Part 8

A final vision is presented in C. J. Thompson’s book—this one by a soldier in an artillery battery in a letter dated June 26th, 1915. He describes a being like an angel with outstretched wings surrounded by a luminous cloud which appeared between the advancing Germans and the British. The artillery man further states, “with regard to the stories which you have heard about angels and spirits, they may be right but of course you must remember that trench work is mind-straining as well as nerve-racking and that may account for a lot of these stories.”

And indeed, Mr. Thompson ascribes most of these visitations, visions and miracles to nerve strain or mass hallucination.

It will be noted that the legend had, by this time, divorced itself completely from its creator. Mr. Thompson makes no mention of Arthur Machen, either as the reporter or creator of this astonishing event. Nor do Thompson’s _Acknowledgments_ or _Index_ contain any mention of Machen, Arthur; or of his published works. Of course the tale of _The Bowmen_ was first published in a newspaper, the London _Evening News_ for September 29, 1914, for which paper Machen was then a reporter. Mr. Machen may have been included in Mr. Thompson’s inclusive word “Press.”

3

However, the curious turnings and twistings of legend are not yet finished. The miracles of 1915 became the mass hallucinations of 1930, and the creator of the slight story of _The Bowmen_ had been quite forgotten in the furore attending each of them. But by far the most curious circumstance in the whole curious affair is contained in the most recent, to my knowledge, mention of the Mons legend. It occurs in an article by Meyer Berger, entitled _Legends of the War_, published in _Harper’s Bazaar_ in January, 1944.

Mr. Berger is an extremely competent correspondent for the _New York Times_. As a matter of fact, it was out of respect for Mr. Berger’s worth as a correspondent that I saved from salvage the magazine in which his article appeared. Early in the spring of 1944 I was cleaning out the winter’s accumulation of magazines and newspapers and readying them for the next paper pick-up. The baroque _Bazaar_ is not, usually, to my taste, but seeing Berger’s name over an article I placed the magazine to one side and took it up to read some nights later.

The article concerns _legends_ of the war. Mr. Berger remarks, sensibly, that war nurtures in the soldier some dormant sense that opens the door to superstition, to mysticism, and to visions of the supernatural. He then outlines the various legends of the White Lady on various fronts, the Christ in Flanders legend and, of course, the Angel of Mons. Mr. Berger uses the singular, and so one supposes, there is an Angel of Mons legend as well.

Mr. Berger outlines the legend briefly, explaining that there was no earthly reason for the Jerries to have stopped the pursuit, but stop they did—and the wherefore of this astonishing halt forms the basis for the story.

“Arthur Machen said later,” continues the Berger article, “that he conceived the legend of the Angel of Mons as he daydreamed in church over the news of the German’s miraculous halt.” This is not quite what Machen said, of course. Machen explained that he conceived the story of the Bowmen as he brooded in church over the news of the British _retreat_. Berger goes on to relate that when Machen’s story appeared in the London _Evening News_ as fiction it was, to his (Machen’s) astonishment, taken up and spread all over the world as something that actually happened. “There is no reason,” remarks Berger, “to question his explanation.”

On the other hand Berger spoke in France with Tommies who swore that, Machen or no Machen, they saw the Angel at Mons, though not as he described it in his piece. “The Machen story said that when the British were hardest pressed at Mons, there appeared in the heavens, above the battlefield, an unusual cloud formation. This changed into a giant likeness of St. George, flanked by rows of medieval English bowmen whose flights of arrows killed virtually all the German horde. When the bodies were examined there was no sign of a wound.”

Whatever this may be, it is _not_ the Machen story. Machen has no cloud, no giant St. George ... only “a long line of shapes with a shining about them.” Mr. Berger also talked with a Sergeant Coombs of the King’s Royal Rifles at an English base hospital in Trouville. Coombs swore he had seen the Angel of Mons and Berger had reason to believe him, “if only because he wore the Mons Star.” Coombs describes “a kind of triple cloud” ... a large center cloud with two clouds at either side. They had no particular shape at first but they gradually became a great angel ... “the two smaller clouds were enormous wings, and the angel spread its wings as if it were signalling the jerries to stop where they were.”

This seraphic semaphore is a refinement that had not previously appeared in any of the many versions of the legend. One of the legend’s variations, writes Berger, “has a faintly humorous side.” It appeared in the _North American Review_ in August, 1915.

“It told of a soldier, hard-pressed with the rest at Mons and ready to drop, who found himself murmuring, ‘Adest Anglis Sanctus Georgius.’ He knew no Latin and he didn’t know what moved him to the utterance. Even as it came to his lips, he recalled that he had seen it lettered on a plate in a vegetarian restaurant in London, before he was called up to service. It means, roughly, ‘May St. George be a present help to England.’ Something like an electric shock convulsed the soldier and his shock-packed ears dimly heard men around him shouting, ‘St. George for Merrie England.’ From that point, the story followed the Machen pattern—archers appeared in the sky and the Germans dropped by thousands.”

