The Haunted Vintage

by Marjorie Bowen, Michael Dirda (Introduction)

The wine looked a thick amber colour, powdered with gold. Lally thought of the doctor's story of the two men who had followed this woman to the forest and afterwards died miserably. Perhaps it was here that she had brought them.

Following a scandal in the Duke's court, roguish officer Lally Duchene is dismissed to a new post at a small monastery and asylum deep in the forests of the Rheingau. Disregarding the local superstitions about the dangers of ghosts and nixies in the woods and vineyards, his days slip by in a haze of daydreams.

But there something stirring in this woodland idyll. Among the patients is a woman possessing an overpowering, otherworldly aura, and the vestiges of a sinister paganism leer from beneath the holy facades. As the wine harvest approaches and figures from Lally's past find themselves drawn to the monastery, the forces of nature awaken and the countryside erupts in an intoxicating carnage of ancient rites.

First published in 1921, this rare historical mystery of pagan weirdness rife in nineteenth-century Germany returns to print for the first time since it's original publication.

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Classics, Gothic, Folklore

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1921

About the author

Marjorie Bowen (pseudonym of Mrs Gabrielle Margaret V[ere] Long née Campbell), was a British author who wrote historical romances, supernatural horror stories, popular history and biography. Her total output numbers over 150 volumes with the bulk of her work under the 'Bowen' pseudonym. She also wrote under the names Joseph Shearing, George R. Preedy, John Winch, Robert Paye, and Margaret Campbell. As Joseph Shearing, she wrote several sinister gothic romances full of terror and mystery. Many of these stories were published as Berkley Medallion Books. Several of her books were adapted as films. Her books are much sought after by aficionados of gothic horror and received praise from critics.

Bowen's alcoholic father left the family at an early age and was eventually found dead on a London street. After this, Bowen's prolific writings were the chief financial support for her family. She was married twice: first, from 1912-16, to a Sicilian named Zefferino Emilio Constanza, who died of tuberculosis, and then to one Arthur L. Long. Her first novel was The Viper of Milan (1906), after which she produced a steady stream of writings until the day of her death on 23rd December 1952. Her last, posthumous, novel was The Man with the Scales (1954).

Reviews

[p. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am always a little apprehensive of the novels published under the "Tales of the Weird" series but this is easily one of the best works under the banners. More of a mystery novel than a romance, it was deliciously atmospheric and adept at building up the intrigue. I could hardly put it down - I kept wanting to see how the story would develop.

I could easily see this testing well with modern audiences, were it adapted as a film or a limited series.

[MRLY · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read this one because Bowen’s Crown Derby Plate is one of my favourite ghost stories. Read this very quickly so was pretty engaging and I wanted to find out what would happen, but then felt sort of predictable how it would end. Setting very vivid though and something new.

[Samantha T · Rating 5 out of 5]

A delightful tale for those able to reproduce the picturesque scenes in their mind and enjoy the building intrigue. Not one for fans of steamy romance, high adventure or derring do. How some could rate it less than 3 stars baffles me.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Old beliefs die hard in the Rhineland, and those who do not recognize this may live to regret it.

[Lee Foust · Rating 3 out of 5]

One rule of thumb for reading Gothic is that the genre usually represents a cultural anxiety in the form of a monster or other form of deadly supernatural threat, leading to groups of texts and films that share a similar cultural anxiety. Usually these anxieties represent elements repressed by dominant cultures, thus explicating wonderfully Freud's concept of the return of the repressed--as if risen corpses, ghosts, and vampires weren't image enough of the process. Thus this one fits in with the Christian fear of nature and the pagan gods of nature that haunt the European wilderness after Christianity turned them into goat-like images of the devil and demonized human sexuality and pleasure as monstrous tools of Satan. While this anxiety seems more common in our modern nature-horror films like The Wicker Man, Harvest Home and Midsommer, even Henry James dabbled in a pagan goddess' haunting in Rome with his short story "The Last of the Valerii," and the Roman vampire story "A Mystery of the Campagna" by Anne Crawford assigns vampirism to a Roman demigod.

So, despite some great originality here, it reads a bit tame after the above-mentioned films. And I sort of expected a twist, or at least more dramatic, ending maybe given those films' denouements.

On the positive side though, Bowen's prose is so very sleek and modern-sounding. It's hard to believe she was writing in the era of the great Gothic stylists Lovecraft and Machen. While I fell in love with those writers as a prolix, pretentious youth with a flare for the Baroque and dramatic, I can still appreciate Bowen's sleeker storytelling and great fluency with changeable human emotions and her total resistance to the good/bad categories, which is no mean feat in the Gothic mode which tends to divide everything up into good v. evil. I really enjoy how her characters endlessly change their minds and desires, veer between good and evil acts and just generally muddle along like real people. It's quite refreshing in a Gothic to not really know who the good guys are supposed to be, the uptight life-denying Christians or the brutally natural pagan gods. Six to one, half dozen...

