1
The original outline for this book included a chapter to be called
“Hieroglyphics.” This was to be composed largely of what other writers
had said or written about Arthur Machen. It seemed a good title and a
sound enough notion, and certainly there has been enough said and written
about Machen to compose a fine chapter indeed.
And then it occurred to me that there was a rather cynical note being
struck here, that the use of that particular word in such a connection
might imply (and I am quite sure that at one time it was meant to imply)
a certain lack of respect for some of the material to be grouped under
that heading. Much has been written about Machen, not as much, certainly,
as one would like to see; and some of it, unfortunately, is the sort of
thing with which one cannot agree. As, for example, the views of the
anonymous Manchester guardian, the reviews of some of the early books as
they appeared in London newspapers, and the estimates of Miss Dorothy
Scarborough in her otherwise excellent book about the supernatural
elements in English literature.
[Illustration: THE MACHENS IN LONDON: Photo taken by Holbrook Jackson in
1937. Left to right, Montgomery Evans, Mr. and Mrs. Machen and Bertram
Rota before whose bookshop photo was taken.]
On the other hand: one cannot always agree with the idolizers and the
cultists. These are, at times, even more annoying and sometimes rather
embarrassing.
The admirers of Arthur Machen are probably as heterogeneous a collection
as one is likely to find anywhere outside the membership lists of the
Book of the Month Club, the Literary Guild and a distinguished After
Shave Club. There are, among the more ardent Arthurians, poets and
pedants, dilettantes and divorcees, men of letters and three-letter
men from the universities, reviewers and romanticists, critics and
connoisseurs, columnists and collectors of every description—a rare
assemblage that numbers sincere admirers, warm friends, not a few dreads
and some drolls. Mr. Machen’s works are known to the Librarians at Yale
and at Stanford. They are known also to the librarians at Liggetts and
Walgrens—for recently several anthologies have appeared on the forty-nine
cent table and several Machen stories have made the grade in the corner
drug store through the medium of the quarter pocketbooks. This is passing
strange company for a man whose first editions were published in Vigo
Street under the Sign of the Bodley Head and whose American triumphs were
under the auspices of the aristocratic Borzoi.
Mr. Machen’s published works have fared as variously. His stories have
appeared in anthologies whose sales have run into thousands, and there is
noted in Van Patten’s bibliography a small work published in an edition
of two copies.
How does one decide upon an edition of two copies? It must be admitted
that, to his fervent admirers at least, the peddling of Machen to the
millions along with the malteds and lunches at Liggetts is to be
preferred to the arch-conservativeness that confines a Machen item to a
very limited edition of two copies. It may cause shudders to run up and
down the arthritic vertebrae of many a venerable Machenite to suggest
such a thing, but I find myself wishing that Winchell would one day give
Machen “the works.” And who knows but that he may? With realism and the
realists in disorder, if not retreat, in disarray if not utter rout,
with realism seen from a rapidly shifting focal point, with reviewers
suggesting that the work and the world of our realists may be, after all,
allegory—who knows but the Sunday Night Sage may not admonish Americans
from coast to coast to demand from their bookseller a copy of _Dog and
Duck_, or the _Anatomy of Tobacco_ (LSMFT) or even _Hieroglyphics_?
Such unscholarly suggestions may seem unworthy, may even draw the fire
of many Machenites who will deeply resent such facetious flippancy—but
they are offered merely as an antidote to the equally absurd and equally
unworthy tactics of some collectors who come to praise and to bury Machen
in the same devout breath.
I must confess that, while I envy certain men and mausoleums the
possession of many a Machen item, I am pleased beyond measure to find
_The Great God Pan_ or _The Cosy Room_ or _The Novel of the White Powder_
in the gaudiest, grizzliest anthology of horror stories displayed for the
delight of the drug store trade.
However, to return to the Arthurians, whether of the cultivated or the
common garden variety. The response to a prospectus describing this
volume when it was in its projected state was enlightening. There
were letters on fine paper bearing the crests of famous colleges and
libraries, there were scribbled notes from, obviously, “stfans” in Kansas
City, Dallas, Scranton and the Coast. These letters did affect the
construction of this book in one important respect. I determined then to
add to the book a bibliography that would direct the reader of Machen to
the stories and essays of Machen wherever they may be found. The scholars
and the specialists know in which vaults the more valuable manuscripts
are under lock and key. Let them rest in peace. One day, perhaps, they
will be released and they will be read as it was intended, by the man who
wrote them, that they should be. Meanwhile it may be amusing to compile
a list of the unlikely and out of the way corners of literature in which
there are mentions of Machen—and to the true Machenite the mere mention
of Machen is rewarding.
