The Dead of Night – The Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions
Wordsworth Editions, 2010
General Editor: David Stuart Davies
Introduction by David Stuart Davies
The Beckoning Fair One: Paul Oleron is an author currently working on a novel, Romilly Bishop, which he knows will be of crucial importance in defining his future artistic development. Grown tired of sleeping in a boarding house and walking to his work-room each day, he decides to rent a floor of the long-vacant house in the square which he passes daily.
The story is rich in detail, multi-layered. The row of To Let boards outside the house and overhanging the palings, set the tone from the start: “each at its own angle, like a row of wooden choppers, ever in the act of falling upon some passers-by.”
The house has a curious history; a previous tenant has starved to death in it. Oleron becomes aware that he is sharing the house with some kind of restless spirit; he is also aware that the spirit is undoubtedly female. This marks the beginning of an obsession which results in his estrangement from his long-time girlfriend, Miss Bengough, upon whom he based the character of Romilly; and with her leaving now, he needs to rethink the whole novel.
Said by Robert Aickman to be “one of the (possibly) six great masterpieces in the field,” this story was also regarded by Algernon Blackwood and H P Lovecraft as one of the most effective and subtle ghost stories in all literature.
Phantas: I usually have a pretty strong resistance to ghost stories set aboard sailing ships (no particular reason; just a personal prejudice), but this one was unusual enough to get under my guard.
From the start the intense colour and strangeness of the scene, with the two survivors hanging onto the galleon’s sloping deck, the masts heeled over at such an angle that the topsails dip into the sea; skin blackened by the sun while woodwork is bleached white and bronze given a “thick incrustation of bright, beautiful, lichenous green.”
Abel Keeling and the crazy Bligh are all that remain of the crew of the Mary of the Tower. But possibly Abel’s going a little crazy now, with the oddest thoughts going through his mind; and now he hears another ship through the mist and sees a pyramid shape towering above the Mary.
Strange and memorable.
Rooum: Rooum is an unschooled but skilful black engineer who travels around the country, moving from job to job. The narrator has not taken much notice of him until the day that Rooum falls down screaming at an unexpected touch. Rooum provides no explanation for his terror but instead begins questioning his colleague about ‘molecules’ and ‘osmosis’.
Something is following the black man, something invisible, and it can pass through solid objects. The denouement is a genuinely thrilling piece of writing as the terrified Rooum attempts to run down his invisible pursuer with an overhead crane riding its rails high above a floodlit night-time building site. Breathtaking!
Benlian: A painter of commercial portrait miniatures occupies an upper level studio above a timber-yard, while on the other side of the yard is the much larger ground floor studio belonging to Benlian, the sculptor. The two have little to do with each other until the day Benlian visits and makes an appointment to have his photograph taken.
At first the artist is simply angered by the other man’s manner, which is superior and bullying. But with repeated meetings a curious friendship develops. Benlian is at work on a bizarre sculpture which he says is ‘a god’ and which the other artist can only see as being oddly disproportionate. Benlian invites his new friend to come back and view the piece in future to witness its development.
It’s difficult to know how much to say about this one in case of spoilers; enough to say then that a favourite Onions’ theme was the developing and exploring of an artist’s vision, and here is a quite strange sharing of that vision between two very different artists.
It’s a pretty good thriller, too, by the way!
The Ascending Dream: Beginning with a Neolithic couple looking out to sea, with wifey getting stressed because hubby wants to take his dug-out canoe into unknown waters. The scene then changes to a medieval setting and a lady who’s disenchanted because her chap wants to make a pilgrimage; the final shift brings the reader into contemporary times, or at least the beginning of the First World War, with yet another young woman distressed as her beaux prepares to leave for the Front. You’ll gather this one didn’t really grab me.
The Honey in the Wall: This story left me reeling. I hadn’t expected to find another story of a similar calibre as The Beckoning Fair One (I’d been told there weren’t any). In fact The Honey in the Wall actually replaced Fair One on my personal Bookshelf of Honour.
Gervaise is a serious and capable young woman of 26 who has taken her mother’s place in maintaining and administrating her massive family home. The Abbey has housed the Harow family for generations but now is finally crumbling beneath the combined onslaughts of death duties and taxes. But in taking her mother’s place, she has ceased to live her own life.
A group of young people have come to spend their summer holiday at the Abbey. Freddy Lampeter is among the visitors. Gervaise finds the presence of the popular young man irritating, but it quickly becomes clear that other women will be only too willing to distract him from her; and of course she finds this even more irritating. The title is explained by a scene which occurs near the beginning of the story, where the young people have discovered a bees nest buried in a crumbling Norman wall.
Clot after clot, it was taken out, unsightly lumps, black as pitch, caked and crusted with earth and scurf and bits of mortar. But the housekeeper cut and scalded the outer grime away, and there was enough of the stored sweetness of long-vanished flowers to fill the row of waiting jars.
