We offer a rare treat today, listeners. As far as we know, the detailed article which follows has not been reprinted since it was first published in 1977, to mark the centennial of the birth of William Hope Hodgson. It was written by the prolific author and historian Peter Berresford Ellis (aka Peter Tremayne, author of ninety plus books including the Sister Fidelma mysteries), and published in Essex Countryside Magazine (now succeeded by Essex Life).

Regular listeners will know that we are enormous Hope Hodgson enthusiasts, and publish a range of articles on him every year – plus John Linwood Grant’s own linked series of stories ‘Tales of the Last Edwardian’ spring in no small part from Hodgsonian roots. His astounding works remain; his life and his tragic death one hundred years ago this April, at the age of 41, still fascinate.

So we were delighted to obtain permission from Essex Life to revisit the article, and also to receive the direct blessing of Peter Berresford Ellis himself, who wrote:

“I knew Hope Hodgson’s niece, Betty, in Canada for a number of years at that period and I edited Masters of Terror Vol 1: William Hope Hodgson (Corgi paperbacks, November, 1977), a series Transworld launched. I edited this as one of the first Tremayne’s.”

Thanks also to Jo Thompson at the A M Heath Literary Agency, and to Sue Condon of the Folk Horror Revival Group who we think first alerted us, and posted the original scans. Any mistakes below are the result of us fighting with OCR technology and word-processing packages, and all our fault. As usual.

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The Essex-born Master of Horror

by Peter Berresford Ellis

 

Born in Blackmore End, near Finchingfield, in 1877, William Hope Hodgson achieved a high reputation as a writer of the horror fantasy tale. On the centenary year of his birth, many lesser known works and new anthologies of his short stories are being published in this country and in the United States where he has always had a large following.

 

“The supreme master of imaginative horror in science fiction,” and “a writer on whom the mantle of Poe has fallen,” were two of the accolades given to the Essex born writer William Hope Hodgson (1877 – 1918) during his lifetime. No other writer, except the American Edgar Allan Poe, has achieved such a literary reputation through the media of the horror-fantasy tale nor influenced as many modern fantasy writers as Hodgson has. His major works have never been out of print either here or in America. This year is the centenary of his birth and the Americans, always to the fore in such matters, are already issuing his lesser known works and new anthologies of his short stories.

William Hope Hodgson was born on November 15 1877 in Blackmore End, near Finchingfield, where his father was an Anglican clergyman. The Rev. Samuel Hodgson was a strong-minded man with radical ideas on the interpretation of the Bible which often brought him into conflict with his own hierarchy. William was the second of twelve children, three of whom died in infancy. His education was sketchy, and at the age of thirteen he was finally sent to a boarding school. But the year following, Mr. Hodgson died of cancer of the throat and William’s education was cut short.

There was a large family to support. On August 28, 1891, young William signed on as a cabin boy on an ocean-going wind-jammer. It was a hard life and some years later, in an interview with a newspaper, he recalled, “Being a little chap with a very ordinary physique,  (I) had the misfortune to serve under a second mate of the worst possible type. He was brutal and although I can truthfully say I never gave him just cause, he singled me out for ill-treatment. He made my life so miserable that in the end I summoned sufficient courage to retaliate and ‘went for him’. It was all the world like a fight between a mastiff and a terrier, for he was powerful and knew how to punish. Of course. I took a merciless thrashing…”

The incident launched young William on his greatest hobby. He became a student of judo and was obsessed with body development, studying the science of the interaction of muscles. This was to win him some notoriety when he became the only man to be able to bind the ‘Great Houdini’ for a lengthy period. Hodgson took out the escapologist’s challenge for a member of the audience to bind him, undertaking to pay £50 if he could not effect an escape. Hodgson used his knowledge to ‘scientifically’ bind Houdini.

Hodgson also took up photography. still in its infancy, becoming a recognised master of the art, photographing cyclones and storms at sea. Later, his photographs and lectures were to make him almost as much money as his fiction work.

After eight years at sea Hodgson decided it was ‘a dog’s life’. He had, by then, received his third mate’s certificate. He had also been awarded the Royal Humane Society’s award for heroism when, off New Zealand, he had dived into shark infested waters to rescue the first mate of his ship from drowning.

At the age of twenty two, Hodgson ‘retired from the sea’ and decided to set up a School of Physical Culture in Blackburn. In 1903 he made his first writing attempts, articles on physical culture and on photography which were successful. Then, in 1904 Hodgson turned to fiction and wrote a short story entitled ‘The Goddess of Death’ concerning a Hindu statue which comes alive to kill. The Royal Magazine published the story in April 1904. It was his second short story that gained Hodgson a reputation and respect from professional writers and editors. It was called ‘A Tropical Horror’ and published in The Grand Magazine (set up as a rival to the more popular Strand Magazine). J Greenhough Smith, the editor, wrote of the story, “Though this story, a terrible tale of the sea, may be too gruesome for some tastes, it is written in a masterly manner and with an air of reality that holds and rivets the attention of the reader in a way that recalls the best efforts of Poe.”

Hodgson had now given up his School of Physical Culture and was earning his living by journalism, writing articles on his hobbies and lecturing on them. He also wrote some hard hitting exposes of conditions in the merchant navy. He summed up his attitude in an article “Why I am Not at Sea” (The Grand Magazine, September 1905) in these words “I am not at sea because I object to bad treatment, poor food, poor wages, and worse prospects. I am not at sea because very early I discovered that it is a comfortless. weariful and thankless life — a life compact of hardness and sordidness such as shore people can scarcely conceive. I am not at sea because I dislike being a pawn with the sea for a board and the ship owners for players.”

