Part 7

This preoccupation with literature extended even to his employment, for through 1898 Machen worked on the staff of “Literature,” a weekly paper published by the Times. This seems to have been not too happy an association, for he says he had been harassed and worried for a whole year in the office of “Literature,” and that he was in high spirits in May 1899 when he was released from this bondage.

Besides, there were a great many important things to be done. There was, of course, another Great Romance. Like its predecessors this one did not quite come off, or it was never quite finished. What there was of it was eventually published as _The White People_. There were other irons on the hearth, and one of these had been heated and re-heated many times before; but it was never quite forged or beaten into shape.

This is the story we know as _A Fragment of Life_. It is, in its present state, a mere fragment of a great work. Machen had lived with the idea for ten years or more, for the story was born in another tale published in the Globe or the Gazette or some other paper in 1890 under the title _The Resurrection of the Dead_, which was not quite what Machen intended when he originally called it _Resurrectio Mortuorum_.

This story is about a man who one day recovered his “ancestral consciousness.” The idea had long fascinated Machen, perhaps because he was forever on the verge of recovering his own “ancestral consciousness,” or perhaps because he had never quite lost it. At any rate, it was always close to him, it greatly influenced his daily life because he never became used to the contrast between “raw London suburbs and the old gray houses under the forest near the river” in Gwent.

This, and _The White People_, seemed to have been of the greatest importance to him. Neither was finished in that century—nor were they ever completely finished. Yet in this time he wrote and completed one of the best of his books, and one of the finest books of our time. _Hieroglyphics_ was finished in 1899 and it joined the fragments and the beginnings of the Great Romances that had been written and put aside in that repository of Great Romances—the Japanese bureau.

Of _Hieroglyphics_ we shall have much to say later, for it is of greater significance in this twentieth century than in the nineteenth century in which it was written.

5

Now we are come to the end of the year 1899—the turn of the century. This was, as has been previously noted, an intensely time-conscious era. The birth of the twentieth century was awaited with perhaps more interest and excitement than had attended similar events in the past. For one thing, everyone was conscious of the enlightenment of their age, progress was almost as much a byword in the Nineties as it became in the Nineteen-Twenties and the early Nineteen-Forties. And, of course, there was the minor satisfaction of knowing that it was quite likely to be the only turn of the century within the memory of living man. Prophets of doom had their say and their day along with those who proclaimed new glory and new heights and new horizons. It was, to be sure, a well-heralded and eagerly awaited event. That a mere clock should unemotionally tick so momentous a second!

The more memorable men of the notorious Nineties were, for the most part, either dead or dying, visibly decaying or decently interred. They passed, most of them, mercifully before the significant second struck.

This was a year of great significance in the life of Arthur Machen. For in this year “a great sorrow which had long been threatened fell upon me; I was once more alone.” And in another place, he writes, “... and then my life was dashed into fragments. I ceased to write. I travelled.”

Again and again he refers to this event, in his two autobiographical books and in several of the forewords and prefaces he later wrote for re-issues of his earlier books. Always the references are veiled in mystery or followed by a recital of strange experiences and a cloud of mysticism that conceals, as it was intended, the shattering event.

What was this event? There are a few who know, but they are not likely to reveal what they know. As recently as 1947, less than a year before he died, Machen wrote in a letter, “Even now it is painful to recall. I would rather you did not refer to it.”

Since this is not intended as a biography, nor a Life, we shall not pursue the matter. There is this much more to be said, that may give some clue to the events of the year 1900. Machen wrote in _Things Near and Far_,

“I can set down the facts, or rather such of them as I remember, but I am quite confident that I am not, in the real sense of the word, telling the truth; that is, I am not giving any sense of the very extraordinary atmosphere in which I lived in the year 1900, of the curious and indescribable impression which the events of these days made upon me; the sense that everything had altered, that everything was very strange, that I lived in daily intercourse with people who would have been impossible, unimaginable, a year before; that the figure of the world was changed utterly for me—of all this I can give no true picture dealing as I am with what I called facts. I maintained long ago in _Hieroglyphics_ that facts as facts do not signify anything or communicate anything; and I am sure that I was right, when I confess that, as a purveyor of exact information, I can make nothing of the year 1900. But avoiding the facts, I have got a great deal nearer the truth in the last Chapter of _The Secret Glory_, which describes the doings and feelings of two young people who are paying their first visit to London. _I_ never bolted up to town with the house master’s red haired parlour maid; but truth must be told in figures.”

6

Back in 1880, while his family were making plans for him, plans involving the Royal College of Surgeons, Machen used to walk to the Pontypool Road station to pick up the London papers. On his way back he would rest for awhile, (it was an eight mile walk) under the hedges and turn to the theatrical pages which seemed to him by far the most interesting parts of the paper, and the stage the most fascinating part of the Fabulous City of the West. And so, in a sense, he followed the bright lights to London, and then, having arrived there, set to work in the dark caves (HERE DWELL PUBLISHERS) of Chandos Street, Leicester Square and Catharine Street.

