The penguin Book of Ghost Stories – from Elizabeth Gaskell to Ambrose Bierce – Edited by Michael Newton (2010)

 

I bought this book a little while ago – fully intending to read it during Halloween week. I’m not especially fond of Halloween, although I don’t actually dislike it; I just thought it might be fun. As an aside, although I never read horror – or anything too dark, – I don’t find ghost stories scary – as I don’t believe in ghosts –I find much of what goes on in the real world to be far more frightening. I do however find that these kind of old fashioned ghost stories to be strangely cosy and absolutely perfect for reading on dark chilly evenings in late Autumn. I do imagine though, that these stories wouldn’t be regarded as particularly frightening by most people anyway. I suspect we are all just a little more sophisticated, far more cynical and dismissive of things we can’t explain, than the readers who these stories were originally written for.
This collection is a real joy – a veritable who’s who of nineteenth century authors on both sides of the Atlantic, including Elizabeth Gaskell, Charles Dickens, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Rudyard Kipling, Sheridan Le Fanu and Edith Wharton – among others. Nineteen stories by some fabulous writers – what’s not to like? Well of course – as with any collection of short stories there are some which I enjoyed more than others. Thrawn Janet by Robert Louis Stevenson was one I struggled with as it’s written in – what I found to be – very difficult Scottish dialect. I also found the story by Henry James pretty hard going and I skipped some of it I’m afraid. All the other stories though are wonderfully readable, and I thoroughly enjoyed them.

“There could be no doubt, however, of the fact, for the lamps grew larger and brighter every moment, and I even fancied I could already see the dark outline of the carriage between them. It was coming up very fast, and quite noiselessly; the snow being nearly a foot deep under the wheels.
And now the body of the vehicle became distinctly visible behind the lamps. It looked strangely lofty. A sudden suspicion flashed upon me. Was it possible that I had passed the crossroads in the dark without observing the sign-post, and could this be the very coach which I had come to meet?”
(from The North Mail by Amelia B Edwards)

As I think I have said before I do find it difficult to review short story collections – which ones do I talk about? I generally come down on the side of talking about some I liked most. The first story – The Nurse’s Tale by Elizabeth Gaskell is one I have read before – and I love it – it’s marvellously atmospheric. An ageing children’s nurse recounts the story of a ghost child in the house where she and her young charge went to live following the death of the child’s parents. A perfect opening to this collection it is the story of cold wintery weather, footprints in the snow and windswept fens, eerie organ music and ghostly apparitions. The Cold Embrace by Mary Elizabeth Braddon – the author of Lady Audley’s secret which I read recently, concerns the aftermath of a tragic death. A feckless young man betroths himself to a young woman, who pledges that even in death she will love him. When the young man throws her over, the broken hearted young girl is driven to desperate measures. Margaret Oliphant’s The Open Door – is one of the slightly longer stories – and was also one of my favourites. A former Colonel’s beloved young son appears to become terribly ill, is very distressed and told by the doctor to stay in bed. The boy is claiming to have heard strange moaning noises coming from some local ruins. The boy’s father promises his son to discover what it all means, and with the help of his butler and his thoroughly unconvinced doctor friend, he does just that. The Monkey’s Paw by W. W Jacobs will be one story I don’t think I will easily forget. It’s a wonderfully chilling twist on the old three wishes type fairy-tale. Afterward the final story in this collection is by the brilliant Edith Wharton, a chilling story of a woman and her businessman husband who now living in England move into a house they are told is haunted but that they would never know it – at least not till long “afterward.”
I am glad I finished this collection just in time to post this review late on a Halloween night – it does seem appropriate. I would certainly recommend this collection to those who enjoy these kinds of old fashioned chillers, they are perfect winter evening reading.

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Hester Lilly and Other Stories – Elizabeth Taylor (1954)

In the title story of this collection which is more in length like that of a novella, a middle aged wife of a boarding school headmaster dreads the arrival of Hester, her husband’s cousin. Hester and Robert having been writing to one another for some time and Muriel feels excluded. Initially she is relieved when Hester arrives, not seeing in her the threat she had dreaded.

“Hester, in clothes which astonished by their improvisation – the wedding of out-grown school uniform with the adult, gloomy wardrobe of her dead mother – looked jaunty, defiant and absurb. Every garment was grown out of or not grown into.”

However, having underestimated Hester’s appeal Muriel soon reverts to her original jealousy. Robert and Hester get along well together, while Muriel and her husband have a strained relationship, which she only serves to worsen when she makes a fool of herself at a dance. Muriel makes Hester nervous, slowly driving her almost to collapse, Muriel wants rid of Hester and Hester feels it keenly and it makes her miserable.
Muriel is wonderfully terrible creation, as is the peculiar character from the village that Hester meets on her wanderings, the lonely Miss Despenser who lives in a filthy house with her memories of her dead sister.
This story is a wonderful start to a lovely collection. Anyone regularly reading my blog knows how much I love Elizabeth Taylor’s writing, and this collection demonstrates beautifully why I do. In ‘First Death of her Life’ a daughter sits by her dead mother awaiting the arrival of her father. I’m sure that this story is deeply autobiographical, as the death of Elizabeth Taylor’s own mother had a huge effect on her. There are too many stories in this collection to talk about each one individually but among my favourites were: Shadows of the world, Swan Moving and A Red letter Day. In Swan Moving, a swan comes to the pond of a small rather down at heel village. Its presence seems to instigate something of a change in attitude of the villagers to their environment- although they do go rather too far. However when the pool begins to dry up, the villagers decide to move their swan to another deeper pool a mile away.

“The swan sat on the front seat beside the Vicar and the manservant sat behind. When they drove away, the crowd waved and cheered as if seeing off bride and bridegroom. The swan surveyed them with indifference. His feet were splayed out in an ungainly way on a piece of sacking and, as the car moved forward, he crooked his neck and began to cleanse from his plumage the trace of human hands.”

In ‘Red Letter Day’ a mother and son go out for the afternoon, the mother collecting her son from boarding school, a day so looked forward to, is of course a small disappointment. Elizabeth Taylor is a master at showing us the small everyday events that loom large in people’s lives, the way people act, speak and think, ring so beautifully, and often poignantly true. Shadows of the World is just so well written, a subtle domestic story, a woman shares a drink with a male friend, awaits her husband’s arrival home, her daughter is put to bed, her son watches over his cat as she gives birth to four kittens. He imagines the kittens later running and playing around the house.
There is though, plenty of Elizabeth Taylor’s wit in evidence. She was such a wonderfully sharp observer of people, the way they speak particularly; she must have had just as sharp an ear for speech, as she had for the way people act. In ‘Nods & Becks and Wreathѐd Smiles’ a group of women discuss childbirth while having tea in a café.

“Well it was certainly the worst experience I ever had,” Mrs Howard said emphatically. ‘I hope never to go through –‘
‘I thought neuralgia was worse,’ Mrs Graham forgot herself enough to say.
At first, they were too surprised to speak. After all, men could have neuralgia. Then Mrs Miller gave her own special little laugh. It was light as thistledown. It meant that Mrs Graham only said that to be different, probably because she was vegetarian.”

I do so adore Elizabeth Taylor’s writing, I think her short stories are masterly, and I am very fussy about short stories, I used to think I didn’t much care for them. These were a joy, and I am sure they are stories that I will happily return to again and again.

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Bliss and other Stories – Katherine Mansfield (1920)

It is possibly surprising that I had not read any Katherine Mansfield before now, but I am fairly sure that I hadn’t. I downloaded this collection to my kindle free – there are so many amazing free books to be found out there! I must say that I always find it quite difficult to review collections of short stories, but anyway here goes.
There are fourteen stories in this collection, and while there were a couple I couldn’t quite see the point of – the majority I found to be wonderful. The writing is really very beautiful, and the characterisation surprisingly deft considering how short some of these pieces are. The stories concern small incidents in the lives of the characters – highlighting their disappointments, naiveties and quiet angers.
Two of my favourite stories were the first story Prelude, and the title story Bliss. In Prelude a family move from town to a large house in the country – there are four adults and three children, nothing very much happens – but the setting and characterisation are just glorious. In the title story Bliss – a young woman is about to get a rude awakening from her perfect life. Then the way Mansfield ends this sharp little piece is just masterly, in complete contrast to the start.

“Although Bertha Young was thirty she still had moments like this when she wanted to run instead of walk, to take dancing steps on and off the pavement, to bowl a hoop, to throw something up in the air and catch it again, or to stand still and laugh at – nothing – at nothing, simply.
What can you do if you are thirty and, turning the corner of your own street, you are overcome, suddenly by a feeling of bliss – absolute bliss! – as though you’d suddenly swallowed a bright piece of that late afternoon sun and it burned in your bosom, sending out a little shower of sparks into every particle, into every finger and toe?”

The little governess is another of the stories that will stay with me – an innocent young woman journeys by train to her new appointment, and meets a grandfatherly type of man who she naively fails to realise has other interests in her. I also rather loved the story Pictures, a sad little tale about a young woman contralto who can’t pay her rent and is trying to get a job as a singer or an actress. She and others like her dreaming of the big time, the realities of life coming much sharper.
This collection has really piqued my interest in Katherine Mansfield – so I’m sure that I will be reading more of her work at some point.

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The Gipsy’s Baby – Rosamond Lehmann (1946)

As it is the Rosamond Lehmann reading week, and as I have loved reading her work so much in the past (I’ve yet to read everything she wrote) I decided to take a short break in my month of re-reading when I found this in Waterstones just waiting for me. I popped in (never usually going to full price book shops) just to see if they had a copy of one of the Rosamond Lehmann books I hadn’t read – they had, this one – I decided it was meant to be.
This short collection of stories Rosamond Lehmann wrote during the Second World War. They concern primarily the minutiae of everyday rural life. These stories do seem to offer the reader a different view of the world than Rosamond Lehmann’s novels which are more concerned with romantic love and the women who are hurt or betrayed by it. The war looms large particularly in the last of these stories, the families are socially speaking like those of the novels I have read – yet their worlds have been shrunk by the war. A lost trunk could prove disastrous- there is no chance of just replacing everything during such times.
The title story – and “The red-haired Miss Daintreys” are narrated by Rebecca, the memorable narrator of Rosamond Lehmann’s brilliant complex novel “The Ballad and the source” which I read about a year ago. In “The Gipsy’s Baby” Rebecca and her sisters strike up a fragile, unlikely friendship with the Wyatt children, who live in a tiny cottage at the end of the lane. The social gulf however is just too hard to bridge and when the gypsies arrive the scene is set for tragedy.

“In October, the gipsies came back. They came twice a year, in spring and autumn, streaming through the village in ragged procession, with two yellow and red caravans; men in cloth caps, with handkerchiefs knotted round their throats, women in black with cross over shawls and voluminous skirts, some scarecrow children, and several thin-ribbed dogs of the whippet race running on leads tied, much to Jess’s disquiet, under the shafts of the caravans.”

In “The red-headed Miss Daintreys” Rebecca and her family meet the four Daintrey daughters and their parents while on holiday on the Isle of Wight. The relationship with the family continues for some years – seeing the eldest Miss Daintrey the subject of an unlikely romance.
The next three stories: “When the waters came”, “A dream of winter” and “Wonderful holidays “are each about Mrs Ritchie and her children Jane and John. A bee man arrives during winter to take the swarm living in the walls of the house; there are village amateur dramatics during school holidays, while a WW1 veteran misses his absent wife.

“I wrote to her yesterday and told her she better come back. I don’t like the idea of her being up in town. Those last raids were child’s play to what’s coming, so I hear. They might start any moment. I can’t have her exposing herself to them. Besides’ his voice went up his nose, weak with self-pity – ‘I can’t see to everything myself day in day out like this. There’s all the potatoes to go in. It means too much stooping for me”

I loved these wonderful stories – they are quite different to the novels of Rosamond Lehmann that I have read – but they are beautifully written, the characterisation just as well developed. The world of adults seen mainly through the eyes of children during those war years is brilliantly portrayed.

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The Blush – Elizabeth Taylor (1958)

I started reading these lovely stories the evening before I went to the Elizabeth Taylor day at Battle library in Reading. I had a lovely read of it going down on the train and finished it on the train coming home after a lovely day talking and listening to others talk, about Elizabeth Taylor. I will write another post about that though.

There are 12 stories in this collection – I enjoyed all the stories, they are beautiful, minutely observed and intuitively drawn. Her characters are so immediately recognisable, as Taylor was such a faithful chronicler of people, ordinary middle class people particularly – although she also observes servants and their like with absolute understanding and sympathy. I am not going to try and describe each story – but there are a few I wish to draw attention to, as particularly good examples of Elizabeth Taylor’s stories. In “The Letter Writers” we have a middle aged woman meeting the man to whom she has written to for years – as Taylor describes it…

“the crisis of meeting for the first time the person whom she knew best in the world.”

It is almost inevitably a meeting that is far from what it might have been. The whole is a wonderfully devastating snap shot of a sad lonely woman and the enormity of a meeting which could only ever be disappointing.
“The Ambush” is a touching examination of grief, as a young woman goes to stay with the woman who might have become her mother-in-law had her son not been killed in a car accident.

“Her irritation suddenly heeled over into grief and she dropped her brush, stunned, appalled, as the monstrous pain leapt upon her.”

In “Summer Schools” two middle-aged sisters, who share their home, each take a holiday. One sister visits an old married school friend; the other attends a summer lecture course. They each find their experiences to be unsatisfactory, and they are forced to recognise the lives they are leading for what they are.

“Of recent years she had often tried to escape the memory of two maiden-ladies who lived near her home when she and Melanie were girls. So sharp-tongued and cross-looking, they had seemed to be as old as could be, yet may have been no more than in their fifties, she now thought.”

Other stories are darkly comic, such as The Blush – the title story – which is very short – Mrs Allen a sensible middle-aged lady finds she become an unwitting alibi for her domestic’s extra marital carryings on. In “Perhaps a family Failing” a young woman marries a man who like his father is possibly a little too fond of the drink – and although it is blackly comic, it is at the same time subtly devastating.

I am continually impressed by Elizabeth Taylor’s writing, I know I can’t possibly do it justice in my reviews. I think it an enormous pity that she is still so under-read – so many people haven’t heard of her. She is often compared to Jane Austen – and I wish that in this her centenary year – her already famous name, can start to become better recognised as that belonging to an amazing writer.

 

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The Closed Door and Other Stories – Dorothy Whipple (1935/1941)

Dorothy Whipple’s key theme – it is one with which most Persephone readers will (we hope) identify profoundly – is ‘Live and Let Live’. And what she describes throughout her short stories are people, and particularly parents, who defy this maxim. For this reason her work is timeless, like all great writing. It is irrelevant that Dorothy Whipple’s novels were set in an era when middle-class women expected to have a maid; when fish knives were used for eating fish; when children did what they were told. The moral universe she creates has not changed: there are bullies in every part of society; people try their best but often fail; they would like to be unselfish but sometimes are greedy.
(Persephone books)

(The lovely reproduction endpaper and matching bookmark)

Short stories are a funny genre – they seem to either loved or loathed – I sort of fall somewhere in between. I generally find modern short stories a disappointment – that is probably a bit of a generalisation I am sure there would be some I enjoy – however I do tend to steer clear of them. So many short stories written today seem to be a bit too clever by half, and suffering a bit of style over substance, the endings so often, leave me at least, with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction. I do however find what one might call ‘old fashioned’ short stories a complete delight. Just before Christmas I read a book of short stories by Stella Gibbons, for me the simple well written stories were wonderful.
Having already read five of the six Dorothy Whipple novels re-published by the divine Persephone books – I looked forward eagerly to these stories – wishing before I had even begun reading that is was a fatter book. Like so many women writers of her generation Dorothy Whipple presents the worlds inhabited by her characters in a way that is instantly recognisable and familiar even at a distance of eighty years. Hers is a society in which a wife’s adultery means a ruined life, deemed unfit to have custody of her children she may see them once a month. A daughter is unquestioningly obedient to her parents – even If they are unreasonable or even cruel – she owes them that obedience, to do otherwise is unthinkable.
Many of the themes encountered in her novels are present in these wonderful stories. Marriage, society and family, the so often fragile veneer of middle class respectability. Not all the people in her stories are nice – some are downright horrid – many are sad, allowing life to pass them by. Yet Whipple treats them with affection – their flaws often bringing them to a better understanding.
The title story – The Closed Door – is by far the longest story in this collection – and one I found both sad and compelling. It is the story of an unwanted daughter and the suffocation of her life by her dreadful parents. Dorothy Whipple can also be darkly comic too however, as in the stories ‘Handbag’ and ‘After tea’ I have been trying to decide if I had a favourite in this collection – but I am not sure that I do – I loved each of them for different reasons. Overall it is Dorothy Whipple’s eye for detail and minute observations of life that I enjoy most. Her writing has a wonderful subtlety about it – pared down to the bone – she isn’t a writer to labour a point – it is clear and uncomplicated. It does appear that she has been over looked in the past. But I believe she was a wonderful writer and I thank goodness for Persephone for bringing her work to a wider audience.

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Christmas at Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons (1940)

A glorious collection of stories from the author of Cold Comfort Farm. The title story tells of a typical Christmas at the farm before the coming of Flora Poste. It is a parody of the worst sort of family Christmas: Adam Lambsbreath dresses up as Father Christmas in two of Judith’s red shawls. There are unsuitable presents, unpleasant insertions into the pudding and Aunt Ada Doom orders Amos to carve the turkey, adding: “Ay, would it were a vulture, ’twere more fitting!”