We’ve wandered from Wilde to Winchell, but there are many more unexpected
encounters awaiting the ardent Arthurian. For example, Tiffany Thayer,
_enfant terrible_ of the late Twenties and early Thirties, whose books
were rather lurid things, made use of Machen in certain passages. We
find, if we dredge deep enough, a passing reference to Machen, and one
that might conceivably outrage the true believer.
An even more strange, and not too flattering, reference is found in one
of the books of William Seabrooke. Mr. Seabrooke, who visited strange
places and saw strange things, once visited, as a client, and I violate
no confidence, an asylum. Since Mr. Seabrooke wrote a book about his
experiences therein, any hesitation on my part would be a needless
delicacy.
Mr. Seabrooke’s mention of Machen is even given a title: Self-Portrait
of a Dementia Praecox Case on First Reading the works of Machen. The
“self-portrait” follows: “Sweet spirits of my own dementia praecox!
womb-wailing guide calls reechoing throughout sub-cavernousterraneous!
fuga, fugae. Corncopios fugalations in depths arbeitung
verstaltheight.... I have just read _The Hill of Dreams_! By the brazen
buttocks of that brimstone bellona who lolls in lakes of lava, never
in my life have I read or even imagined that such a piece of escapist
literature existed. He is superior to Dunsany and to Algernon Blackwood
who though almost not an escapist may be classed with them. The book
is filled with black magic. The man’s powers of psychotic invention
are almost unbelievable and his familiarity with certain phenomena of
abnormal psychology is creepy. Are you acquainted with Tchaikovski’s
scherzi? especially the waltz-scherzo of his Fifth? It moves in this same
weird, uncanny way. Now I wish I were dead....”
Seabrooke’s d.p. exhibits astonishing lucidity toward the end, is
apparently versed in intellectual small talk, and displays a familiarity
with the works of James Joyce as well.
It is sometimes fascinating to compare different reactions to certain of
Machen’s tales. Basil Davenport writing in the _Saturday Review_ some
years ago noted: “... there are some stories which portray a non-moral
fall into a moral gulf; someone’s foot quite innocently slips, and there
is no stopping above the bottom of hell ... that is what makes Mr.
Arthur Machen’s stories supreme of their kind ... and such a story of
irrational, irresistible temptation as Mr. Machen’s _The White People_
... about a little girl whose nurse happens to be a witch, and who
becomes a devil-worshipper without the least idea of what she is doing.”
Carl Van Vechten says of this same story: “Was ever a more malignantly
depraved story written than _The White People_ (which it might be
profitable to compare with Henry James’s _The Turn of the Screw_?).”
Mr. Carl Van Vechten’s _Peter Whiffle_ probably did as much to popularize
Arthur Machen in the Twenties as any score of reviewers, but it also
had the effect of rarifying Machen and conditioning him for a specific
audience. It was Mr. Van Vechten’s (or rather, Peter’s) audience more
than it was Machen’s. It was this audience, I think, that prompted Walter
Winchell to report, breathlessly, that Arthur Machen was “tops among the
literati.” Peter was a delightfully “naughty” character—there were so
many of them in the Twenties! When he spoke of Machen he was speaking
mostly about Peter. Nevertheless he was an able press agent. Said Peter,
in part, and to paraphrase a phrase, we quote:
“It is a byword of the day that one only takes from a work of art what
one brings to it, and how few readers can bring to Machen the requisite
qualities, how few readers have gnosis! Machen evokes beauty out of
horror, mystery and terror. He suggests the extremes of the terrible,
the vicious, the most evil, by never describing them. His very reserve
conveys the infinity of abomination.... But his expression soars so high,
there is such ecstasy in his prose, that we are not meanly thrilled or
revolted by his necromancy; rather we are uplifted and exalted by his
suggestion of impurity and corruption, which leads us to ponder over the
mysterious connection between man’s religious and sensual natures.” From
this point on Peter’s bizarre rhapsody over Machen includes references to
so many Florentine painters, Arabian necromancers, Asiatic messiahs and
French Symbolistes that the average Machenite loses sight of his idol in
the confusing blaze of intellectual pyrotechnics.