Now this version, with the “faintly humorous side,” which appeared according to Mr. Berger in the _North American Review_ in August, 1915, _is_ the Machen story. Whether or not the North American Review version was written by Machen I have been unable to discover. There are differences, of course, even in the very condensed portion offered by Berger. The _North American’s_ soldier knew no Latin ... he merely recited, incorrectly at that, and at a very propitious moment, a motto he had seen in a vegetarian restaurant. Machen’s soldier, although he had apparently patronized that very same vegetarian restaurant, did know Latin “and other useless things.”

And so the legend of the legend of the Angel or Angels of Mons continues to grow out of Arthur Machen’s tale of _The Bowmen_.

4

In 1915, possibly because he was then writing _Far Off Things_ and was in a mood reminiscent, Arthur Machen declared that he had failed in the art of literature. Most good writers have felt, at one time or another, a similar sense of failure—or at least of mild frustration. Presumably they have a particular instance in mind, certainly Machen had his. It was simply because his tale of the Bowmen had been accepted as truth.

Now it may seem to many a triumph of art that one’s work is held to be so life-like and so real that it is generally accepted as the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Our realists, for example, are said to feel that way. They consider the verdict of veracity the highest critical success. They have mirrored life and that, so help them, was what they had set out to do!

Machen felt differently about it. His invention, his creation, was not only accepted as being true, but his inventiveness and creativeness were denied him. His magic had been judged mere journalism and that, to Machen, or to any other creative artist, meant failure. However this may be, Machen did not fail in his other legends of the war. Possibly because he called some of them legends—perhaps because the public felt their “willing suspension of disbelief” already supported too great a load—at any rate Machen’s further inventions were permitted to remain inventions and he was accorded a considerable, if not fanatical, amount of praise.

These other tales, _The Soldier’s Rest_, _The Monstrance_, _The Dazzling Light_, had in them the very elements that should have appealed to those who make legends of inventions. They offered much in the way of tradition blended with mysticism, a mixture that should have drawn credence from a much less tradition-loving people than the British. Perhaps there was too much mysticism in these tales—anything less subtle than a warrior saint might not appeal to the Church Militant.

But surely _Drake’s Drum_, or the tale called _Munitions of War_ had the stuff of legend in them, and tradition too. Layed on, as a matter of fact, with the trowel. _Drake’s Drum_ should have become one of the glorious legends of the sea-girt Britons, the race of mariners. This is the tale that relates the events that took place off Scapa Flow, when the British Navy awaited the German High Fleet in November, 1918 to accept their surrender. There were rumours that the Germans might possibly fight and the crews of the British ships stood at “Battle Stations.” Then, as the first German ship appeared through the mist, a drum began to beat in the “Royal Oak.” And it beat and it rolled from then until the entire German Fleet was encircled and helpless. Of course the unauthorized drumming was investigated, but with all hands at Battle Stations, and especially upon such a momentous occasion, it was hardly possible, and highly improper, that there might be anyone aboard ship with the time and the inclination to beat a drum. However, neither drum nor drummer were located and there was no choice but to believe that what everyone had been hearing was Drake’s Drum—“the audible manifestation of the spirit of the Great Sea Captain, present at this hour of tremendous victory of Britain on the Sea.”

Now this is certainly a tale that should have appealed to the Britons, as indeed it did, but they refused to raise it to the status of a legend. Then too, the story appeared in 1919, by which time England had less urgent need of legends. In any case, the perfidious Teutons had by that time scuttled their ships at Scapa Flow.

_Munitions of War_, a story published in 1915, also has the stuff of legend, but somehow it never caught, never quite made the grade. Oh, it was successful enough as a story, but it never became a legend. Which, on the whole, pleased its creator. It tells of a traveller who went to a seaport in the West of England and how he was awakened in the night to hear vast oaths and burly voices heaving and ho-ing as they loaded ships. The language used by these stevedores had an other-century quality and the watcher in the night could only conclude that these men had loaded Nelson’s ships before Trafalgar. Had this story been written in 1942 or 1943 instead of 1915 it might have been printed in the “Welders and Steam-Fitters Gazette,” or some other house organ, and it may even have been legendized by England’s defense workers and winners of the coveted “E” award—or its British equivalent.

5

One of the longest, and by far the best, of Machen’s stories of the war period is one that made no appeal whatever to the legend-loving instincts of a people at war but which contained, as we may see in this post-war year of ’48, something of the nature of prophecy.

