For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.
1 Corinthians 13:12
As hinted at by the title given to this collection of strange stories, Sheridan Le Fanu was interested in writing about the mystical and metaphyiscal; those inexplicable horrors of shade and shadow that may only be fuzzily glimpsed by mortal man as though In a Glass Darkly. First published in 1872, my edition has an Introduction which compellingly explains that Le Fanu (a Dublin-born Protestant journalist with “an interest in Irish Nationalism”) often shaped his stories so that power-abusing upper class characters face some sort of comeuppance. And as a writer influenced by Swedenborg, Le Fanu was open to the idea that this retribution could come at the hands of actual spirits. As these stories unfold, it seems equally as scientifically possible for a middle-of-the-night pain in the chest to have been delivered by indigestion or vampire; the real delight is in following along to see how the cases unfold. I loved every bit of this.
As food is taken in softly at the lips, and then brought under the teeth, as the tip of the little finger caught in a mill crank will draw in the hand, and the arm, and the whole body, so the miserable mortal who has once been caught firmly by the end of the finest fibre of his nerve, is drawn in and in, by the enormous machinery of hell, until he is as I am. ~ Green Tea
Published in 1871, fifteen or so years before the first Sherlock Holmes story, Green Tea shares many of the detectiving characteristics later employed by Holmes: an assistant who compiles his genius mentor’s notes into readable stories for the laypeople; an eye for evaluating a person upon first meeting (here, after a brief conversation with The Rev. Mr. Jennings, Dr. Hesselius asserts that he is a bachelor, he has drunk a good deal of green tea but has since given it up, and that his father has seen a ghost!); and the belief that there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation for every mysterious circumstance. Coming before Holmes as this did, I couldn’t help but put myself in the mind of a reader in 1871: would that reader have been gobsmacked by Hesselius’ feats of logic? Would that reader have been chilled by the gloomy Gothic setting and, even moreso, horrified by a vicar who is shadowed by a blaspheming demon (a monkey-shaped phantom with glowing red eyes and a penchant for perching on the Good Book in order to block the minister’s readings)? This was a truly surprising delight: I had no idea where this old story would go, nor could I have predicted Hesselius’ solution. Loved this!
"Well, then, Doctor, here is the last of my questions. You will, probably, laugh at it; but it must out nevertheless. Is there any disease, in all the range of human maladies, which would have the effect of perceptibly contracting the stature and the whole frame — causing the man to shrink in all his proportions, and yet to preserve his exact resemblance to himself in every particular — with the one exception, his height and bulk; any disease, mark — no matter how rare — how little believed in, generally — which could possibly result in producing such an effect?" ~ The Familiar
The Familiar begins with a prologue in which Hesselius writes to his aide that the ensuing case of a retired sea captain who suddenly finds himself pursued by a demon — recorded by a clergyman and forwarded to the doctor for analysis — is interesting, but beyond his abilities to diagnose as he had never met the captain himself. Breaking such cases into three categories — hallucinations, actual demonic possession, or a physical ailment that makes possible one of the other two possibilities — the reader is then primed to analyse Captain Barton’s case as it unfolds. And whether he is actually pursued by a demon, or if the figure is a manifestation stemming from his own guilty conscience, there is no denying that this is a man succumbing to harrowing terrors.
This fellow took his pipe from his mouth on seeing the coach, stood up, and cut some solemn capers high on his beam, and shook a new rope in the air, crying with a voice high and distant as the caw of a raven hovering over a gibbet, "A rope for Judge Harbottle!" ~ Mr. Justice Harbottle
In a prologue before presenting another third party manuscript collected by Dr. Hesselius, it is noted that Hasselius has written in the margins that this seemed to be a case of (what we would today call) mass hysteria; that a person suffering from certain cases of “lunacy, of epilepsy, of catalepsy, and of mania” might establish “spirit-action” in one person, which then spreads to others around them. In this case: a haughty and corrupt hanging judge finds himself hauled up before an otherworldly High Court of Appeal. And while Harbottle’s frightening visions might be attributed to gout or guilt, how to explain the visions experienced by others in his household?
It seemed on a sudden, as it came, that the darkness deepened, and a chill stole into the air around me. Suppose I were to disappear finally, like those other men whose stories I had listened to! Had I not been at all the pains that mortal could to obliterate every trace of my real proceedings, and to mislead everyone to whom I spoke as to the direction in which I had gone? This icy, snake-like thought stole through my mind, and was gone. ~ The Room in the Dragon Volant
At 120 pages, this novella-length story of a twisty and complicated con (with the inexplicable disappearances of they who stay in the corner room of the Dragon Volant inn outside Versailles) must have been mind-blowing in the day to readers who hadn’t seen this kind of storyline before; collected here by Dr. Hasselius in an essay on “Drugs of the Dark and the Middle Ages”, this is a story with a rational, rather than supernatural, explanation.
If human testimony, taken with every care and solemnity, judicially, before commissions innumerable, each consisting of many members, all chosen for integrity and intelligence, and constituting reports more voluminous perhaps than exist upon any one other class of cases, is worth anything, it is difficult to deny, or even to doubt the existence of such a phenomenon as the Vampire. ~ Carmilla
Written in 1872, fifteen or so years before the first publication of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, this is a spooky tale of a charming young woman who is not as innocent as she would appear. This manuscript was written by a woman who had crossed paths with Carmilla in her youth and was collected by Dr. Hasselius, who noted in the margins that this tale, involves “not improbably, some of the profoundest arcana of our dual existence, and its intermediates”.
My final thoughts: This was such an interesting collection, and mostly, because I kept wondering how a reader 150 years ago must have reacted to the material: it’s pretty tame — almost cliché — by today’s standards, but I was never unaware that Le Fanu got there first. Also: the appearance in Green Tea of the Holmesian Dr. Hasselius made me think that I was in for a whole collection of his stories, so it was a bit disappointing that he never physically appears again. Still, overall, a cracking good read.
