Homefront Horrors Read online

  HOMEFRONT

  HORRORS

  FRIGHTS AWAY FROM

  THE FRONT LINES

  1914–1918

  Edited by

  JESS NEVINS

  DOVER PUBLICATIONS, INC.

  Mineola, New York

  Copyright

  Introduction and Notes Copyright © 2016 by Jess Nevins

  Copyright © 2016 by Dover Publications, Inc.

  All rights reserved.

  Bibliographical Note

  Homefront Horrors: Frights Away From the Front Lines, 1914–1918, first published by Dover Publications, Inc., in 2016, is a new anthology of seventeen stories reprinted from standard sources.

  Jess Nevins has selected and edited the stories, and provided the Introduction and the biographical notes that precede each story.

  Sensitive readers should be forewarned that the text in places contains cultural references characteristic of the era, which may be deemed offensive by modern standards.

  International Standard Book Number

  ISBN-13: 978-0-486-80907-6

  ISBN-10: 0-486-80907-2

  Manufactured in the United States

  80907201 2016

  www.doverpublications.com

  Contents

  Introduction: Neglected Masters

  Jess Nevins

  The Wings of Horus

  Algernon Blackwood

  Laura

  Saki

  The Place of Pain

  M. P. Shiel

  The Three Sisters

  W. W. Jacobs

  An Episode of Cathedral History

  M. R. James

  The Pavilion

  E. Nesbit

  Not on the Passenger List

  Barry Pain

  The Liqueur Glass

  Phyllis Bottome

  The Pin-Prick

  May Sinclair

  Thirteen at Table

  Lord Dunsany

  The Bird

  Thomas Burke

  Enoch Soames

  Max Beerbohm

  The Ghoul

  Sir Hugh Clifford

  Powers of the Air

  J. D. Beresford

  Old Fags

  Stacy Aumonier

  The Separate Room

  Ethel Colburn Mayne

  The King Waits

  Clemence Dane

  INTRODUCTION:

  NEGLECTED MASTERS

  NO ONE WOULD ever call World War One a pleasant war. Millions of soldiers died from artillery, machine guns, trench warfare, and disease; millions more civilians were killed as a result of the war. The scars the war left on those who experienced it never faded.

  British civilians on the homefront had it relatively easy compared to French, German, and Belgian civilians, who were more directly touched by the war. Yet the British homefront during the war had its own particular unpleasantries—food rationing, aerial bombing by the Germans, and strikes by discontented workers primary among them. The British homefront culture thrived, with huge increases in the circulation of magazines and attendance at music halls, but the effects of the war were felt everywhere.

  Yet one would never know there was a war being fought judging by the horror stories which were published during the time. With one or two exceptions, like Arthur Machen’s “The Bowmen” (1914), authors of horror fiction refrained from using the war as a setting, as a theme, or even referring to it, if only in passing.

  This is indeed curious, especially compared to other literary genres and other media, which incorporated the war into stories and films at about the rate one would expect for such a major contemporary event.

  It may be that the topic of the war was seen as too serious, the threat of the Germans too ominous, for it to be fodder for something as trite and meaningless as horror stories. (Although this was a time before horror stories were condemned to inhabit a literary ghetto; note how many of the stories in this collection appeared in hardcover collections or mainstream magazines, rather than the lower-class story papers. Horror stories were treated by writers and readers as seriously as stories in the mainstream). Conversely, perhaps writers were determined to give the public—who were after all preoccupied with all the horribleness of the war—truly escapist literature, stories which would take the readers away from their current, dreadful realities.

  Or perhaps it was as simple as the writers not wanting to limit themselves to writing about the war when there were so many other things and people who inspired them and their stories. Algernon Blackwood had his Egyptian trip on his mind when he wrote “The Wings of Horus;” Thomas Burke was thinking of his beloved Limehouse during the writing of “The Bird;” Stacy Aumonier’s “Old Fags” deals with the “new poor” of London; Sir Hugh Clifford calls on his experience in Malaysia in “The Ghoul.”