[Tien · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is one of the Tales of the Weird titles published by the British Library. I loved the cover and thought it a promising creepy tale (I was thinking something like The Castle of Otranto or The Mysteries of Udolpho). The protagonist of this novel, however, is one Lally Duchene, a young strapping man; a commandant and man of the modern age who would not believe in such superstitions. He is a man spurned with complex unparsed feelings who struggles against his good intuition but only one thing can save him...

As the book was published in 1921, the language was reflective of the time so it took getting used to. While it set up the atmosphere, I struggled with the very slow pacing of the story. But then I also struggled with the problem of Lally and his past [read: it would have been a trope I'd avoided]. My feelings on how the book ended is rather convoluted I rather expected it but still, I just felt a little let down after trudging through this forest a long time. Do not start reading this book expecting a fast pace or twists/turns. This is a book to read if you wish for something reflective and relaxing.

My thanks to the publisher for gifting me this book

[Ghengis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Absolutely loved this and can't believe it has been out of print for so long. Credit to the British library for resurrecting this. Considering the date it was published it has aged very well and has great female characters. With the right promotion this could be a Netflix movie.

[Patrick Micel · Rating 1 out of 5]

Perfectly dreadful book. I can't take a hero called Lally seriously, especially when the author seem incapable of stringing two words together coherently.

[this.catreads · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is my second strange trip into the publishing archives with the British Library Tales of the Weird series, and as with my first, I rather enjoyed the experience.

Unlike the other ToTW book I read (and some of the other books in the series), this isn't a themed collection of short stories, rather it's a full-length novel, written by Marjorie Bowen (a new-to-me author) in 1921.

The Haunted Vintage follows disgraced nobleman Lally Duchene, who has been banished from court after a scandal. He's sent to a remote corner of the Rhineland to run a prison and mental asylum, with a attached vineyard. The region has a rich folk history, and strange tales appear to be built into the very fabric of the buildings where Lally is now governor.

As we all know, you really cannot outrun your problems and pretty quickly, three other characters who were previously entangled with Lally step back into his life. A resolution to his past indiscretion appears to be within sight, but inevitably, with all the talk of weirdy goings on, something is bound to happen to complicate things. As well as all that, the mysterious Gertruda, who is in solitary confinement in the prison, begins to influence Lally and others around her. Is she simply a woman of ill-repute, or is she something far more troublesome? Don't go into the woods, boys...

As the time for the grape harvest draws nearer, things go from being 'just a bit odd' to being quite a deal wilder and there's a nice ramping up of the weird stuff until the story reaches it's nicely bonkers conclusion.

To be honest, it's not the scariest or the strangest thing I've ever read, some of the characters felt a bit two-dimensional, but on the positive side, it was great fun and the quality of Bowen's writing is really good. She not only builds a lovely creepy fantasy world in the ancient monastery-turned- asylum, but she writes about the countryside in the most beautiful fashion and evidently researched wine and perfume making really thoroughly before writing. I've learnt quite a bit about both, which was not at all what I anticipated when I picked up this book!

Overall, this was pretty enjoyable and once again, I am very grateful to @blpublishing for resurrecting books that might otherwise be lost without trace. This was definitely worth saving!

[Richard Hayden · Rating 3 out of 5]

The British Library Tales of the Weird continues to uncover lost treasures of the fantastical and horrific. Its latest offering is a departure from its more typical themed anthologies, being instead a novel of sinister European folk horror, The Haunted Vintage by Marjorie Bowen.

Disgraced nobleman Lally Duchene has been banished from court to run a rural complex comprising a prison, a mental asylum and a lauded vineyard. There he runs across a vibrant bucolic landscape beset by curious rural customs, and a network of sinister locals (most especially the enigmatically beautiful occupant of the last cell, Gertruda), all while being pursued by the scandal that drove him from the capital, Wiesbaden.

Much of the novel’s early plot is taken up with the love triangle (square?) between Lally, his liege, the Duke, and a noblewoman Pauline, although Gertruda intrudes upon this, too. However, while this mannered dance of consequence and propriety plays out so the background weirdness slowly begins to escalate until the true story bursts on to the page like a medieval German equivalent of the Wicker Man.

The invention and pacing is striking and entertaining. However, some of the characterisation feels undercooked. For instance, Bowen regularly tells us that Lally is a charismatic man, who dominates social occasions; but, she actually shows us that he is a whiny and petulant man, who nobody appears to like. It is a slightly uneven delivery of the main focus character. More positively, Gertruda remains aloof and mysterious to the last.

Pulsing with atmosphere, The Haunted Vintage is an interesting rediscovery in the folk horror tradition, well worth a read for fans of the genre. However, some of the dramatic styling may frustrate modern audiences.

(Proof copy supplied. Opinions my own.)

[Michael John Paul McManus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another great read from The British Library of the Weird. I've only read short stories by Marjorie Bowen that have been featured in various anthologies, so it was really good to read a full novel, The Haunted Vintage. Full of strangeness and weird goings on, it suited my tastes and read it in three days. As always with The British Library of the Weird, another well presented book. 10/10 for this one.