Classic Ghost Stories

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Episode 37: A Wicked Voice by Vernon Lee Feb 29, 2020

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Vernon LeeDespite sounding so masculine, Vernon Lee was actually a woman called Violet Paget, born in France in 1856 and died in Italy in 1935. Despite these location she identified as English. Her biographer Vineta Colby says that Lee was English by nationality, French by an accident of birth and Italian by choice.As well as the ghost stories for which she is most famous, Vernon Lee, was an essayist who wrote about travel and art and especially aesthetics. Her parents were globe-trotting, or at least Europe-trotting intellectuals and in 1873, when Vernon or Violet was 17, they settled in Florence Italy. She stayed living in the vicinity of Florence until her death in 1935.Violet published her first collection of essays when she was 24. These dealt with Italian writers and dramatists and she later wrote on William Shakespeare and Renaissance Italy. She made fun of English artists, particularly the Pre-Raphaelites in her 1884 novel Mrs Brown.Politically, she was a convinced pacificst. She published under a masculine name because she feared that as a woman her writing would not be taken seriously. She was a feminist and mostly dressed as a man. Though she didn’t come out, she did have crushes on women and was probably Lesbian. She suffered from health anxiety.She also fell out with other writers by making fun of them in her work; notably Henry James and Edith Wharton.Henry James wrote to his equally talented brother William warning him about Vernon Lee: the most able mind in Florence, ‘as dangerous and uncanny as she is intelligent.’A Wicked VoiceI had wanted an Italian based ghost story to continue the theme of stories set on the continent of Europe. There was not much choice! Of course there is Don’t Look Now, by Daphne Du Maurier, which I read myself but which is in copyright still and so reading it out would count as a breach. As the Podcast goes on from strength to strength, I may look into whether I would be given permission to read out stories that are in copyright still, such as I did with Along the Old Track by Sam Hicks.I read A Wicked Voice three times. By the end, I quite liked it. It’s obvious that Vernon Lee is interested in aesthetics as we have all that moonlight and blue mist and Venice languishing like a lily and the scent of the white flowers that remind the narrator of peaches. Not to mention the threshing at the farms in Mistra and the lights and music in the old cathedral at Padua!Basically the story, with all that cut out, is quite simple. I’m not sure it needs the frame at the beginning and end either; first of the narrator looking back and beginning to tell and then at the end telling of his possibly recovery.Zaffarino, to give him his nickname, has a ring with cabalistic signs. An allusion to Tartini doing a deal with the Devil to make powerful music is mentioned and so we must guess that Zaffarino has been given the power to make women love him in his music, and also the power to kill, by Old Nick himself.Though Zaffarino is described as beautiful, he is often also referred to as effeminate. I am guessing he may be a castrato? What else did he give up for his art? So the story follows the narrator who is haunted by the scent of white flowers and Zaffarino’s ghostly voice. As promised, the voice makes him fall in love with it, and it almost kills him. But not quite. I’m not sure why not? Because he interrupted the final cadenza by bursting into the haunted room perhaps?Ghost Stories in a Haunted CastleCome along to Dalston Hall, Carlisle in March to hear me read ghost stories, get a tour of the ghosts, have dinner, and even stay overnight in a haunted room!https://wwSupport the show

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Episode 36: The Cigarette Case by Oliver Onions Feb 22, 2020

