Out of the Silence with Bessie Kyffin-Taylor

Do you like classic supernatural tales, those from the late Victorian period to the inter-war years? Good. For today, dear listener, that’s where we’re going. Specifically, to the tales of Bessie Kyffin-Taylor, an English writer of ghostly fiction. That we know of her at all is entirely due to one volume of seven stories, for despite rumours of another book, entitled Rosemary, there seems to be no record of her producing anything else. In fact, there’s little record of Bessie Kyffin-Taylor (d.1922) herself.

Only the male line of her husband has much written about it – predominantly the sons of William Francis Taylor, Archdeacon of Liverpool. Bessie, also Liverpool born, was married to Gerald Kyffin Taylor, one of the Archdeacon’s son, in 1892. Gerald became a Brigadier-General and Member of Parliament. His brother Austin also became an MP, whilst another brother ended up in the legal profession, William Francis Kyffin Taylor, 1st (and last) Baron Maenan.

William Francis Kyffin Taylor (c) Shropshire Council; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

That some sources call her Lady Bessie Kyffin-Taylor is a puzzle, and we wonder if this is an error due to the family connection with Baron Maenan. Although Gerald had a CBE, we don’t think that would have entitled the couple to the titles Sir or Lady.

(The name Kyffin is likely of Welsh origin, related to boundary or border, and as Maenan is in Conwy, North Wales – not so very far from Liverpool- we can assume a Welsh lineage somewhere in the family. Wales as landscape also turns up in some of the stories.)

So, her collection From Out of the Silence survives as the only witness to her interests or her talents, which is a shame, because there’s some good stuff in there. And one or two duds, but the high spots make them irrelevant. Not that we know where the comment comes from, but E F Bleiler, editor and bibliographer, is supposed to have said that her work reminded him of E F Benson, who will be known to many enthusiasts.

Should you read this collection? Yes, you should, for at least a couple of reasons, and we’ll explain in a moment. The seven stories in From Out of the Silence are:

Room No. Ten
Two Little Red Shoes
Outside the House
The Winds in the Woods
The Twins
Sylvia
The Star Inn

These are genuine ghost stories in one way or another, all of them, and include a number of physical manifestations, not only misty figures. You might also note that the supernatural element in almost all the stories is tied to a time of day or a time of the year. This is a conventional old device, but fortunately Kyffin-Taylor makes good use of it in places. And ‘Outside the House’ which we’ll mention at the end, is a truly dark and disturbing story which does her great credit as a writer. But we shall run through the rest of the collection first…

‘Room No. Ten’ is an over-tortuous tale of a ghostly curse. The characters encountered by the protagonist are a bit of a pain, and keep crucial information from the protagonist for thin reasons. We did at one point want to smack them for not explaining what was going on, as their reticence leads to a number of somewhat pointless conversations without real content. The central ‘secret’ of the curse is tolerable, but in a sort of manufactured way, and the resolution isn’t terrific.

We fear that Benson would have done a better job, and M R James would have left it alone entirely. Remember that these stories were published after James’s A Thin Ghost and Others (1919), and before A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories (1925).

Readable, but don’t judge Bessie Kyffin-Taylor on this first one.

(Ironically, in the wide-ranging audio collection by Red Door Audiobooks, Supernatural Stories by Wome Writers, ‘Room No. 10’ is the choice to represent Bessie Kyffin-Taylor. Perhaps others will have more affection for it than we do.)

‘The Wind in the Woods’ is satisfactory and has a nice use of landscape and mood, though there’s nothing very new in it. It revolves around a calendrical re-enactment of a very dark deed, and some additional touches. Worth a look for those who like their psychogeography.

‘Sylvia’, on the other hand, is the duffer of the collection, a typical tale of gypsies, abductions, lost heirs and so forth. It’s somewhat out of place, with the slimmest of ghostly connections and more of the Gothic feel of the early 19^th Century, long abandoned by this point.

Of the four remaining stories, there’s happily much more to be said.

‘Two Little Red Shoes’ is fascinating in that it is one of only two stories with a female protagonist, and a novel one at that. This is a woman who loves and explores empty dwellings. This could easily have been some sort of ghost-hunting codswallop, but she simply loves the feel of them, and sees them as places where her own imagination can be free. It’s a story so closely written from the viewpoint of the protagonist that it makes you wonder if you are ‘hearing’ Bessie Kyffin-Taylor herself.

“All my life, or at least as far back as I can remember, empty houses have always had an irresistible attraction for me… In spite of passing years, in spite of work, in spite of all, I have never outgrown my fondness for empty houses and uninhabited gardens, and to this day I am known to visit a tenantless house, light a fire, from a hidden store of coal and wood, seat myself in an old broken-down chair, and there, in the silence—a silence unbroken by the ring of telephone or any other bells—I dream my dreams and revel in unbroken solitude—with every nerve at rest, sure in the knowledge that none can disturb my peace, since none know my whereabouts…”

The plot itself is an unashamed ghost tale, and has both neat and nasty touches, resulting in an unexpected justice. It has in its main character a noteworthy portrait of an individual, which makes it a little different.