Nevertheless, it was from the sea that Hodgson drew his inspiration to write his finest and most chilling tales of the macabre. In April 1906, an American magazine, The Monthly Story Magazine, published Hodgson’s short story ‘From the Tideless Sea’. It was to prove a landmark in his career because it was his first story creating his Sargasso Sea Mythos. A major portion of his horrific sea tales would be concentrated on the legendary Sargasso, and with it Hodgson evolved an imaginary world of terror as vivid as any ever created.

The story was a resounding success. A critic wrote: “A short story that will fascinate every reader by reason of its simple narrative interest and unusual dramatic power. The young author is an Englishman who ‘has followed the sea’ and this is his finest effort in fiction.” Sequels were immediately demanded and Hodgson willingly supplied them.

He had reached the point in his literary career where he felt it was time to embark on a novel. The Boats of the Glen Carrig was published by Chapman & Hall, London in October, 1907. It is a tale about the crew of the shipwrecked ‘Glen Carrig’ who land on a deserted island which is riddled with terrifying monstrosities. Critical acclaim for what is regarded as one of the world’s most horrifying books, ranking after Dracula and Frankenstein, was immediate. The Daily Telegraph said “A book which should achieve a rapid and distinct success. With an imagination presenting us with things as fearsome as some of the imaginings of Mr. H. G. Wells,” The Daily Chronicle said “Our author can write; he has the literary touch in fine measure and no doubt we shall meet him again.”

The month after its publication the American magazine The Blue Book published what was to be Hodgson’s greatest and most reprinted masterpiece, a short story entitled ‘The Voice in the Night’. This story influenced scores of similar stories and films.

A ship is becalmed at night in the Pacific. It is hailed by a man in a small rowing boat who refuses to come near the ship where he can be seen. He begs for food for himself and a woman. The man and the woman have been stranded on an island after their ship was sunk The island is covered in fungus. Their food runs out. They begin to eat the fungus and find they are turning into it! They try to slow down the process by eating anything but the grey mass around them. They know they must never return to civilisation because they might infect all mankind. His story told, the man begins to row away but as he does so a light from the rising sun catches the boat: “Indistinctly I saw something nodding between the oars. I thought of a sponge, a great, grey nodding sponge. The oars continued to ply. They were grey, as was the boat, and my eyes searched a moment vainly for the conjunction of hand and oar.”

Now Hodgson followed up his success with a second novel, The House on the Borderland. published in May 1908, The great fantasy writer H. P. Lovecraft wrote of it that it was the greatest of all Hodgson’s works. A shorter novel called The Ghost Pirates followed in September 1909. The Bookman, October 1909, raved: “We know of nothing like the author’s work in the whole of present day literature.”

But the novels were not selling all that well and Hodgson turned to detective fiction at a time when scores of writers were trying to imitate the success of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. In the magazine The ldler, Hodgson invented a new type of detective named Carnacki — an ‘occult detective’, tales of a psychic sleuth fighting against sinister forces from the ‘other world’. The Gateway of the Monster, the first tale, appeared January 1910 and the last story appeared in 1912. In 1910 a publisher put out a few Carnacki stories in a small volume, but it was not until March 1913 that Nash of London published all the Carnacki stories as Carnacki The Ghost Finder. The volume is still in print as a Sphere paperback (40p).

Between 1910 and 1911, Hodgson wrote what he considered his greatest work, The Night Land. It was a 200,000 word apocalyptical novel set millions of years in the future when our sun is dead and night is eternal. The remains of humanity are gathered in the Last Redoubt, an oasis of sanity in a nightmare world. H. P. Lovecraft described it as “One of the most potent pieces of macabre imagination ever written.”

The critics were unanimous in their praise. The London Magazine said it was “The most notable book that has seen the light of day for many years. Only Hodgson could have written it…”. The Morning Leader claimed it as “a tour de force”. Vanity Fair said “In every sense remarkable… once it has been taken up one cannot leave it for any length of time.”

Yet The Night Land did have its faults, especially in the use of style, for it is a difficult book to read because Hodgson insists on using a type of narrative in a quasi-17th century style. Nevertheless, it has remained his most profound work and is still available in paperback from Pan books.

That year of 1911 Hodgson married Betty Farnworth. who wrote the ‘agony’ column on Home Notes magazines. Both Hodgson and Betty were thirty-five years of age Because of the lack of money to be made from novels, Hodgson concentrated more on short stories. In fact, according to a letter dated June 14 1914, Hodgson told his brother, Frank, that “I’ve not made one single penny piece out of my last books ” In 1914 Men of Deep Waters, a collection of his short stories, was issued. The Bookman applauded them. “They grip you as Poe’s grim stories do, by their subtle artistry and sheer imaginative power.” The Times went further. “A serious contribution to literature.”

With the outbreak of World War One, Hodgson, in spite of being in his late thirties and considered over military age, volunteered for service. He rejected a commission in the Navy and instead became a lieutenant in the Royal Field Artillery. In 1916 he was thrown from a horse, broke his jaw and seriously injured his head, and was discharged from the service on medical grounds.

His injuries did not prevent his continued work. Luck of the Strong, a further collection of stories, was published in May, 1916. The Daily Telegraph commented: “Mr. Hodgson more than once has been paid the compliment of being likened to Poe. It is a compliment not carelessly paid.” In September 1917 another collection Captain Gault was published.

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Hodgson, that great master of the horror tale, was a victim of World War One — killed in an artillery bombardment near Ypres on April 19, 1918.

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That year, having recovered from his injuries, Hodgson demanded that he be reinstated in the army and sent back to the front in France. Early in April 1918, Hodgson successfully stemmed an enemy attack, aided by a few NCOs, and fought a stubborn rear guard action under a hail of machine gun fire across three miles of country. A few days later, on April 19 1918, Hodgson was killed in an artillery bombardment near Ypres.

