The Bowmen
INTRODUCTION (1915)
by Arthur Machen
(1863-1937)
HAVE been asked to write an introduction to the
story of THE BOWMEN,
on its publication in book form. And I hesitate. This affair of
THE BOWMEN
has been such an odd one from first to
last, so many queer complications have entered into it,
there have been so many and so divers currents and
cross-currents of rumour and speculation concerning it,
that I honestly do not know where to begin. I propose,
then, to solve the difficulty by apologising for
beginning at all.
For, usually and fitly, the presence of
an introduction is held to imply that there is
something of consequence and importance to be
introduced. If, for example, a man has made an
anthology of great poetry, he may well write an
introduction justifying his principle of selection,
pointing out here and there, as the spirit moves him,
high beauties and supreme excellencies, discoursing of
the magnates and lords and princes of literature, whom
he is merely serving as groom of the chamber.
Introductions, that is, belong to the masterpieces and
classics of the world, to the great and ancient and
accepted things; and I am here introducing a short,
small story of my own which appeared in
THE EVENING
NEWS about ten months ago (September
1914).
I appreciate the absurdity, nay, the
enormity of the position in all its grossness. And my
excuse for these pages must be this: that though the
story itself is nothing, it has yet had such odd and
unforeseen consequences and adventures that the tale of
them may possess some interest. And then, again, there
are certain psychological morals to be drawn from the
whole matter of the tale and its sequel of rumours and
discussions that are not, I think, devoid of
consequence; and so to begin at the beginning.
This was in last August, to be more precise, on the
last Sunday of last August. There were terrible things
to be read on that hot Sunday morning between meat and
mass. It was in THE
WEEKLY DISPATCH
that I saw the awful account of the retreat from Mons. I no
longer recollect the details; but I have not forgotten
the impression that was then on my mind, I seemed to
see a furnace of torment and death and agony and terror
seven times heated, and in the midst of the burning was
the British Army. In the midst of the flame, consumed
by it and yet aureoled in it, scattered like ashes and
yet triumphant, martyred and for ever glorious. So I
saw our men with a shining about them, so I took these
thoughts with me to church, and, I am sorry to say, was
making up a story in my head while the deacon was
singing the Gospel.
This was not the tale of THE
BOWMEN. It was the first sketch, as it were, of
THE SOLDIERS'
REST. I only wish I had been
able to write it as I conceived it. The tale as it
stands is, I think, a far better piece of craft than
THE BOWMEN,
but the tale that came to me
as the blue incense floated above the Gospel Book on
the desk between the tapers: that indeed was a noble
story--like all the stories that never get written. I
conceived the dead men coming up through the flames and
in the flames, and being welcomed in the Eternal Tavern
with songs and flowing cups and everlasting mirth. But
every man is the child of his age, however much he may
hate it; and our popular religion has long determined
that jollity is wicked. As far as I can make out modern
Protestantism believes that Heaven is something like
Evensong in an English cathedral, the service by
Stainer and the Dean preaching. For those opposed to
dogma of any kind--even the mildest--I suppose it is
held that a Course of Ethical Lectures will be
arranged.
Well, I have long maintained that on the
whole the average church, considered as a house of
preaching, is a much more poisonous place than the
average tavern; still, as I say, one's age masters one,
and clouds and bewilders the intelligence, and the real
story of THE BOWMEN,
with its "sonus epulantium in æterno convivio", was ruined at
the moment of its birth, and it was some time later
that the actual story got written. And in the meantime
the plot of THE BOWMEN
occurred to me. Now it has been murmured and hinted and suggested and
whispered in all sorts of quarters that before I wrote
the tale I had heard something. The most decorative of
these legends is also the most precise: "I know for a
fact that the whole thing was given him in typescript
by a lady-in-waiting." This was not the case; and all
vaguer reports to the effect that I had heard some
rumours or hints of rumours are equally void of any
trace of truth.
