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Imagination!, v. 1, issue 9, whole 9, June 1938

Page 13

IMAGINATION! #9 38 June     13

RESSURECTION: A. Machen
[[signature]]Frederick Shroyes[[?]]

Too little has been said in praise of Arthur Machen. If anyone reads this column beside myself (& I might mention that I reread it quite often-& blush) they might take my advice & dig up a few of the yellow-bound bks of this Arthur Machen &--well, if you like your phantasy well written & in a style that might be described as Lovecraftian, you won't be disappointed.
In a bk pub't by Alfred Knopf in 1924 & titled 3 Imposters 7 authored by the aforementioned Arthur Machen...there is a novel labeled, rather prosaicly[[?]], "The Novel of the Black Seal". This story, in my estimation, is one of the finer things that might find a nesting place under the phylum of Phantasy. Old readers of Lovecraft will, in all probability, find their eyes growing moist as they turn the pgs of this bk; & as the horrors are suggested & the events leisurely & maddeningly lead to the culmination of the plot one feels that old hairaising sensation that probably has been conspicuous by its absence in the emotionalives of the hardend phantasiac since he first stood on an end table & drug down a copy of Poe & began to read "The House of Usher". (Remember? You were about 12 at the time & how you hated your Coogan-bobbed hair!)
Prof Gregg, worldfamed authority in the field of Tehnology, (What's Ethnology? Why don't you know that? O, you don't, eh? Do I know?! Why, it's--ah--something-- Aw, hell! I don't know, either. Why doncha lookit up & quit bothering me, huh?) as a recreation has followd, a la Forte, little known rumors & storys of strange & weird occurrences. It has always been his wish to be the Columbus of the Unknown, to rediscover Lost Atlantis & all the old & supposedly mythical lands & creatures of folklore & of the old wives tales. It was his belief that the storys of fairys, the legend of the exchange of a changeling for a humsn baby & the age old rumors of strange dwellers of the mts & the desolate moors ...were all based on fact & that science had merely scratcht the surface of wonders, both beautiful & horrible, that lay just beyond our present knowledge & perceptions. Amongst the data he had collected was an old stone, 1000s of yrs old with ancient hieroglyphics carved upon it, & the information that those same hieroglyphics had been found on a block of sandstone in a desolate part of England--& his informant swore that these markings dated back just 15 yrs! So this wild, desolate land goes Prof Gregg, his eyes alite with the flame of the discoverer, his brain areel with the thot that perhaps there still well in the mts of that land weird creatures who were the basis of the old fairyarns.
Here amongst old Druidic ruins he finds a little village which he decides to make the hqs of his research. He discovers that various people from this little antiquated village have disapeard in the mts; some, before the very eyes of their fellowmen. Furthermore, there is in the village a woman who once was lost in the mts, & when she was found...she was insane. In due course of time she gave birth to a queer mess, human in some respects but unable to speak, with the exception of emitting serpentlike noises. He experiments with this beast-boy & one nite the creature changes for a moment into a serpentlike thing which, threshing & coiling about, moves a huge bust in the Prof's study; a bust so heavy & hi on the wall that it would have required the strength of many men to budge it, let alone entirely move it.
One the villagers is found dead, his head bludgeond in with a huge prehistoriclub. Experiments prove the weapon which killd him could have been wielded by no human creature. Spurd on by these substantiations of his theory of the Prof finally succeeds in deciphering the marks found on the ancient stone; & when he reads the contents...he hurriedly burns the translation!

Then, filld with a premonition he'll never return, as the shrouds of evening fall on the wild, haunted land he leaves the flickering lite ofthe village behind him, walks past the huge, somber ruins of a supposedly dead race, & disappears into the darkness of the lost land of the dwellers unknown and horrible. Never to return.

Saving...

IMAGINATION! #9 38 June 13 RESSURECTION: A. Machen [[signature]]Frederick Shroyes[[?]] Too little has been said in praise of Arthur Machen. If anyone reads this column beside myself (& I might mention that I reread it quite often-& blush) they might take my advice & dig up a few of the yellow-bound bks of this Arthur Machen &--well, if you like your phantasy well written & in a style that might be described as Lovecraftian, you won't be disappointed. In a bk pub't by Alfred Knopf in 1924 & titled 3 Imposters 7 authored by the aforementioned Arthur Machen...there is a novel labeled, rather prosaicly[[?]], "The Novel of the Black Seal". This story, in my estimation, is one of the finer things that might find a nesting place under the phylum of Phantasy. Old readers of Lovecraft will, in all probability, find their eyes growing moist as they turn the pgs of this bk; & as the horrors are suggested & the events leisurely & maddeningly lead to the culmination of the plot one feels that old hairaising sensation that probably has been conspicuous by its absence in the emotionalives of the hardend phantasiac since he first stood on an end table & drug down a copy of Poe & began to read "The House of Usher". (Remember? You were about 12 at the time & how you hated your Coogan-bobbed hair!) Prof Gregg, worldfamed authority in the field of Tehnology, (What's Ethnology? Why don't you know that? O, you don't, eh? Do I know?! Why, it's--ah--something-- Aw, hell! I don't know, either. Why doncha lookit up & quit bothering me, huh?) as a recreation has followd, a la Forte, little known rumors & storys of strange & weird occurrences. It has always been his wish to be the Columbus of the Unknown, to rediscover Lost Atlantis & all the old & supposedly mythical lands & creatures of folklore & of the old wives tales. It was his belief that the storys of fairys, the legend of the exchange of a changeling for a humsn baby & the age old rumors of strange dwellers of the mts & the desolate moors ...were all based on fact & that science had merely scratcht the surface of wonders, both beautiful & horrible, that lay just beyond our present knowledge & perceptions. Amongst the data he had collected was an old stone, 1000s of yrs old with ancient hieroglyphics carved upon it, & the information that those same hieroglyphics had been found on a block of sandstone in a desolate part of England--& his informant swore that these markings dated back just 15 yrs! So this wild, desolate land goes Prof Gregg, his eyes alite with the flame of the discoverer, his brain areel with the thot that perhaps there still well in the mts of that land weird creatures who were the basis of the old fairyarns. Here amongst old Druidic ruins he finds a little village which he decides to make the hqs of his research. He discovers that various people from this little antiquated village have disapeard in the mts; some, before the very eyes of their fellowmen. Furthermore, there is in the village a woman who once was lost in the mts, & when she was found...she was insane. In due course of time she gave birth to a queer mess, human in some respects but unable to speak, with the exception of emitting serpentlike noises. He experiments with this beast-boy & one nite the creature changes for a moment into a serpentlike thing which, threshing & coiling about, moves a huge bust in the Prof's study; a bust so heavy & hi on the wall that it would have required the strength of many men to budge it, let alone entirely move it. One the villagers is found dead, his head bludgeond in with a huge prehistoriclub. Experiments prove the weapon which killd him could have been wielded by no human creature. Spurd on by these substantiations of his theory of the Prof finally succeeds in deciphering the marks found on the ancient stone; & when he reads the contents...he hurriedly burns the translation! Then, filld with a premonition he'll never return, as the shrouds of evening fall on the wild, haunted land he leaves the flickering lite ofthe village behind him, walks past the huge, somber ruins of a supposedly dead race, & disappears into the darkness of the lost land of the dwellers unknown and horrible. Never to return.