James Rogers (December 22, 1999)I don't mean to detract from the ongoing discussion of Aickman's The Visiting Star", but does anyone feel like a similar treatment of Machen's "White People"? In my opinion this is one of the most ambiguous and compelling texts of all time.... comparable to "the Hospice" in terms of suggestion without filling in the blanks. What provokes the girl to suicide? What is the significance of the "finger-crushing" episode? What, what, what.....I daresay that the story is obvious to all the rest of the abgf crowd but I have been reading this story for many years now, with great satisfaction and little illumination. I have considered sending a copy to a literate and conservative Priest I know, but I am a bit concerned about the response I would get. At any rate, I suspect that many of us would put the story on or near our "top ten" list so how bad can discussing it ONE MORE TIME be?
By the way, I note mention on Ms. Pardoe's website that M.R. James's private correspondence illustrates a kind of personal loathing for Machen and his fiction. Does anyone have any idea where this personal repulsion stems from?
James, full of questions
oOo
rbadac (December 23, 1999)
James Rogers wrote:
> I don't mean to detract from the ongoing discussion of
> Aickman's The Visiting Star", but does anyone feel like a similar
> treatment of Machen's "White People"?Wouldn't bother me a bit, James ! I LOVE the story.
> By the way, I note mention on Ms. Pardoe's website that M.R.
> James's private correspondence illustrates a kind of personal
> loathing for Machen and his fiction. Does anyone have any idea where
> this personal repulsion stems from?
>
> James, full of questionsSomeone please answer this. I don't think I can sleep at night without knowing why myself.
rbadac
oOo
Jim Rockhill (December 26, 1999)
Yes, please. A discussion of the tale and the source for James' purported animosity toward Machen would be welcome. However, since the contemporary reaction toward Machen's "The Great God Pan" approached hysteria, and James is on record expressing his distate for sexuality in ghost fiction, we probably do not have to look too far for an explanation for the latter.oOo
rbadac (December 27, 1999)
Jim Rockhill wrote:
> Yes, please. A discussion of the tale and the source for James'
> purported animosity toward Machen would be welcome.[Note: here's the 1998 edition of the "White People" discussion.]
God, was it really that long ago? I just checked my thingie on it, and it was dated 12/2/98...
<sigh> Course it didn't go into any particular depth. It did have a link, though.
http://www.mtroyal.ab.ca/programs/arts/english/gaslight/whtpeopl.htm
Suggested questions:
What parts of the witchcraft lore are real?
Was the girl a virgin before she died?
If the flowers in your garden sang a weird song, would you go mad?
rbadac
oOo
Randy Money (December 27, 1999)
> If the flowers in your garden sang a weird song, would you go mad?
>
> rbadacDepends on the song selection. When the daffodils swing into Barry Manilow's greatest hits, it's time for defoliant. Or time to switch to the all-weed, all-the-time station.
Randy
(in the seasonal spirit with the "Hark, the Harold-Poinsettas Sing!" tape, easily found in a WalMart near you)oOo
John Brower (December 27, 1999)
[Serenading Flora]I like it when the crocuses trill "Big-Eyed Beans From Venus".
It always makes me smile my secret smile.
John B.
oOo
William Allison (January 3, 2000)
I like the long lunar note, and how it would float...Bill A, with a tip of the wooden fishhead to Mr Zoot Horn Rollo
oOo
Mark Dillon (December 27, 1999)
["Roses are red, Cotgrave."]"What would your feelings be, seriously, if your cat or your dog began to talk to you, and to dispute with you in human accents? You would be overwhelmed with horror. I am sure of it. And if the roses in your garden sang a weird song --
In a garden of evil, baby!
Ya know that I love ya, yummy!
In a garden of evil, baby!Squeeze magic into your tummy!
" -- would you not slam shut your doors and windows, and pump up the Webern?"
from "The Iron Butterfly People" by Ardent Mädchen
[ No disrespect intended, folks. "The White People" is one of my all-time favourites. And as for Iron Butterfly, well... all disrespect intended. : ) ]
Mark Dillon
Québec, CanadaoOo
James Rogers (December 28, 1999)
This is what I love about this group. I think. Sometimes.Don't do it again, OK?
James
oOo
Mark Dillon (December 28, 1999)
Who, me? Wouldn't dream of it. : )
Mark Dillon
Québec, CanadaoOo
rbadac (December 29, 1999)
Heh heh. It's no use, James. Believe me, I've tried.rbadac, who loves Webern
oOo
Steve Wise (December 27, 1999)
> By the way, I note mention on Ms. Pardoe's website that M.R.
> James's private correspondance illustrates a kind of personal
> loathing for Machen and his fiction. Does anyone have any idea
> where this personal repulsion stems from?
