Bernard Capes, anyone?
Mark Dillon
Bernard Capes is the most interesting writer of ghost
stories I've "discovered" in quite some time.
I first read "The Green Bottle" in Hugh Lamb's anthology,
TALES FROM A GAS-LIT GRAVEYARD, and was immediately
hooked.
Although the central gimmick is absurd (glass-blower blows
his dying soul into a sealed bottle), the story is written with
an angry, urgent style, full of odd verbal effects:
It was an ordinary claret bottle, but distorted at the neck.
The light struck into and through it. And I looked, and saw
that its milky-greenness was in never-ceasing motion.
"There they are!" whispered Sewell gluttonously.
"Look, Mr. Deering, mightn't it be the worm and the
fish, now...!"
A little palpitating, shuddering blot of terror, human and
inhuman; now distended, as if gasping in a momentary
respite; now crouching and hugging itself into a shapeless
ball, and always steadily, untiringly followed and sprung
upon by the thing that had the appearance, through the
semi-opaque glass, of a shambling, fat-lidded...
Something gave in me, and with a sobbing snarl I caught
the bottle up in my hand.
"The Green Bottle" is included in the Ash-Tree Press collection,
THE BLACK REAPER (still in print and available). Not every story
here is good -- I've tried to read "A Gallows-bird" three times now,
but find the prose so clotted and confusing that I always get lost
-- but on the whole, I find his approach to language and imagery
unusual and compelling.
His approach often seems to anticipate Ramsey Campbell:
From the deep green shadow cast by the graveyard wall,
heavily buttressed against avalanches, a form wriggled out
into the moonlight and fell with a dusty thud at my feet,
mowing and chopping at the air with its aimless claws.
I started back with a sudden jerk of my pulses. The thing
was horrible by reason of its inarticluate voice, which
issued from the shapeless folds of its writhings like the
wet gutturising of a backbroken horse.
From "The Moon Stricken"
Hugh Lamb, in his introduction to THE BLACK REAPER,
offers no clues to the writers who might have influenced
Capes (and oddly calls this Edwardian a Victorian!).
His stories bore no resemblance to those of his
contemporary, M. R. James. In fact, I find it hard to place him
in any "tradition" (LeFanu? No. Machen? Poe? Bierce?
Stevenson? Not really, no).
If anything, Capes comes across like a less florid, less allusive
M. P. Shiel....
So... what do the rest of you think of Capes?
Mark Dillon
jpe...@cnw.com
dq...@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (Mark Dillon) wrote:
>
> So... what do the rest of you think of Capes?
Well... What follows is a review that I did for All Hallows some months
back. I immediately placed Capes' collection on my "Top 100" list. A
truly remarkable writer... I keep meaning to check out his mysteries...
From the moment you glance at the striking cover art by Richard
Lamb, (reminiscent as it is of the late, great Lee Brown Coye); you
have the feeling that this book is something special. There are few
authors whose work is more maddeningly difficult to track down than
that of Bernard Capes.. I was introduced to his work some years through
one of Hugh Lamb's anthologies. Since that time I’ve always considered
the appearance of a Capes story in an anthology to be a cause for
celebration. His stories have appeared sporadically in other
anthologies edited by Lamb, as well as those of Michael Cox and Richard
Dalby. Regrettably, other than the aforementioned anthology appearances
and the difficult Equation Chiller paperback, his work is available
only in fabulously rare collections from the turn of the century. The
production of this book might well be considered tantamount to a public
service.
Capes did most of his writing in the early 1900's, too late for
the fin de siecle and just a tad too early for induction into "the
James Gang". The stories in The Black Reaper run the gamut from
altruistic spectral intervention as is in "The Glass Ball" to
horrifying Grand Guignol tales of retribution such as "The Apothecary's
Revenge". In all, it is Capes uncanny eye for detail that raises these
stories far above to the status of mere popular literature. From short
fables such as “The White Hare” and “The Thing in the Forest” to longer
more ambitious work like the novelettes “The Accursed Cordonnier” and
“An Eddy on the Floor” Capes demonstrates a mastery of mood and
language that has few equals.
Historical horror comes in to play here as well in the titular piece,
images of the terrible Black Reaper marching inexorably towards the
town with his plague-bearing scythe slowly swing back and forth is
likely to remain with the reader long after the book has been placed on
the shelf. In this story, the personification of the plague is a
terrifying figure, but one that is capable of showing mercy. To say
whether or not he does so would be to spoil the story. What Capes has
accomplished here is a merger of the classic ghost and an elemental
force, a unique elemental force in that the characteristics of purpose
and intelligence are displayed, making The Reaper that much more
horrific…
What makes this collection of such interest is the sheer variety of
plot devices utilized by the author. Rather than staying in the close
confines of the ghostly tale, Capes ranges through a variety of tropes
covering the entire gamut of weird fiction, in each case making them
something uniquely his own. Included herein are a marvelously
suspenseful werewolf tale, with a chase scene to keep you on the edge
of your seat; and this done isn what must be less than 1500 words!
There is the remarkably violent tale, “The Sword of Corporal Lacoste”,
with scenes of carnage to make even the most jaded devotee of horror
stories squirm just a bit. That this story is accomplished in a
beautiful Victorian prose makes it all the more effective.
In his ghostly tales Capes ranges from the mad and malign
manifestations such as “Dark Dignum” and the evil nobleman in “A Queer
Cicerone” to the more bizarre manifestations such as the strange and
misshapen spectre that appears in “The Green Bottle”. Another high mark
of this book is the inclusion of this collection is the novelette “The
Accursed Cordonnier”, a Romance that incorporates the Wandering Jew in
a deft blending of the modern with the mythic. In this tale, the
Wandering Jew is befret of our sympathies as a doomed wanderer;
instead, he appears as a figure of timeless evil and menace.
This book should serve as a ringing testimony to Capes mastery of the
varied forms of the weird tale, as always, Hugh Lamb has done a
splendid job of assembling stories from difficult-to-find collections.
Recently I’ve heard rumors of the existence of some as yet unreprinted
supernatural tales, if such stories exist and can stand shoulder to
shoulder with such grim masterpieces as “A Gallows Bird” or any of the
other twenty-two gems in this book, then chasing these rare tales down
would be an effort amply rewarded. A reference work in my library cites
several intriguing tales that are absent from this present volume,
perhaps there are enough to comprise a companion volume… If such tales
are few in number, it seems a shame to have not included them in this
book, as there is certainly ample room for the inclusion of more
stories. The Black Reaper weighs in at a healthy 227 pages, but such
are the delights of Bernard Capes fiction that one will finish the book
with a sense of disappointment that there isn’t any more…
And there you have it... Since this was written I've seen one copy of
one of his original collections offered for sale, that's it; just one...
John
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