There is not the slightest bit of evidence that Machen ever thought longingly of footlights and grease paint or, for that matter, that he ever even thought of them at all after he arrived in London. Yet here in 1901 he dons buskins or whatever and prepares to tread the boards, and in a travelling company. His first engagements were with the Benson Shakesperean Company and with them he travelled the length and breadth of England for several season. He seems to have enjoyed it all tremendously, although it does not seem to have affected or influenced his later work. As a matter of fact, with the exception of a brief chapter and a half in one of his autobiographical books, he does not refer to his career on the stage at any great length. Sufficient unto the days....

And then one day, perhaps when the trees were beginning to put forth, Machen resumed the London Adventure. In 1902, and without fanfare of any sort, Grant Richards brought out a remarkable book with a strange title. It was called _Hieroglyphics_, and it was subtitled _A Note Upon Ecstasy in Literature_, by Arthur Machen. The book was born, as so many books are, while the author was reviewing books for a weekly journal. It was written in the happy period following his release from “the detestable office life” and as a perfectly normal reaction against it, and it remains to this day one of the best, and the least known and the most sadly neglected books of English criticism.

A noted publisher once told Machen that _Hieroglyphics_ had “influenced the whole standpoint of English literary criticism.” One wishes it had! At any rate, Machen read proofs of the book while playing in “The Varsity Belle,” and he read reviews of it while playing in “Paolo and Francesca.” And then, when _Hieroglyphics_ seemed unlikely to set Fleet Street afire, or even to start a small blaze in one of the University debating clubs, Machen began once more to write and to publish.

His old friend, A. E. Waite, a distinguished writer in the field of the occult and the mystic, began to publish Machen’s stories. Waite, who was also manager for Horlick’s Malted Milk, had managed to persuade the malted milk magnate to sponsor or subsidize a magazine. This was certainly the strangest commercial venture on record, for the magazine published material concerning the occult and mystical topics that appealed to Waite. Horlick was, presumably, happy to see his name on the cover and on the masthead of the magazine. It was in this esoteric little journal that some of Machen’s work first appeared ... _The White People_, _A Fragment of Life_ and, at long last, _The Garden of Avallaunius_.

Machen remarks, somewhere, that he did not know that the sale of Malted Milk was unfavorably affected by the publication of these tales. As a matter of fact, the stories were quite well received. Such things get around and, in 1906, Grant Richards collected the best of them, plus _Pan_, _The Inmost Light_, _The Red Hand_ and published them in a book called _The House of Souls_. Richards had changed his mind about Machen, but apparently with reservations, for in 1906 another Machen book, _Dr. Stiggins_, appeared, but under the device of a little-known publisher. This book is, in effect, an amplification of some views set forth in the Preface to _The House of Souls_. Mr. Richards wouldn’t touch this, but he did bring out _The Hill of Dreams_ in the following year.

And then there was another change in Machen’s life. He fell into journalism ... something that had once been devoutly wished for by the dear, dead folk of Caerleon.

_Chapter Five_

THE LEGEND OF A LEGEND

1

When the Allied armies achieved the break-through at Saint Lo some few years ago in that war we call Second, our armored columns fanned out over the Brittany peninsula and thrust deep into the river valleys of France. Most of us watched the drive for Paris, shook our heads over that nasty business at Avranches, and breathed more freely when Paris fell. From then on it was largely a matter of following, as closely as the security blackout permitted, Patton’s progress toward the Rhine and the star-shaped forts at Metz.

Few of us were then aware of the column under Hodges that began first to probe, then to thrust northward into Belgium. At the time it was briefly noted that our push to the Belgian border was even more rapid than the German drive southward in 1940. And so our entry into and beyond Mons passed almost unnoticed. Even the Germans were not too well aware of it, apparently, for it was outside Mons, you will recall, that German tanks were waved on by American MPs and obligingly clanked into bivouac areas with the General Shermans and the half-tracks of the American First Army.

There were, if I remember correctly, and I am sure that I do, one or two references to the Angel of Mons incident of the last war, but these were merely notes in passing. The mere mention of Mons meant Machen to me, and I suppose that, like many another Machenite, I waited with something like bated breath for a sign of some sort, or a sequel to the legend that had been born just thirty years ago that very month of September.

And, I suppose, devout Machenites the world over re-read in that September of 1944, the invented tale of the wonderful Welshman, the tale that was at first called simply, _The Bowmen_ and which came to be called, by popular demand, _The Angels of Mons_.