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Oliver OnionsOliver Onions was born in Bradford, Yorkshire, England in 1873 and died in Aberystwyth in Wales in 1961, His father was a bank cashier. When he was a young man he was an amateur boxer. He didn’t like the surname Onions and changed it legally to George Oliver but still published his stories under the name Oliver Onions. Onions is in fact a Welsh name, being from the Welsh Ab Einion.Onions trained as an artist and worked as an illustrator. His most famous ghost story is The Beckoning Fair One. He is reckoned as one of the best writers of ghost stories. He has a very conversational lyrical style and the characters in his story come out via the tone of their voice.The Cigarette Case is a neat little story with a lovely twist in the end. We probably guess what’s going to happen, but it’s very well done.I particularly like Loder’s asides to other members of the circle, such as Marsham the romantic and Smith the sceptic.I was reminded by this story of An Adventure which is the reportedly true tale of two English ladies having a time slip experience in France at the Paris of Versailles in the early 20th Century.The Cigarette Case was published in 1911 in the collection Widdershins and I believe An Ad venture was published in 1910, so it is not impossible that the tale of two English ladies in France who mysteriously disappear was inspired by An Adventure.I’ll put a link tohttps://amzn.to/38vtWMB (An Adventure here)Ghost Stories in a Haunted CastleCome along to Dalston Hall, Carlisle in March to hear me read ghost stories, get a tour of the ghosts, have dinner, and even stay overnight in a haunted room!https://www.facebook.com/events/178095676767514/ (Check it out on Facebook)Call To Action!If you can recommend verbally or send a link to the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast to one friend or acquaintance who might like it, that could double our listeners every week!I’d be very grateful to you for that.Thank you to our Patreons!Thank you for their pledges to:Donna ConstanzaEmmaSandra VailKate UnwinMargaretSandra VailValerie SawyerYour support means a lot!Support Us!Ways to support Tony to keep doing the show:https://www.podchaser.com/podcasts/classic-ghost-stories-923395 (Share and rate it!) http://bit.ly/2QKgHkY (Buy Tony a coffee) to help with the long nights editing!Become a http://bit.ly/barcudpatreon (Patreon) to get additional stuff and allow the show to go on in the long term. Website http://bit.ly/ClassicGhostStoriesPodcast (Classic Ghost Stories Podcast) MusicBeginning music is Some Come Back by the marvellous https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Heartwood Institute) and end sequence is Bad Encounter by MyuuSupport the show

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Episode 35: The Horla by Guy de Maupassant Feb 15, 2020

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The Horla by Guy de MaupassantWelcome to Episode 35 of the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast!What would really help me would be if you could think of one friend or acquaintance who would enjoy the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast and share it with them! If every listener is helpful enough to do this for me, then we would double the podcast every week!Imagine that!The StoryToday’s story is a famous French short-story by a prolific and highly regarded author: Guy de Maupassant. In fact, he was known as the father of the short story!Guy de MaupassantDe Maupassant was a famous French short-story writer born in France in 1850, who died aged only 42 in 1893 in Paris. He is buried in Montparnasse cemetery.De Maupassant was considered a master of the short story form and his first story, set in the Franco-Prussian War Boule de Suif (A Ball of Suiet) was published in 1880 and is a great story. You may not know that the use of ‘de’ in front of the name (like von in German) indicates noble birth and De Maupassant’s mother urged his father to secure the right, from an ancestor, to so style himself.De Maupassant’s father was violent to his mother and the young lad was witness to this. His mother had the courage and support to separate from his father because of the violence and De Maupassant and his brother went with her. As this was the 1850s or so, this was very rare and very brave of his mother.At school, De Maupassant became friends with Gustave Flaubert. And he saved the life of the English poet Algenon Swinborne from drowning.As a profession, he was a newspaper editor and wrote fiction in his spare time. The HorlaThe Horla was first published in 1887, and is set in 1867 near Rouen in Normandy, France. The narrator is obviously a gentleman — a man of leisure who comes to believe that he is haunted by a monster, which later reveals its name as ‘The Horla.’ This is a nonsense word pronounced in French without the H- (so why then include it, monsieur de Maupassant?) but which I have chosen to pronounce in English with an h.De Maupassant was said to suffer from a mental illness and I recognise the symptoms of anxiety he describes at the beginning but which has become so advanced so that it develops psychotic features — in this case the delusion of the invisible being. There are clear paranoid elements, in that he believes the Horla is a superior being come to replace mankind. There is an example of the secondary rationality that you see in psychosis, where after the clearly irrational primary psychotic insight, in this case that he is possessed by the Horla, then rationality kicks in to explain how this could be so. In his case, he links it to a weird psychic vampire epidemic in Brazil and deduces he was infected when he saluted the Brazilian ship that went by on the Thames, before which he was fine. The power of the the Horla is the same domination of will shown by Dr Parent who hyptonises his cousin Madam de Sable.It all makes perfect sense, but of course is delusional.He shows relatively little remorse for burning his servants alive, I must say, though it wouldn’t be out of the way in many cases of paranoid psychosis that he believed them in on it. Though in this story they clearly aren’t.So, the Horla probably draws on De Maupassant’s real experiences of being mentally ill, but fictionalised. It is possibly this reality that makes the story quite unnerving. I remember being very disturbed by it when I read it first in my teens.MesmerismMesmerism or Animal Magnetism was brought to public attention in the 18th Century by the German doctor Franz Mesmer. It was a fairly weird theory of magnetic fluid, but I’mSupport the show