  Whatever the case, the horror stories which British civilians got to read avoided the war, and instead concentrated on doing what the writers did best: frightening the reader. In this, they were highly successful. The war years, 1914–1918, lie in the middle of the golden age of horror fiction, that roughly forty-year span from 1900 to 1940 when a large number of extremely talented men and women were turning out a great amount of high-quality stories of terror, horror, and the supernatural weird. 1918, in fact, was very nearly the century anniversary of the modern horror genre. Mary Shelley published Frankenstein in 1818, but that was both a Gothic novel and the first science fiction novel. It was in 1819 when John Polidori published “The Vampyre,” both the first modern vampire story and in a very real sense the first modern horror story.

  The difference between science fiction and horror is that what followed Frankenstein was several decades of intermittent science fiction short stories and novels. Therefore, it wasn’t until the 1880s, and especially the 1890s, with H.G. Wells and the other major British and American science fiction authors of that decade, that science fiction truly came of age. Conversely, high-quality horror fiction began comparatively quickly after “The Vampyre,” with Walter Scott’s “Wandering Willie’s Tale” (1825) and then the work of J. Sheridan Le Fanu in the 1830s. In mid-century a craze for ghost stories and haunted house stories gripped British writers and readers, with numerous excellent stories following over the next few decades, so that by the turn of the century—when science fiction was only coming of age, when the first professional mystery writers were starting to make their mark, when Western/frontier fiction was still in its infancy—horror fiction had several decades of solid work on its resume.

  Yet none of that could have prepared readers for what was to follow. There were horror stories of note in the 1890s—Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper” (1892), Ambrose Bierce’s “The Damned Thing” (1893), Arthur Machen’s “The Great God Pan” (1894)—but the flood of memorable and even classic stories that began in the early 1900s was unprecedented. Vernon Lee, Mary Wilkins Freeman, F. Marion Crawford, William Hope Hodgson . . . the list goes on, writers whose work retains its power to move and chill us, stories which have aged very little, if at all, and which any fan interested in supernatural fiction should read if they want to understand how the genre developed as it did.

  In fact, the numbers of superbly talented authors and classic stories which appeared during the 1900–1940 period were so great that numerous authors and stories were—perhaps inevitably—overshadowed and forgotten about by later fans and readers. Which brings us, by roundabout fashion, to the authors and stories included in this anthology. Algernon Blackwood and Lord Dunsany are still remembered and in print, but the same cannot be said of Stacy Aumonier or Clemence Dane or Phyllis Bottome, despite the general excellence of their work. “An Episode of Cathedral History” and “Thirteen at Table” have been reprinted within the last twenty y
ears, if not in widely available books, but not so “The King Waits” or “Powers of the Air” or “The Liqueur Glass,” all stories once acclaimed and anthologized. Like many other authors and stories of the time, most of the inclusions in this anthology are forgotten gems by neglected masters, and I hope that, once you finish reading Homefront Horrors, you will be inspired to seek out more work by these authors, whether online or in used bookstores.

  JESS NEVINS

  HOMEFRONT

  HORRORS

  THE WINGS OF HORUS

  Algernon Blackwood

  (1869–1951)

  Algernon Blackwood should be familiar to readers of this anthology. He was famous during his lifetime for his pantheistic fantasies (The Centaur (1911), Pan’s Garden (1912)) and his children’s books (Jimbo (1909), Sambo and Snitch (1927)) as well as his radio broadcasts, in which he told radio-formatted versions of his best stories. Since his death he has become known as one of the best writers of supernatural fiction of his day, author of classics like “The Willows” (1907), “The Wendigo” (1910), and the landmark occult detective collection John Silence—Physician Extraordinary (1908).

