Chapter I: Part 1

_After the Hoppe photograph_]

ARTHUR
MACHEN

_Weaver of Fantasy_

WILLIAM FRANCIS GEKLE

MILLBROOK, N. Y.
ROUND TABLE PRESS
1949

COPYRIGHT, 1949, BY
WILLIAM FRANCIS GEKLE

_All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form, except by a reviewer, without the permission of the
author._

ROUND TABLE PRESS
MILLBROOK, N. Y.

_Manufactured in the United States of America._

for
VERNE

PREFACE

It was, I suppose, during the closing months of the First World War that an urbane and witty gentleman, writing in the Confederate city of Richmond, set down these words in the course of one of his interminable, and witty and urbane, monologues: “I wonder if you are familiar with that uncanny genius whom the London directory prosaically lists as Arthur Machen?”

Since there was no reply, as indeed none was expected, the amiable Charteris chatted on about Arthur Machen and, oddly enough, Robert W. Chambers, for some moments, and then he concluded with this statement.... “But here in a secluded library is no place to speak of the thirty years’ neglect that has been accorded Mr. Arthur Machen; it is the sort of crime that ought to be discussed in the Biblical manner, from the house-top....”

That thirty years’ neglect has almost doubled—and indeed one might say with perfect truth that Arthur Machen has suffered a lifetime of neglect, _and_, in perfect truth, it must be added that the loss has been the world’s which so blindly accorded neglect to the uncanny genius of Arthur Machen.

This is the sort of crime, as Mr. James Branch Cabell suggested back in 1918, that ought to be discussed in the Biblical manner—and it is my intention to do so.

At this point there will be voices raised in protest ... dim voices trained to the librarian’s whisper, voices that echo in the vaults of university libraries and in the reading rooms of Memorial Collections. There will be other voices—the amiable, all-inclusive voice of the anthologist and the rasping roar of the reprint editor. There will be the excited exclamations of the cultists and the happy burblings of the bibliographers as they pounce upon another Machen item. And of course we may expect to hear the calm and cultured tones of the collectors, the excavators and the discoverers, who have pointed with smug satisfaction to their rows of faded bindings and their “obscure little pamphlets.” As for the horror boys, happy with their harpies and hieroglyphs and wild hallucinations, they will probably croak and sibilate in unholy glee and rush down to start their presses—reprinting madly all they can find of the magical tales of that wonderful Welshman, Arthur Machen.

It will appear that I anticipate a renewed interest in the works of Arthur Machen. I do. It may even become apparent that I expect the publication of this book to work the miracle—to right the wrong of sixty years of neglect. I do. Nor is this to be attributed to egotism, nor to a vast respect for my powers of persuasion. A number of literary men, of small stature and great, have written well and passionately of Arthur Machen, only to have their effusions produce a magnificent calm. It is simply that there are signs and portents (of which more anon) that the time is now. And then of course there is always the bare hope that my admiration for Arthur Machen and my enthusiasm for his work may be contagious enough to result in another Arthurian revival. That would be an event to rival a genuine miracle at Glastonbury itself.

I spoke of the voices that will be raised in praise and recognition of Arthur Machen. It may occur to some that there was bitterness in what I said, and in the way I spoke of collectors and cultists, and of bibliographers and bibliophiles, and of anthologists and of the zealots of the pulp press. I daresay it is true that I am inclined to be bitter over the neglect accorded Arthur Machen. Of course the blame for that neglect cannot be fixed or fastened—but it must rest somewhere between the publishers of limited editions and the reprinters of almost unlimited editions, between the alpha and the omega, and the buying and reading public. That covers a lot of territory. One cannot indict the publishing world from top, literally, to bottom, literally. One cannot indict, to paraphrase a much quoted statement of Edmund Burke’s, an entire reading public. One can, to make a concrete proposal, attempt to do something about it.

The interest shown in the prospectus announcing this book has been gratifying, but it does not, to my mind at least, dismiss the charge of neglect. It merely indicates that there are others who bear witness to the crime and who wish to see justice done.

The book has been announced as a critical survey—and it will be that. Many of the stories, written in that decade of the delicate decadents, will be re-examined and re-evaluated. Mr. Machen will sometimes be spoken of as a “Gothick novelist”—a thing he has said he is not. The stories of the “Great War,” as he called it, are seen in a new perspective, as anyone must know who has re-read them, especially _The Terror_, in the past few years.

Many of Machen’s articles and essays, and such works as _Hieroglyphics_ and _Doctor Stiggins_, offer food for thought to those who may think, for example, that Mr. James Farrell has settled literary criteria, once and for all, in his book, of a few years ago, _The League of Frightened Philistines_.

This book is, then, the result of some twenty years preparation; at least half of them spent in planning to “do something about it.” The book has grown slowly, with many interruptions before, during and since the war. The opening chapter or Prologue, called “Conversation Piece,” was written a dozen or so years ago. It was scheduled for publication in one of the ephemeral magazines of the day. This particular one proved to be more ephemeral than most ... to paraphrase a rather famous line, “it sank from sight before it was set.” However, the piece is here presented as it was written some twelve years back. I believe now, as I did then, that there was need for a book about Arthur Machen. I hope this book will fill that need.

At least one chapter, the ninth, may seem to some a philippic, a potpourri of purely personal preferences and prejudices, having little to do with Arthur Machen and his works. Needless to say, I believe it extremely relevant.

—W.F.G.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I cannot recall whether it was James Branch Cabell or Vincent Starrett who first directed me to the works of Arthur Machen. I am deeply grateful to both, not only for this, but for their encouraging letters concerning my book.

To Montgomery Evans and Paul Jordan-Smith for their enthusiasm and interest, their intimate sketches of Machen, and for facts not available elsewhere. To Carl Van Vechten and Robert Hillyer for their articles on Machen, parts of which are quoted herein.

To Joseph Kelly Vodrey and Paul Seybolt for their informative and helpful letters, and to Nathan Van Patten whose bibliographical labors lightened my own. To Meyer Berger for his notes on the Mons affair, and to _Harper’s Bazaar_ for permission to quote from them. To the late Alfred Goldsmith and his delightful reminiscences of Machen. To all of these I am deeply grateful.

To Alfred A. Knopf for permission to quote from the Machen books bearing the Borzoi imprint, and for having published them in the first place. To Robert McBride & Co. for permission to quote from _The Terror_, and to Dodd, Mead & Co. for permission to quote from _More Authors and I_.

To Hilary Machen for his courtesy in handling my proofs at Amersham and, finally, to Arthur Machen for the ‘plenary blessing’ he gave this book.

CONTENTS

PREFACE

PROLOGUE: Conversation Piece 1

CHAPTER

One: Far Off Things 14

Two: The London Adventure 37

Three: The Weaver of Fantasy 58

Four: A Noble Profession 72

Five: The Legend of a Legend 90

Six: The Yellow Books 112

Seven: Machen’s Magic 128

Eight: The Pattern 144

Nine: The Veritable Realists 161

Ten: Things Near and Far 178

EPILOGUE 197

BIBLIOGRAPHY 199

ILLUSTRATIONS

FRONTISPIECE
_Drawing made from the Hoppe Photograph_

SOME MACHEN ITEMS
_A photograph showing one of the famous Knopf
Yellow Books and several title pages_ facing page 112

THE MACHENS IN LONDON
_A photograph taken in London in 1937,
Courtesy of Mr. Montgomery Evans_ facing page 178

_Prologue_

CONVERSATION PIECE

“And what,” asked the younger man, “are they?” He pointed to a long row of books plainly bound in yellow with faded blue and almost indecipherable titles. The Host felt a warmer glow than the brandy alone could have produced. “They are,” he said reverently, “my Machens.”

“Your whats?” asked the younger man absently. He had caught sight of a promising looking volume, enticingly entitled _Aphrodite_, on a lower shelf. The Host intercepted the glance, recognized the symptoms of failing interest and, with skill born of experience, drew his chair before the _Aphrodite_ and pulled out a lapfull of the yellow books.

The younger man, not too obviously disappointed, concentrated on his small globular glass of _Asbach Uralt_. “Who,” he asked in tones that matched his look, “is Machen?”

“Arthur Machen,” began the Host in a voice that matched _his_ look, “he is the ... he’s, well ... look!” He gestured to the shelves. “Fifteen books, and there are more, and you’ve never even heard of him. Fifteen of the most wonderful books in the English language, and you ask who he is!”

“Well,” said the young man with pardonable irritation, “just who is he?”

The Host settled back in his chair, fighting hard for composure and coherence. “Arthur Machen,” he began again, and with every evidence of a strong determination to speak calmly, “is the man who has written more fine things than any dozen living authors you may care to mention. That may strike you as a rather broad and rash statement, but I am in a mood to shoot the works. And there are others, Highly Connected and Well Thought Of Persons, who have indicated much the same opinion. Arthur Machen has been appreciated by some of our best known composers of ‘literary appreciations.’ Unfortunately, this sort of praising is often akin to, and almost as effective as, burying. To the popular mind, a writer who has been appreciated by a duly accredited appreciator is a pet of the pedants, a delight of the dilettantes and nothing more. And, indeed, the titles found on some of the books containing these little essays in literary appreciation are often suggestive of archeological exploration rather than of due honor to a living author. I have in mind, specifically, two books whose titles seem to connote research into a particularly distant past. _Buried Caesars_ and _Excavations_, those two books you see there; they would tell you in a much more literary style, and with considerable technical flourish, just who and what Arthur Machen was and is. But I am not minded to ask you to read them at present.

“I think,” resumed the Host generously gesturing toward the decanter and his friend’s glass, “that the time has come for a new and revised estimate of Arthur Machen. Would that I had the time, talent and/or the temerity to undertake the task! Let us, meanwhile, acknowledge but pass by these appreciators of Machen, at least for the moment. He has attracted the attention and been subject to the discussion of Vincent Starrett, Carl Van Vechten, James Branch Cabell and others. He has even attracted the notice of such literary titans as Tiffany Thayer and Burton Rascoe. He has been crowned by that arbiter elegantiarum of American manners, morals and mentality, Walter Winchell, who once described Arthur Machen as ‘tops among the literati.’ This last, I fear, is not a critical estimate per se, but an indication of a vogue in certain quarters.

“Despite the fact that Mr. Machen has been ‘discovered’ by at least two of our most indefatigable bolster-uppers of literary reputations and revealers-of-lights-under-baskets; despite his having been exhumed and placed on exhibition upon a platform built for two, Machen remains yet to be properly appreciated and honored by a wider public. Perhaps he never will be, and perhaps it is best so. Machen once wrote that if a great book is really popular it is sure to owe its popularity to entirely wrong reasons. And I, for one, tremble to think of what Hollywood might do to Machen.” The Host paused briefly for replenishment.

“Far too often these appreciations have degenerated into what I have in my more bitter moments mentally called _Match-Machen_. An execrable pun, I grant you, but concerning a matter that is, to my mind, as offensive. I refer to the practice of certain appreciators who, in the execution of their self-appointed duties find it, for some reason or other, necessary to devise improbable genealogies to demonstrate their own wide literary knowledge and their conception of the subject of their labors. We find, for example, _Mr. X_ in the act of appreciating a book by _Mr. Y_.

“How does he go about it? Why, he merely tells you that _Mr. Y_ is the literary son of _A_ out of _B_, whose maternal grandmother was _C_, and whose second-cousin is _D_. Another trick is to pretend that _Mr. Y’s_ work is a play ... with music by _R_, scenery by _S_, costumes by _T_ and lyrics by _W_. In short, you come away without the slightest notion about _Mr. Y_. But you have learned that _Mr. X_ knows a great deal, apparently, about the doings of _Messrs. A, B, C, D, R, S, T and W_. Do you follow me?”

“But slightly,” confessed the younger man with that candor born of brandy.

“I will try to make myself clear,” said the Host selecting a volume from the shelves.

“Here we have an essay about a man called, let us say Blank. The author of this little essay will tell you that a passage of Blank’s prose suggests one of the more poignant episodes out of de Maupassant, set to music by Tchaikowski against a background of Gaugain’s Tahitian belles. Have you any idea what Blank’s prose is like?”

“No,” said the young man morosely.

“Good! Listen then to this. It is Vincent Starrett on Machen: ‘Joris Karl Huysmans, in a thoroughly good translation, perhaps remotely suggests Machen, both are debtors to Baudelaire.’ Now, does that tell you anything about Machen?”

“No, it does not!” said the young man. “But then, neither have you!”

“Quite true,” nodded the Host affably. “I am often carried away. But we have ably demonstrated my contention.” The younger man looked decidedly restless. “Um!”

“Know then,” said the Host relishing the sound of his voice, “that Arthur Machen, born in 1863, the son of a Welsh clergyman, first swam into the public ken early in the last decade of the last century—a fact which the public largely failed to appreciate until some years later. His earlier works were translations of the _Heptameron_, the _Memoirs of Casanova_, and several other large and, I should think, rather dull old works. But the most important were two remarkably unique books called _The Anatomy of Tobacco_ and _The Chronicle of Clemendy_.

“Most of Machen’s best work was written before 1901—and in that year he temporarily deserted literature for the stage. Machen’s most productive period then, from 1890 to 1901, affords a curious and striking contrast with what was assumed to be the important literature and the important literary group of the time. The 1890’s in England were celebrated, although few people grow festive about it now, for the Yellow Book Boys, that delightful coterie of delicate decadents who glorified the carnation and the pansy. But after the maddest music had died away, and the reddest wine had been drunk, Cynara and Dorian fluttered to the shelves and Oscar and Hubert and Adelbert retired into a certain pastel-shaded obscurity from which they emerge from time to time as a new volume of memoirs is published. The period still commands a certain amount of academic attention—and yet the best books of that period were written not by these ‘Men of the Nineties,’ but by Arthur Machen. A chap named Muddiman, whose book you see there, wrote his history of these fellows and mentions Machen but briefly: ‘Arthur Machen, in those days, belonged to the short story writers with Hubert Crackanthorpe, who was the great imaginative prose writer of the group.’ Alas, poor Hubert! Who knows him now! Holbrook Jackson and Richard Le Gallienne ignore Machen completely. And perhaps rightly so. Machen was not of the group, nor of the period. But here I wish to digress briefly....

“These delicate contemporaries of Machen derived from the French Symbolistes, who derived from Mallarme and Baudelaire, both of whom were admittedly influenced by Poe. It has been said that Machen was also influenced by Poe. The difference, if you will credit me, is that Poe’s influence, in as far as it exists, came to Machen direct. When it came to the others of the group it had been filtered through Gallic gravel and Symbolistic sand.

“So much for Machen’s literary history. No one could possibly tell it better than he has in _Things Near and Far_ and _Far Off Things_—his two autobiographical collections. Nor is any literary history as simply told. It is not one of your tremendous collections of anecdotes concerning ‘literary figures of the day.’ It is the story of a lonely man who wanted, more than anything else, to write. And then—you must read Machen. All of him. I know of no other writer whose entire output can be so heartily recommended.

“You will realize, as you read, that when people use such names as Poe, Stevenson, Blackwood, and Henry James, they are but vaguely gesturing in the general direction of Machen’s own weird landscape. It is a land as strange as the misty mid-region of Weir where lies the dank tarn of Auber, the measureless caverns where runs the sacred river Alph. But it is like none of these. The young man of Gwent has created his own landscape, a strange country spread out under a sky that glows as if great furnace doors had been opened, bordered by tall grey mountains, traversed by streams that coil their esses through silent woods. It is my fancy to think I have a picture of that country, painted by another genius. You see that Van Gogh hanging there?” The Host indicated a large framed print of writhing cypresses under a swirling sky. “On quiet November nights I sit here and look into it, half expecting to see young Meyrick or Lucian Taylor come down the hillside.

“It is curious to go over some of these former estimates of Arthur Machen. One first reads them through in a fine enthusiasm at finding someone else who has read Machen and found him good. But even those who praise him the most, fail to express, or even to hint at the ‘quiddity’ of Machen. They seem to find him so far beyond their powers to praise that they often resort to picayunish criticism. Thus we find Vincent Starrett mildly complaining about an absence of cloud descriptions in Machen. Or about a lack of humor. True, you’ll find no Maxfield Parrish sky castles, no James Gould Fletcher touches, no rotogravure alto-cirrus formations. But if ever a man could imply clouds without using the very word, Machen can. And although Machen has not yet introduced a pair of jolly grave-diggers to coax us back into our seats or cajole us into combing back our bristling hair, you will find he has humor.

“There does exist, however, a problem in classifying Machen—it seems to exist only a necessary evil. Essentially, I suppose, Machen is what might be called a Gothic novelist. He has been linked so often with the recognized practitioners of the Gothic style and tradition. You’ll find no ivy-covered ruins, no deserted abbeys, no ravens, no baying mastiffs, not even a sinister monk—and we must rule out those jolly tosspots, the monks of Abergavenny. I daresay Machen would prefer to be known as a Silurist. His ruins are those of an older time, older even than the ruins of the golden city of the Roman legions.

“Vincent Starrett calls Machen the Novelist of Ecstasy and Sin—making him sound rather like a Messalinaen Lady Novelist. Mr. Van Vechten too, at least in his decadent novel _Peter Whiffle_, seizes upon Mr. Machen from much the same viewpoint, and makes Machen an asset in the character of his precious Peter. And all too frequently, in discussing Machen, the spirit of Baudelaire raises its ugly head. Novelist of Sin, forsooth! ‘Evil, be thou my good!’ What rot! And there are those, apparently, who would classify some of Machen’s tales as ‘erotica.’ Baudelaire, bosh! As well point out the resemblance between a lane in Gwent and a lupanar in Paris! No—Machen is neither a Gothic novelist nor a writer of delectable indelicacies. Machen’s tag must be sought for in hieroglyphics of his own devising.

“The ‘quiddity’ of Machen, the one quality that pervades all his work, is that of ‘ecstasy.’ It is not the ecstasy of the lyric lady-novelist. Mr. Starrett seems to think it is a technical device, since he finds it is ‘due in no small degree to his beautiful English style.’ Mr. Machen’s own idea of this quality is that it is ‘a removal from the common life.’ And that brings me to _Hieroglyphics_, a book that should be a text-book in all our Universities. But perhaps not—no, surely not. Because in this book of Machen’s you will find set forth, once and for all, the difference between reading matter and fine literature. And such a book cannot fail to make enemies, nor to create false ideas even among its friends. Mr. Starrett says: ‘It is Arthur Machen’s theory of literature and life, brilliantly exposited by that cyclical mode of discoursing that was affected by Coleridge. In it he suggests the admirable doctrine of James Branch Cabell that fine literature must be, in effect, an allegory and not the careful history of particular persons.’ Mr. Cabell, who is, according to Mr. Starrett, Machen’s literary son, set forth his literary credo in _Beyond Life_ some seventeen years after the publication of _Hieroglyphics_. In it, Mr. Cabell expresses admirably, and with his famed urbanity, many of the truths he learned at his father’s knee. One is as pleased with Cabell’s literary progenitor as with his prose.

“Just one more quotation. It is my favorite quotation to end quotations about literary credos or the mechanics of creation. Mr. Machen, in _The Three Impostors_ says: ‘... I will give you the task of a literary man in a phrase. He has got to do simply this—to invent a wonderful story, and to tell it in a wonderful manner.’

“In his novels, _The Three Impostors_, _The Hill of Dreams_, _The Secret Glory_, _The Terror_, _The Great Return_, and in many of his shorter stories: _The Great God Pan_, _The White People_, in all his creative work, Machen has shown himself the master of his own precept. In _Hieroglyphics_ Machen noted the difference between reading matter that related facts about a character or a group of characters, and fine literature that symbolizes certain eternal and essential elements in human nature by means of incidents. You will find, then, that these wonderful stories are not merely startlingly original conceptions of heroes and heroines taking part in unusual events. That many of these plots and inventions are uncanny and fantastic does not place them in the ‘thriller’ class—having nothing more to say than the latest detective story. It would be absurd to think of _The Great God Pan_, for example, as merely a story about the discovery that Pan is not dead, or that Priapic cults may still flourish. No, it’s not so simple as that. There are other elements present, and chiefest of these is that quality of ecstasy. There are symbols and representations of a higher order, no cheap mysticism, no spiritualistic clap-trap. And finally there is in these stories an element of something that prompts belief.

“_The Great God Pan_ is a story much more improbable, more fantastic than _Frankenstein_ or _The Strange Case of M. Valdemar_. And it is not a mere pseudo-scientific story—it is believable. You do not believe that? Yet Machen wrote a story more fantastic still. A story with no possible explanation, scientific or otherwise, in short, nothing less than miraculous vision could have explained it. And that story was, and still is, widely accepted as true. The tale of the _Bowmen_ at Mons, a simply written story, no flourishes, no elaborate atmosphere; yet with that quality of ecstasy, that quiddity of Machenism, has won belief. Quite recently, in a shop, I came across a volume that was an anthology of Myths, mysteries, visions and the like, and in it appeared the story of the Bowmen. It was not Machen’s story, however, and there was no mention whatever of Arthur Machen. It had been set down as an authentic legend, documented and sworn to by this one and that one who claimed to have been there. I daresay it will, in time, join such distinguished company as the Walls of Jericho and Joshua’s obedient sun.

“Yes, you must read Machen. All of him. It has been implied that there is a sameness about Machen’s work. But do not imagine that you will read the same story, told and retold. You will come to realize that there is in Machen a definite pattern. He has said that most men, as well as writers, are men of one idea. And most writers create tales that are variations on one theme, that a common pattern, like the pattern of an Eastern carpet, runs through them all. And Machen’s pattern? You will see, when you read him, that literature ‘began with charms, incantations, spells, songs of mystery, chants of religious ecstasy, the Bacchic chorus, the Rune, the Mass.’ And Machen has taken as his symbol and pattern the devices and signs of ecstasy, of the removal from the common life. The dance—the maze—the spiral—the wheel—the vine, and wine, these are the outward signs of ecstasy, the patterns of Machen.

“One book in particular you must read—_The Hill of Dreams_, without a doubt one of the finest novels ever written. From the first grand sentence a spell is laid upon you. It has never failed to thrill me—it is like the master theme of a symphony—it is as magical as the opening notes of the _Good Friday_ music in _Parsifal_. But there—I have fallen into the ways of those whom I have derided. And I have kept you quite later than I intended.”

The Host rose, stretched, and poured out a brace of nightcaps. The younger man, who had listened patiently to this lengthy monologue, gratefully accepted his brandy, sipped rather too avidly, for listening is also a thirsty business, and said, “Why do you suppose Arthur Machen is so little known? I mean, he sounds marvelous—but, after all, people can’t help it if they don’t know about him.”

“That,” responded the Host sadly, “is one of the Mysteries of Mysteries. Perhaps Machen writes too ‘circumvolantly’ as Cabell says, for our critics. Or perhaps, as Van Vechten says, ‘one only takes from a work of art what one brings to it—and how few readers can bring to Machen the requisite qualities.’ Perhaps our critics are more apt to be impressed by clever young men who go about swimming classical streams, fishing for tarpon, or fighting in the fashionable war of the moment. The general public, unfortunately, knows Machen, if at all, through the inclusion of several of his stories in anthologies of mystery and horror stories. Which is about on a par with using Shelley’s _Indian Serenade_ as a filler in a pulp confession magazine.

“A short time ago in London there was a dinner party in celebration of the seventy-fifth birthday of a writer. The guest of honor made the customary speech—but it was such a speech as has seldom been heard from a feted author. It was tragic, it could have been, and should have been, bitter—but all was gently said. After toiling in the fields of literature for over forty-two years, after having produced eighteen volumes of rare quality, he had earned but £635. That man was Arthur Machen.”

“He is still living?” asked the young man.

“Yes,” replied the Host gravely. “I should like to make a pilgrimage to his home. But you must go. Take these with you. Read them. I fear I have told you little about Arthur Machen. Nor am I the only one has confessed such a feeling of inadequacy to cope with Machen. But I find comfort in what a very capable writer once said of another remarkable writer of Gothic Tales. It will be, I promise you, my final quotation of the evening. Dorothy Canfield once wrote, in a preface to _Seven Gothic Tales_: ‘The person who has set his teeth into a kind of fruit new to him is usually as eager as he is unable to tell you how it tastes. It is not enough for him to be munching away on it with relish. No, he must twist his tongue trying to get its strange new flavor into words, which never yet had any power to capture colors or tastes.’ And now, mind the step going out. It’s rather darkish.”

_Chapter One_

FAR OFF THINGS

1

One might devote a great amount of time and give a great deal of thought to the opening paragraph of a book about Arthur Machen. It is not merely that one is faced with the usual problem of where to begin: in Caerleon or London, in Richmond, Virginia or Newark, New Jersey or, for that matter, wherever one first heard of or first read Arthur Machen. Nor is it simply a matter of how to begin: with a quotation—there are a number of very appropriate quotations—or with a review of a controversy raging in the London newspapers in 1915, or with a few paragraphs taken from _Peter Whiffle_, a rather outré novel published in New York some years ago. Nor is it even a matter of when to begin: with the Nineties, the Twenties, or only yesterday. The problem is one of selection, for one might pick up the line of the legend of Arthur Machen anywhere along the course of the last three quarters of a century. More than that, it is also a matter of the personal history of almost anyone who might attempt the task.

Most people will remember, I think, when it was and how it was, they first became acquainted with the work of Machen. And in most cases, I believe, it will be a rather strong and vivid memory. Whether one was introduced to Machen by Cabell or Starrett or Van Vechten, or made the discovery for one’s self becomes a matter of some importance, at least to those who have come to know Machen and who regard him, as I do, as one of the greatest living writers in English literature. Yet it might seem that these personal recollections and this high regard, however deeply felt, are not quite reason enough for a book about such a man, nor significant enough to serve as an introduction to such a book.

Of course there are facts and figures. Many a book gets under way with an impressive array of figures, or with the clever juxtaposition of two facts which, by their very contrast, seem to promise an unrelenting interest and an unrelaxing grasp upon the reader, or it may start out with a simple statement of fact. Such figures as, for example, these: Arthur Machen’s works have appeared in anthologies which run to fabulous numbers of copies, and one of his stories has been published in an edition limited to two copies. Or a juxtaposition of facts, as for example: Arthur Machen has been praised by Oscar Wilde, the arbiter elegantiarum of the 1890’s, and by Walter Winchell, equally arbiter elegantiarum of the 1930’s.

Or a simple statement of fact, supplied, stiffly and on crackly paper by the British Ministry of Information: “Arthur Machen, the Welsh novelist, was born in Caerleon-on-Usk in 1863.” His Majesty’s Ministry or representative thereof, concludes with the intelligence that further information may be found in a certain book which may be obtained from a certain publisher.

Be it said, then, and to the everlasting glory of His Majesty’s Ministry of Information, that Arthur Machen _was_ born at Caerleon-on-Usk. And in the year 1863. A long time back.

2

Somerset Maugham once wrote something about the unhappy accidents of birth that often place a man amid scenes that must seem forever strange, and among men who must seem forever strangers. When such a person, after years of painful adolescence, dramatic conflict, moving tragedy and innumerable vicissitudes, finally arrives by some happy accident at some other spot upon this planet he feels, in the words of more than one sympathetic novelist, that he has “come home.” And then, presumably, the conflict and the tragedy and the vicissitudes begin all over again. In actual life writers, and artists of other sorts, are particularly susceptible to this form of cosmic accident—or at least many of them prefer to think so. It is, somehow, heartening to meet one who was pleased with the place of his birth.

“I shall always,” wrote Arthur Machen, “esteem it as the greatest piece of fortune that has fallen to me, that I was born in that noble, fallen Caerleon-on-Usk, in the heart of Gwent.... For the older I grow the more firmly am I convinced that anything which I may have accomplished in literature is due to the fact that when my eyes were first opened in earliest childhood they saw before them the vision of an enchanted land.”

There is no doubt that the simple fact that Arthur Machen was born in Caerleon-on-Usk has had a tremendous influence upon his style, his thinking, his writing, his philosophy and his life.

Caerleon-on-Usk, lying within the fabled land of Gwent and close to the Welsh border, would have fascinated Arthur Machen even if he had not been born there—just as it must fascinate everyone who has ever read Machen and anyone who ever will read him. “Little, white Caerleon,” he calls it, an island in the green meadows by the river, was once the headquarters of the Second Augustan Legion, one of the farthest outposts of the sprawling Roman Empire. The Romans originally called it Isca Silurum, evidently for its situation on the river Usk. Later Latin writers called it Urbs Legionem, a translation of the Welsh Caer-Leon.

Caerleon knew the hardened legionnaires, the men who crossed the Channel other conquerors failed to cross. It knew the tread of men who followed the eagles, and it knew the patricians who came with the Pax Romana in the wake of the legions. Caerleon knew also the gallant companions of the Round Table, for it was, in those times, a seat of Arthur the King, and many a summons brought the knightly riders within its walls and many a quest sent them off across the meadows where the river wound in great esses toward the dark forests hanging along the mountainside. Nennius places the scene of at least one of Arthur’s battles at Cairlion. As for Gwent, it is now called Monmouthshire, but in those days it formed the eastern division of the kingdom of South Wales, and some identify it as one of the three divisions of Essyllwg, the country of the Silures. Caerleon itself is the very stuff of legend, and yet it exists today, as it did in the middle nineteenth century, a small and sleepy town not far from the equally legendary Severn.

In this place and in the year 1863, Arthur Machen was born—the son of a clergyman who had the poor “living” of Llanddewi Rectory. His father was John Edward Jones, who afterwards added his wife’s surname to his own, so that his son’s full signature became Arthur Llewelyn Jones Machen. Daniel Jones, Machen’s grandfather, was Vicar of Caerleon-on-Usk and his great grandfather was David Jones, Curate of St. Fagans, Glamorgan. It is not the present writer’s intention to compose a biography, “fictionized” or otherwise, of Arthur Machen. There will be none of your happy little phrases about what the “little Arthur” did, or what the “young Machen” or the “boy Machen” thought. Nor will the reader be asked to “imagine the young Arthur growing up amid the storied stones of Caerleon,” or to believe that “undoubtedly the young Arthur was influenced by the wild Welsh countryside,” or even to “assume that the boy Machen made many trips to the legendary shrines in and about Caerleon.”

Such a biography may one day be written, but one cannot refrain from hoping that it will not be. Machen has written his own biography in at least three of his books, and perhaps in all of them. The two frankly autobiographical books, _Far Off Things_ and _Things Near and Far_ tell most of the facts of his early life ... and they tell them with more meaning than even the most skilled and sympathetic biographer could. His novel, _The Hill of Dreams_, does more with the material suggested in these notes of a lifetime than the most gifted novelist of our day could attempt. The story of Lucian Taylor and his adventures, mental and physical, mystical and spiritual, in the invented town of Caermaen, _is_ the story of Arthur Machen, beautifully told as no one else could tell it. To these books the reader is referred and, fair warning, he will be referred to them again and again!

To be sure, Machen _did_ make those little trips about the legendary town in which he lived; he _was_ inspired by the storied stones of Caerleon and he _was_ influenced by the wild Welsh countryside. He was an only child and he lived in that solitude which is so often the lot of an only child. He often accompanied his father on his “parish calls” and thus he came to know every farm and every lane, every hill and every valley in the heart of Gwent along the roads that led from the rectory at Llanddewi.

When he was eleven he went away to school, passing each term as a sort of “interlude among strangers” until he could come home again to Caerleon. Was he happy or unhappy at school? Was he fond of games or of mooning about—the two alternatives, apparently, of English public school life? That story is told in _The Hill of Dreams_ and again in _The Secret Glory_. Machen’s schooldays were the schooldays of Lucian Taylor and Ambrose Meyrick ... to their stories we must again refer the reader. For conjecture and invention are beyond the scope of this study and Arthur Machen is seventeen when he really enters into our particular field.

For in his seventeenth year Arthur Machen went up to London. There was a very practical purpose behind this first visit to London—he was to come up before the examiners for entrance into the Royal College of Surgeons. Whether or not the actual purpose of this visit was of great importance to Machen is one of the conjectural matters upon which we shall not speculate. The matter had been arranged and decided by family and friends—it was the necessary preliminary to a career in medicine or in surgery. Machen prepared for it by walking some three or four miles several times a week to the Pontypool Road Station to obtain copies of the London papers. These he studied with great care, devoting special attention to the theatrical pages. Not that he had ever given any particular thought to the stage or to the theater, or that he was, in the phrase of today, “stage-struck”; it was simply that the theater was typical of what London was, and of what Caerleon was not. At any rate, on a day in June 1880, he went up to London with his father. And thus began The London Adventure.

3

The examiners found something Machen already knew—he had no head for figures, either arithmetical or anatomical. And apparently Machen had not the interest or the ability to acquire, within a period of time agreeable to the examiners, a proficiency in either. It must not be assumed, however, that Arthur Machen had already decided upon a career in letters, to be pursued amid the pleasures of London. He had not. Years later Machen wrote that he had no idea, when first he went to London, of a career in literature. Indeed, he had _never_ thought of it as a career, but as a destiny.

However, he had not been in London a month before he began to write. There is nothing particularly prophetic about this, nor anything especially startling. Most young men, at one time or another, try to write. And usually their creative efforts are turned in the direction of the epic, the heroic, the classic. A young man, trying to write, almost never permits himself to indulge in a fancy for the light essay, the brief episode. It is epic or it is nothing, usually the latter. Doubtless the Freudians have an explanation for this. It would be, one supposes, a very long and very complicated explanation.

Machen had his own explanation—for his own case. He attributes it to his Celtic blood. Not that Machen thought the Celt, or the Welsh Celt at any rate, had contributed much to the world’s literature. Indeed, Machen had advanced the idea that “all impartial judges will allow that if Welsh literature were annihilated ... the loss to the world’s grand roll of masterpieces would be insignificant.” Yet he concedes a certain literary feeling that does not exist in the Anglo-Saxon ... an appreciative rather than creative faculty, lacking, perhaps, in the critical spirit but still, a delight in the noble phrase ... the music of words. And so—Machen tried, as a young man will, to write.

He wrote verses, of course. “Every literary career,” says Machen, “which is to be concerned with the imaginative side of literature begins with the writing of verses.” So Machen confirms, some sixty years before it was conceived, the opinion expressed above. He had written verses before, while still at the Hereford Cathedral School. They were concerned somewhat with matters derived from the _Mabinogion_ and were probably composed in the heroic manner. This set of verses was, as is the custom, rejected.

He filled notebooks with “horrible rubbish—rubbish that had rhymes to it.” Much of what he wrote was greatly influenced by Swinburne’s _Songs Before Sunrise_. “Influenced” seems a mild sort of word to set alongside Machen’s own “cataclysmic.” At any rate, writing what he describes variously as rubbish and drivel, Machen tried, at the same time, to pass his examinations for the Royal College of Surgeons. His examiners now arrived at their decision regarding Machen’s arithmetical ability and the career as a surgeon came to a close. Machen returned to Caerleon and the writing continued, mostly, of course, after the family had retired for the night.

4

A printer named Jones, who lived in the cathedral town of Hereford, one day received in the post a manuscript accompanied by a request to print one hundred copies of the poem. It was a poem. The title of the poem, _Eleusinia_, probably conveyed nothing to Mr. Jones, stationer, bookseller and printer of Hereford. As he struggled with the text, written in a large sprawling hand on both sides of ordinary letter paper, Mr. Jones might have wondered what our young people were coming to. Certainly the subject matter of the poem was vastly different from the Bibles, Prayer Books and Pitman’s Shorthand Manuals with which his shelves were stocked.

Fortunately for Mr. Jones, the poet pretended no knowledge of book-making. He specified no typographical niceties, he pleaded for no ornaments, he indicated no preference in paper or in binding. His one modest request, that the Greek phrase _Oudeis Muomenos Odureta_ to appear on the title page, be set in Greek type, was withdrawn when Mr. Jones wrote him that Greek type would be extra. And so the phrase appeared in English, and with a typographical error, at no extra charge.

Mr. Jones presumably knew the young poet—remembered him as a purchaser of letter paper and note books. The Llanddewi Rectory address was, in a way, reassuring. His bill would probably be paid, but Mr. Jones must have thought the usual thoughts about “minister’s sons.” As for the poet—he preferred anonymity, the comparative anonymity of “By a Former Member of the H.C.S.” For when a sixteen page pamphlet bearing the title _Eleusinia_ and concerning itself with the Eleusian Mysteries, is published by a Former Member of the Hereford Cathedral School it must be admitted that such anonymity is, at best, comparative. Generations of readers of novels about English public schools will realize that every other former member of the H.C.S. would know at once that the book could have been written by none other than “old Machen.”

Of course the edition of one hundred copies guaranteed that the anonymity would still remain comparative—especially since it seemed unlikely that the former membership of the H.C.S. at large would be interested enough in poetry to purchase sixteen pages of it ... and without wrappers! It is not known, exactly, what happened to ninety-nine copies of _Eleusinia_. Henry Danielson in his _Arthur Machen: A Bibliography_ (1923) says that his collation was taken from what is probably the only copy extant.

The text of this first work of Arthur Machen is, naturally, as little known to the general reader as a transcription of the Rosetta Stone ... and so it is likely to remain. What is it about? Machen says of it, “this is a horrible production.” He wrote it, he adds, by turning an encyclopedia article on _Eleusis_ into verse, “some of it blank, some of it rhymed, all of it bad.” This is Machen’s estimate of it in the notes he wrote for Danielson’s _Bibliography_. Nathan Van Patten lists, _Beneath the Barley. A Note on the Origins of Eleusinia_ (1931). Whether this explains the poem or the mysteries is known only to those who have seen one of the twenty-five copies that were printed. However, in a letter written in 1945, Machen says: “It is less than nothing, but perhaps it might have suggested the entertaining question—‘Here is a boy of seventeen who is interested in the Eleusian Mysteries: what the devil will happen to him?’”

Well, Machen’s poem was published, and whatever he may have thought of it in 1923 or in 1945, his relations, in 1884, thought well enough of it to decide that journalism was the career for Arthur. It is amazing, in a way, that a pleasant little group in a country rectory should decide over a little pamphlet written “about” the pagan rites at Eleusis, that their youthful relative was destined for a career in journalism. Of course, relatives are proud of one’s books and equally proud of one’s pamphlets, even if they do not read them. And so, perhaps, the rector and his family never bothered too much about the contents of the rarest Machen item of them all. Doubtless more than one of the ninety-nine copies slowly disintegrates in a Welsh garret to this very day.

5

In the summer of 1881 Machen was back in London in quest of a career. This one too, although it had nothing to do with figures, did not quite come off. For some time he had thought about journalism as his relatives advised, but he did not actually follow their advice until some years later. Meanwhile, he lived in an old red-brick Georgian house in Turnham Green where he wrote furiously in one manner or another. That Celtic appreciation of the fine phrase and the glorious sound of words was strong within him, for almost everything he read struck a responsive chord, and he would begin at once to compose an epic in the manner of the author or the book he was currently reading.

Thus there was a long heroic poem in the manner of William Morris, whose _Earthly Paradise_ he had just purchased with his tea and tobacco money. Then there were innumerable verses in the manner of Robert Herrick. Now and then there would be a strong Swinburnian resurgence. And while all this furious creation was going on he worked in what was called the “editorial” department of a publishing house.

There are many tasks a literary man might do in serving his apprenticeship and Machen did most of them—or most of the ones current in the ’Eighties. He had assisted in the “grangerizing” of many old and odd volumes and he had composed “Shakespearean” calendars, selecting appropriate quotations from “The Bard” for each of the three hundred and sixty-five days. These and other more or less literary matters occupied his days and earned for him the sum of about a pound a week. At Turnham Green he wrote feverishly and planned prodigiously and read ravenously ... and almost every book he came upon set him off on another venture of his own.

There are some writers, and there are certain casts of mind, requiring exercises of this sort. It is rather odd that these should turn out to be the more imaginative writers after all. Yet it does seem that they have to work out for themselves theories of composition and devote much of their time and talent and energy to perfecting the technicalities of the trade of writing. Poe, of course, comes to mind, and Coleridge and Hawthorne. They first developed theories, seemingly so rigid. They devised formulae, seemingly so mechanical. And then they created tales and poems, not from their observations and experience, based not on facts, but on fancy. And they composed them, apparently, with little regard for the formulae and systems of their own devising. They seem to leap from the frankly imitative to the fearlessly imaginative, without ever taking any of the intermediate steps they themselves had postulated, or calling into use any of the technical and mechanical aids with which they had practiced their trade.

Machen in 1881 might recognize and respond to a pattern or formula in Swinburne, in Burton, in Morris, in Herrick, in Stevenson, in Balzac, in Rabelais. This is not to imply that Machen merely developed a style “in the manner of Swinburne,” or of Stevenson or of any of them. To each of these he brought something of Machen—and as he learned his craft, the technical tricks, the automatic alliterations and the polished phrasing were fused into something, a way of writing, no one else has ever had, no one but Arthur Machen.

Meanwhile Machen discovered that he disliked his labours at the publishing house in Chandos Street. The business of composing cultural calendars to be hung in London kitchens and country parlours did not interest him, nor did he see why it should interest anyone. He therefore resigned his position—and in the face of a raise to twenty-four shillings a week! He then became, of all things, tutor to a group of children, teaching them, of all things, mathematics! His head for figures seems to have improved considerably for, on going over the Euclid he was supposed to pass along to his charges, he found that it did make sense of a sort.

He had moved from Turnham Green to Clarendon Road—a street destined to become, one day, as well known as Baker Street, Cheyne Row and many another London street of literary fame. Machen was already existing on that famous and fantastic diet of “green tea, stale bread and great quantities of tobacco.” Fortunately, at first, his tutorial position entitled him to dinner with his pupils. Later his pupils changed, and with them his menu. The noon hour was spent in wandering about Turnham Green or Holland Park, with a pause for biscuit and beer at a convenient tavern.

These wanderings became a habit, and through the spring of 1883 Machen went further afield into the green suburbs to the north and west of the city. It was on these lonely outings that he first began to formulate one of his literary theories—that “in literature no imaginative effects are achieved through logical predetermination.” Now this theory—so demonstrably true in his own case—was arrived at by no logical predetermination but by sheer pedestrianism. It came about on these solitary walks when, as so often happened, the roads that led so invitingly to green and open country plunged suddenly into a row of horribly new brick houses or, more startling still, a vast and sprawling cemetery.

To the countryman, whose ideal landscape proceeds logically from valley to hill, from stream to pond, from crossroads to village, from fence to house and stile to pasture, these monstrous outcroppings of civilization, these sudden and terrible interruptions of what was and should have continued to be a pleasant prospect, are more horrible even than a factory belching smoke from seven stacks.