Book Review: THE VILLA AND THE VORTEX

Title: The Villa and the Vortex: Selected Supernatural Stories, 1914–1924

Author: Elinor Mordaunt

Editor: Melissa Edmundson

Publisher: Handheld Classics

Pages: 306

My GoodReads Rating: 

 

The Villa and the Vortex: Supernatural stories, 1916‒1924, by Elinor Mordaunt was a treat. I suspect that the editor selected these two stories for the title of this collection because of the alliteration, which works well. My favourite in this collection was Hodge. 

The short stories have been selected and put together by Melissa Edmundson, who also gives us a detailed introduction to Elinor’s life and her writing. A glossary by Kate Macdonald, at the end of the book, brings us up to speed on the archaic words used in the stories.

The stories in this collection were as follows:

The Weakening Point (1916): Bond, the scion of the high-born and privileged Challice family, is plagued by nightmares on the night of his birthday, since his very first birthday. A fine boy, he grows up to be a handsome man with nothing to mar the happiness of his life other than these dreams.

The Country-Side (1917): The Reverend Robert Wister and his wife Margaret have been married for five years in a poor and overcrowded South London parish. Life is hard but there is a sense of purpose and they are happy, in their marriage and in their vocation. When Robert is offered the living of a parish in the countryside, their life changes. Robert adapts quickly to the life of leisure, hunting and drinking, slowly drifting apart from his wife who is shunned by the villagers. But when she receives the greatest betrayal, there must be the ultimate sacrifice. The poor Margaret is blamed for her behaviour, but is she more sinned against than sinning?

One quote from this story stood out for me for its truth. The root of all religions lies about what we – in connection with our own beliefs – call ‘faith’ and – in connection with other people’s beliefs – ‘delusions’.

Another quote says: Your true rustic is suckled on spells, incarnations and superstitions.

Both these stories are about the hold exerted by the primitive over the modern. I wasn’t so impressed with the first story, but the second one sparked my interest, and the following story, The Vortex, held it, never letting go.

The Vortex (1919): Lawrence Kerstervon escapes a dismal home life at age 18 to become a playwright who is attracted to the tragic and the morbid. His play is backed by a famous actor, and rehearsals begin. Slowly the actors get into their characters, getting a little too far into the skin of their characters. Soon we realise that the story has them a little too tight in its vortex.

Hodge (1921): Rector Fane’s children, Rhoda and her younger brother, Hector, having lost their mother, are best friends. The two children spent hours in innocent play, conjuring up the ancient, natural world through their imagination. One day, they find, close to the sea near their home, a charmed forest in which they find the remains of what might be a creature older than Homo Erectus, but younger than Neanderthal Man. The creature is alive. The trouble begins when the creature, who the children name Hodge, is smitten with Rhoda.

 

The Fountain (1921): A woman named Sylvia Colquhoun, too pure for this world, is married to a man with base and voracious appetites. His failure to understand her pains her, and when she learns that he has betrayed their marriage vows, it breaks her heart, and she drowns in the pool of the fountain that Harry had built for her in the early days of their marriage. After her funeral, the household discovers that the pool and the seven springs that fed it have all run dry, but the house has taken on a damp, dank air.

‘Luz’ (1922): A young nurse finds herself at the mercy of a stranger who offers to guide her home on a foggy London night. By and by, she discovers that her guide is blind and that he is leading her far away from home. She will soon learn just how evil his intentions are.

The Landlady (1923): A young, married couple, having rented the genteel and beautiful home of a Miss Julia Champneys, begin to see the disembodied spirit of their landlady around their house. They guess rightly that she is not dead but alive and unable to part with her home. 

Four Wallpapers (1924): Eva Erskine and her husband, Tom, have inherited a beautiful house which needs a lot of repair work to be rendered habitable. Then Eva notices four layers of peeling wallpaper and sees the ghosts of the former inhabitants of the house in four previous decades, and gets a glimpse into their tragic lives. 

The Villa (1924): is a vengeful house that unleashes death upon those who live beneath its roof after its rightful owner meets with her death by foul means. 

Each story plays upon the supernatural theme in vastly different ways. No two stories are set in the same circumstances. Yet in their different worlds, they conjure up the inexplicable and the supernatural for us. Elinor is a very talented writer. Each story is a beautiful piece of writing. 