Throughout his life he had written poetry but, strangely enough, he had only few poems published. In 1920, Selwyn & Blount published two collections of his verse, The Calling of the Sea and The Voice of the Ocean. In one of his poems Hodgson wrote:

I am dying and my work is all before me;
As a pencil that doth break beneath the knife
So have I broke before the bitter sharpening
Of the grim blades of thought that shaped my life.
And made me fit and keen to speak before Thee.
And now I die, just trained enough to sing.

Just before his death, Hodgson had written to his mother from the trenches: “The sun was pretty low as I came back and far off across that desolation, here and there they showed – just formless, squarish, formless masses erected by man against the infernal Storm that sweeps for ever, night and day, day and night, across that most atrocious Plain of Destruction. My God! talk about a Lost World, talk about the end of the world, talk about the Night Land — it is all here, not more than two hundred odd miles from where you sit infinitely remote. And the infinite, monstrous, dreadful pathos of the things one sees — the great shell hole with over thirty crosses sticking in it; some just up out of the water – and the dead below them, submerged. If I live and come somehow out of this (and certainly please God. I shall and hope to), what a book I shall write if my old ‘ability’ with the pen has not forsaken me.”

Alas, that book was never written. Today, William Hope Hodgson remains one of the great literary phenomenon of the turn of the century.

(Copyright 2018 Essex Life/greydogtales.com)

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Other William Hope Hodgson Resources

Since this article was written, in 1977, various new aspects of Hope Hodgson’s writing and life have surfaced  (including fresh information on the writing of The Night Land). Much is covered at Sam Gafford’s dedicated site here: https://williamhopehodgson.wordpress.com/

There are numberous articles about William Hope Hodgson and his works here on greydogtales.com. As part of our centennial recognition of WHH, you may also like recent pieces such as poet Frank Coffman on William Hope Hodgson’s poetry:

http://greydogtales.com/blog/william-hope-hodgson-unuttered-word/

And writer and publisher Sam Gafford on Hodgson and his writing:

http://greydogtales.com/blog/roots-weird-william-hope-hodgson-discussed/

Sam also allowed us to use his powerful short story on the death of Hope Hodgson:

http://greydogtales.com/blog/the-land-of-lonesomeness/

We wrote somewhat earlier about the strange case of Carnacki and those authors who continue the legacy, including Willie Meikle, Brandon Barrows, Joshua M Reynolds and old greydog himself.

http://greydogtales.com/blog/carnacki-the-second-great-detective/

And we had an unusual article by James Bojaciuk which was very popular as well:

http://greydogtales.com/blog/the-woman-who-drew-william-hope-hodgson/

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Phew. Back in a day or two with something… well, probably non-Hodgsonian, we imagine, though we might squeeze one more WHH post in before the end of the year…

Having recently read various pieces by others (some serious, some mocking) on the nature of those who investigate the less than ordinary, we feel it only proper to share an illuminating short story which encapsulates the methods of four outstanding detectives of the late Victorian and early Edwardian period:

Sherlock Holmes (via Arthur Conan Doyle), who considered his work to be entirely apart from the supernatural, if such a thing existed at all, and saw it as having no relevance to “this agency”, as he put it.

Thomas Carnacki (via William Hope Hodgson), who preferred to approach cases practically, with an eye to possible hoaxes and mundane explanations, but was open to supernatural or paranromal influences having a part to play.

John Silence (via Algernon Blackwood), who considered unusual cases from a spiritual and philosophical point of view, though he would not have chosen the epithet of ‘psychic doctor’ which some attached to him.

Flaxman Low (via E. and H. Heron), who blended a robust mixture of science, psychic and psychological knowledge, combined with his athletic past, to confront anything brought to his attention.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Everything you read below is true. And may also be a pack of lies. You asked the wrong guard at the door.

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THE SINGE OF FOUR
by J Linseed Grant

(Limited edition of seventeen hand-written pamphlets, Dombey & Daughters, London, 1909)

 

It was typical of Carnacki that he would say nothing of his most recent adventure, or of the fact that his eyebrows appeared to have been well nigh burned away, until after we had finished our usual excellent dinner at his place. Once we were ensconced in the study with brandies and cigars, however, he gave us that wry smile of his.

“I recently had the uncommon opportunity,” he began, “To undertake a case with others of the detecting persuasion, namely no less than Sherlock Holmes himself, Dr John Silence and Mr Flaxman Low.

“Good heavens!” I exclaimed. “Perhaps the four finest experts on strange mysteries in all of England!”

He bowed his head appreciatively. “Thank you, Dodgson. I will spare you the highly improbable circumstances which led to this gathering of eminent investigators, but say only that, after some days of fervent detective work, we ended up in a disreputable and abandoned old theatre, just off Drury Lane.

“I myself would have looked for some assistance from the Constabulary, under the circumstances, but my colleagues preferred their own approaches. Besides, there was a nasty cold going around Scotland Yard that week; both Inspectors Lestrade and Bradstreet had notes from their mothers excusing them from going out without scarves. Thus the building was empty, save for ourselves and our quarry.

“And what a quarry! My fellow detectives and I had trapped – yes, trapped – a most unusual villain, whose appearance was that of a well-preserved Egyptian relict – a mummy, no less. Or it had trapped us.

“Lit by only by a medley of bulls-eye lanterns and unreliable electric torches, we saw this most ab-natural thing advancing on our position on the theatre stage. Its ruined, linen-wrapped hands rose as it came closer, and its eyes glowed with an eerie green luminescence.

“ ‘Phosphorescent paint, clearly,’ murmured Holmes. ‘I am dogged by the stuff – and you can see the brush-strokes, in the style possibly of one of Shinwell Johnson’s more accomplished–’

“ ‘I sense a psychic invasion,’ Silence interrupted.

