The 5th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories

 

A very long sermon...

 

The price of The 5^th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (first published in 1969) hasn’t gone down on Amazon since I first mentioned it, so if you have a spare copy in your attic you can sell it (or at least list it) for hundreds.  I don’t, so thank you to OP for providing a digital copy.

In this 5^th volume, Aickman is still in charge of the selection, and while he devotes little space to discussing the individual stories, he is still pontificating on “the ghost story” in his introduction, despite a promise not to:

“At its best, its true affinity is… with poetry: it is a projection and symbolisation of thoughts and feelings experienced by most people (perhaps by all) but of their nature excluded from the common plod of ordinary prose narrative and record.

We badly need more living writers of ghost stories with the right kind of imagination and a respect for the power and poetry…”

As usual, Aickman’s definition of a ghost story is a loose one – actual specters are the exception here, if indeed there are any at all.

The collection begins with “The Firmin Child” (1965), by Richard Blum, which deftly exploits parental sins and worries – and young Tommy gives his parents much to worry about:

“The spoon, the dances, the silences, the spells.  It’s not human.  He’s like a devil sometimes, or an animal.”

Tautly written and memorable, “The Firmin Child” is one of the highlights of this volume.

“Lord Mount Prospect” (1965), by John Betjeman (UK Poet Laureate from 1972 until his death in 1984), provides the inspiration for the cover illustration.  It’s nice that the (apparently uncredited) illustrator actually provided illustrations from the stories for all the Fontana volumes, instead of generic ghosts.  The story itself involves a “Society for the Discovery of Obscure Peers”, which discovers a very obscure Irish peer, member of an obscure religious sect, who proves difficult to track down.  I found “Lord Mount Prospect” short on poetry, short on plot, and (although Betjeman apparently intended it to be funny) short on humor.

One of the older members of the collection is Mrs. Oliphant’s 1881“The Library Window”.  The Scottish Mrs. (Margaret) Oliphant had a long and prolific writing career in which ghost stories played only a small part.  This story of a young girl’s obsession with a window across the street which may or may not actually lead to a room is highly enjoyable – cozy but mysterious, and with just enough Scots dialect to add to it rather than detract from it.

Jerome K. Jerome’s “The Dancing Partner” (1893) tells the story of a German maker of mechanical toys who constructs an “electric dancer” for the girls of the town, who aren’t satisfied with their flesh and blood partners. Needless to say, the automaton is debuted a little prematurely.  “The Dancing Partner” is short, simple, and satisfying.

Next up is the debut of Aickman’s own “The Swords”, which I first read in Cold Hand in Mine.  I’m a big fan of this story, but then again I’m a big fan of most of Aickman’s stories.  Here, he really hones in on a very specific type of disquiet and disappointment  – the Germans probably have a word for it, but I don’t.

Speaking of Germans, the next entry is “The Mysterious Stranger”(1823), by an anonymous author.  Aickman writes that “This German story is the work of an important artist.”  The story opens promisingly and atmospherically, as a group of travelers in the Carpathians are menaced by the howling of both “Boreas, that fearful north-west wind” and “reed-wolves” which, it is said, tend to become more rambunctious when Boreas howls. 

“The Mysterious Stranger” delights with its Gothic ruined castles in the moonlight, rampaging wolf packs, coffin-filled vaults, and a mysterious stranger who somehow controls the wolves and exerts a malign influence on the bold Franziska.  It must have occupied a prominent place on Bram Stoker’s bookshelf.   

In Elizabeth Walter’s “A Question of Time” (1969), an old picture of “a monk, sort of greyish, with long pink fingers”, turns out to portray a Father Furnivall, who was tortured to death in the 17^th century.  The picture causes a strange reaction in the young man who buys it, causing him to imagine that he was there for the torture – or is it his imagination?  Unfortunately, “A Question of Time” fails to build to anything particularly gripping.  

Maurice Baring’s “Venus” (1909) involves a man who, seeing an advertisement for Venus Soap in a telephone box, begins to be transported to, or imagine himself transported to, the jungle-shrouded conception of that planet. Like “A Question of Time”, there isn’t enough development in this story to make it particularly memorable.

It’s always refreshing to see a W.W. Jacobs story that isn’t “The Monkey’s Paw” in an anthology.  “Jerry Bundler” (1897) begins in a cozy inn where “three ghost stories… had fallen flat” (coincidentally the same number which fall flat in “The 5^th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories”).  The fourth is more of a success, since it involves a murder-minded ghost said to haunt the very inn in which the stories are being told. It may, in fact, end up being too successful… 

The collection ends with the scintillating “The Great Return” (1915) by Arthur Machen.  Mysterious events are occurring in Llantrisant, on the coast of Wales, and the narrator goes to investigate, to be promptly told by the local rector that “You are not worthy of this mystery that has been done here.”  Has a new religious sect sprung up, or is the change in the town due to something much older? 