(I read this book on Edelweiss. Thank you to the author, the publisher and Edelweiss.) 

 

Book Review: CLASSIC SCIENCE FICTION STORIES

Title: Classic Science Fiction Stories

Authors: HG Wells, Stanley Weinbaum, FitzJames O'Brien, Voltaire, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Florence McLandburgh, Edward Page Mitchell, HP Lovecraft, James Clark Maxwell, Arthur Conan Doyle, Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain and Ambrose Bierce

Editor: Adam Roberts

Publisher: MacMillan Collector's Library

Pages: 290

My GoodReads Rating: 

Classic Science Fiction Stories, edited by Adam Roberts, was an eye-opening collection of 14 short stories. Having read very little science fiction, I had believed that science fiction was more of a modern phenomena. I was surprised to note that as early as the 18^th century, authors were writing about subjects that we might find incredible even today.

Except for HG Wells, Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Conan Doyle and Ambrose Bierce, most of the authors were new to me. Of these four, Poe was the only author whose short stories I had read before.

 

The Star by HG Wells: A star suddenly becomes visible close to Neptune, becoming brighter by the day. The event is interpreted through various perspectives, including science, religion etc. As it hurtles towards earth, it causes cataclysmic changes on our planet, making large swathes uninhabitable. But the Martians are completely unfazed. The author ends the story with a hard-hitting line which only shows how small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem, at a distance of a few million miles. I found it fascinating, this ability on the part of Wells, to pass judgement on the pettiness of human nature against the backdrop of cosmic wonder.

Seen from today’s perspective, the author comes across as judgmental and derogatory towards women. He says, “Pretty women… feigned an intelligent interest they did not feel.”

A Martian Odyssey by Stanley Weinbaum describes the experience of a human, Dick Jarvist, a chemist on the Ares expedition to planet Mars, and a Martian. Tweel’s appearance, behaviour and characteristics are a marvel of the imagination, considering that the story was published in July 1934.

When a shuttle from the craft falls on Mars, Jarvis finds himself stranded on the planet. He has an interesting encounter with a Martian who he names Tweel, because of the high-pitched sounds the latter makes.

There is humour in the manner in which Tweel drinks water. The Martian sucks it into his beak, then carefully squirts it back into the cup. By the end of the story, I, like Jarvis, had developed a fondness for Tweel.

But Tweel isn’t the only marvel on the Red Planet. There is a creature, the Pyramid Monster, that gives out silica bricks, and another, the DreamBeast, which draws living creatures to their death.

Once again, I saw instances of the same negative attitude, racist in this case.  At one point, Jarvis likens the sounds made by Tweel to the “primitive speech of some earth people… like the Negritoes, for instance, who haven’t any generic words.”

In The Diamond Lens by FitzJames O’Brien, published in the 1850s, the narrator, a microscopist named Linley, is besotted by the power of the microscope and becomes convinced that there is much to be discovered, and that he is called to discover great things. He is so much in thrall of his dream that he actually does the unthinkable to achieve this dream.

The story managed to combine elements of the occult with scientific endeavour. It becomes a tale of deceit, betrayal and murder. The following quote expresses the rationale of Linley: Every great genius is mad upon the subject in which he is the greatest.

Micromegas by Voltaire, written in the 18^th century, is a comically wonderful tale of two giants, from the planet Sirius, in another galaxy, and from Planet Saturn, in our own solar system, who set out on an extraordinary interstellar voyage and land on planet Earth, where they encounter infinitesimally tiny beings, namely, us.

The two giants discover that humans, “infinitely small had, it seemed, an almost infinitely large pride.”

One of the giants asks a human, “if they had always been in this miserable state so near nothingness, what they were doing on a globe that appeared to belong to whales.” The story mocks scientists of the time who believed that earth alone supported life and philosophers of the time who adhered to philosophies that contradicted each other and served no purpose.

The Mortal Immortal by Mary Shelley, commissioned in 1833, tells the story of a young man called Winzy, who drinks a potion made by an alchemist and is cursed with near-immortality and eternal youth, while his wife, the love of his youth, grows visibly older.

