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August Derleth Pages / Supernatural Horror: Authors and Themes |
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TWO DEATHS 1 INTRODUCTION The American writer August Derleth (1909-71) is not generally regarded as having been a writer of ghost stories, and rightly so. The record of his huge involvement with the whole of the field of the fantastic, which included pioneering work as a publisher and editor, as well as a considerable number of macabre and science fiction stories, contains very little work that can be categorised as 'ghostly' fiction (1). Derleth's first collection of macabre fiction, Someone in the Dark (1941), contains a preface entitled 'When the Night and the House are Still', in which he claims that he has never taken the time to write a first-rate ghost story (2). This is probably not false modesty: Derleth's working habits, and the need to produce large amounts of fiction and other writing in order to pay the bills, would make the production of first-rate work unlikely. Derleth did attempt several stories in the tradition of classic English ghost-story writer M R James, which are collected in Someone in the Dark. He adhered to the Jamesian dictum that the circumstances of a good ghost story ought to be familiar, and that the majority of its characters, and their conversation, should be everyday (3). Unfortunately, Derleth's Jamesian stories never quite come off, due to Derleth's different circumstances and world-view: the great pitfall of writers of pastiche. As in his fiction based on the work of H P Lovecraft, Derleth reduces ambiguous and morally open situations and occurrences to a simple conflict between good and bad. Virtue is rewarded, and evil punished. However, when Derleth wrote Derlethian ghost stories, they were far better, and bear comparison with the output of the best 'classic' ghost story writers. Derleth's fantastic fiction has been published in several collections of uneven quality, which usually contain a wide range of macabre fiction, from ghost stories and vampire fiction to stories of alien invasion (4). In my view, Derleth's best ghost stories appear in a single collection, ironically published under a pseudonym. This is the 1963 collection Mr George and Other Odd Persons, as by Stephen Grendon (5). As the book's introduction makes clear, the stories were all originally written in the mid-1940s, under circumstances which would not make for the production of quality work: “...it was often late at night -- never earlier than nine o'clock, and on, frequently, to two o'clock in the morning -- before I could begin the daily story.” (6) Mr George contains seventeen stories covering a wide range of the macabre. Most are variations on the theme of supernatural revenge for wrongs done. Stories such as 'The Wind in the Lilacs' and 'Miss Esperson' are similar to Derleth's best regional Sac Prairie fiction. 'Mara' is a benevolent ghost, and in this story Derleth could be exploring autobiographical themes. However, in this article I wish to examine two other stories from Mr George. These are the title story, often regarded as Derleth's best ghost story, and which is placed first in the collection. The other is the final story, 'Mrs Manifold', a piece of 'delightful cold grue' (7) and a story of supernatural revenge that leaves a smile on the reader's face.
2 THE KILLING OF MR GEORGE The opening situation of the main character of 'Mr George' is a standard one. Priscilla is a five year-old who has been left in the care of unscrupulous relatives after the deaths of her mother, and her companion or lover, the Mr George of the title. The relatives -- Laban, Virginia, and Adelaide -- are prevented, by the very fact of Priscilla's existence, from inheriting the property and fortune that now belong to the young girl. Her life is therefore in the balance. Derleth writes of the situation as it would be experienced by the child herself, an innocent abroad in a world in which adults are conspiring against her. Other adults are sympathetic, but can do nothing. Priscilla's only help can come from Mr George himself, who has 'gone away', but later begins to intervene to help Priscilla when she needs him: Just short of him [Laban] something stopped her, something like an invisible hand pressing her back. Something tall and dark took shadowy shape beside Laban where he knelt, waiting for her, something that reached down and tore the sustaining book from beneath the trunk-lid, something that pushed the trunk-lid down with weighty impact upon Laban Leckett's neck. (8) In 'Mr George' the boundary between fantasy and reality, life and death, is blurred, as the child walks unknowingly between them, menaced by her human relatives and helped by her ghostly friend. The 'voice' which tells Priscilla how to avoid the murderous situations made by her relatives is natural and good to her, despite the fact that it spells death to the evil adults, and is not comprehended by the good ones. 'Mr George' is a satisfying story of supernatural revenge, with the ghost being malevolent to those who deserve to be on the receiving end. What is under threat is not simply an innocent girl's life, but all that it stands for: simplicity, truth, affirmation of life, freedom from adult conventions. Derleth pits these virtues against the corresponding vices of hypocrisy and lying, no-saying, and 'provincial' dullness and a loss of child-like wonder at the world: '...they [the relatives] are selfish, greedy, lazy, and evil people, who, behind their old-fashioned respectability, are capable of absolutely anything...'(9) Writing about, and pillorying the values of, these sort of people (as Derleth saw them) formed a major theme throughout Derleth's writing career: in his mainstream fiction, poetry, autobiography, and volumes of published journals. 'Mr George' is one further example of Derleth putting across his preferred values, and the priorities of morality that he held as important. In this instance he chose to put his views across by means of a ghost story published in a pulp magazine, rather than in a hardcover novel from his major New York publisher. Perhaps the menace that Derleth felt resulted from the threat to his positive values, makes the externalisation of the conflict in the terms of a ghost story an appropriate use of the form. Certainly 'Mr George' rings true in ways that much of Derleth's more 'Jamesian' fiction does not. Derleth put his heart into 'Mr George', and gives a quietly horrific portrait of what people who live by his negative values can do. What is more unfortunate is that victims are not usually so ambiguously lucky as Priscilla was.
