From The Abyss: Weird Fiction, 1907–1945 by D.K. Broster

(Handheld Press, 2022)

Reviewed by Graham Andrews

One of the first historical novels I ever read, back in my dim-and-distant childhood, was The Flight of the Heron (1925), by D.K. (Dorothy Kathleen) Broster (1877-1950). Along with The Gleam in the North (1927) and The Dark Mile (1929), Heron makes up the classic Jacobean Trilogy. The editor, Melissa Edmondson, covers the bio-bibliographic ground in her cogent introductory material. Notes on the eleven stories have been provided by Kate Macdonald. All in all, a neat little package from the enterprising Handheld Press.

We are on firm ground with the ‘1907–1945’ part of the subtitle, but ‘Weird Fiction’ is a misleading misnomer. ‘Unique fiction’ would have been more like it, coincidentally raising the spectre of Weird Tales—once billed as the ‘unique’ magazine. Each-and-every Broster story is different from each and-every other Broster story, so there is really no such thing as a typical Broster story. Apart from ‘The Taste of Pomegranates’ (see below), these selections are from A Fire of Driftwood (1932) and Couching at the Door (1942).

‘From the Abyss’ (Chambers’s Journal, December 1940) is a dual-personality story that would have graced the Alfred Hitchcock Presents TV series. And, in a quirkily coincidental way, it did (December 4, 1955); based upon ‘The Strange Case of Mr. Pelham’ (Esquire: November 1, 1940), by Anthony Armstrong. Both Daphne Lawrence and Mr. Pelham split into two separate entities after car crashes…. Spooky, huh? Armstrong’s story was later filmed as The Man Who Haunted Himself (1970), starring Roger Moore. ‘The Window’ (Chambers’ Journal, December 1929), about an accidental half-defenestration, could have been another memorable Hitchcock/Orson Welles Great Mysteries TV adaptation.

A story-by-story resumé would be like fitting 1.36 litres into a 0.568 ml pot, so I will refrain from making the futile attempt. Of the first five (and earliest) stories, ‘Clairvoyance’ (Nash’s Pall Mall: January 1932) is my personal favourite: it may not, of course, be yours. ‘This is one of Broster’s bloodiest stories’ (Melissa Edmundson). I would sum it up as ‘The Small Assassin’ meets Kill Bill, as retold by W. Somerset Maugham in a malignant mood. ‘Well, this particular [sword] is characteristic of the smith Sadamune, the great Masamune’s favourite pupil,’ Edward Strode explains to Mrs. Fleming, ‘and the shape represents the upper part of the head of Jizo, the god who looks after children, and who is generally represented as a young and handsome man with a beautiful smile.’ ‘The Pavement’ (Cornhill, January 1938) is, to my mind, the most affective non-weird story in the book. Lydia Reid is obsessed beyond reason with an ancient Roman mosaic on her family land. The ending can be considered either happy or sad, depending upon your spiritual point of view.

‘The Pestering’ (Good Housekeeping, December 1932) marks Broster’s only (known to me) foray into haunted-house fiction. It is also the longest story, at 15,000 words, and the most fully developed. The slow-burn beginning explains how and why Evadne and Captain Ralph Seton buy an isolated Tudor-era house called Hallows. An anachronistic man of mystery ‘pesters’ the Setons—particularly Evadne—about a chest that had been left at their ‘inn’ some vague time before, for his collection. ‘Yet, since it appears that he may enter no place in search of it that he be not bidden to enter, ‘twould seem that this poor Phantome must continue his quest for ever.’ This vampirically-polite visitant does eventually gain entrance to the Seton household, otherwise there would not have been much of a tale left for the author to tell. He turns out to be (spoiler alert) a monomaniacal but ultimately non-menacing spectral presence, which leaves Evadne and Ralph and the reader in an eerie state of continual suspense. FYI: ‘The Pestering’ was broadcast on the BBC Radio Home Service, on 12 December 1946 (no production details available).

‘The Taste of Pomegranates’ exists in an undated, unpublished manuscript held at St. Hilda’s College, Oxford University. Jack Adrian has been credited with its rediscovery, and the composition date is most likely somewhen around 1945. The present never-before-published text is based upon this manuscript copy, slightly corrected for typographical errors and inconsistencies. Two sisters, Roberta and Arbel Fraser, are swept back through the swirling mists of time to the dawn-age Lascaux cave system in Dordogne (southwest France), which lay unknown to the world at large until September 1940. It contains a multitude of animal-paintings, dating from c. 15,000 BC. ‘In this clever reworking of the Persephone myth, Arbel Fraser attempts to escape the ‘underworld’ of the ancient caves before falling victim to a gigantic prehistoric beast…[the story] considers what might happen if both spatial and temporal barriers suddenly collapse’ (Introduction). Fred Hoyle made great play with this this very same idea in October the First is Too Late (1966).

The remaining stories are as individually unique as you please: ‘All Soul’s Day’ (1907); ‘Fils D’Emigré (1913); ‘The Promised Land’ (1932); ‘Couching at the Door’ (1933). But ‘Juggernaut’ (Chambers’s Journal, January 1935) is worth an honourable mention, if only because it is the only ‘haunted bathchair’ short story that has ever come to my attention. P.G. Wodehouse channelling M.R. James—or should that be the other way round?

‘[Broster] is, in every way, the master of her craft, writing of a distinctly uncomfortable world in which ugly things appear without warning, and sudden, shocking, and (what’s far worse) entirely arbitrary violence occurs’ (Jack Adrian). I would just add that D.K. Broster’s unique short stories remind us that the true horror of sapient existence lies not in ‘monsters’ but not-so-deep within the human psyche itself. If you liked this book, you might well try similar works by Mary Elizabeth Braddon (1835-1915). N.B. Melissa Edmundson has edited two related anthologies for Handheld Classics: Women’s Weird. Strange Stories by Women, 1890-1940 and Women’s Weird 2 (1891-1937).

Review from BSFA Review 19 - Download your copy here.