A Tale of the Ragged Mountains by Edgar Allan Poe is hard for me to describe. While out for a walk in the mountains, a man sees strange sights of another place and another time. Whether this was a description of telepathy or wild imagination is unclear.

The Automaton Ear by Florence McLandburgh: A professor invents an automaton ear which can reproduce every beautiful sound ever heard on the planet, whether that sound be natural or humanmade.

This story reminded me of the power of Artificial Intelligence. The prose was beautiful.

The Tachypomp by Edward Page Mitchell sees a mathematics tutor expound a wild theory to prove that vehicles could theoretically travel 60 miles a minute.

Both The Automaton Ear and The Tachypomp use sound scientific principles of the time to explore the frontiers of possibility. Both end on an anti-climactic note.

The Colour Out of Space by HP Lovecraft, the longest story in the collection, saw science fiction mixed with Gothic elements, even horror. This one was my favourite.

Aspiring authors are told to avoid info dumps, but here the story literally starts with long-winded description that goes on for around three pages, and yet I read this description more than once. Each word was so evocative.

This story isn’t about anything paranormal, but very soon we are overtaken by a sense of horror and dread. My heart went out to Nahum Gardner and his family. Their lives begin to disintegrate when a meterorite lands on their property.

To Herman Stoffkraft, PhD, a Paradoxical Ode (After Shelley) by James Clark Maxwell: Maxwell was a Scottish scientist who was responsible for the biggest advances in physics since Newton. This story is actually a “paradoxical ode” styled “after Shelley.”

The Horror of the Heights by Arthur Conan Doyle: An aeronaut, Joyce Armstrong, comes to know of a number of accidents afflicting aeronauts flying into the higher reaches of the atmosphere. Intent on solving the mystery, he takes a dangerous flight to find out the nature of the danger that confronted them. He finds answers but pays for his life.

Sultana’s Dream by Rokeya Sakhawat Hossain: It is hard to imagine a writer writing in a language that isn’t her first language, and writing so well. That too, a female writer writing at a time when very few Indian women got an education. This feminist utopian story is decades ahead of its time.

The story, written in 1905, is set in a utopia where the word, mannish, means being timid and shy. The story provokes thought: Why should women be confined indoors to keep them safe? Why not confine the men who carry mischief in their hearts?

A Psychological Shipwreck by Ambrose Bierce: A man’s dream of a shipwreck comes true.

The Door in the Wall by HG Wells: A promising young politician with a great career ahead of him is haunted by a door that suddenly appeared in a wall. The door led to a garden where he spent the happiest moments in his childhood. The door and the garden appear at the strangest times and places. The man feels haunted by the sight of that door.

The last two stories didn’t quite fit the science fiction genre. But overall, I enjoyed this selection. I look forward to reading more science fiction from now on.

(I read this book on NetGalley. Thank you to the author, the publisher and NetGalley.) 

W -- We didn’t start the fire, We are the world

I was totally floored when I first heard Billy Joel sing, We didn't start the fire. The speed at which he sang, the encapsulated version of American history that he presented us.

There were some interesting motifs that we appreciated, the fire that we hadn't started -- symbolising the political mess that each generation inherits and worsens, and the turning of the pages of the calendar -- standing for the relentless march of time over the decades.

I was so impressed with this song that I was determined to do an Indian version, by mentioning the political messes that had been perpetrated in my country, but that project never came alive.

Once upon a time, I prided myself that I could remember the lyrics by heart.

I still can.



USA for Africa's We are the World was another song whose lyrics I can still sing to. 

For the one time, when famous artistes came together to sing for the benefit of Africa.

I won't say much, just that like the song says, much can be achieved if the world comes together as one.

V -- Video killed the radio star

Video killed the radio star by The Buggles was a song I heard very few times, but it left its mark.

The song talks about modern day inventions and how they make something else obsolete. Specifically, how video killed the radio.

Those were the days when VCRs had just come into the market. Ironically, within a few years, VCRs themselves would be killed by the CD. Since then, the technological death march has continued. Nowadays, there is much less lean time, with newer technologies outdating previous technologies, almost before half the population has had a chance to buy it.

And of course, the mobile phone has killed so many things, including videos, radios, cameras, watches, editing consoles, pianos.

