The Weekly Machen
Seven months after thrashing Harold Begbie’s On the Side of the Angels, Arthur Machen found himself in the strange position of defending his previous opponent from a new entrant into the Mons controversy. Very little is known about I. E. Taylor, the author of Angels, Saints and Bowmen. Despite the title of the following article, this would be far from the last public comment made by Machen on the legend. For the record, I wholeheartedly endorse Machen’s final statement.
The Angel of Mons:
Absolutely My Last Word on the Subject
by
Arthur Machen
April 7, 1916
There is a certain land—and it is a very pleasant land—called Gwent, or more commonly, Monmouthshire. This land, as my colleague, “The Londoner,” reminds me, was the land of the longbow.
Now I am proud to write this, for I am a man of Gwent, a citizen of Caerleon-on-Usk, which is no mean city, but I would almost say that the ancestral longbow may be too long and too strong. I pulled it as well as I could in the tale of “The Bowmen” which was printed in The Evening News about eighteen months ago. I do not think that I need tell again in detail the story of what happened. In brief, there was a widespread delusion—I still hold it to have been a delusion—that our soldiers were supernaturally assisted during the retreat from Mons; and there was a subsidiary delusion to the effect that a large mass of evidence was in existence proving the fact of this supernatural assistance. These are the points of this very queer business. I cannot enter to the matter more minutely, lest this twice-cooked cabbage, to use Juvenal’s phrase, should sicken my readers; and sicken me also. If there is anybody who wants to hear about it all over again, I would refer him to “The Bowmen,” published by Messrs. Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.
Well, frankly, I thought that the whole thing was at last done with, that “The Bowmen” slept with the Russians in the grave of a common oblivion. The British Museum has applied to me with a puzzling request that I should furnish them with the information in my possession as to the “literature” on the subject; and with this, I thought, the whole story ends.
“Haro! Haro!”
“Instead of which”: here, newly set forth by the Theosophical Publishing Company, comes “Angels, Saints & Bowmen of Mons: An Answer to Mr. Arthur Machen and Mr. Harold Begbie” by I. E. Taylor.
The arrow that I shot into the air is, evidently, still doing its deadly work. It is I that will soon be crying “Haro! haro! à mon aide, mon prince, ou me fait tort.”
Frankly, and without any intention of disrespect, I must that I can make nothing of Mr. Taylor. He is angry both with Mr. Harold Begbie (the author of “On the Side of the Angels”) and myself.
“From the point of view of the prophet, the theosophist and the occultist, the idea of the visions of our soldiers having resulted from the publication of Mr. Machen’s story of ‘The Bowmen’ is almost incomprehensibly ridiculous; and the reproduction, by Mr. Harold Begbie, of statement after statement in a necessarily fruitless endeavour to prove a spiritual reality to material understanding, is, from the above point of view, a lamentable waste of time and energy which might have been profitably employed in answering the only vital question which arises, namely, What is the meaning of the visions which the soldiers saw?”
Curious Logic
Well: there you are. The man who says that he thinks that his story in The Evening News states that the legend of the apparition is ridiculous, and the man who says that that he can prove that there were apparitions is equally ridiculous. The matter stands thus: there must have been apparitions; so what did they mean?
Now from this very beginning, I cannot follow Mr. Taylor. I do not know how he is so certain that there were apparitions of saints, angels and bowmen during the retreat from Mons. He says that Mr. Begbie is quite out of court in bringing evidence—or, as I should put it, what Mr. Begbie thinks evidence—to prove that there was a supernatural intervention during the noble retreat of our Army; and yet he quotes freely from Mr. Begbie’s book. I find allusions to the experience of “the German soldiers” quoted by Mr, Begbie, in the story “told by an English lady . . . reported by Mr. Begbie,” and so forth. I find alleged supernatural experiences on the battlefield introduced by the phrase “we are told that” or “our soldiers declare,” quite in Mr. Begbie’s own manner. So, I really think that Mr. Taylor has used Mr. Begbie harshly. He should not take Mr. Begbie’s instances and Mr. Begbie’s methods, and then tell Mr. Begbie that he has wasted his time and energy.
The Valley of Dry Bones
And as for Mr. Taylor’s own exegesis of bowmen and saints and angels?