“ ‘Hang on, just loading my revolver,’ said Low.

“Our situation was made all the more perilous by the presence of Holmes’ habitual amanuensis, Dr John Watson, who had fallen at an inopportune moment – the stage was in poor repair – and twisted his ankle. Like a girl.

“ ‘Leave me to this demon’s touch and save yourselves!’ the stout fellow cried, but Holmes would have none of that.

“ ‘Nonsense, old friend.’ The Great Detective readied himself for a display of baritsu, that obscure method of self-defence for which he is known. Either that, or he had an attack of cramp. ‘I have no doubt we can prevail. Despite my colleagues’ assertions, I reject the presence of anything supernatural. The villain has cunningly disguised himself as a relict of the reign of Amenhotep II, in order to conceal his true identity. I wrote a monograph on certain aspects of the 18th Dynasty whilst dissecting this morning’s breakfast kippers.

“ ‘From his bearing, I would say he poses as one of the priestly-caste, and from the state of his crumpled bandages, one of the lower devotees, unmarried and inclined to a sedentary life. He is left-handed, and has recently been in the vicinity of–’

“ ‘Hush now, Sherlock.’ Dr Silence gave Holmes a gentle and yet imperious glance (a trick that I’ve never mastered, personally). ‘Let us eschew your extended deductive process, and gather our psychic strength for the battle to come. If you others but contribute your purer thoughts to my own not inconsiderable will, I will utilise my fearless nature and unselfish motives to purge the creature – and these environs – of evil radiation.’

“Before I could add my own comment, Flaxman Low leapt forward, straight into the path of the shambling figure.

“ ‘If you will recall, gentlemen,’ he called out. ‘I predicted this situation at the very start of our adventure – though admittedly I neglected to inform any of you of the solution. It is obvious that the soul of a murdered Vaudeville performer has become entangled with elemental spirits dwelling beneath London, and, in seeking to become corporeal, has assumed this guise under the influence of the recent exhibition at the British Museum. Actors – dead or alive – are dreadfully inclined to mimickry.’

“So saying he shot the mummy five times in the face, kicked it between the legs, and, throwing his lantern in its general direction, set fire to the entire theatre. We were fortunate to be able to drag Dr Watson out in time, plunging through the flames with him in tow.”

I looked at Carnacki in astonishment, as did Arkright, Taylor and Jessop.

“That explains the singed eyebrows,” I said.

“John Silence lost most of his beard in the conflagration,” said my friend, with a gleam of satisfaction. “A veritable King of Spain.”

“But Carnacki, did you play no real part in the denouement of this affair, then?”

He smiled. “Dodgson, you know my fondness for practical techniques. Despite not having packed my electric pentacle, I and my trusty camera played a vital role, solving a most vexing problem to my entire satisfaction.”

“Your camera?” Arkright looked puzzled.

“Indeed.” Carnacki reached down the side of his armchair and held up a large manilla envelope. “Here I hold several dozen photographic prints, having had the foresight to take shots of the entire event, from our entry into the theatre until its collapse in a pile of burning rubble. The developed prints clearly show various stages of Holmes, Silence and Low ‘in action’.”

We examined the photographs, offering a chorus of low whistles and murmurs. The Ghost Finder had indeed captured these three great detectives at their finest. The light of knowledge and self-confidence which shone from Dr Silence’s fine features, Holmes’ hawk-like nose and deep intelligence – and Flaxman Low’s enthusiastic expression at the prospect of wrecking things.

“But what problem,” I asked, “Do these pictures solve?”

“The otherwise insuperable problem,” said Carnacki, “That my rent is due at the end of the week, and I’m stony broke, as they say! Come now, chaps – three shillings a print, or a guinea for eight.”

We may have grumbled, but yes, we paid up. After all, Carnacki the Ghost Finder was our friend – and he had the only key to the locked and bolted front door…

AN END

I have a great fondness for skilful parody, which is why I try to read it only when it’s done by other people – three talented fellows whose work springs to mind immediately are Jerome K Jerome, David Langford and John Sladek.

Sadly, I like to scribble mockeries myself, for relaxation, and take the pee out of things (we’re talking literature here, not lurchers, by the way – Django needs no help in that area) even without the talent. And we’re overstretched at the moment, so instead of doing a proper article on something, with grown-up notes, links and so on, today we offer some of greydog’s dreadful parodies to while away your time in custody.

(And if you choose to say “But look, what you write isn’t actually parody, it’s just cheap shots chucked together for ephemeral amusement!” then yes, you’re right. So?)

It helps, of course, if you mock things which people recognise. A cunningly wrought lampoon of Miss Hepzibah Tworle’s Nineteenth Century novel Kilner, on the sinfulness of bottled peaches, is likely to be passed over without great interest. Sherlock Holmes, on the other hand, is always fun:

THE ADVENTURE OF THE DEVIL’S BISHOP

“Great Scott!” I cried. “This isn’t Sir Reginald Musgrave at all, but seven otters in a morning suit. Damn it, Holmes, I’m a doctor, not a miracle-worker!”

Holmes shook his head. “As usual, my friend, you miss the most salient point. These are not the common otter, but Enhydra lutris, the Pacific sea otter. The entire plot almost succeeded because Sir Reginald was in fact AMPHIBIOUS!”

“Then Hurlstone Manor is…” Inspector Lestrade paused to take in the enormity of this revelation, “The only country house in Sussex involved in the illicit Chinese sea urchin trade, the very business which almost took down Gladstone and eight peers of the realm!”

“No, Lestrade.” Holmes strapped out his pipe on the inspector’s head. “That was in the last story. Do keep up, you utter womble.”