Again I apologise for entering so
pompously into the minutiæ of my bit of a story, as if
it were the lost poems of Sappho; but it appears that
the subject interests the public, and I comply with my
instructions. I take it, then, that the origins of
THE BOWMEN
were composite. First of all,
all ages and nations have cherished the thought that
spiritual hosts may come to the help of earthly arms,
that gods and heroes and saints have descended from
their high immortal places to fight for their
worshippers and clients. Then Kipling's story of the
ghostly Indian regiment got in my head and got mixed
with the mediævalism that is always there; and so
THE BOWMEN
was written. I was heartily
disappointed with it, I remember, and thought it--as I
still think it--an indifferent piece of work. However,
I have tried to write for these thirty-five long years,
and if I have not become practised in letters, I am at
least a past master in the Lodge of Disappointment.
Such as it was, THE
BOWMEN appeared in
THE
EVENING NEWS
of September 29th, 1914.
Now the journalist does not, as a rule,
dwell much on the prospect of fame; and if he be an
evening journalist, his anticipations of immortality
are bounded by twelve o'clock at night at the latest;
and it may well be that those insects which begin to
live in the morning and are dead by sunset deem
themselves immortal. Having written my story, having
groaned and growled over it and printed it, I certainly
never thought to hear another word of it. My colleague
THE LONDONER
praised it warmly to my face,
as his kindly fashion is; entering, very properly, a
technical caveat as to the language of the battle-cries
of the bowmen. "Why should English archers use French
terms?" he said. I replied that the only reason was
this--that a "Monseigneur" here and there struck me as
picturesque; and I reminded him that, as a matter of
cold historical fact, most of the archers of Agincourt
were mercenaries from Gwent, my native country, who
would appeal to Mihangel and to saints not known to the
Saxons--Teilo, Iltyd, Dewi, Cadwaladyr Vendigeid. And I
thought that that was the first and last discussion of
THE BOWMEN.
But in a few days from its publication the editor of THE
OCCULT
REVIEW wrote to me. He wanted to know whether
the story had any foundation in fact. I told him that
it had no foundation in fact of any kind or sort; I
forget whether I added that it had no foundation in
rumour but I should think not, since to the best of my
belief there were no rumours of heavenly interposition
in existence at that time. Certainly I had heard of
none. Soon afterwards the editor of LIGHT
wrote asking a like question, and I made him a like
reply. It seemed to me that I had stifled any
BOWMEN mythos in the hour of its birth.
A month or two later, I received several
requests from editors of parish magazines to reprint
the story. I--or, rather, my editor--readily gave
permission; and then, after another month or two, the
conductor of one of these magazines wrote to me, saying
that the February issue containing the story had been
sold out, while there was still a great demand for it.
Would I allow them to reprint THE
BOWMEN
as a pamphlet, and would I write a short preface giving
the exact authorities for the story? I replied that
they might reprint in pamphlet form with all my heart,
but that I could not give my authorities, since I had
none, the tale being pure invention. The priest wrote
again, suggesting--to my amazement--that I must be
mistaken, that the main "facts" of THE
BOWMEN must be
true, that my share in the matter must surely have been
confined to the elaboration and decoration of a
veridical history. It seemed that my light fiction had
been accepted by the congregation of this particular
church as the solidest of facts; and it was then that
it began to dawn on me that if I had failed in the art
of letters, I had succeeded, unwittingly, in the art of
deceit. This happened, I should think, some time in
April, and the snowball of rumour that was then set
rolling has been rolling ever since, growing bigger and
bigger, till it is now swollen to a monstrous size.
It was at about this period that
variants of my tale began to be told as authentic
histories. At first, these tales betrayed their
relation to their original. In several of them the
vegetarian restaurant appeared, and St. George was the
chief character. In one case an officer--name and
address missing--said that there was a portrait of St.
