Carolyn McCray

Month of October 2022 - Spooky Classics

“All Hallow’s Eve” by Charles Williams (1945; 1960 Internet Archive PDF edition - FREE) 248 pages.

Link to book:

https://archive.org/details/allhallowseve00will/mode/1up?view=theater

Setting: London

Whew! I barely made it through this one. It’s deep. It’s complex. It’s all inside the author’s mind. He knew what he was talking about, but half the time, I didn’t.

I believe I got down the baseline of the story, but I sure didn’t read into it like other reviewers. So, here’s my amateur take on this spooky classic:

Two friends, Lester and Evelyn, are instantly and randomly killed by an airplane that has crashed to the ground during the war. They don’t realize at first they are dead. The two find themselves coming to terms with their mortality…and their new life after death.

Another of their friends, Betty, daughter of Simon the Clerk, who is obviously possessed by a demon and a master in dark magic, is being used by him and is being hypnotized to enter into the world of the dead. Betty doesn’t know or remembers being put into the trances, and she doesn’t remember entering the unseen world of the dead.

Clerk Simon is practicing in black magic with the living in order to make a connection to be “Master” of the dead and the living. He brings people into the dark side with miraculous healings and using words like love, peace and joy.

Simon seems to be having difficulties sending Betty’s soul to the dark side permanently, maybe because she was baptized as a child by her caregiver, unbeknownst to him, so he creates an immortal, deformed dwarfed soulless woman spirit, to act as a temporary go between. He entices the two spirits of both Lester and Evelyn, friends of Betty, into the dwarf soul, then kisses it, sealing their fates…he thought.

The two girls don’t actually reside in the false woman spirit, but they can no longer communicate with the living unless conjured up by Clerk Simon, who hopes they will help draw Betty in with them. [But, then they later do communicate with Betty because Lester directs the soulless dwarfed woman to Betty…so I was confused.]

It’s not enough for Simon to simply conjure up the dead. He wants to Master them, and Betty was to be his liaison.

In this horror novel, what ever evils you lived and spoke often while living, would show up in your death and follow you into hell. Simon the Clerk wasn’t dead yet, but as things were falling apart at the end, his two evil spirits showed up to greet him.

And if your heart was sweet and pure, as Betty’s was, evil couldn’t touch your soul.

Not too far from the truth, except that the Word does say you have to believe and have faith in Jesus Christ as well.

THE MEANING OF ALL HALLOW’S EVE

Halloween: contraction for All Hallow’s Eve, October 31…the day before All Saints (or All Hallow’s) Day, November 1. So, isn’t it strange that today Halloween is considered Satan’s holiday where satanic cults have taken over? I always thought it was free candy night. LOL!

Allhallowtide lasts for 3 days and is practiced by the Roman Catholics, feasting, celebrating, praying and remembering the saints of the past. The 3rd day, November 2nd, is called All Soul’s Day, a day for prayer of your loved ones. This day the Catholics believe that those who were baptized, but may have died from sin and stuck in purgatory, have a chance to be saved and have their soul cleansed, if prayed over by the faithful here on earth. This day they will usually go decorate and light up the graves of loved ones.

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Halloween… (mehr)

Book 1 of the 2020 Challenge. Story was engaging and played well to my love of vintage urban fantasy, similar to Lewis' Space Trilogy. This is not surprising since the author was a contemporary and associate of Lewis.

However, the only print edition I could find was a print-on-demand version which was filled with typos (nearly every page), which, combined with the author's convoluted syntax, resulted in my skimming through a lot of the deep philosophical passages. If I could have gotten past these obstacles more effectively I would probably be writing now about the rich use of symbolism (water, light, etc).

There is an anti-Semitic theme, as the bad guy is a Jewish magician / alchemist and references to his Jewishness are frequent. That was unsettling, especially considering that the story takes place in post-WWII London.

