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Acolyte, v. 3, issue 4, whole no. 12, Fall 1945
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day. The palm must I think be assigned to J. S. Le Fanu, whose stories of "The Watcher" (or "The Familiar"), "Justice Harbottle," "Carmilla," are unsurpassed, while "Schalken the Printer," "Squire Toby's Will," the haunted house in "The House by the Churchyard," "Dickon the Devil," "madam Crowl's Ghost," run them very close. Is it the blend of French and Irish in Le Fanu's descent and surroundings that gives him the knack of infusing ominousness into his atmosphere? He is anyhow an artist in words; who else could have hit on the epithets in this sentence: "The aerial image of the old house for a moment stood before her, with its peculiar malign, sacred and skulking aspect." Other famous stories of Le Fanu there are which are not quite ghost stories---"Green Tea" and "The Room in the Dragon Volant"; and yet another, "The Haunted Baronet," not famous, not even known but to a few, contains some admirable touches, but somehow lacks proportion. Upon mature consideration, I do not think that there are better ghost stories anywhere than the best of Le Fanu's; and among these I should give the first place to "The Familiar" (alias "The Watcher"). (6) It is quite likely that James became infatuated with Le Fanu's stories during childhood, and how this may have come about is indicated by a scene in "A Vignette," which appears to be largely an autobiographical story, inasmuch as the hero, a boy, lives in a rectory on the edge of a park surrounding a manor-hall, as did James. The boy is struck by the sentence (quoted above) about "the aerial image of the old house," which he finds in a bound volume of a magazine. An enthusiasm dating from early youth would account for the fervor of James's somewhat exaggerated devotion to Le Fanu. As to the extent of the latter's direct influence on James's writing, however, opinions differ. Lubbock says, "He had always enjoyed making our flesh creep with ghost stories, and if he had an audience sensitive to such things would read aloud, with great relish, cheerful tales like Mr. Justice Harbottle. For Sheridan le Fanu was his chief inspiration; the activity of corpses in such stories as A School Story would alone prove that. He 'derives' indeed from le Fanu. . . . " (3) A study of the two men's stories, however, does not actually show so many similarities as one might expect. Le Fanu does not depict "the activity of corpses" but usually writes about conventional ghosts, realistically described but not essentially different in nature from those of the popular fiction of his day. In "Green Tea" and "The Familiar," to be sure, the victims are dogged by demonic pursuers, a situation which occurs several times in James; in The House by the Churchyard (1863) Le Fanu introduces (for the first time, I believe) the idea of a spectral and malignant hand for which no body is visible (later used to great effect by W. F. Harvey in "The Beat with Five Fingers"), which James twice employs briefly in dreams of his characters in "The Residence at Whitminster" and "A View from a Hill"; and, of course, the old manor houses that abound in the tales of the gloomy Irishman are common in James as well, though in Le Fanu they are usually dilapidated and run-down if not deserted, while in James they are well-kept and inhabited by well-to-do people. Le Fanu's style, as a rule, is much more leisurely than James's and has a wealth of descriptive and atmospheric detail which James admired but was chary of imitating. Altogether, James, like Lovecraft, was influenced by his predecessors much less than he influenced his followers. In both content and technique he was tellingly original. Unquestionably the most striking examples of his originality in subject-matter are his ghosts and demons. In the first place, they are invariably malignant and loathsome, inspiring extreme horror in their -- 7 --
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day. The palm must I think be assigned to J. S. Le Fanu, whose stories of "The Watcher" (or "The Familiar"), "Justice Harbottle," "Carmilla," are unsurpassed, while "Schalken the Printer," "Squire Toby's Will," the haunted house in "The House by the Churchyard," "Dickon the Devil," "madam Crowl's Ghost," run them very close. Is it the blend of French and Irish in Le Fanu's descent and surroundings that gives him the knack of infusing ominousness into his atmosphere? He is anyhow an artist in words; who else could have hit on the epithets in this sentence: "The aerial image of the old house for a moment stood before her, with its peculiar malign, sacred and skulking aspect." Other famous stories of Le Fanu there are which are not quite ghost stories---"Green Tea" and "The Room in the Dragon Volant"; and yet another, "The Haunted Baronet," not famous, not even known but to a few, contains some admirable touches, but somehow lacks proportion. Upon mature consideration, I do not think that there are better ghost stories anywhere than the best of Le Fanu's; and among these I should give the first place to "The Familiar" (alias "The Watcher"). (6) It is quite likely that James became infatuated with Le Fanu's stories during childhood, and how this may have come about is indicated by a scene in "A Vignette," which appears to be largely an autobiographical story, inasmuch as the hero, a boy, lives in a rectory on the edge of a park surrounding a manor-hall, as did James. The boy is struck by the sentence (quoted above) about "the aerial image of the old house," which he finds in a bound volume of a magazine. An enthusiasm dating from early youth would account for the fervor of James's somewhat exaggerated devotion to Le Fanu. As to the extent of the latter's direct influence on James's writing, however, opinions differ. Lubbock says, "He had always enjoyed making our flesh creep with ghost stories, and if he had an audience sensitive to such things would read aloud, with great relish, cheerful tales like Mr. Justice Harbottle. For Sheridan le Fanu was his chief inspiration; the activity of corpses in such stories as A School Story would alone prove that. He 'derives' indeed from le Fanu. . . . " (3) A study of the two men's stories, however, does not actually show so many similarities as one might expect. Le Fanu does not depict "the activity of corpses" but usually writes about conventional ghosts, realistically described but not essentially different in nature from those of the popular fiction of his day. In "Green Tea" and "The Familiar," to be sure, the victims are dogged by demonic pursuers, a situation which occurs several times in James; in The House by the Churchyard (1863) Le Fanu introduces (for the first time, I believe) the idea of a spectral and malignant hand for which no body is visible (later used to great effect by W. F. Harvey in "The Beat with Five Fingers"), which James twice employs briefly in dreams of his characters in "The Residence at Whitminster" and "A View from a Hill"; and, of course, the old manor houses that abound in the tales of the gloomy Irishman are common in James as well, though in Le Fanu they are usually dilapidated and run-down if not deserted, while in James they are well-kept and inhabited by well-to-do people. Le Fanu's style, as a rule, is much more leisurely than James's and has a wealth of descriptive and atmospheric detail which James admired but was chary of imitating. Altogether, James, like Lovecraft, was influenced by his predecessors much less than he influenced his followers. In both content and technique he was tellingly original. Unquestionably the most striking examples of his originality in subject-matter are his ghosts and demons. In the first place, they are invariably malignant and loathsome, inspiring extreme horror in their -- 7 --
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