Well, my longbow has, it seems, shot an arrow into strange regions indeed. Mr. Taylor discourses of the Hebrew prophets, of a mass of clotted Theosophy, of Judah and the Ten Tribes, of the Apocalypse, of the failure of ecclesiasticism, of the Turk; of I know not what. He has an open mind, I think, about those famous bowmen. They may be saints, or angels, or they may be dead English soldiers still fighting on for the good cause. Or finally, they may be, nay are, the terrible inhabitants of the Valley of Dry Bones, seen by the prophet Ezekiel in his vision.
That having been described as an “exceeding great army” they were—when they stood upon their feet—apparently prepared for the war; and having risen as soldiers, they must, according to an unalterable divine fundamental law, have fallen as such. And as they fell in the days when bows and arrows were used, with bows and arrows they would rise again.
Very well; nay, prodigious; but I must say that I certainly invented the story of the Bowmen, whatever may be said of the stories of the angels; and so I really do not see what Ezekiel’s vision has to do with it.
But there are many things in this treatise which I do not understand. I see that “the Turks . . . must very shortly surrender their possessions in Egypt to the Russians as representing the champions of the Jews, or to the English, French and other Anglo-Saxons now representing the Israelites.”
Really: the Turks have no possessions in Egypt. And, though all the Mahatmas of Tibet rise up against me, I will maintain that the French are not Anglo-Saxons.
Haro!
Previous: Those Angels
Next: The Great Terror, Chapters 1 & 2
darklybrightpress.com 
Wow – that was/this is fun! Thank you! Machen’s wishful thinking…
Ah, the French – I’m just (finally!) reading G.N. Garmonsway’s Everyman’s Library translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles, into some versions of which creep reports of the doings of Charlemagne… But how ignorant I am of Frankish – would Alcuin have understood any, or Franks his Old English?
My sense of Google Books is too dull – am I right, or wrong, that one cannot simply look at Mr. Taylor’s book? – in contrast to the Internet Archive scan of his The Suffrage Movement from its Evolutionary Aspect published in 1910 by good old Swan Sonneschein…
Machen has got me attentive to his variant in “The Bowman” “Harow! Harow! Monseigneur St. George, succour us” of the “Clameur de haro“, which has its own English Wikipedia article, which calls it “an ancient legal injunction of restraint employed by a person who believes they are being wronged by another at that moment”! – and translates “Hear me! Hear me! Hear me! Come to my aid, my Prince, for someone does me wrong.”
Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1895 version, apparently, according to the website fromoldbooks[dot]org) tells me of “Crambe bis Cocta [“cabbage boiled twice”] A subject hacked out. Juvenal says, ‘Occidit miseros crambe repetita magistros (vii. 155), alluding to the Greek proverb ‘Dis krambē thanatos.’ ‘There was a disadvantage in treading this Border district, for it had been already ransacked by the author himself, as well as by others; and, unless presented under a new light, was likely to afford ground to the objection of Crambe bis cocta.’—Sir W. Scott: The Monastery (Introduction.)” G.G. Ramsay in his 1918 Satires translates “Served up again and again, the cabbage is the death of the unhappy master!”(I find in Roger Pearse’s transcription at tertullian[dot]org).
I wonder if Mr. Taylor’s ideas about “Ezekiel’s vision” have any exegetical precedent? E.g. the wonder of the coming to life again of the dead man who was “cast into the sepulchre of Elisha” and so touched his bones (2 Kings 13:21, AV/KJV) occurs in a combat context – though it does not specify he at once fought again…
In The Steel Bonnets (1971), George MacDonald Fraser has a fascinating little discussion of the enduring advantages of the long bow for rapid and accurate fire, recommended by Benjamin Franklin in preference to the muskets of his day for these reasons.
I take it “I would refer him to ‘The Bowmen,’ published by Messrs. Simpkin, Marshall, and Co.” is a discreet plug for the revised second edition.
.
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Many wonderful connections and side paths! Thank you for broadening the conversation. You’re correct: Machen would be advertising the second edition at this point (1916). You should be able to read the book. I’ll add another link below:
https://books.google.com/books?id=dXqsAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false
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