Will this ever stop?

U - Una Paloma Blanca

I bet you couldn't hear Una Paloma Blanca by George Baker without feeling something soar within your own heart. Without feeling suddenly upbeat and free.

The song always had that kind of an effect on me, and my friends confirmed feeling the same way.

I would stretch my arms out wide and pretend that I was a dove, miles above the earth, enjoying her freedom.

From the opening riffs of the song, it seemed to invite you to clap along and sing delightedly and loudly. 

George Baker's voice was so refreshingly robust, it felt thrilling to hear it. 

T -- That’s what friends are for, Those were the days

That's what friends are for was first sung by Rod Stewart but it is the version with Dionne Warwick, Luther Vandross, Whitney Houston and Stevie Wonder that we remember the most. The official video was apparently performed along with Elton John, Stevie Wonder and Gladys Knight.

When I was younger, my friends and I used to sing it together. It was our friendship anthem. I remember how we used to sing it as our college years tapered to a close. It seemed to symbolise everything beautiful about our friendship.


Those were the days by Mary Hopkin was another childhood favourite. What a voice she used to have. So distinctive, so completely unlike anything I'd heard before.

The first time I heard it, I had gooseflesh. It was so hauntingly beautiful. And the lines, where the narrator looks in the glass in the tavern and thinks, Is that lonely woman really me?

This song could cause me to feel sentimental for no reason I could think of.

After having spent five of the most beautiful years of my life in college, I think I was afraid of the rest of my life going downhill from then on.

Those were the days my friend
We thought they'd never end
We'd sing and dance forever and a day
We'd live the life we choose
We'd fight and never lose
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days

S -- Sad movies always make me cry

In the song, Sad movies always make me cry by Sue Thompson, the narrator suffers a betrayal on the part of her boyfriend and her best friend.

Even as a child, I felt keenly this unnamed woman's misery at how she was being cheated by the two people she loved the most. And of how she wept in secret. Of how she watched them, seated there in front of her in the movie theatre, ripping apart her trust and faith.

The saddest part was when her mother sees her tears and asks her what is bothering her. And she replies, Sad movies always make me cry. 

This video shows her performing this song in 1991. She first sang it in 1961.

R -- Rasputin

I first heard about Rasputin through Boney M. They painted an intriguing picture of a manipulator who get close to the power base through healing the Queen's son, and then through an affair with her.

Our history books mentioned Rasputin only in passing, so I was mighty pleased that I had some inside knowledge of the man.

The song itself painted a very colourful picture of his life and his death. It was all very interesting.

And at the end, we got to say, "Oh, those Russians!"

As if people weren't the exact same no matter where you went.

Q - Que Sera Sera

Que Sera Sera, Whatever will be, will be by Doris Day.

The Spanish and the English in that line are not exact translations of each other.

In fact, the Spanish is grammatically incorrect. That didn't stop me from liking it.

The lyrics told us about the unpredictability of life. We could never tell what lay in our future.

They also reminded us about the inevitability of life. What had to happen would find a way to happen.


It's still a phrase I often use.

P -- Please help me, I'm Falling

Please help me, I'm Falling (in love with you) by Hank Locklin is a sweet number about a very volatile situation.

Our narrator is married, yet finds himself hopelessly drawn to another, unable to be true to the vows he has taken. Yet he makes the choice to turn himself away from the temptation.

Hank Locklin sings the song so simply, while playing his guitar. There is no wild gyrating to music, and no skin-show on display and yet this song has always touched me with its simple melody.

Great music doesn't need fancy videos and expensive props to hold it up and it never ever goes out of style.

O -- One lonely night

One Lonely Night by REO Speedwagon has always seemed to me to have that slightly haunting quality about it. It tells us that one lonely night is all it takes to completely break a person.

For some reason, the song always reminded me of the millions of people all over the world who live lives of quiet loneliness, day after day, for years.

What does the loneliness do to them?

How does it unravel them?

And the rest of us, who are not in their shoes, might never even recognise the agonies they live on a daily basis.

N -- Nothing's gonna change my love for you

Cheesy as it may now sound to my (let's admit it) slightly and partially cynical ears, Nothing's gonna change my love for you was a great hit back in the day. We all loved it, and almost all my friends got this moony, dazed look on their faces when the song began to play.

