Do you hear the past speaking to you? Today we feature notable Victorian-born authors of horror, ghost stories, detective fiction and fantasy, in rare audio appearances. We looked for genuine recordings where, if possible, they spoke about writing or writers. Our selection of Victorian Voices runs from G K Chesterton to J R R Tolkien, with rather different guests at both the start and the end.
But wait! There are actually seven voices plus one below. During the selection process, we noticed that the recordings used were all of men. We’re sharp like that. So we decided to add someone who wasn’t a Victorian or a man, whose contribution to weird fiction is sometimes overlooked: the late Southern Gothic writer Flannery O’Connor.
It’s easy enough to find modern recordings of writers. Even the greydog himself has done the occasional podcast or audio interview. But the deep past is strange, and surviving audio can be fragmentary and rare. Fascinated by listening to people born in the Victorian era speaking, we therefore start with something which has no connection with writing or horror, except for the horror of war. Feel free to skip if you want to get on to the writers.
The Bugle’s Bright Blast
The recording which follows is a demonstration of how close we are to the past in many ways. It was an accidental find some time ago, when researching military history. And it gives us a link which goes even further back than Victorian voices or the existence of voice recording technology – to the time of King George III. A bit of context, if you like.
A number of bugles survive from the Battle of Waterloo, fought on the 18th of June, 1815. The instrument pictured above, for example, was blown by 16-year-old John Edwards, who was duty trumpeter of the day. It sounded the charge for the Household Brigade on the day.
So what, you say? Well, the first of our Victorian voices is from a recording which was made on 2nd August 1890, and reported in the Pall Mall Gazette of August of that year.
“I am trumpeter Lanfried. One of the surviving trumpeters, of the Charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava. I am now going to sound a bugle, that was sounded at Waterloo, and sound the charge was sounded at Balaclava on the very same bugle, the 25th of October, 1854.”
The exact truth of Lanfield’s statement has occasionally been disputed. Some say that the key bugler for the charge at Balaclava was William Brittain, from Dublin. Whatever the facts, the bugle is genuine, borrowed by the Edison Company from the army. It, like the one pictured above, still exists, and spans two centuries of sound. Which seemed weird enough to make it our starter course.
Victorian Voices: The Writers
It can be disconcerting to hear a writer speak. If you know their work, you can have expectations that they sound a particular way. When you hear their real voices – at a presentation or on a podcast, for example – it can really throw you. Some sound as polished and articulate as their fiction, whilst others are halting and clearly find it harder to express their views in such formal setting.
The clips which follow contain a touch of both sides.
G K Chesterton 1874-1936
Chesterton is well known to many for his adventures of the priestly detective Father Brown, though we’ve noted him here before for his novel The Man Who was Thursday . http://greydogtales.com/blog/five-weird-fantasy-books-not-on-fantasy-lists/
John Dickson Carr’s detective Dr Fell was supposedly based upon G K Chesterton, whose physical appearance and personality were similar. Here is Chesterton introducing Rudyard Kipling at a Canadian Literary Society in the 1920s:
Rudyard Kipling 1865-1936
And here’s Kipling himself, also in the 1920s. Born in India to English parents, the Eyebrow Man was a journalist poet, novelist and short story writer. Dismissed as a versifier, he was nevertheless highly regarded by poets such as T S Eliot, and his work is being constantly re-appraised. He had the peculiarity being an old-style Conservative, who ended up being anti-fascist and anti-communist, and both supportive and critical of the British Empire. Hence the contnued questions about his literary status and heritage.
No stranger to supernatural fiction, he wrote almost forty tales which might be classified in that broad area.
Arthur Conan Doyle 1859 – 1930
We won’t spend time introducing Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame, apart from mentioning that he also wrote a number of supernatural tales, including the well-known ‘Ring of Thoth’ – and he was keenly involved in the Spiritualist movement. Doyle was recorded on film in 1927 on the ideas behind the character of Sherlock Holmes, and on Spiritualism (Fox newsreel interview).
Arthur Machen 1863-1947
Machen, a Welsh writer, is a peculiar figure in that not only is he lauded for his supernatural fiction, such as his novella the Great God Pan, but he had a keen personal interest in the occult. He studied alchemy, Celtic Christianity, Welsh mythology and the kabbalah, among other subjects. Unlike Conan Doyle (see above), he is said not have taken to Spiritualism as a movement, thought spirituality was a key concern of his. Here he is in 1937, on Dickens and characters larger than life:
Algernon Blackwood 1869-1951
A noted English writer, seen as influential by many writers of supernatural or weird fiction, from H P Lovecraft to Caitlin Kiernan. This is a rather good recording, one of the few surviving examples of Blackwood himself reading his work. He has a style that is relaxed, and rather draws you in to this short tale, ‘Pistol against a Ghost’, recorded in 1948:
J R R Tolkien 1892-1973
The last of our Victorian voices is Tolkien, born to English parents in South Africa. Although primarily a scholar of Old English literature and philology, Tolkien came to fame, occasionally unwanted, through his fantasy books The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, and related material. This recording from the 1960s is typical of the sometimes dismissive way in which he talked about interpretations of his works.
Out of that Victorian Planet
Flannery O’Connor 1925 – 1964
We wanted a dramatic change for our last recording, so when we found this piece, we went for it. O’Connor, an American writer, was not known for supernatural tales as such, but for her style and for elements of the grotesque, which have caught the interest of many weird writers who followed.
Though a devout Roman Catholic like Tolkien, it is hard to imagine two writers who explored faith and spirituality in more different ways. Where JRR wove myths of Good and Evil, O’Connor explored a world of harsh Christian realism and human failings in the American South.
“… When I see these stories described as horror stories I am always amused because the reviewer always has hold of the wrong horror.”
Fitzgerald, Sally, ed. The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor
She herself explains her views far better than we could, so here she is, speaking on writing in the 1960s, prior to a story reading:
And there we rest our ears. Thank you for listening to Victorian Voices, and we hope you found it of interest. Also, do keep that aluminium foil cap on when not actively listening to the radio or audio files. You never know who else may be trying to broadcast at you…