  Blackwood’s life makes for a good story, though not as frightening as his horror stories: hardships as a young man in Canada and New York City; travels through remote sections of northern Canada, the Caucasus mountains, and down the Danube; several years’ experiences with the occult group The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn; a broken heart when his “soul mate” married someone else; work as an intelligence agent and Red Cross volunteer during World War One; and eventual success and stability in his sixties in his radio career.

  “The Wings of Horus” comes from Blackwood’s Egyptian phase, from his time spent there in 1914, although it was not published until his Day And Night Stories (1917). Blackwood was much inspired by Egyptian culture and philosophy, and wrote a number of stories while there. “The Wings of Horus” is generally regarded as the best of the bunch, and one of Blackwood’s best overall, what Blackwood biographer Mike Ashley calls “both a beautiful love story and an awesome story of power and belief.”

  BINOVITCH HAD THE bird in him somewhere: in his features, certainly, with his piercing eye and hawk-like nose; in his movements, with his quick way of flitting, hopping, darting; in the way he perched on the edge of a chair; in the manner he pecked at his food; in his twittering, high-pitched voice as well; and, above all, in his mind. He skimmed all subjects and picked their heart out neatly, as a bird skims lawn or air to snatch its prey. He had the bird’s-eye view of everything. He loved birds and understood them instinctively; could imitate their whistling notes with astonishing accuracy. Their one quality he had not was poise and balance. He was a nervous little man; he was neurasthenic. And he was in Egypt by doctor’s orders.

  Such imaginative, unnecessary ideas he had! Such uncommon beliefs!

  “The old Egyptians,” he said laughingly, yet with a touch of solemn conviction in his manner, “were a great people. Their consciousness was different from ours. The bird idea, for instance, conveyed a sense of deity to them—of bird deity, that is: they had sacred birds—hawks, ibis, and so forth—and worshiped them.” And he put his tongue out as though to say with challenge, “Ha, ha!”

  “They also worshiped cats and crocodiles and cows,” grinned Palazov. Binovitch seemed to dart across the table at his adversary. His eyes flashed; his nose pecked the air. Almost one could imagine the beating of his angry wings.

  “Because everything alive,” he half screamed, “was a symbol of some spiritual power to them. Your mind is as literal as a dictionary and as incoherent. Pages of ink without connected meaning! Verb always in the infinitive! If you were an old Egyptian, you—you—” he flashed and spluttered, his tongue shot out again, his keen eyes blazed—“you might take all those words and spin them into a great interpretation of life, a cosmic romance, as they did. Instead, you get the bitter, dead taste of ink in your mouth, and spit it over us like that”—he made a quick movement of his whole body as a bird that shakes itself—“in empty phrases.”

  Khilkof ordered another bottle of champagne, while Vera, his sister, said half nervously, “Let’s go for a drive; it’s moonlight.” There was enthusiasm at once. Another of the party called the head-waiter and told him to pack food and drink in baskets. It was only eleven o’clock. They would drive out into the desert, have a meal at two in the morning, tell stories, sing, and see the dawn.

  It was in one of those cosmopolitan hotels in Egypt which attract the ordinary tourists as well as those who are doing a “cure,” and all these Russians were ill with one thing or another. All were ordered out for their health, and all were the despair of their doctors. They were as unmanageable as a bazaar and as incoherent. Excess and bed were their routine. They lived, but none of them got better. Equally, none of them got angry. They talked in this strange personal way without a shred of malice or offense. The English, French, and Germans in the hotel watched them with remote amazement, referring to them as “that Russian lot.” Their energy was elemental. They never stopped. They merely disappeared when the pace became too fast, then reappeared again after a day or two, and resumed their “living” as before. Binovitch, despite his neurasthenia, was the life of the party. He was also a special patient of Dr. Plitzinger, the famous psychiatrist, who took a peculiar interest in his case. It was not surprising. Binovitch was a man of unusual ability and of genuine, deep culture. But there was something more about him that stimulated curiosity. There was this striking originality. He said and did surprising things.

