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Arthur Machen’s treatment of the occult and a consideration of its reception in England and America

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Arthur Machen’s treatment of the occult and a consideration of its reception in England and America

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Content 71-27,913
CASSAZZA, Alice Catherine, 1912-
ARTHUR MACHEN'S TREATMENT OF THE OCCULT
AND A CONSIDERATION OF ITS RECEPTION IN
ENGLAND AND AMERICA.
University of Southern California, Ph.D.,
1971
Language and Literature, general
University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michig
Copyright © by
ALICE CATHERINE CASSAZZA
1971
THIS DISSERTATION HAS BEEN MICROFILMED EXACTLY AS RECEIVED
ARTHUR MACHEN'S TREATMENT OF THE OCCULT
AND A CONSIDERATION OF ITS RECEPTION IN
ENGLAND AND AMERICA
by
Alice Catherine Cassazza
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(English)
June 1971
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY PARK
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA 90007
This dissertation, written by
Alice..QatJie.j:irie..C.assaj5.aa
under the direction of h&x.... Dissertation Com
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Gradu
ate School, in partial fulfillment of require
ments of the degree of
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
.Qi^A^M.22
1
:
o
Dean
Date
T
.une.,..1.9.7l.
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
/) /" Chairman'
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
My thanks are due to the Machen scholars and students
of the occult who have given me encouragement and assistance
in this project—above all to Professor Wesley D. Sweetser,
Father Brocard Sewell. Adrian H. Goldstone, Gerald J. Yorke,
j i
]Ellic Howe, and Francis King.
I i
I I am particularly grateful to Professor William D. j
j i
iTempleman, Chairman of my dissertation committee, for ;
! i
j i
ipatiently examining my manuscript numerous times in the
i |
;various stages of its progress. I also wish to thank the
i j
other members of the committee—Professor Aerol Arnold and
Professor Gerald La Rue—for their criticism and sugges
tions .
ii
PREFACE |
I
This study will deal with Arthur Machen's writings that)
jtreat "the occult." It will undertake to give the history
of Machen's productions that deal with the occult and to
i :
[make certain comments about their reception in England and [
[America. In its three major divisions (I, II, and III) it
i
Iwill treat Machen's occult writings in nonfiction and fie- |
' . !
|tion and the reception of the nonfiction and fiction by
I i
[English and American readers . This study will not treat J
I I
I
Machen's translations, all from the French—The Heptameron
jof Marguerite of Navarre, The Way to Attain of Beroalde de
Verville, The Memoirs of Casanova, Casanova's Escape, and
the Remarks upon Hermodactylus of Lady Hester Stanhope.
I
i
i
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Pag e
[ACKNOWLEDGMENT „ . . ii
PREFACE iii
INTRODUCTION 1
Definition of the Occult
Brief Biography of Arthur Machen
Review of Related Literature
Bibliographical Notes
Chapter
I. MACHEN'S TREATMENT OF THE OCCULT IN HIS
NONFICTION 13
Machen's Encounters with the Occult
in Wales
Machen's Encounters with the Occult
in London and During the Course of
His Careers in Acting and Journalism
II. MACHEN'S TREATMENT OF THE OCCULT IN HIS
FICTION 65
Diabolism
The Supernatural Being in Folklore
Apparitions
The Holy Grail
Miscellaneous Topics
IV
Chapter Page
III. THE RECEPTION OF MACHEN'S OCCULT WORKS
IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA 192
APPENDIX: OCCULTISM AS REFLECTED IN ENGLISH
LITERATURE EXCLUSIVE OF MACHEN'S WORK
DURING THE PERIOD 1880-1940 2 33
Diabolism
The Supernatural Being in Folklore
Apparitions
Life After Death
The Alchemical Quest and Uncanny-
Science
The Doppelganger and Metempsychosis
Miscellaneous Topics
BIBLIOGRAPHY
264
INTRODUCTION
I Definition of the Occult
i In this study "the occult" refers to a wide range of
manifestations all having points of similarity. Such mani
festations are derived from the religious movements in
i
India, Greece, and Alexandria, and include alchemy, astrol- i
I I
! . i
ogy, theosophy, Rosicrucianism, and white and black magic.
i In his introduction to The Encyclopedia of Occult
{Sciences M. C. Poinsot contends that occultism j
i I
I is at bottom only the study of natural phenomena which
are, however, in the main understood and explained . . .
only by our hyperphysical senses, by what Paracelsus
I ... called the sixth sense. The occult sciences quite
simply explore, farther than is usually done, the im
mense realm of the Visible and the Invisible, still so
rich in mysteries.
i
"Magic" was the ancient name of occultism. The wise
l
men or magi of India, Chaldea, Persia, and Egypt studied
imagic. Among those considered to be famous magi are Moses,
1
(New York, [1968]), p. 14.
1
2
Solomon, Hermes Trismegistus, and Paracelsus. Thomas
vaughan, who wrote under the pseudonym of Eugenius Phila-
lethes, is known in English occultism for his works in
i
Hermetic philosophy. Modern magi listed in The Encyclopedia
!
of Occult Sciences are Eliphas Levi, Stanislas de Guaita,
l
!Sar Peladan, and Papus (Gerard Encausse) (p. 306). |
Gerald J. Yorke says that there are six kinds of magic.
i
JHe presents his classification:
i
j The first, Invocation, is theurgic, and all agree that
j it is white magic. After enflaming yourself with prayer, |
you worship, consume the consecrated sacrifice, or par
take of the appropriate sacrament, and then communicate
! with or become inspired by a Being or Force from one of
1
the nine orders which in various systems form an inter-
1
mediary between God and man... .
! The five remaining types of magic are Goetic, and
I most people regard them as black magic. They are not
i necessarily so unless you abuse them for selfish ends,
I or treat the Intelligences or Spirits concerned as if
| they were gods or angels, praying to them instead of
conjuring them. These five goetic types are:
evocation, in which a particular spirit or intelli
gence is called forth:
working with talismans in which a spirit is bound in
matter:
divination in which a spirit is made to control the
hand or brain of the magician or his medium:
necromancy, a perversion of which occurs at most
spiritualist seances:
and works of fascination, which consist of distract
ing the attention, or disturbing the judgement of
3
2
the person you wish to influence, deceive or destroy.
| The word "occult" traces its origin to the Latin word
joccultum meaning "hidden"; another term used to describe the
occult sciences is "esoterism," which comes from the Greek
esoterikos meaning '"inner. " The early philosophers reserved
i
their most abstract teaching for their best pupils (Ency
clopedia of Occult Sciences, p. 16). This led to the prac
tice of having degrees among disciples so that particular i
knowledge could be imparted at different stages of readiness
land to those most able to profit from such knowledge. The
i
jname "occultism" first appeared in the Middle Ages (p. 17)
when the secret societies added many other doctrines from
the gnosis, from magic, and from the cabala.
i John Senior has compiled a list of tenets useful in
i -3
iunderstanding "the occult." His list includes the follow-
I
ing concepts: the universe is one, single, eternal, in-
jeffable substance; things above are as they are below; the
joriginal source separates into male and female parts and, by
cohabiting with itself, creates; adepts have often organized
2"Magic and the Golden Dawn: A Lecture" (n.p., n.d.),
pp. 10-11.
^The Way Down and Out: The Occult in Symbolist Litera
ture (Ithaca, N. Y., 1959), p. 39.
4
brotherhoods to facilitate the work of self-realization
(pp. 39-41) .
Senior reviews the mysteries of life, death, and
resurrection in the ancient religions of Babylon and Egypt.
He shows that the symbolism conveyed by these mysteries
appears in all occult systems:
The soul is a grain, and unless it die, it cannot
flower. The way down—into Hell, into mortification,
into the abyss of the unconscious—is the way up. The
descent into Hell is the way to Heaven. (p. 13)
The occult doctrines of astrology and alchemy are not the
superstitious nonsense that modern scientists would have one
believe. Senior is convinced that the world of today must
admit total failure in interpreting either astrology or
alchemy. He points out that astrology is essentially mys
tical: "the duty of man, as in all occult systems, is to
realize his solar character" (p. 27). And as for alchemy,
J [it] is the astrology of earth, as astrology might be
! called the alchemy of stars . Its basic assumption is
that all nature strives toward a return to its single
source, and as the mystic strives to transmute his self
into Godhead, the alchemist attempts to assist the
process in nature by transmuting baser metals into
purest ones. (p. 27)
The chemical process is not just an allegory and nothing
more. Senior says:
5
In this living universe metals are as alive as we are
and can be changed as we can be changed.... Alchem
ists identify their "work" with every conceivable occult
system. They were often cabalists, for example. Since
the symbol for fire in alchemy is a triangle and for
water an inverted triangle, their combination—a super-
imposition of the two—is represented by a Star of
David. (p. 28)
Numbers and odors had important roles in alchemy. Odors
[also correspond to colors, sounds, stars, and metals.
Senior endeavors to summarize the basic belief of every
loccult system in this fashion:
Everything--the universe or men and things—is one; j
everything acts in correspondence with everything else,
striving to realize the appointed end, the sublime per- '
fection of gold, the sun, the light, the Everlasting
i God. (p. 28) !
| . i
It has been shown that although the occult world view i
i I
i
ihas identifying attributes, the synthesis of elements in
occultism is so broad that what one generally regards as
"supernatural" is included. In regard to this, Arthur E.
Waite says, "The ways indeed are many, but the Gate is
one." Senior paraphrases the well-known scriptural passage
pertaining to heaven: "In my Father's house are many man
sions with many doors, both front and back. Even the
i
i
The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross (New Hyde Park,
N. Y., n.d.) , p. 631.
i
6
dirtiest alley may lead someone in" (p. xiv).
' Occultism as practiced by adepts of the various broth
erhoods relies heavily on ceremonies and the symbolism of
i
alchemy and astrology, but it does not deny spiritualistic
phenomena or the existence of fairies and demons. Even
i
witchcraft has been found to be a "poor relative of the .
higher magic." [
i
i
Arthur Machen attempts to shed light on the definition ;
'of occultism by opposing the term to mysticism. In Dreads >
i !
{and Drolls he refers to an occultist who, he writes, j
| i
| gradually withdrew himself more and more from the world \
of occultism—which is a world where visible and sen- i
| sible marvels happen or are supposed to happen—and
attached himself to the teaching of Jacob Behmen [Jakob
Bohme], to the world of mysticism, where the signs and
wonders are of the spirit, not of the body. I
I Before leaving the definition of occultism, I would
J
'like to draw attention to an occult doctrine that has par-
!
iticular significance for literature. It is the concept of
the double. In literature this is often referred to as the
idoppelganger. It is found in occultism in the beliefs in j
i
Spennethorne Hughes, Witchcraft (London, New York, i
Toronto, [1952]), p. 196.
6"The Man from Nowhere," Dreads and Drolls (London,
1926), p. 82.
7
spiritual affinity and in the astral body. Like souls are
joined by sympathy and become spiritual doubles. Ralph
iTymms explains the astral body as consisting of
an ephemeral covering of the soul, reproducing its j
owner's bodily form; like the ka, or soul-double of the '
Ancient Egyptians, it can at times appear separated from i
the body, as a phantom double, according to the beliefs '
of the high priests of occultism— ... ,
Interest in the occult has played an important part in
lEnglish life and literature. It is not surprising, there
fore, that Machen should be preoccupied with the occult in j
such a great portion of his writing. !
i
i
Brief Biography of Arthur Machen
Machen (1863-1947) has been described figuratively by
Wesley D. Sweetser as "the product of the union between the
Little People and the Roman Legion in the mystic region of
,'Avalon." He was born and reared in Wales. Although at one:
time he had considered the study of medicine, he was always :
profoundly interested in a literary career. When he failed
the preliminary examinations of the Royal College of
Doubles in Literary Psychology (Cambridge, [England],
[1949]), p. 25.
"Arthur Machen (New York, [1964]), p. 18. Hereafter
cited as AM.
8
Surgeonsj he turned his attention to literature as a voca-
i
,tion. "I never have thought of it as a career," Machen
I 9
'writes, "but only as a destiny."
|
| In London he became a cataloguer of rare occult and
l
i
larchaeological books and a reader for George Redway, a pub-
i
i
lisher. According to Sweetser, when Machen left Redway, he
'took with him
I
I a wealth of knowledge of occult doctrines: spiritual-
I ism, the Kabala, alchemy, and the like; of religious
j doctrines dating back to the advent of Christianity;
j and of odds and ends of folklore, legends, and customs.
! All of these quaint and outlandish bits of information
remained in his mind and formed a part of the writings
| that were to come. "
Machen made translations from French literature and became
the editor of Walford's Antiquarian. He later joined the
Benson Company of actors . He quit the stage in 1909 and
became a journalist. During these varied occupations Machen
remained a man of letters still interested in fulfilling his
dream of becoming an important author.
Machen had begun writing as early as 1881, when he
9
Caerleon Edition of the Works (London, [1923]), VIII,
88. Hereafter cited as Works.
10"Machen: A Biographical Study," in Arthur Machen:
Essays by Adrian Goldstone, C.A. and Anthony Lejeune, et al.j
ed. Father Brocard Sewell (Llandeilo, Wales, 1960), p. 5.
9
[published at his own expense 100 copies of his poem Eleu-
isinia. This was not a work of magnitude, but Sweetser
points out that it reveals Machen's "early interest in the
Imysteries" (AM, p. 19). The feeling of awe and wonder which
I
I i
iMachen portrays in Eleusinia was one that was to stay with
i
him throughout his life. It was to appear in his later
works time after time. On occasions the awe may produce in
the reader a wonder when experiencing the ineffable or the |
lunseen, or it may evoke sheer terror following a glimpse of
I the malefic, or it may even exalt the reader to mystical
heights .
I
Machen wrote The Anatomy of Tobacco (1884) during his |
i !
I early London days. He followed this with The Chronicle of j
Clemendy (1888) . He became financially independent between
1890 and 1899, and therefore he was able to devote a great
deal of his time to writing. A great portion of Machen*s
work falls in the last decade of the nineteenth century.
t
i
One of the most widely anthologized stories written by
IMachen during this time is "The Great God Pan." It was
published with his "The Inmost Light" by John Lane in the
Keynotes Series (1894). Machen's The Three Impostors was
also published by Lane in 1895 in the same series of books.
The Hill of Dreams was written in the 1890 decade, but not
10
printed in book form until 1907 . Machen continued writing
well into the twentieth century. Much of this work is in
'the occult vein.
I
i
| At the present time Machen is known best for his weird
I
(and occult tales, such as "The Great God Pan," "The Red
Hand," "The Shining Pyramid," "The Children of the Pool,"
|and the various stories first included in his The Three
I
{impostors. By his own admission Machen said that he "was
i
'always a dabbler in the occult sciences." Indeed his
.stories reflect this concern with occult ideas .
I During his lifetime Machen achieved fame for a tale
!
{entitled "The Bowmen," wherein supernatural bowmen come to
I
jthe aid of British soldiers at a critical moment in World
War I. This story, which very nearly assumed the proportion
of a national legend, and Machen's tales of the extraordi
nary have attracted a small but loyal group of readers.
| Review of Related Literature |
A number of works have been written in which Machen*s l
{association with the occult is considered. Significant {
Henry Danielson, ed., Arthur Machen: A Bibliography
with Notes Biographical and Critical by Arthur Machen (Lon
don, 1923), p. 4
11
critical contributions have been made by Dorothy Scar
borough , who gave some space to Machen in her work The
Supernatural in Modern English Fiction (New York and London,
1917) and Paul Jordan-Smith, who wrote "Black Magic: An
Impression of Arthur Machen" in his On Strange Altars (New
York, 1924). H. P. Lovecraft's Supernatural Horror in Lit
erature first appeared as a periodical work in 1927 and was
later reprinted in book form (New York, 1945) . Lovecraft
lauded Machen's ability to weave tales of terror. Madeleine
1
L. Cazamian devoted a chapter to Machen in Le Roman et les \
i
Idees en Angleterre: L'Anti-Intellectualisme et L'Esthe-
!
tisme (1880-1900) (Paris, 1935). An appreciative work, i
Arthur Machen: Weaver of Fantasy, was written by William j
i
F. Gekle (Millbrook, N. Y., 1949). Peter Penzoldt con- J
i
tributed a study of Machen in The Supernatural in Fiction j
([London], [1952]). Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier in- j
i
eluded Machen in Le Matin des Magiciens: Introduction au
Realisme Fantastique (Paris, 1960). This work was trans
lated with some omissions by Rollo Myers in 1963. Aidan
Reynolds and William Charlton published Arthur Machen: A
Short Account of His Life and Work (London, 1963) . The best
scholarly treatment is to be found in Arthur Machen, by
Wesley D. Sweetser (New York, [1964]). Sweetser's book is
12
mainly biographical and critical, but it does contain not
able information regarding Machen's use of occult concepts.
! Bibliographical Notes
i
j There were no textual problems in this study. The j
i
jCaerleon edition of Machen (Works I-IX, London, [192 3]) and |
the Philip Van Doren Stern edition of Machen's stories en- \
titled Tales of Horror and the Supernatural (New York, 1948)!
were used wherever possible. Many of Machen's works are not]
i i
'included in these booksj hence, other texts were also ex- I
|amined. !
1 <
The bibliographical aids for Machen scholarship are
i
extensive. Adrian GoIdstone and Wesley D. Sweetser have
prepared a bibliography of printed works by and about Macheri
entitled A Bibliography of Arthur Machen (Austin, Texas,
[1965]). They have included in their list theses that have
been typewritten. The GoIdstone-Sweetser bibliography has
ja lengthy list of books and pamphlets containing mention of '
i !
Machen. Sweetser has added to this list his later bibliog- j
raphy, "Arthur Machen: A Bibliography of Writings About
Him," English Literature in Transition, XI (1968), 1-33.
CHAPTER I
i
I
MACHEN'S TREATMENT OF THE OCCULT
j IN HIS NONFICTION
The most significant nonfiction of Arthur Machsn con
sists of his three autobiographies--Far Off Things, Things
Near and Far, and The London Adventure or The Art of Wander-|
ing. In these works the reader is frequently informed of
iMachen's concern with the occult. The three books follow
I i
i .
(Chronological sequences with occasional flashbacks telling i
of particular events in Machen's early life. There is much
repetition of ideas and even of incidents . Far Off Things
(1922) begins with Machen's childhood and then recounts his
first residence in London with his return to Wales. Things
I
lNear and Far (1923) concerns Machen's writing and acting j
i :
careers in London. The London Adventure (1924) gives some
i
'of Machen's impressions of London. The autobiographical
series ends with the year 1923. In these autobiographies i
Machen omits many details of his life. For example, there
I
13
14
are no references to his first or second marriages, and
there are no particulars regarding his various journalistic
assignments.
i
|
I As the reader follows Machen from childhood to 192 3,
! . !
jhe notes the influence of the Welsh environment on a certain
i I
i i
tendency toward the occult in Machen. It was not only the
transcendent beauty of the Welsh landscape that affected
Machen but also the lore and traditions of Wales. Machen's
|early associations provided him with knowledge of the Roman *
i
[occupation of Britain, Celtic folklore, and Arthurian leg-
j
j
jend. An only son of a poor Welsh clergyman, Machen had a
i !
! I
'limited library at his disposal, but his readings included j
imuch occult material. As a youth in Wales he first learned
about alchemy. His readings in the journals of the day,
Household Words in particular, brought him into contact with
a profusion of ghost stories.
J
Some of Machen's experiences during his walks in the i
I i
i
^surrounding regions of his native Caerleon-on-Usk also have
an occult quality.
When Machen moved to London in the early 1880's, he
1
Stuart Ellis, "The Ghost Story and Its Exponents,"
Mainly Victorian (London, [1924]), p. 325.
15
found a world occupied to a noteworthy degree with the
occult. Spiritualism, theosophy, and infernal cults were
'the subjects of much discussion. Machen's own employment
before 1900 in London included cataloguing occult books for
two publishers. His friendship with A. E. Waite, the cele-
! I
brated historian of occultism, and his interest and member- ,
i
ship in the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn were forceful ,
i
occult influences in Machen's life. ,
i
i Many of the journals of the day dealt with the findings
i
Jof the Society for Psychical Research. Toward the end of
i
[the nineteenth century and during the early twentieth cen-
Itury reputable scholars became concerned with comparative l
I
Ireligion and folklore. The Grail legends and fairy tales
I
jwere studied. During the 1920's there were many histories
and analyses of witchcraft. Machen's career as a newspaper
man led him to investigate poltergeist activities in var- j
I
ious parts of England. Machen found, furthermore, a rein- I
forcement of certain phases of occultism in his own exper-
:
iences: on a number of occasions he speaks of events that
seem to him to be incapable of a natural explanation.
In addition to his autobiographies Machen produced
other nonfiction in which he alludes to occult matters.
Such works consist mainly of brief articles in newspapers
16
and magazinesj essays, personal letters, and a longer work
ientitled The House of the Hidden Light: Manifested and Set
Forth in Certain Letters
Machen
from a Lodge
s Encounters with
in Wales
of
the
the Adepts
Occult
In Far Off Things Machen presents a vivid account of
his childhood. We see the almost enchanting effects of
Machen's walks in the wooded hills and along the river in j
his native region. In the very earliest references in the
autobiography the occult to Machen seems to mean "the hid-
I
den" or "that which cannot be seen or detected in the nat- [
ural environment." Machen senses the wonder behind natural ;
objects; he feels that a hidden power lies just beyond that i
which he can see or hear. He writes: |
I
Everywhere, through the darkness and the mists of the
childish understanding, and yet by the light of the
child's illumination, I saw latens deitas; the whole
, earth, down to the very pebbles, was but the veil of
a quickening and adorable mystery. (Works, VIII, 25)
i
Machen contends that the attitude of the child is more re-
i
ceptive to the abstruse and the mysterious than that of the
adult. The child says in his heart: "'Things are because ]
they are wonderful'" (p. 25). The mature man is not im
pressionable, but once he accepts the idea of latens deitas,
17
he has the intellectual capacity to understand more deeply
than the child. No man, however, will ever be able to ex
plain the nature and the actual workings of this mystery.
|
iMachen enlarges on this view by saying:
I
!
j The good people—amongst whom I naturally class myself—
feel that everything is miraculous] they are continu
ally amazed at the strangeness of the proportion of all
things. The bad people, or scientists as they are some
times called, maintain that nothing is properly an object
of awe or wonder since everything can be explained.
I (pp. 127-128)
Machen relates a significant experience that occurred
i
j
jas he was walking in the countryside. He and two friends
i
Iwere in a desolate region that Machen describes as follows:
i
j
i
i It was a place of rough grass, winter withered] of
! bracken clumps turned brown; of brambles that had for-
! gotten autumn berries, black and richj of the twisted,
ancient thorn tree, dark and dreaming of fairyland. And
as we passed on our way, while the keen wind shook the
bare, brown boughs . . . there I saw on the hillside,
under a low black thorn bush rising from withered
bracken, the green leaves and pale yellow blossoms of
a daffodil, shaking in that high, cold wind.
Vere Deus . It was forgotten . . . Forgotten then,
! but remembered always: the shining apparition of the
\ god.
2
i
Machen's youth in Wales was subject to additional in
fluences that affected his personal and literary attitudes
"With the Gods in Spring," Strange Roads (London,
1923), pp. 52-54.
18
toward the occult. The antiquity of his surroundings and
the fairy and folk beliefs of the country people stimulated
him to entertain thoughts of the mysterious and the awe-
i
inspiring. The ancient past of Caerleon with its prehis
toric, Roman, and Arthurian associations made a deep im
pression on Machen. Aidan Reynolds and William Charlton
speak thus of the atmosphere surrounding Machen's formative
(years: "the greatness of Rome and the romance of Arthur and
|
jbehind them both, an uneasy mystery, bequeathed by unknown
!
races of primitive men, still lying like a mist in the folds
i
of the hills" (p. 4) . j
Throughout his work Machen speaks of Roman antiqui
ties . Some of his literary references are to actual
archaeological discoveries, as the statues of fauns and
satyrs and the fragment of the temple "'Nodens, god of the
depths'" (Works, VIII, 18). Other antiquities are imagined,
|as the red jar of thousand-year-old wine that appears promi-
j i
.nently in Machen's early fiction.
i
The folk beliefs that influenced Machen were Celtic in
origin, and many stories based on such beliefs may be found
in the two-volume Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (1901)
by John Rhys. Sweetser enumerates some of the beliefs that
he thinks Machen borrowed from the Welsh oral tradition for
19
use in his literary works:
. . . the substitution of a fairy, usually dwarfish,
wizened and malignant, for an infant in the cradle; the
story of a little girl who went away every day to play
with the Tylwyth Teg; the old woman who overheard an
unintelligible language; the conception of the soul as
a pigmy or lizard; "the belief in transformations or
transmigrations"; the idea of the Tylwyth Teg as dwarfs;
! the fact that fairies were once regarded as cannibals;
the theory that since fairies are associated with an
cient sites, they may perhaps have been real people,
such as the Picts, who lived in the Lowlands of Scot
land, underground or in hillocks. (AM, pp. 86-87)
Machen's references to antiquities and folklore do appear in
i . . . I
[his nonfictional works but not to the degree that they do in|
I i
i
ihis fiction. In his autobiographical works Machen discusses;
i j
jfairy beings. He says that j
i
i
the fairies are the gods of the heathen come down in
the world: Diana become Titania. Or the fairies are
a fantasy on the small, dark people who dwelt in the
land and under the land before the coming of the Celts;
or they are "elementals," spirits of the four elements
. . . the stories may be—occasionally, not always by
any means—the veils of certain rare experiences of
i mankind; experiences, I may say, which are best avoided.
(Works, IX, 154-155)
i :
'In his essay "A Midsummer Night's Dream" Machen adds two
!
more types of fairies : the Robin Goodfellow being, who will
work for you if you reward him, and the fairy queen whom
mortals visit and "who makes three hundred years seem but
20
3
the passing of a single night."
I From his vantage point as an adult Machen looks back on
his childhood and wonders about other lore that perhaps was
known by the Welsh folk. He thinks that at times witchcraft
practices could have been resorted to by the villagers. He
says: "I have wondered . . . whether, by any possibility, j
there were waxen men, with pins in them, hidden in very j
secret nooks in many of the Llanddewi cottages"(Works, VIII,
25). Machen's comment about the possibility of waxen men in
his native village was written either in 1915, when the
first draft of the autobiography was made, or in 1922 when j
1
i
Far Off Things was first published in book form. By this I
time Machen would have become aware of many phases of the
black arts by reason of his reading and also because of his
knowledge of the practices of the Satanic cults that were
in existence in the late nineteenth century.
i
Machen's reading of occult works began when he was
jeight or nine years of age. He tells of his early encoun
ter with alchemy in Household Words, a magazine edited by
Charles Dickens . In Far Off Things Machen confesses that
his attention was attracted to alchemy at this period and
'Dog and Duck (Toronto, 1924), pp. 64-65.
21
that alchemy, in fact, engaged his curiosity throughout his
adult life (Works, VIII, 39) . He mentions three theories
regarding alchemists: (1) that they transform inferior
metal into superior, (2) that the great alchemical books are
really symbolical, and (3) that the Great Experiment of
which the alchemists speak is the Great Experiment of the
mystics . Machen voices his respect for some of the old
alchemists without revealing his belief or disbelief in
their ideas (pp. 37-38) .
Machen tells of his youthful interest in alchemy, but
he does not seem to have been impressed by the ghost stories
i
|
that we know often filled the pages of Household Words. |
Ellis has commented that in Household Words and All the Year
Round, also edited by Dickens, "some of the best ghost
stories ever written" (p. 325) can be found.
Machen's Encounters with the Occult in London
i .
i and During the Course of His Careers m
I Acting and Journalism
I
When Machen went to London, he came into a world that
paid considerable attention to the kinds of things he was
later to write about in his fiction. He encountered much
that was occult in the journals and newspapers of the day.
Ghost stories continued to appear in print. In fact, the
22
second half of the nineteenth century has been acclaimed as
4
"the hey-day of the good old-fashioned ghost story." The
Review of Reviews (1891-1892) "supplied a large number of
Real Ghost Stories, under which title they were reprinted in
October, 1897" (p. xxi). '
Spiritualism, along with ghost stories, had become
popular in the seventies and eighties. According to Warren
Sylvester Smith, nearly all of the intellectuals of these
5
decades "gave Spiritualism some attention." Sir Oliver
!
Lodge, Frank Benson, and Arthur Conan Doyle were among those
who expressed a belief in spiritualism. Sir Oliver Lodge,
jsir William Crookes, and Sir William Barrett thought that
psychic phenomena should be subjected to scientific investi
gation. But Stevens says that "they brought on their heads
a storm of ridicule that tended to compromise their standing
as men of science.
j In 1892 London the Society for Psychical Research was
i
I Montague Summers, ed., The Supernatural Omnibus (New
York, 1933), p. xxxv.
5
The London Heretics 1870-1914 (London, [1967]), p.
144.
"William Oliver Stevens, A Book of Real Ghosts: Un
bidden Guests (London, 1949), p. xi.
23
being organized. This Society proposed to inquire "into a
mass of obscure phenomena which lie at present on the out-
7
skirts of our organised knowledge." It was "scrupulous in
its testing of evidence and ruthless in exposing frauds"
(p. 140). The publications of the Society were consistently
scientific in their tone and method. From the day of its
inception the Society prospered. It became a vogue with thej
!
upper classes, including on its roster the names of Arthur ,
i
i
|Balfour, Leslie Stephen, John Ruskin, Gladstone, Tennyson, j
William James, and Sir Oliver Lodge.
j With regard to spiritualism Machen may write seriously
i j
or humorously. He can make caustic remarks about the gib- i
berish and humbug associated with spiritualistic perform- j
ances, or he can become objective, when he is faced with
what he considers to be a genuine phenomenon. He can, for
example, speak of the famous medium Home, who reputedly
floated in and out a castle window, and say that "if levi-
tation . . . were a criminal offence and Home had been put
on his trial he would have been convicted" (Works, IX, 14-
15). Machen's conclusion about spiritualism is that "it is
7
Samuel Hynes, The Edwardian Turn of Mind (Princeton,
N. J., 1968), p. 139.
24
rubbish, nonsense, inveridical to the last degree. Yetj let
us beware," he cautions. "Not one of us understands the
universe" (p. 15).
Machen's ability to look at both sides of a question |
1
and give a fair assessment appears in his account of an
i
impromptu seance—a seance engaged in for amusement by his
friends. Machen declined to join the group around the
table. After the seance ended, one of the participants told
. i
Machen that suddenly during the ritual
I
| A sense of great horror had come upon her, and with that
1
a physical sense as of an icy breath in the little, !
I stuffy, overheated room; and then, last of all, there
I had been the feeling of a presence of a dear friend, who |
j had died suddenly some four years before.
i
Machen compares such occasional opening of doors into an- i
other world with the seances of professional spiritualists.
He observes that when such spiritualists do claim to make
contact with the spirit world, the spirits are gay and [
i i
|friendly. There is no horror, "no sense of the awfulness
of another order of being impinging on ours" (p. 67). j
i
Machen believes that his friend "came into momentary contact}
with unconjectured worlds which it is not meant to visit"
I
i
^The London Adventure or The Art of Wandering (London,
[1924]), pp. 65-66.
25
(p. 68). He thinks that the occasional, unsolicited glimp
ses of the hidden world are the true experiences. The feel
ing of horror attests to their authenticity.
At times Machen deals with spiritualism in a lightly
humorous and genial way. He has great fun, for example,
when he parodies a seance. He depicts the medium as an
ignoramus who calls up
John Milton, the author of the "Fairy Queen." He says
that he . . . spends most of his time with Shakespeare |
and Ben Jonson. Shakespeare has confessed to him that
all his plays were written by Bacon. The evidence will
be found in a brass box under the Tube station at Liver
pool Streeet. Pope often has tea with him. He says
j they don't use alcohol there. (Works, IX, 16)
The seance continues with the apparition of an American
Indian and a gramophone playing "Abide with Me." All pres
ent "repeat the Lord's Prayer, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
expresses his intense gratification" (p. 16).
! As an introduction to an essay on the hangings at
JTyburn Tree Machen continues to speak humorously of the
i
spirit world. He writes as follows:
There is a great talk of ghosts just now. They call
them spirits, but ghosts is the good and ancient word
of England. These ghosts come when the lights are out,
and utter nothing or very little of consequence; and
sometimes their remarks are "evidential" and sometimes
they are not "evidential," and on the whole nothing much
happens. But how is it—if ghosts are, in fact, accus-
tomed to revisit the lands beneath the moon—that anyone
26
dare to pass the intersection of the Edgeware Road with
the Oxford Road after night has fallen? . . . how is it
. . . that the site of Tyburn Tree is not dense with the
spirits of the great multitude of men and women who per
ished awfully there during the space of three hundred
years or more?
9
Automatic writing and the activities of professional
-spiritualists and spirit photographers were the subjects of
many newspaper articles during the late nineteenth and early
i
twentieth centuries. The Society for Psychical Research
also dealt with many inexplicable matters that were reported
by spiritualists and their followers.
; Machen repeatedly makes fun of mediums; nevertheless,
i i
he shows a disinclination to reject completely all matters i
pertaining to professional spiritualism. In regard to
ectoplasm, he says: "In all probability the whole theory
is a pack of nonsense, and the 'phenomena' are the tricks
of clever cheats: still, what do we know?" (Works, IX,
:
207). Machen's position fundamentally is one of non-
lacceptance of professional spiritualism. We have shown,
i
however, that in some cases he contends there may be genuine
manifestations of the supernatural.
Machen's early days in London came at a time when not
"Deadly Nevergreen," Dreads and Drolls, p. 188.
27
only spiritualism but also the theosophical doctrines of
Madame Blavatsky were being generally discussed. Theosophy
was based on revelation, and as it developed, it became
mystical and ritualistic. Smith maintains that theosophy
could not have met with such great success in London had not
a revival of spiritualism preceded it (p. 142).
The Theosophical Society had begun in New York in 1875
under the leadership of Madame Helena Blavatsky. In 1879
Madame Blavatsky established the world headquarters of the
theosophy movement in Adyar, India. She then left her In
dian shrine in 1884 and went to Paris and London in the hope
of attracting converts to her Society. Madame Blavatsky
said that her mission to England "was to overthrow Spiritu
alism, to convert materialists, and to demonstrate the
existence of the Masters" (Smith, p. 148) . She was enor
mously successful in her presentation of her doctrine, which
iblended the philosophies of the East and the West. Accord
ing to Smith,
The real vogue of Theosophy arose from the miracles,
or, as Theosophists would prefer to say, the phenomena,
connected with the Masters. Those who achieve a high
enough plane to go beyond mere mysticism to Occultism
can establish communication with the Masters (Mahatmas).
These Masters are neither gods nor angels, but beings
who have arrived through many reincarnations at a stage
of existence where their bodies, and the material world
in general, no longer hamper them. They can course
through the world at will, leaving messages, and even
on rare occasions appearing in the dim pre-dawn beside
the bed of one of the faithful. (pp. 149-150)
Madame Blavatsky had claimed to be able to communicate with
certain of the Mahatmas.
i
i During the time of Madame Blavatsky's residence in
i
London, a struggle broke out within the membership of the
Theosophical Society at Adyar. The Christian missionaries,
ever at enmity with the theosophists, obtained for publica-
I i
ition the letters of Emma Coulomb. Madame Coulomb had been j
! . !
I in Cairo in 1870 when Madame Blavatsky had lived there. i
j I
[Madame Blavatsky was studying magic, but she was also en- |
jgaged in an extended love affair with an operatic singer. j
1
i
i
Madame Coulomb and her husband used this information to
blackmail Madame Blavatsky.
i
While Madame Blavatsky was in England, a group of
theosophists expelled the Coulombs from the headquarters at
I
j Adyar . In their anger the Coulombs gave to the missionariesj
ia packet of letters from Madame Blavatsky. These letters j
1
!
I
contained proof of the unsavory activities of Madame Bla
vatsky in her pre-theosophy days.
When Madame Blavatsky was exposed, it was also found
that she and her colleagues had used trickery to work their
so-called "miracles." The shrine at Adyar, for example,
29
had been fitted with sliding panels and contrivances of all
kinds . The letters from the Mahatmas were found to have
been written by Madame Blavatsky herself.
The Society for Psychical Research sent a special rep
resentative to India to make a report on theosophy. The
investigator found that the charges of charlatanry were true
(Smith, p. 152). As Smith points out, however, the report
of the Society for Psychical Research "was not the end
either of Blavatsky or Theosophy" (p. 155) . |
|
Machen had always been loud in his denunciation of j
i |
Icharlatans, but he was particularly hard on theosophy. He j
1
j
! . I
writes: j
In a more direct line of descent from Gnosticism is the
horrible, squalid and noisome imposture known as Theoso
phy, which, for the last twenty years or more has in
fested foolish drawing-rooms and (occasionally) foolish
newspapers; accumulating a record of sham miracles, sham
deities, sham gospels and of other things still more
unsavoury, that is probably unequalled in the history
of the folly and wickedness of the world.
i
i
In spite of his condemnation of theosophy Machen admits that
he has feelings of tenderness for Madame Blavatsky. He
feels compelled to declare, nevertheless:
iU
"The World to Come," in The Glorious Mystery, ed.
Vincent Starrett (Chicago, 1924), pp. 136-137.
30
Her learning was humbug, her books were humbug, her
signs and wonders were most impudent and arrant humbug—
but, she was undoubtedly on the grand scale; she is not
altogether unworthy of being mentioned in the Great
Calendar of Quacks beside Joseph Balsamo, called Cag-
liostro. (p. 137)
Spiritualism and theosophy were but two of the mani
festations of the occult encountered by Machen in the London
of the 1880's. Londoners seemed to be engaged in a search
I
of the bizarre. William Francis Gekle speaks of the preva
lence of peculiar clubs at this time (p. 57).
What was true in London was also true in France. The
jFrench novelist Joris-Karl Huysmans compares the latter
!
years of the nineteenth century with the declining years of
the previous century. He has one of his characters say in j
La-Bas (1891):
"When materialism is rotten-ripe magic takes root. Not
to go further back, look at the decline of the last
century. Alongside of the rationalists and atheists
you find Saint-Germain, Cagliostro, Saint-Martin,
Gabalis, Cazotte, the Rosicrucian societies, the infer-
j nal circles, as now."
