Folklands: The Forgotten Henges

The Folklands podcast is ‘a journey in the hidden corners of England and its folklore with writer/actors Tim Downie and Justin Chubb.’

In early October last year Ray Russell and I met the charming duo at the Thornborough Henges prehistoric site in North Yorkshire for a highly enjoyable day's wandering and discussion on ancient monuments, supernatural fiction and folklore. ‘The Forgotten Henges’ is now available for listening. As part of this we talk about some ghost stories with a strong sense of place, including work by Arthur Machen, Mary Butts, Sarban, Walter de la Mare. The episode also includes a reading from my story 'Except Seven'.

RIP Mark Samuels [by R.B. Russell]

We are very sorry to hear that the author Mark Samuels passed away peacefully in his sleep on the night of 2nd/3rd December, aged 56 (writes R B Russell on behalf of The Friends of Arthur Machen). We would like to pass on condolences to the family and friends of Mark, who will be known to many as the author of a number of books in the weird fiction genre, beginning with his collection The White Hands and Other Weird Tales in 2003.  More recent fiction has been scheduled for what will now be posthumous publication.

Mark was a member of the original Arthur Machen Society in the 1990s, and would later become active in its successor, the Friends of Arthur Machen, becoming Secretary for two different terms. He will be remembered from many meetings of the Friends (from annual dinners, to more ad hoc pub crawls), as great company; he was a knowledgeable and passionate advocate for writers such as Machen, Lovecraft and Ligotti, as well as enjoying, like Machen, good conversation, drink, food and tobacco.

I first met Mark in the 1990s through the Society and we met many times in London and Wales, sharing an interest not only in weird fiction, but authors of the 1890s. I remember having a long conversation with Mark about Edgar Allan Poe’s philosophy of ‘unity of effect’ in the short story, and published his essay on the subject, ‘Brilliance beyond Darkness’ in 1994. Mark’s own fiction was often at its best when he employed Poe’s philosophy: Mark was not particularly interested in writing stories set in recognisable and benign present day settings into which the weird or uncanny might slowly intrude.

From the outset, Mark’s stories take place in a strange and decaying world—one that is often blighted, if not diseased. This gives his fiction a bleak vision and an intensity that has been admired by many readers as well as fellow-authors, since the first magazine appearances of his stories in the 1980s. Apart from in his own books, his stories have been published in such prestigious anthologies as The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror, Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror, A Mountain Walks, and The Weird.

Mark’s first great literary influence was H.P. Lovecraft, but Machen was to become an equally strong influence. Mark wrote:

'Machen had a significant advantage over Lovecraft for me, in that he was a Londoner like myself. So I could immediately identify with the locales he describes in much of his fiction in a way that I couldn’t with Lovecraft’s Providence and Rhode Island. Machen’s vision of London as some interminable labyrinth of mysterious wonder and horror took firmer hold of my imagination, since I experienced it on a daily basis. Now one could argue that this is just an accident of birth and has no bearing on their respective literary merits, which I think is true. In terms of their contribution to the literary weird continuum, I would place them on an approximately equal level. I don’t think Machen’s work is, overall, necessarily superior to Lovecraft’s. . . . Both men were remarkable prose-stylists who recognised that the creation of atmosphere in a supernatural horror tale required a language of heightened sensitivity.'

Mark Samuels was not averse to controversy. I had a couple of bust-ups with him (I was not without some degree of blame both times) and we had some profound disagreements, but we always managed to put those things behind us, sit down over a drink, and resume our friendship. I was delighted when (post disagreements) he dedicated his 2011 Chômu Press edition of The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Stories to me.

Mark had become a Roman Catholic in his mid-twenties, and discussed his faith in relation to his literary interests and writings in a fascinating interview with Matt Cardin in 2000. On his death, Mark received, as was his request, Last Rites.

In recent years Mark had moved to King’s Langley, just outside of London. He was living close to his partner, Madeleine, with whom he planned his future. When The Friends of Arthur Machen meet in Hay on Wye in March, in the midst of the bookish and Machenian talk, he will be sorely missed, and we will raise a glass to him. In the wider world of weird literature, he will continue to be read.

A Mark Samuels Bibliography

Novels

 A Pilgrim Stranger, self published 2017

Witch-Cult Abbey, Zagava, 2021

Novellas

The Face of Twilight, PS Publishing, 2006, reprinted self published 2016

Glyphotech, PS Publishing, 2008

Short Story Collections

The White Hands and Other Weird Tales, Tartarus Press, 2003 (translated as Die Weißen Hände und andere Geschichten des Grauens)

Black Altars, Rainfall Books, 2003

The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Stories, Ex Occidente Press, 2010, reprinted as The Man Who Collected Machen and Other Weird Tales, Chômu Press, 2011

Written in Darkness, Egaeus Press, 2014, Chômu Press, 2017

Glyphotech and Other Macabre Processes, self published 2016

The Prozess Manifestations, Zagava, 2017

The Age of Decayed Futurity: The Best of Mark Samuels, Hippocampus Press, 2020

Essays

Prophecies and Dooms, self published, 2018

(R B Russell)

Guest Post - Robert Aickman's "Holiday Photographs" - R B Russell

Robert Aickman King at Doniert’s Stone, St Coleer, Oct 1979
(photo by Jean Richardson)

Adam Scovell recently posted on his “Celluloid Wicker Man” blog what he calls “Robert Aickman’s Holiday Photos”. He is entirely right to suggest that the photographs are atmospheric and open to interpretation. We are privileged to see Aickman relaxed, on outings for pleasure, but we can never quite know what he is thinking, or share anything really tangible of his experiences. It is tempting to project our own ideas onto the photographs, informed by our reading of the author’s strange tales. Scovell’s own interpretations are poetic, and he is clearly sympathetic to Robert Aickman and his strange fiction. But the photographs are not quite as mysterious as he would like to make out.

Robert Aickman, Gatehouse, Burton Agnes Hall, Oct 1975
(photo by Jean Richardson)

All of the images have been ripped from Robert Aickman: Author of Strange Tales, a documentary made by myself and Rosalie Parker for Tartarus Press. (You can watch the whole thing here). Despite claims that nobody knows who took the photos, the film makes it obvious that they were all made by Aickman’s close friend, Jean Richardson (who owns the copyright on them.) They document a period from between 1975-1979 and were taken on a number of different “Trust House Forte Bargain Breaks” that Aickman took with Richardson. Jean gives a full account of her relationship with Robert, and context to the photos, in her essay in the Faber paperback reprint of Cold Hand in Mine.

Robert Aickman, Statsfield Saye House, April 1976
(photo by Jean Richardson)

Adam Scovell reproduces the image of Aickman at the Grave of Copenhagen, the Duke of Wellington’s charger, and he is quite right to suggest that “Even writing the phrase ‘the grave of the horse’ seems impossibly Aickman-esque.” As the Duke of Wellington’s charger apparently died of eating too much cake, the whole story becomes even more surreal.

Robert Aickman, Filey, East Yorkshire, October 1975
(photo by Jean Richardson)

Unfortunately, the Copenhagen photograph is used to try and pin down the location of the other photos, and it is assumed that they were all taken on the same trip. Seeing Aickman at the coast, it is assumed that he was somewhere on the South Downs, and it is believed that the image of him relaxing on a menhir was also nearby. However, the seaside photo was taken at Filey in East Yorkshire, while the other was at St Coleer in Cornwall. They are 400 miles from each other, and the photos were taken four years apart. The blogger has been led astray by the hard-wearing nature of Aickman’s blue pullover. (Or am I making erroneous assumptions—did Aickman have more than one blue pullover?) It is just as misleading to use the frequent appearance of Aickman’s tartan thermos flask to link photographs.

Robert Aickman on the sea wall near Bradwell, Essex, September 1975
(photo by Jean Richardson)

Robert Aickman with his thermos flask.
(photo by Jean Richardson)

The suggestion is made that the photos are like Aickman’s stories—faded and impossible for us to understand, but this does an injustice (albeit a romantic one), to both the photographs and the stories. Jean Richardson’s snapshots were taken at very specific places at very identifiable times, in just the same way that Aickman’s stories were often inspired by very precise times and places. Take, for instance, the stories in Sub Rosa, for which Aickman supplied “Story Notes”:

"‘The Unsettled Dust’ is based upon a visit to Wimpole Hall . . . The dust in the story is authentic . . . ‘The Houses of the Russians’ . . . is based upon the Finnish town of Savonlinna. . . . The cathedral in ‘The Cicerones’ . . . was at Antwerp, but the events described in the story happened to me so precisely (almost) that I moved the whole thing, including all the detail, to the cathedral at Ghent . . . There are such establishments as are described in ‘Into the Wood’ . . . The town referred to in the story is Östersund, which, in my opinion, is much as I describe it, and the lake is Lake Storsjön, complete with monster (visit the local museum for further details). . . . Everything in ‘Ravissante’ is topographically correct, and all the Belgian painters named, exist; their works being every bit as remarkable as is implied . . . ‘The Inner Room’ . . . is based simply upon looking into the window of a toyshop in Hounslow . . . About ‘Never Visit Venice’ I can only remark that the ‘large inscriptions daubed by supporters of the previous Italian regime’ were still in the position described when I was there in about 1962. . . ."

Jean Richardson, Mulgrave Oct 1975
(photo by Robert Aickman)

My favourite line in the whole “Celluloid Wicker Man” blog has to be the one in which Aickman is described, in the snapshot taken at the grave of Copenhagen, as “unblinking”. How frightening would it be if, looking out of a photograph from the distance of nearly half a century, the author of such hauntingly strange tales did appear to blink at us?

R B Russell

Guest Post - The Aickman Archive by R B Russell & Rosalie Parker

In 2014, after several years wondering why Bowling Green University Library seemed to have such an odd and incomplete collection of material by Robert Aickman, we discovered that the author’s full literary archive was still in private hands here in the United Kingdom. It had been passed on to Heather Smith, a friend of Aickman’s and his literary executor (after the death of his original executor, Felice Pearson).

We visited Heather and Graham Smith to consult the archive and spent many fascinating hours looking through it and talking to them about their friendship and Waterways campaigning with Aickman. We were also able to make a full inventory of the archive which contains, among other material, the finished typescripts of nearly all of the forty-eight strange short stories for which Aickman is acclaimed, as well as his longer works of fiction, autobiography, philosophy and non-fiction. Aickman also kept copies of most of his published and unpublished writings, as well as professional and personal correspondence.

It was through Heather and Graham’s enthusiasm, generosity and friendship that we were able to put together and publish The Strangers (Tartarus Press, 2015), a collection of previously unpublished and uncollected writings by Aickman. Reading the typescript of the title story we felt that it was as good as any of his published tales. (We later learned from Aickman’s friend Jean Richardson that ‘The Strangers’ had probably not been offered for publication because it too closely described living people.) Two stories that we published in the book were subsequently selected for annual ‘Year's Best’ anthologies.

Several years before this, Leslie Gardner at Artellus Ltd (for decades the literary agents for Robert Aickman’s work) had first mentioned to Heather that she might consign the Aickman archive to a library so that it could be properly conserved and made easily available to researchers. Finding a home for the archive was conducted by Leslie’s contact, Peter Grogan (formerly of the Gekoski group), whose knowledge of the international market in this field cannot be underestimated. The result of Peter’s skilful work has been the acquisition of the archive by the British Library — the best possible home for this treasure trove.

It has taken some time for the Aickman archive to be collated and the acquisition announced, but it will soon be available at the British Library in central London. (Aickman’s waterways archive can be likewise consulted at the National Archives in Kew, although there are also a few waterways papers at the Boat Museum at Ellesmere Port.)

To celebrate the acquisition of the archive, the British Library is hosting an evening of readings and discussion with special guests including Ramsey Campbell, Leslie Gardner, and Jeremy Dyson. ‘Even Stranger Things: A Night for Robert Aickman’ will be held on Fri 10 Nov 2017, 19:00 - 20:30. Tickets are available from the box office.