The Centenary of "The Smoking Leg and Other Stories" by John Metcalfe

 The 1925 Jarrolds dust-wrapper

John Metcalfe (1891-1965) is remembered primarily as a writer of “strange stories”—a precursor to Robert Aickman in terms of subtlety and ambiguity. Metcalfe’s first book, The Smoking Leg and Other Stories (Jarrolds), reached its centenary on September 18th. It came out when Metcalfe was a few weeks shy of his 34th birthday. He would go on to publish five novels (including the slow and subtle My Cousin Geoffrey), two novellas (Brenner’s Boy and The Feasting Dead, published as slim books), another short story collection (Judas and Other Stories), and a good number of uncollected tales. The Smoking Leg and Other Stories was unusual in that only five of its eighteen tales are known to have had previous periodical publication, and that as a book the volume was reprinted not once, but twice, in 1926 and 1927 respectively.

The earliest story was “The Bad Lands” published in Land and Water, 15 April 1920. The other four previously published stories all date to March-May of 1925, the most significant being the title story itself, published in The London Mercury for May. A US edition, with a striking dust-wrapper, was published by Doubleday, Page & Company on 14 November 1926.

In England, The Guardian noted:

To make an improbable story plausible is often the most difficult problem of the historian of the psychic or the macabre, and it is even more often an insoluble problem. Mr. Metcalfe has discovered a most paradoxical solution: in this volume of mysterious adventure he makes no attempt to account for anything; he simply poses as an impartial observer of strange happenings  who does not particularly care whether he is believed or not. And one must admit that by ignoring the difficulty he overcomes it. . . .  Mr. Metcalfe may congratulate himself that he has succeeded in keeping up a very uniform standard throughout the book. (16 October 1925)

 The 1926 US dust-wrapper

A few other contemporary reviewers made  another important point—that  “The Smoking Leg,” the lead story in the book, is not Metcalfe’s best, and it distracts from the higher quality of the bulk of the book. Frederick P. Mayer called it “a deal of rattling clap-trap and machine-made horror” (The Literary Digest International Book Review, August 1926). In the TLS, Orlo Williams noted that the story  “illustrates the chief weakness from which Mr. John Metcalfe, its author, suffers. He too obviously strains after the shocking, the horrible, the unexpected” (1 October 1925).  “The Smoking Leg” begins in Burma, and follows a lascar with a magical jewel implanted in his knee together with an amulet, the latter to restrain the jewel’s power. The other pulpish story in the volume is “Nightmare Jack,” which also deals with  a Burmese god and magical rubies. Such stories are by no means poor, but they do not show off Metcalfe’s real talents, which lie in psychological subtleties inherent in his descriptions.

Most of the collection is less exotic that the two pulpish tales, and more focused on England and London.  To me, one of the very best is his first published story, “The Bad Lands,” where a patient on his walks encounters an alternate, truly evil land.  “The Double Admiral” is a baffling tales of a quest to find a blur on the ocean horizon—the admiral ends up dead, and the others in the boat see a vision of themselves in another boat with the admiral apparently alive. “The Flying Tower” deals with the haunting at a cliffside folly. “The Grey House” shows, apparently, a house in more than one world.  The ambiguities and the borderline supernaturalisms make the collection as a whole especially intriguing.

 The 1927 Jarrolds 3rd Printing 

The Centenary of 'Thus Far' by J.C. Snaith

 

Thus Far (1925) by J.C. Snaith, which celebrates its centenary this month, is an uncanny SF thriller written in a vigorous and vivid style by this versatile writer of popular fiction and eccentric fantasies. Snaith was 49 years old and already the author of about 28 novels from 1895 onwards.

I wrote about him in my essay 'Possible Masterpieces: The Novels of J.C. Snaith’ (Haunted By Books, 2015). In this I noted that several critics thought he had almost written a masterpiece, but did not agree which of his books that was. They include Willow the King (1899), a Pickwickian cricketing yarn, Henry Northcote (1906), about the sensational defence at a seemingly hopeless capital trial, and William Jordan Junior (1907), about a mystical young scholar completely innocent of the modern world.

Thus Far is not in that category: it is unaffectedly commercial fiction which uses some very familiar devices but which the reader can still rather relish. The narrator receives an urgent summons from an old friend, an eminent but erratic scientist, who feels he is in ‘terrible danger’ but does not say why. He hastens to his friend’s remote house, The Hermitage, in the New Forest, Hampshire. (The ‘New’ Forest is 900 years old and not a forest in the usual sense but mostly heath. It was new when the Normans designated it as a royal hunting estate).

He arrives too late. A gruesome discovery is soon made and, because of the intricate, delicate nature of the case, Scotland Yard sends in a semi-official amateur detective, complete with monocle and rowing club silk tie, who proves to be a Cambridge varsity chum of the narrator. A romance interest is offered through the young niece and ward of the doomed scholar, who seems to be holding back a secret. Later, an Aunt in the tradition of Bertie Wooster’s redoubtable relations, ‘as English as an east wind’ and with ‘the astringency of home-grown apples or cranberries’, enlivens the scene.