2
And then we have the testimony of C. Lewis Hind, a sort of literary
journalist who once saw Machen plain. Mr. Hind did essays and sketches
of literary people about London and collected them into books called
_Authors and I_ and _More Authors and I_. He remembers having met
Machen once at a dinner given for Sir Frank Benson and members of his
Shakespearean Repertoire Company; he also recalls having seen Machen
“slouching through the interminable corridors of the Evening News.”
An article on Machen, published in one of his collections, he credits
to a letter from Vincent Starrett. Mr. Starrett’s enthusiasm apparently
moved Hind to do a piece on Mr. Machen. The encounter described in the
article was, apparently, a chance encounter of the sort in which Machen
himself delighted.
Mr. Hind had gone, one evening, to call upon an acquaintance who lived
in one of the London Inns of Court. While he was peering at the names
inscribed on the oak door the door was opened—by Arthur Machen! “My
friend was not in, but the author of _Hieroglyphics_ and I had some
good, rapid talk. He is an admirable monologist when in the mood (see
_Hieroglyphics_). For some reason or other I have a vivid recollection
of that brief encounter—the open door, the snug room beyond, the books
and a lamp, warmth and stillness, and Arthur Machen standing in the
passage—smiling and talking, ready to talk but also ready to go back to
his folios.”
Machen was, according to Mr. Hind, “a heavily built man, with a large
genial, yet brooding, clean-shaven face; a good companion, I think, but
one who keeps many of his thoughts to himself.” Mr. Hind was, in short,
charmed and impressed, but he obviously did not consider Arthur Machen a
V.I.P. It would be interesting to read Machen on Hind.
One of the most curious estimates of Machen is made by Professor
Cornelius Weygandt in his _A Century of the English Novel_. Professor
Weygandt admires Machen somewhat for his essays, and classifies him as
a “lesser late Victorian” along with Baring-Gould, Quiller-Couch, Marie
Corelli, Mrs. Humphrey Ward, Rider Haggard, Rudyard Kipling, Walter Pater
and others—a very curious group indeed!
The professor devotes a full page to Machen, which is not at all bad, and
well above the average, for lesser late Victorians! Machen’s great fault,
the professor finds, is that he is not a story-teller, he has not taught
himself the craft. He has little sense of the creation of character
and his own life is, obviously, very narrow. As an essayist, however,
concedes the Professor, Machen is often a bringer of delight. _The Hill
of Dreams_, on the other hand, is saved from futility only by some good
writing. So sayeth Professor Weygandt.
Wagenknecht, in his _Cavalcade of the English Novel_, is much more to
my taste than the austere professor. He introduces Machen as “one of
the most remarkable examples of sustained devotion to creative work in
literary history.” He finds that Machen reveals a gift for breathless
narrative to match LeFanu’s, but he feels that this quality is lacking in
the book generally regarded as Machen’s masterpiece—_The Hill of Dreams_.
Nevertheless, Wagenknecht considers Machen “important,” he rates him with
Blackwood and de la Mare, and has included Machen’s _The Terror_ in his
collection _Six Novels of the Supernatural_ published a few years ago by
Viking.
3
The student of Machen is not content to have read everything Machen has
ever written (and there are few who have), he must also read everything
that has ever been written about Arthur Machen. He may begin, naturally
enough, with a study of the period in which Machen first appears.
There have been quite a few books written about the Nineties, these
unaccountably yield but little material on Machen. Richard LeGallienne,
Holbrook Jackson and Osburt Burdett, whose studies of that period are
very carefully written and copiously annotated, scarcely mention Machen
at all.
One then moves on to memoirs and biographies of the men who lived and
wrote in this period, and even consults the critical studies on the whole
vast subject of English literature. One picks up dozens of such books and
soon develops the habit of examining them from the back cover forward,
for a glance at the index reveals whether the book is worth while, from
this viewpoint, or not. Too often one finds mention of Macaulay, Lord;
MacCarthy, Desmond; MacLeod, Fiona; even Mackenzie, Compton—but few are
the mentions of Machen.
One finds too that the index of a book can be a very revealing thing
indeed. We have before us, for example, the memoirs of a Literary Figure
of, let us say, the 1890’s and the early 1900’s. The index indicates
that our man knew everyone worth knowing. We find Shaw and More, Shelley
and Kelley, Shakespeare, Rossetti and Donne, Keats and Yeats, Whistler
and Wilde, Moore and Hardy and a generous sprinkling of the nobility. It
would seem, from the index, that our man lived a very full and eventful
life, that he was close, as they say, to the heart of things.
