Gaslight digest of discussion for 97-apr-23, part one
The Gaslight mailing list was caught in an error-mailing
loop on this day. I have broken the digest into two parts so
that you may quit reading part one when the errors start,
(Post #[11319] and you may recommence reading with part two
at which point the discussion by listmembers resumes.
---------------------------THE HEADERS-----------------------------
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 09:50:53 -0400
From: "John D. Squires"
Subject: Robert Chambers [11279] & The Black Priest [11314]
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 10:40:39 -0400
From: "John D. Squires"
Subject: Chambers correction [11315]
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 19:16:06 +0200
From: Henrik Johnsson
Subject: Re: Robert Chambers [11279] & The Black Priest [11316]
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 11:46:59 -0700 (MST)
From: "STEPHEN DAVIES, MT. ROYAL COLLEGE"
Subject: What is "porching" or "church-porching"? [11317]
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 14:18:34 -0500
From: "S.T. Karnick"
Subject: Re: [gaslight] Robert Chambers [11279] & The Black Priest [11316]
[11318]
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 14:35:00 -0400
From: AC Mail
Subject: Undeliverable Mail [11319]
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 14:45:53 -0400
From: AC Mail
Subject: Undeliverable Mail [11320]
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 14:58:31 -0400
From: AC Mail
Subject: Undeliverable Mail [11321]
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 15:10:09 -0400
From: AC Mail
Subject: Undeliverable Mail [11322]
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 15:21:03 -0400
From: AC Mail
Subject: Undeliverable Mail [11323]
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 15:33:24 -0400
From: AC Mail
Subject: Undeliverable Mail [11324]
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 15:43:48 -0400
From: AC Mail
Subject: Undeliverable Mail [11325]
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 15:53:08 -0400
From: AC Mail
Subject: Undeliverable Mail [11326]
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 15:53:08 -0400
From: AC Mail
Subject: Undeliverable Mail [11326]
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 15:57:34 -0400
From: AC Mail
Subject: Undeliverable Mail [11327]
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 16:09:33 -0400
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Subject: Undeliverable Mail [11328]
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Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 16:32:30 -0400
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Subject: Undeliverable Mail [11330]
----------------------------THE POSTS-----------------------------
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 09:50:53 -0400
From: "John D. Squires"
Subject: Robert Chambers [11279] & The Black Priest [11314]
4/23/97
Gaslighters,
Midst ineffective attempts to deal with other more pressing
matters, I took a few minutes last night to go back through Chambers' THE
MYSTERY OF CHOICE (Appletons, N. Y., 1897) in re: Stephen's questions about
The Black Priest.
The first three stories in the book are linked by common characters
and settings, and could be read as chapters in a continuous narrative.
Dick Darrel & Lys express their love for each other in "The Purple
Emperor", then Dick has a nasty fright in an atmospheric walk through the
woods to meet her in "Pompe Funebre". (A carron eating beetle plays a key
part in the story.) By the time of "The Messenger" they are married and
suffer the culmination of the curse placed on Lys' family by the traitorous
( and satanic ) Black Priest. He had been buried in 1760 in a mass grave
with the bodies of 38 English soldiers killed in the assault on a French
fort the priest had betrayed. The curse provided that when his skull, the
39th, was uncovered, he would rise from the dead to have his vengeance. His
coming was preceded by a death's head moth, a portent of death.
I suspect that Henrik Johnsson's correspondent was referring to
some French translation of "The Messenger" as "The Thirty-ninth Skull" and
that "The Purple Emperor" butterfly from the first story was translated as
the "Crimson Emperor". [The events of the first story are referred to in
the third when Dick Darrel oversees the packing up of the butterfly
collections of the two antagonists from the first story for donation to a
Paris museum.] Johnsson is also Swedish, so we may have a round robin
translation problem; English to French, [French to Swedish?], then back to
English? "The Messenger" is readily available in Bleiler's selection from
Dover if anyone wants to read it. THE MYSTERY OF CHOICE is also still
listed in BOOKS IN PRINT in the 1969 Books for Libraries Press edition, now
distributed by Ayer Company Publishers, Inc. Chaosium, Inc. has announced
a new edition of Chambers' weird stories for publication next year & has a
web site which can be cross-linked from Johnsson's Chambers page
.
Johnsson's page should be taken with a grain of salt. He appears
to have actually read only a few of the stories & (besides the 39th skull
issue) makes some odd statements. For instance he suggests that the
non-fantasy stories were added to later editions of THE KING IN YELLOW (F.