George in a certain London restaurant, and that a
figure, just like the portrait, appeared to him on the
battlefield, and was invoked by him, with the happiest
results. Another variant--this, I think, never got into
print--told how dead Prussians had been found on the
battlefield with arrow wounds in their bodies. This
notion amused me, as I had imagined a scene, when I was
thinking out the story, in which a German general was
to appear before the Kaiser to explain his failure to
annihilate the English.
"All-Highest,"the general was to say,"it
is true, it is impossible to deny it. The men were
killed by arrows; the shafts were found in their bodies
by the burying parties."
I rejected the idea as over-precipitous
even for a mere fantasy. I was therefore entertained
when I found that what I had refused as too fantastical
for fantasy was accepted in certain occult circles as
hard fact.
Other versions of the story appeared in
which a cloud interposed between the attacking Germans
and the defending British. In some examples the cloud
served to conceal our men from the advancing enemy; in
others, it disclosed shining shapes which frightened
the horses of the pursuing German cavalry. St. George,
it will he noted, has disappeared--he persisted some
time longer in certain Roman Catholic variants--and
there are no more bowmen, no more arrows. But so far
angels are not mentioned; yet they are ready to appear,
and I think that I have detected the machine which
brought them into the story.
In THE
BOWMEN my imagined
soldier saw "a long line of shapes, with a shining
about them." And Mr. A.P. Sinnett, writing in the May
issue of THE OCCULT
REVIEW, reporting what
he had heard, states that "those who could see said
they saw 'a row of shining beings' between the two
armies." Now I conjecture that the word "shining" is
the link between my tale and the derivative from it. In
the popular view shining and benevolent supernatural
beings are angels, and so, I believe, the Bowmen of my
story have become "the Angels of Mons." In this shape
they have been received with respect and credence
everywhere, or almost everywhere.
And here, I conjecture, we have the key
to the large popularity of the delusion--as I think it.
We have long ceased in England to take much interest in
saints, and in the recent revival of the cultus of St.
George, the saint is little more than a patriotic
figurehead. And the appeal to the saints to succour us
is certainly not a common English practice; it is held
Popish by most of our countrymen. But angels, with
certain reservations, have retained their popularity,
and so, when it was settled that the English army in
its dire peril was delivered by angelic aid, the way
was clear for general belief, and for the enthusiasms
of the religion of the man in the street. And so soon
as the legend got the title "The Angels of Mons" it
became impossible to avoid it. It permeated the Press:
it would not be neglected; it appeared in the most
unlikely quarters--in TRUTH and
TOWN
TOPICS, THE
NEW CHURCH
WEEKLY
(Swedenborgian) and JOHN
BULL. The editor
of THE CHURCH
TIMES has exercised a wise
reserve: he awaits that evidence which so far is
lacking; but in one issue of the paper I noted that the
story furnished a text for a sermon, the subject of a
letter, and the matter for an article. People send me
cuttings from provincial papers containing hot
controversy as to the exact nature of the appearances;
the "Office Window" of THE
DAILY
CHRONICLE
suggests scientific explanations of the hallucination;
the PALL MALL
in a note about St. James
says he is of the brotherhood of the Bowmen of
Mons--this reversion to the bowmen from the angels
being possibly due to the strong statements that I have
made on the matter. The pulpits both of the Church and
of Non-conformity have been busy: Bishop Welldon, Dean
Hensley Henson (a disbeliever), Bishop Taylor Smith
(the Chaplain-General), and many other clergy have
occupied themselves with the matter. Dr. Horton
preached about the "angels" at Manchester; Sir Joseph
Compton Rickett (President of the National Federation
of Free Church Councils) stated that the soldiers at
the front had seen visions and dreamed dreams, and had
given testimony of powers and principalities fighting
for them or against them. Letters come from all the
ends of the earth to the Editor of THE
EVENING NEWS
with theories, beliefs, explanations,
suggestions. It is all somewhat wonderful; one can say
that the whole affair is a psychological phenomenon of
considerable interest, fairly comparable with the great
Russian delusion of last August and September.
