The Weekly Machen
The following article gives the impression of two short articles joined as one. In the first half, we are treated to Arthur’s Machen’s urban wanderings and literary musing. Any reader familiar with London or Dickens’s work is encouraged to respond to Machen’s surmises. Of particular interest, we find Machen elucidating upon the qualities of the imaginative writer, which surely applies to our reporter. The second half presents brief notes from his reading list, always an entertaining activity for discovery.
Odd Volumes:
An Exploration in Dickens’ Land
by
Arthur Machen
July 24, 1911
A few days ago I made a pilgrimage to one of those quarters of London which everybody knows of, and scarcely anybody knows. There are lots of such places; how many of my readers have been over the Tower? What is the percentage of those who have climbed the Monument?
My journey of the other day was taken to Southwark; it is a few minutes’ walk from London Bridge Station, and it is practically an unknown region in spite of the Dickens associations. There are very few, indeed, even of avowed Dickens readers who can point to the exact site of the Marshalsea.
I did not go with the purpose of steeping myself for the local atmosphere of “Little Dorrit”; I went to look for a poet in a common lodging-house, that he might tell me what he thought of his civil list pension. But the poet had migrated into Kent, wisely enough; so I put on my Dickens spectacles, and forthwith made discoveries—which I am sure other Dickens enthusiasts must have discovered before me. My finds were the names of two streets—Quilp-street and Clenham-street.
Now I cannot suppose that these names were given after the fact—that is, the novels. No local authority would name a street after Quilp, who was “a little hunchy villain and a monster.” And if the Southwark people had wished to name a street after Arthur Clennam, the rather wooden hero of “Little Dorrit,” they would surely have spelt the word correctly. Consequently, I am forced to conclude that Dickens took the names from the streets. Old Dickens was imprisoned in the Marshalsea, and the local names stayed in the writer’s memory. We know how he put Bob Sawyer into lodgings in the adjoining Lant-street; it is still a shady vale, where factories have not yet supplanted the old two-storeyed houses.
Dickens and the Marshalsea
It was very hot, that day of my Southwark stroll; and it will be remembered how Dickens dwells in the story on the fierce burning heat that beat on the prison walls. I have no doubt myself that all these descriptions of the stifling heat and closeness of the Marshalsea are the distilled and rectified recollections of an especial hot day, that for some reason or another had left a deep impression on little Charles Dickens’s mind.
This is often the process with the purely imaginative writer. The impression of a few seconds or a few minutes stays in the mind, and is resolved into fine literature many years afterwards. And this is the true process; it gives magical results which can never be obtained by the deliberate journey in search of “local colour.” But the worst of it is that the capacity for receiving these impressions leaves most of us as we grow older; a veil falls between our eyes and the world.
Childhood is the age of vision, of real insight; and hence Hazlitt declares truly enough that most men of genius spend their lives in teaching the world what they themselves knew before they were eighteen.
Mysticism and Magic
I can hardly agree with The Times Literary Supplement criticism of Mr. A. E. Waite’s “Book of Ceremonial Magic” (Rider). The reviewer lays down the proposition that the Black Art “is really a mysticism à rebours”; that is, one may say, a mysticism spelt backwards. With the reviewer’s leave, there is no connection between mysticism and magic. The modern equivalent for magic is Spiritualism; the professed evocation of the spirits of the dead, who are supposed to signify their presence by some material means.
Mysticism knows nothing of this or of anything like it. It neither desires to raise ghost nor demon, and it never proposes any material end. The theorem of the mystic is that the soul, coming from God, can experience God, even in this life; its problem is how to achieve this end in the best possible way. The mystic says, “Thy will be done”; the magician, “My will be done.”
A Prodigy
“The Hampdenshire Wonder,” by J. D. Beresford (Sidgwick and Jackson), is a very striking and remarkable book. First, it embodies an idea; and, secondly, that idea is full of strange and wonderful suggestion. It is very rarely that I open a novel which has any relation with the world of ideas, so I welcome “The Hampdenshire Wonder” with the more warmth.
The theme is of a child being born who is about 1,000 years in intellectual advance of humanity. I don’t think that the mechanism by which Victor Stott’s extraordinary mental equipment is supposed to be produced is very plausible. Mr. Stott, senior, has a fervent desire for a child who shall have “no ‘abits” with the view of training him to be the finest professional bowler in the world. And I hardly see that the absence of “ ‘abits,” if achieved, would necessarily imply the presence of extraordinary mental abilities.