1
^
i
I
j It would have been difficult for Machen to ignore the
occult turmoil of the times even had he so desired. His
native interest in the mysteries and his early employment
11
Down There (La Bas): A Study in Satanism, trans.
Keene Wallis (Evanston and New York, 1958), p. 261.
31
in London would have persuaded him to look closely at the
manifestations of the occult in his environment. But yet
i
[an additional influence was being exerted upon him. In 1887
I
he met Arthur Edward Waite, a scholar whose principal in-
I i
Iteres t lay in tracing the development of various kinds of
i
i
occultism—Rosicrucianism, devil worship, magic, the legend
of the Holy Grail, and the cabala. Machen's friendship with!
Waite lasted over fifty years. Throughout these years Waite
[was delving into documents relating to the occult.
i
Waite expresses the view that "the occult sciences are
! !
|in the minds of their disciples, all inter-connected] it is j
^impossible to pursue one without becoming tinctured by an-
' i
other" (p. 589). The occult tradition becomes in degenera- I
tion a magical art, and from this it is but a step to black
magic. According to Waite the cultus diabolicus in France
developed in the nineteenth century, but it "offered ele-
'ments which are not to be found in old legends of the Black
i
iSabbath and in old records of sorcery" (p. 593). Authors
'so adorned the tales of black magic that the religion of
the evil principle was subsequently put into application
(pp. 593-594). The occult circles practicing black magic
in Paris were derived from the past, no doubt, but their
doctrines had been altered. Waite's investigation of
32
Satanism in France is found in his Devil-Worship in France
or The Question of Lucifer (1896) . Although Waite seems to
i
'respect Huysmans, whom he credits with the discovery of
12
modern Satanism, he cites other authorities (notably, Dr.
I
Bataille) who tell preposterous stories. Waite does not
doubt authenticated reports of the theft from churches of
ciboria containing consecrated hosts (p. 15), but he appears
I
to be laughing at some of the more fantastic experiences of j
1
i
!the Satanists . I
| i
1
There was some emulation in London of the Parisian
jinfernal societies (Gekle, p. 57). Whether or not Machen
1
i
i i
[was drawn into membership in any of the diabolic or freakish!
I !
clubs is a matter for speculation. His membership in the I
Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, a Rosicrucian-type so
ciety, has been established. In Far Off Things Machen says
that he was involved in more than just one group, however.
He writes: "I am reminded of one of the secret societies
I
i
;with which I have had the pleasure of being connected"
(Works, VIII, 25).
Machen's employment in London brought him into direct
contact with occult books. He worked as a cataloguer first
Devil-Worship in France (London, 1896), p. 11.
33
for George Redway and later for a firm of rare book dealers.
He describes the works he catalogued for Redway both in a
fictional essay entitled "The Priest and the Barber" (1887)
and in his autobiography Things Near and Far. In Redway's
i
attic storeroom Machen catalogued books on alchemy, astrol
ogy, magic, witchcraft, diabolical possession, the cabala,
and the evil eye, and found there also works on secret
societies, ghosts, spiritualists, psychic researchers, mes-
i
merists, diviners, Gnostics, and Mithraists. In regard to |
the books with which he worked, Machen says: j
i
| In a word, the collection in the Catherine Street gar-
I ret represented thoroughly enough that inclination of
the human mind which may be a survival from the rites
of the black swamp and the cave or—an anticipation of
a wisdom and knowledge that are to come, transcending
all the science of our day. (Works, IX, 13)
Machen contends that much ancient and modern occultism may
jbe brushed aside as false or fraudulent. He concedes, how-
lever, that authentic phenomena of an occult nature do occur
from time to time (p. 13).
Machen gives some advice to the person who would read
occult works. It is his belief that such a reader should
avoid "over-thoroughness" (p. 18). He thinks that a deep
and systematic study of Crollius, Thomas Vaughan, Robert
Fludd, and the cabalists would prove disenchanting. Machen
34
advises the reader rather to select inspiring chapters and
passages only. He clearly demonstrates that he is inter
ested in the occult but that he is by no means a serious
student of all the branches of learning that are included
in the so-called "occult sciences." Machen will accept only]
i
I
the ideas that please him.
Sweetser presents a list of occult books that Machen i
acknowledged having read:
. . . besides Jennings' Rosicrucians, are Jennings'
:
Phallicism; Waite's Real History of the Rosicrucians,
| Doctrine and Literature of the Kabalah, and The Hidden
i Church of the Holy Graal; Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine;
j Frazer's Golden Bough; and Rhys's The Arthurian Legend.
;
! He probably also read Blavatsky's Isis Unveiled; Rhys's j
Celtic Folklore and Lectures on the Origin and Growth j
of Religion as Illustrated by Celtic Heathendom; and j
Waite's Book of Black Magic. (AM, pp. 90-91) j
j
i
Machen had married in 1887, and between this date and
1892 (Works, IX, 62) he received a small legacy that af
forded him sufficient leisure to try to achieve success as
a writer. Machen worked diligently at his task, and, in- j
jdeed, most of the works for which he is known today were
written in the last decade of the nineteenth century.
The death of Machen's wife in 1899 brought his literary
endeavors to a temporary halt. He was overwhelmed with
grief to the degree that he could not mention the cause of
35
his sorrow even in his autobiographical works . When Machen
was in the very depth of misery, he began to undergo a
series of strange experiences. He describes these in Things
Near and Far: "great gusts of incense" seemed to blow into
his nostrils as he walked on the London streets (Works, IX,
128); he had the feeling of walking on air or on resilient
pavement (p. 128) ; he saw the pictures on the walls of his
apartment quiver and dilate (p. 129). One afternoon when
Machen was beside himself with despondency, he thought of a I
:process that might possibly afford relief. Although he was
i
{successful in his experiment, he never did reveal its exact
i
nature. All that he says is this: "without crediting what
I had heard of this process or indeed having any precise
knowledge of it or of its results, I did what had to be
done—" (pp. 131-132). Machen writes that "the state which
followed this last experience was of high consequence" (p.
|134). Everything of body and mind seemed to dissolve in
jbliss. He was in a euphoric state, in fact, which lasted
for many days. During the period of his prolonged rapture
Machen observed that he had the ability to stop a migraine
headache by the power of his own touch (p. 136). He com
mented that such headaches never did return, although the
euphoria faded after a number of days.
36
Even though Machen did not divulge the details of the
process he used to overcome his extreme misery, he says in
a letter to Munson Havens: "I may tell you that the process
whxch suggested itself to me was Hypnotism; I can say no
more .
Machen's unusual sensations had scarcely subsided, when
he found himself beset with a series of odd encounters.
Strange persons entered his life very suddenly and as sud
denly departed (Works, IX, 142-149). Certain characters
from his work The Three Impostors also seemed to come to
life (pp. 142-149). Machen met a "real" Miss Lally and a
Young Man with Spectacles, both characters in The Three
Impostors. According to Reynolds and Charlton (p. 73), the
Young Man with Spectacles told Machen that "Crowley had
hired gangs of ruffians to waylay him all over London."
Aleister Crowley was a member of the Hermetic Order of the
Golden Dawn; at this time he was gaining notoriety as a
magician. Machen would have been aware of many of Crowley's
activities through Waite's association with the Golden Dawn.
It was shortly after the series of encounters and sensations
" I o
December 1, 1924, in A Few Letters from Machen
(Cleveland, 1932), pp. 31-32.
37
that Machen himself joined the Golden Dawn.
The actual text describing the story of the Young Man
with Spectacles does not name Crowley. It merely refers to
the enemy of the Young Man as a monstrous "expert in Black
Magic-, a man who hung up naked women in cupboards by hooks
.which pierced the flesh of their arms" (Works, IX, 146).
Machen affirms that there is such a person, but he does not
give Crowley's name.
Reynolds and Charlton regard Machen's experiences as
"quasi-mystical adventures" (p. 76). They consider the in
cident of the process or experiment described by Machen as
"Hypnotism" (Works, IX, 146) as the most remarkable one.
They write: "One gets the impression he had other milder
ones, such as a sudden feeling of lightness quite different
from physical faintness or an access of good spirits" (p.
76). These writers also conjecture that in 1899 something
'made Machen think
i
i
i that the way a person transcended the bounds of environ
ment, or, at least, the way he might be represented as
transcending them, was by sudden visions of the . . .
inner structure of the universe, visions accompanied by
a pleasant sense of relief. In the absence of direct
evidence as to why he thought this, one presumes the
cause was his experiment. (pp. 76-77)
Reynolds and Charlton contend that at this time Machen
Las in grave danger of turning to diabolism. They see in
'the process mentioned by Machen the author's attempt "to
bewitch himself" (p. 74). They conclude that it was "not
actually Satanist in character" (p. 74) but that it was a
type of experiment frowned on by orthodoxy. They surmise i
i !
I |
that the process was "poised between psychology and magic" j
(p. 74). j
j
Reynolds and Charlton seem to equate Machen's hypnosis j
or self-hypnosis with a touch of the Satanic. It is pos-
sible that Machen's sensations and euphoria may have been j
caused by narcotics, but there is nothing to substantiate
la belief in the author's use of hallucinatory or other >
i I
drugs.
Perhaps a little more of the nature of the experiment
may be determined if one turns briefly to the description
Machen gives in his novel The Hill of Dreams (1907) of a
! j
isimilar process employed by Lucian the protagonist: \
i |
l He had read books of modern occultism, and remembered j
some of the experiments described. The adept, it was i
alleged, could transfer the sense of consciousness from
the brain to the foot or hand, he could annihilate the
world around him and pass into another sphere .. . A
certain process suggested itself to his mind, a work
partly mental and partly physical, and after two or
three experiments he found to his astonishment and de
light that it was successful. Here, he thought, he had
discovered one of the secrets of true magic, this was
the key to the symbolic transmutations of the eastern
39
tales. The adept could, in truth, change those who
were obnoxious to him into harmless and unimportant
shapes, not .. . by transforming the enemy, but by
transforming himself.
This is admittedly conjectural. However, Reynolds and
I
Charlton continue to press the point, thus far not estab- |
, !
ilished by fact, that Machen at one time could have turned |
j
to diabolism. They write:
|
Now a touch of the diabolist was always latent in |
Machen's character, so, at least, he believed, and he
preferred Bohun Lynch's cartoon of himself, which brings
it out, to all the other representations that were made j
I of him, in which he looks merely placid or benign.
, (P- 76) !
I i
It does not seem to occur to the authors that Machen's i
i
preference for the "diabolic" representation may have been |
due to the time of its appearance (1923). In the 192O's
i
jMachen was winning readers through his tales of the evil
and the monstrous. The Lynch caricature was appropriate
for an author of such stories. i
! j
| That Machen's process contained nothing whatsoever of |
i i
ithe Satanic does seem almost assured by Machen's comparisons
of his experiment with certain non-diabolic descriptions of
feelings similar to those that he evoked. Machen cites one
of his own stories, "The Great Return," in which the Holy
(London, n.d.), pp. 132-133.
40
Grail comes back to a Welsh village; throughout its stay
the country folk experience the same warm, euphoric glow
that he had felt. He also said that he learned that the
monks of St. Columba also experienced surges of joy and
strength similar to those of his own experience (Works, IX,
137). It does not seem likely that Machen would associate
a Satanic act or experiment in black magic with the glory
of the Grail or the piety of the monks of St. Columba. Even
t
supposing that Lucian's act in The Hill of Dreams is based
on his own process, there is nothing in its description that
! . i • -i i • !
points to diabolism.
i
I In writing of such feelings and encounters, Machen
apparently thinks that he has made himself vulnerable to
critics. He writes:
There is one thing that I hope I may be spared, that is
the comment of the Occult Oriental Ass. I confess that
i I have written all this with difficulty, and with doubt
i as to the decency of writing it at all. . . . But I do
| hope that nobody will say: "Why, this is only Ruja-
1
Puja! You get it all in the first chapter of the Anan-
gasataga Raja. It's all perfectly elementary. Little
Hindu children learn their AB C out of it in the Svanka
Visatvara." (Works, IX, 140)
The unusual incidents in Machen's life in 1899 may have
been responsible for his turning to the Hermetic Order of
the Golden Dawn. He appeared to be seeking assistance "or
41
at least some enlightenment" (Reynolds and Charlton, p. 78).
The fact that Waite was influential in the Golden Dawn was
no doubt a factor in Machen's decision to join. In 1900,
therefore, Machen entered the Order.
The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the Outer had
i
been founded in England in 1887 (Yorke, p. 1) for the pur
pose of instructing its members in the occult sciences (p.
8). It was a secret society having grades or degrees of
membership. Yorke writes:
I The G.'.D.'. had eleven grades . . . subdivided into
I three groups. The first was called the Golden Dawn
| (G.'.D.*.) with five degrees, the second the Rose of
Ruby and the Cross of Gold (R.R. et A.C.) and the third
the Silver Star (A.". A.*.) each of three degrees. Mem
bers of the G.'.D.". group were not allowed to know who
were in the R.R. et A.C. group, which was known as the
second or inner Order, while the third group or A.*. A.",
consisted of the "Secret Chiefs." Since the latter do
not appear to have been living, they were probably
mythical, like the Mahatmas of the Theosophical Society,
(p. 1)
i
Within three or four years of its founding the Golden
bawn had temples in London, Bristol, Bradford, Edinburgh,
and Paris (p. 3). By 1900 it numbered 200 members. Accord
ing to Rosicrucian tradition women as well as men were eli-
gible for membership. The most celebrated members were
MacGregor Mathers, who was one of the founders of the London
Isis-Urania Temple, William Butler Yeats, A. E. Waite,
42
Aleister Crowley, Allan Bennett, Florence Farr (Florence
Emery), and Arthur Machen. Yorke believes that occult
writers Algernon Blackwood, Bram Stoker, and Sax Rohmer
(Arthur Sarsfield Ward) were also members of the Golden
Dawn (p. 8) .
It is probable that Machen met Yeats at the Isis-
Urania Temple. In response to John Gawsworth's question—
"When and How did you come to meet W. B. Yeats?"—Machen
15
replied: "In a place that I may not name."
In 1900 trouble erupted in the London Temple of the
Golden Dawn. Yorke cites the cause as the "suspicious na
ture" of MacGregor Mathers, who had "accused all but five
members of the Isis-Urania Temple in London of plotting
against him" (Yorke, p. 5). Virginia Moore sees Crowley as
16
"the mam irritant."
Crowley had joined the Order in 1898. By 1899 he had
passed four degrees of membership, and he now thought that
he was ready for the fifth grade or Adeptus Minor. The
London Order of the Golden Dawn refused initiation to him
15
Unpublished questionnaire, Special Collections, Uni
versit y of California at Los Angeles, no pagination.
16
The Unicorn: William Butler Yeats' Search for Real-
i
i
it y (New York, 1954), p. 160,
43
in this grade. He therefore went to France^ where he suc
ceeded in being initiated into the Adeptus Minor degree by
MacGregor Mathers. The London members of the Golden Dawn
objected to Crowley's acceptance by Mathers. Crowley said
that the London Adepts envied his rapid progress in the
i
Order (Moore, p. 160). Kathleen Raine contends that "the
last straw" came when Mathers sent Crowley as his delegate ;
17 I
to take over the London Order. Yeats led the revolt j
against Mathers. A kind of magic "war" ensued. The Mathers'
and Yeats clairvoyants and thaumaturgists hurled spells back
! I
and forth (Yorke, pp. 5-6). Yeats became Imperator in 1901,;
i
but there was stil l much friction in the Order. Finally j
I
Waite took charge of the Isis-Urania Temple from '1904 to !
1917. Waite revised the rituals of the Golden Dawn in order
to make them conform to Christian practices (Yorke, pp. 6-
7) .
1
During the period of turmoil the Order encountered yet j
i i
!another kind of difficulty. Mrs. Rose Horos, posing as an j
initiate of a high grade, had approached Mathers. She re- j
putedly proved her capability in occult matters by repeating
i 7
"Yeats, the Tarot, and the Golden Dawn," Sewanee
Review, LXXVII (Winter 1969), 116.
44
to Mathers a certain conversation that he had once had with
Madame Blavatsky. Mathers accepted Mrs. Horos without a
question. In December 1901, however, both Mrs. Horos and
her husband were arrested by civil authorities and tried as
sex perverts . Both were found guilty and given penal servi-
! 18 I
tude. Needless to say, the Horos scandal was a terrible
blow to the members of the Golden Dawn.
In 1905 Machen resigned from the Golden Dawn (Raine,
!
p. 117). In this same year Crowley severed ties with '
j
Mathers and founded his own Order of the A.A. or Silver \
i
i
Star. About five years later Crowley exposed the secret j
ritual of the Golden Dawn in the September 1909 and March I
1910 numbers of the Equinox, a magazine he edited. After
the first publication in 1909 Mathers tried to stop Crowley,
but his injunction was set aside. Israel Regardie writes:
"The result was that in most of the daily newspapers were
i long sensational articles on the recent case and on so-
called Rosicrucian teaching" (p. 27).
i
During the interval between 1899 and 1900 Machen had
occasion to refer to "the occult" in two of his letters to
"Israel Regardie, My Rosicrucian Adventure: A Con
tribution to a Recent Phase of the History of Magic, and a
Study in the Technique of Theurgy (Chicago, 1936), pp. 16-
17.
45
Paul-Jean Toulet, a French writer who was translating "The
Great God Pan." Toulet succeeded in publishing his trans
lation in France in 1901.
In a letter written to Toulet in 1899 Machen refers to
his sensations and encounters. Rollo Myers translates
i
i
Machen's letter in The Morning of the Magicians, by Louis
Pauwels and Jacques Bergier:
"When I was writing Pan and The White Powder I did not
j believe that such strange things had ever happened in
| real life, or could ever have happened. Since then,
I and quite recently, I have had certain experiences in
! my own life which have entirely changed my point of
i view in these matters ... . Henceforward I am quite
! convinced that nothing is impossible on this Earth.
I need scarcely add, I suppose, that none of the ex
periences I have had has any connection whatever with
such impostures as spiritualism or theosophy. But I
believe that we are living in a world of the greatest
mystery full of unsuspected and quite astonishing
things . " (pp . 212-213)
In 1900 Machen again wrote to Toulet. The Rollo Myers
i
.translation follows:
i
i
' "It may amuse you to know that I sent a copy of my
Great God Pan to an adept, an advanced 'occultist' whom
I I met in secret, and this is what he wrote me: 'The
i book amply proves that by thought and meditation rather
than through reading you have attained a certain degree
of initiation independently of orders or organizations.'"
(p. 213)
Louis Pauwels speculates that the "adept" may have been
Waite. Machen had met Waite, however, in the reading room
46
of the British Museum in 1887 . Amelia Hogg, soon to become
Machen's wife, brought about the meeting (Reynolds and
Charlton, pp. 27-28).
Machen's experience in the Golden Dawn was extremely
disappointing. In a number of passages in Things Near and
Far he tells about his disillusionment. He refers to the
Golden Dawn as the "Twilight Star."
He says that he expected to obtain guidance from the
j . !
Order, but the Twilight Star "shed no ray of any kind" ;
! (Works, IX, 140) on his path. Machen remarks that he had
i
jfound the Order's claim to antiquity attractive, but he
hastens to add, "there was not one atom of truth in it"
(p. 151) . In his denunciation of the Order he alludes to
the scandals that harassed the Golden Dawn. Machen writes:
Among the members there were, indeed, persons of very
high attainments, who, in my opinion, ought to have
i known better after a year's membership or less; but the
i society as a society was pure foolishness concerned
i with impotent and imbecile Abracadabras. It knew noth-
1
ing whatever about anything and concealed the fact under |
an impressive ritual and a sonorous phraseology. It
had no wisdom, even of the inferior or lower kind, in
its leadership; it exercised no real scrutiny into the
characters of those whom it admitted, and so it is not
surprising that some of its phrases and passwords were
to be read one fine morning in the papers, their setting
being one of the most loathsome criminal cases of the
twentieth century. (p. 150)
A work that owes its inception directly to the Golden
Dawn is The House of the Hidden Light: Manifested and Set
Forth in Certain Letters Communicated from a Lodge of the
Adepts. This manuscript, privately printed and issued in
unbound gatherings in 1904, was written by both Machen and
I
Waite. Goldstone and Sweetser think that it was intended
i
"possibly for members of the Hermetic Order of the Golden j
Dawn" (p. 28). Sweetser believes that it was written "in a j
spirit of hoax" (AM, p. 56). [
A duplication of the work owned by Gerald J. Yorke
j
bears the notation that Yorke requested Crowley to comment |
on The House of the Hidden Light. Crowley obliged him by .
writing notes on the margins of a number of the pages . The i
notations are legible even on the duplicated form, and they j
j
indicate that Crowley regarded The House of the Hidden Light!
!
as a serious occult document.
Waite opens the book with a pastoral letter in which
ihe gives the general purpose of the work. Then follow J
;thirty-five "Aphorisms and Maxims of the Secret Mystery," ;
i
i
thirty-five "Versicles and Symbols of the Secret Order,"
i
and thirty-five letters. The aphorisms and versicles com- j
press the meaning of the letters in recondite terms. The
first letter is written by Machen, the second by Waite, and
so on. Machen and Waite are named as "The Persons of the
48
Mystery" with their names appearing respectively as Frater
Filius Aquarum and Frater Elias Artista.
In occult societies it is often customary for the ini
tiates to assume symbolic names. These names are usually in
I
i
Latin, and they are either descriptive epithets or mottoes
having special meanings in occultism. A male member of such
an organization as the Golden Dawn, for example, prefaces
his occult name with the word Frater ("Brother"). A female
occultist in the secret society attaches the word Soror or ,
j"Sister" to the Latin term selected as her name. In The
I
House of the Hidden Light the reader will learn of the
activities of Frater Filius Aquarum ("Brother Son of Wa- i
i
i
ters"), Frater Elias Artista ("Brother Elias the Artist"), j
Soror Benedicta in Aqua ("Sister Blessed in Water"), and
Soror Gloriosa in Iqne ("Sister Glorious in Fire"). The
actual names in the Order of the Hidden Light apparently are
inot the same symbolic pseudonyms that the members had actu- i
| j
ally assumed in the Golden Dawn. Waite, for example, was |
Frater Sacramentum Regis in the Golden Dawn, but in The
House of the Hidden Light he appears as Elias Artista. It
is possible that the Sorores of the Hidden Light were not
really members of the Golden Dawn.
The House of the Hidden Light is written in the
49
traditional esoteric style of the documents of the alchem
ists, and it is directed to initiated readers, who presum
ably would understand the veiled references, symbolism, and
special terminology.
Ostensibly The House of the Hidden Light is a serious
I
discussion by two brothers of a secret order. Their letters
concern the rites of the society, the mysteries of nature,
the manifestation of the Light, the Annus Mirabilis, the
Hermetic Marriage, and the importance of the elements of
fire and water. Waite concludes the lengthy and intricate
series of letters by saying in Letter XXXV:
We shall need no longer to go in search of the Soror
Benedicta in Aqua or of the Soror Gloriosa in Igne, for
they will dwell with us after a secret and most intri
cate manner, even as the life of the beloved is hidden
in the life of the lover.
The marginal notes of Crowley indicate that he took the
[entire work as a sincere expression of occultism; he re-
jgarded the Order mentioned as the Golden Dawn. He comments
l
on Waite's passing through the various grades of the Golden
Dawn and sees him as head of the group after the trouble in
the Order.
19
The House of the Hidden Light (City of Zion [London],
n.p., 1904) , p. 178.
50
It is my conjecture that although the work expounds
certain occult doctrines, it nevertheless refers subtly to
personal events in the lives of Machen and Waite.
The arcane language of The House of the Hidden Light
is, in a sense, similar to the love litany that Machen's
character, Lucian, describes in The Hill of Dreams . We read
that the litany delighted Lucian because a great part of
what he had written "might have been read aloud to the un
initiated without betraying the inner meaning" (p. 107).
The same holds true for The House of the Hidden Light. The
entire piece is in occult language for the adepts, but there
i
are other recurring references to a special knowledge shared
by Machen and Waite. Both authors cloak this special knowl
edge in occult terminology and thereby conceal it from all
readers but themselves. Thus, The House of the Hidden Light
has been written for the initiated in a double sense of the
i
jword. It is not only for the adepts of an Order but for twc
very special adepts . A thorough analysis of the actual
meaning of The House of the Hidden Light would require an
investigation too detailed for this study.
Waite and Machen write to each other "as of a Pontiff
to a Pontiff" (House of the Hidden Light, pp. 37, 41), and
Waite says that in truth they are Pontifices Maximi and
51
empowered to speak Urbi et Orbi. This is the language of
Roman Catholicism and therefore incongruous in such a work
as The House of the Hidden Light. The incongruity makes for
humor, especially when both Machen and Waite refer to them
selves in one breath as Pontifices Maximi but in the next as
"poor brothers."
Reynolds and Charlton have identified Soror Gloriosa in
i
I
Iqne as Vivienne Pierpont, a young actress with whom Machen j
fell in love following the death of his first wife in 1899.
i
goror Benedicta in Aqua is no doubt an actual person. Fra-
ter Christophorus appears in The House of the Hidden Light,
and in real life he was Christopher Wilson, a friend of the
writers.
Certain portions of The House of the Hidden Light seem
to tell of the vicissitudes of love. Waite, in veiled
terms, advises Machen against marriage to Gloriosa in Iqne.
i
We have seen that there was an actual Soror Gloriosa in
i
Igne. Reynolds and Charlton show that for a time she ap
peared as a frequent topic of discussion in the correspon
dence between Machen and Waite.
The manner of writing in The House of the Hidden Light
follows, as we have said, the style of the alchemists. This
is also the style that Machen and Waite often used in their
52
correspondence with each other. Reynolds and Charlton quote
from a letter written by Machen to Waite:
"Nay, when I last wrote to you, showing how utterly and
in all things your word had been fulfilled, how she who
was in the Light our exalted sister Gloriosa in Igne
. . . had become of common mortality .. . do you not I
remember that while with some tinge of earthly sorrow,
with some ingurgitation of the Old Evil Cup, I mourned
for the extinction of the torches, the desolation of
Syon, the Prophecy came to me and I announced even from
the ruined walls and river Temple that Life should be j
afforded, that Love should be given, that even while I j
spoke there was being prepared the Mensa Dulcissimi
Convivii. Now, most beloved, I say to you that all
these things have been and are being fulfilled." (p. 87) ;
1
i
The language of the letter quoted above is identical with |
the language of The House of the Hidden Light. The formal j
I
I
prophetic tone and the capitalization of important nouns are
j
similar to the letters written by Machen and Waite in their
occult document addressed to adepts. Reynolds and Charlton
print an additional fragment from Machen: "'Since the
evanishment of the Sisters Benedicta in Aqua and Gloriosa i
| I
jin Igne, there has been manifested the shining beauty of '
I i
ISoror Fides Pura'" (p. 87). Soror Fides Pura ("Sister Pure
Faith") was Purefoy Hudleston, to whom Machen became engaged
in the summer of 1902 . Machen and Purefoy were married one ,
year later.
The letters cited by Reynolds and Charlton are not
53
dated, but they undoubtedly belong to the period between
1901 and 1902. The House of the Hidden Light, from the fact
of the date on its title page (1904), was ready for publica
tion at the time when Benedicta in Aqua and Gloriosa in Iqne
were out of Machen's life.
The humor of mingling personal situations with alchemi
cal abstractions was very likely never apparent to anyone :
but the authors. To give an example of the hidden meaning, !
i
I shall quote from Letter XIV written by Machen: i
I have also had tidings recently from our venerable and I
! elect sister Benedicta in Aqua, which to my judgment |
shows that a certain purging is being operated within j
her, and that her soul longs for the Light. But she
alleges that you have altogether neglected her. How is !
this, brother of the Light? If the Shepherd of the j
Mysteries guard not the sheep, feeding them by green
pastures, shall not evil wolves pass into the fold?
(House of the Hidden Light, pp. 84-85)
The aphorism for Letter XIV reads as follows: "The children
;of the elemental orders move blindly in search of the Light"
j
| (p. 21). The versicle for the same letter is: "Earthly
love produces from time to time such an indifference towards
the outward object, that a certain neglect may follow, but
this is not an operation of the work" (p. 28). Other ex
amples could be cited to show the deceptive way in which
Machen and Waite dealt with their narration of affairs of
the heart in The House of the Hidden Light. The last refer
ence that I shall make comes from Letter XXXI written by
Waite. In this letter Frater Elias Artista advises Frater
Filius Aquarum not to marry Gloriosa in Igne; "Hence I
counsel you to work no longer with Fire, as I also have
i
iceased working with the Water of the Sages, in obedience to
i
i
certain admonitions which have come to me from the verge of ,
i
things" (p. 162).
! In several places Machen has spoken of Waite's ability [
j
jto see humor in the created world. Machen writes: "A stu-
jdent of the deep things of mysticism has detected a curious '
I
[element of comedy in the management of human concerns . . ."
i I
! I
(Works, IV, 48). Again he mentions in Things Near and Far:
"Well does A. E. Waite declare that there is an element of
waggery in the constitution of the universe" (Works, IX,
105). Machen also had this gift of being able to see the
I ;
h i
ihumor in situations that concerned him. Whether or not he |
and Waite planned to foist a hoax on the membership of the I
Golden Dawn is not known. It suffices to point out here
that The House of the Hidden Light does have a personal as ,
well as an occult significance understood only by a select
few.
Not long after Machen's withdrawal from the Golden
55
Dawn another kind of delving into "the occult" captured his
attention. He developed a scholarly interest in the legends
surrounding the Holy Grail.
By the end of the nineteenth century scholars were ad
mitting the historicity of King Arthur. They had arrived
at the point of view that the stories about Arthur and the
knights were based on "historical or quasihistorical per-
20
sonages." They accepted the historical Arthur as a Celtic
chieftain who had succeeded in holding off the Anglo-Saxon j
invaders of Britain. However, no proof of their being based,
upon real life was attached to the Grail stories. Nash says
that such tales "are usually regarded as wholly legendary"
(p. 110).
The Grail Quest has a profound relationship with oc
cultism. The high orders of occultism seek the transmuta
tion of self so that eternity can be contemplated. The
I pursuit of the Grail is the seeking of mystical sanctity.
i
|The medieval romances that are primarily Arthurian illus
trate the search for a chivalric ideal—an ethical mode of
action for life on earth; the Grail stories present the
on .
Berta Nash, "Arthur Machen Among the Arthunans," in
Minor British Novelists, ed. Charles A. Hoyt (Carbondale
and Edwardsville, 111., [1967]), p. 109.
56
individual's quest for a mystical illumination.
Waite, who had examined the romances and scholarly
research based on the Grail., summarizes the entanglements of
the legend as follows:
i
I have said that the Sacred Vessel is sacramental in a
high degree, at least in the later developments: it
connects intimately with the Eucharist; it is the most
previous of all Relics in the eyes of all Christendom
indifferently; for, supposing that it were manifested J
at this day, I doubt whether the most rigid of Protes- ,
tant Sects could do otherwise than bow down before it.
And if at the same time the roots of it lie deep in J
folk-lore of the Pre-Christian period, in this sense
it is a Dish of Plenty, with abundance for an eternal
festival, like that which the Blessed Bran provided for
his heroic followers. So also from another point of
view, it is not a Cup but a Stone; and it came to this
earth owing to the Fall of the Angels. In either case, j
it is brought to the West; it is carried to the East I
again; it is assumed into Heaven; for all that we know !
to the contrary, it is at this day in Northumbria; it
is in the Secret Temple of a Knightly Company among the
High Pyrenees; and it is in the land of Presbyter Johan
nes . It is like the Cup of the Elixir and the Stone of
Transmutation in Alchemy—described in numberless ways
and seldom after the same manner; yet it seems to be
one thing only under its various veils; and blessed are
' those who find it. 21
SThe real quest for the Holy Grail is not made with horse anc
lance; the quest is of the spirit. The mystic search be
longs to the secret tradition of occultism which "goes
2
"'"The Holy Grail (New Hyde Park, N. Y., [1961]), p.
21.
57
22
beyond the ken of the literal-minded many."
Machen says that his attention was directed to the
23
Grail by Waite. The Grail for Machen "has the fascination
of an insoluble problem" (p. 9) . Machen's study of the
I
i
Grail legend first appeared in 1907; it was later printed m
i
the Vincent Starrett edition of essays entitled The Glorious
Mystery. At a still later date Machen revised and length-
i
ened his treatment of the Grail for the English printing of i
The Shining Pyramid (1925) (Goldstone and Sweetser, p. 52) .
Machen employs the Middle English spelling of the word; j
I
hence, he uses "Graal."
i
Machen believes that the Grail legend is Celtic in i
origin. He writes that "it is the glorified version of I
early Celtic Sacramental Legends, which legends had been i
married to certain elements of pre-Christian myth and folk-
24
lore." He finds the evidence for this hypothes is in the
i
lives of the early Welsh saints, and particularly in the i
life of St. David (p. 100). The Grail itself appears in
i
22John C. Wilson, "Introduction," The Holy Grail, p. I
xvi. I
23
"Introduction," The Shining Pyramid (London, 1925),
p. 9.
24"i>he Secret of the Sangraal, " The Shining Pyramid,
P- 90.
58
various forms in the romances; it may be a sepulcher, a
stone, a paten, the vessel Christ used to wash the feet of
His disciples, and a cup or chalice. Machen says: "There
i
is strong reason for believing that the Graal was first con
ceived as a portable altar, belonging to one of the saints
j 25
!of the Celtic Church, perhaps to St. David." The Grail
church symbolized the Celtic Church, which was later made to
conform to the liturgy established by Rome. Machen writes
i
that "the anti-Celtic fervour of the Roman authorities was I
1
jso thorough that there is no such thing as a Celtic Liturgy
in existence" ("Secret of the Sangraal," p. 117).
i
j Machen's thoroughness in his examination of the Grail j
i i
i
ilegend was exemplary. He felt that he was a qualified
scholar in the Grail investigation. Sweetser says: "For
his research and his treatises on the subject, he was not
exactly joking when he asked Hillyer in a letter dated
! February 1, 1928, to try to get him an honorary degree"
(AM, p. 51) .
Machen has incorporated some of the language of "the
occult" in his theory of literature. He frequently speaks
of literature as an alchemical art because of its power to
25
"Parsifal": The Story of the Holy Graal ([London],
n.d.) , p. 5 .
59
transmute life. When such a transmutation is made, he con
tends the vision of Paradise is possible. Ecstasy, for
Machen, is the one determining quality of real literature.
He declares that the idea is the soul in literature, and
style is "the glorified body of the very highest literary
art. . . . it is the outward sign of the burning grace
within" (Works, V, 39). Art with Machen is not a conscious
product. Machen uses the metaphoric device of the "Shadowy
I
Companion" to describe the unconscious magic at work when
art is being produced. This Companion, the etheric double
!
of the occultists, is
the invisible attendant who walks all the way beside !
us, though his feet are in the Other World .. . it is
he who whispers to us his ineffable secrets, which we
clumsily endeavour to set down in mortal language. . . .
while the artist works he is conscious of joy and of
nothing more; he works beautifully but he could give
no rationale of the process, and when he endeavours to
explain himself we are often perplexed by this strange
spectacle of a man wholly ignorant of his own creation.
j (Works. V, 118-119)
l
j
! Machen's significant literary criticism is contained
in his work entitled Hieroglyphics (1902) .
During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centu- j
ries there was intense activity among anthropologists and
folklorists. Sir James Frazer, Jessie Weston, Jane Harri
son, and John Rh$s were working with myths and marchen.
60
Andrew Lang's name might be added to this group, as his
collections of fairy tales reflect the enthusiasm of the
period.
i
The occult scholars Ralph Shirley and Montague Summers
should also be mentioned. Shirley was an astrologer and
also the editor of The Occult Review. Summers wrote numer
ous works on demonology; he became the defender of the
medieval attitude toward witchcraft. Margaret Alice Mur
ray's books on witchcraft support her hypothesis that the
i
witch cult was a survival of a primitive religion. Hughes
contends that Murray's The Witch-Cult in Western Europe was
jpartly responsible for the vogue of the literature of dia
bolism in the twenties and early thirties (p. 1).
Although Machen respects the efforts of some of the
scholars in the field of folklore and comparative religion,
he seems to think that at times they go too far. He is
i
l intolerant of the incessant explaining of the origins of
i
I
t
various modern ceremonies and practices.
In Far Off Things he describes his fondness as a boy
for dark lanterns. He pretends to perceive in the lighting
of the lantern a mystery and a ceremonial. He writes:
Of one thing only I am certain, and I speak with all
due deference to the author of "The Golden Bough," not
forgetting Miss Jane Harrison; the lantern service of
61
my early boyhood had no reference whatever to the young
crops or to the sprouting of the corn. As I lit the
wick I did not say, "0 Sun! shine thou also on the land
and make it warm so that there may be many cabbages, so
that green peas may not be lacking to the lamb which is
equally nurtured by thy beams." Of course, I am quite
willing to allow that, as a general rule, an anxiety
about the spring crops fully explains the origin of all
painting, all sculpture, all architecture, all poetry,
all drama, all music, all religion, all romance: I
admit that the Holy Gospels are really all about spring
cabbage, that Arthur is really arator, the ploughman;
that Galahad, denoting the achievement and end of the
great quest, is Caulahad, the cabbage god. I admit all
this because it is so entirely reasonable and satisfac
tory, and, indeed, self-evident; but though all Frazer-
dom should rise up against me, I cannot allow that when
I lit my dark lantern I was inviting the sun to help the
crops. (Works, VIII, 108)
Machen's dealings with the occult in his personal life
were for the most part far removed from what is generally
regarded as the ghostly. He has reported only one notable
encounter with a ghost, or, at least, with ghostly foot
steps . He and a companion were walking on a lonely country
iroad toward Marlborough, and according to Machen,
suddenly, quite instantly, without any preparation of
a distant sound, soft at first, and growing louder by
degrees we both heard the sharp rattle of footfalls
coming behind and gaining on us. We looked back fully
expecting to see the figure of someone in a great hurry
and making pace; but no one was visible . . . the road,
white and chalky, without the shadow of hedges, was
quite clear before us. While we turned and stopped the
sound ceased, but when we went on . . . the clatter of
hurrying steps was at once renewed and increased. . . .
It was not an echo; the road was soft with dust, and
our own footfalls made no distinguishable sound. . . .
62
The rattle of pursuing footsteps ceased as we saw the
glimmer of the lamps in the little town below. (Strange
Roads, pp. 18-20)
Machen offers no explanation for the sound of the footsteps,
but he is careful to affirm that he is "not one of those
j
happy people who have only to think of fairies to be hallu
cinated, whether visibly or audibly" (p. 21).
On one other occasion Machen recognizes in a seemingly
inexplicable coincidence the intrusion of a higher sphere.
He says in The London Adventure that he has always tried "to
reverence the signs, omens, messages that are delivered in
i
queer ways and queer places, not in the least according to
the plans laid down either by the theologians or the men of
science" (p. 14). He tells how a "message" was delivered
to him as he sat in a tavern one afternoon in January 1921.
He describes his feelings before the delivery of the message
—his despondency because of "humiliating mortifications" at
the hands of others . While he was thus gloomily reflecting,
i
Machen was approached by a man who asked him how to spell
exaltavit. The stranger explained to Machen that the word
appeared in a quotation and that he wanted to know its cor
rect spelling. The sentence quoted to Machen was: "Depo-
suit potentes de sede, et exaltavit humiles" (p. 17) ("He
put down the mighty from their seat and exalted the
63
humble"). Machen was startled to hear these words. He
immediately became more hopeful. He realized that the ad
monition, so to speak, coming as it did at a critical mo
ment, might have been coincidental. His honest feelings,
however, are summarized in his concluding comment on the
i
jsubject: "It is not for us to laugh at the message, because
the messengers don't wear their dalmatics in Fleet Street
taverns or show a glory about them" (p. 28). j
| In recapitulation: Machen's treatment of the occult in
i
his nonfiction shows a concern for the ineffable beauty |
{ |
ipresent in nature but yet hidden from view; his treatment j
!includes the considerations of fairy tales, occult books, j
a secret society, theosophy, and the many remarkable inci- j
dents associated with spiritualism; it is in Machen's per
sonal experiences with the occult, however, that the reader
discerns the author's great willingness to believe in a
f
'hidden world. I
j j
Machen never laughs at the mystery surrounding all
things, but he does ridicule the so-called professional
dealers in the occult, and he can be humorous at the expense
of the traditions of the Rosicrucians. He is especially
harsh with the charlatans, although he is equally hard on
the scientists who believe that they will eventually find a
64
complete explanation for everything (Sweetser, AM, p. 57).
Sweetser suggests that the real test of Machen's views
on occultism is to be found in a list of books he chose "for
one of his correspondents to read: Mysticism by Evelyn
Underhill, The Grail by Waite, and Religio Poetae by Coven
try Patmore" (p. 57) .
Machen has stated a principle that seems to form the
basis for his acceptance or rejection of occult phenomena.
JThe principle, which may very well be called Machen's Law,
j
'is this : "... if we are justified in disbelieving certain^
! !
[tales, though we have no logical grounds for our disbelief, I
j I
jso also we are justified in believing other tales, though wej
26
have no logical grounds for our belief."
26
"The Art of Unbelief," Dog and Duck, p. 225,
CHAPTER II
I
MACHEN'S TREATMENT OF THE OCCULT
IN HIS FICTION
Machen's literary career began with the publication of
Eleusinia (1881), a poem describing the rites of Demeter.
I
As the poem progresses, it tells of the gathering of the i
worshippers of Demeter, their cleansing in the sea from all
{
I
stain of sin, the religious processions, the vigil, and
!
finally the secret initiation rite for certain candidates. j
Eleusinia lacks poetic merit, but does show that Machenj
i
had a marked interest in the occult. The Mysteries of
i
Eleusis had degrees of membership and reserved the highest
knowledge for special candidates. These Mysteries were
I
^actually considered to be the forerunners of the rites of \
| I
jmodern Rosicrucian sects. The Hermetic Order of the Golden
Dawn maintained that the Rites of the Rose and the Cross had
been practiced "in Egypt, Eleusis, Samothrace, Persia,
65
66
Chaldea and India, and in far more ancient lands." At the
time of writing Eleusinia Machen did not belong to an occult
organization, but the poem shows that he did recognize in
the Rites of Eleusis the assumed presence of arcane knowl-
edge that could be divulged to worthy initiates. .
Machen's next work was the prose The Anatomy of Tobacco
j
(1884), published by George Redway. This work bears a simi-j
i
j
larity to Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy. The Anatomy of ;
i
Tobacco is of no significance in the study of Machen's
i
treatment of the occult. It did lead Machen to George Red-
| l
[way, however, who later employed him to catalogue a collec-
i
j
tion of occult works. Machen's catalogue was issued under '
the title of "The Literature of Occultism and Archaeology." i
In 1887 Machen wrote an introduction to this book list. He
thought that "a parody of the famous chapter in 'Don Qui
xote' relating to the examination of the Knight's library
i i
by the Curate and the Barber would make an amusing adver- j
i
tisement of the library of Catherine Street" (Danielson, j
J
pp. 7-8) . Machen wrote such a chapter, which appeared under
the title of "Don Quijote de la Mancha: A Chapter from the
i
^Israel Regardie, The Golden Dawn: An Account of the
Teachings, Rites, and Ceremonies of the Order of the Golden
Dawn, rev. and enl. (St. Paul, Minn., [1969]), II, 34.
67
Book Called the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quijote de la Mancha
Which by Some Mischance Has Not Till Now Been Printed."
This essay has since been reprinted as "The Priest and the
Barber." In it Machen substitutes books dealing with oc
cultism for the books dealing with chivalry in Cervantes'
i
[novel.
i
j In a conversational and witty manner Machen depicts
I
Master Licentiate, a priest, and Nicholas, a barber, in an j
lattic storeroom. The place is cluttered with occult works
j
of all kinds. Master Licentiate comments on books that the j
jbarber puts into his hands, as the two men survey the con- !
| |
tents of the garret. Some of the works mentioned are Ptol- j
emy's treatise on astrology, several volumes of Thomas
Vaughan, the Book of the Offices and Orders of Spirits,
Collectanea Chimica: A Collection of Rare and Curious
Treatises on Hermetic Science, and the Key of Solomon the
JKing. While the priest and the barber are admiring the
I :
ipentacles, seals, cabalistic designs, and magic writings in
i
|a curious volume, a sheet of paper flutters to the floor.
The priest divulges the contents of the note. He says that
it is an account "'of an interview with a Spirit, showing
how a man conjured a demon to appear and how they spoke
i 68
2
jtogether . '" Other books described are The Herball by
Girarde, The Discovery of Witchcraft by Scot, the predic
tions of Nostradamus, and The Open Entrance to the Shut
Palace of the King. Of the work mentioned last, Master
Licentiate has this to say: "'I know the book, and have read
,it in Latin, but can scarce say the entrance is altogether
an open one. Rather it is a wonderful maze, adorned with
mystical figures that shodow forth the Great Work'" (p. 68).
The books of Swedenborg, Mesmer, and Lilly are examined. He
refers to Jacob Behmen (Jakob Bohme) as "'that Prince and
Prodigy of all Theosophers'" (p. 70). The browsings of
Master Licentiate and Nicholas are interrupted by the house
keeper. The priest and the barber depart from the garret
with regrets, leaving the "books in darkness" (p. 71).
Perhaps one might gain some idea of Machen's own occult
preferences from reading "The Priest and the Barber," but
the significance of this essay for literary study is the
success with which Machen achieves his parody of Cervantes.
The occult topics treated by Machen are the following:
diabolism, supernatural beings in folklore, apparitions, the
2
Machen, "The Priest and the Barber," The Shining
Pyramid (Chicago, 1923), p. 67.
69
Holy Grail, the alchemical quest, the annihilation of self,
and the relationship between man and the animal world. The
discussion of Machen's fiction dealing with these subjects
will follow this arrangement.
! Diabolism
Although Machen was acquainted with many of the rami
fications of occultism, he seemed to concentrate on the j
diabolic aspects . Witchcraft and demonology predominate in
many of Machen's works. In as early a work as The Chronicle
i
I of Clemendy (1888) Machen brings in magical contrivances,
i
jincantations caused by wizards, and a number of other de- j
vices of witchcraft. The presence of these borrowings from j
!
diabolism indicates Machen's interest at this period of his
career. Sweetser says: "The element of demonology and
witchcraft enters almost all of his tales in one form or
3
another under the guise of a symbol, thinly veiled."
j The first of Machen's stories in which he uses a physi
cal operation to achieve an unearthly consequence is "The j
! S
Great God Pan," published in 1894. In the story Raymond,
who calls himself a doctor of transcendental medicine,
3
"Machen," in Arthur Machen, ed. Father Sewell, p. 16.
70
assisted by his friend Clarke, performs brain surgery on
Mary, who apparently is the ward of the doctor. Mary has
consented to the operation, which will enable her to see the
god Pan. Seeing Pan is
"an exquisite symbol beneath which men long ago veiled
their knowledge of the most awful, most secret forces
which lie at the heart of all things; forces before
which the souls of men must wither and die and blacken,
as their bodies blacken under the electric current. i
Such forces cannot be named, cannot be spoken, cannot |
be imagined except under a veil and a symbol, a symbol i
to the most of us appearing a quaint, poetic fancy, to ;
some a foolish tale."
After the surgery has been completed, Mary's face expresses
an ecstatic joy, but this joy is immediately followed by ,
expressions of fear and revulsion. Elsewhere Machen has
offered an explanation of the outcome of seeing stark real
ity or true essence. He says that
we behold no essences, nor could we bear to behold them,
if it were possible to do so. We know what happened to
I the lady . . . who obtained her desire, that she should |
see her lover Zeus in his true essence, as Hera saw him. [
I Her wish was fulfilled, and she was blasted and consumed i
' in a devouring flame. (London Adventure, p. 70)
Mary, too, is blighted when she has the vision of Pan. She
i
awakens from the operation a complete idiot. She later
Machen, "The Great God Pan," Tales of Horror and the
Supernatural, p. 107.
71
dies, but not before giving birth to a daughter Helen, a
fragile, olive-skinned, Italian-appearing girl. The doctor
observes Helen one day and finds that she is playing pre
sumably with fauns and satyrs. He takes her to a different
i
part of England and hires a farmer's wife to rear her. The '
child has an evil influence on other children: a young
friend Rachel goes with Helen into the woods and later dies ,
from shame; a little boy Trevor is reduced to imbecility
after seeing Helen with a satyr. Helen disappears for a
time. When she is seen again, she is a mature woman of j
London and married to Herbert, whom she proceeds to ruin. |
Villiers, the friend of Herbert, investigates the story of ,
Helen in order to find out why his friend committed suicide.
Before Helen is confronted regarding her treatment of Her
bert, she has managed to become a social leader in London.
She is famous for serving excellent wine, which, she says,
i i
is a thousand years old. Her emergence as a wealthy hostess
'is coincidental with a rash of suicides among men who have j
!
I
been attracted to her. Most of the suicides have been by !
hanging. Hence, it is fitting that villiers decides to
force Helen to hang herself. He succeeds, and as she dies, |
she changes from woman to man to beast and finally to a
jelly-like substance. Then the process is reversed for a
72
moment, and Villiers sees a form, the symbol of which "may
be seen in ancient sculptures, and in paintings which sur-
I 5
'vived beneath the lava, too foul to be spoken of."
It will be seen that "The Great God Pan" has strong
i
ties with Greek and Roman mythology, indicated by the ref- i
erences to "seeing Pan," the allusion to Helen's satyr com
panions, the veiled hints of the rites in green vineyards, j
and the introduction of Roman artifacts, such as the statue
of the satyr and the pillar dedicated to Nodens, the god of
I
'the abyss. With Machen, however, the implications of diabo-^
jlism also are present. He recognizes that the fauns of |
l
Greek mythology are much different from the evil beings i
described in "The Great God Pan." He writes:
"And be not doubtful, Brother, concerning such a Rite
as that of the Hermetic Marriage. For the fauns and
nymphs that are mentioned in it are not those beings
evil and unspeakable that we discoursed of in 'The
Great God Pan': they are rather symbols of the child
hood of the world, of that first school whereby men
were led in the beginning, of that natural ecstasy. j
. . . Such were the myths of the Greeks." (House of
the Hidden Light, p. 125)
Sweetser is of the opinion that although Pan "may be j
I
liberally construed as the devil, Machen had in mind a more
"The Great God Pan," Tales of Horror and the Super
natural, p. 111.
I 73
general concept calculated to impart the terror of the un
known when he first conceived this experiment in transcen-
jdental surgery" (AM, p. 112) . Sweetser thinks that Machen
I
may have been thinking of a drawing of the Sabbatic Goat
that Waite used as an illustration for The Book of Black
Magic. This symbol had "a goat's head and feet, wings,
jwoman's breasts, and indescribable eyes" (p. 112) . It is
possible that Machen already knew of this representation
from his occult readings, as it is the Goat of Mendes de
scribed by Eliphas Levi. A he-goat worshipped at Mendes,
JEgypt, is supposed "to have been the goat of the Witches'
i
jsabbath." Eliphas Levi also referred to his goat as the
i
JBaphomet of Mendes. At the time of Machen's composition of
"The Great God Pan" there was much talk regarding a differ
entiation between the Satanists and the Luciferians. Jules
Bois claimed that Baphomet was adored by the Luciferians,
7
land he concluded that Lucifer was none other than Pan.
1
jWaite, however, identified the Luciferians with the diabo-
jlists . He said: ". . .we must all agree that from the
Richard Cavendish, The Black Arts (London, [1967]),
p. 315 .
'James Laver, The First Decadent: Being the Strange
Life of J. K. Huysmans (London, [1954]), p. 146.
74
'standpoint of Christian and Latin orthodoxy the Luciferian
is a diabolist, though not in the sense of the Satanist"
(Devil-Worship in France, p. 2 3) .
That Machen intended to regard Pan as the equal to the
devil is seen in many ways. He subtly prepares the reader
for the evil outcome of the operation on Mary by having
Clarke experience an ominous dream. As Clarke dozes, he
recalls a hot summer day in the country fifteen years ago.
Then
. . . in place of the hum and murmur of the summer, an
infinite silence seemed to fall on all things, and the
wood was hushed, and for a moment of time he stood face
to face there with a presence, that was neither man nor
beast, neither the living nor the dead, but all things
mingled, the form of all things but devoid of all form.
And in that moment, the sacrament of body and soul was
dissolved, and a voice seemed to cry "Let us go hence,"
8
Mary's revulsion at what she saw and her subsequent idiocy
and death point to the evil nature of the presence. That
Pan is diabolic is definitely shown in the last sentences
that Clarke appends to Dr. Phillips' account of the child
hood of Helen: "Et Diabolus Incarnatus Est. Et Homo Factus
Est" (p. 75). The translation of this inscription is: "And
g
"The Great God Pan," Tales of Horror and the Super
natural, p. 65.
75
the devil was made incarnate and made man." Sabbats and
black masses may be suggested by Herbert's remark to Vil-
liers: "'I have seen the incredible, such horrors that even
I myself sometimes stop in the middle of the street, and ask
whether it is possible for a man to behold such things and
| I
live'" (p. 78). Villiers feels that Herbert has indeed been
a participant in indescribably evil deeds. A vague terror
j
is reflected in Herbert's face. Later on a gentleman is j
found dead before Helen's London house. The doctor who
!
examines the body pronounces the death to have been caused
i
from "sheer, awful terror" (p. 82). I
When Villiers visits Helen's house, he is so much over-!
come with horror that he nearly faints. This sensation is I
i
i
particularly potent in a large room on the first floor. TheJ
collection of black and white drawings by an artist whom
'Helen corrupted also reveals diabolic horror. The Walpurgis
1
night orgies so familiar in the accounts of witchcraft are
! ;
^epicted by the artist. The dances on the mountain top and ,
1
by the desolate shore are portrayed. Fauns, satyrs, and
Aegipans appear in the drawings. The description of a man ;
observed leaving Helen's house lends credence to the opinion
that "The Great God Pan" is a tale of diabolism. Villiers
says :
76
"... the man's outward form remained, but all hell
was within it. . . .he saw nothing that you or I can
see, but he saw what I hope we never shall. . . . that
man no longer belonged to this world; it was a devil's
face I looked upon." (p. 102)
At last, when Villiers forces Helen to hang herself, he sees
her body first reduced to a protoplasmic substance; then the
i
process is reversed, and a "horrible and unspeakable shape,
neither man nor beast" (p. Ill) is changed into human form,
i
i
and death finally occurs. I
The suggestion that Helen really has nothing in common j
with human beings is made in various parts of the story. j
I I
[Herbert exclaims: "'I don't think she [Helen] had a name.
i
I i
No, no, not in that sense. Only human beings have names'"
(p. 78). Dr. Raymond, who performed the operation on Mary,
cries out: "'. . .1 forgot, as I have just said, that when
the house of life is thus thrown open, there may enter in
that for which we have no name, and human flesh may become
{
the veil of a horror one dare not express
1
" (p. 115). After
i
Helen dies, Dr. Raymond concludes his remarks by saying:
"'And now Helen is with her companions'" (p. 115). Helen's
companions, he has indicated, are fauns and satyrs. j
In appearance Helen is beautiful but repelling. At
no time does she reflect horror because of the deeds she has
77
done. Her human associates die from fear, hang themselves
in despair, or become imbecilic. But Helen appears, until
her death, to be the daughter of the devil, if not the devil
himself.
The references to Hermetic doctrines in "The Great God
i
iPan" are minor. Dr. Raymond is a practitioner of transcen
dental medicine. The use of ritual for the evoking of
spirits is typical of magical practices. In this case
Machen substitutes brain surgery for the ritual. The Sab- ;
batic Goat, as we have seen, may have been in Machen's mind;
'it, too, may have been derived from the non-diabolic occult.
| j
Reynolds and Charlton suggest that Machen's use of dissolu- |
tion in the death of Helen may have come from Thomas
Vaughan's Lumen de Lumine. Vaughan believed that all humans
were bisexual and that basic matter is a cool slime (Rey
nolds and Charlton, p. 46). However, we find that Machen
had difficulty understanding Vaughan's book. On one occa- j
sion he remarked: "I bought one of the most curious—I do
not say the best—books in the world, Vaughan's 'Lumen de
Lumine' in a shop in Clare Market, and still I should be
much obliged if someone would tell me what 'Lumen de Lumine'
is about" (Works, VIII, 135). The epigraph of "The Great
78
9
God Pan" does come from an occult source, the Kabala of
Knorr von Rosenroth (Sweetser, AM, p. 112).
There are several references in "The Great God Pan" to
spiritualism and ghosts. Clarke endeavors to overcome the
horror of the surgery on Mary by attending seances . He
hopes that the trickery of the mediums will disgust him and
thus prevent his becoming involved in future occult experi
ments .
Machen's narrative technique in "The Great God Pan" is
!
one of indirection. Nearly everything is told in retro
spect. Part of the story is presented in Clarke's memoirs
and part in the papers of Dr. Matheson, who has witnessed
Helen's death.
"The Great God Pan" was printed by John Lane as Volume
V of The Keynotes Series . Included in the 1894 volume was
"The Inmost Light," which had been written in 1892.
In "The Inmost Light" Machen tells once more of a
physician's interest in uncanny experimentation. The doctor
named Black marries a beautiful golden-haired girl, and for
a time he is content to abandon his studies in
Q
"Qui perrumpit sepem, ilium mordebit serpens" ("He who
disturbs the venomous serpent, him the serpent will bite").
79
transcendental medicine. He again begins to experiment.,
however, and he reaches the point at which a live human
i
being is needed for surgical experiment. He persuades his
wife to agree to the operation. Black is successful in
bridging the gap between the world of consciousness and the
world of matter. He is able, therefore, to draw out his
wife's soul and encase it in a substance so that it resem
bles a large and brilliant opal. Since nature abhors a
vacuum, an evil presence invades the body of the wife, and
she becomes lower than man or animal. After her death a
surgeon remarks that Mrs. Black's brain was the brain of a
devil. Dyson, an interested onlooker in the story, does
detective work and pieces together the facts of the case.
He finds Black, who is now a ruined and sick man, and he
finally gains possession of the opal. When Black dies,
Dyson learns the secret of the jewel from the doctor's
diary. He then tramples on the stone. Heavy yellow smoke
issues slowly with a hissing sound from the center of the
gem. Then a thin white flame appears in the smoke and
shoots into the air. What is left of the stone becomes
black and cinder-like.
Apparently alchemical medicine and occult experiments
were being practiced to a certain extent in the late
80
nineteenth century in England. In Devil-Worship in France
Waite writes:
The revival of mystical philosophy, and moreover, of
transcendental experiment, which is prosecuted in secret
to a far greater extent than the public can possibly be
aware, has, however, set many old oracles chattering,
and they are more voluble at the present moment than
the great Dodonian grove. (p. 3)
Black's ideas go beyond the wildest dreams of Paracel- j
l
10 . !
sus and the Rosicrucians. His ability to ensnare his i
wife's soul so that it flames iridescently further suggests
alchemy. In a sense the gem is a type of Philosopher's
Stone, as it has resulted from a meeting of the material and
i I
the spiritual.
Sweetser has observed that the Faustian element is
strong in Machen (AM, p. 86). It is true that in "The In
most Light" a man's desire to know destroys his wife and
ruins the man himself. The Faustian theme, of course, is
i
essentially diabolic. But here again, illustrating Machen's
i
merging of themes, we find that the author may have been
following strict occult tradition, in which knowledge rather
than virtue is the key to spiritual progress. Occultists
Machen, "The Inmost Light," Tales of Horror and the
Supernatural, p. 17 3.
81
believe that "knowledge of the universe is synonymous with
its control" (Cavendish, p. 229).
The description of the transformed Mrs. Black as seen
by Dyson reveals "the face of a woman, and yet it was not
human." The face reflects an insatiable lust, and around
the face there is "a mist of flowing yellow hair, as an
aureole of glory round the visage of a satyr" (p. 161) .
In both "The Great God Pan" and "The Inmost Light"
transcendental medicine produces evil—the incarnation of a
devil in one case and a metamorphosis into a devil in the
second case.
i
I
In 1895 The Three Impostors of Machen was published as
Volume XIX of The Keynotes Series . The title was suggested
by a much talked-about but reputedly nonexistent book, De
Tribus Impostoribus (Danielson, p. 26). The three impostors:
of the mythical work were Moses, Christ, and Mahomet. The
[three impostors of Machen's work are Davies, Helen, and
Richmond, who belong to a secret organization headed by ]
Dr. Lipsius, a depraved and decadent person who deals in
antiques. Lipsius lures Joseph Walters, known as "The
I
"The Inmost Light," Tales of Horror and the Super
natural, p. 160.
I 82
Young Man with Spectacles," into joining his organization.
Walters assists by a fraudulent act in obtaining a gold
Tiberius coin for Lipsius. When he discovers that his de
ception has caused the death of the owner of the coin,
Walters tries to escape from the Lipsius group. His at
tempts to evade Davies, Helen, and Richmond, who are set on
his trail by Lipsius, accidentally involve Dyson and Phil- [
lipps. The impostors tell strange stories to Dyson and j
Phillipps in the course of the quest. Two of these stories
—"Novel of the Black Seal" and "Novel of the White Powder"
i
—have definite occult elements. The three evildoers fi-
i
nally capture Walters, and they subject him to torture and ,
i
death in an abandoned mansion. Dyson and Phillipps discover!
I
i
the body of Walters shortly after the three impostors have
[
left him to die.
It is significant to note that a girl by the name of
Helen is the worst of the three impostors. She is totally
jcommitted to evil. It is Helen who tells the two most
!
horrible tales in The Three Impostors, known in their
shortened forms as "The Black Seal" and "The White Powder."
The pursuit of Walters is Machen's device or vehicle
for narrating his stories. There are numerous references
to the demonic and to other occult themes already used in
83
"The Inmost Light" and "The Great God Pan." When young
Walters, for instance, is initiated into the cult of Lip-
sius, he is served the wine of Avallaunius, or "the wine of
the Fauns" (Works, II, 202). This drink affects Walter
strangely. He seems to be at once subject and object; he
watches the orgy of the initiation, yet at the same time he
is a participant. It is as though he were a dual personal
ity. This use of the doppelganger motif is prominent in the
annals of witchcraft. Machen later writes of the splitting
l
of the self into two in "The White Powder" but not exactly
lin the same way as is described in the witch trials. Typi
cally, the witch can send her astral body out while she is '
12 '
in another location. Walters speaks of strange rites and
of having seen "the mystery of the Greek groves and foun
tains enacted" (Works, II, 202). He also says that he has
i"led many to the depths of the pit" (p. 203) .
' The dissolution of a human being does not occur in the
I i
I framework of The Three Impostors, although such a process
does take place in one of the tales—"The White Powder."
Dissolution appears in the framing vehicle, however, in a
12
Gillian Tindall, A Handbook on Witches (New York,
1966), p. 72.
84
symbolic way. The house, for example, in which Walters is
brutally murdered is falling into decay, with the cupids
painted on the ceiling engaged in a dance of death, as their
festered limbs indicate (Works, II, 220) . Phillipps is also
depicted as planning a work to be entitled "Protoplasmic
Reversion" (p. 124). Machen seizes on this theme later and
applies it to the city of London, when he describes some of
the streets as "mere protoplasmic streets, beginning in j
i
orderly fashion . . . and ending suddenly in waste, and j
pits, and rubbish-heaps, . . ." (p. 142).
It is in "The White Powder" that diabolism comes out
very forcefully. The impostor Helen, as Miss Leicester,
i
i
tells of the gruesome dissolution of her brother Francis . \
Her brother, who has been studying very hard, is persuaded
to seek medical help for a nervousness that is troubling
him. The doctor prescribes a white powder. Seemingly, the
medicine proves beneficial, and Francis becomes improved in I
I
i
health. As time passes, however, Francis
1
character under- <
i
i
i
goes a change. The sister observes a dark discoloration on I
i
his hand, and she instinctively knows that it is a brand. j
i
Francis finally retires to his room permanently. Little by
little his body putrefies. The doctor who has administered
the medicine discovers that the pharmacist has filled the
85
prescription from powder that has undergone chemical
changes. This resulted in Francis' having taken unknowingly
the Vinum Sabbati ("Wine of the Sabbat") instead of the pre
scribed salutary medicine.
A thread of consistent diabolism runs throughout this
tale. The horror is intensified by the fact that the
brother is an innocent victim of the devil. With no intent
to yield himself to evil., he nevertheless is visited with a
terrible judgment.
The symbolism in the development of "The White Powder"
jadds to the tension and horror. On the first evening that
Francis takes the powder and decides to go out, the sky is
a brilliant red. The heavens seem to be on fire, and blood
appears to be pouring down. Again in the evening when Miss
Leicester notices the ugly discoloration on Francis' hand,
the sky looks as though it were on fire with a pool of blood
below.
!
, Just as Dyson has seen the evil visage of Mrs. Black
I
i
J looking out of an upstairs window, so Miss Leicester sees
i
the black stump of her brother's hand holding the blind at
the window of his room. By the time she obtains the physi
cian's assistance to help save her brother from his malign
fate, all intervention is useless.
86
The conclusion of the story contains a letter to the
family physician from Dr. Chambers, who has analyzed the
white powder. In the letter Chambers presents a discussion
of witchcraft. He says that the drug taken by Francis
Leicester
13
"is the powder from which the wine of the Sabbath,
the Vinum Sabbati, was prepared. No doubt you have
read of the Witches' Sabbath, and have laughed at the
tales which terrified our ancestors; the black cats,
and the broomsticks, and dooms pronounced against some
old woman's cow. Since I have known the truth I have
often reflected that it is on the whole a happy thing
j that such burlesque as this is believed, for it serves
j to conceal much that it is better should not be known
j generally." (Works, II, 182)
!
Chambers refers the doctor to Payne Knight's monograph on
witchcraft for all the ghastly details of the Sabbat. He
continues:
"The secrets of the true Sabbath were the secrets of
remote times surviving into the Middle Ages, secrets
| of an evil science which existed long before Aryan man
\ entered Europe. Men and women seduced from their homes
! on specious pretences, were met by beings well quali-
I fied to assume, as they did assume, the part of devils,
and taken by their guides to some desolate and lonely
place, known to the initiate by long tradition, and
unknown to all else. . . . There, in the blackest hour
of the night, the Vinum Sabbati was prepared, and this
evil graal was poured forth and offered to the neophytes,
and they partook of an infernal sacrament; . . . And
Machen consistently uses the word Sabbath for Sabbat.
87
suddenly, each one that had drunk found himself attended
by a companion, a shape of glamour and unearthly allure
ment, beckoning him apart, to . . . the consummation of
the Sabbath. .. . By the power of that Sabbath wine, a
few grains of white powder thrown into a glass of water,
the house of life was riven asunder and the human trin
ity dissolved, and the worm which never dies, that which
lies sleeping within all of us, was made tangible and an
external thing, and clothed with a garment of the flesh.
And then, . . . the primal fall was repeated and re
presented, and the awful thing veiled in the mythos of
the Tree in the Garden was done anew." (Works, II, 183-
184)
The idea of witchcraft is emphasized in the discoloration
appearing on the hand of Francis. Miss Leicester recognizesj
i
!
it as a brand. The blemish is probably intended by Machen
to be a witch-mark such as the historians of demonology and
i i
witchcraft record (Tindall, p. 144).
The doppelganger theme is present in "The White Powder"
in the splitting of the self into two parts. The emerging
of two persons from the drinking of the Vinum Sabbati may
have been suggested from witchcraft, but it may also have ,
! i
i . !
been derived in part from Hermetic concepts. Occultists \
believe that man is androgynous, essentially male and fe-
i
male, with "only one phase of that nature manifested at a i
..14
time. i
Manly P. Hall, The Hermetic Marriage: A Study in the
Philosophy of the Thrice Greatest Hermes (Los Angeles,
Calif., 1935), p. 15.
88
The topic of witchcraft was handled briefly by Machen
in three sketches written in 1897. These tales appeared in
book form in Machen's Ornaments in Jade, published in 1924.
One of the tales, "Witchcraft/
1
tells of Miss Custance's
obtaining of a charm from old Mrs. Wise, a witch. "The
Ceremony" narrates the tale of the strange veneration that
country people have for a mysterious gray stone in the wood.
In the third story, "Midsummer, " Leonard, who has been stay-!
ing in the country, goes for a walk at midnight. In a cir
cular place among the trees he finds that a meeting of i
ivillage girls is in progress. The suggestion of witchcraft ]
1
is given, when the story ends thus: "He had seen their
smiles, he had seen their gestures, and things that he had '
15 I
thought the world had long forgotten."
Machen begins "The White People," written in 1899, with
a long prologue in which he discourses on the subjects of [
l
sorcery and sanctity. Ambrose, one of the actors in the i
story, believes that holiness
"is an effort to recover the ecstasy that was before
the Fall. But sin is an effort to gain the ecstasy and
the knowledge that pertain alone to angels, and in
i
i
(New York, 1924), p. 37.
89
I
! 16
I making this effort man becomes a demon."
Ambrose explains that the "'saint endeavors to recover a
gift which he has lost; the sinner tries to obtain something
which was never his. In brief, he repeats the fall'" (p.
120). He shows that real wickedness is unconscious and that
,sin "'is the infernal miracle as holiness is the supernal'"
(p. 122). He states further that a paradox exists: "'one
17
may avoid every crime and yet be a sinner'" (p. 122).
In order to prove his point Ambrose produces a green
book that contains the extraordinary diary of a young
girl who was bewitched unknowingly. The girl tells of the
secret language she has learned and the white people she
has seen. Her nurse has gained control of her by telling
her some stories of a girl who had a demon lover, of a man
who had been kissed by the queen of the fairies, of a hill
on which Sabbats were held, and finally of Lady Avelin, who
was actually a snake-woman named "Cassap." Lady Avelin was
skilled in the art of making effigies for magical purposes.
She herself was loved by a wax doll that became a handsome
"The White People," Tales of Horror and the Super
natural, p. 119.
•*-'Madeleine L. Cazamian sees in Ambrose's discourse on
sorcery and sanctity a relationship between the La-Bas of
Joris-Karl Huysmans and Machen (p. 277).
90
lover at night. By means of making little images Lady Ave-
ilin destroyed four of her five suitors. The fifth suitor
spied on Lady Avelin, however, and he was thus able to bring
her to justice.
The nurse in charge of the young girl teaches her to
i
make clay images. She also instructs the girl in many of
!the magical arts. The girl learns how to perform polter-
l
jgeist feats and how to make rapping noises in the house.
Years after the nurse has left the household, the girl
continues her interest in forbidden things. Accidentally,
[ i
ishe finds a hidden thicket on a strange hill, and there she j
sees a luminous white image, a remnant of the Roman occupa- ',
tion of Britain. Because she has encountered the image so j
unceremoniously, she pays a second visit to the statue, but
she blindfolds herself this time. Later on she is found
'dead before the image.
Ambrose remarks that the girl has poisoned herself "in
! I
i |
time" (p. 154). Whether she has committed suicide before
she has had time to transmit her knowledge of evil to oth
ers, as Sweetser thinks (AM, p. 124), or whether she kills
herself in order to enter the spirit world is not clear.
But the girl does say after visiting the statue the second
time: " ".. . I wished that the years were gone by, and
91
that I had not so long a time to wait before I was happy
for ever and ever'" (p. 151).
"The White People" is a remarkable story of deadly
evil. Machen has merged his knowledge of Hermetism with the
black deeds of witchcraft to construct a tale of terror.
When the girl tells of seeing white faces around her
cradle and of conversing in the Xu language with the little j
people who seek her companionship, she is reflecting an I
i
occult concept of Paracelsus. Paracelsus said that fairies
were elemental creatures. Children were prone to see them
because in infancy "the soft spot on the crown of the head
has not completely closed and the pineal gland, or etheric
[
eye, is still somewhat active" (Hall, p. 30).
Machen incorporates other materials of occultism in his
use of "nymphs," by which may be meant certain processes in
alchemy. Helen's use of the queer fairy speech and her
iobscurity and secrecy in her journal follow the Hermetic j
I !
jtradition of keeping secrets from all but the initiated. i
Her knowledge has power; therefore, she protects it from
those who cannot deal with magic properly. There is the
suggestion that the girl's strange behavior on the hill when
she dances among and with the misshapen and malevolent-
appearing rocks is a ceremonial rite of some kind.
92
Although the girl speaks in the language of the fair
ies, she is definitely participating in the activities of
the witches. But then, as we shall see later, the associa
tion between fairies and witches has been recognized by
anthropologists .
j
The machinery of diabolism in "The White People" in
cludes the clay and wax images so familiar in black magic, j
I
charms and spells, hints of Sabbatic orgies, and demon j
lovers. The luminous Roman statue has also appeared in j
witchcraft history. Ambrose says: "'. . . in the Middle
Ages the followers of a very old tradition had known how to
use it [the statue] for their own purposes. In fact it had
been incorporated into the monstrous mythology of the Sab
bath" (p. 154). During the nocturnal meetings on the hill,
according to the child's nurse, there were games and danc
ing. Some of the dances would transform the participants
into animals. Other dances would draw a person out of him- j
self "and hide him away as long as you liked, and his body j
went walking about quite empty, without any sense in it"
(p. 146). This is a variant of the doppelganger motif men
tioned in "The White Powder." No Vinum Sabbati is needed
here; the drawing out of the soul is accomplished by the
incantation of dancing, winding, and turning.
93
The girl's ability to accomplish poltergeistic tricks
and spiritualistic phenomena seems to equate spiritualism
with diabolism.
"The White People" is told in diary form with a pro
logue and an epilogue. The expository prologue prepares the
reader for the story and serves to lend distance. The diary
format forces the telling of the tale in retrospect. The
epilogue gives the conclusion. The seduction and bewitching;
of the child is contrived so cleverly that the reader imag-
ines in the early parts of the story that the black magic isi
i
i
actually white magic. Subtle touches by Machen prove effec-i
tive in creating this illusion. The reader finally becomes '
aware of what is happening to the child. Machen has the
girl say: "'Nurse must have been a prophet like those we
read of in the Bible. Everything that she said began to
come true, and since then other things that she told me of
have happened'" (p. 151) . The assocxatxon of the Bxble wxth ;
!
the nurse-witch at a time when the reader is convinced of '
the girl's seduction is an extraordinarily clever device. I
The novel A Fragment of Life, written between 1899 and |
i
1904, tells of a young married couple, Darnell and Mary, who
live in London. Darnell discovers some ancient Welsh docu
ments in the attic of their house. He is subsequently
94
inspired to see the spiritual in life rather than the mate
rial. He and Mary realize that they will eventually go to
Wales to live on a farm that Darnell expects to inherit.
The story contains a rather lengthy but unrelated episode
of an aunt who goes mad. Machen makes use of occultism in
A Fragment of Life in his frequent references to magic and
alchemy. He writes: '
I Darnell knew by experience that man is made a mystery !
j for mysteries and visions, for the realization in his
[ consciousness of ineffable bliss, for a great joy that ,
j transmutes the whole world, for a joy that surpasses |
i all joys and overcomes all sorrows. (Works, VI, 94) ,
i
The book moves toward mysticism as Machen describes a church
i
that practices age-old rites. In contrast to the vision of ,
the joy in the ineffable is the warning also that the soul
might be endangered. Machen says:
There were suggestions of an awful region which the
i soul might enter, of a transmutation that was unto
death, of evocations which could summon the utmost
forces of evil from their dark places—in a word, of i
that sphere which is represented to most of us under \
the crude and somewhat childish symbolism of Black
Magic. (p. 113)
Darnell recalls an incident during a childhood visit to
Wales, when he accompanied his uncle on a trip to a mountain
farm. A young girl has apparently gone into a forbidden
part of the hills, and she has returned possessed to her
95
home. She is confined to an upstairs room in the house
where she is heard shrieking and singing. Machen describes
the scene as follows:
The girl's chants seemed to summon all the hierarchy of
evil, the hosts of Lilith and Samael; and the words that
rang out with such awful modulations . . . were in some
unknown tongue that few men have heard on earth. (p. 117)
The evil enchantment described here is reminiscent of the
girl's visit to the secret hill and shrine in "The White
i
People." !
Machen's novel The Hill of Dreams, published in 1907
but written between 1895 and 1897, is considered by Sweetser
i
i
;to be "both a monument and an epitaph for the Aesthetic-
Decadent period" (AM, p. 109) . The book., which is written j
J i
jin a stream-of-consciousness style, is concerned with the |
thoughts and feelings of the principal character. The
[senses merge in the dreams of the protagonist so that there
i
i
as effective use of synaesthesia. The book as a whole is
characterized by sensuousness and shocking incidents.
In the story Lucian Taylor, the son of a poor clergy
man of the Caermaen vicinity, is forced to leave his formal
schooling because of his father's critical financial condi
tion. He has been a misfit at school, and he is even more
ill-adjusted in the small, materialistic community in which
96
he lives. Lucian's neighbors are practical, hypocritical,
and intolerant of anyone who deviates from their way of
life. Lucian is shocked at the cruelty of both children and
adults. He intervenes when a little bully torments a dying
i
cat. Later, after Lucian has learned from books of modern j
j
occultism how to "annihilate the world around him" (Hill of j
Dreams, p. 132), he is able to pass by without interfering
when a group of boys led by the bully previously mentioned
hang a friendly puppy. Lucian has been very much attracted
to the ancient Roman fort near Caermaen. As a small boy he
has had a strange inner experience there. He falls in love j
!
with Annie Morgan, a peasant girl. Actually, he is in love j
with the idea of love. He makes extravagant plans for
Annie. He envisions the restoration of the Roman fort for
his beloved Annie. In the fort Lucian assumes the name of
Avallaunius as he reconstructs in his imagination the an-
i
cient Roman scenes. Machen explains elsewhere the origin j
i
of the name "Avallaunius": "The word, an invention of my
i
own, has its little history. There was a Roman-British
name, Vallaunius. This I conjectured to be, more properly,
Avallaunius, the man of Avalon" (Danielson, p. 39). The
original title of The Hill of Dreams was The Garden of
Avallaunius. In his visions Lucian rebuilds the Roman city
97
and repeoples it. He visualizes himself partaking of wine
of the same thousand-year-old vintage mentioned in "The
Great God Pan" and in The Three Impostors (p. 155).
Lucian's adoration of Annie causes him to lie naked on
thorns in his room in order to experience the depth of his
passionate love. Annie marries another, but this is of no
consequence to Lucian. His love will always be perfect, as
it has been idealized. A small legacy permits Lucian to go
to London to pursue a writing career. In Caermaen earlier
he had submitted a manuscript to a publisher, only to have
his story stolen. Lucian does not succeed in London.
Through his own imagination he sees the life there dis
torted. He makes an alliance with a prostitute, becomes
addicted to a narcotic, and finally dies from an overdose
of the drug.
There are allusions to occultism throughout The Hill
of Dreams. As a young boy Lucian delighted in reading the
books of the alchemists. He liked the "pomp and symbolism
of the Cabala, with its hint of more terrible things; ..."
(p. 43). In London Lucian compares the labor of writing to
the alchemical process.
There are a number of allusions to fairies and fairy
land in The Hill of Dreams. Lucian wonders whether he has
98
"some drops of the fairy blood in his body" (p. 210) that
cause him to adjust so poorly to society. He sees the
writhing fog of London as assuming the shape of gray rocks.
The fog appears to be creating goblin towers and "swelling
into a vague dome like a fairy rath., huge and terrible"
(p. 224). Another time in London Lucian thinks he may still
be in the Roman fort at Caermaen. He believes that perhaps
he has never come out, "but a changeling had gone down the j
hill, and now stirred about the earth" (p. 231) . Machen |
subtly contrives to merge this idea with another savoring
of diabolism. Lucian thinks that perhaps he had "let Annie !
i
drink his soul beneath the hill, on the night when the moon-
fire shone, but he had not surely seen her exalted in the I
flame, the Queen of the Sabbath" (p. 303) .
The ghostly becomes part of a recurrent theme in The
Hill of Dreams. Lucian looks at the Roman fort at night
fall, and at the same time he hears a bugler play reveille, j
To him the music becomes the note of a Roman trumpet sum
moning the legions of Rome to attack. "By hundreds and
thousands the ghostly battle surged about the standard
. . . ready to march against the mouldering walls they had
built so many years before" (p. 67). In Lucian's mind the
dead come from the graveyards and from the river "for the
99
last great battle" (p. 270) - It seems to Lucian that the
"kingdom of the dead" (p. 73) has begun. He seems to be
assailed by his ancestors and "by desires that had slept in
his race for ages" (p. 73). Even the Little People creep
out of their mounds "muttering charms and incantations in
hissing inhuman speech" (p. 73). The envisioned battle of
the dead legions of Rome recurs to Lucian again when he goes
to London.
Machen makes significant use of Satanic materials in {
i
The Hill of Dreams . Lucian's love ritual in praise of Annie!
shows him "abased and yet rejoicing as a Templar before the
image of Baphomet" (p. 104). We have already seen that
Baphomet could have been associated with the non-diabolic
forms of occultism in its origin, but later it did become a
symbol of the Sabbat of the Satanists . One of the strangest
practices of Lucian's love ritual in praise of Annie was his
self-mutilation or self-punishment. Three times a day and
once at night he pressed thorns into his flesh "to savor the
joy of physical pain" (p. 113). Sweetser regards this prac
tice as Lucian's attempt to scourge himself "like an as
cetic" (AM, p. 105). It is my conjecture that Machen was
thinking of the mysteries of Mithra. Indeed, he refers to
"the secret rites of Mithras" (Hill of Dreams, p. 131)
100
several times. At the Roman fort, in Lucian's imagination,
there are priests of Mithra (p. 152).
Mithraism was a sun-cult that entered Rome from Asia.
Initiation into the mysteries of Mithra included "bathing,
18
branding with a red-hot iron" and the taurobolum. Summers
writes:
This ceremony consisted in the sacrifice of a bull, the
blood of the animal being allowed to flow down through
a floor riddled with eyelets and holes, so that it
streamed in a drenching rain upon the worshippers in i
the chamber beneath. (p. 52)
Waite studied the Mithraic rite when he was examining
the alleged sources of the Grail legend. He found that in
i
laddition to the details described above, "certain candidates,
i
mutilated themselves in honour of the goddess" (Holy Grail,
p. 435). Lucian's self-scourgings may have been suggested
by Mithraism, which, with both Summers and Waite, has Sa-
[
tanic connotations. In London Lucian fancies himself i
imarked: "he was feeling his face, searching for some <
!
loathsome mark, for the stigmata of evil branding his fore
head" (Hill of Dreams, p. 217) . Later he believes that j
i
blood has "rained upon him, and cold blood from a sacrifice
°Montague Summers, The Geography of Witchcraft (Evan-
ston and New York, [1958]), p. 52.
101
in heaven; his face was wet and chill and dripping, and he
had passed his hand across his forehead and looked at it"
(p. 269) .
Lucian wonders at the contrasts of the Middle Ages.
i
The people of those times had compassion on animals, yet
they "believed in witchcraft, demoniacal possession and ob
session, in the incubus and succubus, and in the Sabbath"
(p. 128). We shall see that Lucian himself believes in
i
i
witchcraft. I
Away from Caermaen and pursuing his career in London,
Lucian seeks for the magic "by which Hawthorne had lit his
infernal Sabbath fires, and fashioned a burning aureole
about the village tragedy of the Scarlet Letter" (pp. 199-
200). He speaks of the "red halo of malediction" (p. 218)
that may be surrounding him. In London when Lucian acci
dentally frightens a women in the fog, it seems to him that
her scream comes from a Sabbat (p. 219). This Sabbat image
remains with Lucian. He sees the Sabbat of the witches in
nearly all of his human contacts. He views the Saturday
night celebrations of the London working classes as equiva
lent to the orgies of the Sabbat. The naphtha lights of the
city resemble "infernal thuribles" (p. 292). Lucian begins
to think that he may be possessed.
102
He is unaware that the frost and prolonged fogs in
London have been unusually severe. He thinks of London as
a huge gray temple of an awful rite, ringed by great circles
of stones, and "every circle was an initiation, every ini-
i
tiation eternal loss" (p. 223). In the very center is the \
i
|
sanctuary of the Satanic rite, and Lucian "was borne thitherj
!
as in the eddies of a whirlpool, to consummate his ruin, to j
celebrate the wedding of the Sabbath" (p. 305) He is j
attracted to a prostitute who, he thinks, has summoned him
to the Sabbat. He remembers that the old doctor in the
i
country had whispered of queer objects found in old Mrs. j
Gibbon's cottage. Dr. Burrows had said she was a witch,
"and the mistress of the witches" (p. 303). Lucian succumbs
to the prostitute's seduction, and he follows her to cele
brate the orgiastic marriage of the Sabbat. He imagines his
desire as rising up "like a black smoke" (p. 306).
i
I Lucian seemed unable to convey to the reader the actual
significance of what had occurred when he as a young boy had
visited the Roman fort and had experienced the frightening
dream. What happened is never made clear. In London, how
ever, Lucian remembers his experience, and now he views it
as a "horrible Sabbath he had imagined" (p. 262).
Although Lucian sees the city as diabolic, he believes
103
that the conditions in London preclude the presence of
either "a splendid sinner or a splendid saint" (p. 279) .
A desolate old house in the last stages of decay fasci
nates Lucian. The house becomes an external image of what
is happening within himself. The black and green streaks or
the moldering wood appear to Lucian "as the outward signs of
evil working and creeping in the lives of those within"
(p. 282) .
| Diabolism appears in The Hill of Dreams thematically >
I
and figuratively. Although Lucian finally surrenders to
'evil, he has not sinned on a grand scale. He is the type
i i
of sinner he himself despises. His miserable death from an i
i
overdose of a drug accentuates his failure. !
An abundance of material in Machen's works originated
in demonology and witchcraft. The stories discussed in this
section, however, seem to rely more heavily on the demonic
i .
'than do some of the other works. Machen continued to draw
from diabolism as long as he created literary pieces. Be
tween 1908 and 1936 he produced four short works that depend
for their effectiveness upon the actual presence or the
suggestion of diabolism. In "Psychology" (1908) Machen's
use of diabolism is made through suggestion. Young Dale
follows the advice of a friend and psychologist to write
104
down all his impulses for a day. Dale reads his notes in
the evening and is horrified at his secret thoughts, "crazy
lusts, the senseless furies, the foul monsters that his
heart had borne, the maniac phantasms that he had har-
19
boured." He says: "'And every day .. . we lead two
lives, and the half of our soul is madness, and half heaven
is lit by a black sun. I say I am a man, but who is the
other that hides in me?'" (p. 27).
In "Guinevere and Lancelot" (1909) Machen shows the
20
cause of Lancelot's passion for Guinevere. He portrays
Guinevere's resorting to sorcery in order to gain Lancelot's
love. She obtains a "wych-bough" from a wizard; as long as
she keeps this bough, she will be able to bind Lancelot.
With the falling of each leaf from the bough a black bird
flies away to tell of the illicit love affair. The bough
is accidentally cast into fire, and Lancelot is freed from
'the enchantment. Arthur at first orders Guinevere to be
burned at the stake, but he changes his mind.
"Out of the Picture" (1936) is a kind of Jekyll-and-
Hyde tale. Machen as the reporter-narrator tells of
•^The cosy Room and Other Stories (London, [1936]), p.
27.
20
Notes and Queries (London, 1926), pp. 10-12.
105
viewing the paintings of M'Calmont. All of M'Calmont's
landscapes, which are eighteenth century in style, contain
fire, water, and a twisted figure of a man. The deformed
man appears faintly in the early paintings; he is very
prominent in the later pictures. At this particular time
in London, according to the story, there have been a number
of vicious attacks on certain persons by a deformed, twisted
kind of dwarf. One evening Machen sees M'Calmont as he pre
pares to leave his apartment. The painter assumes a twisted
posture. The narrator later observes that the deformed
figure no longer appears in M'Calmont's paintings. This
figure seems finally to have merged with the personality of
the painter himself.
The last story to be discussed is "Change" (1936) .
Although this tale is allied to the fairy tale in its sug
gestion of the changeling theme, most of its elements par-
I
take of diabolism and witchcraft. In the story Alice Hayes \
is a capable young nurse who has been hired to take care of
the Brown children during the summer season at Trenant. She
takes a group of children to visit the Darren caves. Alice
and her group return late from their journey only to dis
cover that one little boy, Bobby Brown, is missing. The
child is found beneath a thorn tree. His appearance has
I 106
changed: he is malignant in behavior and wizened in coun
tenance. Vincent Rimmer has investigated the Darren Mystery
to find that Alice Hayes is actually a witch with the Sabbat
' 21
name of "the Bridegroom and the Bride." He says that
Alice has seduced all of the children. He finds a clay
image in the caves and a paper containing vowels arranged
in a certain order. He learns that such an ordering of
vowels was used to signify the "'final operation of an in-
cantation in medieval and later medieval magic
1
" (p. 254).
He has been told that the wailing of prescribed vowels |
! I
jformed a part of initiations in Mithraic or Gnostic rituals
(p. 254) .
i
A sufficient number of references have been cited in
this chapter to show that Machen made extensive use of the
materials of diabolism and witchcraft. In certain stories
Machen has suggested very strongly that each man actually
j
has a double personality. In these same stories, in which j
the doppelganger is used, we find that Machen tended to
treat it in connection with the demonic.
The doppelganger theme is suggested further by Machen
p i
"Change," The Children of the Pool and Other Stories
(London, n.d.), p. 252.
i 107
i
jin the frequent appearance in his tales of clay or wax
images. These images are magic doubles "whose ill-treatment|
is transmitted by sympathetic magic to the original" (Tymms,
p. 23). The pictorial double, yet another variation of the
doppelganger motif, is portrayed in "Out of the Picture,"
iWhen the twisted man emerges from a series of paintings and
comes to life in the person of the artist who created him.
Machen's treatment of the doppelganger does not usually
result in the creation of two distinct personalities capable
of acting independently. However, in the allusions to the
division into male and female personalities during Sabbatic
rites, distinct entities do appear; for example, when Wal
ters drinks the ancient wine in The Three Impostors, when
Chambers describes the rites of the Sabbat in "The White
Powder," and even in the witchcraft pseudonym of Alice Hayes
in "Change." The presence of the double in Machen's work is
ordinarily revealed in what remains in a human being after
the exodus of one of the entities. Berta Nash observes that
"horror prevails because of some effort made which de
stroyed" (p. 113) the balanced elements in a human being.
She also contends that Machen writes "stories of diminution,
in which a person is destroyed in an attempt to separate out
an element which is an essential part of him" (p. 120). '
108
Machen's synthesis of the doppelganger and non-diabolic
occultism with the demonological in his stories of diabolism
has for its purpose the development of terror in the reader.
Machen says that he had originally intended to produce
strong feelings of awe in the presence of the ineffable or
the nameless but that he did not succeed in his objective.
i
He writes: "Here, of course, was my real failure; I trans- j
lated awe, at worst awfulness, into evil; again, I say, one
dreams in fire and works in clay" (Works, VIII, 127). j
i
The greater part by far of Machen's work in diabolism
was written between 1891 and 1900. We have already indi
cated that during this period infernal cults and societies !
incorporating the ideas of black magic came into prominence
in both France and England.
The Supernatural Being in Folklore
Throughout Machen's career there was much activity j
among anthropologists and folklorists. Frazer, Weston, ,
Murray, and Rhys have been cited earlier in this study.
Machen, as has been shown, was acquainted with the
studies of some of the scholars concerned in the field of
folklore. In addition he knew much about the traditional
lore of Wales. When he began to create stories about fairy
109
folk, therefore, he was able to draw from a number of
isources .
Machen's treatment of fairies in his creative works
falls into three divisions. First of all, Machen writes
stories in which his fairies are similar to the mythic
Little People of the British Isles. He portrays his Little
People as remnants of a prehistoric race existing into mod- j
ern times. Second, Machen writes of fairies who are not
i
i
necessarily a prehistoric people but who are nevertheless |
mischievous and malignant. In the third place, Machen j
writes fairy tales in which the appearance of the fairies j
i
i
is psychological. These fairies represent strange inner
:
experiences of mankind. These divisions constitute three
of the types of fairies that Machen classified in his auto
biographical writings (see p. 19 above).
Machen refers to "The Novel of the Black Seal" as a
I j
i"fairy tale" (Works, IX, 107). He describes the process he
used in developing his concept of this type of fairy. His
thoughts on the subject are to be found in Things Near and
Far and in his notes to Danielson's bibliography. Machen
says that he combined the view that fairy tales, "the sto
ries of Little People, are in fact traditions of the ab
origines of these islands, small, dark men who took refuge
110
from the invading Celt" (pp. 107-108), with the view that
ithe human body can project ectoplasm. He added a third
idea, that fairies still live under the hills today and that
they are anything but pleasant. Machen takes full credit
for regarding the Little People as "something more—or some
thing less—than human" and for the fact that they continue
to live in the hills at the present time (Danielson, p. 27) .
The tales in which Machen portrays his aboriginal type
of fairy are as follows: "The Novel of the Black Seal,"
"The Red Hand," and "The Shining Pyramid."
"The Novel of the Black Seal," to which I shall refer
as "The Black Seal," was written between 1890 and 1894. It
is narrated by the malevolent Helen of The Three Impostors. |
i
Masquerading as Miss Lally, she narrates the story to |
Phillipps. She tells of her experiences as a governess in
Professor Gregg's household. Gregg is a famous ethnologist,!
j
who keeps a secret file on mysterious disappearances in the I
western section of England together with a newspaper clip
ping telling of a murder with a primitive weapon, a copy of
ancient characters found inscribed recently on limestone,
and a black seal bearing wedge-shaped marks. The professor
takes his family to Caermaen for a holiday. It soon appears
to Miss Lally that Gregg is not on a vacation but that he is
Ill
deeply involved in an investigation. Gregg uncovers the
meaning of the black seal, which is called "Sixtystone" or
"Ixaxar." He learns that it is a valued stone of subhuman
22
beings who celebrated "foul mysteries on savage hills."
The professor hires Jervase, a supposedly retarded child, to
assist him. Miss Lally later finds that the child has ac
tually been fathered by one of the Little People. During j
|
seizures Jervase speaks with a hissing tongue. Professor |
i
Gregg demonstrates to his own satisfaction some of the pre- i
ternatural characteristics of Jervase. Gregg finally jour- |
i
neys to the place in the hills where he hopes to see the |
i
Little People. He does not return. Some of his belongings i
are found on the hill, but the Sixtystone is gone. Profes- J
sor Gregg is never seen again.
Machen's fairies in this tale are noxious, debased
little creatures. They are close to the typical "bad" fairy
|
jwho curses and showers ill-luck upon humanity in the old-
fashioned fairy tales for children. Gillian Tindall linked
the activities of fairies and witches, saying that "some
i
authorities . . . considered fairies as identifiable with [
the Hosts of Hell, and wholly evil" (p. 67). Tindall j
!
22"The Novel of the Black Seal," Tales of Horror and
the Supernatural, p. 16.
112
further writes:
Historical indications are that originally witch-
activities were entirely identifiable with those of
fairies, . . . If, as some anthropologists think, the
Little People survived physically in parts of Europe
into the Middle Ages, it is probable that some of the
"Devils" of covens belonged to their race. Certainly
some were considered to belong to their race. The
witches, in continuing to a late date traditions such
as spells . . . were just a rather depraved and garbled
form of fairy, getting nastier as time went on. (p. 70) j
I !
Not only are the fairies of "The Black Seal" murderers and
rapists but they also are endowed with unusual abilities. i
Jervase, for example, under the spell of the Sixtystone
Isends forth a slimy tentacle and removes the bust of Pitt
i I
from an extremely high shelf in the library of Professor I
23
Gregg's home. Machen explained that he derived the idea ,
i
for this feat from the ectoplasmic phenomena of the spirit- I
ualists (Works, IX, 107).
The hissing language of the fairies frightens Miss
t |
lLally . It seems to her to be an "infamous jargon" and an !
! I
i . ]
"infernal clamour" (p. 22). She cries out, "Surely this is
the very speech of Hell" (p. 22).
When Professor Gregg asks the opinion of Mr. Meyrick,
i
the local rector, on the probable language of "Ixaxar," a
J
"The Black Seal," Tales of Horror and the Super
natural, p. 41.
113
word that Jervase used in one of his seizures, he is told
that the language is not Welsh. Meyrick speculates that it
must be from the language of the fairies or the "Tylwydd
Te-g" (p. 24) .
The reptilian nature of the fairies is suggested by
their ability to thrust out gigantic pseudopodal feelers.
The Little People have another quality in common with rep
tiles—they have the stench of serpents. Miss Lally's maid j
j
describes the library after Jervase has reached out for the i
bust of Pitt: I
i
"There was a queer sort of smell in the study when I j
came down and opened the windows; a bad smell it was, j
. . . we went into the snake-house [at the London Zoo]
to see the snakes, and it was just the same sort of
smell; very sick it made me feel, I remember, ..."
(p. 28)
Professor Gregg presents a theory of fairies in the
final statement he has asked Miss Lally to read. The pro-
I
fessor thinks that folklore tends to exaggerate events that
really happened. Fairies were called "good" and "beautiful"
because our ancestors actually dreaded them, and such com
plimentary epithets obscured their evil nature (p. 32).
Gregg goes on to show that the sinister witches of ancient
times also were made comic with broomsticks and cats to hide
their diabolic inclinations. By analogy Professor Gregg
describes the Furies, who in Greek literature were trans
formed into Eumenides or pleasant ladies. His hypothesis is
that the fairies are simply remnants of a race that has
"fallen out of the grand march of evolution" (p. 34). They
have retained to this day "certain powers which would be to
us wholly miraculous" (p. 34).
Reynolds and Charlton say that Machen's ingenious ex
planation of fairies arrived at by Gregg "was contrived |
1
simply to lend plausibility" (p. 50) to the professor's j
!
I
fate. In other words, they contend that the explanation of '
the origin of fairies as related by Gregg was not the one |
i j
[honestly believed by Machen. i
In "The Red Hand" (1895) Dyson and Phillipps come upon ,
a mysterious murder in London. The murdered man is a promi
nent physician by the name of Sir Thomas Vivian. He has ha
his throat cut by a primitive flint knife of a type made
10,000 years ago. A mano in fica symbol, the human hand in j
the evil-eye curse position, has been sketched in red on a
wall near the place of the murder. Phillipps identifies the
i
i
hand sign as having its origin "'in the black swamp whence
i
man first came'" (Works, I, 148). To compound the mystery,
a note in code and written in a peculiar script is found on
the body of Sir Thomas Vivian. The language of the note is
115
in the terminology of astrology. The object of value men
tioned in the note is referred to as "the black heaven"
(p. 154). What is even more curious is the fact that Sir
Thomas himself has kept his private memoranda in the same
fantastic handwriting of the cryptic message. ;
Dyson believes that there are "'sacraments of evil as
well as good about us'" (p. 155) and that possibly man may j
I
go backward on the track of evolution and revert to horriblei
practices . Dyson soon becomes the possessor of a stone that
i
presumably is "the black heaven." Phillipps believes the j
I
stone to be "'even more ancient than the Hittite seal
1
"
(p. 162). Dyson contrives to trap Mr. Selby, the murderer i
of Sir Thomas, and he learns the full details of the crime, j
Selby has been fascinated throughout his life by the proba
bility of a treasure trove existing in the mounds of western
England. A secret handwriting developed by Selby has been
ithe medium by which he can let his old friend, now wealthy j
Sir Thomas, know of his actual discovery of the hoard.
Selby secures a little black stone with ancient writing
covering its surface; he is able to translate the message
and to find out, consequently, where the treasure is hidden.
He sends a note in code to ask Sir Thomas to meet him in
London. Sir Thomas attacks Selby, who is forced to strike
116
back. Selby's blow with a primitive weapon from the treas
ure mound kills the doctor. Selby then goes to western
England, finds an entrance to the cave where the gold is
kept, and prepares to carry away the treasure. He is con
fronted by the evil and bestial keepers of the gold, how
ever, and he barely escapes with his life. He manages to
carry away a small gold object as proof of his visit to the |
world of the mound-dwellers.
The fairies in this story are troglodytes similar to
i
trolls who guard gold hoards. The treasure in the case is j
desirable so far as the value of the gold is concerned, but i
i
the artifacts are obscene. These Little People are of the |
same ancient race as described earlier. They are debased
inhabitants of the caves of England and dwell there even in
modern times. Seemingly, the only way in which they differ
from the Little People of "The Black Seal" is in their
i
guarding of treasure. i
j
"The Shining Pyramid," written by Machen in 1895, is
another tale dealing with fairies. Machen depicts the Lit
tle People in this story as having more characteristics than
1
i
those previously described. In this story Vaughan and Dyson
1
attempt to solve the disappearance of Annie Trevor. The
cottagers say that Annie has either "gone with the fairies"
117
or that she has been "taken by the fairies." Vaughan has
observed arrowheads of great antiquity arranged on the grass
beyond the wall of his property in western England. He is
afraid that the peculiar arrangement of the arrowheads is a
signal to thieves who have designs on his costly silver
plate. Dyson is able to "read" the messages left outside
the wall. The arrowheads have been first placed in the
order of an army, then they appear as a bowl, then as a i
pyramid, and finally as a half-moon. A series of eyes i
appears drawn on the wall. Dyson interprets the symbols
|thus: "'There is to be a gathering or assembly at the Bowl !
jin a fortnight (that is the Half moon) to see the Pyramid, '
24 I
or to build the Pyramid.
1
" Dyson and Vaughan find the
bowl, a hollow in the hills, and witness the burning alive
of Annie by the malignant Little People. Dyson says that
he does not regret his inability to rescue Annie. He ex- \
iplains: "'You saw the appearance of those things that
jgathered thick and writhed in the Bowl; you may be sure that:
what lay bound in the midst of them was no longer fit for
i
earth'" (p. 207). The fairies in this tale again are j
i
I
j
?4
"The Shining Pyramid," Tales of Horror and the Super
natural , p. 206.
118
malevolent representatives of the ancient inhabitants of
England. In this story we learn that they are between
three and one-half and four feet in height. They live
underground and therefore they are accustomed to seeing in
the dark. They possess stone instruments. They appear "in
i
the form of men but stunted like children hideously de
formed, the faces with the almond eyes burning with evil and
1
s
unspeakable lusts" (p. 202). They are a lurid yellow. When|
f
Vaughan sees the masses of these horrible creatures in the
hollow of the hill, he is sure that "no fellow soul or human
thing stirred in all that tossing and hissing host" (p.
201). When the Little People speak, they sound "like the
i
hissing of snakes" (p. 201). Their writhing and hissing as
they congregate in the hollow of the hills gives the im
pression that the bowl is stirring and seething "like an
infernal caldron" (p. 201). The orgy is as gruesome as a
i
i
Witches' Sabbat. Machen is vague about the activities of
ithe Little People as they surround their bound victim and
i
prepare to burn her alive. But the suggestion seems to be
that the Little People are partaking of a cannibalistic
feast. The natural hollow of the hill in which the assembly
is held is regarded by the country folk as a fairies' castle
and therefore a place to be avoided. The reader learns that
119
the farmers of the region find traces now and then of fires
in desolate parts of the hills, but no one seems to know who
has set them.
The second type of fairy described by Machen is also a
i
malignant little being. He shares smallness of stature and |
i
depravity with the Little People of the previous stories, i
i
but he is not a descendant of a prehistoric race living in
i
i
modern times. The stories discussed in this section include
1
! !
"Out of the Earth" (1915), The Green Round (1933), and I
I
"Change" (1936) . "Out of the Earth" appeared one year after!
England had gone to war against Germany. Machen the narra- I
tor has heard that since the beginning of the war certain j
Welsh villages have been plagued with blasphemous children, j
There are stories of visitors' children having been beaten
and tortured. One little boy has supposedly been impaled
on a stake near Manavon; another child has been enticed over
the high cliffs of Castell Loch. Machen and his family soonj
go to Manavon. The little,son returns from the beach sev
eral times badly frightened. He speaks of having seen
strange children. Machen's friend Morgan, who is a mystic, j
I
childlike man, is also spending a holiday near Manavon. One|
|
day as he is meditating on the cliffs, he is aroused by the
raucous cries of children. The tones of the children's
120
voices are foul. Morgan hears the most abominable blasphe
mies . When he spies the children, he is appalled to see
"horrible little stunted creatures with old men's faces,
with bloated faces, with little sunken eyes, with leering
25
eyes." The children are engaged in practices such as
those the German purportedly perpetrated in Belgium during
World War I. Yet these children are no more than five or
six years old. Morgan hears the children shriek gleefully
as they go about their torturing. Morgan shouts at the ]
i
children, who disappear almost immediately. He has seen thej
i
blood running in streams on the grass, but when he examines j
the place where the children have been standing, he finds nol
sign of their having been there at all. i
i
An old doctor explains the matter by saying that these
Little People come out of the earth in time of war and great
evil. They rejoice that at last human beings are following
their own vicious ways. The doctor says that the little ;
beings are visible and audible only to children and to
childlike adults.
The fairies in this story are malign as in the other ',
i
i
25
"Out of the Earth," The Shining Pyramid (Chicago,
1923), p. 45.
121
Machen tales of the Little People. They dwell underground,
and they appear deformed. They do not speak in sibilant
sounds. On the contrary, these fairies can make their blas
phemy understood in a modern tongue. Children who have
heard them have repeated "horrors" and "words that shamed
their nurses and their mothers" (p. 46). These unpleasant
fairies may have actually tortured children, but more than
I I
I likely the scenes of sadism viewed by the little boys and !
1 i
girls were a kind of magical projection. Morgan heard and |
saw the fairies inflicting torture, but no actual wounding j
of others took place.
The second story in this discussion of malignant fai- i
ries is The Green Round. It is a book-length story of mis- .
i
chief perpetrated by fairies. Sweetser describes the work I
as
a hodgepodge fantasy lacking continuity and verisimili-
1
tude. It combined dream psychology, alchemy, polter- j
geists, and other supernatural devices purportedly to
show the role played by the newspapers in the creation
of twentieth-century myth. (AM, p. 46)
i
Smith of Wimbledon writes to a London newspaper to complain
about the despoiling of the rural beauty of Porth. He says i
that red brick buildings housing dance halls and shooting
galleries are now situated in what was once a grassy hollow
in the hills. The city clerk of Porth replies that no such
122
buildings have been erected. When Smith returns to inspect
the natural amphitheater, he finds that it is still a green
country area.
Lawrence Hillyer, who is doing research on the rela
tionship between the Seven Sleepers and mortals who went to
fairyland, goes to Porth for a holiday. He frequents the
region near the amphitheater. A murder is committed in the [
i
jtown, and Hillyer is accused of shielding a friend who the I
! I
I
villagers think is guilty of the crime. Hillyer returns to |
I
London, but misfortune follows him. Wherever he goes, mir- |
j
rors fall, cornices of buildings crumble, ladders break, i
I
windows are smashed, and accidents of all kinds occur. The j
reader of The Green Round is aware that the poltergeist
activity is not caused by Hillyer. A small deformed figure
has accompanied Hillyer everywhere since his visit to the
amphitheater of Porth. Hillyer does not see the little man
!—nor do most persons. A bystander, for example, sees
Hillyer's companion and remarks to a friend who has not seen
26
him: "'There was something wrong about him.'" Hillyer is
finally able to see the horrible being that dogs his foot
steps . The little creature is twisted and deformed with the
The Green Round (London, [1933]), p. 73.
123
"old face of a dwarf" (p. 196). The Green Round ends with
Hillyer's sudden departure for the Near East.
Machen associates the events of The Green Round with
the Moberly and Jourdain encounter at Versailles. In An
Adventure Misses Moberly and Jourdain, teachers and daugh
ters of clergymen, told how they stepped into the eighteenth
century one day in Versailles in 1901. They saw the figures:
i
of Marie Antoinette and the lords and ladies of her court. I
The writers explained that they must have wandered into a
kind of pocket of the unfortunate queen's memory.
i
Machen also associates Hillyer's difficulties with the
experiences of a group of mountaineers who climbed Mount i
Nephin. The persons climbing the mountain were led astray
by voices and tricks of the fairies. Machen feels that both
Smith's and Hillyer's problems stemmed from their visits to
the green round or grassy amphitheater. Hillyer's seems to
have been the only case that resulted in one's being fol- j
i
i
lowed and plagued by a mischievous spirit. The fairy de
scribed in The Green Round is small and stunted, and his i
face appears old. Yet he is depicted grinning at Hillyer.
He is more inclined to do mischief than to do serious bodily
harm to anyone.
"Change" has been treated in the section on diabolism
124
but should be mentioned here also. This story contains a
combination of witchcraft and fairy materials,, with the
witchcraft theme predominating. The fairy motif is intro
duced twice in "Change." It occurs first when Rimmer tells J
of the villagers' custom of having lights burning in their
. . 27
houses all night to keep out the fairies . It appears a
second time when the lost Bobby Brown is found beneath a i
i
thorn tree. The little boy has changed so that he has a
little, shriveled., yellow face; his behavior has become wild
and frenzied. The reader realizes that the real Bobby Brown
[has been stolen by the fairies and that a changeling has
been left in his place. Machen is careful to show that the :
child is found near a thorn tree. In all of his writings
Machen portrays the thorn as the revered tree of the fairy
folk. Mortals must be wary of enchantment when they are
near such a tree. Alice Hayes, who is the witch of
"Change," succeeds in seducing all of the children under herj
care.
The third category in our discussion of fairies will
concern the concept of fairy tales as psychological experi-
ences of some kind. The three tales selected for study in
2?"Change," The Children of the Pool and Other Stories,
p. 240.
12 5
this division include "Awaking" (1930), "Opening the Door"
(1931), and "The Strange Tale of Mount Nephin" (1932).
"Awaking" tells of Johnny's anticipation of his trip to
the Midsummer Fair. He attends the fair and enjoys the
bright and glorious wonders. He falls asleep under "a very
old and twisted thorn tree that threw a shadow on a green
28
bank." When he awakens, his world has changed. He no
longer sees wonders and glory; he recalls only broken dreams
and pains. When he tries to speak of what he remembers of
the Midsummer Fair, no one will listen. His family think
that he suffered sunstroke. Johnny becomes a poet who
i
i
writes of a reality that has passed away. |
In "Awaking" there is no actual appearance of a fairy.
Machen presents a powerful suggestion, however, when he
contrives to have the youth fall asleep beneath a thorn
tree. The awakened youth sees the world transmuted. He ;
becomes a poet in order to capture the beauty that once j
i
existed for him.
In "Opening the Door" the Reverend Secretan Jones
leaves his study one day, goes into the garden, and opens
i
the door to the lane. He notices that there are three
28
"Awaking," The Cosy Room and Other Stories, p. 181.
126
children playing some games. The children are horrible,
stunted little creatures. Jones returns to his study to
'find that he has been gone for six weeks. The flower that
he picked as he left the garden is fresh in his hand upon
his return. All that Jones remembers of his experience is
that everything was absolutely right. Afterwards Jones goes
to Wales . Late one afternoon he goes out in wild fall
weather and never returns. No trace of him is ever found. j
i
Presumably he has vanished into eternity. j
The reader will recognize the presence of fairies in
i
"Opening the Door." The horrible creatures have something j
to do, no doubt, with both disappearances of Jones . They j
seem to be the visible representations of the timelessness |
i
that the clergyman enters . i
"The Strange Tale of Mount Nephin" describes the ex
periences of a group of mountain climbers who are on Mount
Nephin. The members of the party become separated because j
of some force. One member of the group said that she felt |
that for a moment time was nonexistent. She was pulled away
i
i
by a strange power, and she went in the direction of crying
i
voices . Other members of the climbing party were likewise |
led astray. Machen's conclusion of the sketch mentions the
possibility of the fairies' tricking of the climbers. He
127
says :
Were they harried and misled and deluded by the Little
People . . . I am with the "man of the cottage" here;
I don't talk about that—because I know nothing of it.
Tradition, even wild tradition, is often trustworthy
29
in a high degree.
i
Machen refers to the feelings experienced by the persons who
were on Mount Nephin. He writes: "I dare not say that the
people who climbed Mount Nephin in July, 1929, were beset by
I
fairies; but I think I may say that experiences such as ,
theirs were the foundation of the older fairy lore" (p. 20).
It has been shown that Machen's fairies are not super
natural beings in every case. In fact, Machen's most ter
rible and malignant fairies are actually the descendants of
an early race that in some way became static and failed to i
follow the evolutionary process . In his second type of
fairy, however, Machen does presuppose more than natural
beings. These fairies can appear and disappear at will;
they are not equally visible to all persons at all times. '
They also have certain disrupting powers. In associating i
fairies with psychological experiences Machen also draws on
the supernatural.
29
"The Strange Tale of Mount Nephin," Bridles and Spurs
(Cleveland, 1951), p. 20.
128
Apparitions
, A character in "The Great God Pan" makes a disdainful
remark about tales of the supernatural. He exclaims that
nothing strikes him as being "'more commonplace and tedious
i
30
than the ordinary ghost story of commerce.'" We observed
earlier in this study that tales of the ghostly were popular
during Machen's lifetime. j
i During the decade from 1890 to 1900 Machen did not ,
write any ghost stories, although it was his most prolific
period of literary activity. He was well aware of the
ghost-story technique, however, as he demonstrated in his |
preface to Bruno Brunelli's Casanova Loved Her. Machen said
that the more amazing a tale was that Defoe narrated
the more fully he loaded it with trivial and insignifi
cant and irrelevant details. Here there was an end
that justified the means. Thus Defoe made his readers
believe in the ghost of Mrs. Veal: but if you have no
marvel to show, you need not be at the pains to be dull.
When Machen undertook to write a series of stories of
apparitions, he followed Defoe's practice in the insertion
of trivial matters, but with certain limitations. Machen's
i
"The Great God Pan," Tales of Horror and the Super
natural, p. 91.
31
(London, 1929), p. vi.
129
stories that deal with apparitions generally are short and
simple. There is no room for the accumulation of details.
It was during the emotional upheaval of World War I
that Machen first turned to stories "purely supernatural in
nature" (Sweetser, AM, p. 125). The first work in this j
genre was "The Bowmen," which appeared in The Evening News, j
j
September 29, 1914. It tells of the retreat of the 80,000, j
when British hope is at low ebb. A British soldier remem-
i
bers seeing the figure of St. George on the plates in a i
London restaurant. A Latin motto accompanies the picture j
and reads in translation: "May St. George be a present help!
i
to the English." The soldier utters the motto, and suddenly!
he feels an electric shock surge through his body. He hears!
thousands of men calling on St. George, and he sees beyond J
the trench a long line of gleaming bowmen shooting arrows.
The British think they kill 10,000 Germans. But the soldierj
who sought saintly assistance knows that St. George has |
32 !
"brought his Agincourt bowmen to help the English." The j
German general staff attribute the massacre of their own men
i
I
to an unknown poisonous gas because no wounds are discern- ;
ible on the dead soldiers.
The Angels of Mons: The Bowmen and Other Legends of
the War (New York and London, 1915), p. 31.
130
I have written a fairly long summary for what is actu
ally a slight tale, since "The Bowmen" proved to be a con
troversial piece of writing. "The publication of 'The
Bowmen,'" according to Goldstone and Sweetser, "with the |
assertion of Machen that the story had no basis in fact !
resulted in the appearance of books and pamphlets, written
by others, in contradiction" (p. 35). Machen says that he
was very much affected, as were all the English, by the i
British retreat from Mons during World War I. He envisioned
the horrors of the battlefield, he thought of "Kipling's
33
story of the ghostly Indian regiment," and these elements
i i
became intermingled with his own medievalism (p. 7) to pro- i
duce "The Bowmen." His story was regarded by the English i
reading public as true. Machen repeatedly denied that the
tale had any factual basis . Many variants of "The Bowmen"
began to appear, with the bowmen of Machen finally emerging
i
as angels (p. 13) . j
i
Machen confesses his belief in miracles, but in the
case of "The Bowmen" he is convinced of the fictional origin
of the tale inasmuch as he himself conceived and executed
jthe story in its first form. He maintained this position;
•""Introduction," The Angels of Mons, p. 7.
131
by 1922 he was referring to the mushrooming effect of "The
Bowmen" as "mass illusion or mob emotion" (Sweetser, AM,
p. 127) .
In "The Soldiers' Rest/' which also appeared in 1914,
a soldier wounded while performing a courageous feat is com
forted by a kindly-looking man wearing a black robe. Soon
others wearing black crowd into the room where the soldier :
is resting. The soldier is given "Vin nouveau du Royaume"
to drink, and all his sorrows leave him. The man in black !
i
changes in appearance and stands arrayed in rose-colored |
i
armor. The soldier realizes that he is in the presence of i
i
St. Michael. \
"The Dazzling Light" is a type of dream vision that is
set in the period of World War I. Delamere Smith dreams in j
South Wales of a mighty battle. He sees in his dream a
farmhouse battered to bits. The soldiers engaged in the
battle seem to be carrying strange equipment. Later Smith
I
is sent to France as a liaison officer. There he sees the
farmhouse of his dream; the men with the peculiar weapons
are carrying bombs and bomb-throwers.
In "The Monstrance" a German soldier is haunted for
having killed an aged priest and a young child. He had
crucified the child on the door of St. Lambart's church.
132
The haunting is a progressive thing, narrated in the sol-
idier's diary. It begins with the sonorous ringing in the
soldier's ears of the bell of St. Lambart. Then out of the
corner of an eye the soldier sees a white robe, and he
smells the fragrance of incense. Finally he sees a white
procession of children carrying lilies and an old priest in
golden vestments . The priest is holding up his hands carry
ing something. The soldier shrieks before he dies, as he j
catches a glimpse of the shining monstrance held by the j
priest. I
i
This tale has a psychological quality not present in I
i
the other three stories summarized. The "haunting" has been
set in motion by the German soldier's conscience. j
The four supernatural stories just described were pub
lished together in a volume entitled The Angels of Mons:
The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War (1915). For a time
Machen did not turn from this genre. He continued dipping
into the events of World War I for additional supernatural
legends. He wrote "The Little Nations" (1915), "The Men
from Troy" (1915), "Munitions of War" (1915), "Drake's !
Drum" (1919), "Vision in the Abbey" (1920), and "The Happy
Children" (1920) .
"The Little Nations" was first printed under the title
133
"What the Prebendary Saw." It foreshadows the bitterness of
the fighting of the Gallipoli campaign in a war between the
red and the black ants. As the ants wage their war in the
Prebendary's rose garden., they unconsciously arrange their
earthworks so that they resemble the Gallipoli Peninsula.
The discussion of this tale has been reserved for a later
portion of this study. \
In "The Men from Troy" a soldier who lost his arm in
i
Gallipoli tells the chaplain of the bravery of the British :
fighting men. He has been very much impressed by the fan- j
tastic feats of courage performed by the Gallipoli "na- I
tives." He speaks of the strange idiom of these men, the i
i
Hellenes, who refer to the ocean as "the wine-dark sea," i
and who swear "by Ares" and "by cloud-gathering Zeus"
(Works, VII, 183-184). The Hellenes frighten the enemies,
who act as though they have seen ghosts. The chaplain
realizes that the soldier has witnessed the return of the j
ancient Greek heroes .
"Munitions of War" tells of a traveler who is staying
in a town on the seacoast of western England. He is awak- i
I
ened at night by loud oaths and the language of stevedores
as they load the ships. The traveler is aware that he is
listening to Lord Nelson's men. One of the voices says:
134
34
"'Blast ye, bos'n; I fell at Trafalgar.'"
In the story entitled "Drake's Drum" Machen tells of
the incidents surrounding the surrender of the German fleet
to the English at the end of World War I. The English fear
i
i
that at the last moment the Germans will resume hostilities .j
Just then the roll of a small drum is heard on the Royal
Oak. The drum continues to beat during the encircling of
the German fleet by the British. The sailors believe it is
"the audible manifestation of the spirit of the great sea
captain Drake at this hour of the tremendous triumph of
35
Britain on the seas."
"Vision in the Abbey: The Little Boy Who Came to the
King by Way of Great Tribulation" is a dream vision. The
little boy has a vision of his death in World War I. He
sees his own burial as the Unknown Soldier, and he sees his
spirit leading the army of the dead "to the secure, inex-
36
pugnable camp that is on high.
Machen begins "The Happy Children" with an account of
34
"Munitions of War/
1
The Cosy Room, p. 112.
35
"Drake's Drum," The Shining Pyramid (Chicago, 1923),
p. 241.
•^"Vision in the Abbey," in Cenotaph: A Book of Remem
brance, ed. Thomas Moult (London, [1923]), p. 22.
135
his journalistic mission to the northern part of England to
discover the truth of the story that Germans are in hiding
there. He obtains the desired information, and then he goes
to Banwick. He arrives there on the day after Christmas.
!
He goes for a walk in the late evening and finds the streets,
"alive with children." Later on, even after eleven o'clock
at night, Machen still sees the children. They pass him in J
i
procession on their way up the steep hill to the church. i
Machen notices that all the children have severe wounds, j
some wear wreaths of dripping seaweed, and some show signs j
f
of having been tortured. Machen realizes that some of the I
! . . . . !
children are recent victims of the atrocities of war in the
fields of Flanders and of the sinking of the Lusitania. He '
finds a book entitled The Ancient Rites of Banwick, wherein
he reads of the special Mass of the Holy Innocents that in
medieval and Elizabethan times had been sung at Banwick
37 I
jchurch on "Childermas Day." Machen knows that he has wit-i
nessed the gathering of the children for this Mass.
Sweetser regards Machen's stories in the supernatural
genre as fragile. He feels that "they should be kept dis-
i
tinct from his tales of cosmic horror, which may prove to j
•^"The Happy Children," Tales of Horror and the Super
natural, p. 251.
! 136
(bring him lasting fame" (AM, p. 127). Machen's ghost sto
ries are all narrated as true accounts of what actually
happened. They report spontaneous experiences—none have
been produced by the incantations of occultism or by the
mediums of seances. The stories in this group are simply
told, and they reflect a sincere patriotism. There are no }
extended passages to create mood and setting. The phenomena
delineated in these tales include the ghostly bowmen of
Agincourt, St. Michael, hallucinations, prophetic visions,
the ghosts of the Hellenic warriors, the ghosts of Lord
i
Nelson's men, the mysterious beating of a drum, and the
:
ghosts of martyred children. The most famous tale of this
category is "The Bowmen," which Sweetser regards as "sig
nificant in one sense, however. After that time Machen
turned more to marvelous visions and away from infernal
machinations" (p. 127).
When Machen published Dreads and Drolls (1926), he in
cluded a number of stories that contain supernatural ele
ments . These stories are very close to the ordinary ghost
story. "The Adventure of the Long-Lost Brother" (1925) and
"The Strange Case of Emily Weston" (1925) both concern per
sons—a brother in one case and a daughter in the other--who|
l
have disappeared and who reappear under queer circumstances. i
137
The reappearance is of short duration, and the reader won
ders whether those returning are ghosts or whether a hoax is
involved. "The Man from Nowhere" (1925) is purported to be
a true account of the life of Martinez de Pasquales. Mar
tinez influenced the Abbe Fournie, who was thereafter able '
i
to see his deceased parents and sister. The vision of the
dead persons persisted to the degree that the Abbe was
i
terror-stricken. "7B Coney Court" (1925) is a story of a
ghostly tenant Michael Carver who pays his rent regularly ,
by mail with the postmark on the envelopes bearing the
single letter "N." Carver asks for repairs to be made to j
his apartment. Not only does he write letters and pay his
rent, but he also plays the piano loudly at midnight so that
his neighbors complain. The owner of Coney Court has the
complaint investigated. He learns that there is "a broken-
op
down old piano with hardly a dozen notes sounding" in a
I
dingy garret. He has the piano and other rubbish removed,
and there are no more disturbances or letters.
The stories comprising the "dread" content of Dreads
and Drolls come from "famous newspaper mysteries or from
books of the eighteenth century" (Sweetser, AM, p. 42) .
38
"7B Coney Court," Dreads and Drolls, p. 29.
138
There is certainly the suggestion of the ghostly in the
'tales mentioned. In the "droll" content of the book
Machen's fictional account of the "tenant" of 7B Coney Court
is a deftly treated ghost story. Though the tale is brief,
the effect is made powerful by the accumulation of details.
Any discussion of Machen's "ghosts" is not complete
without mention of the apparition of "The Children of the
Fool" (1936). In this story Meyrick, who is visiting near
the Welsh border, discovers that an old friend, Roberts, is
also in the vicinity. Roberts is staying at Lanypwll, a
comfortable farm situated near a disagreeably ugly marsh. !
i
The owners of the farm advise everyone to stay away from
the stagnant water. Roberts visits the marsh, however. Up !
to this moment Roberts has been enjoying his holiday at
Lanypwll, but suddenly he becomes distressed and nervous.
He is being annoyed by a girl with whom he had had an affair,
I
i
jtwenty-five years before. He believes that the girl intends;
i
to blackmail him. Since the girl seems to be aware of all '
the details of Roberts' present life, Meyrick assumes that j
Roberts himself is responsible for her appearances. He has j
Roberts spend the rest of his vacation at the seashore. j
Roberts finds that he no longer is troubled with the girl
who haunted him at Lanypwll. The landlady of Lanypwll
139
thinks that Roberts' visit to the hideous marsh has evoked
the "children of the pool" so that they have come to haunt
him. Meyrick believes that the black oily water of the
marsh with its foul growth of plants is "a strong drug, a
drug of evocation; the black deep without calling to the
black deep within, and summoning the inhabitants thereof to
39
come forth." And the "inhabitant" in the case of Roberts
|
is an indiscretion that has been swelling in "the hidden
i
places" of his soul (p. 334) to monstrous proportions. When
Roberts ventured to the edge of the gruesome pool, the hor- i
ror of the landscape called out to the ugliness within him.
Machen, who says in "The Children of the Pool" that the
psychoanalyst deduces "the most incongruous and extravagant j
results" (pp. 332-333) from the simplest dreams, has no
patience with psychoanalysis. He contends that psycho
analysis is compounded "by mingling one gram of sense with
i
a hundred of pure nonsense" (p. 332). Machen thinks that l
the true interpretation of many dreams moves "in the oppo- |
site direction to the method of psycho-analysis. The
psycho-analyst infers the monstrous and abnormal from a
on
The Children of the Pool," Tales of Horror and the
Supernatural, p. 335.
140 "
trifle; it is often safe to reverse the process" (p. 333).
It has been seen that once Machen delved into the realm
of the ghost that he could become remarkably versatile. He
utilized war themes and in so doing brought back a number ofi
i
heroes of other periods of history. He made use of prophecy
by visionj even by having a war of ants prefigure the out
come of the Gallipoli campaign. Machen used a kind of audi
tory ghost in "Drake's Drum." He portrayed St. Michael and
i
showed the return of the spirits of the children-martyrs. j
Machen certainly can compare favorably with any writer
of ghost stories so far as manysidedness is concerned. He j
seemingly does not choose to create terror in the ghost
stories he narrates. The most complex story of this group i
i
of tales is "The Children of the Pool." It contains little
malignancy except in the references to the pool of Lanypwll
Farm.
Machen treats yet another type of story that may be
discussed with apparitions . The two works that will be here|
examined—"N" (1935) and "The Exalted Omega" (1936)—have
certain characteristics in common with "The Dazzling Light.",
In "The Dazzling Light" Delamere Smith has a vision of a j
place in France. He sees a section of the French country
side that actually exists at the time of his vision. In
141
"N" the apparition consists of an appearance of a park in
London as it must have looked in the very early days of the
city. In "The Exalted Omega" the planning of a murder that
will take place in the distant future and even after his own
death intrudes upon the protagonist. The past and the pres
ent merge in "N." In "The Exalted Omega" the future and the
present come together. J
"N" concerns the apparition of Canon's Park in Stoke '
Newington. Arnold investigates the story that Canon's Park ,
has been seen in all its rural splendor by Mr. Hare and an
experimental farmer. Arnold discovers a book supposed to
have been written in 1853 in which the Reverend Thomas Ham- i
pole also saw Canon's Park as a beautiful country location j
when he was in the company of a mysterious occultist Glan- |
ville. In the process of his examination of the story,
Arnold finds that the astounding vision of Canon's Park in
j
all its glory was the undoing of a young lunatic Vallance. I
j
This madman, who has been staying in a lodging house across j
from Canon's Park, comments on the exquisite beauty of the
view from his room. He describes a thick wood and a bub
bling well, both features of the panorama being equally
nonexistent. His landlady reports Vallance to the proper
authorities. The young man is found to be an escaped
142
lunatic, and he is confined to the asylum from which he
recently escaped.
Arnold regards the story of the apparition of the
Canon's Park of an earlier age as true. He believes that j
ancient periods of time can reoccur and that "'there is a
perichoresis, an interpenetration. It is possible, indeed, i
that we . . . are now sitting among desolate rocks, by bit-
40
ter streams ... . And with what companions?'"
The strange apparition that has been manifested at
l
different times to persons not in the least similar poses a j
!
I
problem for Arnold. He arrives at his theory of perichore- !
sis after he rules out telepathy, hallucination, and hypno
tism. He discusses by means of Hampole the alchemical view j
that before the Fall the universe had been fluid and could
be molded to suit the fancy of man. Hampole has written:
i "It is said . . . that the experiments of the alchemists
of the Dark Ages . . . are, in fact, related, not to the
transmutation of metals, but to the transmutation of the [
entire Universe. . . . This method .. . is simply con- i
cerned to restore the delights of the primal Paradise;
to enable men, if they will, to inhabit a world of joy
and splendour. It is perhaps possible that there is
such an experiment, and there are some who have made it."
(p. 302)
An occultist had a part in the vision of Canon's Park as it ''
"N," Tales of Horror and the Supernatural, p. 315.
143
occurred to Hampole. The other visions were spontaneous.
Arnold's theory of perichoresis seems to be the only valid
explanation of the mysterious apparition.
"The Exalted Omega" is a story that deals with spiri
tualistic events, both genuine and spurious, poltergeist .
activity, automatic writing, and the mobility of time bar- j
riers . J. F. Mansel, who has withdrawn from society, is j
reading the Moberly and Jourdain account of the apparition I
of Versailles as it appeared in the eighteenth century.
Mansel finds the description of the landscape affecting.
i
The trees of Versailles remind him, as he reads, of the
trees interwoven in tapestry. He looks out of his window
to find that the "leafage and tree trunks, green turf and
grey bricks of Raymond Buildings wavered together as he had
41
seen vistas and towers wavering on the theatre backcloth."
Mansel later hears voices telling of a murderous plan.
i
Years later the plan is apparently executed. A death under
t
i
mysterious circumstances occurs in Mansel's apartment many !
years afterward and even after his own death. [
l
The ghostly apparitions described in "N" and "The
Exalted Omega" are associated, needless to say, with
41
"The Exalted Omega," The Children of the Pool and
Other Stories, p. 9.
IAA
Machon's theory of time. In some of his literary works, at
least, Machen's thesis regarding time is this: the past,
present, and future are intertwined, and under certain con
ditions one of the arbitrary divisions of what we call
"time" may move out of its normal position and interpene
trate another division.
The Holy Grail
Machen's interest in research relating to the legends
of the Holy Grail has been pointed out earlier in this study
(pp. 57-58 above). At this place in our discussion, how
ever, we are occupied with Machen's creative treatment of
the Grail matter.
In a brief fictional sketch "The Holy Things" (1908) j
Machen describes a man overcome with weariness in the noise
and congestion of life in London. Suddenly the man experi
ences an unaccountable silence, and the air becomes filled
i
with reverent expectancy. Ho sees lights burning before a
store, he hears organ music in the city traffic, he smells
incense, and he is aware of the insistent ringing of a sil
very bell. He hears the chanting of choristers. The man's
weariness leaves him as he sees "the Holy, White and
145
42
Shining Mysteries exhibited—in Holborn."
Although the Grail is not depicted in this short work,
[the symbols that usually accompany its appearance in Ma-
chen's stories—light, incense, bells, the Celtic Mass—are
present. Machen conveys the feelings of peace and restora
tion that come to the person fortunate enough to see the
Grail.
In 1907 Machen began a long work, The Secret Glory, in
which he planned to use Grail materials. Some of the epi
sodes appeared in print during this same year, but the ac
tual book was not completed until 1908. It was not pub
lished as a whole until 1922.
The Secret Glory is written in the third person with
the use of flashbacks to previous times in the life of the
protagonist Ambrose Meyrick. Some of the story is presented
by means of excerpts from Meyrick's notebook. Most of the
^narration deals with the years of Meyrick's boyhood. Mey
rick's adult life and his death as a martyr are treated in
I
I
a brief epilogue. Machen inserts poetry at infrequent in- i
i
tervals in the book.
!
i
Sweetser points out the imperfect blending of elements
""'The Holy Things," The Glorious Mystery, p. 106.
146
in The Secret Glory. It is as though Machen were undecided
whether to be mystical or satirical (AM, p. 33). The mysti
cism relates to the presence of the Grail in England; the
satire concerns the evils of the public-school system in t
!
England.
i
i
Ambrose Meyrick is fifteen when the story begins. He I
has had a sensitive rearing up to this time. Ambrose's
father, now deceased, has interested his son in the old
architecture of England and has taken his son on pilgrimagesi
to hidden shrines, telling him stories of the Welsh saints j
j
and the early Celtic Mass. On one occasion Ambrose's father;
takes him to Cradock's farm in the Welsh highlands. Cradock
is the last Keeper of "the Holy Cup of Teilo sant" (Works, i
j
IV, 83) or the Grail, a glorious, bejeweled bowl-like vesseli
with a short stem. Ambrose and his father participate in a
ceremony in the Celtic rite. Ambrose becomes enraptured; he
I
sees a dazzling light, hears the holy bells and the songs of
I
angels and fairy birds, and he smells the "odours of Para- ,
dise" (p. 82) .
i
Ambrose has been placed at Lupton, an English public !
school. There he is bullied by the boys and by his uncle ,
I
i
until he learns to conform, superficially at least, to Eng
lish materialism and grossness. To all appearances Ambrose
147
becomes a model student. All the while, however, he is
laughing to himself at the teachers and the boys. Within
himself Ambrose is "'being gathered more and more into the
sanctuaries of immortal things'" (p. 160). He runs off to
London with Nelly Foran, whom he later renounces. Then he
i
becomes an actor and a writer of curious articles. A voice i
keeps speaking within him, censuring him for having wit- ,
I
I
nessed the ancient Celtic rites: "'Woe and great sorrow arel
on him, for he hath looked unworthily into the Tremendous
Mysteries, and on the Secret Glory which is hidden from the
Holy Angels" (p. 57). Ambrose has been cautioned not to
divulge his knowledge of the Sacred Cup to anyone, for "the I
truth, like many precious things, must often be concealed I
from the profane" (p. 85).
Sweetser writes, and indeed Machen makes it quite clear
in The Secret Glory, that "The story of Ambrose is intended
t
!as a direct parallel of the Graal legend, and in it the
spiritual unpreparedness of the recipients of the symbol of
their faith causes its withdrawal" (AM, p. 34). The Grail
legend is the story of a great loss . To behold the Cup is
to attain sanctity, but the renunciation of worldly attach
ments must come first. The renunciation made by Ambrose has
been suggested to him by the occult sayings in a book
148
entitled Persian Wisdom. Ambrose has read this book at
Lupton, but he does not discover the true significance until
many years have passed. The adages of the book are these:
"If you desire to be inebriated; abstain from wine."
"If you desire beauty: look not on beautiful things." |
"If you desire to see: let your eyes be blindfolded."
"If you desire love: refrain from the Beloved."
(Works, IV, 163)
Upon the death of the last Keeper of the Grail, Ambrose,
i
takes the Cup so that he may carry it into the East. He ]
takes the precious vessel to a shrine in Asia where it will
be hidden forever from the evil world. On his return trip
i
Ambrose is captured by the Turks. His captors ask him to |
I
i
trample upon a crucifix; Ambrose refuses, and so he himself
is crucified. i
The story of Ambrose, whose name comes from a Greek
word meaning "immortal," has been dedicated to the mystical
quest. His father reared him through a kind of incantation.
Machen speaks of Ambrose's growth under his father's tute
lage:
. . . there are those who dwell under the protection of
enchantments, who may go down into the black depths and [
yet appear resurgent and shining, without any stain or I
defilement on their white robes. For these have ears
so intent on certain immortal songs that they cannot
hear discordant voices; their eyes are veiled with a
light that shuts out the vision of evil. (p. 121)
149
Ambrose sees life as a rite, the end of which is the achiev
ing of the Grail. All nature and art have a deeply fervent
significance for him. He is happy in doing that for which
he has been created, but he feels that he will suffer for
having earlier penetrated the Mysteries unworthily. He in- |
tends to pursue his quest faithfully and accept any adver
sity along the way. There are foreshadowings of the end of j
i
Ambrose's mission. On one occasion Ambrose befriends an old
i
Irish beggar who plays Celtic melodies on his fiddle. Am- i
brose gives the old man a shilling. The beggar looks in the
face of Ambrose and asks to be forgiven for begging money
"'from one that is to gain Red Martyrdom'" (p. 159). He
asks Ambrose to remember him in the time of his glory. \
Another time the London poet Carrol observes Ambrose in a
restaurant and remarks that the young man is in the wrong
setting. He says: "'I kept thinking . . . how I should i
; i
jlike to see him in a monk's robe'" (p. 190). Still later a
philosophic Frenchman converses with Ambrose and hails him
as an artist and mystic. He remarks abruptly: "'You will
i
i
probably be crucified. Good evening . . . and a fine mar- I
tyrdom to you!
1
" (pp. 211-212). The impromptu prophecies
made to Ambrose by the beggar and the philosopher are ful
filled. The poet's impression of Ambrose as a monk is also
150
near the truth. In commenting on The Secret Glory, Machen
says :
The humble have many treasures; and one of the greatest
of these is the gift of vision. I do not mean by this
the vision of the higher kind, or the sight of those
things which it is not lawful to utter, nor even that
lower gift which enables the palmist and the astrologer
to do some very astounding things every now and again.
The vision I speak of has nothing to do with this or
that; and yet we poor folk certainly are enabled to see
the secrets of many hearts, . . . (Danielson, p. 49)
Idealism is the quality that Ambrose's seers have in common..
The beggar is in rags, the philosopher is critical of the
populace that hates the artist, and the poet is unsuccessful
materially, but all three persons place ideals before prac- ;
tical considerations. The spontaneity of the prophecies ;
conveys the feeling to the reader that the words are di
vinely inspired.
Ambrose is a Perceval who defies the powers of dark
ness (the English school system); he is recognized as a man
•predestined for greatness by beggar, poet, and philosopher.
He renounces love and a career, and he becomes the Keeper
of the Grail in order to carry it away from the materialis
tic West to the mystic East. He is martyred just as Christ \
was. As Perceval "has entered the burning furnace as the
lead enters the athanor of the alchemists, and he has come
151 "
43
forth shining and glorious, glistening as the sun," so is
Ambrose victorious. Instead of kneeling before the Grail in
an act of adoration, Ambrose becomes one with Christ Cruci
fied, i
!
A witness to Ambrose's crucifixion describes the events
that took place. He refers to Ambrose as "'the stranger
Ambrosian'" (Works, IV, 250). It is my conjecture that
Machen intends to portray Ambrose as a type of the crucified
1
Christ. Anything "ambrosian" may pertain to the food of the
1
Greek and Roman gods. Ambrose's offering of himself on the |
cross becomes one with Christ's death. Christ is a divine i
i i
!
food; so, too, is Ambrose a symbol of the food of the gods.
There is much in The Secret Glory that derives from
occultism. But then there is a similarity, as we have said,
between the search for the Grail and the quest of the Phi
losopher's Stone. Ambrose writes in his journal that "'our
t
great loss is that we separate what is one and make it two; !
and then, having done so, we make the less real into the
more real, as if we thought the glass made to hold the wine
more important than the wine it holds'" (p. 151). Again
using the terms of occultism, Ambrose tells of casting all
43
"Parsifal" : The Story of the Holy Graal, p. 11.
152
the treasures he possessed into the alembic "'and at last
Sol rose red and glorious
1
" (p. 171). He says: "'I had dis
possessed myself of all, and I found that I possessed all; I
had thrown away all the money in my purse, and I was richer
i
than I had ever been; I had died, and I had found a new life!
in the land of the living'" (p. 177).
In the Defence of Taverns, a work mentioned in The j
i
Secret Glory as having been written by Ambrose, Machen
i
blends all of his Cup ideas. He writes: "'But the history •
of men who have attained, who have done the glorious things j
i
of the earth and have become for ever exalted is the history;
I |
of the men who have quested the Cup
1
" (Works, IV, 205).
i
Ambrose then cites Dionysus and the Bacchic Msytery, the !
i
references to the vine and the vineyard in the Old Testa
ment, the Grail, and La Dive Bouteille of Rabelais (pp. 205-
206) .
I Machen makes many allusions in The Secret Glory to !
Welsh religious and folk beliefs . He tells the tale of the
Emperor Eos, who changes himself into a lowly brown night
ingale so that all mankind can hear the beauty of fairy
melodies. The bird Eos, however, is despised by everyone
but the wise men who became the first bards of Wales (Works,
IV, 126-128).
"153 ~
Another tale of Machen is an allegory of a man who
lives in the Bright Palace, which has 101 doors. Of these,
100 open onto scenes of great beauty and splendor; one leads
to a cesspool, and that is the only door the man ever opens .;
Ambrose compares this circumstance to life—the majority of
the persons in the world prefer gross materialism and close
their eyes to the treasures surrounding them (Works, IV, ]
157). i
j
Machen's nature descriptions add a sense of mysterious j
beauty to The Secret Glory. The sunset is described in one
place as follows: "All the east became as a garden of
roses, red flowers of living light shone over the mountain,
and as the beams of the sun lit up the circle of the earth
a bird's song began from a tree within the woods" (p. 53).
Meyrick sees the evening star, as the clouds in the sky
disperse. Machen writes: "An ocean of white splendour
Iflowed over him: he dwelt within the star" (p. 51).
Machen has given some thought to the various meanings
for the symbolism of the Cup. He has Meyrick speak of
Benedictine liqueur: "Perhaps the bottle that went round
the table that night was like the powder in Jekyll and Hyde
—its properties were the result of some strange accident.
At all events, they were quite magical" (p. 191).
154
A Fragment of Life summarized elsewhere follows the
Grail theme. Darnell sees the inner beauty of London during
a holiday, when he tours the city. He tells of a church on
a hill. If he were able to draw a picture of what he has
seen, he says that he would place a cup in the air over the i
church, and he would have rays coming down from it. The
vision of the cup in the air above the church marks Darnell [
as one who is also on the quest of the Grail. I
i
As the story advances, Darnell becomes more and more |
withdrawn from the materialism of London. He and Mary
I
anticipate an inspired life on a farm in Wales . References j
I
to magic and transmutations occur throughout A Fragment of >
Life. Darnell tells of a wonderful twilight he once saw: j
". . .a dark blue, glowing like a violet, just as they
say the sky looks in foreign countries. I don't know
why, but the sky or something made me feel quite queer;
everything seemed changed in a way 1 couldn't under
stand. I remember I told an old gentleman I knew then !
I ... about how I felt, and he looked at me and said i
j something about fairyland ..." (Works, VI, 50) j
Darnell wonders on one occasion who the actors and dancers
in a vision are:
Magicians, workers of great efficacious spells, who j
knew the secret word by which the earth may be trans
formed into the hall of Gehenna, so that they that gazed
and listened, as at a passing spectacle, should be en
trapped by the sound and the sight presented to them,
should be drawn into the elaborated figures of that
155
mystic dance, and so should be whirled away into those
unending mazes on the wild hills that were abhorred,
there to wander evermore. (p. 89)
A Fragment of Life is written in the third person. It
is written in two different styles that Sweetser identifies j
as naturalism and intonation (AM, p. 31). Sweetser says of i
this book: "It marks a shift in approach and subject matter
from the black magic and demonology of the 1890's to the ,
more positive revelation of miracles and communion which he
[Machen] was to adopt thereafter" (p. 31) .
| It is in "The Great Return," a story published in 1915J
jthat Machen tells not only of the vision of the Grail but j
j !
also of its return to Wales after a long absence. Strange
rose-colored lights and the ringing of a melodious bell ,
herald the return. The fragrance of incense fills the lit
tle Anglican church of Llantrisant. Because of the coming
iof the Grail an old deaf woman receives her hearing, ene- I
i
i
mies become reconciled, those who have aches and pains are j
I
free from misery, the rich and the poor love each other, ;
I
i
Olwen Phillips is cured of tuberculosis, a fox and a hound !
I
play together, and finally all religious sects in Llantri- j
sant participate in the Holy Mass of the Sangraal. |
Machen adopts the pose of a newspaper reporter to tell
in the first person of the wonders that happened in the
_ 156 "
little Welsh village. He says that ordinary human beings
receive only brief glimpses of the world on the other side
44
"of the dark curtain." He cites an example of such a
I
glimpse in an astounding news article telling of the trans-
j
figuration of the Tashi Lama (p. 212). An almost equally '
i
surprising news item concerns the remarkable occurrences in
Llantrisant (p. 214). Machen determines to investigate the '
i
situation in Llantrisant. Upon his arrival there he sees
clearly that "a great secret exists" (p. 223). He learns
that for the duration of nine days beginning on the first j
i
iSaturday in June, "Llantrisant and all the regions about j
became possessed either by an extraordinary set of halluci
nations or by a visitation of great marvels" (p. 231). •
Machen has referred to these "marvels" earlier as "a mani
festation of what is conveniently, if inaccurately called
the supernatural order" (p. 230). He seems to be saying, as
he has said in other places, that the so-called "supernatu- j
ral" lies all about usj it is we who have to discern it.
The supernatural order is in actuality the natural order,
i
for the spiritually-minded man can see through the veil. I
The first ringing of the bell of Teilo Sant ushers in j
44
"The Great Return," Tales of Horror and the Super
natural, p. 213.
157
the Grail and its attendants—the Fishermen, who appear in
the village and in the local church. At first the sound is
not audible to everyone. Many persons are convinced of the j
j j
mighty event in Llantrisant only after miracles are worked. '
Machen refers to the spiritualistic wonders believed in
1
by Sir William Crookes and Sir Oliver Lodge. Yet., he con- i
tends, no one really believes in such things. "Much less do
we believe in the rose of fire," he says, "that for a moment
swallowed up the skies and seas and shores of the Welsh i
coast last June" (p. 2 33). Even the men who witnessed the
i
marvel "would have invented fairy tales to account for it, J
. . . if it had not been for that which was within them" !
(p. 233). Machen speaks of the restorative powers of the ,
i
Grail at the moment of the vision.
The effect of the vision on the faces of the villagers
is to make them glow "with an ineffable joy" (p. 223). The
i
greatest joy of all is to be seen on the face of the rector
i
i
who, says Machen,
had heard through the veil the Greek word for "holy," i
three times repeated. And he, who had once been a j
horrified assistant at High Mass in a foreign church,
recognized the perfume of incense that filled the place
from end to end. (pp. 237-238)
The miraculous happening in Llantrisant affected the appear
ances of the villagers, changed them within, and sharpened
158
their senses (p. 234). Machen describes the sensations of
,the villagers by saying that the nearest approach to these
feelings is to be found among the users of the drug Anhelo- \
! j
nium Lewinii. The Llantrisant villagers entered a world I
transmuted as if by alchemy.
!
i
Machen gives an account of the Sunday service in the i
church when, because of a strange compulsion, the parish
ioners hurry from their pews into the nave and crowd as near
the altar as they are able . No one knows why he feels com-
pelled to do this, but everyone expresses the feeling of ;
lunutterable joy. A compulsion similar to this was described.
1
i '
in The Hill of Dreams when Machen envisioned the dead Roman I
legions streaming from their graves and moving by an in- ]
I
explicable force. In "The Great Return" the living move |
irresistibly as if drawn by the wonders of the ceremony.
The nine days of wonder reach a climax with the dream
of Olwen Phillips, a young girl who is in the final stages
jof tuberculosis. She is so near death that her doctor has
a death certificate ready. In her dream Olwen hears the
ringing with increasing crescendo of a sweet-sounding bell.
I
Her room becomes filled with the sound, and the walls become
I
rosy-red in color. Three men with shining faces appear:
one holds a golden bell, the second carries a blue table
159
top, and the third holds a cup that is "like a rose on fire"
i
i
(p. 239). Olwen hears a voice singing praises. Then the [
t
dream fades, and Olwen awakens completely cured from her
i
illness. "The dream of Olwen Phillips," says Machen, "was, [
in fact, the vision of the Holy Graal" (p. 241).
I
In portraying the power of the Grail to heal sickness J
and to overcome pain Machen follows the Grail legend close- ;
ly. In "Parsifal": The Story of the Holy Graal Machen
cites Tennyson's Idylls of the King as telling the legend in
iits most familiar form. Tennyson describes the miraculous
i
jcurativ e power of the Grail ("Parsifal," p. 3).
I
Machen's Grail legend has nothing to do with "political'
allegory, pagan survivals of sun heroes, or the Templar
heresy" (Sweetser, AM, p. 59) . It has its origin, as we
have seen, in the ancient Welsh church, the liturgy of which
differed from that of Rome. While accretions of local myth
iand folklore attached themselves to the Grail story, the !
!
Great Loss in the legend was the devastation of the Celtic
Church. "The Great Return" is a portrayal of the restora
tion of the Holy Grail and the Celtic Church—but only for
I
the duration of nine days. j
Machen uses all of his mystical devices in "The Great
Return"—bells, odors of incense, the ancient Celtic rite,
160
the roseate glow, and the Holy Grail. I
Sweetser speaks of Machen's ritualistic tone in "The i
!
I
Great Return" (AM, p. 38). To Nash the religiosity of the
!
work leads "to a kind of insight into the nature of Machen's
i
writings" (p. 119). She observes that Machen's stories "are
either unutterably horrible or completely joyous" (p. 119).
As I mentioned earlier, Nash contends that Machen's tales of
terror are narratives
of diminution, in which a person is destroyed in an
attempt to separate out an element which is an essen-
i tial part of him. The other part of the canon, the
happier tales, are sums in addition. The actors remain i
very human and alive. They are recognizable but changed,
(p. 120)
Miscellaneous Topics i
l
The alchemical quest
Machen's interest in alchemy began, as we have seen,
when he was a child. He learned of the quest for the Phi-
I t
losopher's Stone both in its literal and in its symbolic
meanings. The quest of the Stone could be a search for the
object that could transmute inferior to superior metals . Iti
could be a quest of the soul for a spiritual transmutation. '
I
As early as 1888 Machen had written a parody on the I
alchemical quest. He used this work, now known as "The
161
Spagyric Quest of Beroaldus Cosmopolita," to introduce a
'catalogue of books on alchemy and magic. It originally bore
the pretentious title (in itself a parody of the pedantic
and turgid titles of the works of the followers of Hermes
Trismegistus):
Thesaurus Incantatus: The Enchanted Treasure; or, The
Spagyric Quest of Beroaldus Cosmopolita, in Which Is
Sophically and Mystagorically Declared the First Matter
of the Stone. With a List of Choice Books on Alchemy,
Magic, Talismans, Gems, Mystics, Neoplatonism, Ancient
I Worhips, Rosicrucians, Occult Sciences, etc., etc.
{ (Danielson, p. 14)
I
iln his notes to Danielson's listing of the "Thesaurus In-
cantatus" Machen writes:
The fantastic tale of "The Enchanted Treasure" is an
exercise in a somewhat rare literary genre: the occult
extravaganza. I believe that "The Chemical Marriage of
Christian Rosycross" (early seventeenth century) is in
this kind, though some Rosicrucians take it seriously.
My effort arose from various occult readings of the
ancient sort, and, largely, from the study of Beroalde
de Verville's "Moyen de Parvenir." (Danielson, p. 14)
In his tale Machen narrates the experiences of Canon Bero
aldus, who cursed his furnace inasmuch as he "had reduced
into elemental powder and sophospagyrick dust all his
worldly goods and found himself so sophisticated, metallur-
gised, suffused, salivated, and petrobolised that he had
162
45
not a crown in his pouch, . . ." Machen proposes in his
story to teach "the true way of the Spagyrick Quest" (p.
49). The way is shown to Beroaldus first by a cabalistic
message that appears mysteriously in the air and second by
a yellow-skinned stranger known as Liripipiastor, who prom
ises to take the Canon
"to the place where what is below is that which is
above, where the earth is separated from the fire,
where the brood of the crow change their feathers and
are made like unto doves, where is performed the en
gendering of the sun from the Philosophal Egg." (pp.
51-52)
j
'The stranger leads Beroaldus down a long staircase (which,
we learn, has only seven steps, surprisingly enough). The
stairwell begins at the Canon's window and goes to the lower
regions. Beroaldus arrives underground and is asked the
same question at two different times: "In quo sit bonum
vinum continendum?" The Latin sentence means in transla
tion: "In what must good wine be contained?" Beroaldus
answers that good wine is contained in bottles and barrels;
but this answer apparently is incorrect. The Great Master
whom he meets on his journey instructs the Canon in the
truth of the riddle; namely, that the temple of good wine is
45
"The Spagyrick Quest," The Shining Pyramid (Chicago,
1923), p. 47.
16 3
"the sage's belly" (p. 56). Beroaldus then is told to seek
the "Tree of the Second Juice" (p. 57). He then proceeds on
his quest through a labyrinth and finally comes to seven \
fountains that are placed around the tree he is seeking. |
!
Beroaldus climbs the tree, undergoes seven transmutations, \
|
and returns to the earth with a book containing one leaf, !
i
and the message on the leaf is this: "IN THE SIXTH HOUR OF
THE NIGHT SEARCH NOTHING BUT THYSELF, AND THOU SHALT FIND •
THE FIRST MATTER OF THE STONE, AND IN NO OTHER PLACE SHALT i
THOU FIND IT" (p. 62) .
There is little to be found on the subject of the oc
cult extravaganza. Waite's comments on The Chemical Mar
riage of Christian Rosencreutz (1616), however, do shed
light on the genre mentioned by Machen. Waite writes:
"The Chymical [sic_] Marriage" is called a ludibrium by
its author, and Professor Buhle describes it as a comic
romance, but those of my readers who are acquainted
with alchemical allegories will discern in this singu
lar narrative by a prepared student or artist who was
supernaturally and magically elected to participate in
the accomplishment of the magnum opus, many matters of
grave and occult significance. They will recognise that
the comic episodes are part of a serious design, and
that the work as a whole is in strict accordance with
the general traditions of alchemy.
46
The Real History of the Rosicrucians. . . . (London,
1887), p. 231.
164
Waite concludes that The Chemical Marriage is not a ludi-
ibrium as it has a serious purpose and conceals an inner
meaning. The Latin word ludibrium means "mockery" or
"jest." Machen is of the opinion that The Chemical Marriage
is an occult extravaganza. In Webster's Third New Inter
national Dictionary (Springfield, Mass., 1968), the word
"extravaganza" signifies "a literary fantasy that is freely ,
imaginative in subject, structure, and development and that
joften includes elements of burlesque or parody."
The occult extravaganza would seem to be a genre that
!employs in a recondite way the matter of alchemy together
i
with the terminology describing its processes . It is a kind
of parody containing comic episodes subtly interwoven with
the traditional matter of alchemy. Wonders abound in such
an extravaganza. Riddles or enigmas form an important part
of this genre, and there is much use of love imagery with
references to the Hermetic Marriage. Allegory has a sig
nificant part. The occult extravaganza seems to be related
47
to Menippean satire as described by Northrop Frye. It
piles up masses of erudition, it uses a pedantic jargon (in
47
"The Four Forms of Prose Fiction," in The Hudson Re
view Anthology, ed. Frederick Morgan (New York, [1961]),
pp. 343-347.
165
this case, the language of the professional occultist), it
makes use of digressions, and it combines fantasy and moral-
I
ity. Unlike Menippean satire, however, the occult extrava- ,
ganza must of necessity deal with occultism. The use of
lLatin phrases and passages is prominent in Machen's inter
pretation of this genre. The reader of a work intended as
an occult extravaganza will find it difficult to determine
the proper way to respond to that which he has read. Cer-
i
tain questions will arise: Is the work a parody? Is it a
serious work of occult instruction? Is the author making
I
jfun of the reader? What is the purpose of the comic epi- |
i I
sodes of the work? As we have mentioned, scholars disagree
on the true nature of The Chemical Marriage.
Machen has referred to "The Spagyric Quest" as an
f
!
occult extravaganza. The work does seem to meet the quali
fications of such a genre. "The Spagyric Quest" opens with
a list of items that Canon Beroaldus has passed through his
alchemical furnace—twelve meadows, a house, three orchards,
a vineyard, a medlar tree, three cows, a house and garden in
Tours, and 3,000 crowns. This is a figurative statement of
the Canon's fortune lost in the pursuit of alchemy. Humor j
is further injected into Machen's tale by the importance
given to wine as the Canon goes on his journey in the
"" " " 166
underworld. There are three enigmas in The Chemical Mar
riage ; there is one in "The Spagyric Quest"—and it concerns
wine. The intermingling of asides, extravagant language,
and Latin phrases adds to the humorous tone. On the surface;
i
the Canon is simply lent assistance and given additional ]
knowledge so that he may attain the Hermetic Marriage. The :
result of the quest of Beroaldus is the instruction to study!
himself. "The Spagyric Quest," then, is an effort in humor,!
i
but it does teach a serious truth.
1
The annihilation of self j
Machen was aware of the occult concept of the annihi
lation of the self. His readings in occult books and his i
association with the Golden Dawn possibly brought this idea
to his attention. Regardie, who first published an account
of the beliefs and rituals of the Golden Dawn, between 1937
and 1940, writes thus of the major function of the Order: \
|"to assist the candidate by his own aspirations to find thati
unity of being which is the inner Self, the pure essence of
Mind, the Buddha-nature" (I, 41). Regardie describes the
I
importance of the guidance of the soul by initiates in such !
a society as the Golden Dawn. In passing through a series
of initiations the consciousness of the adept becomes ex-
167
alted above its natural state and finally is completely
withdrawn from the attraction of matter. At this point the
self becomes annihilated.
Machen's principal work describing the mystical experi-;
ence of banishing the self is a short prose sketch entitled !
, i
"The Rose Garden" (1908) . In rhythmic prose this brief com-i
position is an expertly treated piece of mystical writing.
It shows the process of selflessness as it is achieved by a
i
woman who has had spiritual direction. Sweetser's explica-
I
i
tion of "The Rose Garden" captures the true spirit of the [
isketch:
i
Like petals unfolding, the soul of a woman embraces the
deep rest of the night, veiled with half-light and half-
shadow, and achieves rapport with the shapes, sounds,
and sights around her. She is as ecstatic as a poet
dreaming under roses, having neither reality nor sub
stance. . . . Her self was annihilated; old feelings
and emotions, inherited loves and hates were destroyed.
Her old life had been thrown utterly away. (AM, p. 110)
,The woman comes to an understanding of a line quoted to her:;
! I
I"'The kingdom of I and We forsake, and your home in annihi- I
lation make.'" |
Sweetser praises Machen's ability to convey the feeling!
"of spiritual detachment from the corporeal realm . . . with
"The Rose Garden," The Glorious Mystery, p. 97.
168
sufficient suggestion of the worldly to give it meaning and
with sufficient intimation of the otherworldly to give it
impact" (AM, p. 110). Indeed Machen succeeds in describing
the mystical experience symbolized by the transmutation of
the dross into gold. The spiritual attainments achieved by
i
the woman in "The Rose Garden" are the same as those that
Regardie says are fostered by the Golden Dawn or "any other
legitimate initiating system" (I, 41). He writes: "Such is
the stone of the Philosophers, the Quintessence, Summum
Bonum, true wisdom and perfect happiness" (I, 40). Senior
jhas said the same thing regarding the true achievements de
sired by the serious student of occultism. We have seen
that the quest of the Philosopher's Stone is also the quest
of the Holy Grail. Waite has said:
that the perfect transmutation of Alchemy, the passage
from Kingdom to Crown in the Kabbalistic Tree of Life,
! the journey through Hades to Elysium and in Dante as
their last spokesman, and finally the Quest of Galahad,
are the various aspects and symbolical presentations of
' one subject. (Holy Grail, p. 531)
i
The relationship between man
and the animal world
To Machen the animal world is of great significance.
He is eager to show that animals and men were friends in
past ages and that they continue to have mutual obligations.
169
In regard to his ideas about animals there is the possi
bility that Machen may have been influenced either by his
dabbling in the occult or by his reading of Holy Scriptures .'
Machen's most ambitious work dealing with animals is ',
i
"The Terror: A Fantasy" (1917). Chronologically, this work
followed the supernatural stories that appeared in The
Angels of Mons. "The Terror" has its setting in the period
of World War I, and although there are no actual super
natural beings in the story, it treats events that are fan
tastic and separated from reality.
I
"The Terror" gives the reader the impression of being |
a true account of events that took place in England after
the beginning of England's hostilities with Germany. In '
telling the story Machen gives numerous details, many of
which are insignificant, in order to give credence to his
narration. The sinister tone is deepened by the threat of
i
j
the dangers of war. Tension is built in the reader by the
j I
occurrence of the many random attacks on human beings. The
i
curiosity of the reader is also aroused. I
The series of events that constitute "The Terror" erupt
during a period of rigid censorship in wartime England. An |
enormous flock of pigeons brings an airplane to earth. Men
in a factory are disfigured and killed in a mysterious
170
manner. In Meirion, a small town in Wales, a child dis-
!
appears, a man is found dead below a cliff, a woman is dis- |
covered dead in a quarry, all the members of a family living!
!
I
near a public road are horribly mutilated and killed, horses
i
panic, sheep dogs turn on their masters, and swarming bees
i
attack human beings. A small child is found lying dead; as
he is discovered, a large moth that has been resting on his
forehead flies away. A boat sinks suddenly in still water,
and the three occupants are drowned. Because of the censor-
I
ship laws the deaths and disappearances are withheld from
the press. People are not aware that the events occurring
i
in Meirion are also happening in other parts of England.
In Meirion various theories have been formulated to account
for the unfortunate occurrences: (1) the deaths and dis
appearances are regarded as crimes and they have been com
mitted by a madman; (2) the murders have been committed by
a man who has a Jekyll-and-Hyde personality; (3) there is
more than one madman at work; and (4) the Germans have ,
i
secretly invaded England, and they are in hiding all over [
the country. A local club man of Meirion decides that the
Germans must have a potent Z ray that drives animals and i
human beings to acts of violence and self-destruction. The
denouement comes after the deaths at Treff Loyne farm. All
171
the occupants of the household there have met death through
violence or starvation. A young artist Secretan, who has
been living in the house, has kept a journal telling of the !
i
siege of the farm by hidden forces. No one has been able to
leave during the day, and by night an assemblage of fiery
I
eyes watches over the place. In his journal Secretan has
doubted his own sanity. The doctor of Meirion arrives at
the solution of the mystery: the animals have revolted :
against mankind. The murders have been committed by birds,
rats, sheep, horses, bees, moths, and porpoises. The only
[animal remaining faithful is the Treff Loyne sheep dog that
has tried to bring help to the farmer and his family held :
captive within the house by the farm animals. "The Terror" !
ends suddenly in the winter of 1915-1916.
Machen gives two explanations for the hostility of the
ianimals to man. First, the fury of the war with its death
^and destruction "infected at last these lower creatures, and
|in place of their native instinct of submission, gave them
49
rage and wrath and ravening." Second, and Machen prefers
this opinion, "the subjects revolted because the king
I
i
i
"The Terror," Tales of Horror and the Supernatural,
p. 426.
172
abdicated" (p. 426). Machen believes that
Man has dominated the 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 '<
when he maintained this power and grace, . . . between
him and the animals there was a certain treaty and
alliance. (p. 426) j
|
i
Man, however, has forsaken the spiritual and accepted the I
rational. "He has vowed that he is not Orpheus but Caliban"|
i
(p. 427) . The beasts sense that man is no longer king;
!
;
hence, man to them becomes a sham and something to be de
stroyed (p. 427). All animals, therefore, from the insects
t
!to horses participate in the revolt.
In "The Terror" Machen cites tradition as proof that
men and animals were friends so long as each knew his place
in the scheme of nature. Machen observes:
Our popular tale of Dick Whittington and his cat no
doubt represents the adaptation of a very ancient leg- '
[ end to a comparatively modern personage, but we may go j
back into the ages and find the popular tradition as-
| serting that not only are the animals the subjects, but
I also the friends of man. (p. 427)
i
Theories regarding the position of animals in relation
!
!
to man are found in the works of occult scholars . For ex- ]
i
ample, Regardie's views on the subject appear in his work
The Golden Dawn. He writes:
173"
For the Man is a God unto the Beast, and the aspiration
of the Beast is toward the Man, and great is the office ;
of the Beast, for he prepareth the foundation for the
Man. Man is responsible for creation, and since he was
originally placed in creation to be its Lord, as he is,
so will the creation follow him. (I, 225) '
i
Machen's views on the animal world seem close to those of
!
occultism as expressed by Regardie. j
I
"The Terror" does not deal with the supernatural from
i
the viewpoint of the human being. But all of the members of
the animal world in the story enact, as it were, the male
diction of a curse. In so doing they are acting unnatur
ally. They unite against mankind, they carry out their own
i
vengeance, and in many cases they are sly and watchful. '
Their attacks are as ruthless as the one described by Saki |
(H. H. Munro) in "The Music on the Hill," when an angry Pan
incites the horned beasts against one who has desecrated his
shrine. In rebelling, Machen's animals have acquired quali
ties that savor of the diabolic. When "The Terror" ends, as
(
it does quite suddenly, Machen remarks that "the spirit and .
convention of malignant design passed out of the hearts of
i
all the animals" (p. 425). j
Machen's imagery conveys the rising tone of panic in j
!
the community of Meirion. We hear of "a secret murderer,
ravening for blood, remorseless as a wild beast" (p. 352) .
174 "
One of the characters in "The Terror" describes what he
I
i
heard in the forest as "'some sort of chattering speech I
i
going, that sounded .. . as if the dead sat in their bones
and talked!'" (p. 373). Later the reader learns that Mer-
I
ritt is "still as death about the doings of the Midlands;
I
. . ." (p. 386). As for the people in Treff Loyne, "'not ,
only did they see death advancing on them, but advancing
with incredible steps, as if one were to die not only in
nightmare but by nightmare'" (p. 423). Throughout England, <
writes Machen,
i
All the towns were full of houses of mourning, .. . j
there were things done and suffered that perhaps never
will be brought to light, memories and secret traditions '
of these things will be whispered in families, delivered
from father to son, growing wilder with the passage of j
years, but never growing wilder than the truth. (p. 425) '
i
There is a biblical element in "The Terror" that must
not be overlooked. Secretan, who has written the account of
i [
jthe siege of Treff Loyne farm, thinks that he is mad. Just i
before he dies, he hears a voice chanting "The Book of the
Wrath of the Lord our God." Supposedly, this book was writ
ten by "'an unknown minor prophet'" (p. 417). Secretan I
I
]
copies the entire passage which predicts God's judgment on
the land:
"Woe unto the armed man, . . . for a little thing shall
175
smite him, and by one that hath no might shall he be
brought down into the dust. .. . I will make the lamb
and the young sheep to be as the lion . . . they shall
not spare, saith the Lord, and the doves shall be as
eagles on the hill Engedi; none shall be found that may
abide the onset of their battle." (p. 414)
This quotation is one of Machen's many imitations of writers
of an earlier age. It is similar in style to the laments of
Jeremiah. Although this particular passage is a serious i
imitation of the Bible, there are two actual passages in the
Old Testament that apply to "The Terror." One verse from !
i J
Leviticus is a command requesting obedience. If the people
iwill not obey God, He says: "'I will also send wild beasts
i
I
among you, which shall rob you of your children, and destroy
your cattle, and make you few in number; and your highways
shall be desolate
1
" (Leviticus 26:22). In another place God
says that His people have angered Him. He tells them:
"'They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning
heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the
Iteeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of
i
i
Ithe dust'" (Deuteronomy 32:24). The two passages quoted
would seem to strengthen another hypothesis for the animals'
attack on mankind. Perhaps God was punishing His people for
their materialism and hatred of each other. In this case
the animals would have been acting as avengers or as
176
instruments implementing a curse.
The signs of the times appear in "The Terror," too, but
the occult activities of the day play a comparatively minor
role. There are references to Madame Blavatsky (p. 374),
Anhelonium Lewinii (p. 367), spiritualism and psychical re
search (p. 353), and telepathy and hypnotism (p. 364).
A reference to the fairies occurs in the incident of
I
ithe death of a little child. The parents blame the murder
on the Little People. Machen interjects a reputed fact at
this point to say: "The Celtic fairies are still malignant"
(p. 390).
Machen spoke of the friendly relationship that existed
ages ago between human beings and animals. It is apparent
that he has a kindly attitude toward the animal world. In
The Hill of Dreams he portrays the cruelty of small children
in their mistreatment of a cat and dog (pp. 60, 121). He
contrasts such sadism by telling the reader of a medieval
religious ceremony of Caermaen honoring all beasts. Once a
year in the so-called "Dark Ages" the parson and the choir
in solemn procession prayed for the beasts. The priest
preached a sermon saying that human beings owe mercy to
God's creatures. As the angels, the twelve disciples, the
martyrs, and all the saints served Christ on earth and are
177
with Him in heaven, "'so also do the beasts serve him,
though they be in torment of life and below men'" (p. 127).
The Secret Glory contains a significant passage de
scribing the behavior of animals. Nicholas Meyrick tells
his son Ambrose about an old Welsh saint, liar the Fisher- J
i
man. liar offered the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass for the
living and the dead and for all the beasts of the forest. j
The creatures of the wood participated in the ceremony. Thei
hares and weasels beat their breasts for their sins; the j
wolves, lambs, and adders wept. The birds—nightingales,
thrushes, and blackbirds—chanted the responses of the Mass.
The bees showed Saint liar where he could find wax for
i
candles. Such was the Mass of liar.
Machen presents the animal world as being profoundly
moved by the Passion of Christ. Under the influence of
ireligion the animals seem to gain insight into sacred mys-
teries. In a sense they are sharing in an occult experi-
i I
i i
jence.
One of the war stories that Machen relates has to do
with the ant colony. The story entitled "The Little Na
tions" was written in 1915. Dr. Duthoit, Prebendary of
Hereford Cathedral, whose leisure occupation is horticulture
and whose goal is to grow a coal-black rose, has always had
178
a strong inclination toward the occult. One day he wanders
into his garden to inspect a new plot of ground recently-
prepared by the gardener. Prebendary Duthoit finds that
instead of smooth, carefully raked soil, there is a surface
of miniature hills and valleys . In fact, he recognizes that
his garden plot has been turned into a kind of relief map of
the Gallipoli Peninsula. This garden Gallipoli swarms with
(
i
activity: the black and the red ants are at war. By watch-J
ing the ant "war" in his own garden, Dr. Duthoit learns the j
i
complete details of the ill-fated Gallipoli campaign before j
any news has been made public by the English press. Dr.
Duthoit tells Machen of this prophetic event. He quotes j
i
from the Smaragdine Tablet of Hermes Trismegistus: "'That
which is above is as that which is below'" (Works, VII,
179). The Prebendary conjectures on the possibility of
World War I's being a world battle in the sense that it
ireflects the war in heaven; so, too, the ants are at war.
!
JHe concludes: "There may be a battle between creatures that
no microscope shall ever discover" (p. 179).
"The Little Nations" is rooted in occultism. It par
takes of an occult philosophical hypothesis. The ants by a
strange compulsion have moved the sand into appropriate high
and low spots so that they can enact the events of
179
Gallipoli.
One of the most beautiful little animal pieces that
Machen has written is "The Compliments of the Season"
(1934). In this story Tyndall, a materialist, is trying to
prove rationalism. He is especially concerned with a ra
tionalistic reason for the aesthetic impulse. He has
learned that certain birds decorate their nests. He ob- ,
serves the actions of birds that have stolen two lilies from
i
a hothouse. The birds place the flowers on a flat stone.
In the center of the stone there is a doll of twigs lying
l
Ion soft moss. The birds place the lilies on either side of
!
I
I the tiny figure. Tyndall cites the activities of these
I
i
birds as mechanistic and instinctive. His friend points I
out, however, that the birds have been behaving intelli
gently and appropriately, for they have built and decorated
a creche for Christmas Day.
In his stories and remarks about animals Machen re
flects orthodox Christianity in seeing God's plan in every
aspect of the created world. Nevertheless, there is some
thing more. Man's violence in war is reflected by the ani
mal world in "The Terror" and in "The Little Nations." Even
when the animals rebel, however, one animal remains loyal.
In referring to the faithful dog at Treff Loyne farm, Machen
180
has no explanation. He says: "'That remains a mystery'"
("The Terror," p. 425).
The holy man elicits a spiritual response from the ani
mals . Saint liar the Fisherman is able to lift the animals
i
to a higher place of existence through his own sanctity.
There are some animals capable of rising to a higher place
with no assistance from man. We have seen how several birds
honored Christ on Christmas Day by building a creche.
The inexplicable or the fantastic may be the key to
Machen's animal stories. The realm of fantasy, however, is
i
iclose to the supernatural. The deceased person who returns
to haunt the living is doing something beyond the ordinary; ,
so, too, are the animals that contrive against man, mimic
him, or that lament, pray, or rejoice.
1
Machen's treatment of occult topics illustrates his
[eclecticism and versatility. He draws from many sources and
(selects what he considers to be appropriate for achieving
I
the effect he desires . For Machen the occult is hidden
behind the veil of nature. This veil may conceal the beau-
tiful or the horrible. Machen is chiefly preoccupied with
diabolism, but he has other thematic concerns, too. The
181
concepts that appear in Machen's works range from the
Faustian pursuit of knowledge, through the injustice in the
design of things, man's predicament., the potency of evil,
the belief in the doppelganger, the reality of fairies, the
interpenetration of one period of time by another, the idea
that the old heroes may return in England's hour of peril,
the alchemical quest, and the origin of the Grail in the
ancient Celtic Church. He suggests the androgynous theme
in "The Great God Pan," in which the disintegration of Helen
shows her to be both male and female. The androgynous often
[appears in occult systems as a symbol of the unity of human
nature.
Evil has many vantage points from which to assail man.
In "The Shining Pyramid" Annie is seized almost at random
by the malignant Little People; in "The White Powder" Fran
cis Leicester takes a drug that has been rendered deadly
i
ithrough the carelessness of a pharmacist. An evil act can
call forth evil spirits as in "Out of the Earth" and in "The
Terror." A man's evil deed can haunt him as it does the
German soldier in "The Monstrance" and Roberts in "The
Children of the Pool." Evil is in most cases irreversible:
Annie meets a violent death at the hands of the Little
People, the young girl in "The White People" commits
182
suicide, and the children in "Change" succumb to the witch's
deceits . Machen suggests in A Fragment of Life that the
soul can be confronted with visions of evil when seeking
spiritual perfection.
Man's isolation from human companionship is forcefully J
presented in The Hill of Dreams, "The Exalted Omega," and I
!
The Green Round.
l
I
Machen's theory of perichoresis or the interpenetration
1
i
of one period of time by another appears as a stated concept!
in "N." The movement is to a past time in "N." In "The
jExalted Omega" and "Vision in the Abbey" the time is in the
i i
[future. A sense of timelessness is described in "Opening
the Door" and "The Strange Tale of Mount Nephin." In most I
of Machen's stories, however, there is a feeling of con
tinuity with former times. Machen achieves this effect by
his references to the Old Celtic rite, the Roman occupation
i
i
!
of Britain, and the Greek myths. As an illustration, one
first learns about the thousand-year-old wine in The Chron
icle of Clemendy, in which Brother Drogo drinks from the
ancient jar. The Young Man with Spectacles drinks such wine
in The Three Impostors. Helen serves wine that is a thou
sand years old to her victims in "The Great God Pan," and
Lucian imagines such a wine in his visionary reconstruction
183
of the old Roman fort.
Machen's knowledge of the occult and the prevalence of
so much that was reputedly occult in his environment are
responsible, no doubt, for the appearance of the many ref
erences in his fiction to alchemy, diabolism, theosophy,
spiritualism, seances, and poltergeists.
In regard to technigue Machen seems to prefer indirect
storytelling. The events in his stories are usually told
in retrospect by interested persons who may have become in
volved in the action. There is much use of journals, mem
oirs, old manuscripts, letters, and even an art portfolio
in the presentation of all the events of a particular story
Machen makes extensive use of prologues and epilogues. In
The Three Impostors he places his tales in a framework. All
of these devices assist Machen in giving an air of unreality
to the occurrences about which he writes; at the same time
ithe abundance of trivia in his journal entries lends veri-
i
similitude. The functioning of these two forces together,
along with Machen's suggestions rather than explanations of
horror, creates highly effective stories.
Machen describes such a technique in his critical work
Hieroglyphics . He says that many authors pretend they have
found an old manuscript or that someone has told them a
184
story. He writes: "It would be amusing to trace all the
various devices which have been used to secure the effect
of separation, of withdrawal from the common tract of com
mon things" (Works, V., 165) .
Machen invents a stream-of-consciousness style for The
Hill of Dreams. In this novel the action progresses through
the occurrence and recurrence of certain themes in the mind
of the protagonist.
Machen has referred to a nest of Chinese boxes to de
scribe the complexity of a situation in "The Great God Pan"
(pp. 79, 82) and again in A Fragment of Life (Works, VI, !
i
72). Such a designation would be a very apt description I
nearly always for Machen's fictional style. Figuratively
the reader opens box after box only to find a smaller one
concealed within.
The story beginnings and endings in Machen's works are
forceful. In "The White Powder" Francis dreams of horror
before he takes the drug; in "The Great God Pan" Clarke has
a premonitory dream before the surgery on Mary. In each
case the reader is prepared for the evil consequences. "The
Shining Pyramid" begins with the following dialogue:
"'Haunted,' you said?' 'Yes, haunted. .. . It has always
185
50
remained a sort of enchanted picture in my mind . . .'"
The reader's curiosity is captured almost immediately. He
is prepared for a strange tale by the single word "haunted."
Machen's endings are also powerful. At the conclusion
of "The White Powder" Chambers in discussing witchcraft dis
credits mesmerism, spiritism, and theosophy. Sweetser says
i
'this "serves to accentuate the horror of underlying forces :
|
!
(beyond the scope even of those occult sciences" (AM, p. 119).
i
| The awfulness of witnessing the death of Annie is shown)
[near the conclusion of "The Shining Pyramid" by relating it
|to madness. Vaughan says: "'The mystery is over, and we
'can live quietly again. I think some poison has been work-
! I
i
ing for the last few weeks; I have trod on the verge of
madness, but I am sane now'" (p. 203). We recall that the
artist Secretan in "The Terror" believes that he is mad.
Reynolds and Charlton commend the quality of Machen's
i
"technique of pastiche" (p. 22). Machen excels in imitating
;ancient styles such as the biblical and the Hermetic. He
mentions numerous fictitious works from which he supposedly
quotes excerpts. That Machen enjoyed imitating the style of
old books is seen in Things Near and Far, in which he says:
(Chicago, 1923), p. 184.
186
"I have always been proud of my parody of the terms of an
ancient writ" (Works, IX, 42) .
Along with parody Machen displayed a vital interest in
strange scripts and secret writing capable of being under
stood only by the initiated. In some of his most celebrated
works this facility of imitation and this love of the cryp
tic appear. In "The Red Hand" Machen makes use of an odd
penmanship which indicates a certain topic by the very shape
and slant of its letters rather than by the actual content.
Machen describes the wedge-shaped characters of the malig-
i
inant Little People in "The Black Seal," and he uses arrow-
i
i
(heads to convey messages devised by the Little People in the
i
i
story "The Shining Pyramid." In The Hill of Dreams, as I
observed in Chapter I, Machen portrays Lucian as affecting
an obscure style to describe his love for Annie (p. 107) .
Machen wrote a parody of The Arabian Nights in an arti-
icle entitled "Ten Thousand and One Nights" to celebrate the
ten thousandth issue of The Evening News, November 21, 1913.
In the manner of the Arabian storytellers he describes the
"enchantment" of gathering and printing news. In "The Ter-
ror" Machen does a very impressive imitation of the biblical
prophets of doom in his passage "The Wrath of God." He does
a humorous parody of Dickens in "Scrooge: 1920, a New
Christmas Carol." Machen brings the Dickens tale up to date
in order to satirize materialistic philosophy, the income
itax, and modern restrictions on alcohol.
Just as in the Grail stories Machen develops the sym
bolism of incense, bells, music, and the rose of fire, so
,in his horror stories he presents images that become sym
bolic. Among these symbols are odors, sinister houses, ugly
rocks, blood-red skies, the mist, and bureaus and chests.
The use of odor is pervasive in "The Great God Pan," "The
Black Seal," and "The White People." The odor can be used
for seduction or for repulsion, or it can be used for other
effects. For example, in "The White People" the diary has
an "old delicate, lingering odour about it, such an odour
as sometimes haunts an ancient piece of furniture for a
century or more" (p. 124) .
Machen has also been fascinated by a dread of old or
ugly houses . "The Great God Pan" owed its inception to a
lonely house that to Machen became a symbol of "awe and
51
mystery and dread." Evil houses appear in "The Great God
Pan," "The Inmost Light," and "The Black Seal." A decaying
51 .
!
Letter to Munson Havens, September 23, 1923, in A Fewi
Letters from Arthur Machen, p. 6.
l
188
mansion is the scene of Walters' murder in The Three Impos
tors . In The Hill of Dreams Lucian identifies with a deso
late house that is rotting away.
Monstrously shaped rocks also recur in Machen's occult j
stories . In "The Black Seal" we read of gray limestone
i
boulders "worn by the ravages of time into fantastic sem
blances of men and beasts" (p. 41). Grotesque rocks appear j
again in "The White People," and here they become a kind of
maze. The London fog assumes the shape of gray rocks in
The Hill of Dreams. In "The Shining Pyramid" there are
hideous rocks "of an aspect as forbidding as an idol of the
jSouth Seas" (p. 198) near the place of Annie's cremation.
i
! Blood-red skies, mists, and the London fog appear from
time to time in Machen's stories. These environmental char
acteristics add to the sinister tone of the tales.
Bureaus and old chests figure prominently in Machen's
fiction. The bureau holds the secret research project in
"The Black Seal," the insidious white powder of the story
in The Three Impostors, and Clarke's "Memoirs to Prove the
Existence of the Devil" in "The Great God Pan."
Machen's imagery and nature descriptions play a sig
nificant role in the unfolding of his fictional tales . In
"The Black Seal" Machen writes: "There is one day that
189
stands up from amidst the others as a grim red beacon, be
tokening evil to come" (p. 21). Machen describes little
children playing in a square in London in "The Red Hand."
The children flit about "in the twilight of the lamps, as
elusive as bats flying on the verge of a dark wood" (Works,
!
I, 139) . In The Hill of Dreams Machen uses a simile in
keeping with the tone of his novel: "the sapless branches
above him rattled against one another like bones" (p. 4).
jln "The Terror" Machen gives his impression of the effect
of delirium. He says:
i It is often a sort of cloud-castle, a sort of magnified
| and distorted shadow of actualities, but it is a very
j difficult thing, almost an impossible thing, to recon
struct the real house from the distortion of it, thrown
on the clouds of the patient's brain. (p. 417)
Machen's writing in "The Terror" is often tense and precise.
His description of an unknown vibration in the air illus-
i
itrates such writing:
j It was so still . . . and yet he knew he was listening
| to some sound that he could not determine or define.
j It was not the wind in the leaves, it was not the gentle
I wash of the water of the sea against the rocks . . . But
there was something else. It was scarcely a sound; it
was as if the air itself trembled and fluttered, as the
air trembles in a church when they open the great pedal
pipes of the organ. (p. 365)
Lucian envisions a rose garden in The Hill of Dreams. The
dismal streets of the real London are in sharp contrast to
190
the world of which he dreams:
He thought in symbols, using the Persian imagery of a
dusky court, surrounded by white cloisters, gilded by
gates of bronze .. . a singing voice . . . chanting
of the Lover and the Beloved, of the Vineyard, of the
Gate and the Way. . . . And every rose was a flame,
(pp. 243-244)
(The examples that I have cited to show Machen's skill in
the use of symbols and nature description could be multi
plied. The quotations serve as instances of his technique.
i
The science-fiction element in Machen's works is not i
|
so predominant as one would think from a superficial read- j
i j
ling. It is true that Machen has used scientific experiment!
i
as a starting point in two tales, he has depicted the taking
j
of a drug that has deteriorated into an evil potion in an
other, and he has portrayed a number of characters pre
occupied with bizarre "scientific" interests. Machen does
not dwell, however, on the scientific aspects involved. Th4
; i
doctors, the nature of the chemical compound, and research j
projects are forgotten as the demonic horror of the stories
unfolds. Science has no part in the resolution of Machen's
stories.
Machen once said that his own fiction reminded him of
Henry James's story "The Pattern in the Carpet." He com
mented: "'The pattern in my carpet is the sense of the
191
eternal beauty hidden beneath the crust of common and com
monplace things: hidden and yet burning and glowing con-
52
tinually if you care to look with purged eyes . '" In a
great number of Machen's occult stories, however, it is the
deadly peril rather than the eternal beauty that confronts
the reader. In an interpretation of John Gawsworth's Above
the River, Machen has described the horror that he himself
so skillfully portrays. Gawsworth has written of a man who
slips to his death from a cliff overhanging a river. Machen
i
i
says: i
It is the terror that awaits all those who seek initia- I
tion into the mysteries, who require the knowledge of
the secrets . Dread and fear are presented to them, the
serpent of Cos awaits them on the path, and if they
stumble, affrighted, their feet may go down to destruc-
tion.
J
i
52
Anthony Lejeune, "Memories of Machen," in Arthur
Machen: Essays, ed. Father Sewell, p. 35
53
"Preface,"
don, 1931), p. 7.
5 *5
Preface," in John Gawsworth, Above the River (Lon-
CHAPTER III
THE RECEPTION OF MACHEN'S OCCULT WORKS
IN ENGLAND AND AMERICA
In this chapter treating the reception of Machen's
occult works I shall present some contemporary critical
estimates of such works and indicate the pieces having a
degree of popularity that endured from year to year. I
shall also devote some space to Machen's probable influence
on other writers.
As I pointed out earlier, Machen's first literary
undertaking was Eleusinia. It appeared anonymously in an
edition numbering only 100 copies. The reading public of
Eleusinia was obviously limited. The work was very well
received by Machen's relatives, however. Gekle says that
they "thought well enough of it to decide that journalism
was the career for Arthur" (p. 24).
After Eleusinia Machen turned to imitative prose. He
wrote The Anatomy of Tobacco in imitation of Robert Burton
192
193
and The Chronicle of Clemendy with Rabelais as his model.
Neither work falls into the category of occult fiction. It
is true that there are stories treating the magican and in
fernal aspects of occultism in The Chronicle of Clemendy,
but the work is known principally for its Rabelaisian char
acteristics . Gekle writing in 1949 summarizes the impact of
JThe Chronicle of Clemendy;
i
It was printed at Carbonnek, "for the society of Panta-
gruelists." 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. (p. 36)
With the publication of The Great God Pan in 1894
Machen earned a considerable degree of fame. The publisher j
i
was Lane of Bodley Head Press, and the title page decoration
was supplied by the Yellow Book artist, Aubrey Beardsley.
"The Inmost Light" was included in the volume with "The
iGreat God Pan." The book, coming from Lane's publishing
house, indicated its destination for a certain market
(Gekle, p. 61). Gekle says that the book presumably "hit
the mark, for the tale achieved a fame that has lasted to
this day" (p. 61) .
Lane's publication, which bore on its title page the
name The Great God Pan and the Inmost Light, was greeted by
194
a storm of adverse criticism. Many of the critics associa
ted the work with sensationalism and decadence. Sweetser
writes that "when Mr. Mudie sold a copy of the book, he al
ways brought it from under the counter" (AM, p. 27).
In 1924 Machen published Precious Balms, a book con
taining thirty years of critical comments about his works.
Most of the criticism quoted in Precious Balms is negative,
as Machen said in his introduction to the work that nothing
is more boring than praise. Selected passages from Pre
cious Balms reveal the way in which "The Great God Pan" was
received.
In 1895 The Literary News regarded "The Great God Pan"
as "an uncanny parable too morbid to be the production of a
2
healthy mind." Other contemporaneous criticism is equally
negative in its view of Machen's work. The Daily Chronicle
says that the horror of "The Great God Pan" is not convinc-
;ing:
I "... our flesh obstinately refuses to creep. Why?
j Possibly because we have had a surfeit of this morbid
j thaumaturgy of late, and 'ken the biggin' o't.' Pos
sibly, too, because, while Mr. Machen describes the
(literally) panic terror of the various people who
(London, 1924), p. x. Hereafter cited as PB.
Sweetser, "Arthur Machen: A Bibliography," p. 12.
195
behold the monster, he never lets us have so much as a
glimpse of the monster for ourselves." (PB, pp. 2-3)
The Belfast News Letter contributes the following com
ment :
"Sensationalism is the order of the day, and must, we
suppose, be pandered to to make the author's pot boil;
! but, despite the ability in this direction—for the
conception is cleverly carried out—we fail to see why
such absurdities should be presented to intelligent
readers." (PB, p. 3)
The Echo's literary critic also observes that "'Mr. Arthur
Machen's story, "The Great God Pan," published by Mr. John
,Lane, is a failure and an absurdity'" (PB, p. 4) .
j
The literary columnist of The Manchester Guardian |
thinks that Machen's book is |
"the most acutely and intentionally disagreeable we
have yet seen in English. We could say more, but re
frain from doing so for fear of giving such a work
advertisement. The same remarks apply to 'The Inmost
Light,' the second story in the book, in only slightly
i lesser degree." (PB, p. 8)
The Queen evaluates Machen's work as follows:
"'The Great God Pan
1
comes near being a book of genius
with its originality and weirdness; but it distinctly
misses it, because Mr. Machen has not the power of in
dicating, even by a hint, the nature of the horror which
made strong men destroy themselves rather than live with I
such a memory." (PB, p. 8)
The Westminster Gazette sees "The Great God Pan" as a
I 196
work written
"under the inspiration of the French School of Diabo-
lists. That school, as the reader knows, is possessed
with ideas of black magic, spirits of evil, devils be
come incarnate, and numerous other nightmares of cor
ruption. . . . Several English imitators of this school
have come into my hands recently, but the wildest is,
perhaps, Mr. Machen's 'Great God Pan,' published in the
Keynotes Series." (PB, p. 9)
The critic continues his censure of "The Great God Pan,"
finally noting that "'it is an incoherent nightmare of sex I
and the supposed horrible mysteries behind it, such as might'
conceivably possess a man who was given to a morbid brooding
over these matters'" (PB, p. 10). I
i
A critic in The National Observer reviews Machen's book
i
!
and comments: j
I
"In all the glory of the binder's and printer's arts
we have two tales of no great distinction. Indeed paper
and form are worthy of much better things. We look for
literature and find the old, old tale of man or woman
who is possessed of a devil." (PB, p. 10)
I
l
The sensation that The Great God Pan created is re
vealed by the foregoing reviews. Gekle says that "the book
was well received and gained considerably more of a reader
ship for Machen than had his previously published exercises
in the antique" (p. 62) . "The Great God Pan" made a suffi
cient impact in England to call forth parodies. Arthur
Rickett published Lost Chords: Some Emotions without
197
Morals in 1895. This work contained a parody on Machen
entitled "A Yellow Creeper." Goldstone and Sweetser report
Machen's statement that Rickett's parody "originally ap
peared in a periodical with the title of 'The Great Boo Plan
and the Utmost Fright'" (p. 25). Arthur A. Sykes wrote a j
subsequent parody, "The Great Pan-demon: Dedicated to
Arthur Machen" in 1896. It was published in Without Per
mission: A Book of Dedications (Goldstone and Sweetser,
p. 25) .
Roberts Brothers of Boston printed The Great God Pan in
J1894. Goldstone and Sweetser conjecture that the American
i
'edition "may possibly have appeared before the English
issue" (p. 23) .
The companion piece of "The Great God Pan," "The Inmost
Light," was received with much the same comment in the
1890's as the Pan story.
That "The Great God Pan" had a certain amount of popu
larity is indicated by Bodley Head's publication of a second
edition in 1895. Other editions have appeared at fairly
regular intervals ever since "The Great God Pan" and "The
Inmost Light" were printed in Machen's collection known as
The House of Souls (1906). "The Great God Pan" has been
widely anthologized (Gekle, p. 63).
198
Paul-Jean Toulet introduced "The Great God Pan" to
French readers in his translation, which was published in
1901. Toulet had tried for a year to have his translation
of "The Great God Pan" published (Pauwels and Bergier, pp.
208-209). Machen was aware of the difficulties of Toulet's ;
venture. He wrote to Toulet in 1899:
"So there is nothing to be done with 'The Great God j
Pan' in Paris? If that is the case, I am really dis- j
appointed—for the book, of course, but especially on !
account of my French readers: I had hoped that if they j
tasted 'The Great God Pan' in its French dress and found j
it to their liking, I should then perhaps have found my
public!" (p. 209)
| I
Machen then says that his works seem destined to "'remain j
eternally in the purgatory of the unpublished'" (p. 209).
He cites his failure to find a publisher for either Orna
ments in Jade or The Garden of Avallaunius [The Hill of
Dreams 1 . When "The Great God Pan" was finally published in
'France in 1901, the only notable favorable comment was made
by Maurice Maeterlinck (p. 209) (see p. 224 below).
In 1895 John Lane followed the publication of The Great
God Pan with Machen's The Three Impostors. Reynolds and
Charlton note that its success was hampered by the scandal
of the trial and conviction of Oscar Wilde (p. 51). This
event "caused a wave of reaction throughout the country
199
against anything that could in the slightest way be termed
'unhealthy' in art and literature" (p. 51). The Three Im
postors was regarded as falling in the category of the "un
healthy, " and its reception was generally unfavorable
(Sweetser, AM, p. 27). Some critics "showed by their re- j
views, unfavourable though they were, that Machen had far
more in common with Poe, Le Fanu, and the Stevenson of Dr.
i
Jekyll and Mr. Hyde than with any of the decadent writers ofj
his own day" (Reynolds and Charlton, p. 51).
Lady's Pictoria1 said:
"If you like the Prologue read the stories. I did
not like the Prologue, but I was obliged to read the
stories. They are a shade less odious than 'The Great
God Pan,' but the comparison says but little in their
favour, for in the former, Mr. Machen gave to the world
a most gruesome and unmanly book. I should like to
know how the imagination of the author would work upon
clean and wholesome lines." (PB, p. 24)
The Graphic sees Machen's The Three Impostors both as
following Stevenson and as entering into competition with
Poe. The reviewer criticizes Machen for being
"too much addicted to the artifice of describing by
telling you that things are indescribable. This is
a device which, though perhaps not absolutely illegi
timate, ought obviously to be very sparingly used; but
in 'The Three Impostors,' as even more conspicuously
in Mr. Machen's earlier volume in the same series, 'The
Great God Pan,' it is employed to an extent which is
almost provocative of parody." (PB, p. 25)
200
The Literary World speaks of the "'tame horrors'" of
The Three Impostors (PB, p. 28). The reviewer of The New
Age considers both "The Great God Pan" and The Three Impos
tors "'clever and ingenious stories; but as blood-curdlers
i
they are almost failures'" (PB, p. 28). ,
i
Roberts Brothers of Boston brought out an American edi-i
tion of The Three Impostors in 1895. A second edition of
i
this work did not appear in America until 1923- In England i
I
The Three Impostors was reprinted in The House of Souls in
i
1906. |
i
Machen wrote "The Shining Pyramid" and "The Red Hand" j
for magazine publication in 1895. Other brief stories in
i
the occult vein were written in 1897 . During the same year
!
he completed The Garden of Avallaunius, which was published
in 1907 as The Hill of Dreams. In 1899 Machen completed
"The White People," Hieroglyphics, and the first part of A
'Fragment of Life; these works were not published in book
I
I i
iform, however, until later—1906, 1902, and 1906 respec- j
tively.
By 1900 Machen seems to have achieved some reputation
as a writer of uncanny tales . Although certain reviewers
regarded him as an author of merit, still other critics saw
him as inferior. In spite of the adverse criticism of his
201
works Machen seems to have earned status as an author of
above-average ability. H. D. Traill, for example, includes
a Machen article on literature in a work he was editing in
1898—Among My Books : Papers on Literary Subjects by the
Following Writers. Among other authors solicited by Traill
were Andrew Lang, Edmund Gosse, Austin Dobson, Vernon Lee
(Violet Paget), and Leslie Stephen. Machen submitted to
Traill his essay in criticism entitled "Unconscious Magic."
Despite the reaction of the public to Machen's works
published in the Keynotes Series and Traill's inclusion of
a critical article from Machen for Among My Books, Sweetser
is of the opinion that by 1900 Machen was not succeeding in
his literary career. He summarizes what he regards as
Machen's position in literature during the last decade of
the nineteenth century:
. . . the evidence is clear that he [Machen] achieved
neither riches nor fame. Only two of his books were
published, both tales of the weird and occult; some of
his better tales appeared only in the transient medium
of periodicals; and some of his other masterworks were
not even published at all. As a consequence, his posi
tion in the world of letters by 1900, despite his great
productivity and his almost frantic attempts to estab
lish a reputation, differed only in slight degree from
what it was at the time he had first set pen to paper.
(AM, p. 29)
Machen's critical theories are embodied in
202
Hieroglyphics, which was published by Grant Richards in
1902. A. B. Walkley, writing contemporaneously in The Mor
ning Leader, accuses Machen of having a "'preconceived no
tion that all great literature is a form of mysticism, in
stead of quietly examining the question without any precon
ceived notions at all'" (PB, p. 42). A reviewer in The
Academy contends that Machen's object in Hieroglyphics
i
"'seems to be brilliance rather than elucidation'" (PB, p. !
43) . !
Sweetser's conclusion regarding the early reviews of J
Hieroglyphics is that they were "generally speaking, half
laudatory and half derogatory" (AM, p. 97). |
I l
i i
The House of the Hidden Light was the next work of I
Machen to go to the printer. It was privately printed in
1904, and was very likely intended only for members of the
Golden Dawn.
: I
The House of Souls was printed for publication by Grant
Richards in 1906. Machen included in this volume works that
had appeared earlier: "The Great God Pan," "The Inmost
Light," The Three Impostors (with the omission of "The
Decorative Imagination" and "Novel of the Iron Maid"), "The
White People," A Fragment of Life, and "The Red Hand."
Grant Richards had written to Machen in 1895 asking for
203
manuscripts for publication. Much later in his career
Richards wrote at least two books telling of his experiences
as a publisher. Gekle observes: "Neither of them contained
a single mention of Arthur Machen although Richards pub
lished several of Machen's books, and at a time when
l
Machen's name was certainly an asset to any publisher's
i
list" (p. 188) . When The House of Souls appeared, Thomas ',
Lloyd wrote in The Sunday Sun: "'The tales strike one as
i
the work of one who has overtasked his imagination in London]
streets and been overcome by nightmares'" (PB, p. 56). The
j
reviewer in The Academy singled out "The White People" for '
particular criticism. He observes that it is "'the best- j
i
written piece'" in The House of Souls. He says of the other
stories: "'Weird and resourceful as they are, however,
perhaps they rather fail of horror in their super-psychical
parts ' " (PB, p. 58) .
I In The Saturday Review a critic comments on "The Great
i
!
|God Pan" :
"Mr. Machen's literary monomania takes the form of pos
tulating that behind the veil of matter, in the centre
of the material universe, resides an obscene and ter
rible power, the revelation of which brings to mortals
infamy and madness." (PB, pp. 84-85)
The critic concludes that Machen has style, however, and
204
"'a talent for the fantastic'" (PB, p. 85). He also remarks
that Machen does not have "'the power of creating horror'"
(p. 85) .
The Tribune commented that the deity Pan had become
exceedingly popular. The review of The House of Souls has
this to say:
j
"It was Mr. Benson who began it, earlier in the year, :
and since that time the number of novels in which we j
are vouchsafed manifestations of the goat-god—complete |
even to the hoofs, and with an attendant murky odour I
thrown in—increases almost daily. .. . Mr. Arthur
Machen is one of those who see in him all the possi
bilities of a 'hair-raiser.
1
Were it not disrespectful
| it might be said that 'The House of Souls' is exactly
! the kind of book which would have been written by the
Fat Boy in Pickwick, had he been possessed of literary
ability." (PB, pp. 85-86)
An American issue of The House of Souls also appeared
in 1906, the same year as the English publication date. It
was printed and bound in England for Dana Estes and Company
i
of Boston.
I
I Machen's preface to The House of Souls "satirized puri-i
i I
tanical intolerance of all art devoid of a moral purpose"
(Sweetser, AM, p. 32). Machen thought that the ideas con
tained in the preface could be expanded into a book-length
work. He was able to negotiate a contract to write a sati
rical book embodying his views. The title of the work was
205
Dr. Stiggins: His Views and Principles. According to
Sweetser, the work, which was published in 1906, "was hardly
noticed at the time and has received even less attention
since" (AM, p. 33). Machen himself observed when Dr. Stig
gins was published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf
3
in 1925 that it "attracted no attention whatever."
Grant Richards undertook the publication of The Hill of
Dreams in 1907. Sweetser speaks of the novel's "critical
I
acclaim, although it never became anything close to a best
seller" (AM, p. 33). Quotations from some of the contempo
raneous reviews indicate the temper of the critical evalua
tions .
The Birmingham Gazette and Express reviewer regarded I
The Hill of Dreams as an unhealthy book (PB, p. 92). The
Birmingham Post also said that The Hill of Dreams "'is not
a healthy book, and the power of fascination that it exer
cises is tempered with a certain instinctive feeling of
repugnance'" (PB, p. 93). The reviewer of the Birmingham
Post commended Machen's artistry with words and wrote,
"So far as charm of language and beauty of imagery go--
and they go far—the season is hardly likely to see the
Introduction," Dr. Stiggins: His Views and Princi
ples , a Series of Interviews (New York, 1925), pp. 11-12.
206
rival of Mr. Machen's novel. The weakness is that all
this accumulated beauty is something fantastic, exotic,
and bizarre." (PB, p. 94)
The Manchester Courier literary critic thought that The
Hill of Dreams showed capability, but he felt that it would
not have a wide appeal because of its lack of humanity (PB,
p. 93) .
The unsigned review written by Lord Alfred Douglas for
The Academy is regarded by Sweetser as an admirable critique
1
i
of The Hill of Dreams ("Arthur Machen: A Bibliography," !
p. 10). Douglas said:
Mr. Machen fashions prose out of the writhings of Lu-
cian, who is dear to him: and his prose has the rhyth
mic beat of some dreadful Oriental instrument, insis
tent, monotonous, haunting; and still the soft tone of
one careful flute sounds on, and keeps the nerves alive
to the slow and growing pain of the rhythmic beat. . . .
It is like some dreadful liturgy of self-inflicted pain,
set to measured music: and the cadence of that music
becomes intolerable by its suave phrasing and perfect
modulation. The last long chapter with its recurring
themes is a masterpiece of prose, and in its way unique.
Eight months later in the same year (1907) The Academy
carried a letter to the editor from Arthur Milbank. Milbank
objected to the omission of Machen's name from a current
"Fiction" [rev. of The Hill of Dreams 1 , The Academy,
LXXII (March 16, 1907), 273-274.
I 207
5
list of "best novelists." Milbank contends that Machen
"has surely a right to a very high place among contemporary
writers of fiction. For my own part, I should put him at
the head of all our living novelists, with the exception of
Mr. Meredith and Mr. Hardy" (p. 149). The editor's response
to Milbank indicates that Machen is regarded as a writer of
romances rather than as a writer of novels. The editor com
ments that as a writer of romances Machen "does more than
stand high among contemporary writers, he stands, as far as |
we are able to judge, alone" (p. 149).
I A contemporary reviewer of The Hill of Dreams in The
Athenaeum writes: "'His [Machen's] Muse is a kind of Lilith!
—not a drop of her blood is human—and thus, except from |
the decorative point of view, he leaves us cold
1
" (PB, p.
100) .
An American publication of The Hill of Dreams appeared
!in Boston in 1907. This work, printed in England, was is- j
sued by Dana Estes and Company.
As we have shown, Machen's interest in the Holy Grail
led him to investigate the legend. His essays on "The
5
"Mr. Machen's Place Among Contemporary Writers," The
Academy, LXXIII (November 16, 1907), 149.
208
Sangraal" first appeared in The Academy in the fall of 1907.
Machen and Alfred Nutt entered into a kind of critical dia
logue regarding the origins of the Grail legend. The essays
on the Grail were scholarly in nature and appealed, there
fore, to a limited group of readers.
I
By the beginning of World War I Machen's following both
in England and in America was limited. But with the publi-
I
cation of "The Bowmen" in 1914 immediate fame came to |
Machen. Sweetser writes:
j It opened the door to the only fame ever to come his
j way during his lifetime. Turner, . . . cognizant of
the commercial possibilities of the subject, engaged
Machen to write several other stories of a similar na
ture—"Soldiers' Rest," "The Monstrance," and "The
Dazzling Light." All of these stories were collected
and published under the title of The Angels of Mons.
(AM, p. 37)
Fifty thousand copies of The Angels of Mons were sold within
three months; 100,000 were sold by the end of the year (Rey
nolds and Charlton, p. 118).
Reynolds and Charlton comment on "The Bowmen":
To thousands of people, the idea . . . gave consolation
or hope, but when Machen protested that his story was
entirely the child of his own imagination, the fame
threatened to turn to notoriety; he was rebuked for his
impudence at claiming originality for the tale. (p. 118)
The Occult Review, the Theosophical Society, and certain
209
clergymen entered the controversy about the apparition of
the "Bowmen" of Agincourt, who finally metamorphosed into
angels in the later versions of the legend that Machen set
into motion (Gekle, pp. 94-95).
T. W. H. Crosland contributed a parody on the theme.
He gave his story the title of Find the Angels: The Show
men: A Legend of the War. In his introduction Crosland |
i
parodies an editor's reaction to The Showmen: "You know, |
. . . human, palpitating stuff like this, with a touch of
the supernatural in it, is exactly what everybody is wanting
just now.
During this period of excitement about "The Bowmen"
Machen wrote four works for The Evening News — "The Great
Return," The Confessions of a Literary Man, The Great Ter
ror, and God and the War. Three of these works were later
given new titles: The Confessions of a Literary Man became
iFar Off Things, The Great Terror became The Terror, and God
:and the War became War and the Christian Faith. Machen
wrote other supernatural tales with their bases in the
events of World War I. Sweetser notes that two of these war
stories entitled "Drake's Drum" and The Terror were widely
6
(London, 1915), p. 11.
210
circulated in England and the United States in various
periodicals (AM, p. 37).
An amusing review of The Terror was printed in the
magazine The International in New York late in 1917 . In an
i
ironical style the author of the review demanded Machen's
execution for discouraging recruiting by his writing The
Angels of Mons and for contending in The Terror that men are
lower than the beasts (Sweetser, "Arthur Machen: A Bibliog
raphy, " p. 19) .
Not long after the publication of The Terror Machen's j
worth as a writer was proclaimed in America by Vincent
Starrett. Starrett had read The Terror, The House of Souls,i
and The Hill of Dreams, and he became convinced that Machen j
was "one of the most original and excellent minds of Eng-
7 . .
land." Starrett s essay in appreciation of Machen's genius
first appeared in 1917. It was reprinted in 1918 and again
i
revised in 1923. Starrett says:
I
i
His books exhale all evil and all corruption; yet they
are as pure as the fabled waters of that crystal spring
De Leon sought. They are pervaded by an ever-present
intoxicating sense of sin, ravishingly beautiful, furi- I
ously Pagan, frantically lovely; but Machen is a finer i
7
"Arthur Machen: A Novelist of Ecstasy and Sin,"
Buried Caesars : Essays in Literary Appreciation (Chicago,
1923), p. 30.
211
and truer mystic than the two-penny occultists who guide
modern spiritualistic thought. (pp. 4-5)
Starrett's zeal in furthering Machen's cause inspired other
writers. Reynolds and Charlton write:
The cry was then taken up by Carl Van Vechten, and in
1920 Paul Jordan Smith [sic! made probably the first of
many American pilgrimages to Melina Place [Machen's
home]. Machen's affinity to Edgar Allan Poe and his
enthusiasm for Hawthorne, Mark Twain, and Miss Wilkins
made him an attractive author to Americans, and the
authoritative support for his work from Robert Hillyer,
Professor of English at Harvard, lent strength to the
movement] yet these factors are hardly adequate to
account for the more extravagant opinions expressed by
the enthusiasts hailing Machen as a Mystic, a Magician,
a High Priest of the Religion of Art and so on. (pp.
127-128)
James Branch Cabell praised Hieroglyphics in 1919
(Sweetser, "Arthur Machen: A Bibliography," p. 4). In the
1920's Hieroglyphics was adopted at Cornell University as a
text (Sweetser, AM, p. 99).
The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction of Dorothy
I
Scarborough was published in 1917. Scarborough recognizes
Machen's power and genius in the field of occult literature.
Some of her comments, however, seem to reflect the views of
the critics of the 1890's and the pre-World War I era. For
instance, she writes: "One feels one should rinse his mind
out after reading Arthur Machen's stories, particularly the
collection called The Three Impostors" (p. 247). Again she
212
says :
The most dreadful biological experiments in recent fic
tion are described in Arthur Machen's volume of short
stories, The House of Souls. . . . These curious and
revolting stories are advanced instances of scientific
diabolism and leave a smear on the mind. (p. 271)
The interest in Machen in the early 1920's was respon
sible for the reprinting of many of his works in America.
Alfred A. Knopf undertook the publishing of a number of
Machen's works. Starrett published The Shining Pyramid in
i
192 3; in the following year he published The Glorious Mys
tery. Both of the Starrett publications were collections of
Machen material.
i English readers were also becoming enthusiastic about
Machen. Martin Seeker, an English publisher, brought out
The Secret Glory in 1922. Knopf issued the American edition
of this work during the same year. In 1923 Stuart Ellis
published a favorable critical essay on Machen in his Mainly
Victorian, a collection of literary essays.
Reviews of The Secret Glory were generally negative.
Forrest Reid, writing in The Daily Herald, voiced his dis
appointment in the story (PB, p. 110). Rose Macaulay
thought the book was a fantasy "'not to be judged as a tale
of real life'" (PB, p. 119). In The Nation and Athenaeum
213
Middleton Murry was critical of Machen's protagonist Ambrose
Meyrick (PB, p. 120).
Although The Secret Glory received its share of un
favorable criticism, Seeker felt that Machen's literary
reputation merited a worthy edition of his works. In 1923 ;
he brought out the nine-volume Caerleon edition of Machen's
I
tales, novels, and autobiographies. Seeker also printed the
third autobiographical work of Machen, The London Adventure,
i
in 1924. He published the English version of The Shining |
Pyramid collection of tales and articles in 1925.
Writing in 1925, Cornelius Weygandt believed that the
Machen "that is well worth while is the Machen of the criti
cal and autobiographical essays, of Hieroglyphics (1902), of
Far Off Things (1922) and Things Near and Far (1923)."
In 1923 Robert Hillyer commented on Things Near and
Far. He wrote:
: "In bookshops he [Machen] came in contact with alchemi-
I cal and occult works which were to influence, though
I not dominate, all his later writing. Much of the in-
j terest of 'Things Near and Far' lies in his treatment
of various phases of mysticism, from its faddish to its
serious manifestation. Very wisely, I think, he has
carefully guarded himself against seizure as an 'adept'
by any Spiritistic or pseudo-Oriental cult." (PB, p. 169)
8
A Century of the English Novel (New York, 1925), p.
331.
214
Hillyer sees the implied conclusion of the occult experi
ences that Machen underwent in 1899 as this: "'no occult
experience is of any consequence in itself; its sole value
is to enhance the dignity, decency and happiness of the
human race
1
" (PB, p. 172).
Sweetser comments on the publication of Machen's works
in the twenties. He observes that Seeker continued the
publication until 1926 and Knopf until 1928 (AM, p. 41). He
says that Machen's discovery or "rediscovery" in the 1920's
occurred at the time when Machen's "creative urge was in its
Indian summer" (p. 41). In order to meet the demands of
publishers Machen was forced to scrutinize his journalistic
I
articles and unpublished essays and stories with a view of
selecting appropriate works for new books (p. 41) .
Some of Machen's books published in the decade of the
1920's included Strange Roads, Dog and Duck, Notes and
i
Queries, Dreads and Drolls, and Ornaments in Jade. Much of
this work constituted a republication of essays written by
Machen during his career as a journalist. A number of the
essays and stories had been written in the 1890's and were
now being submitted for publication in book form during this
period of Machen's popularity. As I mentioned earlier in
this chapter, Machen also published in 1924 a book of
215
reviews and criticisms of his works under the title Precious
Balms.
Because of the public interest in his works Machen pro
duced a book on an eighteenth-century trial. The Canning
Wonder. It was published in England by Chatto and Windus in
1925. Knopf printed the American edition one year later.
The Canning Wonder does not deal with the occult, although
an astrologer is mentioned as having been consulted by one
9
of the persons in the story.
Machen's nonfictional work on the Grail was reprinted
in 1924 in the American work of Starrett entitled The Glo
rious Mystery. Machen's revised and enlarged essay on the
Grail appeared in the English edition (Seeker's) of The
Shining Pyramid in 1925. Waite commended Machen's scholar
ship in his Grail research in The Holy Grail published in
1933 (p. 615). In America in 1923 Maude V. P. Hazelton
contributed an essay in praise of Machen's treatment of the
Grail and the cup symbolism in his fiction.
In 1923 in England Machen contributed a story to Ceno
taph, Thomas Moult's anthology honoring the men who fell in
9
(New York, 1926), p. 138.
10
The Cup and Arthur Machen (folder) (N.p., [1923]),
P-
2
216
World War I. Machen had written "Vision in the Abbey" in
1920 as an Armistice Day piece. He sent this work for
Moult's collection. Machen's story appears in first place
in the volume, immediately following the anthologist's in
troduction (pp. 15-28). Among other authors solicited suc
cessfully for contributions were Dunsany, Chesterton, Con
rad, Masefield, Waugh, Quiller-Couch, and Hardy.
From 1927 through 1931 Machen contributed a story a
year to Cynthia Asquith's anthologies (Sweetser, AM, p.
128) .
I
I
I H. P. Lovecraft's evaluation of Machen's place in lit
erature appeared in The Recluse in 1927. His study, which
was entitled Supernatural Horror in Literature, was later
published as a book. Lovecraft says that Machen's "powerful
horror-material of the nineties and earlier nineteen-
hundreds stands alone in its class, and marks a distinct
epoch in the history of this literary form" (p. 88).
i
I
| Aleister Crowley apparently had high regard for the
occult value of Machen's works. In the appendix of his
Magick in Theory and Practice, first published in 1929,
Crowley presents a list of nonfiction and fiction that he
recommends to students of magic. He describes the fictional
works listed as being "of a generally suggestive and helpful
217
kind." He recommends the reading of all of Machen's
works, saying: "Most of these stories are of great magical
interest" (p. 213).
By 1930 Machen's fame was diminishing both in England
and America. Some collections of Machen's stories and arti-
I
cles written previously for newspapers appeared in the
1930's. Among these books were The Glitter of the Brook
(1932) and The Cosy Room (1936). A new story, "N, " was
written especially for the publication of The Cosy Room j
I '
(Sweetser, AM, p. 46). .
I A series of essays produced in the early 1930's had |
i
j I
[been collected for publication, but the proposed work was i
not actually printed until after Machen's death. This book,
appearing in 1951, was entitled Bridles and Spurs.
The Green Round and The Children of the Pool were pub
lished in 1933 and 1936 respectively. The former was a new
novel employing many occult devices; the latter was a col
lection of new stories .
Machen's stories, particularly those written in the
last decade of the nineteenth century, appear in many
Magick in Theory and Practice by the Master Therion
(Aleister Crowley) (New York, n.d.), p. 212.
218
anthologies (Gekle, p. 121). Montague Summers prepared a
collection of occult stories for his English edition of
Supernatural Omnibus in 1931. It is interesting to note
that Summers did not include a Machen tale in this edition, i
I
When he prepared the American edition of the same anthology |
in 1932, Summers deleted and added a number of stories. He
12
printed "The Inmost Light" of Machen in this volume.
Starrett, writing to William Bowerraan, October 18, i
i
1932, gives a perceptive evaluation of Machen's literary -
reputation:
! "It is likely that Machen has outlived his time—what
ever his time may have been. He has . . . almost out- j
lived his reputation, as far as the public is concerned;
I not quite, however. I think new converts are coming
along all the time. His subterranean reputation must
still be fairly large. His clandestine celebrity will
always be greater than his public appreciation. He will
always be a cult. He is the sort of writer who is 'dis
covered' all over again, every decade or so, by oncoming
generations. That he is a classic, I am quite certain.
Yet his great books are few in number." j
i
In 1935 Madeleine L. Cazamian devoted a lengthy chapter
to Machen in her work Le Roman et les Idees en Anqleterre:
Timothy d'Arch Smith, A Bibliography of the Works of
Montague Summers (New Hyde Park, N. Y., [1964]), p. 82.
°Peter Ruber, The Last Bookman: A Journey into the
Life and Times of Vincent Starrett (Author—Journalist—
Bibliophile) (New York, 1968), p. 47.
219
L'Anti-Intellectualisme et l'Esthetisme (1880-1900).
Basil Davenport discusses "The Black Seal/' "The White
Powder," and "The White People" in his essay, "The Devil Is
14
Not Dead," that appeared in 1936.
August Derleth published an article on Machen in 1937.
He included some of Machen's tales in later collections of
stories of the supernatural (Gekle, p. 121) .
The brief revival of interest in the 1930's in Machen's
works has been attributed to the publication of The Cosy
Room and The Children of the Pool (Gekle, p. 189).
Gekle observed in 1949 that the decline of interest has
not been so extensive as it seems. He writes:
It is true that he has not been accorded the recogni
tion 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 ami
able booksellers, wrote me . . . that there is and al
ways has been a constant, if small, demand for his books.
Ben Abramson of the famed Argus Book Shop has his . . .
i 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 collec
tion issuing from Arkham House. (p. 192)
Machen continued to have a following in the 1940's.
Stanley J. Kunitz commended Machen's masterly evocation of
Saturday Review of Literature (New York), XIII
(February 15, 1936), [3]-4, 18, 20.
220
evil (Sweetser, "Arthur Machen: A Bibliography," p. 17).
Derleth pointed out Machen's talent for creating terror and
showed his influence on H. P. Lovecraft. In H. P. L.; A
Memoir Derleth observes that Machen's tales, and in particu
lar "The White People," contributed "the Aklo Letters, the
Dols (to become Sholes), the Jeelo, the Voolas. Little by
little, these were assimilated into the structure of the
15
Cthulhu Mythos as Lovecraft conceived it."
Sweetser calls attention to the work of Machen that was|
his last publication during his lifetime. The book Holy
Terrors, a collection of Machen's stories, appeared the year
before his death. It "sold over eighty thousand copies"
(AM, p. 47). In 1946 Machen also sold the motion picture
rights of "The Terror" (p. 47).
In 1947 Machen died at the age of eighty-four. His
passing was reported in some newspapers and periodicals, but
! "there were no bulletins, no eulogies by electronic commen
tators" (Gekle, p. 195).
During the year following Machen's death The Arthur
Machen Society was formed by Nathan Van Patten, Vincent
i
Starrett, Paul Jordan-Smith, Carl Van Vechten, Montgomery
(New York, 1945), p. 74.
221
Evans, Robert Hi1Iyer, and others (Gekle, p. 195). The
Society, an informal organization, with self-elected offi
cers and no meetings or dues, has continued to print arti
cles and anecdotes about Machen.
The Knopf publication in 1948 of Tales of Horror and
the Supernatural is, in Gekle's opinion, "the largest and
the best collection of Machen's stories ever published"
(pp. 195-196). This volume was edited by Philip Van Doren
Stern. It contains a reprint of an Atlantic Monthly article
on Machen by Hillyer. Ernest Jones was one of the reviewers
of the Knopf anthology. He regards Machen as "a fine but
unsatisfying writer" (Sweetser, "Arthur Machen: A Bibliog-
i
raphy," p. 15) .
In 1952 Peter Penzoldt reviewed Machen's contributions
to supernatural literature. His comments are made in The
Supernatural in Fiction, in which he also discusses Machen"s
t
influence on Lovecraft. Penzoldt attempts a kind of Freud-
jian analysis of Machen. He contends that Machen "wrote some
jof the most loathsome horror tales" (p. 153). Penzoldt
!
i
writes:
In a personal letter to me from Bob L. Mowery, Presi
dent of The Arthur Machen Society, July 9, 1970.
222
There are three themes that always recur in his [Machen's]
work which are really one and the same: guilt and the
guilty conscience, evil and Sin, with a capital letter,
and what Machen called "the little people." The little
people are the embodiment of the problems that obsessed
him. (p. 154)
Writing an introduction in 1951 to his edition of two
of Machen's autobiographical works, Morchard Bishop (Oliver
Stonor) regards Far Off Things as a beautifully written work
destined to take its place among the great works of Eng-
17 . .
lish. J. M. Cohen's review in 1951 of the Bishop edition
commends Machen's treatment of Edwardian themes (Sweetser,
"Arthur Machen: A Bibliography," p. 6) .
Julian Symons evaluated The Hill of Dreams, following
the 1954 edition; he discussed Machen's works generally in
his essay entitled "Distorting Mirrors." Symons says:
During the last decade of the nineteenth century Machen
produced all the work by which he is likely to be re
membered: The Three Impostors, a number of long stories
or short novels of which A Fragment of Life is the most
notable, and above all The Hill of Dreams, . . . His
later books are for the most part repetitions in one
form or another of his early ones, written when passion
had turned into recollection.
The Autobiography of Arthur Machen (London, 1951),
pp. 9-12.
• J Q
Distorting Mirrors," Critical Occasions (London,
[1966]), p. 43.
223
Symons contends that Machen "was capable of weaving fanta
sies but not of constructing novels" (p. 43). In his opin
ion Machen is not likely ever to become a popular author,
"but in the best of his works there is something remarkable,
an intensity of vision that does not fade with time" (p.
42) .
In 1960 Father Brocard Sewell edited a festschrift
honoring Machen. The contributing essayists were Adrian
Goldstone, C. A. and Anthony Lejeune, Maurice Spurway, I
Wesley D. Sweetser, Henry Williamson, and Father Sewell.
In the "Foreword" to this work Father Sewell observes that l
i
Machen "was never a best seller . . . Yet those who were j
i
reading him thirty, forty, or fifty years ago are reading
!
him still, and his works are keenly sought for both by new
readers and by collectors" (p. vii).
Aidan Reynolds and William Charlton published a book-
length account of Machen's life with a discussion of some
of the major works. The book entitled Arthur Machen: A
Short Account of His Life and Work appeared in London in
1963.
The Dawn of Magic, appearing in 1964, was a translation
of Le Matin des Magiciens, a work by Louis Pauwels and
Jacques Bergier. The authors mention Maeterlinck's
224
enthusiasm over Toulet's translation of "The Great God Pan."
Maeterlinck wrote:
"All my thanks for the revelation of this fine and sin
gular work. It is, I believe, the first time an attempt
has been made to combine the traditional, or diabolical
brand of Fantasy with the new scientific kind, and that
such a mixture has produced the most disturbing work I
have ever come across, for it appeals at the same time
to our memories of the past and our hopes for the fu
ture." (Pauwels and Bergier, p. 209)
The greatest contribution to a scholarly study of
Machen was made by Sweetser in 1964, when he prepared Arthur
Machen for Twayne's English Authors Series. In so doing
Sweetser revised his earlier doctoral dissertation entitled
"Works of Arthur Machen: An Analysis and Bibliography."
Sweetser's dissertation was presented for the Doctor of
Philosophy degree at the University of Colorado in 1958.
Earlier scholarly efforts to gain a knowledge of
Machen's life and works had been made by various students in
order to fulfill the requirements for the Master's degree.
In 1930 Ralph Grainger Morrissey of Vanderbilt University
prepared a Master of Arts thesis on Machen. Master's theses
were written by William Price Albrecht at the University of
Pittsburgh in 1934, Charles McGinn Stewart at the University
of Southern California in 1939, and D. P. M. Michael at the
University of Wales in 1941.
225
I
Sweetser worked with Goldstone to publish a bibliogra
phy of Machen in 1965 . This volume contained listings both
of Machen's works and also of references and articles about
Machen. Sweetser prepared a thirty-two-page bibliography
of writings about Machen for publication in English Litera
ture in Transition in 1968.
The application of scholarship to Machen's works was
made by Robert L. Tyler in his discussion of the place of
19
the minor writer in literature in 1960 and also by Robert
S. Matteson in his "Arthur Machen: A Vision of an Enchanted
Land," an article appearing in 1965 (Sweetser, "Arthur
Machen: A Bibliography," p. 19). In 1967 Berta Nash con
tributed "Arthur Machen Among the Arthurians" to Charles
Alva Hoyt's edition of essays entitled Minor British Novel
ists . Nash's work seeks to reconcile Machen's tales of
horror with his tales of joy.
A popular work on the terrifying in literature and the
cinema was written in 1966 by Drake Douglas (Werner Zimmer-
i
mann, Jr.). The work named Horror! devotes about eleven
pages to a discussion of some of Machen's occult stories.
"Arthur Machen: The Minor Writer and His Function," i
Approach: A Literary Quarterly, No. 35 (Spring 1960), 21-
26.
I 226
bouglas includes Machen in his section of the book appearing
under the title of "The Creators of Horror." Machen figures
prominently in the discussion with Poe and Lovecraft.
Machen's translations of The Heptameron, The Way to
Attain, and The Memoirs of Casanova were originally pub
lished before 1900. The interest in Machen in the 1920's
was reflected in the reappearance of these works along with
the tales and novels. The Memoirs of Casanova has proved to
be the most important of the translations. It was first
reprinted in New York by The Society of Bibliophiles in
1920. Since that date it has been issued by various pub
lishers and societies at least fifteen times (Goldstone and
Sweetser, pp. 71-72). Machen's Casanova's Escape appeared
in 1925. Machen then translated the Remarks upon Hermo-
]
dactylus, which was privately printed in 1933. All of
Machen's translations were from the French.
Machen's reception in England and America is indicated
in yet another way—his influence on other writers. The
i
question of influence is conjectural except in the instances
in which certain writers have acknowledged indebtedness to
Machen.
I have mentioned the influence of Machen on Lovecraft
!
as pointed out by Derleth (see above, p. 220). I
227
James Branch Cabell admitted the influence of The Hill
of Dreams and A Fragment of Life on his The Cream of the
T 4-
2 0
Jest.
Van Vechten portrays the works of Machen as having a
21
direct influence on his character Peter Whiffle. Peter
commends Machen for suggesting "'the extremes of the ter
rible, the vicious, the most evil, by never describing them.
His very reserve conveys the infinity of abomination'"(pp.
196-197). Peter comments that even Machen's name is mysti
cal, "'for, according to the Arbatel of magic, Machen is the
name of the fourth heaven'"(p. 198). Toward the conclusion
of Peter Whiffle Van Vechten shows Peter's intense interest
in black magic. This interest culminates in experimentation
in diabolism. Peter contemplates the horror of "The Great
God Pan" and says that "'one wonders what price Machen him
self has paid to learn his secret of how to keep the se
crets! He must have encountered this horror himself'"(p.
200). Later the narrator of Peter's story writes:
An ambition which had persuaded its possessor that in
^Colum and Cabell, eds., Between Friends in Sweetser,
"Arthur Machen: A Bibliography," p. 6.
2
-'-Carl Van Vechten, Peter Whiffle: His Life and Works
(New York, 1922), pp. 196-202, 213.
228
order to become the American Machen, he must first be
come an adept in demonology seemed to me to be the
culmination of Peter's fantastic life, which, indeed,
it was. (p. 213)
M. P. Shiel presents a view of Machen as a writer by
portraying him in The Purple Cloud (1929), a tale of fan
tasy. Shiel shows Machen as a Cornish poet who writes
feverishly on as a destroying cloud descends upon England.
Shiel's narrator says:
I do not know that I ever encountered anything so com
plimentary to my race as this Machen, and his race with
the cloud: for it is clear now that the better kind of
those poet men did not write to please the dim inferior
tribes who might read them, but to deliver themselves
of the divine warmth that swarmed within their breast,
and, if all the readers had been dead, still they'd
have written, and for God to read they wrote.^2
Ray Bradbury, writing in 1951, identifies Machen as a
writer of occult stories by depicting him as a character in
"The Exiles," a story in his collection entitled The Illus
trated Man. Machen appears with Poe, Bierce, Shakespeare,
23
Blackwood, and other writers. "The Exiles"—a science
i
fiction tale of the future—tells of the outlawing in 2020
of all books of horror. The books call on their authors for
^The Purple Cloud (Cleveland and New York, [1946]),
pp. 93-94.
23
The Illustrated Man (Garden City, N. Y., 1958) , p. 141.
229
assistance. Because of the scientific trend of the times
the authors can do nothing but wait on the planet Mars hop
ing that human beings will come to their senses and accept
their works once again. Machen and his fellow authors die
on Mars as the remaining copies of their works are burned.
Sweetser has the following observation on Machen's
effect on other writers:
Definite indications of influences on the works of
other writers are apparent only in the cases of Love-
craft, Bradbury, Daphne du Maurier, and P. J. Toulet.
In the first instance, Lovecraft more than once acknowl
edges his allegiance to the master; and his "Cthulhu
cult" has all the terrible though dimly defined attri
butes of an outlandish race like Machen's Little People.
With Bradbury, however, the link is more tenuous ... .
The similarity to du Maurier is only conjectural based
upon the single instance of the theme in "The Birds,"
which is obviously similar to that of The Terror. (AM,
p. 137)
Sweetser cites Henri Martineau as his source for Machen's
influence on Toulet (pp. 137-138). Sweetser contends that
Machen may have had some influence on the works of Shiel,
Richard Middleton, Thomas Wolfe, Proust, and Virginia Woolf,
although he agrees that no proof has been established. The
effect on Shiel and Middleton lies in the use of fantasy and
occult themes. The influence on the other writers mentioned
lies in the stream-of-consciousness technique (p. 138).
Charles McGinn Stewart thinks that Machen anticipated
230
both James Joyce and Virginia Woolf. He quotes from
Machen's brief tale "Psychology" to show that some of
24
Machen's ideas were similar to those of Joyce. Stewart
points out similarities between Machen and certain English
and American writers. He sees a likeness between the con-
elusion of James Hilton's Lost Horizon and the ending of
Machen's The Secret Glory (p. 77). Stewart also suggests
that perhaps Aldous Huxley and Zona Gale may have been in
fluenced by Machen (p. 77). '
Patricia Merivale turned to Machen in 1964 in her study
jof the Pan myth. She attributes the origin of the sinister j
!
Pan of early modern short stories to Machen's account of the
25
terrifying vision of Pan in "The Great God Pan." She
cites the following stories depicting Pan as an avenging
deity: "The Story of a Panic" by E. M. Forster, "The Man
Who Went Too Far" by E. F. Benson, "The Music on the Hill"
iby Saki (H. H. Munro), and "The Last Laugh" by D. H. Law-
|rence (p. 297) .
"The Aesthetic Career of Arthur Machen: A Study of
the Sources and Development of Machen's Critical Ideas,"
unpub. Master's thesis (University of Southern Californiaj
1939), pp. 79-80.
5
"D. H. Lawrence and the Modern Pan Myth," Texas Stud
ies in Literature and Language, VI (Autumn 1964), 297-305.
231
It has been shown that from 1894 Machen has been recog
nized as a writer of occult stories. To sum up Machen's
contribution to this type of literature, Sweetser writes:
Numerically greater than any other fictional types in
his total literary output, Machen's tales of the weird
and occult are also the only ones being currently re
printed on a large scale. .. . In this field, Machen's
horrors are always remote and suggested, never physical;
and it is precisely in this small area of psychological,
transcendental occult that Machen has never been sur
passed. His peculiar knowledge of demonology, witch
craft, folklore, particularly Celtic lore, and occult
societies and religions combined with his unique talent j
for suggesting the indescribable through the creation |
of atmosphere to make him the spokesman without peer
for sorcery and sanctity existing always behind the
veil of the ineffable mystery.
"Arthur Machen: A Biographical Study," in Arthur
Machen: Essays, ed. Father Sewell, p. 17.
APPENDI X
OCCULTISM AS REFLECTED IN ENGLISH LITERATURE
EXCLUSIVE OF MACHEN'S WORK DURING
THE PERIOD 1880-1940
232
OCCIHVJ'J.SM AH RKKLKCTKD IN KNC.LTSII lYITKRATURK
KXCLUSIVl'l 01'' MAGI INN'S WORK DURING
Till': PKRIOD .I.HHO-1.94 0
I n no l.ectin q occu I L literatur e which I. con.'iidor repre
sentativ e of Lho period f'rom I UHO to .1.94 0 , I have paid more
attentio n to the works of important .literary liguroa . With
reape d to minor writers, .1, hav e endeavored to choose sub
ject s and themes related to those used by Machon. Much ol.'
th e materia I. .summarized in Lhi.'-i section comes from the sur
vey s ol" occul t literature made by Dorothy Scarborough, II. P.!
Lovocral-'t , Stuart H.I.I in , Peter Pun/.oldt, and Coleman 0.
Paraons . By far the greater bulk of such literature lies in
th e realms ol the short story and the novel. In th.is iiur-
ivey , therefore, :i shal l pay particula r attention to the
i
!
occult in prone f.i.ct:ion.
Periodica Is in Kngland continued to provide numoroun
ghost stories for their readers. The Christmas number ol
The Whitcha 1.1 Reviow (.1.09.1) contained n co.llect.ion ol wo I I
233
234
written ghost stories. As we have seen, the Christmas and
New Year's numbers of the Review of Reviews (1891-1892)
supplied a large number of "real" ghost stories. An inter
esting periodical was published by Horlicks, the malted milk
company: under Waite's influence this magazine, known as
I
The Horlicks Magazine and Home Journal for Australia, India
and the Colonies, was devoted almost entirely to the print
ing of occult stories and articles. It seemed to publish
"all that was least likely to stimulate sales" of malted
milk (Reynolds and Charlton, p. 53). Machen's "The White
i
People" and The Hill of Dreams appeared in the columns of
this periodical.
Much literature treating the occult in England from
1880 to 1940 originated in the Gothic novel. Scarborough
cites a number of new sources of information that enlarged
the scope of Gothic writing in modern times. She says:
i
] Modern science, with the new miracles of its labora-
i tories, proved suggestive of countless plots; the new
study of folk-lore and the scholarly investigations in
that field unearthed an unguessed wealth of supernatu
ral material; Psychical Research societies with their
patient and sympathetic records of the forces of the
unseen; modern Spiritualism with its attempts to link
this world to the next; the wizardry of dreams studied
scientifically—all suggested new themes, novel compli
cations, hitherto unknown elements continuing the super
natural in fiction. (p. 2)
235
The stories that were being printed in periodical and
book form may be treated under the following headings:
Diabolism, The Supernatural Being in Folklore, Apparitions,
Life After Death, The Alchemical Quest and Uncanny Science,
The Doppelganger and Metempsychosis, and Miscellaneous
Topics. Diabolism includes literature about devils, pacts
with the devil, black magic, witchcraft, curses, werewolves,
and vampires. The category named "The Supernatural Being in
Folklore" deals with fairies and folk beliefs about fairy
land and natural forces. The topic "Apparitions" treats
objective and subjective ghosts, spirits as conjectured by
spiritualism, and apparitions or visions of the future or of
places that either have no material existence or have ex
isted in former ages. "Life After Death" contains stories
in which authors portray life after the death of the physi
cal body. "The Alchemical Quest and Uncanny Science" in-
[
eludes occult stories about alchemy and science. "The
Doppelganger and Metempsychosis" category treats fiction
that portrays the existence of one personality in two bod
ies, the supernatural merging of two separate personalities
into one, or a rebirth or reincarnation of a person.
Many of the stories in this section contain elements
that would seem to necessitate classification in two or more
236
ways. Other stories are difficult to categorize because of
the author's use of ambiguity in treating his subject. I
have endeavored, however, to place each literary piece in
only one category.
!
Diabolism I
i
Mocking red devils appear on earth in Oscar Wilde's j
i
"A Legend of Sharp" (Scarborough, p. 134) . Wilde also sug- J
!
gests the diabolic in his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray
(1891), in which he shows how a young man is led into a life;
of sin. Scarborough regards Dorian Gray as "a concept of
diabolism" (p. 134). i
j
Rudyard Kipling has dipped into the occult for numerous
stories. He depicts devils in his short story "Bubble Well
Road" (Scarborough, p. 138). In this work a plot of ground
is filled with demons and ghosts controlled by an evil na-
i
jtive priest. In "The Haunted Subalterns" manifestations of
malicious spirits frighten young army officers (p. 138).
Kipling selects lycanthropy as his theme in "The Mark of the
Beast." A man's soul is stolen by Indian magic and the
curse of a leper priest, and a beast's soul is put in its
place (pp. 100-101, 167). The man's exterior form does not
change. Scarborough differentiates between the real
237
werewolf and the lycanthrope—"the latter a human being who,
on account of some peculiar twist of insanity, fancies him
self a wolf and acts accordingly" (p. 166). Kipling depicts
magic in his tale "In the House of Suddoo" (p. 146). "The
Courting of Dinah Shad" by Kipling follows the workings of
curses (p. 152) .
Two of Walter Pater's Imaginary Portraits--"Denys
l'Auxerrois" (1887) and "Apollo in Picardy" (1895)—depend
for their effect upon qualities beyond the natural in the
characterizations of Denys and Apollyon. The diabolic is
suggested by the frenzied cruelty of the protagonists in the
two portraits.
In a book entitled Werewolves (1912) Elliott O'Donnell
"gives serious credence to the existence of werewolves not
only in the past but also in the present" (Scarborough, p.
170). He conjectures that they may be "phantasms of the
,dead that cannot be at peace" (p. 172), or they may be pro
jections of the cruelty latent in man. O'Donnell was very
much drawn to manifestations ofthe occult. He portrays an
evil spirit's occupation of the body of a loved deceased
person in "The Mummy's Tale" (p. 110).
John Lane's Keynotes Series, consisting of thirty-three
volumes published between 1894 and 1897, included the work
238
of at least three writers who used occult themes. Machen,
M. P. Shiel, and Fiona Macleod (William Sharp) produced
works for publication in the Keynotes Series. Shiel is the
author of many weird and grotesque novels. The House of
Sounds is the story of a dead man's vengeance (Lovecraft,
pp. 77-78). In The Purple Cloud Shiel writes of a curse
which comes from the Arctic to attack mankind (p. 78). |
i
Macleod tells of bewitchment in his short story "The Judg
ment of God" (Scarborough, p. 234). Macleod's "The Sin-
Eater" presents demons symbolically. The sin-eater is a
person possessing the power either to remove the sins from
an unburied corpse or to turn them into demons that torment j
!
the soul until the Day of Judgment (p. 138).
Richard Middleton, a friend of Machen, produced some
fantastic stories. He suggests evil in "The Coffin Mer
chant" (p. 254).
i There are many variations on the supernatural theme in
the work of H. G. Wells. In "The Flowering of the Strange
i
Orchid" Wells writes a botanical vampire tale. A bulb
brought from the Andaman Islands flowers in England, its
tentacles almost strangling to death the botanist who is
cultivating it (p. 273).
Robert Louis Stevenson did much to advance the
239
popularity of the supernatural story. In his tale "Thrawn
Janet" (1882) he shows the terrifying influence wielded by
a man in black over an old servant (p. 137).
The most celebrated story of vampirism of all times is
Bram Stoker's novel Dracula. It tells of Count Dracula's
migration from the Carpathians and of his design to populate
England with fellow vampires (Lovecraft, p. 78). The book
was published in 1897 and converted into a play in 1927. It
brought fame to its author and a great interest in the
superstitions surrounding vampires. In The Lair of the
I
White Worm (1911) Stoker tells of a being who is both a
beautiful woman and a serpent ages old (Scarborough, p.
188) .
A frequently anthologized story of the occult is "The
Monkey's Paw/' written by W. W. Jacobs (pp. 253-254). It
concerns a talisman capable of granting three wishes . In
i
i"The Monkey's Paw" the wishes are fulfilled in an exceed
ingly horrible way.
Marie Corelli is known chiefly for her sentimental
novel The Sorrows of Satan (1896). In this book the author
describes the attempt of a sympathetic Satan to work out his
salvation—every soul rejecting him is responsible for his
advance little by little to heaven. Concerning this novel,
240
Machen says that "literary men do not long for a sequel to
the 'Sorrows of Satan.'"
Barry Pain has written a number of stories treating the
occult. He suggests diabolism in "Moon Madness" wherein a
princess dances alone night after night in the moonlight but
finds that she is not dancing alone (Scarborough, p. 139).
"The Story of a Panic," by E. M. Forster, gives the
reader a glimpse of the god Pan and the aura of terror that
surrounds him. Pan seems to assume diabolic qualities in
this story and others that describe Pan as vengeful. Ste
venson in the essay "Pan Pipes," first published in 1878,
says that "of all fears the fear of him [Pan] was the most
2
terrible since it embraces all." The malevolent Pan is
found in E. F. Benson's "The Man Who Went Too Far" and in
Saki's (H. H. Munro's) "The Music on the Hill" (Merivale,
p. 297). Saki's story portrays the prompt death by a horned
beast of an unbeliever who has despoiled an offering to Pan.
The Charwoman's Shadow by Lord Dunsany also touches on the
Pan motif. According to Ellis, "Pan is Forrest Reid's
"New Lamps for Old," The Shining Pyramid (Chicago,
1923), p. 200.
2
Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers (New York and
London, 1904), p. 17 3.
241
3
presiding deity." His Pan is not malignant, but he is
nevertheless "equally fatal to those mortals who meet him
face to face" (p. 344). The Spring Song is a story illus
trating Reid's use of Pan.
E. F. Benson discloses a tale of vengeance in his short
story "Negotium Perambulans" (Lovecraft, p. 81). In "The
Horror Horn" he tells of a half-human creature that lives
in the remote Alpine regions (p. 81). He writes a rather
typical vampire story in "Mrs. Amworth" (Penzoldt, p. 178).
George MacDonald is a versatile writer in the genre of
the occult. His Lilith (1895) follows the vampire theme
(Lovecraft, p. 79). j
Hugh Walpole is also known for a story utilizing the !
vampire motif. His short story "Mrs. Lunt" is his contri
bution to the occult in literature.
E. R. Eddison, an admirer of the heroes of Norse saga,
icreates in his novel The Worm Ouroboros a world of fantasy.
In this work rival factions of Demons and Witches perform
valorous feats, mythological creatures participate in the
unfolding of the plot, and the Witches engage in magical
sendings.
3"Forrest Reid," Mainly Victorian, p. 343.
242
William Fryer Harvey produced several collections of
short stories of the supernatural. Two of his tales that
have a diabolic aura are "Sambo" and "The Beast with Five
Fingers." In the former tale a little girl sacrifices her
dolls to a puppet that turns out to be an African idol
(Penzoldt, pp. 223-224) . "The Beast with Five Fingers" is
a frightening story of a hand that is endowed with life
after the death of its possessor (p. 17).
In William Hope Hodgson's novel The House on the Bor
derland a house with an evil reputation is the focus i. .^ ?n
attack by malevolent otherworld forces (Lovecraft, p. 83).
Peter Penzoldt, in evaluating writers in the field of
the supernatural, regards Algernon Blackwood as the best.
He points out that the reputations of few authors rest
solely on their tales or novels of the supernatural. Most
authors have regarded supernatural fiction merely as an
interesting experiment and "have approached the genre in
much the same spirit as a great painter who works in oils,
but will occasionally do a water-colour out of sheer curi
osity" (p. 228). All of Blackwood's work deals exclusively
with the supernatural. Penzoldt writes:
His message comes entirely from those regions that lie
beyond our five senses ... . Writing a short story of
the supernatural means to Blackwood exactly the opposite
243
from what it means to most other authors. While they
are merely seeking a new field in which to try their
skill, Blackwood has a message. (pp. 228-229)
One of Blackwood's most interesting works is John
Silence, Physician Extraordinary, a book of five tales
through which a single character "runs his triumphant
course" (Lovecraft, p. 97). The opening tale, "A Psychical
Invasion," deals with the exorcism of fiends; "Ancient Sor
ceries" shows how an entire village is enchanted by the past
and relives the witchcraft of long ago; "Nemesis of Fire"
portrays a hideous elemental evoked by blood; "Secret Wor
ship" treats of Satanism and devil worship; and "The Camp
of the Dog" is a werewolf story.
4 .
The phenomenon of "induced atavism" is a favorite
motif with John Buchan. Coleman 0. Parsons says that in
Buchan's works "strange creeds and powers may be exuded by
an apparently dead past" (p. 316). Various stories in The
Watcher by the Threshold depict survivals of primitive times
with ancient ceremonies involving witches and the devil and
Pict-brownies. "A modern man may be swept off his feet by
4
Coleman 0. Parsons, Witchcraft and Demonoloqy in
Scott's Fiction: With Chapters on the Supernatural in
Scottish Literature (Edinburgh and London, 1964), p. 316.
244
repeating some vestigial ritual or frequenting an unhallowed
place" (p. 317) as in Buchan's "The Grove of Ashtaroth."
"The Green Wildebeest" is a story of African witchcraft.
The short story "The Wind in the Portico" awakens dead
Britanno-Roman horrors. Buchan's novel Witch Wood shows
forcefully the survival of the Sabbat rites in Scotland.
Walter de la Mare's stories possess the qualities of .
i
being both uncanny and antiquarian. Lovecraft regards de |
i
la Mare as "among the very few to whom unreality is a vivid,!
living presence" (p. 80). De la Mare has written poetry of
high quality, and it also reflects the unearthliness and
haunting fear that he creates so convincingly in his tales .
He has written novels and several volumes of short stories.
Some of his more effective stories of the supernatural in
clude "Seaton's Aunt," "The Tree," "A Recluse," and "All-
Hallows." "Seaton's Aunt" is set in a background of vam-
i
pirism (p. 80). "The Tree" describes an evil vegetable
growth on the premises of a starving artist (p. 80), and
"A Recluse" hints "at what sent a chance guest flying from
a house in the night" (p. 80). "All-Hallows" gives the
reader a glimpse of demonic forces besieging a church (p.
80) .
The poet Yeats looked to the occult for his
245
inspiration. Although he was more concerned with Hermetic
doctrines, he does treat some of the standard themes of
diabolism. He depicts witches in "The Curse of the Fires
and the Shadows" and "The Wisdom of the King" (Scarborough,
p. 154). In "The Old Men of the Twilight" he portrays the
enchantment inflicted on old men who are turned into herons
(p. 234). His play Countess Cathleen tells of peasants who
have been driven by starvation to barter their souls to the
devil to buy food for their children. Countess Cathleen j
sells her own soul to save the souls of the peasants (p.
143) .
I
i
I
The Supernatural Being in Folklore j
Most of the fairy stories mentioned in this section
are written by authors concerned with the Celtic Renais
sance. One exception occurs in H. G. Wells's story "The
Man Who Had Been in Fairyland." This tale is a modern ver
sion of the fairy mistress motif. A young man falls asleep
on a fairy mound and is taken to the queen of the fairies.
The queen woos him in vain. The young man awakes on the
knoll homesick for fairyland. His earthly fiancee now seems
crude and repulsive in comparison with the fairy queen
(Scarborough, p. 241).
246
The world of fantasy and whimsy appears in James M.
Barrie's Peter Pan, both in the play and in the novel.
In The Crock of Gold James Stephens mingles fairy tales
"with other elements of the supernatural ... to make a
charming social satire" (Scarborough, p. 241).
!
Yeats "tells us many stories of the Dim People, in his
tales and dramas" (p. 240). His play The Land of Heart's
Desire depicts the struggle between the fairies and mortal
forces for the soul of a young wife (p. 241).
Scarborough observes that many stories of gods and
heroes have been "tangled up together in folk-tales" (p.
242). Lady Gregory writes many such tales. For example,
she tells of
Cruachan, who knew druid enchantments greater than the
magic of the fairies so that he was able to fight with
the Dim People and overcome them, and to cover the
whole province with a deep snow so that they could not
! follow him. (p. 244)
I
I Scarborough regards supernaturalism concerned with
'nature as one of the most interesting facets of folklore
(p. 228). This type of story was written by Lady Gregory,
John M. Synge, Yeats, Lady Wilde, and other Celtic authors
(p. 229) .
Blackwood has supernaturalized the forces of nature in
"The Regeneration of Lord Ernie," "The Man Whom the Trees
247
Loved," "Sand," and "The Wendigo" (Scarborough, p. 230).
The first of these stories describes the wind and flame as
though they were endowed with supernatural power. "The Man
Whom the Trees Loved" tells of goblin trees that lure men to
destruction. "Sand" depicts incantations on the desert
bringing hidden powers to life. "The Wendigo" tells of a
monstrous demon dwelling in the North Woods.
Apparitions
A long tale of considerable power is Margaret Oli-
phant's "A Beleaguered City" (Scarborough, p. 211). This
story tells of a French town that has been besieged by the
dead. The dead return to compel the inhabitants to leave
because of their irreligiousness. The story is told in a
setting of deep gloom and with the ringing of church bells.
Ghostly happenings occur in some of Kipling's tales.
In "The Return of Imray" the tenant's dog refuses to sleep
inside the hut until Imray's body is discovered concealed
in the rafters and is removed. In "They" shy little ghosts
of children are glimpsed and heard (Scarborough, p. 288).
"The Phantom Rickshaw" is another story concerning an appa
rition (p. 88) .
The supernatural held great fascination for Henry
248
bames. In The Turn of the Screw James's genius in dealing
with the supernatural most famously asserts itself. This
book, which was based on an incident reported to the Society
for Psychical Research regarding a woman ghost's corruption
of the mind of a child (Scarborough, p. 204), unfolds an
appalling tale of haunting and possession. Even Hynes, who
deplores the supernatural of the Edwardian period, admits
that the work is good. "Of all the examples that one could
cite," he says, "only 'The Turn of the Screw' is a substan
tial work of art" (p. 147).
Middleton has written of a child ghost in "The Passing
of Edward." He tells of a shepherd boy who has died because
of his drunken father's neglect. Edward, the boy, returns
to help his father tend the sheep. He is invisible in his
return, but he manifests himself through the sound of little
steps and the rustling of leaves (Scarborough, p. 99).
Vernon Lee (Violet Paget) produced a notable volume of
four ghostly tales entitled Hauntings: Fantastic Stories.
Another writer, Mary Elizabeth Braddon, gained a degree of
fame in the realm of the ghost story. It was Braddon who
asked Machen to contribute a story for some type of annual
that she was publishing in the 1890's. Machen said that he
submitted "The Inmost Light," but "Miss Braddon refused it
249
with lightning speed; and so no harm was done" (Danielson,
p. 37) .
The spirit of Lord Strafford walks alarmingly in the
i
novel John Inglesant by Joseph Henry Shorthouse (Scarbor
ough, p. 87) .
Montague Rhodes James dips into his treasury of anti
quarian and archaeological learning to create the proper
atmosphere for his malignant ghosts. James's short stories
occur in four collections: Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, j
More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, A Thin Ghost and Others,
and A Warning to the Curious (Lovecraft, p. 102). Typical
°" I
tales are "The Tresure of Abbot Thomas" and "The Stalls of
* i
Barchester Cathedral" (p. 105). James's "Count Magnus"
narrates the Black Pilgrimage of a seventeenth-century count
and tells what happened to a nineteenth-century Englishman
who investigated the count's tomb (pp. 103-104). His story
I
i
i"0h, Whistle, and I'll Come to You" describes the horror
summoned by a strange metal whistle found in a ruin on a
lonely seashore (p. 105).
Arnold Bennett's novel The Ghost portrays a jealous
ghost, who haunts the suitors of a singer whom he had loved
during his life on earth (Scarborough, pp. 117-118).
Blackwood produced ghost stories that show the dangers
250
that lurk across the threshold dividing the known from the
unknown. In "The Empty House" he depicts the power exerted
over human beings in a certain house (Scarborough, p. 117).
Blackwood's "With Intent to Steal" tells of the return of
the spirit of a man who has committed suicide (p. 117). In
"Old Clothes" Blackwood narrates the story of a little
girl's obsession by subliminal memories. She is haunted by
a terrible deed committed in the house. Investigations
bring to light the facts that "a long dead ancestress, liv
ing in the same house, had been walled up alive by her hus
band" (p. 124). In "The Listener" Blackwood tells of an
"awful psychic residuum creeping about an old house where a
leper died" (Lovecraft, p. 97).
H. R. Wakefield wrote excellent tales of the super
natural. "The Red Lodge," "He Cometh and He Passeth By,"
"The Cairn," and "The Seventeenth Hole at Duncaster" are
lexamples of his artistry (p. 81).
Oliver Onions (George Oliver), a writer famous for one
superb ghost story—"The Beckoning Fair One" (Penzoldt, p.
170)—also contributed other tales of the supernatural to
his collection Widdershins.
Robert Hichens is known for a particularly powerful
story in the supernatural genre. In "How Love Came to
251
Professor Guildea" Hichens portrays the reaction of a skep
tical professor to an invisible visitor that attaches itself
to him.
Arthur T. Quiller-Couch showed a marked interest in the
supernatural. His "The Roll-Call of the Reef" has appeared
in many collections of ghost stories (Scarborough, p. 107).
"A Pair of Hands" by Quiller-Couch is a delicate tale in
which the ghost of a little girl returns at night to do
housework for the living. She is visible only as a pair of
little hands (p. 288) .
Uncanny Stories, written by May Sinclair, consists of
seven stories ranging from the old-fashioned ghost, "through
5
mental hallucinations, to a metaphysical state."
Automatic writing appears in Harvey's "The Beast with
Five Fingers" and in George du Maurier's The Martian. In
The Martian a spirit from Mars causes the protagonist of
ithe novel to write in his dreams books impossible to him
awake (Scarborough, p. 207).
Although Oscar Wilde was not interested in the ghost
story as such, he tried his skill in this genre with "The
Ellis, "The Ghost Story and Its Exponents," Mainly
Victorian, p. 327.
252
Canterville Ghost." Ellis regards this tale as perhaps the
best short story ever written by Wilde (p. 393).
Middleton depicts informal, humorous ghosts in "The
Ghost Ship" (Scarborough, p. 111).
Apparitions of past or future times also occur in the
literature of the occult. Hilaire Belloc tells of a strange
walk into another dimension in "Home." Edward Bellamy's
novel Looking Backward describes a magic sleep that permits
a man to live far beyond his natural span of years.
Buchan's The Gap in the Curtain shows how seven Englishmen
are enabled to see into the future.
; i
i
i
I Life After Death
Life after death is shown in a variety of ways in
occult prose fiction. The author may depict the deceased
person in his eternal surroundings, or he may imagine some
fanciful detail after the person's life on earth has ended.
I The nearness of the dead to the living and the thinness
of the veil that separates the two worlds appear in The
White People, a delicate novelette written by Frances
Hodgson Burnett (Scarborough, p. 203).
Kipling's "The Last of the Stories" portrays the Hades
of literary endeavors presided over by the spirit of
Rabelais, who is the master (Scarborough, p. 216).
Forster contributed a collection of stories entitled
The Celestial Omnibus to the genre of the supernatural.
The story giving its name to the anthology is an allegory
of poetic fancy as opposed to materialism. Dead authors and
famous fictional characters appear as living in this tale.
The magician Aleister Crowley's career was marked by
abundant inventiveness in literature. He produced plays,
poems, short stories, and books on magic. He wrote "The
Testament of Magdalen Blair," a strange story dedicated to
Allan Bennett, an occultist. In the story Magdalen, who
can read her husband's mind, maintains communication with
him after his death. Throughout the decomposing of the body
the husband's consciousness of being survives. Magdalen
learns that her husband is in an appalling hell in which he
will suffer unutterable torment until his body has decayed
completely.
The Alchemical Quest and Uncanny Science
Yeats was greatly indebted to his occult studies for
much of his poetry and prose. William York Tindall says
The Stratagem and Other Stories (London, n.d.), pp.
47-120.
254
Yeats learned that
Anima Mundi, a reservoir of all that has touched man
kind, may be evoked by symbols. From Swedenborg he
received the doctrine of correspondences, from Eliphas
Levi the doctrine of magical incantations and symbols
that have power over spiritual and material reality,
and from Boehme the similar doctrine of signatures.
The Emerald Table of Hermes Trismegistus informed him
that things below are as things above. And the sym-
bolic ritual of the Rosicrucians confirmed these ideas.
In 1896 Yeats wrote three stories based on ceremonial oc
cultism—"The Tables of the Law," "Rosa Alchemica," and
"The Adoration of the Magi." "The Tables of the Law" is
based on the decadent notion of the beauty of evil. "Rosa I
Alchemica" is a Rosicrucian story in which Michael Robartes,
i
the hero, is a magus who makes use of spiritual alchemy.
The rose, as in Eliphas Levi, symbolizes the work of trans
muting matter into spirit. "The Adoration of the Magi"
depicts divine inspiration's being given to a suffering
!prostitute so that before she dies she is able to prophesy
8
the rebirth of the pagan gods.
Yeats's firm belief in the occult appears in his essay
'Forces in Modern British Literature 1885-1956 (New
York, [1956]), pp. 267-268.
^Michael Fixler, "Affinities Between Joris-Karl Huys-
mans and the Rosicrucian Stories of William Butler Yeats,"
PMLA, LXXIV (September 1959), 467-468.
255
"Magic" (1901). He writes:
I have come to believe so many strange things because
of experience, that I see little reason to doubt the
truth of many things that are beyond my experience;
and it may be that there are beings who watch over that
ancient secret, as all tradition affirms, and resent,
9
and perhaps avenge too fluent speech.
The secret of eternal life is the theme of H. Rider
Haggard's She and Ayesha (Scarborough, p. 183).
Barry Pain treats the magic of love in "The Love Phil
ter" and "Blue Roses" (Scarborough, pp. 267-268). In "The
Wrong Elixir" he tells of an alchemist who concocts a youth-
giving potion intending to keep it for himself. He also has
prepared a poison so that a gypsy girl can kill a man. When
the alchemist finally drinks his own mixture, he dies . The
reader is left to wonder whether he drank the wrong elixir
or whether his own potion was poisonous (p. 186).
Charles Williams was the author of novels that used
I
occult ideas. William York Tindall (p. 184) contends that
Williams combines "the thriller with theosophical melodrama
and the occult concerns of Eliphas Levi."
Williams centers his attention on a jewel from the
9
Ideas of Good and Evil (London, 1914), p. 48.
256
10
crown of King Solomon in Many Dimensions. In The Greater
[Trumps he introduced Tarot cards into his novel (p. 124) .
Scarborough observes that there has been a gradual
transition from the sorcerer and wizard of older fiction to
the scientist of the present (p. 252).
Uncanny chemistry appears in Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and
Mr. Hyde (1886) and in Wells's The Invisible Man (1897). In
Wulls's novel a man experiments with drugs until he finds
one that will render living tissue invisible. He swallows
the drug and cannot be seen. His clothes, however, appear
to be moving around by themselves (Scarborough, p. 269).
In The Time Machine Wells shows the effect of the com-
pression of time on the hero of the novel. The man lives a
very long time in a few hours (pp. 260-261).
The Human Chord by Blackwood is a novel "based on the
psychic values of sounds" (Scarborough, p. 275). The pro-
i
!tagonist brings down disaster upon himself by mispronouncing
the proper name of God.
Sax Rohmer's (Arthur Sarsfield Ward's) evil Chinese
doctor, Fu-Manchu, performs experiments in botany in order
Frederick S. Wandall, "Charles Williams," in Minor
British Novelists, ed. Charles Alva Hoyt, p. 124.
257
to gain power over men. "The Flower of Silence" tells of a
death-dealing orchid used by Fu-Manchu to put opponents out
of the way (Scarborough, p. 27 3) .
In 1908 Somerset Maugham produced The Magician, a novel
very different from all his other works. Its plot and main
character Oliver Haddo are based on the exploits and per
sonality of Aleister Crowley. Gruesome science prevails
as Haddo, an evil magician, sacrifices his wife in an at
tempt to create life.
I
The Doppelganqer and Metempsychosis
The doppelganger theme has been a favorite with the
writers of occult fiction. Its most frequent form is that
of dual personality—one being appearing in two forms.
Scarborough thinks that such stories may have their germinal
origin in Spanish literature. In Calderon's play, El Em-
bozado, the protagonist's self haunts him (Scarborough, p.
i
119) .
One of the most famous stories based on this theme is
Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. In this tale a chemi
cal mixture causes a transformation of character.
Gilbert Highet, Talents and Geniuses; The Pleasures
of Appreciation (New York, 1957), pp. 158-161.
258
It is interesting to observe that Machen selected
Jekyll and Hyde as an example of a literary work capable of
just scraping "by the skin of its teeth, as it were, into
the shelves of literature, and no more" (Works, VI, 71).
Machen made this judgment in his critical work Hieroglyph
ics . He felt that Stevenson's story was a fine work of art
in conception, "though not in its execution" (p. 71). One
of the major weaknesses of the work, in Machen's opinion, is
12
Stevenson's use of allegory. Lurking behind the plot of
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, however, Machen detected the pres
ence of an inspired idea: that man is not really one per
son, but two. He elaborated on this theme in his descrip-
tion of the literary artist at work (Works, VI, 118-119).
Machen's idea of the existence of a double personality is
portrayed in another Stevenson story, "Markheim," wherein a
stranger becomes the embodiment of a man's nobler self
I (Scarborough, p. 120).
Kipling has written "At the End of the Passage," a tale
which portrays the haunting of a man by his own spirit body
(p. 120) . In another story, "The Drama of Duncan
12
"Realism and Symbol," The Shining Pyramid (Chicago,
1923), pp. 170-171.
259
Parrennness," Kipling's protagonist sees himself as he
really is. His ghostly double horrifies him with its dis
sipated features and serves as a warning against his way of
life (Tymms, p. 109).
Scarborough sees The Picture of Dorian Gray as a novel
following the doppelganger theme. There is a kind of super
natural dualism in the relationship between Dorian and his
portrait (p. 121).
i
The magical exchange of bodies by means of a chemical
is the basis of the plot in "The Story of the Late Mr.
Elvesham, " by H. G. Wells. It depicts the rejuvenation of |
an old man by the exchange of the old body for that of a
t
young man (Tymms, p. 109).
Osbert Sitwell and Aldous Huxley wrote stories on the
theme of the doppelganger. Sitwell's "The Man Who Lost
Himself" depicts a man's change of personality under the
force of a great shock (Tymms, p. 117). Huxley tells of a
man with two alternating personalities in "The Farcical
History of Richard Greenow" (Tymms, p. 118).
Blackwood uses the doubles motif in "The Terror of the
Twins," in which two natures merge into one through the
power of a curse (Scarborough, p. 122).
Henry James's "The Jolly Corner" makes use of dual
260
personality (Scarborough., p. 122, n.).
Similar to dual personality in stories is the theme of
metempsychosis, in which at death the soul of a human being
may pass into another mortal body or into a plant or an
animal.
In Bram Stoker's novel The Jewel of Seven Stars the
soul of an Egyptian princess enters into the body of a baby
born to one of the explorers seeking treasure in the tomb
of the princess (Scarborough, p. 191).
Arthur Conan Doyle makes use of the reanimated mummy in
his story entitled "Lot No. 249" (p. 62).
"The Brushwood Boy" by Kipling is a dream-metempsycho
sis tale (p. 195).
Blackwood portrays witch metempsychosis on a large
scale in "Ancient Sorceries." His novel Jules Le Vallon is
based on collective reincarnation (p. 194) . The Wave, an-
i
iother novel by Blackwood, has for its theme the reincarna
tion of the main characters (p. 194).
Quiller-Couch depicts dual reincarnation in "The Mys
tery of Joseph Laquedem." In this story a young Jew in
England and a half-witted girl recall their lives in another
age (p. 195).
The soul of a dead man reaches out of its grave of two
261
centuries to enter the body of a living man in The Return,
a novel by de la Mare (Lovecraft, p. 80) .
A variation of the metempsychosis theme occurs in "A
Dream of Armageddon" by Wells. The protagonist of this
story has a vision of his death; he then dreams he is an
other person (Scarborough, pp. 196-197).
Miscellaneous Topics
There are other topics in the realm of the occult in
literature. Some literary works treat the ascribing of
supernatural powers to animals. The animals may act as an
aid to man, but generally they serve as a means of his de
struction .
The Gaelic stories of Fiona Macleod (William Sharp)
tell of the supernatural relationship that exists between
human beings and seals. Sea creatures may enchant mortals
,and turn them into beasts .
I
Wells has written tales of terrifying creatures pos
sessing unusual powers. Penzoldt cites three of these
stories portraying animals "so strange that they leave us
uncertain to what world they belong" (p. 48). Wells's
stories are "Aegypornis Island," "The Avu Observatory," and
"The Sea Raiders,"
262
Horrible spiders appear in Wells's "Valley of the Spi
ders." Caterpillars create horror through a persistent
dream in E. F. Benson's story "Caterpillars" (Penzoldt, p.
49) .
The Grail theme of the Arthurian legends is the one
i
singled out from Arthurian material as having significant
occult associations. Twentieth-century Arthurians include ,
!
Charles Williams and T. S. Eliot (Nash, p. 109), j
!
i
The treatment that I have just presented of the occult
in English literature between the years 1880 and 1940 is by
no means complete. It is intended only to serve as a par
tial background for the study of Machen's works. It does
indicate, however, that there was a considerable amount of
supernatural literature in England during the span of years
mentioned.
It is well to remember that Machen could have read all
of the works surveyed in this section. Sweetser says:
"Machen's longevity made him a contemporary of every writer
of weird and occult fiction since the publication of Steven
son's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (AM, p. 91) .
BIBLIOGRAPH Y
I
26 3
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Core Title Arthur Machen’s treatment of the occult and a consideration of its reception in England and America

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Tag Literature, General,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Templeman, William D. (committee chair), Arnold, Aerol (committee member), La Rue, Gerald (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c17-209439

Unique identifier UC11351659

Identifier 7127913.pdf (filename),usctheses-c17-209439 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier 7127913.pdf

Dmrecord 209439

Document Type Dissertation

Rights CASSAZZA, ALICE CATHERINE

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA