Tarnhelm: The Best Supernatural Stories of Hugh Walpole

by Hugh Walpole

Sewn hardback printed and bound by Bath Press in blue wibalin cloth stamped in silver, with head and tailbands.
350 copies. (500 copies, according to the copyright page)

Contents:
-An Introduction by George Gorniak
-The Clocks/ The Twisted Inn/ The Silver Mask/ The Staircase/ A Carnation For An Old Man/ Tarnhelm Or, The Death of My Uncle Robert/ Seashore Macabre/ The Little Ghost/ Mrs Lunt/ The Snow/ Miss Morganhurst/ Mrs Porter and Miss Allen/ Lizzie Rand/ The Tarn/ Major Wilbraham/ The Tiger/ Hugh Seymour (A Prologue)/ Angelina/ ’Enery/ The Fear of Death/ Field With Five Trees/ The Conjurer/ The White Cat/ The Perfect Close/ Mr Huffam, A Christmas Story.

'If subtlety, originality and ambiguity are hallmarks of the best supernatural tales, then Walpole’s stand with the very best.’—So writes George Gorniak in his Introduction to this definitive collection of the most admired of Hugh Walpole’s supernatural and macabre shorter works, along with two previously uncollected early masterpieces, ‘The Clocks’ and ‘The Twisted Inn’. Perhaps best known for The Herries Chronicle (1930-34), four historical Lakeland novels which remain in print to this day, Walpole was widely recognised in his own lifetime as a consummate literary craftsman with a fine narrative style and an admirable ability to portray character, humour and dialogue. In classic tales such as ‘The Silver Mask’, ‘Tarnhelm’ and ‘The Snow’, he also demonstrates beyond question that he understood the experience of sheer, stark terror.

Walpole had a deep and abiding interest in the supernatural and consistently incorporated macabre, mystical and supernatural elements in his work. He also exhibits a markedly modern understanding of the psychological, and it is this combination which allows his more traditional ghost stories, such as ‘The Little Ghost’ and ‘Mrs Lunt’, to retain their power today.

This collection of twenty-five stories should help renew the recognition enjoyed by Walpole in his own lifetime. As he said himself ‘. . . the creator who relies more upon the inference behind the fact than upon the fact itself, more upon the dream than the actual business, more upon the intangible world of poetry than upon the actual world of concrete evidence, this kind of creator will come into his kingdom again.’

Genres: Short Stories, Fantasy

363 pages, Hardcover

First published March 10, 2003

About the author

Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole was an English novelist. A prolific writer, he published thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two plays and three volumes of memoirs. His skill at scene-setting, his vivid plots, his high profile as a lecturer and his driving ambition brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. A best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s, his works have been neglected since his death.

Reviews

[Murray Ewing · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tarnhelm collects two dozen supernatural & uncanny stories from the prolific Hugh Walpole. (I couldn’t find any dating information, but most, if not all, are from the first quarter of the 20th century.) Unusually for supernatural stories of this vintage, the strong point in these tales is usually the characterisation, with some stories being basically character portraits ending in a revealing twist — a good example being “Miss Morgenstern”, whose titular subject seems a monster of indifference, caring nothing about the First World War raging around her, but only about her dog, and playing bridge:

“I’ve seen her play bridge, and it’s not a sight one’s likely to forget — bent almost double, her hooky fingers, of a dull yellow loaded with rings, pointing towards some card, and her eyes literally flashing fire. Lord! How these women played! Life and death to them truly . . . no gentle card-game for them. She was a woman who hated sentiment; her voice was hard and dry, with a rasp in it like the movement of an ill-fitting gate. She boasted that she cared for no human being alive, she did not believe in human affection.”

Of a more traditionally horrific sort is “Tarnhelm”, in which a boy is sent to spend Christmas with two uncles, one of whom is nice, the other nasty. The nasty uncle tells the boy the story of the Tarnhelm, a mythical skull-cap that allows its wearer to transform into any animal. And the boy has been noticing a rather nasty yellowish dog slinking about the house and scaring the other uncle...

A story like “The Little Ghost” is more characteristic of Walpole. Here, a man is haunted, first of all by the loss of a close friend (finding and losing a once-in-a-lifetime friend is a recurring theme in Walpole’s stories), then by an actual ghost — though this isn’t a scary ghost but a scared one, and the protagonist, caught up in his own sense of mourning, is in the perfect state of mind to comfort it, and therefore be healed of his own grief.

As often as the tales in this collection take horrific twists, they take positive ones, towards wonderment or fulfilment. There’s a little trio of stories in which dreamy, unworldly children living in harsh worlds discover a ‘Friend’ of some decidedly unworldly sort. Other stories tread the line between the supernatural and the psychological, and some of the better ones can be read as having no supernatural element at all. In “The Silver Mask”, for instance, a woman’s act of charity leads to her life being slowly overtaken, until she has, effectively, given away everything. "The Fear of Death" is a simple murder story, but has some of the best characterisation, as the protagonist gets to like a disagreeable fellow-writer just as the other man's wife realises she's had enough of him.

There’s a nice variety of tales, here, and it’s Walpole’s skill at characterisation you’ll remember, rather than the moments of horror or fantasy. The best tales mix the two, so the supernatural element is a perfect drawing-out of a character’s hidden life, but there are, equally, a few tales with rather obvious supernatural outcomes, even — ugh! — a couple (early ones, it has to be said) in which it’s all a dream.

[Shawn]

THESE ARE PLACEHOLDER REVIEWS - as I wanted to complete the Walpole's on my to read list, and had only one left, I spent the $8 for the e-book version of this on Amazon. I will, undoubtedly, go back and read some more of this at a later date - but here's some reviews of the one story on my list, and anything else that appears here and which I reviewed elsewhere.

"A Carnation For An Old Man" - Richard Herries, a 75-year-old man on vacation in Spain, finds himself tiring of the maternalistic control of his sister and decides to enjoy Seville as he wants. This means that he ends up languishing at the Seville cathedral, where he gradually begins to fall in love with a painting of Saint Emilia, who also falls for him. And final escape for him is exactly what you think.... Spiritual Fantasy, essentially. Not bad, quite well-written in fact (the travelers assumption that Spain meant they would disembark to castanets and bull-fighters, "instead of kissing him, being English, she scolded him", "few people realize the tomb-like silence in which most Englishmen spend their lives", etc.) but essentially sentimental fantasy.

"The Fear Of Death" - Our narrator, Peter Westcott describes a disagreeable and repugnant man of his acquaintance - one William Rollin - who he generally avoids but who happens to be staying (along with his composed and restrained second wife, who also despises Rollin) at the same small vacation hotel on the Channel Island of Sark. Rollin endlessly gripes and treats his wife awfully, but also seems terribly worried and in fear of the inevitability of death - and Westcott comes to see him as equally distasteful and pathetic, and his wife as determined and wracked by an unspoken personal conflict. This is an odd little story - essentially an abstracted character piece about the contemplation of murder, and what that means if the individual is odious and takes no joy from life, reflecting only negativity on those around him. Like a lot of Walpole, there's a homoerotic aspect (although Wesctcott thoroughly dislikes Rollin - who is a cringing, whining, unlikable man - he grows to pity him, and offers advice as to how he can make his life better, there is some talk of "feminine souls" in men's bodies, and Rollin comes to Westcott's room and sleeps on his bed, when troubled by fear) and also a strange kind of take on morality, "natural law" and "inherently bad people," as murder is weighed as an act. Would have made a good episode of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS or TALES OF THE UNEXPECTED, back in the day.

"The Silver Mask" - Sonia Herries (seemingly Walpole wrote an entire series of books about this family), a single well-off woman with too generous of a nature, is buttonholed by a handsome but starving young man - one Henry Abbott. In an act of "impulsive kindness" she invites him home, where he admires her artwork - but later returns to sell her one of his awful, sentimental paintings. From there, events escalate as Abbott and his coterie of extended family begin to insinuate themselves into Sonia's lonely life, despite her best efforts. This is a nasty, effective story - one could argue that there's a rather privileged class assumption going on ("The underclass will drain you, given half a chance - so watch out, fellow upper class socialites") - and one would not be wrong - but taken purely as a vaguely (very vaguely) supernatural story - it is effective.

"The Staircase" - Candil Place, 1815, is occupied by landed gentry Edmund Candil and his new wife Dorothy, along with Edmund's bitter, spinster sister Henrietta. But this tale of a familial rivalry, that ends in a death, has a fourth character: the house itself, personified and subdivided into various parts, places and items of furniture, all of which have opinions and feelings about what occurs within or around them, and the events which finally rouse them to "action." This charming story can obviously be traced backward to Walpole asking "Yes, but what does the house think?" (Not, it might be noted, "the haunted house" - as this is not a ghost story but a flight of Gothic, non-whimsical whimsy - almost an "anti-haunted house" story). It starts with an extended bit of architecture porn (completely justifiable given the tack the story takes - we must describe our characters, mustn't we?). An old, established house has its own history and opinions, even as it intends to serve humans to its best ability - and the story's conceit to subdivide this personification ("The Store Room hated her more than any other part of the house") is quite enjoyable, adding an interesting and engaging fillip to the general concept - even the Sun itself gets personified at one point! And all while presenting a sadly familiar and believable tale of familial jealousy with some nice touches ("such is the British temperament"). Not scary, as I said, but the climax builds to some solid eeriness. Quite good!

"Tarnhelm" by Hugh Walpole - A man relates how his entire life has been affected by seeing his Uncle's death when he was 10 years old. When a child (self-described as a bookish, somewhat sickly ectomorph "in search of a glorious library") he was sent to spend Christmas with his two uncles in remote Cumbria, as his parents were in India for years and he was endlessly shuttled around from relative to relative. Arriving, he befriends the trap driver Bob Armstrong, who becomes a bit of a manly father figure for him as his two Uncles prove to be, respectively, a congenial and chubby dandy (Constance - "what a funny name for a man") and a friendly but strict fellow with a collection of odd artifacts in his forbidden "Grey Tower" (Robert - whose house it is). That night he has a nightmare of a slinking yellow dog in his room and Armstrong later relates that he hates, fears and yet has pride in serving Uncle Robert. But after Uncle Robert invites the boy into his tower and tells him the legend of Tarnhelm, while showing him a grey skull-cap that he claims can transform him, everyone warns the child away from his Uncle... There are some elements in this story that seem to reoccur in Walpole's fiction (or what I've read of it): a Christmas setting, a character who is a minor writer (in this case Uncle Robert is a poet who has self-published his work) and, it must be said, suggestion of male camaraderie that border on the homoerotic (the boy recovers from his nightmare only after Bob Armstrong climbs into bed with him and holds him through the night - Armstrong, it is later noted, becomes a close companion of the narrator and his "personal bodyguard"). Also, there is some attention to a love of literature (the previously mentioned library line, both William Harrison Ainsworth's The Lancashire Witches and Ann Radcliffe's The Romance of the Forest are name checked, and at a bookstall in Cumbria the boy buys "...a publication called The Weekly Telegraph that contained, week-by-week, installments of the most thrilling story in the world") and there's some nice landscape descriptions of the area. While I hesitate to suggest this (because it's become a bit of a cliche of story analysis) I believe you can read this story two ways. The presumed way: from a Fantastic POV, our young narrator barely escape being killed (or something - maybe possessed?) by his predatory Uncle who has a magic item that allows him to shape-shift into a yellow dog. But one can also read the story as record of a failed sexual molestation/assault (very little is actually made of the supposed shape-shifting - with the dog's predatory, slinking & vile qualities more to the fore) by the Uncle. Take your pick.

"Seashore Macabre: A Moment's Experience" - A memory of childhood summers spent at the seaside, and a specific incident in which our narrator recounts becoming fascinated with a "wicked-looking, bent old man," who he follows to his cottage, only to glimpse a frightening tableaux. Again, not a "horror" or "ghost" story (the slightest suggestion of the supernatural at the end can easily be chalked up to a child's imagination) - but a short piece about a child discovering the existence of death (or perhaps just "the dead"). I was worried for a time that this might share the same unspoken subtext of Walpole's "Tarnhelm," but it does not play out like that, although interestingly it does share with that story an expression of a young boy's passionate love of fiction-reading, and THE WEEKLY TELEGRAPH (here we get specific mention of enthusiasm for R. Murray Gilchrist, E. Phillips Oppenheim, and Leonard Merrick's The Worldlings - as well as mentions of The Red and the Black and Saracinesca, while his parents read Meredith's The Egoist).

"Mrs. Lunt" - an author tells of his Christmas trip to meet Mr. Lunt (another author and a bit of a recluse) on the coast of Cornwall, at the latter's invitation. On arriving at the desolate, remote mansion he finds a nervous, pleading, pathetic man who seems to fear his wife, who died a year ago. The place itself seems haunted by the specter of a severe older woman who is only barely glimpsed - and eventually, Lunt confesses to his fear that his dead wife is attempting to exact revenge. This is not a bad - if somewhat familiar story - loaded with atmosphere (the cold carriage ride through the snowstorm from the train station, the pounding ocean, disagreeable smells in the house) before it follows its usual "revenge of the dead" plot. Notable most, to me at least, for two things. One is the fixation on companionship between Lunt and the narrator which (following the narrator's distaste at Lunt's physical embraces and Lunt's confession that he married his wife merely because that was what was done) could be read as merely the English upper-class distaste for shows of overt emotion, or something more. Secondly, the opening (in which our frame narrator introduces our author narrator) contains some rather pointed observations of the lives and personalities of "minor authors" - those who toil away in obscurity, ignored by the press and the public, knowing only that they may - long after their deaths - achieve some recognition. Which seems to apply to both our author narrator and Mr. Lunt (who is compared to the authorial type who writes a half-novel/half-poetry book like Walter de la Mare's The Return - which I've read and reviewed!)

"The Snow" - On Christmas Eve, as a heavy snow falls, Alice - Herbert's second wife who has been suffering bouts of explosive anger over her husband's occasional mentions of his loving but tenacious first wife - is plagued by cold rooms and mere glimpses of a vision - a vindictive, elderly female. She resolves not to lose her temper so often - but this barely holds, as her husband, tired of her cruelty, voices his desire for a separation. A compact, nasty little story. Again, Walpole may not feature thematic depths or many attempts at atmospheric attempts in his ghost stories, but he is an accomplished storyteller - her knowing how short and simple he needs to be for the piece. An enjoyable read, it makes me think Walpole would be a good candidate for BBC TV adaptations in the style of the famed 1970s M.R. James TV films.

"The Tarn" has a delectable opening (why one misanthropic, reclusive author detests another, always sunny, confederate - he blames him for all his misfortunes) then moves to murder by drowning enacted on the jolly fellow, only for ghostly vengeance to unexpectedly have its way. Really, an excellent little weird tale - again, the trajectory is familiar but the odd little details (the hills like India rubber, the odd impression of being stalked by a body of water) and especially the writing (the climax is a masterclass in suspense deployment) make this a winner.

"The Tiger" - a mild-mannered British businessman enjoys his trip to New York City so much that he returns for a full summer, but begins to find himself drifting into a nightmarish frame of mind, obsessed with the vision that wild animals prowl around through secret tunnels under the city, waiting to strike. This is a supremely odd story - not in its overall plot progression (which pretty much goes as you'd expect) but in its basic concept and incidental details. It could be read a number of ways - most specifically that our main character, visiting a foreign city, somehow processes the idea that "the city is dangerous" into an obsessive delusion, but the forms that takes are....well, it's just odd - some are passively racist (musing on a black man he meets on the street as being "animalistic" in his calm suavity), some possibly repressed sexuality (his reaction to a "scandalous" play he takes in), and some (like a momentary musing of what might happen if all the cars in the city team up with the underground wild animals to herd people to their death) are just strange. Almost felt like reading a Shirley Jackson story at times...

"Field With Five Trees" - a rustic farmer, who dearly loves his wife, tells about a strange incident in his life. At the time, he and his wife were suffering through a period of instability in their marriage, as all couples do (with no help from a crabby mother-in-law), and thanks to a chance encounter he began to entertain the idea of having an affair - but on the night he set out for the assignation, all of the landscape around their home seemed to conspire against him reaching his goal. This is a nice little piece (not a "ghost story" and barely a "weird story"), more involved in charting a man's heart as he suffers the vicissitudes of love and matrimony. It reminded me a bit of A.E. Coppard, in its evocation of the Cumberland area and landscape.

[Jameson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don’t know if the “Supernatural” title does this collection a disservice or not. If I’d read these stories under a different name maybe I would have appreciated their literary merit more and likewise more appreciated the supernatural or fantastical elements. But many of these stories aren’t supernatural, and some of the ones that are are tepidly so. Many are just literary fantasy. Set your expectations and you’ll enjoy it more, I’d guess. Walpole is a good writer, a good storyteller, but only one or two of his stories are the kind that I’d re-read around Halloween or Christmas.

Might be more interest to gays, given Walpole’s sexuality and the times. Two examples, of which there are plenty, of the kind of subtle and some not so subtle themes of homosexuality:

“But he was queer, and that is enough in this world to divide a man from his fellows. As though we are not, all of us, queer as queer! If we are not queer in one way, we are certainly queer in another!” (“The Conjurer”)

“Most men are conscious at some time in their lives of having felt for a member of their own sex an emotion that is something more than simple companionship. It is a queer feeling quite unlike any other in life, distinctly romantic, and the more so, perhaps, for having no sex feeling in it.” (“Major Wilbraham”)

[Maria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Годный хоррор с гнетущей и таинственной атмосферой. Особенно впечатлит и понравится тем читателям, которые только открывают для себя жанр и готовы страшиться оборотней и загадочных мест.

Рассказ прекрасно подойдёт на Хэллоуин детям.