Waiving this point, little Victor Stott is born, as I say, 1,000 years in advance of any human being, so far as logical and mathematical intellect is concerned. At five years old he is examined by a local committee, led by the headmaster of the grammar school.
“What is the square root of 226?” he asked.
“15,03329—to five places,” replied the Wonder.
Steven started. Neither he nor any other member of the committee was capable of checking that answer without, resort to pencil and paper.
So the examination goes on, and all the intelligent persons present perceive that little Victor Stott, the Wonder, is accommodating himself with very great difficulty to their limited and backward intellects.
The Link
The Wonder is really a superman so far as the logical understanding is concerned—and the only human being who really likes him is the village idiot, who feels instinctively that Victor is of his own nature. Here Mr. Beresford makes a profound point. He dots the i’s and crosses the t’s at the end of the story, when one of the characters says that “we should all perish through sheer inanity or die desperately by suicide if no mystery remained in the world.” But the incident of the idiot’s instinctive sympathy for the Wonder tells the truth of the matter more picturesquely: a being that was all knowledge and no imagination and no emotion would be an inhuman being, and with such a creature an imbecile would naturally consort, feeling the link of their common remoteness from sane humanity.
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I looked in Cunningham’s Hand-Book of London (1850), a book valued by Machen, and didn’t find Clenham-Street or Quilp-Street. I’ll trust Machen was reporting genuine names, evidently of streets otherwise of so little note that they are not mentioned by Cunningham.
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My first venture at searching finds that there are now both a Clennam Street (so spelt) and a Quilp Street in Southwark, but what of their (spelling) histories? Wikipedia’s “Street Names of Southwark” has a page reference (p. 100) in Sheila Fairfield’s The Streets Of London: A Dictionary Of The Names And Their Origins (1983) for the annotation that the latter is “after Daniel Quilp, a character in the novel The Old Curiosity Shop by Charles Dickens, by association with Dickens Square” – but that invites further digging: when, how?
One of Wikipedia’s “Southwark” article books for “Further Reading” is an Internet Archive scan of a copy of the second edition of Findlay Muirhead’s Blue Guide for London and Its Environs from 10 years after Machen’s article: neither spelling of Clenham/Clennam nor the name Quilp turn up in a word search, though the Southwark section includes in the Lant Street paragraph that Bob Sawyer lodged there “in a house now replaced by the so-called ‘Dickens’ school” (p. 314) – as (in slightly different terms) does James Muirhead’s “Dickens in London” article (p. lxiii). That school is not mentioned in the corresponding sections of the 1918 first edition (also scanned in the Internet Archive: pp. lx and 412).
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More Internet Archive searching: Nothing in the 1911 Baedeker, or in Lilian and Ashmore Russan’ s Historic Streets of London: An Alphabetical Handbook (1923) – though lots of Dickens references. Fascinating is Dickens’s Dictionary of London[…]: An Unconventional Handbook, attributed to a Charles Dickens who lived 1837-96. I tried the 1882 edition, which has a map of the area of Southwark where Quilp and Clennam Streets now are, but were not, then (page “18 of 360” in the scan). Interesting looking are: F. Hopkins Smith, In Dickens’s London (1914) – though no results for Quilp or Clennam; T. Edgar Pemberton, Dickens’s London (1876); and perhaps Alex Werner and Tony Williams, Dickens’s Victorian London 1839-1901 (2011), where the single references each to Quilp and Clennam are to the characters, not the streets.
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Machen’s two paragraphs on mysticism and magic are important. My sense is that, early on in his life, he spent a lot of time looking into occult books, and so he wrote his best-known horror stories. But he left that sort of thing behind in favor of Arthurian legend, Welsh saints, Anglo-Catholic ritualism, the study of liturgical history, etc. Waite may have influenced him, but I wonder if he read Evelyn Underhill’s Mysticism (1911) and felt something like, “THIS is what I have really been looking for.” I hope to learn more about these possibilities.
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I was thinking as I read that her Mysticism first appeared sometime in the same year as this article: it would indeed be good to know more of Machen’s (possible) familiarity with her various works, or with her personally!
I cannot quickly find a scan of Waite’s Book of Ceremonial Magic, but in what looks like a transcription but which is presented as a scan, I find in the Preface “That there was, as there still is, a science of the old sanctuaries, I am certain as a mystic; that this science issued in that experience which imparts wisdom I am also certain; but it did not correspond to any of the arts and processes to which I refer here, nor to anything which can be received by the mind as the result of their exaltation. The consideration of a possibility thus already condemned is therefore ruled out of the inquiry which I have attempted in the present work.”