  “I could fly if I wanted to,” he said once when the airmen came to astonish the natives with their biplanes over the desert, “but without all that machinery and noise. It’s only a question of believing and understanding—”

  “Show us!” they cried. “Let’s see you fly!”

  “He’s got it! He’s off again! One of his impossible moments.”

  These occasions when Binovitch let himself go always proved wildly entertaining. He said monstrously incredible things as though he really did believe them. They loved his madness, for it gave them new sensations.

  “It’s only levitation, after all, this flying,” he exclaimed, shooting out his tongue between the words, as his habit was when excited; “and what is levitation but a power of the air? None of you can hang an orange in space for a second, with all your scientific knowledge; but the moon is always levitated perfectly. And the stars. D’you think they swing on wires? What raised the enormous stones of ancient Egypt? D’you really believe it was heaped-up sand and ropes and clumsy leverage and all our weary and laborious mechanical contrivances? Bah! It was levitation. It was the powers of the air. Believe in those powers, and gravity becomes a mere nursery trick—true where it is, but true nowhere else. To know the fourth dimension is to step out of a locked room and appear instantly on the roof or in another country altogether. To know the powers of the air, similarly, is to annihilate what you call weight—and fly.”

  “Show us, show us!” they cried, roaring with delighted laughter.

  “It’s a question of belief,” he repeated, his tongue appearing and disappearing like a pointed shadow. “It’s in the heart; the power of the air gets into your whole being. Why should I show you? Why should I ask my deity to persuade your scoffing little minds by any miracle? For it is deity, I tell you, and nothing else. I know it. Follow one idea like that, as I follow my bird idea,—follow it with the impetus and undeviating concentration of a projectile,—and you arrive at power. You know deity—the bird idea of deity, that is. They knew that. The old Egyptians knew it.”

  “Oh, show us, show us!” they shouted impatiently, wearied of his nonsense-talk. “Get up and fly! Levitate yourself, as they did! Become a star!”

  Binovitch turned suddenly very pale, and an odd light shone in his keen brown eyes. He rose slowly from the edge of the chair where he was perched. Something about him changed. There was silence instantly.

  “I will
show you,” he said calmly, to their intense amazement; “not to convince your disbelief, but to prove it to myself. For the powers of the air are with me here. I believe. And Horus, great falcon-headed symbol, is my patron god.”

  The suppressed energy in his voice and manner was indescribable. There was a sense of lifting, upheaving power about him. He raised his arms; his face turned upward; he inflated his lungs with a deep, long breath, and his voice broke into a kind of singing cry, half-prayer, half-chant:

  “O Horus,

  Bright-eyed deity of wind,

  Feather my soul1

  Through earth’s thick air,

  To know thy awful swiftness—”

  He broke off suddenly. He climbed lightly and swiftly upon the nearest table—it was in a deserted card-room, after a game in which he had lost more pounds than there are days in the year—and leaped into the air. He hovered a second, spread his arms and legs in space, appeared to float a moment, then buckled, rushed down and forward, and dropped in a heap upon the floor, while every one roared with laughter.

  But the laughter died out quickly, for there was something in his wild performance that was peculiar and unusual. It was uncanny, not quite natural. His body had seemed, as with Mordkin and Nijinski, literally to hang upon the air a moment. For a second he gave the distressing impression of overcoming gravity. There was a touch in it of that faint horror which appalls by its very vagueness. He picked himself up unhurt, and his face was as grave as a portrait in the academy, but with a new expression in it that everybody noticed with this strange, half-shocked amazement. And it was this expression that extinguished the claps of laughter as wind that takes away the sound of bells. Like many ugly men, he was an inimitable actor, and his facial repertory was endless and incredible. But this was neither acting nor clever manipulation of expressive features. There was something in his curious Russian physiognomy that made the heart beat slower. And that was why the laughter died away so suddenly.

  “You ought to have flown farther,” cried someone. It expressed what all had felt.