_The Terror_ was first published in 1917. It was obviously inspired by the reception accorded the tale of the Bowmen combined with more of Machen’s creative magic. In the opening chapter Machen refers to the rumours and legends current in the early years of the war—the Bowmen, and the Russians who traveled through Britain by night on their way to some great push or other. These absurdities, Machen points out, depended upon the newspaper for their dissemination. The events described in _The Terror_ had been held in strictest secrecy and no word had been given to the Press. For reasons of security all events connected with the Terror had been hushed up.

However, continued Machen, in a “now-it-can-be-told manner,” these were the reasons why “almost two years of war had been completed before the motionless English line began to stir.” The story of the Terror is, then, purported to be the secret of the long inactivity of the British Army.

Things were happening all over England ... very strange things. An airman had been killed under mysterious circumstances. The circumstances appeared to have been obvious enough—he seemed to have been attacked by a flock of birds, a rather mysterious matter in itself. There were other happenings here and there, and rumors of many more. After a few strange events had been reported in local papers there were no further accounts, and sometimes there was no local paper thereafter. Few people would have connected these events in any case. An airman is killed. A child chases a butterfly and is seen alive no more. There are strange stories about munitions works and fiery clouds and bees and horses and dogs. But none of these may be written up in the papers.

Well, at long last and with Machen’s usual circumambience and magic the story reveals that the mysterious deaths and strange events are being caused by animals—by cows and sheep and dogs and horses and bees and birds and moths. The explanation? Machen writes—

“... The source of the great revolt of the beasts is to be sought in a much subtler region of inquiry. I believe that the subjects revolted because the king abdicated. Man has dominated beasts throughout the ages, the spiritual has reigned over the rational through the peculiar quality and grace of spirituality that men possess, that makes a man to be that which he is. And while he maintained this power and grace, I think it is pretty clear that between him and the animals there was a certain treaty and alliance. There was supremacy on the one hand, and submission on the other.... ‘Spiritual’ signifies the royal prerogative of man, differentiating him from the beast. For long ages he had been putting off this royal robe ... he had declared, again and again, that he is not spiritual, but rational, that is, the equal of the beasts over whom he was once sovereign. He has vowed that he is not Orpheus but Caliban. But the beasts ... perceived that the throne was vacant—not even friendship was possible between them and the self-deposed monarch. If he were not king he was a sham, an impostor, a thing to be destroyed.”

But before these mysteries are resolved there is much talk of German spies, of mysterious rays, of all sorts of things that attempt to link the chain of horrors with the Germans. And in the course of these attempts to implicate the Germans in the Terror, Machen creates several hypotheses which seemed the very stuff of fiction in 1917—but which in our time must seem like prophecy.

It was in 1944 that the Viking Press issued a volume of its Portable Library devoted to _Six Novels of the Supernatural_. Machen’s tale of _The Terror_ was one of the six. Thus it happens that I re-read _The Terror_ at about the time our forces were capturing the platforms from which the robot bombs were launched at London. Now _The Terror_ has always pleased me as a tale, a diversion and, as with most of Machen’s magic, something to think about when the world is quiet and mysterious—say a midnight in October, or three o’clock of an August afternoon. Nothing is inconceivable at such times, I think, and anything can happen—or seem to happen. A long, long look at a tree or a hedge or a hillside might give rise to disturbing thoughts—and one often finds oneself looking hastily away before something actually _does_ happen.

But to return to _The Terror_. I had read it several times before and I thought I knew it quite well. But reading it in 1944 it seemed quite new. I had not remembered some things, perhaps because they seemed only incidental to the plot. They were the sort of thing one skipped over rapidly to see what would happen next, or when and where the Terror would strike again.

Well along into the story a Mr. Merrit, one of Machen’s more talkative characters, is explaining to a group of friends that “the Terror” is all part of a German plot, that there are, indeed, Germans established in England who are doing these things. And this, according to Merrit, is how it was done:

“The scheme had been prepared years before, some thought soon after the Franco-Prussian War. Moltke had seen that the invasion of England presented very great difficulties. The matter was constantly in discussion in the inner military and high political circles, and the general trend of opinion in these quarters was that at the best, the invasion of England would involve Germany in the gravest difficulties, and leave France in a position of the _tertius gaudens_. This was the state of affairs when a very high Prussian personage was approached by the Swedish professor, Huvelius.”

Professor Huvelius, according to Merrit (or Machen) was an extraordinary man. He was personally an amiable individual who gave every penny he owned to the poor, who dissipated his salary on charity and kindness. He starved himself in order to help the needy. And he wrote a book called _De Facinore Humane_, which book proved the infinite corruption of the human race.

The amiable Professor preached a cynical philosophy, the main tenets of which have a familiar sound. He held that human misery was due, by and large, to the mistaken notion that man was naturally well-disposed and kindly. Murderers, thieves and other abominable creatures are created by the false pretense and foolish credence of human virtue. And he goes on to say that kings and the rulers of people could decrease the sum of human misery to a vast extent by acting on the doctrine of human wickedness.