Thus it was that I, John Watson, left Sussex a wiser man, smelling of seaweed and five pounds lighter. The blacksmith took ship to South America; Lestrade toyed with entering a nunnery and Holmes himself remained triumphant. I would have written this case up for The Strand magazine, but I think, instead, that I shall make up some old bollocks about a dog covered in phosphorescent paint. That always goes down well.

Oh, and I never did find out what happened to the bishop…

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I can’t say I’m a vampire fan, though it can occasionally be done well. It can also be done like Twilight, which entranced a generation of teenage girls and also screwed up their sense of self-worth:

THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF EDWARD

His dark, brooding face turned to hers in a look which spoke of centuries of tousled, slightly ill-defined passion, as if they had known each other since the beginning of time, or at least prior to the invention of portable toilets.

“I’m not a vampire,” he said moodily, brushing shimmering fragments of congealed light from his shoulders. She wondered if he knew there was a shampoo for that sort of thing?

“That’s nice.” She faced him warily, thinking suddenly and unnecessarily about her dead but beautiful mother, her loveable but alcoholic father, and the veiled warnings she had heard from her grandmother, before they discovered the old lady was overdosing on toilet cleanser and trying to date the washing machine as well.

He coughed. “But you might say that I’m also a rebel, a loner in this small, narrow-minded town with a generic name and an intolerant pastor who has his own secrets to hide.”

She smiled playfully, showing that most of her teeth were in the right place. No one had ever spoken to her like this before, except three other boys at school who had inexplicably self-ignited during football practice.

“What are you rebelling against?” she asked trepidatiously.

“Raccoons, mostly.”

Her destiny was sealed.

Or you can go with the gay version:

“I can make make you immortal,” said the man with the slicked-back, raven-black hair and eyes like pools of Dettol. Wrapped in a velvet cloak of darkness, he seemed to have swirled in with the evening breeze.

Gary looked up from his Budweiser. “You’re a photographer?”

“No,” said the stranger, his voice a sliver of ice across the bar, “A vampire!”

“Immortality, huh? You sculpt working men in surprising poses?”

“No, I said–”

“You can get my scripts read at the studios?”

The man hissed. “Look, I am a Prince of the Undead, right? Master of the Children of the Night, sire of a thousand depraved souls. And as it happens, mortal, I’m taken by your roguish good looks.”

Gary adjusted the collar of his check shirt, glancing in the mirror behind the bar. Instead of the stranger’s reflection, all he could see was some expensive dental work hovering in mid-air.

“I see. I am into guys, as you ask. Are you fond of colour co-ordinated design, extravagant musicals and soft furnishings?”

The vampire prince hesitated. “Uh, yes. Yes I am.”

“Pity. I dislike sexual identity stereotypes. I’m a dockyard welder with an interest in cheap hamburgers (no onions), and stapling parking citations onto old ladies’ hats to annoy them.”

“So…”

“Nope.”

The vampire sighed, and wrapped his fine velvet cloak more tightly around his lean frame, like a clothes-horse re-arranging itself. This was not to be his night for passionate embraces and a good siring, it seemed.

“You don’t know if anyone sparkly called Edward lives in the neighbourhood, do you?” He caught the look in Gary’s eye as he edged away. “Yeah, I know – but I’m getting desperate here…”

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Easy targets, you say? Well, yes. I mean, I could write parodies of Nabokov or Gogol, sly and subtly crafted works which would get me the admiration of the literati, but what can you do with admiration? Bottle it, like those wicked peaches?

I have no shame in taking cheap shots – such as at the Weird Western, a sub-genre which is being explored by more and more writers:

A SLOW DAY FAIRLY NEAR HELL BUT NOT QUITE IN IT

The town of Aching Gulch had given in for the day. It settled low into the afternoon dust, hunkered down like an old cougar whose claws were too blunt to make fighting worth a spit. Far in the distance, the Jessop Boys removed the wheels off the stagecoach; the passengers they had intended to rob were carrying nothing but wooden nickels and jewellery made of paste. Wallpaper paste, at that.

Jeb Whittles, the town podiatrist, leaned back on the saloon porch. He lit a match on his daughter’s stubble, and drew in a lungful of smoke from what the folk of Aching Gulch liked to call cigars.

“Sure is weird round here, Annie-Beth.”

Annie-Beth snickered, and knocked over a bucket with one mucus-laden tendril. The clatter of the tin bucket down the steps was as hollow as Abe Murphy’s testicles.

“Yep,” she said.

Annie-Beth had to admit that the town had seen its fair share of trouble since the cattle barons clashed with the sheep earls, and the goat lords gave up on the whole idea of hanging around in such a violent area. Times were hard.

Lured by talk of a plot of land for only $1, most of the homesteads were filled with embittered court stenographers from New York, and there were now more cuticle salons in Aching Gulch than in the whole of Texas. A man could easy lose his life walking down the main street, prey to a stray fingernail clipping coming out of one of the shop windows.

“Heared there’s vampires in town,” said Old Jed, spitting at the saloon dog. The dog growled, and urinated on Jed’s six-shooter to make a point.

“Yup, they dun been sayin’ that,” agreed the tall, scarred man with the sheriff’s star on his vest, and the Winchester ‘73 crooked in his arm. Even half-blind old Jed could see the ripple of muscle under the grimy, torn shirt the man wore. “Pity I’m a florist.”

“Sure is.” Old Jed sighed. It looked like Aching Gulch was pretty much doomed again.