3 MRS MANIFOLD 'Mrs Manifold' is a much more straightforward story of revenge from beyond the grave. What makes it memorable is its gruesome humour, and the feeling that Derleth simply wanted to let his hair down and give himself and his readers a good laugh. The only one with no cause for laughter is Mrs Manifold herself. Robinson, the story's narrator, takes a job as a clerk in a sailors' hotel run by the reclusive Mrs Manifold. She seems on edge, and asks to be informed of the appearance of certain of her guests, as if she was looking for someone. It turns out that there had been a Mr Manifold, but his wife had returned to London alone. No one knows what happened to her husband, or where he is now. A visiting sailor tells the story of Mr Manifold's disappearance, along with a cask of Madeira wine, from the ‘fancy house’ that Mrs Manifold had run in Singapore. Eventually a stranger comes to stay, bringing with him an overpowering smell of wine, causes Mrs Manifold to change: There
was a greater furtiveness about her: there was less sly humor,
almost nothing of humor at all; there was unmistakable grimness,
a kind of terrible bravado; and there was above everything else
something about her that made her far more horrible than she
had ever seemed to me -- something that made me think of death
and fear of death, The reader is right. The strange sailor with the smell of wine is Mr Manifold, returned at last to take revenge on his murderous wife. And was there a connection between Mrs Manifold's death by strangulation, the bones scattered around her room, and an empty barrel once containing Madeira wine, washed up by the Thames, and with a few human bones left inside? It would not do to give the closing lines of the story, but they are unforgettable -- an example of laconic black humour that is far removed from the eerie menace and innocence of ‘Mr George’.
4 CONCLUSION I
hope that this brief examination of two of his best stories
will help to put August Derleth into his proper place in the
field of the fantastic, as a skilled story-writer in his own
right, and not just as an editor, or imitator of other people's
work, whether they be H P Lovecraft or
NOTES 1. For example, Derleth's contributions to Weird Tales alone take up a two-column listing in Sheldon Jaffery and Fred Cook's The Collector's Index to Weird Tales. For a consideration of Derleth's contributions to science fiction, see my 'Somebody Pointed Earth' in James Roberts, ed., Return to Derleth, Vol. 2 (1995). 2. Someone in the Dark, (Jove ed.), p.7. 3. Ibid, p.8. 4. Derleth's collections within the fantastic field are: Someone in the Dark (1941); Something Near (1945); Not Long for This World (1948); The Mask of Cthulhu (1958); Lonesome Places (1962); The Trail of Cthulhu (1962); Mr George and Other Odd Persons (1963); Colonel Markesan and Less Pleasant People (1966); The Watchers Out of Time and Others (1974); Harrigan's File (1975); Dwellers in Darkness (1976). 5. 'Stephen Grendon' is a character used by Derleth in many autobiographical stories and novels. Thus there never any chance of Mr George's true authorship not being known. Also, a photo of Derleth appeared the dustjacket of the Arkham House edition! 6. Mr George and Other Odd Persons, p.vii. 7. Ibid. 8. Ibid., p.16. 9. Ibid., p.22. 10.Ibid., pp.236-7. Mr George and Other Odd Persons was first published by Arkham House. A U K paperback edition appeared from Tandem in 1965, confusingly retitled When Graveyards Yawn.
A slightly different version of this article first appeared in All Hallows 12, published by the Ghost Story Society
Copyright (c) 2001 John Howard |
