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The Great Return
They were purged as if they had passed through the Furnace of the Sages governed with Wisdom that the alchemists know. They spoke without much difficulty of what they had seen, or had seemed to see, with their eyes, but hardly at all of what their hearts had known when for a moment the glory of the fiery rose had been about them.
90 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1915
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About the author
Arthur Machen
1,107 books1,001 followersArthur Machen was a leading Welsh author of the 1890s. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. His long story The Great God Pan made him famous and controversial in his lifetime, but The Hill of Dreams is generally considered his masterpiece. He also is well known for his leading role in creating the legend of the Angels of Mons.
At the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, where he received an excellent classical education. Family poverty ruled out attendance at university, and Machen was sent to London, where he sat exams to attend medical school but failed to get in. Machen, however, showed literary promise, publishing in 1881 a long poem "Eleusinia" on the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Returning to London, he lived in relative poverty, attempting to work as a journalist, as a publisher's clerk, and as a children's tutor while writing in the evening and going on long rambling walks across London.
In 1884 he published his second work, the pastiche The Anatomy of Tobacco, and secured work with the publisher and bookseller George Redway as a cataloguer and magazine editor. This led to further work as a translator from French, translating the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre, Le Moyen de Parvenir (Fantastic Tales) of Béroalde de Verville, and the Memoirs of Casanova. Machen's translations in a spirited English style became standard ones for many years.
Around 1890 Machen began to publish in literary magazines, writing stories influenced by the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, some of which used gothic or fantastic themes. This led to his first major success, The Great God Pan. It was published in 1894 by John Lane in the noted Keynotes Series, which was part of the growing aesthetic movement of the time. Machen's story was widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content and subsequently sold well, going into a second edition.
Machen next produced The Three Impostors, a novel composed of a number of interwoven tales, in 1895. The novel and the stories within it were eventually to be regarded as among Machen's best works. However, following the scandal surrounding Oscar Wilde later that year, Machen's association with works of decadent horror made it difficult for him to find a publisher for new works. Thus, though he would write some of his greatest works over the next few years, some were published much later. These included The Hill of Dreams, Hieroglyphics, A Fragment of Life, the story The White People, and the stories which make up Ornaments in Jade.
At the age of eleven, Machen boarded at Hereford Cathedral School, where he received an excellent classical education. Family poverty ruled out attendance at university, and Machen was sent to London, where he sat exams to attend medical school but failed to get in. Machen, however, showed literary promise, publishing in 1881 a long poem "Eleusinia" on the subject of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Returning to London, he lived in relative poverty, attempting to work as a journalist, as a publisher's clerk, and as a children's tutor while writing in the evening and going on long rambling walks across London.
In 1884 he published his second work, the pastiche The Anatomy of Tobacco, and secured work with the publisher and bookseller George Redway as a cataloguer and magazine editor. This led to further work as a translator from French, translating the Heptameron of Marguerite de Navarre, Le Moyen de Parvenir (Fantastic Tales) of Béroalde de Verville, and the Memoirs of Casanova. Machen's translations in a spirited English style became standard ones for many years.
Around 1890 Machen began to publish in literary magazines, writing stories influenced by the works of Robert Louis Stevenson, some of which used gothic or fantastic themes. This led to his first major success, The Great God Pan. It was published in 1894 by John Lane in the noted Keynotes Series, which was part of the growing aesthetic movement of the time. Machen's story was widely denounced for its sexual and horrific content and subsequently sold well, going into a second edition.
Machen next produced The Three Impostors, a novel composed of a number of interwoven tales, in 1895. The novel and the stories within it were eventually to be regarded as among Machen's best works. However, following the scandal surrounding Oscar Wilde later that year, Machen's association with works of decadent horror made it difficult for him to find a publisher for new works. Thus, though he would write some of his greatest works over the next few years, some were published much later. These included The Hill of Dreams, Hieroglyphics, A Fragment of Life, the story The White People, and the stories which make up Ornaments in Jade.
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
October 23, 2022
A minor work, by Machen's standards. Which obviously means it's a bazillion times better than almost anything by his peers, if he even had peers. This starts with a three-line Reuters clipping about Tibet and ends with the Mass of the Sangraal, and it gets from one to the other via a route only Machen would take. And the writing, of course, is extraordinary – not so much a style as a presence.
January 26, 2022
As a long-term Machen fan, this is a re-read of I don’t know how many times and is one of Machen’s more mystically/mystery inclined pieces.