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e-book from ansible editions

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On the other hand, parody in the style of dear M R James is a gentle pleasure:

A CURIOUS INCIDENT IN PICKERING

Mr Bettleworth did not consider himself to be a scholar. He had achieved some minor success, it is true, with his monograph on the lost hill-people of King’s Lynn, and his acclaimed series of presentations to the Royal Society detailing the men’s toilet facilities at Beverley Minster. At this advanced age, however, he felt that the days of bicycle, brass-rubbing kit and a pack full of hard-boiled eggs were behind him. Especially the latter, since the incident with the rubber tube and olive oil at King’s College.

And so it had been a pleasant prospect to take an extended walking holiday through the less corrugated parts of the Yorkshire Wolds, encumbered only by his umbrella, the Seal of Solomon, the drowned coronet of the last King of Cumbria, a dog whistle and a series of curiously animated fitted sheets.

In these perambulations, he was often accompanied by his nephew Reginald, a keen photographer who seemed to fall into a state of gibbering terror every time he was instructed to develop negatives which included Mr Bettleworth himself.

In mitigation of such circumstances, the genial uncle always had a kind word for young Reginald. “Nil desperandum, parva lamia”, he was fond of quoting when his nephew was especially distressed. Which is to say, in loose translation from Ovid’s original text, “Don’t worry about treading on the smaller owls.”

Mr Bettleworth, it must be admitted, understood little Latin.

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And occasionally I like to hit multiple genres at the same time:

THE DA VINCI CUBE NEXUS MYSTERY

The nurse mopped the doctor’s brow with surprising urgency. If only I could love him, she thought, but I swore to my undead mother that I would become a Lesbian for Jesus. Besides, I have yet to solve the jade-encrusted riddle of the Unremitting Garden, where the blind beg hoarsely for throats with which to scream.

Doctor Aalfinus smiled, knowing her thoughts only too well. His own mother, the Autarch of N’Eph’Eir, had asked for a similar pledge when the diesel-powered cowboys of the Santeria Lord has breached their plane of existence and slaughtered the Dawn Legion. He turned back to the patient, sliding his hands into the purulent, protoplasmic ooze of the last shoggoth, just as Brett, the anaesthetist, pulled off his shirt and displayed his glistening torso.

“Damn you, Brett, not now!” snapped Aalfinus. “Negacorps Inc insists that we complete the operation – this shoggoth is our only hope of understanding how two people adrift in time, and continents apart, can still have a love affair that their families have forbidden. Don’t you care about them, or our troops fighting the Industrial Complex Wars?”

Disappointed, Brett put his shirt back on, dreaming of the time when there had only been the open plains and his faithful possum hound. It had been so simple back then, when finding D’Arne’s lost notes on the Da Vinci Cube was all that mattered. He glanced at the nurse, who tossed back her long, lustrous copper hair to reveal a long, lustrous copper skull.

“We are the Void,” she said. “Bereft of that coruscating luminosity which shelters all from unreason and the night-cries of the Ur-Mind. We are Yesterday, splintered into a Tomorrow which will flense sorrow from the City of Cities…”

“I think I’m in the wrong story,” said Flaxman Low, noted psychic investigator.

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And speaking of investigators, having started our parody adventure with Holmes, why not fail to finish satisfactorily with an eerie tale of Carnacki the Ghost Finder:

THE CASE OF THE MAN WITH NO ENDING

Carnacki settled back into his armchair and lit his pipe, affecting such a Holmesian pose that we looked to the study door to see if Mrs Hudson was on her way in.

“Did I ever tell you fellows…” he began.

After we had recovered Taylor from behind the curtains, and stopped Arkright from feigning an epileptic fit, the Ghost Finder nodded and continued.

“…about a dashed sticky situation I encountered in Nottingham, a case which almost cost me more than my life, threatened the sanity of many a resident of that fair city, and brought me to the attention of some of the highest authorities in the land”

We admitted that he had not.

“Good,” said Carnacki. “Out you go, then, you ungrateful bastards.”

Today, beloved listener, we provide an intensive step-by-step guide to creating, describing and using characters in fiction, along with tutelary videos, a comprehensive workshop package, one-to-one coaching, and seventeen character stereotypes you hadn’t thought of. No, no, dear gods we do not! We lied again. Instead, we mess around with an Australasian author of the Victorian era, Marcus Clarke, and share one of his most amusing tales from 1871 – ‘The Haunted Author’ – about a writer plagued by his own characters. It may impart some valuable lessons…

But we could quite easily collect together all the extensive advice available on character development, with detailed references to hundreds (if not thousands) of articles which tell you to:

• Make them stop and think
• Give them opinions
• Give them flaws
• Describe their body language
• Give them motivations
• Create a back story for them

And so on. Pages of that sort of thing. We pay little attention to any of it (which is perhaps why old greydog is an award-winning, billionaire author with so many film options taken up).

Some of the advice is written by people who should be busy producing fiction if they’re that good at it (which makes us suspicious). Some advice may be genuinely useful, though much tends to be a bit over-obvious – unless you had planned a novel with motiveless characters who stand there like cardboard cut-outs and have never met anyone else in the world or done anything until the story starts.

John Linwood Grant (greydog to you) writes tolerable character-based fiction. This is mostly because:

• He has come across other people, and spoken to them
• He does not only know white Britlander males exactly like himself
• He has spent most of his life as a Human Being
• He has eyes and ears

It may also be that he is good at copying what better writers did in the past, but we won’t explore that one in case it’s true.

We did think about including real tips, but could only come up with one:

• Assume your characters ALL exist as real people, and do/did so whether you write about them or not.

If you do not know any real people, then copying neatly may be your only option.

LAZY READER NOTE: If you want to skip down to the rather amusing Marcus Clarke story ‘The Haunted Author’, about writing and characters, feel free. It’s not like you paid for this and have to squeeze value out of it. Nor do you have to be a genre fan to enjoy the tale.