The book itself is rather likely to be pretty dull stuff—mostly about
our man’s preoccupation with his public school and his dislike of games,
the amazing and discouraging tenacity with which his great aunt in Bath
clung to life, the duplicity of publishers and the simply astonishing
things that can and do befall an Englishman in Naples, Nice or Florence.
Throughout the book, however, one encounters reports of what Whistler
said to Pennell or Pater or both; what G.B.S. wrote to the brash American
journalist and how Lord Lymph responded to a quip tossed out by Lord
Lissom. Hence the index. One can only conclude that reviewers, and
possibly publishers, read the index more carefully than the book itself.
Occasionally, however, the slow unrewarding progress through the shelves
of the public library does yield a choice bit or two and these, be it
noted, more frequently in books by Americans than by Englishmen.
Mr. Grant Richards who wrote in 1895 to Arthur Machen asking if he had
anything he would care to have published, has written at least two books
of his experiences as one of England’s most enterprising publishers.
Neither of them contained a single mention of Arthur Machen although
Richards published several of Machen’s books, and at a time when Machen’s
name was certainly an asset to any publisher’s list.
The index of Richards’ book about A. E. Housman (Oxford, 1942) arouses
hope. There are three references to Machen. The first of these is
contained in a letter from Housman to Richards. The context, in full,
follows: “I don’t think Machen ought to drink port on the top of
Burgundy.” One may wonder, one is tantalized, by the implications of
that brief note. Does it imply that Machen did drink port on top of
Burgundy—or that he merely contemplated doing so or sought advice on the
advisability. If he did, were the results memorable, and in what respect?
Does it imply that Housman is a purist in these matters? A Tory in
tippling? Does it hint at “an incident”?
Another reference is even more brief and profoundly unimportant. “We know
too that Housman read Arthur Machen and Frederick Baron Corvo.” The most
significant entry is this, from another Housman letter: “Thanks to you,
I believe I possess Machen’s complete works. He is always interesting
(except in the _Evening News_) and to some extent good. Mixing up
religion and sexuality is not a thing I am fond of, and in this book the
Welsh element rather annoys me. The imitation of Rabelais is very clever.”
We know, at any rate, that Housman read Machen, quite a bit of him. He
was not fond of the Welsh, nor of mixing religion and sexuality nor, for
that matter, of mixing port and burgundy.
What we would like most to know from Mr. Richards, I think, is why it
took him ten years to change his mind about _The Hill of Dreams_, and why
he changed it when he did. Of this, unfortunately, we have no hint.
The Machen revival of the Twenties lasted through to the end of the
decade and, to some, to the end of an era. Machen appeared at rare
intervals in public life, preferring the countryside of Wales and the
company of his friends, a great many of them Americans. Paul Jordan-Smith
and Robert Hillyer and Montgomery Evans have given us sketches of Machen
through this period. For the most part, however, his work was done. In
the early Thirties Machen wrote a novel, _The Green Round_. It has not
yet been published in this country nor is it very well known. Machen says
it is “sorry stuff.” As for _Tom O’Bedlam_, it was an essay “written to
order of an American.” Machen never saw the book in print.
In 1936 there was a brief revival of interest in Machen occasioned by
the publication of two collections of his stories and essays. Hutchinson
brought out _The Children of the Pool_ in which there appeared seven
stories not previously collected. Rich and Cowan brought out a collection
called _The Cosy Room_, consisting of essays and stories collected over
a period from the late 1880’s to the late 1920’s. Each of the pieces
included in this collection is given a date—apparently the year in
which it was written. Some of the dates supplied, presumably by Machen,
give rise to bibliographical speculation. Most of these pieces had been
published elsewhere although some of them, obviously “the wreckage of
discarded and abandoned books,” appeared in print for the first time.