The unnamed narrator might as well be the author when he says “ The ordinary man, in the ordinary passage of his life, accepts in main the evidence of his senses and is entirely right in doing so. He says that he sees a cow, that he sees a stone wall, and that the cow and the stone wall are “there.” This is all very well for the practical purposes of life, but I believe that the metaphysicians are by no means so easily satisfied as to the reality of the stone wall and the cow. Perhaps they might allow that both objects are “there” in the sense that one’s reflection is in a glass: there as an actuality, but is there a reality external to oneself? In any event, it is solidly agreed that supposing a real existence, this much is certain - it is not the least like our conception of it.”
The story itself concerns an intrusion or realisation, if you wish, of another existence and how it affected the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of a small Welsh village and its surroundings. It could perhaps be a spiritual version of his previously published (and hugely successful tale) ‘The Bowmen’.
I note that some other reviewers comment on the lack of ‘action’ (as it were) in this tale. I disagree with that but is certainly true that you must roll with Machen’s rich and teasing prose as he eases the tale out.
If you do not care for his almost languid style then this as a standalone story is probably not for you but in the context of a ‘collected stories’ or ‘best of’ it will probably make more sense as it epitomises one of the many aspects of Machen oeuvre. This tale is, in my opinion, one of his best and as such is recommended!
The unnamed narrator might as well be the author when he says “ The ordinary man, in the ordinary passage of his life, accepts in main the evidence of his senses and is entirely right in doing so. He says that he sees a cow, that he sees a stone wall, and that the cow and the stone wall are “there.” This is all very well for the practical purposes of life, but I believe that the metaphysicians are by no means so easily satisfied as to the reality of the stone wall and the cow. Perhaps they might allow that both objects are “there” in the sense that one’s reflection is in a glass: there as an actuality, but is there a reality external to oneself? In any event, it is solidly agreed that supposing a real existence, this much is certain - it is not the least like our conception of it.”
The story itself concerns an intrusion or realisation, if you wish, of another existence and how it affected the physical, mental and spiritual wellbeing of a small Welsh village and its surroundings. It could perhaps be a spiritual version of his previously published (and hugely successful tale) ‘The Bowmen’.
I note that some other reviewers comment on the lack of ‘action’ (as it were) in this tale. I disagree with that but is certainly true that you must roll with Machen’s rich and teasing prose as he eases the tale out.
If you do not care for his almost languid style then this as a standalone story is probably not for you but in the context of a ‘collected stories’ or ‘best of’ it will probably make more sense as it epitomises one of the many aspects of Machen oeuvre. This tale is, in my opinion, one of his best and as such is recommended!
March 11, 2025
“The Bell that is like y glwys yr angel ym mharadwys—the joy of the angels in Paradise—is returned; the Altar that is of a colour that no men can discern is returned, the Cup that came from Syon is returned, the ancient Offering is restored, the Three Saints have come back to the church of the tri sant, the Three Holy Fishermen are amongst us, and their net is full. Gogoniant, gogoniant—glory, glory!”
— Chapter VII.
This novella, first published in instalments by the London Evening News and then in booklet form by the Faith Press in 1915, was – back in the early 1970s – my favourite fiction by Arthur Machen because it felt like a heartfelt response to the legend of the Holy Grail.
Like C S Lewis – who in 1963 wrote that he was “not a good enough Grailologist (to coin a dreadful word)” – I have nevertheless dabbled enough in grail research to know there’s no simple answer to the question “What is the Holy Grail?” But I did at least recognise that Machen felt that as a symbol the grail spoke profoundly to him.
And as a symbol its inherent ambiguity also reflected his own position: in a country of nonconformist chapel-goers he was an Anglo-Catholic from Monmouthshire – then often seen as an English county though officially in Wales. Still, he retained a sense of hiraeth, a yearning or nostalgia for the land of his birth, even when self-exiled as both journalist and author in London. And that ambiguity suffuses The Great Return and, indeed, much of his writing.
“It is my opinion, then, that the Legend of the Grail as it may be collected from the various Romances, is the glorified version of early Celtic Sacramental Legends, which legends had been married to certain elements of pre-Christian myth and folk-lore.”
— ‘The Secret of the Sangraal’ (1925), essay by Arthur Machen.
The opening section, ‘The Rumour of the Marvellous’, sets the scene: the narrator, Machen himself, offers us a fine example of fictional reportage when he quotes a national newspaper clipping describing “remarkable occurrences” which are “supposed to have taken place during the recent Revival” in the West Wales coastal town of Llantrisant, though it reports “the lights have not been observed lately.”
What exactly does this brief notice allude to? German seaborne activity? The aurora borealis? ‘Odours of Paradise’ supplies more details when the writer visits Llantrisant church in August 1915: there is a lingering smell of incense in the austere building, and Machen overhears a conversation on the town beach in which references to made to odd prayers being made in private homes. Further research, recounted in ‘A Secret in a Secret Place’, reveals individuals whose illuminated faces are “glowing with an ineffable joy”, ancient feuds which had been resolved without rancour, and reports of strangers in Llantrisant who were called “the Fishermen”.
