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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 1, December 1943
Page 4
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instead of fear the expressions on their faces evoke her maternal compassion for them. Henceforth the sight of the apparition no long brings disaster upon the watcher. While there are touches of sentimentality in this tale they do not by any means render it inferior. "The Thing in the Hall", here included, may also be found in The Best Ghost Stories (1924) edited by Bohun Lunch (published in England as A Muster of Ghosts); here is unfolded a description of an elemental that haunted the room of a Cambridge student. Benson is at his best in many descriptive passages of this story and his careful delineation, not of the elemental itself, but of its shad-ow---"it was like...some enormous slug, legless and fat, some two feet high and about four feet long...one end of it was a head shaped like the head of a seal, with open mouth and panting tongue"---and his later recounting the elemental's attack on a medium there are dune with a consummate artistry that is truly envi-able. The variety of the sixteen tales if The Room in the Tower is indeed great enough to satisfy the most discriminating reader, Modernists will probab-ly be pleased to note that Benson does not rely on the Victorian ghost through-out, but even goes so far as to include the apparition of a motor-car in one of the stories ("The Dust Cloud"). "The Confession of Charles Linkworth" involves the return for absolution of an executed mruderer who died unconfessed; "Gavon's Eve" describes the fate of two lovers near a pool on a night when evil powers are reputed to return to a near by pagan altar; and "At Abdul Ali's Grave" takes the reader within the shadows of Egypt's pyramids to tell of black magic and thought transference. What Anthony Boucher has called the therianthropy themeis enlarged upon with deft realistic touches in "The Shootings of Achnaleish", wherein the provincial superstition of a human transformation into a black hare is artistically recounted. Whether Benson held any actual belief in spiritualism, or merely found its close contact open-mindedly interesting cannot be determined accurately, but the extent to which characters his stories discuss it, together with the consistency with which the pro-'s win out argumentatively even the con-'s---if only by inference---breeds more than a suspicion that the author's inclinations tended toward the former. Mention has already been made above of cases where the spiritualistic rituals entered the scenes portrayed, and fully one-half of "Outside the Door" is devoted to animated discussions of the subject. However, it must be made clear that never does Benson depend upon the stock devices of either spiritualism or occultism to furnish material, for the physical response which his climaxes so often impart even to a veteran reader. "Outside the Door" (which connoisseurs will be interested to compare with William Hope Hodgson's "Whistling Room", from Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder) is a case in point. The high point of the story is reached not in the explanation of supernatural happenings, but rather in their actual telling. The same holds true for other instances of the use of spiritualism, both in The Room in the Tower and the author's remain--ing collections. Abnormal psychology
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instead of fear the expressions on their faces evoke her maternal compassion for them. Henceforth the sight of the apparition no long brings disaster upon the watcher. While there are touches of sentimentality in this tale they do not by any means render it inferior. "The Thing in the Hall", here included, may also be found in The Best Ghost Stories (1924) edited by Bohun Lunch (published in England as A Muster of Ghosts); here is unfolded a description of an elemental that haunted the room of a Cambridge student. Benson is at his best in many descriptive passages of this story and his careful delineation, not of the elemental itself, but of its shad-ow---"it was like...some enormous slug, legless and fat, some two feet high and about four feet long...one end of it was a head shaped like the head of a seal, with open mouth and panting tongue"---and his later recounting the elemental's attack on a medium there are dune with a consummate artistry that is truly envi-able. The variety of the sixteen tales if The Room in the Tower is indeed great enough to satisfy the most discriminating reader, Modernists will probab-ly be pleased to note that Benson does not rely on the Victorian ghost through-out, but even goes so far as to include the apparition of a motor-car in one of the stories ("The Dust Cloud"). "The Confession of Charles Linkworth" involves the return for absolution of an executed mruderer who died unconfessed; "Gavon's Eve" describes the fate of two lovers near a pool on a night when evil powers are reputed to return to a near by pagan altar; and "At Abdul Ali's Grave" takes the reader within the shadows of Egypt's pyramids to tell of black magic and thought transference. What Anthony Boucher has called the therianthropy themeis enlarged upon with deft realistic touches in "The Shootings of Achnaleish", wherein the provincial superstition of a human transformation into a black hare is artistically recounted. Whether Benson held any actual belief in spiritualism, or merely found its close contact open-mindedly interesting cannot be determined accurately, but the extent to which characters his stories discuss it, together with the consistency with which the pro-'s win out argumentatively even the con-'s---if only by inference---breeds more than a suspicion that the author's inclinations tended toward the former. Mention has already been made above of cases where the spiritualistic rituals entered the scenes portrayed, and fully one-half of "Outside the Door" is devoted to animated discussions of the subject. However, it must be made clear that never does Benson depend upon the stock devices of either spiritualism or occultism to furnish material, for the physical response which his climaxes so often impart even to a veteran reader. "Outside the Door" (which connoisseurs will be interested to compare with William Hope Hodgson's "Whistling Room", from Carnacki, the Ghost-Finder) is a case in point. The high point of the story is reached not in the explanation of supernatural happenings, but rather in their actual telling. The same holds true for other instances of the use of spiritualism, both in The Room in the Tower and the author's remain--ing collections. Abnormal psychology
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