It was one of the strangest stories of that first World War and a story pure and simple it was. But it so captured and fired the imagination of all Englishmen, and of the world, that people were unwilling for it to remain merely a magical tale by a Welshman writing strange tales in the city of London. People must have their miracles, and so Machen’s invention of the Bowmen became one of the hallowed legends of the war. You may remember the story, for you must have heard it, in one version or another, even if you had never even heard of Arthur Machen.

_It was during the Retreat of the Eighty Thousand_, the tale begins. The English were in danger of annihilation. At a particularly important point in the line the German guns had thundered and shrieked all morning. Finally, their numbers greatly reduced, the English saw a tremendous host moving against them. German infantry—as far as the eye could see. Well—the English fought on. One of the riflemen, who happened to know Latin and other useless things, recalled a motto he had once seen in a restaurant, _Adsit Anglis Sanctus Georgius_, which motto he said, uttered or shouted. As he did so he felt “something between a shudder and a shock” and behold! the roar of battle died down to a gentle murmur and a great voice and a shout louder than the thunder cried, “Array, Array, Array!” This was followed by other battlecries in English and in French—cries to Saint George. And then he saw, “beyond the trench, a long line of shapes, with a shining about them. They were like men who drew the bow,” and their arrows flew toward the German host. Who, as it happened, were stopped in their tracks.

Now this invention served its purpose, no less than any inspirational tale or legend or truth or half-truth. But it became a matter of great controversy because, as it happened, Arthur Machen, when questioned about it, blithely revealed that there was not an ounce of truth in it. The story was pure invention, a piece of fiction which was not, he added, entirely to his satisfaction as a writer.

This discrediting of a miracle soon got abroad, and there was a great hue and cry and indeed a notable hullabaloo about the matter. Machen was taken to task ... the clergy thundered against him and many a pulpit was pounded by many a pudgy ecclesiastical fist. Gentle ladies began to produce “evidence” that the event had actually taken place—that they had had it from a soldier who was there. A great many witnesses, once or twice removed, were found and quoted. The controversy grew and with it the legend.

As for Machen, he finally wrote a preface to a new American edition to _The Bowmen_, now called _The Angels of Mons_, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1915. In it he wrote:

“This was in last August, or to be more precise, in the last Sunday of last August. There were terrible things to be read on that hot Sunday morning between meat and mass. It was in the _Weekly Dispatch_ that I saw the awful account of the retreat from Mons. I no longer recollect the details, but I have not forgotten the impression that was then made in my mind. I seemed to see a furnace of torment and death and agony and terror seven times heated, and in the midst of the burning was the British Army. In the midst of the flame, consumed by it and yet aureoled in it, scattered like ashes and yet triumphant, martyred and forever glorious. So I saw our men with a shining about them, so I took these thoughts with me to church, and, I am sorry to say, was making up a story in my head while the Deacon was singing the Gospel.” Well—that is the genesis of _The Bowmen_ or, if you insist, _The Angels of Mons_.

It was murmured and hinted and suggested and whispered in all sorts of quarters, Machen says, that before he wrote the tale he had “heard something.” The most decorative of these whisperings was this: “I know for a fact that the whole thing was given him in typescript by a lady-in-waiting.” And, presumably, as is the custom with all popular legends, most everyone had a cousin or a brother-in-law who had been there. By the time the story had been reprinted in parish periodicals and spread by word of pulpit, it began to seem to Machen that he had failed in the art of letters. There began to be variations on the theme—such as one in which the German dead were found to be punctured with arrow wounds. The occultists next had a go at it, then the scientists began to talk learnedly of “mass hallucination.”

The legend was then translated into several languages including, at any rate, the French. The shining figure of St. George became, variously, St. Michael the Archangel and St. Joan of Arc. The Germans, for security reasons no doubt, offered no opinion or explanation of their abrupt halt or of the tale. However, as Machen observes, “Other versions of the story appeared in which a cloud interposed between the attacking Germans and the defending British. In some examples the cloud served to conceal our men from the advancing enemy; in others, it disclosed shining shapes which frightened the horses of the pursuing German cavalry. St. George, it will be noted, has disappeared—he persisted some time longer in certain Roman Catholic variants—and there are no more bowmen, no more arrows. But so far angels are not mentioned; yet they are ready to appear, and I think I have detected the machine which brought them into the story.

“In _The Bowmen_ my imagined soldier saw ‘a long line of shapes, with a shining about them.’ And Mr. A. P. Sinnett, writing in the May (1915) issue of _The Occult Review_, reporting what he had heard, states that ‘those who could see said they saw ‘a row of shining beings’ between the two armies.’ Now I conjecture that the word ‘shining’ is the link between my tale and the derivative from it. In the popular view shining and benevolent supernatural beings are angels and nothing else, and so, I believe, the Bowmen of my story have become ‘the Angels of Mons.’ In this shape they have been received with respect and credence everywhere, or almost everywhere.”