‘The Ringing of the Bell’ and ‘Olwen’s Dream’ deepen the mystery of Llantrisant’s wonders, with people hearing sweet tolling of bells and the consumptive-stricken teen Olwen Phillips restored to life and health from the sound. And what of ‘The Rose of Fire’ which, during the nine days or so of these strange happenings in June 1915, was either witnessed or hallucinated by a great many people? This was the “red light” on the sea seen by sailors which rushed towards the Chapel of St Teilo on the headland where, on the following Sunday in early June, the congregation were present at an unprecedented service, when three figures emerged from the sanctuary door:
These three were in dyed vesture, red as blood. One stood before two, looking to the west, and he rang the bell. And they say that all the birds of the wood, and all the waters of the sea, and all the leaves of the wood, and all the winds of the high rocks uttered their voices with the ringing of the bell.
The second held up the lost altar that they once called Sapphirus, which was like the changing of the sea and of the sky, and like the immixture of gold and silver.
And the third heaved up high over the altar a cup that was red with burning and the blood of the offering.
Machen the grailologist (who confesses he has “an appetite for these matters”) suspects that Olwen’s dream, and the unorthodox service in the church, and all that led up to it, points to just one outcome: the Mass of the Sangraal. And he gives us lots of antiquarian hints that the bell, portable altar and cup are still remembered in folk tradition – in Teilo’s bell, the altar described by William of Malmesbury, and the Tregaron or Nanteos cup.
Is it all pure fiction? Not quite, for more than a century later we can easily discern Machen’s inspirations. The medieval Book of Llandaf has this passage (here translated from the Latin by J Gwenogfryn Evans):
To Blessed Teilo, the Pontifex, was given not the least of the gifts, a Bell more famous than great, more precious than beautiful, for in sweetness of sound it seemed to excel every organ; it condemned the perjured, it healed the sick, and what is far more wonderful, it kept sounding every hour without being moved until, by the rash and constant handling of sinful men, it ceased from its sweet services.
The healing cup of Nanteos still exists, of course, but Machen deliberately confounds it with the Holy Grail variously described in medieval romances as a platter, a stone, or a chalice. Where else did Machen derive his ideas from? Was it from reports of blue lights seen over Pwllheli and the Dysynni Estuary in 1877? Or from reports of the preacher Mary Jones who formed the focus of a religious Revival movement at a chapel in Egryn, between Barmouth and Harlech in the early 1900s?
For around this time a huge “aurora arc of light” was reported, stretching from the mountains of Snowdonia into the Irish Sea, and this was followed by “lights” associated with Mary Jones, beginning in 1904 and reaching its zenith in 1905 as the religious Revival movement reached its peak.
Between 1903 and 1906 eight earthquakes were experienced in northwest Wales, associated with the Aber-Dinlle geological fault, and it’s faintly possible that associated phenomena such as ball lightning occurred because London journalists were soon sending back reports of balls of lights around the chapel and in the vicinity of Jones: these were described as strange lights “coming together with a loud clap” at Pensarn, Abergele, a “blood-red light a foot above the ground” near Egryn Chapel, “a ball of fire [with an] intense yellow brilliance” at Egryn Chapel and “light radiating a brilliant luminosity” over a road on the east-entrance to Barmouth.
It’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that Machen, who was otherwise suspicious of nonconformist fervour, took the phenomena witnessed at the Egryn Chapel Revival and conflated it with more mystical and ritualistic grail legends to create his ‘report’ of strange happenings during the first full year of the Great War. But this conflation, I believe, is not what gives The Great Return its potency as a narrative: at a time when newspapers regularly included short fiction in their pages Machen’s episodic ‘reporting’ of events at Llantrisant (seemingly only a train ride away from Pembroke) slowly builds up the sense of mystery before his ‘explanation’ in a manner which must have thrilled regular readers reading each instalment side by side with the real news.
And what adds to the narrative potency are his descriptions, couched in almost biblical language, rendering the coast of Wales as a kind of Earthly Paradise:
A land that seemed to be in a holy, happy dream, a sea that changed all the while from olivine to emerald, from sapphire to amethyst, that washed in white foam at the bases of the firm, grey rocks, and about the huge crimson bastions that hid the western bays, and inlets of the waters; to this land I came, and to hollows that were purple and odorous with wild thyme, wonderful with many tiny, exquisite flowers.
September 22, 2021
I know, I know. Machen is a pioneer, a hero for lovers of the Weird, etc. etc. But I have to judge this book by its words, nothing more or less. And, as a work of fiction, it is lacking.
