The Skeleton Clutch; or, The Goblet of Gore

The story goes that Melbourne bookseller, John P. Quaine, issued a sale catalogue in 1931 that included two phantom titles, The Skeleton Clutch; or, The Goblet of Gore (E. Lloyd, 1841), and Sawney Beane, The Man-Eater of Midlothian (E. Lloyd, 1851). Montague Summers was taken in by the beautiful gory titles and unwittingly added them to his Gothic Bibliography. The Australian collector of Bloods, and long-time correspondent of Quaine, Stanley Larnach, revealed the prank in a review of Summers' bibliography in Biblionews in 1952, and again in The Story Paper Collector in 1955.

But was his information accurate? Larnach's scrapbook of Bloods survives in the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne. Pasted into it is a letter from English bibliographer W.O.G. Lofts, dated December 1955:

"I must contradict your statement that the following “Bloods” did not exist; “Sawney Bean the Man-eater of Midlothian” and “The Skeleton Clutch, or the Goblet of Gore” as I have been in contact with a collector who bought this “Blood” in 38 nos., and then disposed it to a collector at Castle Comer Eire.

The second was seen by an author in his own right a Mr George E. Foster in the collection of the late Barry Ono. A detailed account of it was reported in the “Collectors Digest” No. 16. Mr Foster has written over 100 bound books (which are recorded in the British Museum Files) and his and the former collector’s word are 100% trustworthy. I can only suggest that Mr J.P. Quaine must have leaned over backwards in suggesting that these Bloods were invented as a joke."

The mystery of the Phantom Clutch continues...

R. Murray Gilchrist

I am hoping that we may, in a future Wormwood, have a feature on R. Murray Gilchrist (1867-1917), author of the long sought-for volume of decadent weird tales, The Stone Dragon (1894), now available in various reprint forms under different titles. In the meantime, here's a picture of his family home, Cartledge Hall, and gravestone, in the village churchyard at Holmesfield (Derbyshire), a short distance away.

"Late Reviews"

"Late Reviews" is the title of my column in Wormwood where I review obscure titles. I've written more of these reviews than have ever made it into the magazine, so I thought I'd occasionally post some of the otherwise unseen ones here.


Robbins, Tod [Clarence Aaron Robbins, 1888-1949]. The Scales of Justice and Other Poems (New York: J. S. Ogilvie, 1915).

Robbins’s third book and only collection of poems. This is a collection of twenty-three poems. Most are routine, and more than a bit sing-song in an old-fashioned way. Compared to Robbins’s fiction, these poems are almost entirely without interest. One example should suffice:

Come Dine

The night is cold, and dark, and drear;
Come dine, my brother, come dine.
A wanton whiff of Life’s good cheer,
A foaming glass, the larder near,
A taste of flesh, a sip of wine;
Come dine, my brother, come dine.

Dark shadows speed across the sea;
Come dine, my brother, come dine.
Soon other guests, than you and me,
Will enter in Life’s hostelry
To taste the flesh and sip the wine;
Come dine, my brother, come dine.

Your face is white, like winter snow;
Come dine, my brother, come dine.
The wind, you hear, is sighing low;
Close you eyes, and you’ll never know
Your sister’s flesh now steeped in wine;
Come dine, my brother, come dine.

The Silver Skull is in the sky;
Come dine, my brother, come dine—
It drives the charnel coach close by.
For all who sup at last must die
To pay for flesh and tasted wine;
Come dine, my brother, come dine.

Sloane, William M., III. Runner in the Snow: A Play of the Supernatural in One Act (Boston: Walter H. Baker Company, 1931).

This short play is labeled on the title page as “adapted from the story by W.B. Seabrook entitled ‘I Saw a Woman Turn into a Wolf’.” And Seabrook’s title basically says it all. It is the story of the bookish John Bannister, who has a small, ugly black idol, Yi King, the Chinese demon or god of the past. Bannister has asked his old friend Richard Seton to visit and monitor an experiment that their friend Mara Orloff will perform. Mara is a nervous Russian woman with an accent, and she has experimented with the idol. When under a trance and while holding Yi King in her left hand, she relives an ancestral memory, human or prehuman. In this instance, she relives for some short while of the life of a wolf. As a play, it is hard to imagine this coming off well.

Sloane (1906-1974) is better-remembered for his two novels, To Walk the Night (1937), and The Edge of Running Water (1939; filmed in 1941 as The Devil Commands, starring Boris Karloff). Seabrook’s story appeared in the July 1931 issue of Hearst’s International, with a reprint in Nash’s Pall Mall Magazine in May 1932. It was reworked as chapter VII of Part Two of Seabrook’s book Witchcraft (1940).

The Genius of J.C. Snaith

One thing I think we share with many Wormwood readers is an interest in neglected writers, those who have unaccountably, and often undeservedly, fallen from view. Last year, Doug wrote to me about one of these, John Collis Snaith (1876-1936): “In looking up some things in the [London] Times, I found...a column by Oliver Edwards, who was praising the nine titles published in the 1963-4 Gollancz [Rare Works of imaginative Fiction] series. And Edwards puts forth as a candidate for the series J. C. Snaith's William Jordan Junior, one of Snaith's very early novels. Edwards also comments that ‘those who have read some of his books ... may wonder that any claim of quality could be made for him at all', adding, however, that 'when it first came out in 1908 it did not go altogether unrecognized. George Russell (AE) was moved by it. Massingham knew it was something rare. In The English Review the young James Elroy Flecker roundly declared that the work 'is unique, and it is a masterpiece, and it is all but unknown.’”

I promptly ordered a copy. The New York Times Review is equally enticing, quoting its “peculiar charm and rare quality…psychological loveliness, half mystic, half human…”. It says it is a story of “strange visionaries…father and son”, “high priests of the most wonderful dream in the world”, the elder a scholar and bookseller, the younger delicate, high-strung, a poet and dreamer, neither of them equipped for the world. There is “a thread of asceticism and exaltation”.

It is certainly peculiar. The father and son are extremely unworldly persons, absorbed in the work of “the ancient authors” to the extent that they do not understand contemporary life at all: money, commerce, society, the ways of the “street people” as they call all others: all are a bewilderment to them. The effects of their encounters with everyday hurly-burly are humorous but also poignant. They are just a shade too good to be true as characters, and may at times rather irk the reader. But the central conceit is sustained with the utmost purity, and the subsidiary characters – a pompous old publisher, a conniving but warm-hearted young worldling – are done with Dickensian gusto and glee. It is a book that prompts astonishment it should ever have been essayed.

Several critics agreed, I later found, that J.C. Snaith was the author of a masterpiece. Unfortunately for him, none of them could agree which book of his that was, while all of them did agree that the others were not worth much attention. That must be a uniquely frustrating position. Essayist S.P.B. Mais acclaimed his novel The Sailor (1916): others lauded his humorous and Pickwickian cricketing novel Willow, the King (1899). There are champions for others of his books too.

Snaith’s reputation has suffered, I think, from his work being too various. Comedy, sport, historical romance, criminous thrillers, psychological meditations, visionary works, it was all too much for the reader and reviewer to get a grasp upon. Nevertheless, with the advantage of retrospect, we can winnow out those that stand distinctive. Whichever work one chooses, though, it is sure that Snaith was an original, as eccentric in his outlook and his style as, say, M.P. Shiel or Baron Corvo.

RIP: Dr. Anthony Harrison-Barbet 1939-2009

I note with sadness the recent passing, on May 29th, of noted philosopher and teacher Dr. Anthony Harrison-Barbet, due to prostate cancer. Anthony was a friend of writer E. H. Visiak (1878-1972) for the last thirteen years of Visiak's life, and had promised to write a study of his friend's life and works. The resultant volume, E.H. Visiak: Writer and Mystic, was published by Paupers' Press in 2007, and it stands as the most significant study to date of Visiak's world-view and literary achievement. Anthony also contributed an essay on his friendship with Visiak to the final issue of Abraxas Unbound, published in January 2009.