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You are quite correct: her book was published in 1911. Machen read the book and wrote a two-part review, but I have not located the concluding half. Underhill and Machen were on friendly terms. She dedicated her final novel, Column of Dust, to Machen and his wife, Purefoy. In turn, he review that book for T. P.’s Weekly. It was included in the Mist and Mystery collection.
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I had quite forgotten that! That’s the only Underhill novel I have read, so far, but think it well worth reading!
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Dale: I agree with your assessment here. Machen is clear on his preference between the two. Acknowledgement of this truth about him should steer the scholarship.
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Tentatively — it seems to me that relatively early in his writing life, Machen rebelled against what seemed to him an overly moralistic and prosaic Evangelical and/or “Broad” Christianity. He found it amusing to write things (e.g. “A Double Return”) that would be likely to offend adherents thereof. He felt an attraction to the occult.
Machen never simply forbade the reprinting of stories written under the influence of these sentiments. However, in some degree he did publicly criticize himself in two places that come to mind. In his autobiography Far-Off Things he distanced himself from the Golden Dawn, albeit in a veiled way. And in “The Great Return” the narrator, “Machen,” accepts the stern rebuke of a pastor who reproaches him for railing against “Low Church” ways.
I forget when Dr. Stiggins was written, and frankly it’s one of the two books by Machen, along with The Canning Wonder, that I find unreadable. My impression is that in Stiggins Machen is still “railing,” in a satirical mode, against some kind of Low and Broad Church Christianity.
In any event, though, by early in the 20th century Machen more or less resolved not to “give anyone a white powder” any more, that is, to write stories exhibiting a fascination with black magic. This must be distinguished from his open and ongoing interest in alchemy as a symbolic form of mysticism…
…if I’m not mistaken, which I might be about much of this tentative comment.
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Again, tentatively… This is an interesting line of thought, and much of what you wrote, especially on the occult and Machen’s interest in alchemy as a hieroglyph, I think is true and sound. Yet, I would hesitate in going as far when it comes to his views on Evangelical or Low Church theology. He held a dislike for many aspects of it, most especially what he perceived as Puritanism, as well as the theological views found in Calvinism, which he described as “half-pagan.” (There was a some robust conversation in this regard at the 2021 inklings Festival!) I think what we see in laters years, including that wonderfully humble segment in The Great Return, is his softening of rhetoric. He becomes more conciliar, a quality definitely lacking in Dr. Stiggins. In the culmination of that story, the various sects join in the Mass of the Graal, a decidedly High Church and mystical ritual. He admitted mistakes on his part without surrendering his theological ground. Fun conversation!
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What a lot I have not read – a Graal Mass! A copy of Dr. Stiggins at the University of Toronto is scanned in the Internet Archive: I’ll have to make its acquaintance!
C.S. Lewis is variously critical of Calvinism, even (if I recall aright) in draft material for Letters to Malcolm not included when it appeared, as well as (notably) in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century, which did not preclude getting along with contemporary Calvinists insofar as orthodox in Christology and Trinitarian theology (so, too briefly, to put it!).
Branching off from this, what do ‘we’ know about Machen’s contacts with and thoughts about George MacDonald and his works?
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The single biggest “issue” for Machen scholarship is one that, from the paucity of materials (known to me, anyway!), might not be resolvable. This is the matter of changes in Machen’s thinking, perhaps in his beliefs.
One would like to know more about the preaching Machen heard from his father’s lips and about details of his life as an only child growing up in a Welsh rectory. Likewise one would like to know what was in the atmosphere not only at home but in the town as regards religion. Did Pastor Machen-Jones express disdain for the (presumably) more Evangelical faith and worship services of the “chapel” Welsh? If Machen’s father indulged in that sort of thing, or his mother did, or parishioners did — that might have ease the way to a disenchantment with Christianity as he knew it.
That early Machen certainly did not pursue lines of study one would expect of a Christian man. He translated Moyen de Parvenir, described by Wikipedia as “The single biggest “issue” for Machen scholarship is one that, from the paucity of materials (known to me, anyway!), might not be resolvable. This is the matter of changes in Machen’s thinking, perhaps in his beliefs.