The story culminates with a game of hide-and-seek played in the massive house at night, the players wearing fancy dress and finding their way through the huge, dark rooms by moonlight. As hostess, Gervaise must join in the game, and she decides to disguise herself as the Lady Jane of an unsigned portrait.
Onions writes like an artist because he was an artist. He worked as a commercial artist before turning to writing. Consider this passage:
She reached the corner chamber from which she had first seen the moon, but already its aspect had changed. That bulging orange ball was now a mere round of brilliance with even its volcano-scape hardly discernible. It changed the colour of things, greened the tinsel of Gervaise’s garments, turned the reds and browns of bodice and stuffed sleeves to black; and her face within the dormer-shaped structure of linen was lost to the bridge of her nose in shadow. And, forgetting all about the game, she thought again of the lovely place, so proudly waiting its end.
The house and the young children playing in it are doomed: the house by finances and a changing class system, the young people by war which even now is waiting to waste or blight their lives.
The sketch below is not one hundred per cent accurate as a representation, but was as close as I got to the passage quoted below it, in which Gervaise has searched for Freddy, but found him engaged in a little game of his own.
...And Gervaise had guessed his dress rightly. He was wearing the garb you will find in any costumier’s wardrobe though there be but a couple there. The close-fitting hood of a Mephistopheles enclosed his small head, and the long crimson cape draped the spare spread of his shoulders and fell to his heels.
But what Pamela wore could not be seen. She was completely enfolded in his cloak, strained to his breast. Her small mask was all that was visible of her. It resembled the petal of some other flower, windlodged in the heart of a dark poppy.
N.B. Trying to date this story, to find exactly what war was threatening at the time, proved almost ridiculously difficult. There seems surprisingly little information available about this writer. The Cambridge Guide to Literature doesn’t list his name. There is a small entry in The Oxford Guide to Literature (which mentions Widdershins but not The Beckoning Fair One). According to WorldCat, the story appeared in the Ghosts in Daylight (1924) collection.
While attempting this last-minute research (which has actually taken several hours!) I quite incidentally found a post by D F Lewis, written back in 1994. And it seems his reaction to reading Oliver Onions was similar to mine. He writes “I genuinely believe I have found for myself a writer to rank alongside the great Robert Aickman. Why hasn’t anyone told me before?”
To read his complete post – and I do encourage it - follow this link:Tentacles Across the Atlantic: Collected Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions.
Wordsworth Editions, 2010
General Editor: David Stuart Davies
Introduction by David Stuart Davies
The Beckoning Fair One: Paul Oleron is an author currently working on a novel, Romilly Bishop, which he knows will be of crucial importance in defining his future artistic development. Grown tired of sleeping in a boarding house and walking to his work-room each day, he decides to rent a floor of the long-vacant house in the square which he passes daily.
The story is rich in detail, multi-layered. The row of To Let boards outside the house and overhanging the palings, set the tone from the start: “each at its own angle, like a row of wooden choppers, ever in the act of falling upon some passers-by.”
The house has a curious history; a previous tenant has starved to death in it. Oleron becomes aware that he is sharing the house with some kind of restless spirit; he is also aware that the spirit is undoubtedly female. This marks the beginning of an obsession which results in his estrangement from his long-time girlfriend, Miss Bengough, upon whom he based the character of Romilly; and with her leaving now, he needs to rethink the whole novel.
Said by Robert Aickman to be “one of the (possibly) six great masterpieces in the field,” this story was also regarded by Algernon Blackwood and H P Lovecraft as one of the most effective and subtle ghost stories in all literature.
Phantas: I usually have a pretty strong resistance to ghost stories set aboard sailing ships (no particular reason; just a personal prejudice), but this one was unusual enough to get under my guard.
From the start the intense colour and strangeness of the scene, with the two survivors hanging onto the galleon’s sloping deck, the masts heeled over at such an angle that the topsails dip into the sea; skin blackened by the sun while woodwork is bleached white and bronze given a “thick incrustation of bright, beautiful, lichenous green.”
Abel Keeling and the crazy Bligh are all that remain of the crew of the Mary of the Tower. But possibly Abel’s going a little crazy now, with the oddest thoughts going through his mind; and now he hears another ship through the mist and sees a pyramid shape towering above the Mary.
Strange and memorable.
Rooum: Rooum is an unschooled but skilful black engineer who travels around the country, moving from job to job. The narrator has not taken much notice of him until the day that Rooum falls down screaming at an unexpected touch. Rooum provides no explanation for his terror but instead begins questioning his colleague about ‘molecules’ and ‘osmosis’.
Something is following the black man, something invisible, and it can pass through solid objects. The denouement is a genuinely thrilling piece of writing as the terrified Rooum attempts to run down his invisible pursuer with an overhead crane riding its rails high above a floodlit night-time building site. Breathtaking!