Okay, I got it too.

I can still sing the words of this song, both verses and the chorus, without forgetting a syllable in between.

And of course, I am old enough to realise that there's no such thing as a love that remains unchanged.

Love is like water. It must change its nature once in a while if it is to remain dynamic. When it stays as it is, it tends to stagnate.

To be alive, love must alter its intensity. And so it is.


Sometimes it grows and sometimes it abates.

M -- May the Good Lord Bless and Keep You

I have always sung Jim Reeves' May the Good Lord bless and keep you in a soft, solemn undertone, treating it with as much feeling and reverence as if it weren't a song, but a beautiful blessing, a prayer.

Jim himself sang this one with a sense of awe and humility, it has always seemed to me.



If you listen to the lyrics, I'm sure you'll feel that way too.

L -- La Bamba, Living in the Love of the Common People

La Bamba by Ritchie Valens burst in on our minds, as soon as it began playing on the airwaves. We were drawn to it almost as soon as we first heard it.

Gleefully, we tried to make sense of the language, the meaning behind the words. They made no sense at all. Even then, in spite of not knowing the meaning of those words, we were drawn to them.

Soon we were singing them, or rather mimicking them. Or even more correctly, attempting to mimic them. 

Since the vocalist sang too fast for us to catch on, we hummed and hammed our way through those sections where we couldn’t quite catch on. When it came to the parts we knew, una poca de gracia, or ya arriba, yarriba, or yo no soy mariner, soy capitan, we sang louder.

What fun times La Bamba can still conjure up!

Living in the Love of the Common People was apparently quite a favourite with many artistes, but it was the version sung by Paul Young which caught my fancy.

I liked to think that song meant something more to me than it did to many other people. There wasn’t any hole in my shoe where the rain came through.  

But I could relate to many other parts in the song.

Our condition wasn’t so bad, growing up.

But Dad did face years of joblessness, when his company was locked down. It was a period of major deprivation for us, and if Mum and her sewing talents hadn’t risen to the fore, we would never have managed to get by. She was a wizard with a thread and needle and with the sewing machine. One more reason why I was never a little sister, crying ‘cause she doesn’t have a dress without a patch for the party to go. Not that I had a party to go to.

That song always reminds me of the tough times I went through as a child.

But more importantly it is a reminder that at the worst of times, we were still much, much better off than many other families I heard of. Families that gave up and surrendered to despair.

Thank God, we didn’t.

Mum and Dad worked hard, steadfastly, battling circumstances and bills with smiles, infusing us with hope.

When Paul Young sang, Daddy’s gonna buy her a dream to cling to, and Mamma’s gonna love her just as much as she can, it resonated with me.

The crowning glory came with the last verse when he said, Living on a dream ain’t easy, 

but the closer the knit, the tighter the fit, 

and the chills stay away. 

You take them in stride, family pride. 

You know that faith is your foundation, 

with a whole lotta love and warm conversation, 

don’t forget to pray, making you strong, 

where you belong.

Reasons why this song remains deeply satisfying for me.

K -- King of the Road

Another pick-me-up song for me is the pleasantly indolent yet energetic sounding King of the Road by country singer Roger Miller.

The song spoke of a vagabond, a hobo, who reveled in his life of rootlessness, of living it up in whatever situation he found himself. A "man of means by no means."




There was more than a hint of delight and mischief in that voice that reminded us that our lives, caught up in deadlines and routines, was missing something. We let other people’s rules and plans decide for us, but this tramp made his own decisions. He did whatever his fancies dictated.

We were slaves to others.




And that is why this song is so fascinating.

We may never chuck it all away. We may never willingly choose to drift about, driven by every passing wind.


Yet we cannot help but be charmed by this hobo, who deserves his self-styled epithet, King of the Road.

J -- Jolene

I was struck by what seemed like anguish in the voice of Dolly Parton when she sang, Jolene. It was a song about an unnamed woman who feared that her lover/husband was about to be ensnared by Jolene, against whose superior charms she stood no chance.

I was too young to comprehend anything about the nature of relationships, how complicated and twisted they often got, how they could make a person feel fulfilled and abased in equal measure. And yet I blithely went about singing, Jolene.