This is like a HAITE story (Here's An Idea; The End), except perhaps we should call it a HAPTE story (Here's A Phenomenon; The End). The only plot consists of a visitor to a Welsh town collecting reports of a strange occurrence of miracles and grace: the deaf hear, the lame walk, all accompanied by heavenly bells and overwhelming senses of well being and brotherly love. The final curiosity it that it the event is linked, albeit vaguely, to ancient religious experiences predating the arrival of Christianity.
And that's it. This is not a story in the conventional sense. Were it not by Machen, nobody would care about it. It could never get published today. It is, of course, beautifully related, which saves it from being completely worthless, but I can't recommend it to anyone not a Machen completist.
This is like a HAITE story (Here's An Idea; The End), except perhaps we should call it a HAPTE story (Here's A Phenomenon; The End). The only plot consists of a visitor to a Welsh town collecting reports of a strange occurrence of miracles and grace: the deaf hear, the lame walk, all accompanied by heavenly bells and overwhelming senses of well being and brotherly love. The final curiosity it that it the event is linked, albeit vaguely, to ancient religious experiences predating the arrival of Christianity.
And that's it. This is not a story in the conventional sense. Were it not by Machen, nobody would care about it. It could never get published today. It is, of course, beautifully related, which saves it from being completely worthless, but I can't recommend it to anyone not a Machen completist.
August 23, 2024
Not really sure what Machen was going for with this one. Starts off with a kind of " the world's a funny place, eh?" setup, which then leads to "that reminds me of this town where all of a sudden everyone just got real happy", and finally wraps up with a Return of Avalon type event where the guardians of the grail appear by sea and bring peace to the land.
What makes it odd is that this was a real page-turner compared to everything else I am reading (Donald Westlake and Stephen Graham-Jones among the fiction books); ol; Machen can certainly create an atmosphere. It just starts to get intriguing and then ... ends.
What makes it odd is that this was a real page-turner compared to everything else I am reading (Donald Westlake and Stephen Graham-Jones among the fiction books); ol; Machen can certainly create an atmosphere. It just starts to get intriguing and then ... ends.
July 2, 2020
I may be being unnecessarily harsh here, but I think that what I responded to in this story has more to do with the setting - with memories of the extraordinary blue-white-gold-green of a Welsh Summer by the sea - than it does with the story - an account of miraculous occurrences in a small community. Certainly when Machen dropped the framing I lost interest. That's a shame, because if he'd kept it up I think it could have been rather better.
Be warned: this is not horror.
Be warned: this is not horror.
August 18, 2023
Offers promise - opening with the recollection of the Visit of the Tashai Llama in Reuters - then the narrator offers an outward, expository frame to digress into his tale of the mystical. Leaves more to be desired though, this being my first Machen. His lucid flow and equanimous prose make for quality page-turning, with the document of the young girl being so engrossing; alas the story just sputters out leaving more to be desired.
March 12, 2022
OK 👌 listening 🔰😀
A will written fantasy thriller adventure short story by Arthur Machen. I would recommend this novella to anyone looking for a quick read. Enjoy the adventure of reading 👓 or listening 🎶 to different types of novels 🔰🏡😄 2022
A will written fantasy thriller adventure short story by Arthur Machen. I would recommend this novella to anyone looking for a quick read. Enjoy the adventure of reading 👓 or listening 🎶 to different types of novels 🔰🏡😄 2022
August 12, 2024
Not Machen’s greatest! It was ok I guess, a couple of parts I enjoyed. Now I wonder if Machen had recently taken psychedelics? Because the glow he describes sounds awfully like a post-psychedelic one! And he even mentions mescaline in the story! 🧐🤔
January 17, 2022
A beautiful (and brief) attempt to imagine the visitation of a holy power.
March 17, 2023
The writing is engaging though there's really not a payoff to this short story so it feels unfinished. Audible edition. Narrated by Felbrigg Napoleon Herriot.
April 1, 2025
Great weird story and fantastic narrator!!!
March 31, 2012
Arthur Machen utiliza o artifício do jornalista que investiga estranhas ocorrências para reviver aspectos das lendas arturianas neste conto que nos leva a visitar uma plácida vila galesa à beira mar onde, no meio das trevas da I guerra, ocorre um curioso surto de bonomia. O interessante nesta obra é a forma como o autor só nos revela o cerne lendário quase no final. Leva o leitor a imaginar o que se terá passado para só nas últimas páginas do livro desvendar que o que causou as estranhas mas positivas ocorrências tem a ver com a aparição de guardiães do santo graal - aparição fugaz, que depressa se desvanece. Conto sólido saído da pena clássica do grande mitificador que foi este influente escritor inglês do fantástico.
December 29, 2013
It was kind of average, I expected more.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews