![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
We all heard the stories to bring you to your knees
I wish the introductory essay to the edition I have recently acquired of In the Dark: Tales of Terror by E. Nesbit (1988/2017) was less chattily biographical and told me more about the context of the stories. The bibliography at the back tells me where all of them were published, which turns out to be a mix of collections and magazines, but what I can't get from either the book or the cursory internet is any sense of Nesbit's writing community. I know she had a political life. I'd love to know if she was talking to other horror writers or just reading them, if these stories are in dialogue with other stories or if they are just the inevitable flipside of writing so carefully for children: the darkness has to go somewhere. They are weird stories. I mean that both informally and technically. Some have ghosts, some have black magic, some have mad science, some have madness, some have premonitions, some have coincidences, some have cruel twists, some have happy endings; a little from column A, a little from column B. Some are straight-up shockers. Some are really eerie. I am nearing the end of the book and just finished "The Shadow" (1905), which opens with the strikingly modern disclaimer:
This is not an artistically rounded off ghost story, and nothing is explained in it, and there seems to be no reason why any of it should have happened. But that is no reason why it should not be told. You must have noticed that all the real ghost stories you have ever come close to, are like this in these respects—no explanation, no logical coherence. Here is the story.
It is possible for the reader to round off the story for themselves—it's almost impossible for the reader not to try—but even then it is the kind of Aickmanesque almost-pattern where nothing can be proven and it might be worse if it could. A number of the collected stories are in this vein, subtler and stranger than they first look. "The Haunted House" (1913) reads like a kind of miniature reverse Moreau, mediated by vampirism. "John Charrington's Wedding" (1891) has one of the nastiest narrators I have run into in some time and I can't tell if he's a factor in the terrible story he records, because if so he is as entirely unaware of it as he is of the impression he makes on the reader. "The Violet Car" (1910) is psychological horror until it isn't. I keep thinking about "The Head" (1907), not because of its gruesome ending, but because of everything else that's in it. It's one of the few where the introductory essay was actually useful to me, since it informed me that "The Head" bears "traces" of a 1905 visit to the waxworks of the Musée Grevin and "also owes a lot to her more happy pastime of building miniature towns and cities, one of which she exhibited at the 1912 Children's Welfare Exhibition, at London's Olympia." In the story, Nesbit gives that pastime to a recluse who has spent decades obsessively recreating the scene of his trauma with tiny wax figures in his basement; when it is moved to London and scaled up to life-size at the encouragement of a chance-met music-hall promoter, of course it results in murder. It is not a story of sympathetic magic—not explicitly, though the artist believes it will achieve something which the promoter dismisses as impossible and the reader may guess now which of them is right—but it evokes the same uncanny collapse of image and reality. Or just the potential for destruction in every creator, the control of small and carefully arranged lives: "It's the work of my hands. And I love the work of my hands, same as Almighty God did." Either way it is an evocative part of herself for a storyteller to give to a story, especially when she already spends her days making up houses and towns and churchyards and peopling them with precisely detailed imitations of life. Anyone who has ever worried about Nesbit's ability to get out out of the way of her own twee based on her children's fiction should feel reassured by reading these stories and then feel not reassured at all. "Man-Size in Marble" (1887) appears to be famous and deserves it. She's good with the uncanniness of things.
So my mother gave me this collection because she didn't know that Nesbit wrote horror and I read it because I wanted to know what her horror for adults (rather than the flashes in her children's fiction) would be like and I am left hoping it has been seriously rediscovered, because some of it is historically interesting and some of it is just plain creepy. I wish I'd known before Readercon. She is this year's Memorial Guest of Honor and I'm scheduled across from the panel that might discuss it.
This is not an artistically rounded off ghost story, and nothing is explained in it, and there seems to be no reason why any of it should have happened. But that is no reason why it should not be told. You must have noticed that all the real ghost stories you have ever come close to, are like this in these respects—no explanation, no logical coherence. Here is the story.