I read it mainly for its milieu but I doubt if very many others without my love of this 'type' would stick it out. Given a do-over though, I would read it again.… (mehr)

review of
Charles Williams's All Hallow's Eve
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 29-30, 2017

This isn't the same cover as my edition but the details match otherwise. It's too much to be bothered w/ to change the cover image right now.

I've never heard of Charles Williams. I got this bk b/c it's published by Avon Bard, who I associate exclusively w/ great Latin American fiction so I was surprised to see this English horror story. Of course, it was also used & cheap.

"CHARLES WILLIAMS was born in 1886 of Welsh parentage. Though largely self-educated and the holder of no formal degrees, he was a lecturer at Oxford and was awarded an honorary M.A. He spent most of his adult life working as an editor of the Oxford University Press." - p i

Go team go! Of course, if he had been taught by other people, if he had learned to imitate them, & wasn't, therefore, an original & free thinker, then he'd really be someone to respect (what?!). T. S. Eliot wrote the intro, that intrigued me too. "I learned that Charles Williams had died in hospital in Oxford the day before, after an operation which had not been expected to be critical." (p viii) You mean like Andy Warhol & bpNichol? & how many others? I even have a 1,154pp bk entitled Deaths From Surgical Complications: Rudolph Valentino, Stonewall Jackson, Douglas Macarthur, Andy Warhol, Eddie Bracken, Ingrid Bergman. I prefer to not be charged for being killed so I think I'll avoid the hospital as much as I can.

"much of his work, especially for the theatre, was done without expectation of adequate renumeration and often without expectation of payment at all." - p x

""I played a concert for 16,000 people at Hollywood last night—unfortunately, they don't pay!" Surely he meant 1,600, unless the concert was out of doors,but in any event, according to one newspaper, it was the largest concert of the season." - p 102, Joel Sachs's Henry Cowell - A Man Made of Music

Ah, yes, the high-rolling life of the creative person! Just give 'em a few drinks & tell 'em how brilliant they are & then send 'em packing while you count the loot.

Eliot is very convinced of Williams's authenticity & originality:

"The stories of Charles Williams, then, are not like those of Edgar Allan Poe, woven out of morbid psychology—I have never known a healthier-minded man than Williams. They are not like those of Chesterton, intended to teach the reader. And they are certainly not an exploitation of the supernatural for the sake of the immediate shudder. Williams is telling us about a world of experience known to him: he does not merely persuade us to believe in something, he communicates this experience that he has had." pp xii-xiii

If Williams has had experiences such as what're recounted in this bk he was a very unusual man indeed. "And if "mysticism" means a belief in the supernatural, and in its operation in the natural world, then Williams was a mystic; but that is only belief in what adherents of every religion in the world profess to believe. His is a mysticism, not of curiosity, or of the lust for power, but of Love" (p xiv)

I have to give Eliot credit for setting the stage nicely in his intro. I don't read much horror or ghost stories or whatevs & I'm hardly a connoisseur but Williams impressed me as somewhat unique mainly b/c the writing seems much less rote than 'usual'. We're not immediately told that some of the characters are dead. Instead we experience their confusion:

"She took her hand off the wall and turned. The bridge was as empty as the river; no vehicles or pedestrians here, no craft there. In all that City she might have been the only living thing. She had been impressed by the sense of security and peace while she had been looking down at the river that only now did she begin to try and remember why she was there on the bridge." - p 20

"She went after him; he should not evade her. She was almost up to him and she saw him throw out his hands towards her. She caught them; she knew she caught them, for she could see them in her own, but she could not feel them. They were terrifying and he was terrifying. She brought her hands against her breast and they grew fixed there, as, wide-eyed with anger and fear, she watched him disappearing before her. As if he were a ghost he faded" - p 22

The jingle faded a bit here & the ad for an ethnic cleansing product flashed on the screen.

What?! I didn't write that! I swear! It was as if a malevolent spirit took possession of my hands & I was powerless to prevent the macabre humor from taking over!

"And then the sudden loud noise, the shrieks, the violent pain. The plane had crashed on them. She had then, or very soon after, become what she now was." - p 24

There's nothing worse than an astral plane crashing into you while you're minding your own business. Next thing you know, even in death you're unsympathetic to your fellow sufferers.

"Lester looked at her. Once she would have been impatient or sympathetic. She felt that, even now, she might be either, but in fact she was neither. There was Evelyn, crying and chattering; well, there was Evelyn crying and chattering. It was not a matter that seemed revelant. She looked away again. They went on sitting." - p 30

Same old, same old. That's about as tral as it gets. Good thing the clergy's a round.

""We know," said Richard, "that his name is Simon Leclerc—sometimes called Father Simon and sometimes Simon the Clerk. We gather he's a Jew by descent, though born in France, and brought up in America. We know that he has a great power of oratory—at least, over there; he hasn't tried it much here so far—and that it's said he's performed a number of very remarkable cures, which I don't suppose we've checked." - p 46

I saw him perform one of those Curés, I think he just put his jacket on backwards, round people tend to do that, absent-minded n'at y'know.

Williams's descriptions of Jonathan's paintings were part of what sucked me into this bk (messy) b/c the author really seems to have a painterly eye (messy).

""They look exactly like beetles," Lady Wallingford said. "They are not human beings at all. And Father Simon's face is exactly the same shape."" - p 48

I was reminded of paintings by James Ensor, maybe his "Ensor aux masques" (1899) ( https://www.wikiart.org/en/james-ensor/self-portrait-with-masks-1899 ) - but that's not quite right. Or, perhaps, I'm reminded of Rene Magritte, maybe his "La reproduction interdite" (1937) ( https://www.renemagritte.org/not-to-be-reproduced.jsp ). But, most of all, I'm reminded of the movie version of Eugène Ionesco's "Rhinoceros" (play, 1959; movie, 1974) where the character that Gene Wilder's portraying steps off a trolley or a bus or some such & everyone he sees has their faces blocked by turned-down hats or umbrellas. Whatever. Father Simon likes the painting that makes him look like an insect preaching to the insects.

"in low triumph: "That is I."

"Jonathan turned. He said, "You like it?"

"The other answered, "no one has painted me so well for a hundred years. Everything's there.""

[..]

""She was rather annoyed with it," said Jonathan. "In fact, she talked, as no doubt she told you, about insects and imbeciles."

"The Clerk, still looking at him, said, "They aren't insects; they are something less.["]" - p 63

That's right, they're robopaths.. & the Clerk is a megalomaniac.. & I, dear reader, am yr humble observer.

"["]You shall have the girl if you want her. Show me something else."" - p 65

Yep, just like that. The Clerk will give the Painter the Girl. SO, remember that, readers, the next time you want to mate w/ someone, paint a picture of an authority figure looking like an insect leading insects & they'll give you whatever you want. Try it on the lust-object's father. Works every time.

""I haven't much here," Jonathan said. "The war paintings—"

""Oh the war!" the Clerk said. "The war, like Hitler, was a foolery. I am the one who is to come, not Hitler! Not the war; something else."" - p 65

Hitler is so passé. Too bad this day & age's neo-nazis haven't figured that out yet.

"Jew and Christian alike had waited for the man who now walked through the empty London streets. He had been born in Paris, in one of these hiding-places of necromancy which all the energy of the Fourteenth Louis had not quite stamped out." - p 68

I think he's talking about phone booths here. I saw a guy changing into some weird onesie in one w/ an "S" on it. I think it stood for "Sorcerer". Now that phone booths are gone what do those sorcerer's use to metamorphose in? There must be a cell-phone app. It probably takes the form of a 'Reality' TV Show where people reveal skeletons in their family closets:

"If she had been Lady Wallingford's real daughter, she might have had a better chance, or so sometimes she thought. But since, years ago, Lady Wallingford had spoken of her adoption, she had always felt at a disadvantage. No allusion was ever made to it now."

[..]

"There was in the north, in Yorkshire, a small house where she and Lady Wallingford sometimes went. They always went by themselves, and when they got there she was not even treated as a daughter. She was, purely and simply, the servant." - p 71

& you thought yr parents were bad. At least the house was small, less cleaning to do. Cdn't she've eaten her way out? Aren't those Yorkshire houses made of pudding? I think I read that somewhere.

"That other who stood over the girl who was his daughter also, did not wish her to be herself, or even that only for a purpose." - p 77

I foreshadowed that earlier. Eventually, we come to a discussion of Boot Camps.

"It lay there,as it always does—itself offering no barriers, open to be trodden, ghostly to this world and to heaven, and in its upper reaches ghostly also to those in its lower reaches where (if at all) hell lies. It is ours and not ours, for men and women were never meant to dwell there long; though it is held by some that certain unaccountable disappearances have been into that world, and that a few (even living) may linger there awhile. But mostly those streets are only for the passing through of the newly dead." - p 80

"She said nothing. She went forward and up the steps. She went on into Lady Wallingford's house." - p 94

Richard, you know, Lester's husband (or ex-husband?), "felt with a shock that Simon was between him and the door. He knew the door was there, but he could not focus it properly. The door was not behind Simon; it was Simon: all the ways from this room and in this wood went through Simon. Lady Wallingford was only a stupid old witch in a wood, but this was the god in the wood." (pp 101-102) I didn't tell you so. Don't say I never told you anything. You didn't hear it from me.

"They were going down the hall and turning into a narrow corridor, as if into a crack in the wall, insects passing into a crack; they were all passing through." - p 103

Don't panic in the event of a gas attack. Try our weight-loss plan & turn into a narrow corridor!

"All the poems and paintings may, like faith and hope—and desperation—live, they live; while human communication remains, they remain. It was this that the clerk was removing; he turned, or sought to turn, words into mere vibrations. The secret school in which he had grown up had studied to extend their power over vocal sounds beyond the normal capacities of man. Generations had put themselves to the work. The healing arts done in that house had depended on this power; the healer had by sympathy of sound breathed restoring relationship into the subrational components of flesh." - p 105

That's why I'm not an organ donor.

"It had been, earthly, about five that morning when Lester entered the house at Highgate. It had seemed only evening in the City she had left, for that other City was not bound either to correspondence or to sequence. Its inhabitants were where it chose they should be, as it engaged in its work of accommodating them to itself. They could not yet, or only occasionally, know contemporaneously. Lester still, in general, knew only one thing at a time, and knew them in a temporal order." - p 113

That's similar to knowing them in a 'biblical sense'.

"What had looked at Lester from Evelyn's eyes, what now showed in her own, was pure immortality. That was the seal of the City, its first gift to the dead who entered it." - p 130

I had a pet seal. She died. Its immortality must've been impure.

"It was not for her yet to know the greater mystery. That waited her growth in grace, and the enlragement of her proper faculties in due time. Yet all she saw, and did not quite wonder at seeing, was but a small part of the whole. There around her lay not only London, but all cities—coincident yet each distinct; or else, in another mode, lying by each other as the districts of one city lie. She could, had the time and her occasions permitted, have gone to any she chose—any time and place that men had occupied or would occupy. There was no huge metropolis in which she would hae been lost, and no single village which would itself have been lost in all that contemporaneous mass. In this City lay all—London and New York, Athens and Chicago, Paris and Rome and Jerusalem" - p 170

Hhmm.. I reckon that's a Metalopolis rather than a Megalopolis.

"With his hands thus encased, he took up the manikin between them and handled and dandled and warmed and seemed to encourage it, whispering to it, and once or twice holding it above his head, as a father might his child, and as it turned its head, now grown, and looked over its shoulder, the girls saw that its eyes were open and bright, though meaningless. They saw also that it was longer and now nearly three feet in height" - p 176

Some people just don't know when to leave well enuf alone.

Well, there it is, the story in a nut-shell. No need to read it, go outside & play now.

I was reminded a little of Maurice Blanchot & Wyndham Lewis.… (mehr)