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The Bishop of Hell &
Other
Stories (Wordsworth Editions
-- Tales of Mystery and
the Supernatural)
By Marjorie Bowen
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Marjorie
Bowen was one of several
pen-names adopted by the writer Margaret Gabrielle Vere Campbell Long
(1885 -- 1952). This collection of her stories is 189 pages long and
contains a dozen tales of the supernatural and macabre. The book also
has an introduction written by her son, Hillary Long.
The Fair Hair of Ambrosine
The first story, The
Fair Hair of Ambrosine,
is set in Paris, where the central character Claude Boucher is counting
down the days to the 12th of December with an increasing dread. Claude
works as a clerk in The Chamber of Deputies and has been entrusted with
the delivery of some important documents on that date. This is a task
that he had originally looked forward to because it made him feel a
little important as well. But then Claude's memories took him to the
little house on the banks of the river, where his former love,
Ambrosine, used to live. It is also where she died, or to be more
precise it is where she was murdered. Claude will have to walk right
past the house to deliver the documents and just the thought of doing
so makes Claude feel uncomfortable. Then he be begins to have
bad dreams, in which Ambrosine's killer accompanies him on his journey.
The Crown Derby Plate
The central character in The
Crown Derby Plate
is an elderly lady named Martha Pym and although Martha has never seen
a ghost she would very much like to do so, and this is the subject of
conversation between Martha and her two friends when
the reader first joins them as they sit talking
beside the fire. It is Christmas though, and ghost stories and
Christmas go together like holly and ivy, or sage and onion. It is easy
to talk of such matters when sitting in good company, but it is quite a
different matter when you are alone, in dismal countryside or in a big,
old house, miles away from the town, and where there is a distinctly
odd smell and your company is odder still. And it is a house such as
this that Martha soon finds herself in, when she goes looking for the
missing Crown Derby plate that she needs to complete her set.
The Housekeeper
The Housekeeper
is the story of a rather unpleasant gentleman named Robert Skeforde,
who only married his second wife in order to get his hands on her
money. Robert was fooled though, because the second Mrs. Skeforde
misled him and she has no money at all. In fact, she only married him
because she believed that he was the wealthy one. They are both nasty
characters who deserve each other and they are not, as you might have
guessed, happy in their marriage and one of the worst things for Robert
is that his present wife is such a poor housekeeper; not at all like
his first wife, who was a very good housekeeper indeed, and it appears
that she has returned from beyond the grave to put her house in
order.
Florence
Flannery
Floerence Flannery
is the tale of a young lady who gets married and goes to live
with her husband in his house in the country. As in the previous story
the young lady has been slightly mislead about her husband's wealth and
the 'fine manor' has seen better days. Florence becomes intrigued,
however, when she discovers her name scratched onto one of the tiny
panes of one of the leaded windows: 'Florence Flannery Borne 1500.'
Florence is quite amused by this and uses the diamond in her ring to
scratch the present year into the glass: '1800.' Although this was not
her intention, the new mark looks odd and, as her husband remarks, it
is almost as if it represents Florence's year of death and all to soon
the idea seems set to become true.
Elsie's Lonely Afternoon
Elsie's
Lonely Afternoon
might better have been called Elsie's
Lonely Life because Elsie, who
is just seven, has had many lonely afternoons and any number of lonely
mornings and nights as well. Elsie lives in a big house, at Hampstead,
with her ailing grandmother who forbids her to speak to the servants
and, to be honest; they don't sound too nice a bunch anyway. Elsie's
grandmother is confined to bed and so Elsie, whose parents are dead,
has never had much company and her diet is simple, even though her
grandmother is very rich and the pantry is filled with many good things
to eat. It is a sad life for a little girl and this is a tragic story
that paints a picture in the many colours of neglect.
There is also, or so it would
seem, a ghost
in this story and it is a sad day indeed when Elsie and the ghost meet
face to face, though poor little Elsie is blissfully unaware of the
further blow that fate has just dealt her and is too busy worrying that
someone will find out that she has borrowed the keys to a locked
cupboard and stolen some jam.
The Bishop of Hell
The Bishop of Hell
is a story about a nearly-clergyman turned bad. The narrator
begins his tale by telling the reader:
'Hector
Greatrix was my friend, yet to say friend is to profane a noble word;
rather was he my councillor, companion, and prop in all things evil.'
The reader learns that Hector's
excess,
impiety and boldness terrified even those who were hardened in their
own wicked ways. His father had, at one point placed Hector in the
church, but the young man's wickedness soon saw him unfrocked and his
friends from the clubs and gambling dens then nicknamed him
The Bishop of Hell.
No respectable person wanted to
know
Greatrix, the only notable exception being his cousin, Colonel Buckley,
who often helped Hector by 'his countenance and money.' The strangest
thing about this is that the colonel is an upright and decent man with
a distinguished military career. The colonel is also very happily
married. He is a family man who loves his wife and child. His wife is
equally loving in return and the Buckleys appear to be the ideal family
unit until Hector steps in, elopes with his benefactor's wife, and
turns her into a whore so that he can live off the income generated.
Nice guy that Hector, but don't worry, he gets what is coming to him
even if a lot of innocent people do get hurt along the way.
The Grey Chamber
The Grey Chamber
was written by an anonymous author, but the story is included in this
collection because Bowen translated it from the French. The story is
only a few pages long and to be honest it is very similar to a lot of
other stories in its basic set up: a man goes to stay with a friend and
is given a haunted room for the night.
This is quite a creepy story, I
suppose, but
it puts me too much in mind of Sir Walter Scott's
The Tapestried Chamber.