It is possible for the reader to round off the story for themselves—it's almost impossible for the reader not to try—but even then it is the kind of Aickmanesque almost-pattern where nothing can be proven and it might be worse if it could. A number of the collected stories are in this vein, subtler and stranger than they first look. "The Haunted House" (1913) reads like a kind of miniature reverse Moreau, mediated by vampirism. "John Charrington's Wedding" (1891) has one of the nastiest narrators I have run into in some time and I can't tell if he's a factor in the terrible story he records, because if so he is as entirely unaware of it as he is of the impression he makes on the reader. "The Violet Car" (1910) is psychological horror until it isn't. I keep thinking about "The Head" (1907), not because of its gruesome ending, but because of everything else that's in it. It's one of the few where the introductory essay was actually useful to me, since it informed me that "The Head" bears "traces" of a 1905 visit to the waxworks of the Musée Grevin and "also owes a lot to her more happy pastime of building miniature towns and cities, one of which she exhibited at the 1912 Children's Welfare Exhibition, at London's Olympia." In the story, Nesbit gives that pastime to a recluse who has spent decades obsessively recreating the scene of his trauma with tiny wax figures in his basement; when it is moved to London and scaled up to life-size at the encouragement of a chance-met music-hall promoter, of course it results in murder. It is not a story of sympathetic magic—not explicitly, though the artist believes it will achieve something which the promoter dismisses as impossible and the reader may guess now which of them is right—but it evokes the same uncanny collapse of image and reality. Or just the potential for destruction in every creator, the control of small and carefully arranged lives: "It's the work of my hands. And I love the work of my hands, same as Almighty God did." Either way it is an evocative part of herself for a storyteller to give to a story, especially when she already spends her days making up houses and towns and churchyards and peopling them with precisely detailed imitations of life. Anyone who has ever worried about Nesbit's ability to get out out of the way of her own twee based on her children's fiction should feel reassured by reading these stories and then feel not reassured at all. "Man-Size in Marble" (1887) appears to be famous and deserves it. She's good with the uncanniness of things.
So my mother gave me this collection because she didn't know that Nesbit wrote horror and I read it because I wanted to know what her horror for adults (rather than the flashes in her children's fiction) would be like and I am left hoping it has been seriously rediscovered, because some of it is historically interesting and some of it is just plain creepy. I wish I'd known before Readercon. She is this year's Memorial Guest of Honor and I'm scheduled across from the panel that might discuss it.
no subject
And I see no reason not to have a conversation about Nesbit's horror next year, if we don't manage it this year.
no subject
I'll read the collection and see if I can tell! I have not read much of Aiken's short fiction beyond A Necklace of Raindrops (1968), which I imprinted on in elementary school.
And I see no reason not to have a conversation about Nesbit's horror next year, if we don't manage it this year.
Yay!
no subject
no subject
I certainly enjoyed "The Cold Flame," which I just read. It is not a story Nesbit would have written, except the ending is exactly the sort of thing she would have done. Thank you for pointing me toward it!
no subject
no subject
Nesbit was at the centre of of a loosely configured artistic community. She had a close friendship with Bernard Shaw (who didn't write supernatural fiction) and a less close one with H G Wells (who did). Wells attempted to elope with Nesbit's eldest daughter- and Nesbit's husband intercepted the lovers at the railway station and gave Wells a hiding. She was an initiate of The Golden Dawn- as were all sorts of writers- both great and small- from W.B. Yeats to Dion Fortune. In old age she befriended the young Noel Coward.
I've been to the church and seen the tomb that supposedly inspired Man-Size in Marble. I've also visited Nesbit's grave. The locations are within a few miles of each other on Romney Marsh
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
I learned yesterday that Courtney Love's grandmother was Paula Fox! That was a serious crossing of streams.
no subject
"Paula Fox was born in Manhattan on April 22, 1923, to parents who did not want her."
no subject
You're welcome! That is how Margalit Fox writes obituaries. She may be the only person who writes obituaries who one can read for fun.
[edit] So naturally she just retired. But she's retiring to write books, so I look forward. The one she wrote about the decipherment of Linear B was excellent.
no subject
I've read it! I did not realize the Nesbit connection at the time and felt more ambivalent about the book when I found out. (I don't object on principle to the blurring of real and fictitious persons, but I did not like the way that Byatt's version of Nesbit did so much more harm to her children than did the real Nesbit as far as I could tell—in the service of proving her thesis that the writing of children's books is bad for the children who inspire them, she took much worse cases from the lives of other writers and assigned their equivalent to her Nesbit analogue and that did not seem fair to me, considering how otherwise recognizable as Nesbit the character with her polyamorous home life and her Fabian politics is.)
Nesbit was at the centre of of a loosely configured artistic community. She had a close friendship with Bernard Shaw (who didn't write supernatural fiction) and a less close one with H G Wells (who did). Wells attempted to elope with Nesbit's eldest daughter- and Nesbit's husband intercepted the lovers at the railway station and gave Wells a hiding. She was an initiate of The Golden Dawn- as were all sorts of writers- both great and small- from W.B. Yeats to Dion Fortune. In old age she befriended the young Noel Coward.