“War,” says the mild Professor, “which is one of the worst of evils, will always continue to exist. But a wise king will desire a brief rather than a lengthy war, a short evil rather than a long evil. And this not from the benignity of his heart towards his enemies, for we have seen that the human heart is naturally malignant, but because he desires to conquer, and to conquer easily, without a great expenditure of men or of treasure, knowing that if he can accomplish this feat his people will love him and his crown will be secure. So he will wage brief victorious wars, and not only spare his own nation, but the nation of the enemy, since in a short war the loss is less on both sides than in a long war. And so from evil will come good.”

This philosophy sounds more and more familiar as Merrit goes on to expound what he knows of the works of “Professor Huvelius.” The wise ruler will assume that the enemy is infinitely corruptible and infinitely stupid, since all men are so. The ruler then makes friends in the very council of his enemy and among the people of his enemy, bribing the wealthy and offering opportunity for still greater wealth, and winning the poor by swelling words. “For,” says the Professor, “it is the wealthy who are greedy of wealth, while the people can be gained by talking to them of liberty, their unknown god.”

At any rate, this Huvelius sold his plan to the Germans. His philosophy too, apparently, and presumably he donated the moneys thus obtained to his favorite charity. The Germans accordingly proceeded to buy lands in certain suitable places in England, secret excavations were made and in a short time there was a subterranean Germany in the heart of England. The Germans, having made themselves as secure as Crusoes, waited for “the Day.”

This, then, was the plot outlined by Machen as he carefully prepared the background for his story. It seemed not too incredible in 1915 as he worked on the book, for there were rumors even then of emplacements ready for guns discovered by British troops in Belgium and in France, and certain caves along the Aisne seemed to have been made ready for cannon.

Now all this imagining in 1915 and 1917 comes pretty close to the events of 1940. Whether the Germans had read Huvelius or Machen in the years of the Long Armistice, or confined their reading to _Mein Kampf_, which seems the more likely, they had certainly covered the ground from Eben Emael to Quisling.

At any rate, _The Terror_ is first rate reading at any time, and certainly a Machen “must.” It is too lengthy to be included in the usual bibliography—but it is readily available in Viking’s “Six Novels of the Supernatural.”

_Chapter Six_

THE YELLOW BOOKS

1

It would be unflattering indeed to imply that Arthur Machen’s books were quickly discarded by their owners, or that they had ever crowded, in any considerable numbers, the shelves of the second-hand book shops. Nevertheless it is a fact that for some years, especially in the late Twenties and early Thirties, the shelves, counters and sidewalk tables of Fourth Avenue were high-lighted for browsers by the bindings that blazed forth the magic of Machen.

Mr. Alfred Knopf who undertook in the Twenties to introduce, or to reintroduce, Arthur Machen to American readers elected, perhaps for obvious reasons, to issue the odd-sized books in a bright yellow binding. For this, as well as for his work in bringing Machen across the Atlantic, Mr. Knopf is to be thanked; but whoever designed the books, having specified an unmistakable color for the cloth binding, decided also upon a dark blue paper label with gold lettering—a combination that became, in a reasonably short time, completely indecipherable. There was, however, no mistaking a Machen—even when it turned up in the darkest corner of the most unassuming hole-in-the-wall in Fourth Avenue, Twelfth Street or lower Lexington Avenue. The adept Arthurian merely looked for the unmistakable yellow binding with its dark and indecipherable patch. It must be admitted that the production manager or book designer for Knopf planned better than he knew, for it seemed that time could not dull, nor dirt disguise, nor grime diminish the yellow of those bindings. The experienced browser could spot one at thirty feet in the dimmest corner of the dingiest shop, sandwiched though it might be between _V. V.’s Eyes_ and _The Conquest of Fear_ or buried under a pile of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Martian romances. A recent convert might, for a time, respond to the lure of the yellow only to find, on closer inspection, something about a eunuch by a man named Pettit, or an early Ben Hecht, or some other ordinary book bound in yellow; but in time he learned to distinguish that one especial hue. He came to know it, however faded, for it seemed to fade predictably.

Thus the yellow books issued by Knopf became the most eagerly sought-after books along Fourth Avenue. It was not too long of course, before they became scarce. Soon they were taken from tables and stacked reverently on shelves, and before very long they were behind glass doors or in the shelves behind the proprietor’s desk, or even in that holy of holies—the back room.

Today they have disappeared from Fourth Avenue. You may find, now and then, one of the Martin Secker editions, or perhaps one of the deluxe editions of the Heptameron—or even a set, fabulously priced, of the Caerleon edition. For the most part, however, the book shops are Machen-less, a condition that might be remedied, and profitably, by some enterprising publisher, or even by Mr. Knopf.