In a Glass Darkly

I know I was slagging off Irish writers a little while ago, but I think Sheridan Le Fanu might be the exception.  Okay, he's not modernist and- well, actually that might be why I like him.  He spins a hell of a spooky yarn.  In a Glass Darkly is something slightly different to the novels, it's a collection of five short stories from the files of the fictitious Dr Hesselius.  I'll be honest, one of the stories (Carmilla) I'd read before and actually studied at university as an example of pre-Bram Stoker vampire/ early Gothic literature.  So, I didn't bother to re-read it.  It's a taboo as fuck- at the time-Sapphic obession, but I've set myself a rather punishing reading schedule, so corners have to be cut.

The first two stories, Green Tea and The Familiar are very similar.  A well respected man is stalked by an apparition in both tales.  Green Tea's victim, Reverend Jennings is an apparently innocent man plagued by visions of a talking monkey.  Written out like that it does sound a bit like those PG Tips adverts, except Jennings's monkey encourages him to do evil rather than take the weight off and have a brew.  It's a pretty creepy monkey.  Le Fanu is a master of atmosphere, so it's not ridiculous it's gripping.  What's so wonderful about both these stories and the third- Mr Justice Harbottle- is that the men could simply be mad.  All the demons could be hallucinations of a guilty conscience rather than anything supernatural and this point is explicit.  Jennings seeks a medical explanation as his fear intensifies, however he is too late.  Captain Barton, victim in The Familiar is given the chance to rule out some of these options.  He thinks initially that the withered man who stalks him is part of a prank and only once he ascertains that there is no way that the man he believes responsible is still alive does he turn to a supernatural explanation.  Of course, he fails to question his sanity.  The titular Mr Justice Harbottle of the third as well, could have his experiences explained away by guilt weighing on his conscience; where it not for the fact that he seems to have none.

The fourth story, The Room in the Dragon Volant, feels a little out of place.  It's a great little tale about an arrogant Englishman on holiday in France.  He falls madly in love with a mysterious, veiled, married lady and naturally assuming that she loves him back, sets out to woo her.  Naturally, I was expecting a vampire tale.  She's pale and has piercing eyes.  Her husband and her both avoid sunlight.  And I knew about Carmilla.  Instead, the story reveals itself slowly as very clever long con.  It plays off horror narrative tropes.  Men have disappeared before from the Dragon Volant Inn, so we expect our hero, Richard Beckett, to do the same.  But it's not the room Beckett should be worrying about, it's the company he keeps.  There are no even potentially supernatural elements to the story, the cause of any horror is human greed and the lengths people go to for money.  This should make The Room in the Dragon Volant the scariest of the five tales, but it doesn't.  It's a good story, but it lacks the believability of the stories about hallucinations.  There is a set in stone and incredibly far-fetched explanation and true terror comes from the unknown, from doubt.  Also, spiders.  If Le Fanu had whacked a few spiders in there it would have been much scarier.  

I intentionally read these stories in the small hours of the morning.   The only one up in my parents' over-sized house, with all the lights turned off save the one I was reading by.  I think that's the only way to read scary stories, immersed in darkness so all you can focus on is the book itself.   Things that are frightening in the dark are common place in the daylight and it's the kind of book that I was happy to work with so I could get the most out of it.  I didn't really expect to read it as quickly as I did, but scary stories are impossible to put down after a certain point; it's like a good whodunnit.  I get to a certain point in the story and I just can't bear to not know the outcome any longer.  Of course, skipping ahead isn't the way to do it, so the 2 a.m. reading sessions become an inevitability.

My next read is Gustave Flaubert's Sentimental Education.