‘The Twins’ is a passable story. The haunting within has some interesting elements as far as the supernatural manifestations go, as one brother plagues his twin after death. We found a few passages towards the end which veer into the more cloying aspects of spiritualism, and would have preferred a brisker handling, but it’s not uninteresting.

‘The Star Inn’ on the other hand is more engaging, primarily again for its protagonists, a sister and brother who end up staying at an inn despite guarded comments by the locals.

“A low rambling building with a similar roof and very neat windows, most of them full of scarlet geraniums. Blackened oak beams seemed to support two big gabled windows, a long verandah reaching nearly the entire length, and a white cat on the step washing its face. Such was my first impression of the ‘Star Inn.’

“I looked at Dick, and Tim looked at the cat; presumably they spoke, for the cat after one scornful glance, fled precipitantly, and we rang the bell. A little old woman answered it. She had a face like a russet apple, snow-white hair, eyes like little blue beads, and not any teeth; she was dressed in a lavender print frock, and wore clogs.

“‘Well, what do you want?’ she asked.

“‘We want two bedrooms and a sitting-room, some food and a wash, and we want to stay here for our holidays,’ was my brother’s terse reply.

“‘Well, I never did!’ quoth the old dame; ‘I never did!’

“‘Neither did we, I’m sure of that.’”

The two siblings come over as real characters, with a rare amount of wry commentary and humour (for Bessie Kyffin-Taylor) in this tale. The narrator/protagonist is the sister, which works nicely; the haunting (with its associated white cat) is satisfactory, and the conclusion is reasonable.

Which brings us to a more remarkable story, ‘Outside the House’. We don’t want to spoil it, so must be careful. Clearly written with reflections of the Great War in mind, the story conveys an unusual sense of threat and initially intangible horror. It’s as if a ‘haunted house’ story became entangled with something out of the Weird Tales submissions pile. We wouldn’t say it’s at all Lovecraftian, but it could be called Hodgsonian. It contains her most striking imagery, and justifies the collection.

“I had been in France some two and a half years before the bit of shell met me, which landed me back in Blighty, with a leg that was not going to be of much more service to me. I had had many and varied experiences in France—horrors, of course—but of these we do not often speak, much of deep interest, and much which goes to the furthering of knowledge of many kinds—knowledge which has led thousands of men to get down to realities—and to shun for evermore the superficial shams which made up their existences before 1914…”

Having been nursed back to health by a young woman who becomes his fiancée, the soldier visits the house of her family, and has tea on the Low Lawn. She is to join them a few days later. Yet there are hints of something wrong, and at 5pm, the tea party breaks up with some haste. This is nicely done, even down to the nervousness of the butler. He is then shown the most peculiar way in which the house has been adapted – the Indoor Garden:

“It was immense, having a dome- shaped roof, painted a clear pale blue. Three sides of the place were of glass, through which lovely views were seen, the fourth side was an exquisitely painted landscape of a hayfield and trees stretching away into the distance. For a moment one scarcely realised whether one was looking at real scenes or painted ones, or where one began and the other ended. Clumps of shrubs here and there made secluded corners, where cosy chairs and couches were placed.

“A hammock was slung under another tree—one side of the place was trellis-work, with glorious roses rambling over it, and everywhere were flowers or flowering plants. The ground was dull green, like a solid linoleum; in one corner clock golf was marked out; Badminton occupied another place, and under an orange tree was a large round table, with writing materials and many magazines; the dome top could be worked by pulleys and rolled back, the whole idea giving one the atmosphere of a lovely foreign garden.

“All the family were present, though each seemed intent on his or her occupation and no one seemed to have the remotest thought of leaving it for a stroll in the garden outside, though a most perfect summer evening was vainly calling.”

He finds a strict curfew in place. No one must be outside the house after 5pm, but none of the family will explain why, and he is told plainly by the matriarch that he must abide by their rules without question. The Low Lawn is apparently a place to be particularly feared after dark.

What follows – his obstinate attempts to discover the family secret, his explorations outside and so forth – we leave to you to discover. There is something appalling in what he experiences, and it contains touches of true weird fiction. There is an explanation, and a very dark ending. We read a comment elsewhere that if the mystery had not been explained, then this might have ranked as an even greater story. We agree. Distinctly shivery, and not to be missed.

You can get hold of a very modestly priced Kindle edition (Leonaur, 2016), or you can find Bessie Kyffin-Taylor’s collection online if you dig around.