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Episode 34: The Queen of Spades by Aleksandr Pushkin Feb 08, 2020

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Aleksandr PushkinAleksandr Sergeyeviçh Pushkin was a Russian poet, playwright and novelist. He was born in 1799 in Moscow and died aged on 37 in St Petersburg. Hie was fatally wounded on a duel fought with his brother in law, a soldier who had attempted to seduce Pushkin’s wife.Pushkin’ great-grandfather was African, kidnapped from Africa, probably Cameroon, by the Turks and taken to Russia where he became the favourite of Peter the Great and rose to be a famous military engineer.Pushkin is rightly considered to be one of the greats of Russian literature and he was massively talented. He was a supporter of greater political freedom and so came under the surveillance of the Russian Tsar’s secret police, leading to his exile.The Queen of Spades story is very well written and there seems no superfluous detail or incident. The first scene of the gamblers sets up the story and Herman, who Pushkin leaves in the background while the story of the mystical St Germain and his grandmother’s magic secret of winning at cards is discussed. We realise, that though Herman is strangely quiet during this sequence it is because he is taking it all in. Herman begins to stalk the Countess and his sly plot is to get at her by the seduction of her young companion Lisa. Herman is so sly that he persists against Lisa’s initial refusal and Pushkin comments wryly that Herman knows the female heart. Be persistent, boys, is the message, and you will win her round. Many legal cases of stalking and harassment have begun with this mentality, of course.There is nothing admirable about Herman at all, which is important because we as readers know right from wrong and we want the villain to get his just rewards.I have a memory that some versions of the Queen of Spades have her winking, and so her wink, which might otherwise be comic, is sinister here.I also wonder who commands the grandmother to give the secrets of the cards to Herman against her will from beyond the grave? Is the ghost just saying this, or is she in league with another mysterious supernatural power who both want to see the scoundrel punished?Finally, it is the Queen of Spades, who must represent the spectral countess, that brings him down, winking as she does so.The Count de St GermainThe Count of St Germain was a real historical figure who lived in the 18th Century. One story claims he was the son of a prince of Transylvania. The Count was educated in Italy by the Medicis. Later in the 19th Century it was said that the Count was of Jewish origin, born in Alsace by the Rhine. He was a bit of a trickster and used many names. He is one of the late alchemists, but like them claimed to have discovered the Elixir of Life, or the Philosopher’s Stone, the goal of alchemy and claimed to have lived for five hundred years. Tales of his skill at magic abounded and so Pushkin incorporates him into his story.A later rumour has him arrested as a Jacobite spy in 1749 in London, just after the. Highland Rebellion for all you fans of Outlander. Later he appeared at the French court of Louis XV. Later still, he appeared in Holland during the Seven Years War.A man of mystery indeed: a man who knows secrets!FaroFaro also known as Pharaoh is a card game of French origin that generally was played for money rather than pure fun. It was popular in the 1800s, but gradually Poker became the favoured game for gamblers. Faro was popular among gamblers because it was easy to learn and gave good odds for gamblers. However, it was easily rigged by the gambling houses and caused a great deal of hardship and loss.The banker has an entire deck of cards and the players, known as punters. The Support the show

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Episode 33: Dracula’s Guest by Bram Stoker Feb 01, 2020

