Status Updates From Collected Fiction Volume 1:...

“The Great God Pan”

This was more interesting on a second read, picking up details like how it is a deliberate and thorough inversion of the Jack the Ripper killings, and how Raymond is positioned in the piece a bit more thoroughly insofar as the archetypes he and his charge, Mary, inhabit within Gothic horror, and how this “union” bears out in the events of the story.

“The Spagyric Quest of Beroaldus Cosmopolita”

I recognize this as satire but it is so involved with the terms of alchemy that it is incredibly opaque. It’s thematically aligned with the Silurian adoration of alcohol as it’s the key by which Beroaldus accesses higher knowledge. Someone pointed out in Clemendy that Machen uses lists in his prose—for comedy I think—and it’s as subtle as a freight train.

“Epilogue”

Closing the nested narrative, our main man, the chronicler, Leolinus, wraps up his “first” history of Silures before he is sent to become the governor of an island. This is not portrayed as a bad thing! But there may be a subtext that I am wholly ignorant of. In any event, it kind of teases that Machen may have written further “histories”, which I’d be down with.

“The Triumph of Love”

This is just a straight up romance with no twists. A French exile named Symon pledges his service to a Welsh earl, falls in love with the earl’s daughter, Bertha, and then romances her, the two having their plans for marriage and egress to Italy facilitated by the priest who marries them, the priest being more concerned about making sure they don’t have sex out of wedlock.

“The Affair Done At the House With the Lattice”

A knight living by economy gets wind of a local mysterious beauty and sets about wooing her, in spite of her crossbow-toting father. Things go pretty well until she appears to be able to predict stormy weather. He’s worried, but as we find out, his paramour has no supernatural talents whatsoever.

“How the Duke of San Giuliano Made Build a High Wall”

Another story about courtly adultery. In this case, the Duke neglects his wife out of a newly acquired scholastic inclination. She tries one straightforward plot, confiding in a doctor, before attempting to make her husband jealous. In the process, she earnestly falls in love with the man she was manipulating. The finish of this story is… different.

“The Journey Homeward”

A short episode where the men on their way home come across a troop of Italian musicians, make nice with them, hearing how they fared at Uske, share their delicious pastries both savory and sweet, and then solicit a story from them. Somewhere in here are some light superstitions regarding violins having souls.

“The Quaint History of a Lord of Gwent, and How His Wife Desired to Smell a Rose”

Young man debauchs in his estate until he is middle-aged and in so much debt he must knight-errant on the continent, comes home in his 60s, and then at the ripe old age of 70 marries a 17 year old. This goes about as well as you could hope, provided—unlike the Cursal Canon—you don’t mind adultery under these circumstances.

“How a Knight of Uske Kept Guard Over a Tree”

A more or less courtly romance where a knight looking for love makes the acquaintance of a beautiful maiden and then pursues a secret but chaste love affair, leading to a daring Romeo and Juliet midnight meeting at her window that places him at great peril. But with a little luck, and a huge sausage, he makes the best of it.

“The Quest of the Dial and the Vane”

A knightly romance parody that is based on a question on what is best in love: constancy, or variety? Two knights are charged to quest for the answer and then return with fantastic tales of imprisonment that suggest that neither constancy nor variety are superior. But, in Machen’s twist ending, it’s revealed that the knights were telling fabulous lies.

“What Fell Out in the Ancient Keep of Caldicot”

There’s a dubious alchemist and a lovely, chaste maiden. The tone of Machen’s writing did not prepare me for Loyse’s fate, ensorcelled by dark powers to become the alchemist’s sex slave. This story leverages orientalism for the background of the alchemist’s powers, going so far as to curse the Prophet Mahommed.

“The Lord Maltworm’s First Tale—How a Man of Caerlon Found a Great Treasure”

A story of mistaken truth—a simple man overhears two monks brainstorming details for a history and takes the treasure described to be true and not the least bit embellished—and then spends many years trying to dig it up, before he has a prank played on him, only to pay the misdeed back in kind.

A tale where a demon-possessed statue terrorizes the countryside, surprising them in all manner of illicit trysts and enterprises, until everyone is miserable and the clergy decides to put the statue on trial for being a tool of the devil. It took a while to get into Machen’s prose, but he’s actually great fun, if a bit dry by virtue of his presentation, and very learned in mysticism and the occult.

“The Chronicle of Clemendy: Epistle Dedicatory”

I’m glad that I read The Dark is Rising series now, I’m still pretty lost at sea with Machen’s writing about what is apparently Welsh pub culture but at the very least I have a slightly better grounding in Welsh pronunciation, not to say that Susan Cooper’s crash course in The Grey King really prepared me for whatever… this is going to be.

“A Chapter From the Book Called the Ingenious Gentleman Don Quixote de La Mancha Which By Some Mischance Has Not Till Now Been Printed”

I’m glad that I read Don Quixote because otherwise I would have no idea what Machen was trying to do here. This is a laundry-list of books on mysticism and magic, though it doesn’t appear to mention Agrippa’s Philosophie of the Occult, unless that’s the Agrippa listed.

back matter

ON RE-READING 'THE THREE IMPOSTORS' and the WONDER STORY Appendix

INTRODUCTION to 'THE THREE IMPOSTORS' (1923) Appendix