Sleeping Dogs

Books are usually forgotten for a reason, and perhaps a common one is simply that a book failed to find an audience on publication. There can be many and varied subsidiary reasons. 

With G. & M. Hayling's Sleeping Dogs  (London: J.W. Arrowsmith, [October] 1923), it seems certainly the case that the book failed to find much readership at all, and it has remained virtually unknown for over a century. Sleeping Dogs is the title stamped on the spine and upper cover of maroon cloth. On the title page it reads: Sleeping Dogs with The Chair and The Burning Glass. That covers all three stories in the book. "Sleeping Dogs" and "The Chair" are both signed M. Hayling. They comprise half the volume, with "Sleeping Dogs" being twice the size of "The Chair." "The Burning Glass" by G. Hayling comprises the second half of the book. 

All three stories are weird fiction. In the title tale, a fifteen-year old boy, Cecil Ware, goes home from school with an unexpected guest who is concerned about the boy's safety, as a number of the boy's father's servants have all gone mad, and there are hints that the father is experimenting on the boy. The story evolves slowly, and gradually reveals that Mr. William Ware has "some rather unusual power which enables him to vitalise inanimate objects such as chairs and tables, and make them move" (p. 74). The implications goes further, in that Ware has stirred up the core of nature, which resents the interference and creates an atmosphere of antagonism. 

"The Chair" is the most straightforward of the three tales. During the Great War some children are evacuated from London and settle into a mysterious house (which works on the nerves of most people, especially the servants). In one room is a carved armchair. The youngest boy Ambrose is drawn to it, and through it he disappears for stretches of time without ever leaving the house. After a long disappearance, drastic efforts are made to defeat the spirit of the chair and save the boy. 

"The Burning Glass" is the most complex of the stories. A young man is sent to help the librarian at an estate catalogue the library, after the owner's death and the inheritance of it by a relative. The librarian is a cleric with hidden and apparently sinister motives. What deepens the mystery of the story is that the causes of actions by the people involved are left murky, and when explained, they do not always satisfy the reader. After the cleric has a seizure, it is discovered that he has defaced a large number of books and written parodies of the contents inside the volumes. Eventually confronted he gives a long patient religious monologue about the soul and what led him to do the things he had done, ending with: "I am not surprised that you sum me up as insane" (p. 263).  Yes, but the story goes on a bit further. 

Sleeping Dogs is an odd collection, and while it doesn't quite earn the status of lost classic, it is worthy of further study and attention. Strangely, I know of no reviews of the book from the time of its original publication. 

I am grateful to Boyd White for recommending the book to me. He also discovered in the January 1, 1921 issue of The Author that  "G. & M. Hayling" was the pseudonym of Misses Gertrude and Mary Shepherd, presumably sisters, with a common enough surname that make them more difficult to track down. Hayling, on the other hand, is uncommon, and perhaps references Hayling Island on the south coast of England in Hampshire, east of Portsmouth. Or perhaps not. 

G. & M. Hayling are known for only one other publication, the novel Tryfield (London: Hodder and Stoughton, [October] 1912). The book has seven long chapters, each devoted to one day of a momentous week. The plot centers on Al Wainwright, the spoiled and disagreeable eleven-year old owner of the country house Tryfield. He has a sister and brother, and they are faced with their widowed mother remarrying a widower surgeon with a son just younger than Al, so Al sets out to ruin everything. The point of view is that of the child, but, as observed by The Bookman, it fails in the depiction of the grown-ups as "irritating unco' guid* and pious" (November 1912). The Argus of Melbourne said: "It is an excellent story, relieved with touches of true humour, and thoroughly wholesome in its study of childhood" (20 December 1912).  The Times Literary Supplement noted "the authors can draw characters. . . . The touch is, here and there, a little uncertain, but it is a sound, wholesome, responsible story, with plenty of humour, the precursor, we hope, of others by the same hands" (16 October 1912). 

 * unco' guid (Scottish) "the rigidly righteous"