T. Neely, 1895). To the contrary, the five stories based on Chambers'
student days in Paris were always in the book, but most later editions,
including the Ace paperback, dropped one of the primary horror stories, "In
the Court of the Dragon". [The Dover selection has it.]
I first read Chambers more than 20 years ago on the basis of
Lovecraft's recommendation in "Supernatural Horror in Literature". When I
finally was able to read THE KING IN YELLOW, my first impression was that
Lovecraft was praising the potential he saw in the concept as much as the
actual execution in the book. Only three stories really involve the myth
of the baleful play that destroys the souls of its readers, "The Repairer
of Reputations", "In the Court of the Dragon" and "The Yellow Sign". The
play is mentioned once in "The Mask", but has nothing to do with the story.
It is not mentioned in the other stories at all. I don't mean this as a
criticism of the individual stories, which are often quite good, but simply
that suggestions that all the stories are linked back to the cursed play
are wrong. That is how Lovecraft would have written it, but not how
Chambers did.
For a contrary view, see Lee Weinstein's "Robert W. Chambers and
the King in Yellow" which first appeared in STARWINDS, and was reprinted in
THE ROMANTIC. Outside of Bleiler, it is the best treatment of Chambers'
horror stories I have seen anywhere, and he makes a much stronger case than
I feel about the artistic unity of THE KING IN YELLOW.
A final thought: Chambers & Shiel were born the same year, lived
for a while in Paris in the 1890s & with their early horror stories were
both linked to the decadent movement. Chambers returned home to get rich
writing shopgirl romances & lite historical romances. Shiel stuck closer
to his early artistic vision, lived longer ["in heaven-high health" through
jogging, a vegetarian diet, & deep breathing exercises], but died in
relative poverty. Both are largely forgotten by the literary mainstream,
except for those early horror & mystery tales. So it goes.
back to work
John Squires
Shiel_Search(at)compuserve.com
===0===
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 10:40:39 -0400
From: "John D. Squires"
Subject: Chambers correction [11315]
4/23/97
The correct citations to "Chambers and the King in Yellow" by Lee Weinstein
are as follows:
"Starwind", Vol. II, No. 1, Autumn (1976), pp. 24-30.
reprinted, "The Romantist", No. 3, 1979, pp. 51-57.
It just goes to show my memories are fading fast. Shades of Cline's THE
DARK CHAMBER, indeed!
John Squires
Shiel_Search(at)compuserve.com
===0===
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 19:16:06 +0200
From: Henrik Johnsson
Subject: Re: Robert Chambers [11279] & The Black Priest [11316]
Aha ! So news of my confusion has spread this far. I had no idea. But
I've got it all sorted out now. My french correspondent had read a story
by Chambers called "The thirty-ninth skull", in french "Le
trente-neufi=E8me =E9cran". It had appeared in a french horror anthology
without any notes as to its original name. The story is indeed "The
messenger", I am sure of this, but had thus been translated awkwardly.
So the fault is not mine, it's the translator's, who should have
translated "The messenger" as "Le messager". The butterfly called the
Purple emperor was translated as "crimson" ( pourpre ) instead of
"purple" ( violet ). So you see where the fault lies. And yes, I am
swedish, but not in language. I have spent three years in an all-english
school, have read exclusively english books nearly all my life, use
english with all my correspondents, and write almost exclusively in
english. I am far better at english than at swedish ( although this is
not to say that I'm particularly good at english ). I've also lived in
France for a year and a half, and thus speak french fluently. So the
round robin translation problem is not due to inadequate french and
english skills, but only to mistakes and incorrect information, which
has been handed me without any means of verification and correction.
However, I very much appreciate when someone points out my mistakes.