I have been looking forward so much to reading these stories, although I approached it nervously as I had read some fairly luke warm reviews. If anything I was disappointed in the title story – it was too short I wanted more, the only other Christmassy story was charming though. Overall I so enjoyed these old fashioned stories, and it has made me want to read more Stella Gibbons. I of course read Cold Comfort farm years and years ago, and it is now time for a re-read I think. I also have Westwood and Starlight on my ever expanding TBR. Theses new Vintage editions are very attractive looking books. Stella Gibbons’ stories are obviously set in a world that no longer exists, they are about bored housewives, aging Bright Young Things, “modern” career women, spinsters in country villages and librarians. Often the endings are not much of a surprise, but they are generally just what the reader wants, and this makes them wholly satisfying. In his introduction to the new Vintage edition, Alexander McCall Smith writes about the short story as an art form. His description of the modern short story made me smile – and nod in agreement. These short stories come from a different time. They were written before it was fashionable to create a mood or to leave the reader artistically hanging. The modern short story are just the kind I usually hate. These lovely stories however, are just the kind I love.

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His Last Bow – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1917)

A dense yellow fog descends upon London. Tricksters, thieves and murderers stalk their prey undetected. Lawlessness abounds but it is no match for the penetrating mind of Sherlock Holmes as he investigates the strangest of cases. A woman receives a gruesome package – two human ears in a box. A vital government secret is threatened with exposure. Miss Brenda Tregennis is found scared to death – could she really have died from fright alone? And when the stability of the country is threatend, Holmes’ unrivalled talents are called upon once again …

There are times when only certain types of books will do, when one is feeling in need of some consoling literary friend. At such times I often reach for Agatha Christie, although another old and comforting literary companion is Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes.

This fairly slight volume contains eight fascinating Holmes stories, each of them a fairly decent length, utterly perfect to curl up with on a chilly December evening. I adore the character of Holmes, it matches exactly the mood that Doyle creates so perfectly in each story. The tension and fear that lies beneath a rarefied Englishness, the dense fogs that swirl outside the windows of Baker Street, while a great mind is figuring out the unfathomable. In my personal favourite ‘The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot’ Holmes and Watson find themselves in a tiny Cornish village, where a woman has been apparently terrified to death, and two o her brothers left raving mad. In the final  title story, a tale not narrated by Watson, the two old friends are brought back together  some time after Holmes’ retirement, it is August 1914. Although rather different in tome to the preceding stories it is a nice quiet finale.

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Minnie’s Room: the peacetime stories – Mollie Panter Downes (Persephone) 2002

This companion volume to Persephone book no. 8 Good Evening, Mrs Craven contains ten stories describing aspects of British life in the years after the war. ‘Minnie’s Room’ itself is about a family who are unable to believe that their maid wants to leave them to live in a room of her own. An elderly couple emigrates because of ‘the dragon out to gobble their modest, honourable incomes.’ The sisters in ‘Beside the Still Waters’ grumble because ‘Everything is so terribly difficult nowadays.’

Persephone book number 34. It is always such a treat to pick up an unread Persephone book. I have to say I loved these stories. I read the war time stories some time ago and enjoyed them enormously. What Mollie Panter Downes manages to do in not very many words – is to paint a picture beautifully of an entire world, past present and future, you hear the voices, see and feel the insecurities and petty snobberies up close. There is remarkable detail in these everyday lives, and therefore the characters become very real, a vividly poignant portrait of England during the late 1940′s and 1950′s emerges from this slight volume.

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The Bloody Chamber – Angela Carter (1979)

 

Read for my book group.

From familiar fairy tales and legends – Red Riding Hood, Bluebeard, Puss in Boots, Beauty and the Beast, vampires and werewolves – Angela Carter has created an absorbing collection of dark, sensual, fantastic stories.

A collection of dark, adult, re-told fairy tales. Not my usual kind of reading really, but I was strangely fascinated by these stories, and came to appreciate the excellent writing of an author I have not read before. I am not sure I exactly enjoyed all the stories however, although some I did very much. The stories are sexual, sensual and dark, one – Puss in boots rather farcical, there is depravity and cruelty as well as some beautiful imagery in the descriptions of nature. One of the recurring themes is loss of innocence, and Carter has blended the traditions of mythology and fairy tales with nature to explore the sexual awakenings and strength of young women. My personal favourites from the collection: The Bloody Chamber, The Courtship of Mr Lyon and The Company of Wolves.
I am looking forward to hearing what other people in the book group thought.

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