M. P. Shiel versus L. P. Hartley

A writer can assert with an adjective, or describe with nouns, images, and sensations. One method lectures at the readers; the other invites the readers to participate: to feel, for themselves, the strangeness of a moment.

Here is the first method, in all of its weakness, from "Huegenin's Wife," by M. P. Shiel:

And now, from out the vault, there burst -- above the roaring of the fire, and the whistle of the tempest, and the thousandfold rattle of the earthquake -- a shrill and raucous shriek, which turned my blood to ice; and I saw proceeding from the darkness a creature whose native loathsomeness human language has no vocabulary to describe. For if I say that it was a cheetah -- of very large size -- its eyes a yellow liquid conflagration -- its fat and boneless body swathed in a thick panoply of dark grey feathers, vermilion-tipped -- with a similitude of miniature wings on its back -- with a wide, vast, downward-sweeping tail like the tail of a bird of paradise, -- how by such words can I image forth all the retching nausea, all the bottomless hate and fear, with which I looked?

While a fat and boneless body might seem troubling, what is terrible about feathers? What is loathsome about miniature wings, or the tail of a bird of paradise? No, they don't belong on a cheetah, but neither does a ruby collar, neither does a trilby. Shiel grabs our hands, asserts that these details will provoke retching nausea, but we have only his word for this. I myself have not yet vomited, not even a spoonful.

In contrast, here is a passage from L. P. Hartley's "A Visitor From Down Under." The bizarre details of the bus passenger are not asserted, but dramatized. Things happen on the page, and they happen to us.

Breasting the ascent, he saw a passenger sitting on the right-hand front seat; and the passenger, in spite of his hat turned down, his collar turned up, and the creased white muffler that showed between the two, must have heard him coming; for though the man was looking straight ahead, in his outstretched left hand, wedged between the first and second fingers, he held a coin.

‘Jolly evening, don’t you think?’ asked the conductor, who wanted to say something. The passenger made no reply, but the penny, for such it was, slipped the fraction of an inch lower in the groove between the pale freckled fingers.

‘I said it was a damn wet night,’ the conductor persisted irritably, annoyed by the man’s reserve.

Still no reply.

‘Where you for?’ asked the conductor, in a tone suggesting that wherever it was, it must be a discreditable destination.

‘Carrick Street.’

‘Where?’ the conductor demanded. He had heard all right, but a slight peculiarity in the passenger’s pronunciation made it appear reasonable to him, and possibly humiliating to the passenger, that he should not have heard.

‘Carrick Street.’

‘Then why don’t you say Carrick Street?’ the conductor grumbled as he punched the ticket.

There was a moment’s pause, then:

‘Carrick Street,’ the passenger repeated.

‘Yes, I know, I know, you needn’t go on telling me,’ fumed the conductor, fumbling with the passenger’s penny. He couldn’t get hold of it from above; it had slipped too far, so he passed his hand underneath the other’s and drew the coin from between his fingers.

It was cold, even where it had been held. ