Hugh Walpole Anthology

[joysilence]

I recently acquired Tarnhelm : The Best Supernatural Stories of Hugh Walpole. This is another Tartarus Press edition, although the paper is of lesser quality than the Hartley anthology (perhaps because it is an earlier edition, printed before Tartarus standardized the paper they used.) But enough of the paper, I hear you groan, what about the stuff written on it?

Well, this collection is by no means exhaustive, but it’s supposed to contain all of his more sombre works. All the classics such as the brilliant Tarnhelm, The Silver Mask and Mrs Lunt are present and correct, along with two very decent tales that had previously evaded anthologizing (The Clocks and The Twisted Inn.)

There is also a good deal of material showcasing Walpole’s way with the more wistful, gentle end of the supernatural fiction spectrum, including several stories drawn from The Golden Scarecrow, his unusual sequence of connected mystical tales concerning the life of the soul before, during and after death. Many of these tales feature children as heroes, and while Walpole’s sentimentality can begin to cloy at times when dealing with adults (Mr Huffam, A Christmas Story being a particularly tiresome example) he usually writes about children with a fond but very keen eye.

For me, however, the real pearls of this collection are the out-and-out tales of terror. Walpole had an unusually broad range of techniques at his disposal, and almost every one of these stories frightens in a different way. We have the occult intrigue of Tarnhelm and the revenge drama of The Tarn (both of which are brought to life with some of the most stunning descriptions of the Northumberland moors and coast that I’ve ever come across), the disturbing dreamscapes of The Twisted Inn and the Hartleyesque psychological torture of The Silver Mask or The Snow. The latter tale is a great favourite of mine thanks to its spot-on depiction of the Hell that can be stirred up when a passive-aggressive man and a woman with a temper get together, and indeed Walpole’s insight into human sufferings is both sharp and unusually compassionate at all times.

I have often read that Walpole’s fall from ‘serious author’ status was caused partly by Somerset Maugham’s satirical portrayal of him in his novel Cakes And Ale; though I have never read this, I assume that Maugham’s satire mainly hinged on Walpole’s romantic, ultimately hopeful view life. The tint of sentiment that caused him to fall from popularity as a ‘serious’ author is however completely absent from his darker stories, and perhaps Walpole’s lapse into relative obscurity (even now he is mostly famous for his historical melodramas, The Herries Chronicles) was also due to the rise of a bleak, cynical and practical worldview in the aftermath of WWII. For all his minor failings as an author, I personally hope that Walpole’s prediction comes true...

‘…the creator who relies more upon the inference behind the fact than upon the fact itself, more upon the dream than the actual business, more upon the intangible world of poetry than upon the actual world of concrete evidence, this kind of creator will come into his kingdom again.’

...and that this collection helps a new generation of readers discover his work!

For those of you who fancy some free Walpole, here are some links to e-texts:

- The Golden Scarecrow (this is part the Gutenberg library - they have more Walpole, but the rest is all just historical fiction and the Herries chronicles I think.)
- Mrs Porter And Miss Allen, a good scary tale.
- ...And a Wikipage for more browsing.

Have any of you read Rupert Hart-Davis' biography Hugh Walpole, and if so, what did you think?