A few clues emerge about the scientist’s work in his private laboratory: he had brought back from deepest Africa a new species of ape that might be the Darwinian ‘missing link’; he was on the verge of discovering a new element; he was studying the stars; he thought science might be about to make disastrous discoveries and should hold back (‘thus far shall ye go and no farther’). But which of these contributed to his fate?

There are some distinctly Conan Doyle-like aspects to the novel in its combination of keen-eyed detection with a macabre theme, and the plot in particular might appear to suggest ‘The Adventure of the Creeping Man’, first published in The Strand Magazine in March 1923, two and half years earlier. Whether Snaith was inspired by this to try an even wilder, stranger version, or made his own way to a similar theme is not clear. There are two literary allusions in the text, one to Poe’s ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’, with its Borneo ape, and the other to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Both may shed light on what has happened. I’d add that there is a third literary predecessor in Arthur Machen’s The Great God Pan, also about a scientist’s unwise experiment and its monstrous outcome. Indeed, some aspects seem to echo the figure of Helen Vaughan.

It will not, I hope, be giving too much away to say that Snaith’s book, while drawing on all these tales, also reflects his own particular preoccupation. The theme of the individual set far apart from his fellows by extraordinary powers or eccentric perspectives clearly interested Snaith greatly, since he returns to it often in his fiction. But whereas his protagonists are often benevolent, albeit ill at ease with the rest of humanity, in this plot the prodigy is an intensely disturbing figure. He has hypnotic powers, including through thought projection at a distance, preternatural physical strength, merciless cunning and an utterly amoral outlook. This egoistic mastermind foresees that Nature will find it necessary to eliminate humanity before it wreaks too much damage, and is not averse to giving it a helping hand.

A criticism that might be made of the book is that some of the plot mechanics are a bit creaky: characters behaving in ways that seems improbable but which are needed for the plot to work. Indeed, Snaith was evidently uneasy about this himself, as he has his narrator say several times that his actions must in retrospect seem unlikely, but he puts this down to the high tension of the situation or the need to honour competing allegiances. It’s a good try, but it doesn’t quite convince. However, if every character in a thriller always acted entirely cautiously and prudently the genre would lose quite a few classics ('Whatever you do, sir, don't go across that there moor at night!' 'Oh, all right then, I won't. Thanks for the advice').  The reader will just have to indulge this aspect.

And the book does have some effective qualities. It is pacy, the prose is brisk, succinct, even curt, and the atmosphere of brooding menace is well-established. The debonair detective is attractive, in the Lord Peter Wimsey mode, and the fantastical elements are deftly handled. It is a bit of a pot-boiler, but the stew is savoury and sharply-seasoned. It would have made a splendid black and white science fiction B movie with wobbling sets, gloomy lighting, extravagant make-up and ham acting. Perhaps some moody avant-gardeist might still discover it. 

(Mark Valentine)

Spitalfields Life: 'The Bookshops of Old London'

   

The Spitalfields Life blog by the pseudonymous 'The Gentle Author' is always full of fascinating information about the byways of London, including interviews with shopkeepers, tradespeople, hobbyists and others which give interesting insights into their life and occupation. 

The latest post celebrates The Bookshops of Old London, with a personal recollection by the author of his days as an impoverished youth still determined to seek out rare books, and with atmospheric black and white photographs by Richard Brown of the bookshops as they were in 1971. These enjoyable depict both neat, orderly, elegant emporia and those with tottering columns and shambling shelves. 'It made me realise how much I miss them all now that they have mostly vanished from the streets,' The Gentle Author repines. 

It is true that many familiar names are no longer to be seen in Charing Cross Road and its purlieus, and quite natural that the glory days of youthful book collecting will be remembered with affection. However, all is not bitter. There are still about two dozen second-hand bookshops in the postal districts of West Central and East Central London, according to the ever-helpful listings at The Book Guide, and of course many more in the widening ripples of the city. Any Machenesque wanderer exploring the obscurer roads and regions of the capital in quest of a London Adventure may still chance upon them. 

I was amused to find the term 'Old London', which to me might denote Victorian or Edwardian times, is here applied to the Nineteen Seventies, a time I remember and still regard as contemporary. But then I reflected that it is, after all, half a century ago . . . 

(Mark Valentine) 

Image:  'E. Joseph of Charing Cross Rd, established 1885', by Richard Brown, from The London Bookshop (Private Libraries Association, 1971)

The Centenary of 'Christina Alberta's Father' by H.G. Wells: A Guest Post by John Howard

The novels that H.G. Wells published after the end of the Belle Époque seem to get something of a bad rap. The early scientific romances and the comic and social novels of the Edwardian years have largely stayed in print since their original appearance, but Wells’ later novels tend to be overshadowed, dismissed for verging on the polemical and not keeping up with literary trends. It is true that Wells seemed to concentrate on non-fiction, especially his three great attempts to systematise and make accessible whole fields of human knowledge: The Outline of History (1920), The Science of Life (1930), and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind (1931). And there were the numerous other books in which he addressed current affairs and fired-off solutions to the world’s problems, charting the way forward to a socialist future of peace and prosperity for all – if only his sane and reasonable suggestions were adopted. Wells wrote his books and a tremendous amount of journalism while maintaining a headlong schedule – travelling widely, speaking at meetings and conferences, visiting and talking at length with influential people including world leaders.

Yet in most years Wells still published at least one novel – often a very substantial one. Although they sometimes did serve (at least in part) as fictional vehicles for Wells’ ongoing concerns and ideas, that was nothing new. Many of the novels of the inter-war period are full of interesting and characteristically Wellsian things: vivid incident and character, with sharp observation and not a little humour along the way.

In addition to everything else, the turbulence of Wells’ private life – actually not always particularly private – was legendary. This was particularly so during 1923, when his relationship of ten years with Rebecca West conclusively ended. It was during this fraught period for Wells that he wrote what Adam Roberts, in H.G. Wells: A Literary Life (2019), refers to as ‘one of his oddest, most striking and most unjustly overlooked novels’ (321). This is Christina Alberta’s Father, first published one hundred years ago in September 1925.

Christina Alberta’s father is Albert Preemby. Wells opens by proclaiming ‘This is the story of a certain Mr Preemby… Some remarkable experiences came to him. […] it is a story of London in the age of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, broadcasting, and the first Labour peers.’ Preemby starts out as another of Wells’ ‘little men’: of humble origin, put-upon and dominated by other people and their circumstances. While still a very young man Preemby meets Christine Hossett and quickly finds himself married: ‘He was carried over his marriage as a man might be carried over a weir’ (16). Christina Alberta, their only child, is born soon after the wedding, and her father settles down to family life and the laundry owned by his wife’s family. Denied any real involvement in the business, Preemby spends his time reading, particularly ‘ancient history, astronomy, astrology, and mystical works. He became deeply interested in the problem of the pyramids and in the probable history of the lost continent of Atlantis’ (17).

Twenty years go by, and Preemby finds himself a widower and single parent. Father and daughter emerge from the shadow of Christine Preemby. Christina Alberta soon realises that ‘Mother had kept him dried up for nearly twenty years, but now he was germinating and nobody could tell what sort of thing he might become’ (31). Selling the business, they embark on a life in boarding houses and meet people who live on the borders of bohemianism. A dispute over spiritualism between two fellow boarders leads to Preemby taking part in a séance – and it is then revealed to him that he is Sargon the King of Kings, ‘Lord of Akkadia and Sumeria […] come back as Lord of the World’ (87).

Sargon disappears. Christina Alberta and her friend, the author Paul Lambone, walk the streets looking for him. They miss him at Buckingham Palace, where they find that he might have been planning to offer an audience to George V. To Sargon Trafalgar Square was ‘Just a little patch this was in one of his cities. For, you see, by the lapse of time and the development of his ancient empire, he was the rightful owner and ruler of this city and of every other city in the world. And he had come back to heal the swarming world’s disorders and reinstate the deep peace of old Sumeria once again’ (106). After looking out over London from the dome of St Paul’s, Sargon decides to reveal himself. He attracts his first ‘disciples’ and swiftly loses them – except for the young journalist Bobby Roothing, who turns out to be Sargon’s saviour in the troubled days and weeks that follow.

At this time an ambiguity in the novel’s title is also revealed – or rather confirmed, as hints were sown in the first two chapters. Christina Alberta accepts the reality of the situation. Dr Devizes is her biological father, and they agree to regard themselves as cousins; Sargon remains her ‘little Daddy’.

As Sargon undergoes what will be his final illness he explains: ‘I am Sargon, but in a rather different sense from what I had imagined. […] I am not exclusively Sargon. You – you perhaps are still unawakened – but you are Sargon too. We are all descended from Sargon […] We all inherit. […] Of course, everybody is really Sargon King of Kings, and everybody ought to take hold of all the world and save it and rule it just as I have got to do. (227-9). Wells has moved away from his Edwardian dreams of a modern utopian world ruled by an order of ‘Samurai’ to something very different – and much more approachable, although just as problematic. This was not to last. For example, in Wells’ film Things to Come (1936) the remnants of civilisation are saved by a small elite: the ‘freemasonry of science’ operating as ‘Wings Over the World’.

In Christina Alberta’s Father, as Adam Roberts notes: ‘Wells is asserting the fundamental and essentially spiritual dignity of even the most overlooked and neglected of human beings. The point of this novel, in other words, is that Preemby is a king not despite being (in Jung’s cruel but accurate phrase) a ‘midget personality’, but because of it: that we are all great-souled and royal no matter how unprepossessing our exteriors’ (321-24).

Perhaps there is some hope after all.

(John Howard)