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Bram StokerBram Stoker was an Irish author born in 1847 in Dublin. Stoker is probably the best known horror writer in the world (after Steven King!) and is famous for his fantastically best-selling novel Dracula. Interestingly, Stoker spent his first years in bed, stricken by an unknown illness , and then he went to school even becoming an athlete there!After school he got his Bachelor of Arts degree at Trinity College and then got a Master of Arts in 1875. Stoker’s early career was in the Irish Civil Service but on the side became the theatre critic for the Dublin Evening Mail, which was partly owned by Sheridan le Fanu, another Irish author of ghost stories who we have featured on the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast. Stoker also knew fellow Irish author Oscar Wilde. I guess Dublin was a small town in those days, especially in literary circles.In 1876, he became acquainted with the forceful English actor, Henry Irving after he wrote a nice review of Irving’s performance (Hint. You never know what good will come from nice reviews!)Stoker became Irving’s manager and followed him around Britain, which entailed a stay at Whitby (a place I love, and was last at just before Christmas) in 1880. Of course this is where Dracula comes ashore. Stoker died aged 64 in London.Though he is most famous for Dracula, Stoker obviously wrote other stories. This one, Dracula’s guest, which was later published as a short story was intended as the first chapter of the novel Dracula. In it, we have our nameless hero setting off on a day trip from Munich on Walpurgis Nacht. At the end, we realise that this young man is to be the guest of Dracula who writes from Bistritz in Transylvania.The hero of this story is obviously Jonathan Harker and Stoker’s publisher obviously saw no need for the first chapter in Munich, so Dracula begins in Bistritz.The style is very similar to Dracula. The hero does what all heroes in horror stories do, he goes somewhere he shouldn’t. Stoker paints a picture of Central Europe hooching with vampires. Young Mr Harker wanders into the tomb of the vampire countess from Styria (interestingly where Le Fanu (whom Stoker knew) set his story Carmilla — see previous episodes of this podcast. He is pulled out of the tomb by a might grasp, presumably Dracula’s and Dracula presumably blasts the poor vampire countess in her marble tomb with lightning, then sits on him, in the form of a wolf, keeping him warm in the icy cold. It’s a long way from Transylvania to Munich, but as Stoker reminds us: The Dead Travel Fast.MusicMusic is by the marvellous https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Heartwood Institute)Download Charles Dickens The Signalman Free Mp3 https://bit.ly/dickenssignalman (Subscribe to our list and keep in touch with the podcast. Learn of new episodes and bonus Content. )Support our work PLUS you get a free story right now!(The Story Link is in the Thank You Email)Show Your Support With A Coffee!https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (Buy the thirsty podcaster a coffee...)Final Request: The SurveyI want to know what you want. If you have three minutes, I'd be grateful to know what you think of The Classic Ghost Stories Podcast.https://my.captivate.fm/Click%20here%20to%20go%20to%20the%20Survey (Click here to go to the Survey)Support the show

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Episode 32: The Yellow Sign by Robert W. Chambers Jan 23, 2020

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Robert W. ChambersRobert William Chambers was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1865 and died in New York in 1933, aged 68.He was born to a well-off family; his father was a corporate lawyer with his own firm which did very well. Robert’s early love was art and of course this is evident in the story, The Yellow Sign. He first studied art in New York and then aged 21 went to Paris to study at the Ecole des Beaux Arts. When he returned to New York, he sold his illustrations to well-known magazines such as Vogue, but in 1887, while he was in Munich, Germany, he completed his first novel and then he began writing weird tales.At that time, the most prominent art movement was the Art Nouveau with its lines and curls drawn from plants and nature. His best known collection is The King in Yellow, from which this story The Yellow Sign, is drawn.This idea of a book that sends you mad is found in Lovecraft with his Necromicon but also in a story that I will read out one day, about Michael Scott the Scottish Wizard from the 12th Century whose book was kept in Wolsty Castle’s library suspended on an iron spike for fear of the occult knowledge it contained.And of course, books have been banned, notably by the Catholic Church with its famous Index, because of the dangerous information they are thought to contain.Chambers was admired by Lovecraft and perhaps because of that, has not been forgotten like some of his contemporaries.This story: The Yellow Sign, was one of my favourites. In reviews elsewhere they say that Tessie was a prostitute. She was not a prostitute: she was a nude model, which is not the same thing! Though she would have been looked down on by polite society in New York. Though she loves the painter Mr Scott, they can never marry because of her status, but she can be his mistress. I didn’t find Scott an unsympathetic character.I am not sure how much the story needed the love interest in fact, and it was when Chambers was exploring that theme that my interest flagged a little.I thought it was about time I did another American story. I enjoyed doing the accent and I also enjoyed doing the Cockney accent of the bell boy, but the best thing about the story for me was the Yellow Sign.First of all, we have the horrible watcher, and then the gruesome details from the bell boy that confirm his unnaturalness. There is a great comparison with a soft fat coffin worm, that is quite horrid. The occult sign that Tessie finds and gives to Scott seems destined for him and in fact there is a sense on an inexorable destiny that cannot be avoided.Some evil intelligence has planned all of this — brought the Yellow Sign to Scott and planted the King in Yellow Book in his library.And then, as the end comes, I think the approach of the King in Yellow — if that is who it is — is done very well. Very sensory and paced like a slow drum beat as the thing comes ever closer.So, this is a weird tale and a horror story, but I did say that I would be reading weird tales as well as specifically ghost stories.Let me know what you think!LinksWebsitehttp://bit.ly/ClassicGhostStoriesPodcast (Classic Ghost Stories Podcast)MusicMusic is by the marvellous https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Heartwood Institute)Patronage & Supporthttps://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (Donate a Coffee)https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Become a Patreon)https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Support the show) (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Support the show

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Episode 31: Back Along The Old Track by Sam Hicks Jan 23, 2020

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Sam HicksSam Hicks is an English writer based in London. She caught my eye when I read the splendid anthology https://amzn.to/2NwI8MN (Fiends In The Furrows) by Nosetouch Press. The story was then lifted to the https://amzn.to/3abxnsY (The Best Horror of the Year Vol. 11). These anthologies are stuffed with good stories, but Back Along The Old Track was one of the best.It’s strange that I don’t begin these show notes with Writer was born in 1800 and died in 1900 or suchlike because Sam is still very much alive and sounds in the pink. In the interview we talk about her influences; where the story is based, is it based on a real place, what are her influences and it was really fascinating to hear that she’s only been writing for three years full time.Sam is working on more stories and more of her good stuff is coming out in further anthologies as you can hear in the interview.This is a link to Sam’s Goodreads page https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/3018664.Sam_Hicks (here.)Hope you enjoyed this modern story. It struck me that the English countryside features in many of these stories we're reading and we could almost chart a social history by listening to them. For example, we have The Old Nurse's Story which portrays a countryside peopled by aristocrats in their big houses and poor peasants in the 19th Century, then we have Man Sized in Marble where we have artists coming to rent a house among the poor peasants in the early 20th Century, and here in Back Along The Old Track, we have city folk in the early21st Century coming to a holiday let among the poor (well weird at least) peasants!Catch you all next week.TonyLinksWebsitehttp://bit.ly/ClassicGhostStoriesPodcast (Classic Ghost Stories Podcast)MusicIntro music is by the marvellous https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Heartwood Institute). Support them on BandcampPatronage & SupportPonder: https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (Donate a Coffee) to keep Tony goingConsider: https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Become a Patreon)And please, rate, share and tell your friends about the Classic Ghost Stories Podcasthttps://www.patreon.com/barcud (Support the show) (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Support the show

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Episode 30: The Housekeeper by Marjorie Bowen Jan 18, 2020

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Marjorie BowenMarjorie Bowen was the nom de plume of Margaret Gabrielle Vere Long, born Campbell. Marjorie Bowen was born in 1885 in Hampshire, England, and lived a very interesting life, especially in a time when women were generally expected to be confined to the kitchen or other minor supporting roles.Unfortunately her father was an alcoholic and abandoned the family and the was eventually found dead on the street in London. There must've been some money in the family, and those of us who are English are ever conscious to subtle indicators of social class. For example, working-class Englishwomen are never called ‘Gabrielle Vere Long’. Another clue to the fact that she came of refined stock was the fact that she studied at the Slade School of Art and later in Paris. I was about to say that working-class people did not study at fine art schools when I remembered my own grandfather ,who was an Irish immigrant, in fact went to an art school in Edinburgh just after the First World War.In any case, Bowen was a talented writer. Even though she married a Sicilian (who died of tuberculosis) and then in Englishman named Long (who survived) , it was Bowen who supported the family through her writing. Her first novel The Viper of Milan was published in 1906. Her work was prolific and she produced over 150 published items and she seems to have liked lurid subject matters such as black magic and murder. All praise to her for that say I. Women have been expected to write stories about love and domestic situations and while that is well and good, why can't they write about murder andblack magic as well!This story that I've just read: The Housekeeper is from a collection called The Bishop of Hell. Although I love the title ‘The Bishop of Hell’, I prefer this story. Like the Bishop of Hell it's a period story set in a historical epoch that was on her own and Bowen makes a good job of creating authentic sounding dialogue. I think she also is brilliant at conjuring characters; and though neither Beau Sekforde, his evil wife the Countess, or even the ghost Jane Sekforde, come out very sympathetically, they may not be sympathetic but they are strong and memorable.In constructing the story we see how she drops the scar on the ghost’s cheek early on when The Countess sees the ghost and doesn’t know who she is, and neither do we at that point, and then then explains the scar at the end causing us we as readers give a gasp of final understanding! Nothing suggests until the end that Beau Sekforde murdered his wife, but when we find out that there is a bottle of poison that the ghost has significantly tidied up, we are not surprised, and we marry that with our prior assessment of Beau Sekforde as a bounder and a cad and are not surprised to find him a murderer.The ghost does what ghosts often do and sets the moral order straight, and murderer is punished I think Marjorie Bowen writes very well. Her prose is strong, her characters vivid, her dialogue convincing, and her story construction is admirable, but in this as in other stories in the anthology the Bishop of Hell I think the weak point is actually the supernatural elementEven so, I hope I enjoyed reading the story very much, and I hope you enjoyed listening to it.LinksWebsitehttps://ghostpod.org (https://ghostpod.org)Musichttps://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Heartwood Institute)Patronage & Supporthttps://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (Donate a Coffee)https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Become a Patreon)https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Support the show) (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Support the show

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Episode 29: On The Brighton Road by Richard Middleton Jan 11, 2020

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Richard Barham MiddletonWhen I first read On The Brighton Road by Richard Middleton (known as Richard Barber Middleton in order to distinguish him from the many other Richard Middletons) I thought the story probably dated from the 1930s. So when I saw that Richard Middleton was of a previous generation I was surprised because his writing has a very modern feel.Richard Middleton was very well regarded by other writers and I think his short story on the Brighton Road is a little masterpiece. One of his most famous stories is the ghost ship — in fact said to be one of the best ghost stories in the English language! I'm sure that at some point in the future I'll read it on the Classic Ghost Stories Podcast.The Preface to Middleton’s ghost ship and other stories is by Arthur Machen that well-known writer of horror and weird tales. Machen knew Middleton on the time in London particularly at the new Bohemian club. He was also a companion of Lord Alfred Douglas.Middleton was born in Staines in the Greater London area which was then in the county of Middlesex in 1882 to a father who was an engineer, and a mother who had no profession, so presumably the family were well-off enough so that she didn’t have to work. Middleton died aged only 29, 1911 by suicide. In the pictures of him on the Internet they actually looks older than 29.Stephen Wayne Foster did an autobiographical article on Middleton using what little historical material there is. He was apparently a sensitive boy and unhappy as a child. As well as Arthur Machen thinking a lot of him pros master Raymond Chandler author of detective fiction such as the big sleep said that he thought Middleton was extremely talented, so much did Raymond Chandler put off his own writing career because he thought he could never be as good as Middleton.Middleton went to be a bank clerk aged 19 but didn't stick it and decided he wanted to make his career first as a journalist and then as a poet and started out on the Bohemian lifestyle in London. Allegedly he spent his nights drinking in the New Bohemian Club in London. In that he fits the stereotype of the damaged, substance abusing writer, that grew from that scene and which persists. Middleton’s most famous poem was The Bathing Boy which is very well regarded, and reading in The Bathing Boy, I wondered, like many other authors of ghost stories, whether Middleton was actually gay, but I read in Stephen Wayne Foster’s article that he fell in love with various young women and mooned after them. Middleton failed to make a career in journalist and moved to Belgium, in his mid 20s. Middleton spent the last years of his life in Brussels in Belgium and was treated there for depression. The treatment at that time was with chloroform but, sadly, Middleton used the chloroform to end his life.http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/A_poet's_death.pdf (http://www.williamapercy.com/wiki/images/A_poet's_death.pdf)LinksWebsitehttp://bit.ly/ClassicGhostStoriesPodcast (Classic Ghost Stories Podcast)Musichttps://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Heartwood Institute)Patronage & Supporthttps://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (Donate a Coffee)https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Become a Patreon)https://www.patreon.com/barcud (Support the show) (https://www.patreon.com/barcud)Support the show

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Episode 28 The Corner Shop by Cynthia Asquith Jan 03, 2020

Show notes

Lady Cynthia AsquithLady Cynthia Asquith, born Charteris in 1887 in Wiltshire, England was an English aristocrat, best now known for her diaries and ghost stories. Her father was Hugo Richard Chatteris the 11th Earl of Wemyss which is a place in Fife in Scotland.Lady Cynthia Asquith married Herbert Asquith who was the son of the British prime minister. Lady Cynthia was also well-connected in British literary circles: — a friend of DH Lawrence’s, she was also the secretary to JM Barrie who is most famously the author of Peter Pan. She worked with Barrie until he died in 1937 and he left her the bulk of his estate. Lady Cynthia was also a friend of another female writer of ghost stories LP Hartley. In terms of the ghost stories, as well as her own she became famous for being the editor of a whole series of anthologies put out by the Publisher’s Pan as The Ghost Book.The story which I have just read The Corner Shop is included in Roald Dahl’s anthology of ghost stories. In the introduction to that book, Roald Dahl says that he read hundreds of ghost stories and most of them were rubbish. He only included the ones he thinks are good in his anthology and I would agree with his choice. I like this ghost story by Cynthia Asquith. I like the evocation of the cold London winter’s night in the fog, with the hero stumbling into a candlelit curio shop. She paints the picture very well.In fact, I think that this story has many of the classic elements of a good ghost story. I'm writing a little article for the website on what I think makes a good ghost story as I'm reading so many of them at the moment. Certainly one of the key elements in a ghost story is the environment and we see that in the cold foggy winter night, which is both hostile and cuts off the hero from the normal world. There is also an essential requirement in that the protagonist must end up somewhere quite otherworldly. In earlier fiction this was the Gothic Castle, but in the Corner Shop, the antique shop itself serves as the Gothic location. These locations have to be both terrible and enchanting and that’s certainly the case.A classic ghost story must also have a moral message. The message in this story isn't hidden at all it, and it is is that if you have a stroke of good luck you mustn't keep it to yourself! Play fair old man!Here the protagonist’s good luck and moral sense enables the ghost to rest in peace ultimately and so serves the moral purpose of the story. We often read that ghosts will wander until the task is concluded, and so here, as the finder of the frog gives half the money ultimately to charity, the ghost feels his guilt is resolved.The final thing I think that Asquith does well is that she misdirects the reader. But she does it in a way that the reader is probably guessing the outcome before the protagonist does so that allows us as readers to feel that we are very clever. We are probably guessing long before our hero that the old man is not in fact the caretaker, even though Asquith shapes the story to keep up the pretense right until the end. Until in fact the final sentence where it is that the ghost is revealed, although we possibly guessed it a little while before that. So another nice ghost story for the first week in January. I hope you enjoyed listening to it as much as I enjoyed reading it and I will be back with you next week to deliver another ghost story.http://ghostpod.org (ghostpod.org)Classic Ghost Stories Podcasthttps://www.patreon.com/barcud (Patreon)https://ko-fi.com/tonywalker (Kofi)Music by https://theheartwoodinstitute.bandcamp.com/album/witch-phase-four (Heartwood Institute)https://www.patreSupport the show

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