Pamphlets were published, as is usual in such cases. The Theosophists published an “answer to Mr. Arthur Machen.” Another worker in the field collected “numerous Confirmations, Testimonies, Evidences of the Wounded” and other materials in an “authentic record” of the event. The furore died out after the war and the Angels of Mons rested in legend with only sporadic appearances in the pages of the Sunday supplements. Within a few years the legend had graduated to the sphere of science or pseudo-scientific study.

2

In 1930 there was published in London a book called _The Mystery and Lore of Apparitions, with Some Account of Ghosts, Spectres, Phantoms and Boggerts in Early Times_ by Harold Shaylor, an investigator in various fields of the marvelous.

The Frontispiece of this comfortably plump volume is “from a Drawing by A. Forestier, reproduced by kind permission from the Illustrated London News.” The sketch shows eight or nine soldiers in a trench in the foreground firing at advancing hordes of Germans. To the right and standing above the parapet of the trench are three gigantic bowmen, helmeted and with swords at their sides, launching arrows (visible in the sketch) at the Germans. A fourth bow and part of an arm are visible at the extreme right. The Germans are falling in great numbers, at least one is visibly pierced by an arrow.

Within the book, among the many marvels, we find this:

“Considerable discussion took place in the Press during the autumn of 1914 and the early part of 1915, with respect to the phenomena said to have been seen at the Battle of Mons.

“The publications of these stories brought forth many others of a similar character, the veracity of which appears to be unquestioned, and it will be found interesting to compare them with some of the accounts of phantom armies told in the preceding pages” (of Mr. Shaylor’s collection).

There follows then a story told by a non-commissioned officer who was in the retreat from Mons on or about August 28th, 1914. The weather was hot and clear and, between eight and nine in the evening, this officer was with a group of others on guard duty. An officer came up and asked if they had seen anything “startling.” Two men were sent forward to see if they could discover what the officer meant. They returned with nothing untoward to report. The officer then came back and, “taking me and some others a few yards away, showed us the sky. I could see quite plainly in mid-air,” says the non-commissioned officer, “a strange light which seemed to be quite distinctly outlined and was not a reflection of the moon, nor were there any clouds in the neighborhood. The light became brighter and I could see quite distinctly three shapes, one in the center having what looked like outspread wings, the other two were not so large, but were quite plainly distinct from the center one. They appeared to have a long, loose, hanging garment of a golden tint and they were above the German line facing us. We stood watching them for about three-quarters of an hour. All the men with me saw them, and other men came up from groups who also told us they had seen the same thing. I remember the day, because it was a day of terrible anxiety for us. Later on the Uhlans attacked us and we drove them back with heavy losses. It was after this engagement, when we were dog-tired, that the vision appeared to us.”

Thus the story of the non-commissioned officer as told to Mr. Thompson. Another account of spectral figures is recounted by a private of the Lancashire Fusiliers. He is supposed to have given an account of his experience to a Sister in a hospital. “It’s true, Sister, we all saw it. First there was a sort of yellow mist like, sort of rising before the Germans as they came to the top of the hill. Come on like a solid wall they did. The next minute comes this funny cloud of light and when it clears off, there’s a tall man with yellow hair in golden armour, on a white horse, holding up his sword and his mouth open. The men knew it was St. George. Hadn’t they seen him with his sword on every ‘quid’ they’d ever seen?”

Thus the Lancashire Fusilier in Mr. Thompson’s 1930 account. Machen encountered him just as the Putnam edition was on the presses in 1915. In a Postscript to that edition of _The Bowmen_, Machen refers to an article called _The Angelic Leaders_ written by a Miss Phyllis Campbell. Miss Campbell relates that she was a nurse in France where there came into her care a Lancashire Fusilier (the same one presumably, mentioned by Thompson). He said he had seen St. George on a white horse, leading the British at Vitry-le-Francaise, when the Allies turned. His story was corroborated by a wounded R.F.A. man who was present. The R.F.A. man said he saw a tall man with yellow hair, in golden armour, on a white horse, holding his sword up, and his mouth open (as if, comments Machen, he was saying, “Come on, boys! I’ll put the kybosh on the devils!”) This figure was bareheaded and the R.F.A. man and the Fusilier knew that he was St. George, because he was exactly like the figure of St. George on the sovereigns. “Hadn’t they seen him with his sword on every ‘quid’ they’d ever had?”

The difference between having a quid and seeing one may be significant. At any rate, Machen makes a rather telling point concerning his Lancashire Fusilier. The soldiers are said to have known it was St. George by his exact likeness to the figure on the sovereign. This strikes Machen as being odd because the apparition is described as being bareheaded and in armour while the St. George on the sovereign or quid is just the reverse, since he is quite naked except for a short cape flying from the shoulders and a helmet. So—the evidence of the quid they’d either had or seen scarcely presents sufficient identification of the saint.