Tarnhelm: The Best Supernatural Stories Read online

  Copyright

  Tarnhelm:

  The Best Supernatural Stories

  of Hugh Walpole

  With an Introduction by George Gorniak

  Tarnhelm: THe Best Supernatural Stories of Hugh Walpole

  was first published by Tartarus Press in 2003

  This new edition 2016

  Coverley House, Carlton-in-Coverdale, Leyburn,

  North Yorkshire, DL8 4AY. UK

  Introduction copyright © George Gorniak

  This edition copyright © Tartarus Press

  CONTENTS

  Hugh Walpole: An Introduction by George Gorniak

  The Clocks

  The Twisted Inn

  The Silver Mask

  The Staircase

  A Carnation for An Old Man

  Tarnhelm or, The Death of My Uncle Robert

  Seashore Macabre

  The Little Ghost

  Mrs Lunt

  The Snow

  Miss Morganhurst

  Mrs Porter and Miss Allen

  Lizzie Rand

  The Tarn

  Major Wilbraham

  The Tiger

  Hugh Seymour (A Prologue)

  Angelina

  ’Enery

  The Fear of Death

  Field With Five Trees

  The Conjurer

  The White Cat

  The Perfect Close

  Mr Huffam, A Christmas Story

  Hugh Walpole: An Introduction

  by eorge Gorniak

  Hugh Walpole was a highly popular and prolific writer and critic. He published over thirty novels and his lasting achievement is The Herries Chronicle (1930-34), a series of four Lakeland novels recording a family saga spanning two hundred years between the early eighteenth and early twentieth centuries. The series remains in print and has helped build up an image of Walpole as an exponent of historical romance. However, amongst Walpole’s other novels and short stories there is much fine macabre, supernatural and fantasy writing. Portrait of a Man with Red Hair (1925) is perhaps the best example of sustained macabre whilst of the short stories ‘The Silver Mask’, ‘The Snow’ and ‘The Little Ghost’ are acknowledged masterpieces.

  Walpole was a well-known public speaker and regularly undertook lecture tours, especially in America, where his popularity was even greater than it was in Britain. He was also for a time a resident screenwriter in Hollywood and took an active part in many literary societies. In 1928 Walpole founded and chaired The Book Society. He was helpful and generous in his support of young writers and artists. His own literary career was marked by a steady growth in reputation from the appearance of his first novel The Wooden Horse (1909) through to its peak in the mid 1930s.

  Walpole’s approach to the novel, his strong use of narrative and the introduction of many characters and sub-plots, was to place him firmly in the traditional school of English novel writing. As such he had far more in common with contemporary novelists such as H.G. Wells, Arnold Bennett and John Galsworthy than with the more fastidious authors of the modern school: Katherine Mansfield, Virginia Woolf and E.M. Forster.

  Walpole’s bibliography is a testament to his industry. It includes over one hundred and fifty short stories, thirty-four novels, six volumes of literary criticism, five autobiographical pieces, five plays and scores of introductions to his own and other writers’ books. He also wrote countless articles and essays for newspapers and magazines. He was an example of a born writer. In his childhood he was constantly to be found reading and, later, scribbling stories. It became an all-consuming occupation:

  ‘The world of my novels became during this time so real to me that the world of school and cathedral and family faded into thin air. I remember once, when a stout overgrown boy was trying to command me to do something or other and I refused, that he threatened me with some dire penalty and I, sticking my chin in the air, replied ‘Rot. You can’t do anything. You’re not real’. A silly enough remark, but I so obviously believed it that it struck him considerably and he walked away, puzzled about himself, metaphorically pinching himself to see whether he were there.

  All this time I was writing, writing, writing. Arnado the Fearless, Charles the Bold, The Trump of the Grave, In the Name of the King, The Doom of the Halberts—all of them historical romances. Mine was the true artist’s impulse then, pure and undefiled. No one read my stories. I had no hope of gain for them. I wrote simply because I could not help myself. Two or three years ago, when it was the fashion to publish juvenile efforts, I opened a drawer and searched through my romances. They were of a desperate badness that makes my cheek pale now when I think of them. No merit of originality or form or narrative to be found in any of them anywhere, and yet I may say with truth that I was far prouder of them than I have been of any of my eternally disappointing later works.’ 1

  Walpole’s professed disappointment with his published works was not shared by most critics and the public. After Cambridge and several restless years spent in a variety of jobs, his first major breakthrough came with his third novel Mr Perrin and Mr Traill (1911), which received unanimous praise for its psychological insight into the claustrophobic atmosphere of life in an English boarding school. Walpole wrote in a later preface that the book’s popularity was probably due to its strong realism, yet it was a realism touched with the kind of macabre imagery not found in other contemporary novels of that kind.

  Mr Perrin and Mr Traill was followed by The Prelude to Adventure (1912), an early psychological thriller admired by Carl Jung, Fortitude (1913) and The Duchess of Wrexe (1914). Each of these novels enjoyed increased sales and lavish praise from the critics.

  The 1914-18 war caused the only real disruption to Walpole’s writing career. Due to his poor eyesight he was unable to enlist and instead travelled to Russia, firstly as a war correspondent and latterly to serve with the Red Cross on the Eastern Front, where he was awarded the George Cross for bravery. He also worked briefly at the Anglo-Russian Bureau in St Petersburg and witnessed the chaotic opening days of the 1917 Revolution. Walpole used these experiences to good effect, in The Dark Forest (1916) and The Secret City, which won the newly inaugurated James Tait Black Memorial Prize for the best work of fiction published in 1919. In that same year, with Jeremy, he introduced his readers to the fictional shire town of Polchester2, which was to feature in many of his later novels and short stories. The detailed descriptions of the town and its inhabitants coupled with ecclesiastical intrigue led some critics to describe Walpole as a second Trollope. However, Walpole disclaimed that honour and in one of his prefaces was candid enough to write ‘I am far too twisted and fantastic a novelist ever to succeed in catching Trollope’s marvellous normality.’3

  Other notable examples of his literary career were The Cathedral (1922), The Old Ladies (1924), which, as one critic noted, portrayed ‘An unforgettable picture of an obscure and poverty stricken old age. . . . A book that has features of Balzac’, and Hans Frost (1929), which won praise from, amongst others, Virginia Woolf. And then came The Herries Chronicle (1930-34), which was to prove the pinnacle of his writing career.

  Ironically it was around this time that some critics first began to question his high literary standing. Literary fashions and reputations can be notoriously fickle, and Walpole’s writing, typified in the public mind by sentimentality and romanticism, fell out of favour, certainly with the critics if not initially with the reading public, in the more austere days of the 1950s. The thinly disguised caricature of Walpole as the scheming literary and social climber Alroy Kear in Somerset Maugham’s Cakes and Ale (1930), resulted in a great deal of largely undeserved damage to his re
putation, which has lasted to this day.

  Although he was hurt by the criticism, Walpole carried on writing, producing popular novels such as The Inquisitor (1935), —his sequel to The Cathedral—A Prayer for My Son (1936) and John Cornelius (1937). His hard work and success were rewarded with a knighthood in 1937. Four busy years later, at the age of fifty-seven, Hugh Walpole died at home in his beloved Cumberland. He had suffered a diabetic coma brought on by overwork and deep anxiety about the Second World War. His final completed novel, The Killer and the Slain, was published posthumously in 1942.

  Walpole consistently incorporated macabre, mystical and supernatural elements in his work throughout the thirty-two years of his writing career, enough to prove a deep and abiding interest. The roots of this seem to lie in his childhood, and particularly in his experiences at his various boarding schools.

  Hugh Seymour Walpole had been born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1884. His parents had recently arrived from England; his father was an Anglican clergyman4 and a descendent of Horace Walpole (1717-1797), author of the seminal Gothic novel The Castle of Otranto (1764). Shortly after Hugh’s fifth birthday the family decamped to New York, and in 1893, at the age of nine, the boy was sent back to England to be educated in the approved manner of the times. Thus began an unsettled and unhappy ten years spent at a succession of schools at Truro, Marlow, Canterbury and Durham. A sensitive and at times difficult boy, Walpole did not flourish and suffered from the bullying and ill-treatment catalogued in the memoirs of many fellow-suffering writers, amongst them C.S. Lewis and Roald Dahl. Walpole was perhaps the archetypal prey for the bullies who stalked the corridors and reigned supreme in the dormitories. The worst experiences were to be remembered from the school at Marlow.

  ‘When I say that it wasn’t all that it should be I mean that the food was inadequate, the morality was ‘twisted’, and Terror—sheer stark, unblinking Terror—stared down every one of its passages. I had two years of it, and a passionate desire to be liked, a longing for approval, and a frantic reaction to anybody’s geniality have been for me some of the results of that time. I have been frightened since then. I was frightened in the war several times rather badly but I have never, after those days, thank God, known continuous increasing terror night and day. There was a period, from half-past eight to half-past nine in the evening, when the small boys (myself with them) were dismissed to bed but, instead, spread themselves in an empty classroom that is still to me, when I think of it, damp green in retrospective colour. The bigger boys held during that hour what they called the Circus. Some of the small boys (I was always one) were made to stand on their heads, hang on to the gas and swing slowly round, fight one another with hair brushes, and jump from the top of the school lockers to the ground. Every night (owing I suppose to my then unrecognised short sight) was a horror to me. I would be pushed up on to the lockers, then, “One, two, three—jump!” I can feel now again, as I write, the sick dizziness at my heart as I looked down at the shining floor, bent to jump, pulled myself together, fell, to be caught generally by some bigger boy who would push me into the arm of someone else, thence on again, and so the round of the room. Swinging round the gas was worse than the lockers— being roasted in front of the fire (shades of Tom Brown). worse than the gas. Worst of all was being forced to strip naked, to stand then on a bench before them all while some boy pointed out one’s various physical deficiencies and the general company ended by sticking pins and pen nibs into tender places to see whether one were real or no—Worse than the hour itself was the anticipation of the hour. First thought on waking was that eight-thirty was far away. Then, slowly through the day, it grew ever closer and closer until by tea-time tears of anticipatory fear would fall into one’s cup and salten one’s husk of bread.’ 5

  This graphic piece of writing was penned by Walpole thirty years after the events in question. There is always a danger in extrapolating too much from the juvenile experiences of an author, yet who could doubt that when later critics were to detect a morbid and even sadistic streak in some of Walpole’s most effective macabre writing, including many of the stories collected in this volume, (e.g. ‘The Silver Mask,’ ‘Tarnhelm,’ ‘The Tarn’) that their origin could be traced back to the school at Marlow. Walpole displays a markedly modern understanding of the psychological. The terror experienced by the unfortunate Mrs Ryder in ‘The Snow’, Sonia Herries in ‘The Silver Mask’ and Thornton Ash in ‘The White Cat’ is finely distilled and realised by the author, and stories such as ‘The Tiger’ and ‘Major Wilbraham’ deal directly with mystical and nightmarish experiences.

  And yet many of Walpole’s short stories also abound in delightful, heart-warming incidents and are pervaded with a sincere appreciation of the warmth and zest of friendships and family life. Amongst these are the touching and comic Dickensian Christmas fantasy ‘Mr Huffam.’ Other stories, such as ‘Hugh Seymour (A Prologue)’ and ‘The Conjurer’ deal sensitively and often humorously with the joys and fears of childhood. It was precisely this all-round picture of life; its joys and sorrows, terrors and delights; that made Walpole such a successful author in his day.

  Walpole felt that his own approach to the supernatural in fiction was derived from that of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry James. Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), first read when Walpole was at school in Durham, was to have a lasting influence. Although Walpole’s highly readable style cannot be compared with the elaborate and congested syntax of Henry James, the latter’s influence can be seen in the ‘spiritual’ dimension that Walpole brought to his own characters. Perhaps not surprisingly, Walpole’s own favourite ghost story was The Turn of the Screw6. Walpole expressed his views on the subject in a letter, written in 1918, to novelist and sceptic Frank Swinnerton:

  ‘To tell you the truth what I miss in your books is exactly what you hate in mine—the fantasy—the ‘spooks’— call it what you will. It’s no use—it’s an intrinsic part of me and it will always be there. I think that the only thing that really absorbs me is the ‘spiritual’ history of the human soul—and the moment and the place where and when the soul and body join and the country in between this world and the others. . . . I shall never get away from it and I do believe in it.’ 7

  Hugh Walpole never professed much interest in his own short stories. They were often viewed as a means of filling up spare time and augmenting his income, and this is reflected in the unevenness of a good many of them. However, those chosen for his later collections are of a high calibre. Rudyard Kipling commented favourably on the 1928 collection The Silver Thorn8 and singled out ‘The Tarn’ for special praise. The aptly titled and celebrated collection All Souls’ Night (1933) contains many of Walpole’s best-known ghost stories including ‘Mrs Lunt’, ‘The Snow’ and ‘The Little Ghost’. Although most of the other tales are highly atmospheric and indeed ghostly, Walpole also includes stories with a predominantly ‘natural’ theme. Most readers would agree that the stories with a strong macabre or supernatural content are among his best. It would seem that the frisson required to make these tales effective spurred the author to greater effort. ‘The Tarn’, ‘Tarnhelm’ and ‘The Silver Mask’ are potent examples of the greatest skill. Each of these enigmatic tales is marvellously homogenous in form and content with hardly a word or phrase wasted. Once read, they are not easily forgotten. They are also the most difficult to analyse, which may indeed partly explain their effectiveness. Throughout his works Walpole deliberately blurred the edges between the psychological and the supernatural. Is ‘The Tarn’ a ghost story, a dream, or is it merely a manifestation of Fenwick’s overheated imagination? Similar questions can be asked of ‘The Silver Mask’9. Is it a supernatural story at all? The author stated that he had dreamt the entire sequence of events related in the story—including the title! In fact Walpole was to suffer from nightmares throughout his life and he would later describe them as his curse. Stories in which the plot revolves around dreams include ‘The Twisted Inn’, ‘The Tiger’ and ‘The F
ear of Death’.

  Whatever their origins, Walpole’s stories range widely in their content, location and character. There are stories set in pre- and post-First World War London, the Channel Islands, Cumberland and California; stories employing a vengeful ghost, an unusual Wagnerian helmet, a novel reworking of the werewolf legend, and an even more unusual group of trees. This is not a storyteller working at some tried and oft-repeated formula. Walpole is a consummate literary craftsman with a fine narrative verve and an admirable ability to portray character, humour and dialogue. Readers will also discover for themselves passages of memorable descriptive power. Many of the stories are also very funny, particularly those dealing with childhood.

  It is to be hoped that this collection will help renew the recognition enjoyed by Hugh Walpole in his own lifetime. In 1937 he edited and introduced Hutchinson’s mammoth Second Century of Creepy Stories, lauded as a classic anthology of its kind. Although the majority of modern critics have tended to ignore his work, Walpole’s own ‘creepy stories’ have weathered well and the better-known ones make regular appearances in various anthologies. In the history of the English ghost story and supernatural fiction Hugh Walpole has earned his niche. He brought a new element of originality, realism and psychological insight to a genre that had become too set in its ways. If subtlety, originality and ambiguity are hallmarks of the best supernatural tales then Walpole’s stand with the very best.