Personally, when it comes to stories like this I tend to prefer H.G.
Well's The Red Room,
but this is probably a lot older than the other two stories and -- who
knows? -- it may even have inspired them. The chamber in this
story is haunted by the ghost of a fair young maiden who killed herself
in the room after she was raped there, and then, just to make a
terrible situation even worse, was no longer considered pure enough to
pursue her ambition of becoming a nun.
The Extraordinary Adventure of Mr John
Proudie
In The
Extraordinary Adventure of Mr John Proudie a
chemist receives a late night
visitor. The man at the door has his face hidden behind a
mask and, speaking with an Italian accent, he demands the services of
the doctor who rents the room above Mr. Proudie's shop. Mr. Proudie is
no more happy about disturbing his lodger than he is about being
disturbed himself, but the masked man is most insistent and the doctor,
who spent some time living in Italy, seems happy to go, but later has
second thoughts until the stranger shows him a curious-looking white
enamel ring, and the sight of this object is enough to convince the
doctor to step out into the night with the stranger. When the doctor
does not return, though, Mr. Proudie begins to worry. Then he has a
second visitor, a young lady this time. She too has an Italian accent,
and soon Mr Proudie is following her out of the shop and going in
search of his lodger.
The Scoured Silk
The Scoured Silk
is a particularly nasty story, but you will
have to read it yourself if you want to know how nasty because I do not
want to give away too much of the plot. The two main characters are Mr
Orford and the young lady he is engaged to Marry Elisa Minden. Mr
Orford is a scholar whose life's work seems to be the process of
translating Ariosto's romance into English Couplets and writing essays
on recondite subjects connected with grammar and language -- now
doesn't he sound an interesting guy? Orford is middle-aged and
considerably older than his fiancee. He has also been married before.
In fact, twenty years ago, when his first wife came to live with him at
the house in Covent Garden Elisa Minden was just a small child watching
from the railings around her house. Nobody saw much of Flora Oxford
after that and it was not long before she died. But that was twenty
years ago and now the child is a lovely young woman. Though it must be
said that it was Elisa's father who arranged the marriage and not Elisa
herself and after Mr Orford takes her to see Flora Orford's place of
interment and tells her what a wicked woman she was, displaying a
certain amount of delight about her death, Elisa begins to have second
thoughts and who can blame her?
The Avenging of Ann Leete
Bowen's story The Avenging
of Ann Leete centres on a painting of a
young lady in a
green silk dress. The story is set in 1845 and the narrator is telling
the reader about how he became fascinated by the picture that was at
that time already seventy years old and how, against all odds and quite
by chance, he was fortunate enough to meet someone who knew Ann Leete
and what became of her is really what this story is about.
Keksies
In Keksies
two young men. Crediton and Bateup, who are worse for the drink, are
caught out in the open countryside when the weather also takes a turn
for the worse. One of the men owns a nearby farm though and so the two
men feel quite at liberty to barge their way into the farmhouse and
make themselves at home. This story is set in the days when horsepower
was the thing underneath the saddle between your legs, but a modern
word best describes the two men: wasters. They may have money, but that
is still what they are.
As it happens they are not the
only guest at
the farmhouse that night. Another guest lies stretched out on the table
in the next room and his drinking days are over because he is dead.
Some of his friends are also expected at the farm and many of them will
want to pay their last respects. Crediton and Bateup have little in the
way of respect though and when circumstances leave them alone with the
body they decide to have a little fun; this is one case though when the
last laugh is on them.
Ann Mellor's Lover
The Final story in the collection
is Ann Mellor's Lover
and it is about a man who runs a bookshop,
who has, through his love of books, managed to develop clairvoyant
abilities. His main skill seems to lie in the practice of psychometry
and he often receives little glimpses of the past just by touching
things and this story is really about what happens when he finds an old
sketch of a young woman trapped between the pages of a book. He feels
an immediate affinity to the picture and knows from his past
experiences that little by little he will receive the insights that he
needs to get the full picture of who the girl was and it is not long
before he discovers that her name was Ann Mellor and it appears that
they were close in a past life.
All of the stories in this collection share a supernatural theme, but
the real horror in the stories comes from Bowen's depiction of the
darker side of human nature. The men like Hector Greatrix in The
Bishop of Hell, for instance,
who live their lives without any morals or conscience about what they
are doing or who they hurt. Or the using and abusing
Skefordes from The
Housekeeper, who perhaps were
not a match made in heaven but in many ways were a perfect match
because they were so alike.
In The
Crown Derby Plate, Martha Pym's
main interest in going to the remote house is greed: she wants that
Crown Derby plate that she needs to complete her set and she does not
think twice about turning her back on what she perceives to be a lonely
old woman once she has got the plate. Martha is not a bad person and
certainly not evil, but neither is she a saint and her greed is very
apparent.
If you read The
Scoured Silk I am sure that you
will find that Mr Oxford is nothing short of a monster. He is just a
well spoken and presented monster and those are often the worse kind.
My favourite story from this collection has got to be Elsie's
Lonely Afternoon, Greed rears
its ugly heard in this one too and it is a very sad story, but it is
the sort of story that sticks with you long after you have closed the
book.
The
Bishop of Hell & other Stories
would make a good addition to any bookshelf. Some of the stories like The
Fair Hair of Ambrosine and The
Crown Derby Plate have
predictable outcomes, but are nonetheless very enjoyable not just for
the plot, but because of the strength of the writing. The dialogue is
believable and Bowen's descriptive talent was second to none.
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