>
> James, full of questionsPerhaps you could say that MRJ was into Christian magic, while Machen (like Aickman) was into pagan magic, which might have rubbed MRJ the wrong way. Of course, I'm using "magic" as shorthand for beliefs and traditions about what lies behind supernatural/otherworldly phenomena--maybe someone can think of a better word.
Dwelling in academia, MRJ probably would be concerned about the "moral influence" of a story on its readers. Note how "The White People" starts: "Sorcery and sanctity," said Ambrose, "these are the only realities." It sounds like Machen wants to preserve a pagan world view without having to give up the Christian one (or at least without having to publicly renounce it), but I suspect MRJ would say that you can't have it both ways.
Well, do I have to speculate? Are those letters available and does MRJ spell out any reasons in them?
oOo
William Allison (January 3, 2000)
Machen's "The Great Return" fascinates me with its depiction of a Christian event (return of the Holy Grail) in a way that makes it all seem utterly pagan.>Well, do I have to speculate? Are those letters available
>and does MRJ spell out any reasons in them?I think James is referring to this letter on the G & S site:
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/ArchiveMRJLetter.html
The pertinent quote from MRJ is:
Arthur Machen has a nasty after-taste: rather a foul
mind I think, but clever as they make 'em.The letter is a lot of fun because in it MRJ comments on HPL's SUPERNATURAL HORROR IN LITERATURE, which he had recently received a copy of.
Bill A.
oOo
Steve Wise (December 27, 1999)
James Rogers wrote:
> [snipped]
>
> What provokes the girl to suicide? What is the significance of
> the "finger-crushing" episode?
>SPOILER ALERT
I'm not entirely satisfied that I have figured out how Machen intended that anecdote of "sympathetic magic" to account for her suicide, but it seems like she felt accepted and honored by the secret world of dormant stones and supposed that she could not fully be part of that community as long as she was living.
"I wished that the years were gone by, and that I had not so
long a time to wait before I was happy for ever and ever."Machen intimates that we shouldn't expect to understand the story without some acquaintance with the principles of alchemy. He says it is "very significant" that seekers were required to blind themselves on second approach to the deity. Perhaps suicide was her way of blinding herself to the mundane world.
However, she had no shortage of conventional motives for suicide. The story says:
"She had poisoned herself--in time. No; there was
not a word to be said against her in the ordinary sense."So she was pregnant, but without the benefit of mortal congress. Perhaps it was her "social conscience" that prompted her to spare the world what promised to be a very un-Christian issue. (Remember, this is before Hollywood.)
Superficially she poisoned herself to avoid the shame of bearing an illegitimate child. If you want to look deeper, she may have wanted to avoid having to share her secret world with outsiders, since that world was for her a substitute for the society of ordinary people. Also her nurse had always emphasized the importance of secrecy regarding the old ways, so she would have felt obligated to conceal from the world anything pointing to those hidden phenomena. And then she would also have wanted to avoid being burned at the stake, perhaps not an irrational fear in the circumstances:
"...I seemed to see the Lady Avelin in the market-place,
with the yellow flames eating up her beautiful white body.
And I thought of it so much that I seemed to get into the
story myself, and I fancied I was the lady, and that they
were coming to take me to be burnt with fire, with all the
people in the town looking at me..."The story also says:
"I went a second time to ths secret place. It was at the
deep brimming well, and when I was standing over the moss
I bent over and looked in, and then I knew who the white
lady was that I had seen come out of the water in the wood
long ago when I was quite little. And I trembled all over,
because that told me other things."It sounds like she discovered that parents were not her real parents (thus accounting for her special abilities). Once believing that, she would have felt much less attached to them and their world, and more strongly drawn to the world of her real parents, especially since her nominal mother was dead and her nominal father was rather distant.
"Powerful and sovereign medicines, which are, of necessity,
virulent poisons, also, are kept in a locked cabinet.
The child may find the key by chance, and drink herself dead."In other words, she got herself in deeper than she was equipped to handle.
It is important to understand that her suicide is presented as just a casual footnote because it is just an ordinary sin, something the world regards as evil but not the "real" evil that Ambrose set out to illustrate, viz. "storming the gates of Heaven". If she came to to see herself as monstrously evil in that special sense, she might have felt that suicide was the only way to atone for it.
-Steve Wise
oOo
Steve Wise (December 28, 1999)
On further reflection, I'm thinking that the finger-crushing anecdote is intended to explain her pregnancy rather than her suicide. However the details still elude me.-Steve Wise
oOo
rbadac (December 29, 1999)
Awwww, yeah. THAT'S the kind of analysis I like to see. Thanks, Steve !Jump in, people. There's plenty to go around. Me, I'm investigating the alchemical angle, so expect retorts from me.
Retorts.
Get it?
(sigh)
rbadac, collecting dew before sunrise
oOo
James Rogers (December 30, 1999)
Steve Wise wrote:
>The story says:
> "She had poisoned herself--in time. No; there was
> not a word to be said against her in the ordinary sense."
>So she was pregnant, but without the benefit of mortal congress.
>Perhaps it was her "social conscience" that prompted her to
>spare the world what promised to be a very un-Christian issue.
>(Remember, this is before Hollywood.)You are doing yeoman's work, but _any_ pregnancy would weigh against this at this period. In my opinion, the rest of your argument falls from there. I reprint the rest of your interpretation:
[snip]
oOo
rbadac (December 30, 1999)
James Rogers wrote:
> You are doing yeoman's work, but _any_ pregnancy would weigh
> against this at this period. In my opinion, the rest of your
> argument falls from there.
Tell us HOW, dammit !! Don't leave us hanging !!
rbadac, who peeked ahead
oOo
William Allison (January 3, 2000)
>On further reflection, I'm thinking that the finger-crushing anecdote
>is intended to explain her pregnancy rather than her suicide.
>However the details still elude me.
>
>-Steve WiseI didn't get the impression that the finger-crushing bit had anything to do with the writer of the green book. I thought rather, that Ambrose used the anecdote as a way to "prep" Cotgrave for what he was about to read in the green book-- to impress upon him that things happen in the world that cannot be easily explained...
Bill A. (who often wonders about happenings in this world...)
oOo
Steve Wise (January 4, 2000)
Yes, he does use that anecdote to "prep" Cotgrave, but then after Cotgrave has read the green book Ambrose says,"She had poisoned herself--in time. No; there was not a word
to be said against her in the ordinary sense. You may recollect
a story I told you the other night about a lady who saw her child's
fingers crushed by a window?"Moreover at the end of "The Great God Pan" Machen has Dr. Raymond report that his 17-year-old adopted daughter/guinea pig gave birth to the infernal seductress nine months after "seeing the Great God Pan", implying that no human agency was required. Most likely he wanted to keep any hint of sex out of his stories in order not to upset M. R. James.
Incidentally, for me the best thing in "The White People" is the poetic line,
And all alone on the hill I wondered what was true.
That could be a capsule statement of the human condition. I wondered whether that's the same hill as THE HILL OF DREAMS, so I read the latter this past weekend. No, I don't think it's the same hill, but the novel is a powerful, harrowing story (at least it was for me, since I identified with the misfit to a considerable extent.)
-Steve Wise
"Out with the bad, in with the new."
oOo
rbadac (January 5, 2000)
As always, thanks Steve !Is everybody ready for MY review, or should I wait a little longer for a few more to read and comment?
rbadac, who identifies with misfits whether he wants to or not
oOo
William Allison (January 5, 2000)
Steve Wise wrote:
>Yes, he does use that anecdote to "prep" Cotgrave, but then after Cotgrave
>has read the green book Ambrose says,
>
> "She had poisoned herself--in time. No; there was not a word
> to be said against her in the ordinary sense. You may recollect
> a story I told you the other night about a lady who saw her child's
> fingers crushed by a window?"-snip-
Cripes, I completely forgot about that second reference; that's what I get for reading under the influence... Of cold medication. Oh well...
I think as a reward for my error I'll stage my own finger-crushing exercise using the door of my car... Or perhaps I should stick to the time-honored a.b.g-f tradition of running around in the basement with the lights off and seeing how many times I can bounce my skull off of the jack-posts... (Hey Randy!)
I can't expect a caning from the group as I'm not an anthologist...
Bill A. (deeply mortified...)
oOo
Rachilde6 (January 2, 2000)
Sorry this is a bit off-topic...Can someone *please* post a link to R. Pardoe's website?
Merci,
~KristinoOo
William Allison (January 3, 2000)
Rosemary's site is always on-topic around these parts. Here's the link:http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/GS.html
Bill A.
--
alt.books.ghost-fiction FAQ
http://home.epix.net/~wallison/abgf_faq.htmloOo
cythera (January 7, 2000)
Hi everyone, I'm new to the group. "The White People" is my favorite horror story, and I'm glad to see an interest in it!
I have to ask, why does anyone believe the girl was pregnant? I don't recall any textual evidence in favor of this. I feel she killed herself to join the "White People" and/or marry the god. Also, didn't she see her OWN image in the well? That part of the story, with the Adam and Eve earthwork figures, is exceptional, isn't it?
About the "frame" around The Green Book, it wasn't included in all editions. Gaslight has some fine information about the story, and this aspect of it.
In closing, does everyone know about the Arthur Machen Society? It's online.Thanks. I look forward to your postings!!
--
cytheraoOo
[rbadac posted "The Shock of the Numinous: Arthur Machen's "The White People" on January 6. You can read it at The Weird Review. It was Number One on Jim Rockhill's 10 Best list for rbadac.]
ooOoo