As for my page, it's unnecessary to say much about it, since it's only a
first, or perhaps second draft. I will rewrite almost the whole thing
due to all the corrections I've received, typos I've noticed and
inaccurate use of english I've commited. The section on the Purple
emperor is of course due for major revision. Have patience with me, I am
only an amateur scholar, and not a very good one at that. The suggestion
about the non-fantastic stories included only in the later editions will
be removed. This was, once again, the mistake of my french
correspondent, who didn't know any better. He said something like "these
stories -seem- to have been added only in later editons", and I drew a (
false ) conclusion that this must be the case, since they are
non-fantastic. Once again, I was wrong. This has been noted and will be
rectified.=20
Now to reveal a quite hideous fact : I have not read a complete book by
Robert W. Chambers. Sad but true. I first discovered him some years ago
in Robert M. Price's THE HASTUR CYCLE ( Chaosium ), and thought nothing
much about him. Included there are "The repairer of reputations" and
"The yellow sign". Then, some months ago, I read the stoires available
at Doyle and Macdonald's Literature of the fantastic ( linked to at my
page ), which were "In the court of the dragon", "The mask", "The
demoiselle d'Ys", "The prophets' paradise" and "The street of the four
winds". These stories whetted my appetite, but I didn't know which books
of his were worth reading. To resove this, I started researching him and
the results of that research is my page. So I created my page primarily
for my own purposes, any eventual readers came and always will come in
second hand. It took me some months, but now I know which of his books
are worth reading. Along with "The purple emperor" from Gaslight, that
is the extent of Chambers that I have read. I am currently awaiting the
Dover edition of THE KING IN YELLOW and the Shroud reprint of THE MAKER
OF MOONS, and when I receive them, I will hopefully know more about
Chambers than I do now.
Pertaining to THE KING IN YELLOW itself, I agree that only three stories
deal with the play, but this only goes to show Chambers' skill - it took
him only three stories to create a mythology which is still alive and
doing well more than a century later. It took Lovecraft much more
fiction than three stories to achieve such a status, but of course, his
following is larger than Chambers'. But these three stories are, in my
humble view, indeed linked by the play, since the narrators and the
events are directly influenced by it. In these stories the play is a
driving force, a very real object which directly influences its
environments, and thus the stories are very clearly linked to it. They
are not linked to each other, however.
I hope I have now cleared up any confusion that might have arisen. I
have not as yet finished proof-reading my page, since I am currently
starting pages on Walter de la Mare and E.R. Eddison, and in the future
I might do the same for Algernon Blackwood and Arhur Machen. So I beg
your pardon if my page remains "faulty" until I can correct it. If any
of you have the time to read it, do so, and tell me the mistakes I've
made. Remember, I am not a scholar, I am not a good researcher, and I am
definitely not a writer of articles on weird literature as the venerable
S.T. Joshi and so many others are. I am simply an average reader who
wishes to know more about the authors he likes. And as such, I am bound
to make mistakes. But I always appreciate corrections. Thank you once
again.
I am unsure if I am on the Gaslight list. I received this mail from John
D. Squires, and replied in the manner he sent it, to the Gaslight
adress, and the adresses of John Squires and S.T. Joshi in the Cc field.
I have no idea as to who is going to receive this mail, but I hope
sincerely that you will bear with me if it ends up in the wrong ( or
right ) mailbox. And thanks once again to all you who have helped me :
John Squires and S.T. Joshi, who are the greatest contributors to my
page, and several others too numerous to mention.
Best regards,
Sir Henrik Johnsson, Esquire
===0===
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 11:46:59 -0700 (MST)
From: "STEPHEN DAVIES, MT. ROYAL COLLEGE"
Subject: What is "porching" or "church-porching"? [11317]
Since we are dealing with ghostly apparitions this week,
I thought I should seek clarification of an expression
used by Bleiler in the index to his _Guide to
supernatural fiction_. Under the heading "ghostly
apparitions" (or some such phrase) he has the
subheading of "porching, or church-porching". Since I
don't have the stories that this subheading indexes,
I can't figure out what porching is about. I think
Bleiler did annotate the heading, but I have forgotten
the explanation.
Stephen D
SDavies(at)mtroyal.ab.ca
===0===
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 14:18:34 -0500
From: "S.T. Karnick"
Subject: Re: [gaslight] Robert Chambers [11279] & The Black Priest [11316]
[11318]
I quite enjoyed Mr. Johnsson's pages and found them very informative. Even
with the small amount of misinformation, I came away knowing quite a bit
more about Chambers than (the little) I had going in. Very worthwhile
effort and clearly a labor of love. I look forward to Mr. Johnsson's pages
on Blackwood, Machen, etc.
Best w's,
S.T. Karnick
skarnick(at)indy.net
===0===
Date: Wed, 23 Apr 1997 14:35:00 -0400
From: AC Mail
Subject: Undeliverable Mail [11319]
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Message: Re: [gaslight] Robert Chambers [11279] & The Black Priest [11316]
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(End of Gaslight digest, part one)