* * *
Now it is possible that some persons, judging by the
tone of these remarks of mine, may gather the
impression that I am a profound disbeliever in the
possibility of any intervention of the super-physical
order in the affairs of the physical order. They will
be mistaken if they make this inference; they will be
mistaken if they suppose that I think miracles in
Judaea credible but miracles in France or Flanders
incredible. I hold no such absurdities. But I confess,
very frankly, that I credit none of the "Angels of
Mons" legends, partly because I see, or think I see,
their derivation from my own idle fiction, but chiefly
because I have, so far, not received one jot or tittle
of evidence that should dispose me to belief. It is
idle, indeed, and foolish enough for a man to say: "I
am sure that story is a lie, because the supernatural
element enters into it;" here, indeed, we have the
maggot writhing in the midst of corrupted offal denying
the existence of the sun. But if this fellow be a
fool--as he is--equally foolish is he who says, "If the
tale has anything of the supernatural it is true, and
the less evidence the better;" and I am afraid this
tends to be the attitude of many who call themselves
occultists. I hope that I shall never get to that frame
of mind. So I say, not that super-normal interventions
are impossible, not that they have not happened during
this war--I know nothing as to that point, one way or
the other--but that there is not one atom of evidence
(so far) to support the current stories of the angels
of Mons. For, be it remarked, these stories are
specific stories. They rest on the second, third,
fourth, fifth hand stories told by "a soldier," by "an
officer," by "a Catholic correspondent," by "a nurse,"
by any number of anonymous people. Indeed, names have
been mentioned. A lady's name has been drawn, most
unwarrantably as it appears to me, into the discussion,
and I have no doubt that this lady has been subject to
a good deal of pestering and annoyance. She has written
to the Editor of THE
EVENING NEWS
denying all knowledge of the supposed miracle. The Psychical
Research Society's expert confesses that no real
evidence has been proffered to her Society on the
matter. And then, to my amazement, she accepts as fact
the proposition that some men on the battlefield have
been "hallucinated," and proceeds to give the theory of
sensory hallucination. She forgets that, by her own
showing, there is no reason to suppose that anybody has
been hallucinated at all. Someone (unknown) has met a
nurse (unnamed) who has talked to a soldier (anonymous)
who has seen angels. But THAT is not
evidence; and not even Sam Weller at his gayest would have dared to offer
it as such in the Court of Common Pleas. So far, then,
nothing remotely approaching proof has been offered as
to any supernatural intervention during the Retreat
from Mons. Proof may come; if so, it will be
interesting and more than interesting.
But, taking the affair as it stands at present, how
is it that a nation plunged in materialism of the
grossest kind has accepted idle rumours and gossip of
the supernatural as certain truth? The answer is
contained in the question: it is precisely because our
whole atmosphere is materialist that we are ready to
credit anything--save the truth. Separate a man from
good drink, he will swallow methylated spirit with joy.
Man is created to be inebriated; to be "nobly wild, not
mad." Suffer the Cocoa Prophets and their company to
seduce him in body and spirit, and he will get himself
stuff that will make him ignobly wild and mad indeed.
It took hard, practical men of affairs, business men,
advanced thinkers, Freethinkers, to believe in Madame
Blavatsky and Mahatmas and the famous message from the
Golden Shore: "Judge's plan is right; follow him and
STICK."
And the main responsibility for this
dismal state of affairs undoubtedly lies on the
shoulders of the majority of the clergy of the Church
of England. Christianity, as Mr. W.L. Courtney has so
admirably pointed out, is a great Mystery Religion; it
is the Mystery Religion. Its priests are called to an
awful and tremendous hierurgy; its pontiffs are to be
the pathfinders, the bridge-makers between the world of
sense and the world of spirit. And, in fact, they pass
their time in preaching, not the eternal mysteries, but
a twopenny morality, in changing the Wine of Angels and
the Bread of Heaven into gingerbeer and mixed biscuits:
a sorry transubstantiation, a sad alchemy, as it seems
to me.
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