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Marjorie Bowen
Aug. 27th, 2007 03:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
joysilenceI bagged another book from Wordsworth's cheapo 'Tales Of Mystery And The Supernatural' series the other day - The Bishop Of Hell & Other Stories, by Marjorie Bowen. Bowen wrote mainly between 1910 and the 30s, my favourite period for ghost stories, and I was hoping that she might prove a worthy successor to the Ediths Wharton and Nesbit.
Sadly, my hopes of a pleasant (if eerie) journey to the world of Edwardian country houses, professional loafing, strange cracklings on the wireless and spectral mishaps on the golf-course were soon dashed. I knew Bowen wrote a lot of historical novels, but this penchant also overflows into her shorter fiction, and most of these tales are set in the 18th century or earlier. She doesn't make a bad job of this - the period details are fairly discreet and never vie with the ghosts for the reader's attention, and my personal bete noire, period dialogue, is largely absent give or take the odd 'dost' and 'thine'. And if Bowen has a point to make about the past, it's that crime and human suffering caper blithely through the ages without undergoing an iota of change from one century to the next. That said, I'm afraid I still believe that an ideal ghost story should be firmly rooted in the present.
But do the stories raise a shiver? Well, I found them to vary in quality. The Scoured Silk is the best of the bunch, with its themes of marital cruelty and vengeance, two appealing lovebirds and a sting in the tail that I certainly didn't expect. Bowen's most famous tale, The Crown Derby Plate,has unfortunately become highly predictable to modern minds, but Keckies picks up the stitch with brio and there's even an early appearance from Dagon in Florence Flannery! A few of the stories are just plain feeble, though to be fair a couple of those are meant to focus on the bittersweet romance of things past as opposed to straight frights.
There was one story I heartily disliked, however: Elsie's Lonely Afternoon. It isn't scary or melancholy, just thoroughly depressing and cynical, centring as it does on a 7-year-old girl who, having been abandoned by her mother, is forced to endure the cruelty and neglect of her rich, aged grandmother and the indifference of the servants. Bowen goes to great lengths to evoke her young character's total isolation and misery in a way that reminded me of Charles Dickens, but without the jokes or uplifting bits. I suppose I should forgive the author since she had an utterly wretched early life due to abuse from her family (as described in Jessica Salmondson's article here), and may have been writing for catharsis or from genuine outrage, but that doesn't stop it from being yet more proof that children in horror are an almost total no-no! (Even The Turn Of The Screw failed to thrill until it was adapted for cinema.)
Still, I enjoyed the collection. While there's nothing here on a par with Lee or Nesbit, and many of the hauntings were just too genteel for my tastes, all the tales share Bowen's fine touch (see Kecksies for some nature writing on a par with John Buchan) and her adroit handling of the games people play with each other, especially love grown sour or perverted. Like the best of the Edwardians, she never writes a single superfluous word and plumbs the darkness of the soul in torment, or the triumph of anger and greed, with the most delicate of brushstrokes. Although none of these stories cost me any sleep or deserve 'classic' status, The Bishop Of Hell makes a nice little treat for fans of that era and genre.
You can find out more about Bowen at her Literary Encyclopedia entry here! And if you fancy picking up some Wordsworth titles, click here to see what's on offer and where to buy it (though be warned: some of the books can be found more cheaply via Abebooks!)
Sadly, my hopes of a pleasant (if eerie) journey to the world of Edwardian country houses, professional loafing, strange cracklings on the wireless and spectral mishaps on the golf-course were soon dashed. I knew Bowen wrote a lot of historical novels, but this penchant also overflows into her shorter fiction, and most of these tales are set in the 18th century or earlier. She doesn't make a bad job of this - the period details are fairly discreet and never vie with the ghosts for the reader's attention, and my personal bete noire, period dialogue, is largely absent give or take the odd 'dost' and 'thine'. And if Bowen has a point to make about the past, it's that crime and human suffering caper blithely through the ages without undergoing an iota of change from one century to the next. That said, I'm afraid I still believe that an ideal ghost story should be firmly rooted in the present.
But do the stories raise a shiver? Well, I found them to vary in quality. The Scoured Silk is the best of the bunch, with its themes of marital cruelty and vengeance, two appealing lovebirds and a sting in the tail that I certainly didn't expect. Bowen's most famous tale, The Crown Derby Plate,has unfortunately become highly predictable to modern minds, but Keckies picks up the stitch with brio and there's even an early appearance from Dagon in Florence Flannery! A few of the stories are just plain feeble, though to be fair a couple of those are meant to focus on the bittersweet romance of things past as opposed to straight frights.
There was one story I heartily disliked, however: Elsie's Lonely Afternoon. It isn't scary or melancholy, just thoroughly depressing and cynical, centring as it does on a 7-year-old girl who, having been abandoned by her mother, is forced to endure the cruelty and neglect of her rich, aged grandmother and the indifference of the servants. Bowen goes to great lengths to evoke her young character's total isolation and misery in a way that reminded me of Charles Dickens, but without the jokes or uplifting bits. I suppose I should forgive the author since she had an utterly wretched early life due to abuse from her family (as described in Jessica Salmondson's article here), and may have been writing for catharsis or from genuine outrage, but that doesn't stop it from being yet more proof that children in horror are an almost total no-no! (Even The Turn Of The Screw failed to thrill until it was adapted for cinema.)
Still, I enjoyed the collection. While there's nothing here on a par with Lee or Nesbit, and many of the hauntings were just too genteel for my tastes, all the tales share Bowen's fine touch (see Kecksies for some nature writing on a par with John Buchan) and her adroit handling of the games people play with each other, especially love grown sour or perverted. Like the best of the Edwardians, she never writes a single superfluous word and plumbs the darkness of the soul in torment, or the triumph of anger and greed, with the most delicate of brushstrokes. Although none of these stories cost me any sleep or deserve 'classic' status, The Bishop Of Hell makes a nice little treat for fans of that era and genre.
You can find out more about Bowen at her Literary Encyclopedia entry here! And if you fancy picking up some Wordsworth titles, click here to see what's on offer and where to buy it (though be warned: some of the books can be found more cheaply via Abebooks!)