Thanks! The introduction mentioned the incident with Wells, but in a context of irony re Hubert Bland and his wide-ranging sex life, which did not tell me anything about Nesbit's relationship with Wells. I have noticed echoes of him in her work before, but you can read someone without actually having them over for tea.
I've been to the church and seen the tomb that supposedly inspired Man-Size in Marble.
That's really neat.
Do you know if any of her miniature cities survive?
no subject
no subject
Thank you!
no subject
I don't hate Byatt by the way; I think her short stories are wonderful.
I've no idea about the miniature cities. It would be wonderful if they still existed- but I have my doubts. Have you read The Magic City- in which a miniature city comes to life?
no subject
Possession was the first book by Byatt I tried to read. I was in college and I bounced off it completely. Fortunately I later discovered Angels & Insects.
I don't hate Byatt by the way; I think her short stories are wonderful.
I didn't assume you did; I don't hate her either. I agree with you about her short fiction. I've just never read one of her novels that I love as much as The Conjugial Angel" or "Crocodile Tears" or "Cold" or "The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye," although large parts of Ragnarok are great.
Have you read The Magic City- in which a miniature city comes to life?
No! And especially after reading "The Head," I feel I should.
no subject
no subject
I hope he enjoyed it!
no subject
no subject
no subject
Yes! They would be much less creepy if they knew what they were. I mean, you the reader know what you are, and you aren't wrong, are you?
no subject
Go! Write! Nesbit will still be here when you get back!
(I may read The Magic City. I didn't know it existed prior to comments on this post. I will try not to talk about it in distracting ways.)
I have not read any of Nesbit’s horror stories but am very keen to do so; I still find the Ugly Wuglies in The Enchanted Castle far more terrifying than they have any right to be.
Yes! That was how I knew she could do horror. Honestly I think they are just as terrifying as intended; they're in Nesbit's sweet spot of the uncanny valley, where she turns out to be brilliant at things that are like living people but not, like statues and waxworks and the dead.
no subject
no subject
"Not white clean skeletons, hung on wires, like the one you see at the doctor's, but skeletons with the flesh hardened on their bones, with their long dry hair hanging on each side of their brown faces, where the skin in drying had drawn itself back from their gleaming teeth and empty eye-sockets. Skeletons draped in mouldering shreds of shrouds and grave-clothes, their lean fingers still clothed with dry skin, seemed to reach out towards me. There they stood, men, women, and children, knee-deep in loose bones collected from the other vaults of the church, and heaped round them. On the wall near the door I saw the dried body of a little child hung up by its hair."
Aaaaaaaagh.
no subject
no subject
I like how she still thinks of him, wishing him well. I have people I met once years ago like that.
no subject
no subject
I think at worst you would find it really interesting and at best you would really enjoy it. She turns out to have a gift that's not really on display in her work for children, but which feels essential to a writer of weird fiction: she can really exploit the human tendency for pattern recognition. Some of the stories in this collection are memorable because they contain surprise vampire plant (although you want to watch the women in that story; you want to watch a lot of the women in these stories), but some are memorable simply because there's no obvious or rational link between all of their moving parts and yet the reader becomes convinced through nothing more than almost background detail that there's some kind of significance, an explanatory pattern or at least a common factor, because it would be better to have some reason than just horrible randomness that strikes out of nowhere, but then of course the reason would be that. I noticed it most strongly in "John Charrington's Wedding," "The Shadow," and "The Head," but I suspect it's present in others, the sense of something else moving under the surface of the story. Several of them have an immediate stinger and then a kind of delayed effect. Because she is E. Nesbit and was writing in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, I have to warn for the occasional totally racist remark that flies by in the text and didn't need to be there in the first place, but otherwise there's not that much that's dated. Also she's just really good with the uncanny valley and that will take you far in this genre.
no subject
no subject
You're welcome! I had no idea these stories existed until my mother handed me the book and I feel fewer people should be in this position.
no subject
Have to buy it!
no subject
This collection looks like most of the same stories—any luck? (I've got nothing to say for the cover, but it might be in your library.)
no subject
no subject
I know it's British, I was just looking for alternatives!
If you must buy this edition, I hope very much that you enjoy it.
no subject
no subject
I hadn't! Thank you.