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.)