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MARCUS CLARKE

And on to our featured author, who sadly does not exist any more. Marcus Andrew Hislop Clarke (1846 – 1881) was born in London, but was send out to Australia at the age of seventeen with £800 in his pocket, from his father (Marcus had an uncle out there who was a judge). In his brief time, he managed to be novelist, poet, farmer, journalist, playwright, and useless bank clerk.

As a lively, mercurial character, by all accounts, he wrote many wry pieces of journalism, but also the totally serious novel His Natural Life –

“The convict of fiction has been hitherto shown only at the beginning or at the end of his career. Either his exile has been the mysterious end to his misdeeds, or he has appeared upon the scene to claim interest by reason of an equally unintelligible love of crime acquired during his experience in a penal settlement. Charles Reade has drawn the interior of a house of correction in England, and Victor Hugo has shown how a French convict fares after the fulfilment of his sentence. But no writer—so far as I am aware—has attempted to depict the dismal condition of a felon during his term of transportation.

“I have endeavoured in ‘His Natural Life’ to set forth the working and the results of an English system of transportation carefully considered and carried out under official supervision; and to illustrate in the manner best calculated, as I think, to attract general attention, the inexpediency of again allowing offenders against the law to be herded together in places remote from the wholesome influence of public opinion, and to he submitted to a discipline which must necessarily depend for its just administration upon the personal character and temper of their gaolers.”

Dedication, His Natural Life (1874)

Clarke married in 1869, and the couple had six children, of which at least two survived, but he died in Melbourne at the age of only thirty five.

“After Clarke’s death his friend Hamilton Mackinnon assembled the Marcus Clarke Memorial Volume (Melbourne, 1884), a selection of his most popular journalism with a biographical introduction. The witty, often malicious, ephemeral humour which colours the greater part of these writings contrasts strangely with the dark, powerful imagination exhibited in His Natural Life, the revised, shortened and best known version of which appeared in book form in 1874 and 1875. The title, For the Term of His Natural Life, was applied by publishers to this work after Clarke’s death. Whether the light and trivial social journalist, the literary butterfly, or the serious author of this great, if defective, novel is the true Marcus Clarke, who is to say? The best defence of his journalism is that, viewed in its context, it still seems extraordinarily alive and vivid, providing a brilliant index to a very vigorous period of colonial literary life.”

Australian Dictionary of Biography, 1969

For the Term of His Natural Life has been filmed a few times, most recently in 1983, though we understand that this version was given a happy ending (?!).

The book can be read on-line here.

https://web.archive.org/web/20050721112736/http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/c/clarke/marcus/c59f/index.html

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THE HAUNTED AUTHOR

by Marcus Clarke

First published as ‘Hunted Down’ in The Australasian 6 May 1871

‘What can I do for you, sir?’ I asked blandly, astonished. He was a tall broad-shouldered man in a rough pea-jacket, and scowled portentously.

‘Put me into an honest livelihood,’ he answered. It was such a strange request that I could only stare. ‘Don’t you understand?’ he said, seating himself with rough vehemence, ‘I want to become a reputable member of society. I want some honest employment.’

‘But, my good sir, why do you come to me? Your motive is most excellent, but an honest employment is the last thing at my disposal.’

‘That be blowed!’ said he, ‘you could give me a fortune if you liked, you know you could. But I don’t want that. No, I’m fly to that game! You’ll have some blessed elder brother, that nobody knowed of, coming back from New Zealand and succeeding to the ancestral mansion; or you’ll get me pitched out of my gilded chariot at the church door, and marry my wife, that ought to be, to somebody else. I know you. I only want a modest competence, nobody interferes with that.’

‘Your language is even more mysterious than your appearance, my friend,’ I said.

‘Pshaw!’ said he (I never heard a man outside a book said ‘pshaw’–never), ‘don’t you know me?’

I looked at him steadily, and it seemed that I ought to know him, that hat, that pea-jacket, that knotted scarf around his muscular throat, those fierce eyes–all were familiar to me…

‘You don’t happen to have any marks about you?’ I asked, while a cold sweat broke out upon my brow.

He laughed–that bitter laugh which I had described so often. ‘I have a peculiar mole on the back of my neck, the tip of my left ear is shot away, my right side still bears the mark of Pompey’s claws when he defended his young mistress Alice in the lonely swamp. I have lost the little finger of my right hand, and have three pear-shaped wens, besides the usual allowance of strawberry marks.’

There was no mistaking him. It was my Villain! I knew his bloodthirsty nature, and dreaded the tremendous struggle which experience told me was to follow.

‘But why come here?’ I urged.

‘I am sick of it,’ said my villain, doggedly. ‘I ain’t to be badgered any more. It ain’t a respectable business. First I was Jabez Jamrack, then Black Will the Smuggler, then Curlewis Carleyon, then a Poacher, then a Burglar, then an Unjust Steward, and now I’m an Escaped Convict.’

It was true. The unhappy creature before me had figured–in my world-renowned novels–in all those capacities…

‘It ain’t because I’m out all nights in all sorts of weather, mostly thunderous. It ain’t because I’m often drunk, always in debt, and totally disreputable. It ain’t because I’ve murdered a large variety of mothers, and brought the grey ‘airs of a corresponding number of aged fathers with sorrow to the grave. It ain’t because my langwidge is altogether ridiculous, and I leave out more ‘h’s and put in more oaths in my conversation than any natural man did yet. It ain’t that. No!’ he cried, waxing wroth, ‘it’s because I’m always left at the end of the third volume, if I’m still alive, without hope of mercy or promise of repentance.’

I shuddered. ‘Take some brandy,’ I said, and pushed him the decanter. He took it, and filling half-a-tumbler with neat spirit drained it at a gulp. I knew he would. The Beast–under my direction–invariably took his liquor in that fashion…

‘Is it right? Is it just, guvernor?…Your comic servant winds up with the chambermaid. Your aristocratic villain, the Marquis, my master, who poisons his niece, and shoots his aunt with an air-gun, he’s all right…he’s never hung in chains, or tuk to Newgate, or starved to death in a deserted drive on the diggings in Bend-i-go…But why waste words? Are we not alone here? No sound but the whistling of the wind in the wide chimneys of the moated grange; no footsteps but that of the midnight mouser as she creeps stealthily to her prey. Ha, ha! Thou art mine, and–‘…

Ha, ha, indeed! I guessed how it would happen. My experience as a novel-writer told me as much. Just as the enraged ruffian advanced to seize me…a new-comer appeared upon the scene. By his wavy hair, square-toed Wellingtons, massive watch chain, and handkerchief that hung from the right hand pocket of his shooting coat, I knew him at once.

He was Sir Aubrey de Briancourt.

‘Assist me!’ I exclaimed. The look of scorn he gave me was sufficient to daunt a bolder man, but I knew of a spell by which I could compel him.

‘Hist!’ I said, in a thrilling whisper. ‘Proud scion of a lordly house, there is another Sir Aubrey. Refuse me aid, and young Fairfield will assume your name and title. These minions are beyond my power, but remember you are to be continued in our next.’

The threat made pale the cheek even of one whose ancestors had bled on Bosworth, and the baronet waved a white hand towards the back door. ‘Take my cabriolet, dog!’ he said, with that courtesy which characterizes the British aristocrat…

I need scarcely remark that I leapt into the cabriolet, and was soon driving with the rapidity of lightning towards Goodman’s Gully. Fast behind came the echo of hooves. The lightning flashed incessantly, and the negro who held the reins was white with fear. All at once a man clad in a red shirt jumped from behind a bush and seized the head of the mare.

‘Who are you?’ I cried.

‘The most abused of all,’ said he. ‘I am the Typical Digger! I am the man whom you and the others of your tribe have made to eat banknotes as sandwiches. I have shod my horse with gold and swilled champagne–which I detest–out of stable buckets…Am I to pass my life in finding repeatedly gigantic nuggets, and being perpetually robbed of the same? Must I never shave? Shall the tyranny of the fictionmonger compel me to sleep in my boots?’

‘Calm yourself, my friend,’ I said, ‘There is not much harm done. I know of some poor fellows whom the fictionmongers have treated much more rudely.’

At that instant, the demoniac howls of my pursuers were borne upon the blast.

‘That may be,’ roared the Digger of Romance, ‘but I will be revenged on thee. Come!’

The cabriolet disappeared in the distance–there was never a cabriolet yet that did not do so under such circumstances–and my captor led me away. He paused at the door of the usual bush inn (how well I knew it), and striking three blows upon the door (they invariably struck three loud blows), we were admitted into a long apartment. I beheld with astonishment that all the personages whom I had imagined the creatures of my own too fertile brain were there.

‘Wretch!’ cried the fair Madeline, ‘why did you not unite me to the Duke? You know you only changed your mind at the last moment.’

‘Monster,’ said the lovely Violet, ‘you made me pass three nights of horror in the Red Farm, when one stroke of your pen would have freed me.’…

‘Christian dog!’ roared Mordecai the Jew, ‘I was born with charitable impulses, and should have lent in peace the humble shilling upon the ragged coat of poverty, had not your felon soul plunged me into crime to gratify the tastes of a blood-and-thunder loving public.’

‘And I,’ remarked Henry Mortimer, with that cynical smile that I had so often depicted, curling his proud lip, ‘did I wish to throw my elder brother down a well in order to succeed to his name and heritage? No! I loved him fondly, madly, as you took pains to state in your earlier chapters.’…

‘Away with him!’ hissed Lady Millicent, the Poisoner. ‘I knew not of the deadly power of strychnine until he told me.’…

”Twas he that let me linger in consumption for forty pages folio!’ cried Coralie de Belleisle, the planter’s daughter.

”Twas he that blighted my voluptous contours with an entirely unnecessary railway accident!’ wept the lovely Geraldine.

‘Away with him!’

‘Mercy!’ I cried, gazing in terror on their well-known lineaments.

‘Mercy!’ cried the Lost Heiress, Isabelle Beaumanoir, ‘when for two long hours you deliberated whether my sainted mother or the poacher’s wife should give me birth! Mercy for thee! Oh, no, no, no!’…

I trembled over the abyss.

‘Why seek to dispel my ennui with this espieglerie, mon ami,’ said the soft tones of the Count in his native tongue. ‘Sacre, let the pauvre petit escape, my dejeuner at the fourchette awaits. The coup d’oeil is superb, the tout ensemble all that could be desired. Voila.’

The digger swung me over the yawning grave. All the buttons in my waistcoat gave way, and for an instant my life hung literally by a thread.

‘Will you make me respectable?’ said the Villain.

‘Never.’

The button cracked. I was going, going–gone, when the alarm-bell sounded, the door was burst open, and–Bridget entered.

‘It is the boy from the printers’ for the proofs,’ said she.

‘Tell him to wait,’ said I; and wiping the sweat from my intellectual brow, I seized my pen, and in ten lines had got my Villain comfortably in irons at Norfolk Island.

THE END

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And that was ‘The Haunted Author’. There’s also a fun podcast version of ‘The Haunted Author’ to be heard here:

http://nineteennocturne.libsyn.com/-the-haunted-author-by-marcus-clarke

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Next time on greydogtales – something unrelated to the above. And don’t forget to subscribe (it’s free!) top left, so that you’ll know when to avoid visiting the site…