Benlian: A painter of commercial portrait miniatures occupies an upper level studio above a timber-yard, while on the other side of the yard is the much larger ground floor studio belonging to Benlian, the sculptor. The two have little to do with each other until the day Benlian visits and makes an appointment to have his photograph taken.
At first the artist is simply angered by the other man’s manner, which is superior and bullying. But with repeated meetings a curious friendship develops. Benlian is at work on a bizarre sculpture which he says is ‘a god’ and which the other artist can only see as being oddly disproportionate. Benlian invites his new friend to come back and view the piece in future to witness its development.
It’s difficult to know how much to say about this one in case of spoilers; enough to say then that a favourite Onions’ theme was the developing and exploring of an artist’s vision, and here is a quite strange sharing of that vision between two very different artists.
It’s a pretty good thriller, too, by the way!
The Ascending Dream: Beginning with a Neolithic couple looking out to sea, with wifey getting stressed because hubby wants to take his dug-out canoe into unknown waters. The scene then changes to a medieval setting and a lady who’s disenchanted because her chap wants to make a pilgrimage; the final shift brings the reader into contemporary times, or at least the beginning of the First World War, with yet another young woman distressed as her beaux prepares to leave for the Front. You’ll gather this one didn’t really grab me.
The Honey in the Wall: This story left me reeling. I hadn’t expected to find another story of a similar calibre as The Beckoning Fair One (I’d been told there weren’t any). In fact The Honey in the Wall actually replaced Fair One on my personal Bookshelf of Honour.
Gervaise is a serious and capable young woman of 26 who has taken her mother’s place in maintaining and administrating her massive family home. The Abbey has housed the Harow family for generations but now is finally crumbling beneath the combined onslaughts of death duties and taxes. But in taking her mother’s place, she has ceased to live her own life.
A group of young people have come to spend their summer holiday at the Abbey. Freddy Lampeter is among the visitors. Gervaise finds the presence of the popular young man irritating, but it quickly becomes clear that other women will be only too willing to distract him from her; and of course she finds this even more irritating. The title is explained by a scene which occurs near the beginning of the story, where the young people have discovered a bees nest buried in a crumbling Norman wall.
Clot after clot, it was taken out, unsightly lumps, black as pitch, caked and crusted with earth and scurf and bits of mortar. But the housekeeper cut and scalded the outer grime away, and there was enough of the stored sweetness of long-vanished flowers to fill the row of waiting jars.
The story culminates with a game of hide-and-seek played in the massive house at night, the players wearing fancy dress and finding their way through the huge, dark rooms by moonlight. As hostess, Gervaise must join in the game, and she decides to disguise herself as the Lady Jane of an unsigned portrait.
Onions writes like an artist because he was an artist. He worked as a commercial artist before turning to writing. Consider this passage:
She reached the corner chamber from which she had first seen the moon, but already its aspect had changed. That bulging orange ball was now a mere round of brilliance with even its volcano-scape hardly discernible. It changed the colour of things, greened the tinsel of Gervaise’s garments, turned the reds and browns of bodice and stuffed sleeves to black; and her face within the dormer-shaped structure of linen was lost to the bridge of her nose in shadow. And, forgetting all about the game, she thought again of the lovely place, so proudly waiting its end.
The house and the young children playing in it are doomed: the house by finances and a changing class system, the young people by war which even now is waiting to waste or blight their lives.
The sketch below is not one hundred per cent accurate as a representation, but was as close as I got to the passage quoted below it, in which Gervaise has searched for Freddy, but found him engaged in a little game of his own.
...And Gervaise had guessed his dress rightly. He was wearing the garb you will find in any costumier’s wardrobe though there be but a couple there. The close-fitting hood of a Mephistopheles enclosed his small head, and the long crimson cape draped the spare spread of his shoulders and fell to his heels.
But what Pamela wore could not be seen. She was completely enfolded in his cloak, strained to his breast. Her small mask was all that was visible of her. It resembled the petal of some other flower, windlodged in the heart of a dark poppy.
N.B. Trying to date this story, to find exactly what war was threatening at the time, proved almost ridiculously difficult. There seems surprisingly little information available about this writer. The Cambridge Guide to Literature doesn’t list his name. There is a small entry in The Oxford Guide to Literature (which mentions Widdershins but not The Beckoning Fair One). According to WorldCat, the story appeared in the Ghosts in Daylight (1924) collection.
While attempting this last-minute research (which has actually taken several hours!) I quite incidentally found a post by D F Lewis, written back in 1994. And it seems his reaction to reading Oliver Onions was similar to mine. He writes “I genuinely believe I have found for myself a writer to rank alongside the great Robert Aickman. Why hasn’t anyone told me before?”
To read his complete post – and I do encourage it - follow this link:Tentacles Across the Atlantic: Collected Ghost Stories of Oliver Onions.