So, the 5^th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories contains a diverse group of stories, and some are excellent.

The 7th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories

This is the penultimate Aickman-edited volume, and here he contributes an introduction and a story, repeating his theme that “scientific advance and naked horror are rapidly becoming hard to differentiate” and that ghost stories provide a “world elsewhere” in which we can be free.  The 7th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories contains:

“Levitation”, by Joseph Payne Brennan.  Set in the always unsavory world of the carnival, this very short story is quickly read, enjoyed, and forgotten.

“Dearth’s Farm”, by Gerald Bullett.  The protagonist visits a country cousin whose husband has a close relationship with his horse.  Aickman talks this story up in his introduction, and it is unusual, but pretty flat.

“Esmeralda”, by John Keir Cross.  This story of a middle-aged tobacconist with an unhappy marriage is vividly written and unexpectedly savage.  A highlight of the collection.

“The Dead Valley,” by Ralph Adams Cram.  Cram was known more for architecture than fiction, but this story of, well, a dead valley, is certainly memorable.  Aickman says it “describes the border landscape between the outer vision and the inner.”

“The Visit to the Museum”, by Vladimir Nabokov.  A man’s trip to a provincial museum becomes increasingly surreal, and he may never exit, at least not to a destination he desires.

“Gone Away”, by A.E. Coppard.  Aickman (perhaps not much of a traveler?) claims that anyone crossing the English Channel will have, at times, the feeling expressed in this story of three tourists encountering inexplicable events as they drive through France.  Coppard skillfully portrays a quickly burgeoning panic here.

“Governor Manco and the Soldier,” by Washington Irving.  Irving is far from New York in this enjoyable Spanish tale.

“The Cicerones,” by Robert Aickman.  For me, at least, this is one of Aickman’s more opaque tales (which is saying something).  Trent tours a Flemish cathedral with some unexpected guides.  “The Cicerones” is full of religious allusions and sustained menace.

“Old Mrs. Jones,” by Mrs. Riddell.  In this Victorian novella, a new family rents an old house in London, only to learn that the ghost of Mrs. Jones is said to roam about at night.  The Joneses mysteriously disappeared (“The Kilkenny cats left their tails behind them, but the doctor and his wife took away every bit of their bodies”), hence the availability and affordability of the house.  “Solid literary craftsmanship” here, as Aickman puts it.

“Over an Absinthe Bottle,” by W.C. Morrow.  Down on his luck, Kimberlin plays dice with a stranger in a San Francisco restaurant.

“Where the Woodbine Twineth,” by Davis Grubb.  Grubb, best known for Night of the Hunter, lays on the Southern flavor in this concise tale of New World fairies. 

The 6th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories

The 5th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories is unreasonably priced on Amazon, but for whatever reason the sixth volume is less valued.  Although the stories in this volume are “selected by Robert Aickman”, he didn’t contribute either an introduction or a story of his own.  His selection includes:

“Clarimonde (La Morte Amoureuse)” by Théophile Gautier.  “My story is a strange and terrible one,” says the elderly priest Romauld as he recounts how at the very moment of his ordination, his eye falls upon an enticing stranger who tempts him to renounce his vows.  It is the titular Clarimonde, a lovely and debauched courtesan.  Summoned to her deathbed (“With her, death seemed but a last coquetry”), he is told that “the tombstone of Clarimonde should be sealed down with a triple seal, for, if report be true, it is not the first time she has died.”  Romauld learns that his love of the flesh may be stronger than his love of God, and the fact that Gautier (in Lafcadio Hearn’s silky translation) is ambiguous about which is the preferred choice makes this excellent story all the better.  “Clarimonde” was published in 1836, and it seems highly likely that the story was a big influence on Bram Stoker.  I hadn’t heard of Gautier before this, but based on “Clarimonde” I will be seeking out his other works.

“The Grey Ones” by J.B. Priestley.  From priests to Priestley.  Mr. Patson consults a psychiatrist about his worry that an “Evil Principle” seeks to “turn us into automatic creatures, mass beings without individuality, soulless machines of flesh and blood… to wipe from the face of this earth all wonder, joy, deep feeling, the desire to create, to praise life.”  Today, don’t we call this the internet?  

“The Door in the Wall” by H.G. Wells.  This is Wells’ well-anthologized poignant tale of the lost things of childhood.  It is miles away from his science fiction stories.

“Priscilla and Emily Lofft” by George Moore.  These two sisters were, at least superficially, “as alike as two casts come out of the same mold”, but now Priscilla has died, and Emily has time to reflect.  “The dead are never really dead, Emily said, until we cease to think of them.”  I must confess I missed the point of this story, or the reason for inclusion in this collection.

“Sorworth Place”, by Russell Kirk.  Former soldier Ralph Bain comes to Scotland and the town of Sorworth, finding that the “dirty and dreary little town” holds “a big ancient house, wraithlike against the heather and gorse and bracken.” Intrigued by the lovely proprietress of Sorworth Place, Bain wrangles an invitation.  As they draw closer, she tells him:

“Don’t you understand? I’m afraid of my husband.”

Bain stared at her. “Your husband? I understood – I thought he’s dead.”

“Quite,” said Ann Lurlin.

“Sorworth Place” is cozily ominous and eminently entertaining.  It was adapted, probably horribly, for Rod Serling’s Night Gallery.

“Where Their Fire Is Not Quenched”, by May Sinclair.  This is a bleak, sad, and savage tale of adultery and eternity.  Most of Sinclair’s work did not involve the supernatural, but based on this story any of her writings would be worth seeking out.

“Oke of Okehurst”, by Vernon Lee.  This novella is the basis for the cover illustration of the unfortunate Elizabethan gent in the ditch.  It takes up over a quarter of The 6^th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, space which might have been used more wisely.  It is the story of an artist hired for a portrait of Mrs. Oke (of Okehurst), who greatly resembles a 16^th century ancestor.  Lee (pen name of Violet Paget) takes a long time to get where she is going, and provides only mild enjoyment along the way.

“The Lips”, by Henry S. Whitehead.  Whitehead was a frequent contributor to Weird Tales and other pulps, and a good friend of H.P. Lovecraft.  He was best known for his West Indian-flavored stories.  “The Lips” is the simple story of a slave trader who gets a nasty comeuppance, although the racist language is the most unpleasant part.  It bears a strong resemblance to Edward Lucas White’s “Lukundoo”, which was published a few years before “The Lips”.

"Weird... alarming... occult": The 4th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories

Robert Aickman begins his introduction to Fontana #4 with a dour rant against science and the familiar prophecy that science will, if not kill us all, at least "close in the world around us, shutter by shutter..."  He continues with "truth can be found only through the imagination" before getting on with it:  "Ghost stories inquire and hint, waver and dissemble, startle and astonish.  They are a last refuge from the universal affirmative shout."

The 4th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories contains ten stories, starting with The Accident, by Ann Bridge, the pen name of an author not know for ghost stories, who based most of her work, including this story, on her travels.  The Accident takes place at a Swiss resort and involves mountain climbers menaced, without much of a motive, by the spirits of deceased mountain climbers.

Not on the Passenger List, by Barry Pain, is one of the more satisfying stories in the collection.  On an ocean liner crossing the Atlantic, a jealous shade pursues a widow on her way to remarry.  Pain's tale is congenial and concise, sunny yet chilly, and makes me want to read more of his horror stories and other fiction.

To call Oscar Wilde's The Sphinx without a Secret a ghost story is to use an already loose term even more loosely.

Vincent O'Sullivan's When I was Dead quickly veers in an unexpected direction as the narrator mentions his belief that "if you place some drops of human blood near you, and then concentrate, you will after a while see a man or a woman who will stay with you during long hours of the night..."

The Queen of Spades by Pushkin, is the story of an elderly countess in possession of a surefire way to win at cards and the avaricious soldier who wants the knowledge at any price.  Needless to say, things end badly for him.  Tchaikovsky loosely based an opera on this story.

The ghostly strangulation depicted on the cover of this volume comes from Hugh Walpole's The Snow, in which a temperamental second wife fails to heed the warnings of the protective first wife's ghost.

Along with Not on the Passenger List, Carleton's Father, by Eric Ambrose, is one of the highlights of this collection.  The plot involves a room insulated from time, and the writing has a classic pulp magazine tone.

What can be said about A School Story, by M.R. James?  James is frequently, and deservedly, anthologized and this classic might be his most frequently printed story.  I've read it so many times in different places that I have it almost memorized.  "He was beastly thin, and he looked as if he was wet all over, and... I'm not at all sure he was alive."  James specialized in concise chills.

In The Wolves of Cernogratz, by Saki, wolves appear and howl when members of the aristocratic von Cernogratz family die in their castle.

Mad Monkton, by Wilkie Collins, involves hereditary madness in 60 gothic pages, over one third of the total word count in The 4th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories.  It's enjoyable, but a few more shorter stories would have been preferable instead.  There's no contribution from Aickman in this collection; his writing (The Swords) returns in the next volume.