One would like to know more about the preaching Machen heard from his father’s lips and about details of his life as an only child growing up in a Welsh rectory. Likewise one would like to know what was in the atmosphere not only at home but in the town as regards religion. Did Pastor Machen-Jones express disdain for the (presumably) more Evangelical faith and worship services of the “chapel” Welsh? Or did Machen’s mother, or parishioners, do so? A youngster hearing religious bickering — probably connected with social position — could be put off “religion” in general.
Certainly his early literary efforts seem unlikely ones for a Christian writer, e.g. translating Moyen de Parvenir, described by Wikipedia as
“playful, chaotic, baroque, sometimes obscene and almost unreadable,” and Casanova, etc. He seems to have found occultism, black magic, etc. intriguing from an early age.
When we get to “The Novel of the Black Seal” or the denouement of “The Great God Pan,” we find Machen working with a combination of occultism and evolutionism. Christian readers might try to read Christianity into them, but I doubt it is there.
How orthodox was Machen’s Christianity when he did go on to affirm the Mass, etc.? How much was his interest a matter finally of aesthetics and “symbolism” rather than of faith?
Now, how consciously and completely did Machen distance himself from the kind of outlook suggested by these stories, when, and why? Was this a matter of “stages”? And so on.
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Belatedly picking up (a bit) re. Machen’s father and family, the Wikipedia link at Caerleon Net (current reference/footnote 3) is variously fascinating – as to how many Established Church clergymen, over how many generations/centuries, with learning and learned interests and appeal – for instance, Machen’s great-uncle Hezekiah’s “oratory, at the turn of the eighteenth century, drew crowds from far outside the county and they were said to be moved to tears by his skill with what was known in Wales as the hwyl.” Intriguing is the reported detail about Machen’s father: “In the 1850s when the poet Tennyson stayed at the Hanbury Arms to get inspiration for his writing the Vicar called on him and was reported to be a little shocked at the pipe but ready to make allowances for the odd behaviour of creative Bohemians such as this.”
I don’t know how this compares to the (in)famous range and variety within the Established Church (which I suppose, e.g., Trollope widely, and Baring-Gould pseudonymously as Irenæus the Deacon in Only a Ghost! (1870), depict as well as satirize in the Nineteenth century), nor how it ‘interacts’ with instances of (I have the impression often mutually hostile) varieties of ‘chapel’ – Wesleyan Methodists, Calvinistic Methodists, assorted Congregationalists and Baptists – and, again, those in communion with the Holy See (whose martyrs include John Roberts (1610), and John Lloyd and Philip Evans (1679) ) – not to consider the variety within the Tudor family itself.
Among famous Welsh(-descended) Established-Church members with an interest in, e.g., alchemy on the one hand John Dee and on the other the Vaughan brothers spring to mind.
I’d have to reread those stories, but immediately wonder in how far the first should be read in its story-within-a-story context, as purportedly a story of “the young lady” among the imposters.
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On the Southwark Council website I find an article from 31 August 2022 about Mint Street Park which includes “A decade ago Mint Street Park was a semi-derelict open space with a reputation for crime and anti-social behaviour.” Google Maps shows Quilp Street running into/through the Park, with Clennam Street near its Northeast corner, and Lant Street – and Weller Street! – Southwest of it.
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By the way, I see Phil Benson has been busy this past month working on a recording of The Hampdenshire Wonder for LibriVox (which one cannot yet sample – but you can try other of his recordings, to see if you like his reading).
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Interesting. When it is released, I would like to link it to this page. Has anyone read this novel?
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Christopher, The Hampdenshire Wonder is likely to be the subject of a Books Around Machen column before the end of this year. I have a copy of Beresford’s novel on hand!
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Wonderful. I hoped you would say something along those lines.
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David — just in case there would be any confusion — the Graal Mass is in “The Great Return” (not, surely, Dr. Stiggins).
If you find yourself able to read Dr. Stiggins, David, perhaps you could write something up here! (I’m sure Christopher, whose site this is, would welcome that.) Even if it’s just a few remarks. But for me — I had a Knopf edition complete with dustjacket, and after years of owning it and not reading it, I gave it away (to a campus library), and I’ve never missed it!
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Thanks – I thought I was in for many and various Graal Masses! The Stiggins chapter-titles intrigue me – I should probably just start at the beginning and try it.
The description “the various sects join in the Mass of the Graal” got me thinking of Williams’s War in Heaven, and that I ought to reread both Mass-descriptions and compare (there is also the intriguing episode in The Place of the Lion with Richardson and the Unicorn at a service decidedly not intended by those worshippers as a Mass).
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