The dust-jacket of Hutchinson’s _Children of the Pool_ carried an
“Appreciation” of Machen, one of the finest and most admirable I have
ever encountered. To find it on, of all places, a dust-jacket! This
is no publisher’s blurb but an analysis that deserves to be included
in this or any book about Machen. The author of the following tribute
is unknown, to me at least: “Mr. Machen creates his own world. This
world is a fusion of the world that is accepted in every day reality—in
which events and their causes are explicable by traditional and humdrum
interpretations—and one that is distinguished not only by the weird
and extraordinary effects. The author does not try to present a state
of affairs so topsy-turvy and bizarre that you are intrigued merely by
its very madness. The supernatural insinuates itself subtly into these
stories. They have an air of common reality until the author develops
their mystical undercurrents. And in this blending Mr. Machen’s art is
supreme. It has an infinite capacity for producing what E. J. O’Brien
describes as “a willing suspension of disbelief” [_this fine phrase
has also been attributed to Dr. Canby, Bennet Cerf and, of course,
Samuel Taylor Coleridge_]. That Mr. Machen’s faculty in this direction
can extend beyond the circle of sympathetic readers and convince
masses has been proved by the fact that his imaginative treatment of
a very famous occasion was accepted by thousands of men and women as
literal description. These stories offer varied excursions into realms
simultaneously unfathomable and alluring, and on that account alone they
are memorable. But there is also Mr. Machen’s craftsmanship, and his
style which is a delight to read. A character in the book says: ‘A man
must know the grammar of his business, whatever it is; the rest, if it is
to be the first order, must be the work of the hidden flame within.’”
Now and then Machen did an introduction or preface for a book or
collection, none of them are of particular importance as Machen
“items.” In 1937 Hutchinson brought out Philip Sergeant’s _Witches and
Warlocks_ with a preface by Machen. The book was, according to the
publisher, suggested to Sergeant by his old friend Arthur Machen. In
his introduction Machen quotes some of the theories expressed in _The
White People_ and _The Great God Pan_. He hints, in other words, and in
justification of his friend’s labours, that there are more things in
heaven and earth than mere hawks and handsaws.
4
In the years since the publication of the “yellow books” by Knopf and the
attendant enthusiasm for his works, Arthur Machen has been very little
in the public eye. The Machen vogue of the 1920’s seemed to exhaust
itself almost as soon as the Knopf editions were exhausted. The Caerleon
Edition, published in 1923 by Seeker in London, quickly disappeared, and
we entered once again upon a lengthy period of “neglect”.
Actually, Machen has not been as neglected as we might suppose. It is
true that he has not been accorded the recognition that is his due, but
there are hundreds, possibly thousands, who have never neglected nor
forgotten Machen. The late Alfred Goldsmith, one of New York’s most
amiable booksellers, wrote me, a year or two ago, that there is and
always has been a constant, if small, demand for his books. Ben Abramson
of the famed Argus Book Shop has his North Wall addicts who are always
eager for Machen items. August Derleth, the one-man wonder of mid-western
publishing circles, knows the value of a Machen story in a collection
issuing from Arkham House. A new generation of booksellers on New York’s
Fourth Avenue know Machen by reputation, even though many of them have
never seen one of the eagerly sought-after books.
Machen himself went into retirement some years ago. For years there
were gatherings at his home in St. John’s Wood, gay parties attended by
writers and theatrical people and journalists—and Americans. Machen has
always had a tremendous appeal for Americans—possibly because of our
Hawthorne and Poe, and possibly because we managed to avoid the stagy
school of the Gothic novelists which he so disliked. And Machen liked
Americans, too, as Robert Hillyer related in his _Atlantic_ article.
It pleased Machen that the majority of the letters he received about
his works were from Americans. On one occasion he told Hillyer he would
consider it a compliment to be taken “into the fold as a fellow American.”
Later, when Machen retired to Wales, there were picnics on the cliffs
overlooking the sea. Robert Hillyer has given us an amusing account of
one of these festive occasions in his recent article on Machen. With the
coming of the war these visits were impossible, of course. Montgomery
Evans, late of the U. S. Army, member of the Salmagundi Club and resident
of Greenwich, was the last of Machen’s visitors before the war.
Evans had known Machen since 1923. It was his pleasant practice to give
parties with the Machens on such American occasions as the Fourth of July
and Thanksgiving. These parties promoted Anglo-American understanding
with “American food and French wine” and such guests as Augustus John,
Holbrooke Jackson, Tommy Earp and others. Evans happened to be again in
England when World War II broke out. Machen had written an introduction
for a book Evans was about to publish. Book and introduction went to the
bottom of the North Atlantic with the torpedoed _Athenia_ as Evans was
bound for home when the war was only a few days old.
Throughout the dark years of the war Machen corresponded with his
American friends—Evans, Jordan-Smith, Goldsmith and others. These were
unhappy days: Machen’s health was poor, his eyesight was failing rapidly,
his son Hilary was in a German prison camp, letters were few and far
between and Machen too old to contrive legends as he had done in the
darker days of 1915.
After the war Machen was placed on the King’s List—the result of a
movement instituted largely through the efforts of Montgomery Evans. In
a letter to Robert Hillyer Machen wrote: “Our gracious Sovereign, King
George the Fifth, out of his great bounty and kindness, has awarded me a
pension.”
Mr. Hillyer’s reflection at this news is worth repeating here: “I had a
vision of the fine old man in Bardic raiment, receiving a bag of gold
from a mediaeval monarch clad in ermine and silks and with a golden crown
on his head.”
Machen’s Street Fleet days were over now, he no longer appeared, a
Johnstonian figure, in the streets of London, nor was he ever again to
impersonate the great Doctor in pageants. There were occasional articles
in magazines and one last book, _The Holy Terrors_, published in 1946.
With the close of the war, correspondence was resumed on a more regular
schedule. Machen was failing badly, his eyesight was almost gone, his
hand had lost its grace but his letters were, as Montgomery Evans notes,
“as charming and Johnstonian as ever.” Hilary had been released from
the Germans and returned home. Scarcely had the family been reunited
at Amersham, however, when another blow fell—Machen’s wife died. This
“ample, easy-going, good natured woman,” as Hillyer describes her, meant
much to Machen and their two children. She was, she must have been, a
woman of great understanding and of infinite patience. She accepted
poverty, hoping always for the recognition she felt was her husband’s
due. And of course she knew, as well as he, that what he wrote might
interest, at most, comparatively few. After her death Machen declined
rapidly. His letters had to be written by his son, but the mind that
composed them was still that of “the greatest master of English prose
in our time.” Then, in the closing days of the year 1947, in a private
hospital in Beaconsfield, Arthur Machen died at the age of 84.
Machen’s passing was not unnoticed. _The New York Times_ (Dec. 16, 1947)
printed his photograph and an obituary under the heading: “Author of the
Story That Led to ‘Angel of Mons’ Legend Dies at 84—Won Success at 60.”
A few other papers in the country carried similar stories—there were no
bulletins, no eulogies by electronic commentators. Subscribers to the
_Atlantic Monthly_ probably recalled Robert Hillyer’s article on Machen
in the May issue. Letters passed between friends expressing regret for
there were, as Nathan Van Patten wrote, “some who mourn.”
Chief among these, perhaps, are the members of the Arthur Machen Society.
This Society was formed early in the spring of 1948 by Nathan Van Patten,
Vincent Starrett, Paul Jordan-Smith, Carl Van Vechten, Montgomery Evans,
Robert Hillyer (all names that will long be associated with Machen) as
well as August Derleth, Joseph Vodrey, Ben Abramson, James T. Babb,
William P. Wreden, Frederick Coykendall, Cyril Clemens, Gilbert Seldes,
Ashton Stevens and a score of comparative newcomers in the great society
of the admirers of Arthur Machen.
This is an informal group which hopes, in the words of its president, Mr.
Van Patten, to stimulate an interest in Arthur Machen’s work. There is to
be an exchange of information and privately printed Machen material, with
possibly an annual or quarterly publication.
In the summer of 1948 Alfred Knopf issued _Tales of Horror and the
Supernatural_, the largest and the best collection of Machen’s stories
ever published. Edited by Philip Van Doren Stern, it included a reprint
of Hillyer’s _Atlantic_ article. The book was reviewed with interest by
Orville Prescott and John Dickinson Carr in the _Times_. _The Nation’s_
reviewer thought the atmosphere of the tales did not “compensate for
his failure to explain the inexplicable.” Mr. Knopf’s ad-men, applying
modern techniques, exhorted readers to “remember Machen, it rhymes with
crackin’.”
The Arthur Machen Society has already begun to make good its promise to
stimulate interest in Arthur Machen:
Mr. Joseph Kelly Vodrey of Canton, Ohio, a specialist in Machen
bibliography, has printed and distributed to the members of the Society a
booklet: _There Are Some Who Mourn_, written by Nathan Van Patten.
Mr. Van Patten, a distinguished professor of bibliography at Stanford
University and dean of Machenites, has printed a handsome booklet,
limited to fifty copies, of Arthur Machen’s _The Gray’s Inn Coffee House_.
There will be others. At long last something is being done to right the
wrongs of which Mr. Cabell wrote so many years ago.