Pulled Down

by Phyllis Paul

From the
Mrs. Hawke, on coming back to England after some years spent in continental wanderings, had taken the lease of a mansion in Cuban Terrace, Knightsbridge, although, as her children well knew, it was most unlikely that she would be content to make use of it for more than six months. It was true that she was a very rich woman. The house was vastly too large for her household as it was just then, reduced to her own family after one of those purgings to which she treated her following from time to time, and to balance the expense and compromise with her natural parsimony, she had had it furnished with second-hand stuff such as must have been buried for hopeless decades in the depths of vaults, with indestructible Victorian pieces which pleased her by their size and their demented elaboration.

Genres: Horror, Canon, Words, Literature, Gothic, Nonfiction, 1917

First published January 1, 1964

About the author

Very little is known about Phyllis Paul and she is little-known today, although she received very positive reviews for her work at the time of publictaion. A subtle novelist, her work invokes an atmosphere of the supernatural and often allows for a supernatural interpretation.
Excerpt from tartaruspress.com

Here are her 11 known works:

1.We Are Spoiled, 1933
2, The Children Triumphant, 1934
3. Camilla, 1949
4. Constancy, 1951
5. The Lion of Cooling Bay, 1953
6. Rox Hall Illuminated, 1956
7. A Cage for the Nightingale, 1957
8. Twice Lost, 1960
9. A Little Treachery, 1962
10. Pulled Down, 1964 (Also published as Echo of Guilt, 1966)
11. An Invisible Darkness, 1967

Reviews

[Timothy Mayer · Rating 4 out of 5]

There's not much written these days about Phyllis Paul (1903-73). She published 12 novels over a 30+ year period. Most of them can be classified as "thrillers", although there are enough supernatural overtones to put them in the supernatural category. My interest in her began when I read a comparison of her writings to R R Ryan. Mark Valentine of Wormwoodiana has a very high opinion of her work, which piqued my curiosity.
Echo of Guilt (AKA PULLED DOWN) has a very dense, literate style. This is not an easy novel to read, which makes me wonder why it was marketed in the US as a Gothic romance (note the Lancer Guild cover which has the generic woman standing in front of a dark mansion). It's more of a tragedy enacted over a 50-year period, with two prominently British families whose fate is intertwined. There's also a lot in this book about the Roman Catholic Church in 20th century England (although no Holy Grail conspiracies).
The novel begins by introducing Ms. Alice Hawke. Ms. Hawke has a bit of a problem. Her son has joined the Catholic Church and wants to become a priest. However, he's wild-spirited and the church has doubts about him. She visits a prominent English Catholic layman, Dr. Rodney, and tries to get him to intercede for her son.
This is where the book starts to become interesting. Dr. Rodney, and his family, is the major focus of the novel. As the book describes him:

He had not been accepted for the religious life; but in his youth his soul had been bound to the ethos of the monk;he had been taught by monks and prejudices of monks had made their iron impress.

Eventually, Dr. Rodney's wife passes away and he is forced to care for his children alone. At the halfway point, Ms Hawke is murdered. The culprit is never found, but her renegade priestly son, Lewis, is sent to stay with Dr. Rodney's family by the church (figuring the exposure to the esteemed layman will do him some good).
Now the book turns up the thriller volume. Lewis tells Dr. Rodney one day that a strange man was seen leaving the house after the death of his mother. He also tells the good doctor that the stranger looked a lot like Dr. Rodney. And where was he on the day of the death?
From Dr. Rodney's actions, you're never quite sure if he was the killer or not. He tries to retrace his movements for the day, talking to everyone he knows,trying to get a witness to his whereabouts on the day of the murder. He even tries to get a prominent protestant scholar to vouch for him. But he never can quite be sure.
And then Dr. Rodney disappears off the face of the earth.
After some chapters discussing the effects of his vanishing on his family, the novel advances thirty years. The children of the both families have grown and moved on with their lives. Most of Ms. Hawkes' children are active in the Catholic church. The book closes with a long meeting between several of her children where Lewis, now a prominent Catholic priest, expounds on his theory as to what happened to Dr. Rodney.
But we never really do find out. Even as the book closes. Dammit.
The overall feel of Echo of Guilt is moody. It has been said that Phyllis Paul's books are filled with doomed characters. The reader is filled with a sense of dread from page one. Which doesn't make it an easy read. Still, Paul is a very literate writer and I'm disappointed she's not better known today.

[Ariadne Lane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Long before the end of the book, Paul’s extended cast of characters and approach to relationship dynamics – particularly family dynamics – reminded me of Dickens, to whom also the texture of her writing seems much closer than to her contemporaries (an early American publisher’s blurb mentions, curiously, that she did not read ‘the new writers’). And towards the end I started to have an inkling of the idea that perhaps her plotting – generally, but with this book in particular – had an especial affinity with 'The Mystery of Edwin Drood'. That, if you remember, was Dickens’s last novel which he had set out to plot specifically in response to criticism of the rather creaky mystery elements of his earlier books. Dickens had declared his intention of writing a mystery which really worked and which would keep the reader baffled until the very end. Then Dickens died, without finishing the book and, maddeningly, leaving no notes to indicate how the plot was supposed to develop. There are a few more or less plausible theories as to the possible solution of Edwin Drood, but none of them is perfect, and all seem to give rise to at least some objections, so that the resulting effect is of a kind of ‘quantum’ mystery which has several mutually exclusive solutions simultaneously, or no conclusive solution in principle.

More: https://twicelostblog.wordpress.com/2...

[Paul Barnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

[Heinemann: London] (1964). HB/DJ. 1/1. 298 Pages. Bradford City Libraries. Purchased from Stephen White Books.

I understand this to be the penultimate of Paul’s eleven published novels (1933-1967). They’re all very difficult to locate at affordable prices in First Edition (U.S. or U.K.). I’ve been trying, on and off, for 10+ years and have only found three. There have been a few reprints of select titles - Lancer, The Sundial Press etc. (The former are cheaply produced paperbacks - prone to disintegration.)

“Pulled Down” (A.K.A. “Echo of a Curse”) is an odd ‘story’. It’s peopled with peculiar - in some cases sinister - characters.

The atmosphere’s full of foreboding.

There’s a murder (perhaps two), a disappearance and a suicide.

The narrative culminates with significant open ends. The reader’s juggling hypotheses and inferences from start to finish: “…left to the torments of imagination…” (p. 244.)

The author’s sensitivity and intelligence shine through. It’s a fine book.