In my mind, I seemed to stare wide-eyed at this fearsomely beautiful woman who could take anything she set her heart on, leaving behind broken hearts crumpled in a heap.

My sympathies lay with the unnamed woman whose plea I sang all through the day, unable to get her cry out of my mind. It was as if the childish me was pierced by her pain.

I still hope Jolene moved on to other pastures.

I -- I can see clearly now, I will survive

I can see clearly now by Johnny Nash. Something about the lyrics of that song or the upbeat tune, I don’t know for sure, always made me feel a wee bit more positive and optimistic about my situation. No matter what circumstances I was going through at the time.

It was my instant, pick-me-up, feel good song.

I would listen to the words, and just like that, my spirits would be uplifted.

I will survive by Gloria Gaynor had her expressing her determination not to give in to the overwhelming sadness of a devastatingly hurtful breakup.

I was very young when I listened to this song. Even so, I was struck by the fierce grit in her voice, as she insisted that she would survive.

H -- Hasta mañana

Hasta mañana by Abba was the first Spanish I ever learned. Later Arnold Schwarzenegger taught me three more words, Hasta la vista, when he threatened to return in the sequel to The Terminator.

For a long time, I didn’t know what Hasta mañana stood for. No, I didn’t figure it out, not even when it stood within the rest of the context.

When I signed up to learn Beginner’s Spanish, I learned that mañana stood for tomorrow. That was an A-ha moment, I can tell you.

Hasta mañana was such a beautiful song. It carried within it the pain of separation tempered with the hope of a reunion. Sure, the cynics say that tomorrow never comes, but when Abba wished to meet again mañana, it felt good. It felt certain somehow.

This was decades before social media, of course. So when people moved apart, often they moved apart for good. It wasn’t always easy to keep in touch. And so, the hope expressed in Hasta Mañana comes across as even more powerful, a sort of fist-in-the-face-of-fate.

Even when confronted with the finality of “Don’t know where, don’t know when,” the song said, “Darling, our love was much too strong to die,” making the “new tomorrow” seem so defiant.

Courage in the face of uncertainty.

G -- Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

I must have just stepped into my teens when I first heard the song, Girls just wanna have fun, by Cyndi Lauper.

Theoretically, it sounded like a great theme song. Especially, since middle class girls back then, as now, didn’t really have much fun, unless we were heavily chaperoned and the fun in question was thoroughly vetted before we had it.

Our brothers had a lot of fun though. They were allowed to return home late if they wanted to. No deadline for them. And they didn’t have to ask for permission before they did anything. Not as much as us anyway.

They weren’t berated or scolded as much as us, and their every move wasn’t scrutinized or criticized as much as ours was.

So this song, Girls just wanna have fun, sounded like a nice anthem to grab hold of, one that would, in the spirit of song and dance, allow us to get away with a little infusion of rebellion.

Perhaps there were other girls and women around the world that thought so too, because pretty soon the song was a hit.

Of course, there were some who thought that Lauper, with her outlandish dressing style and garish makeup was a little over-the-top, at least back then, but I didn’t think so.

Girls just wanna have fun was a statement, about equality and empowerment, and when you make a statement, you’ve got to ensure that you have everyone’s attention.

Cyndi was just winning some attention to the cause.

F -- 500 miles

The song, 500 miles, always made me sad. It was the perspective of a guy who was far away from home, and getting further by the minute, a guy who either couldn’t or wouldn’t come home.

I remember feeling a tinge of sadness whenever I heard this song. It was a great song to hum, and once it got into your head, it was hard to dislodge it. But one couldn't help but be struck by the regret in the words.

Because he never told us what kept him away from home, I was free to speculate. Was he ashamed of returning home? Had he committed a crime? Taken something that wasn’t his to take, or merely broken someone’s heart?

Why couldn’t he just get into the train and chance it, like the prodigal son did after all options were exhausted?

The mere lack of a shirt on his back and a penny to his name ought not to have prompted him to stay away.

So many questions, and the hero of the song never bothered to clear the air.

Five hundred miles is a long distance, in physical terms, but the resignation in the voice told us that figuratively, he was too far gone to return.

Some distances are just too far to return from.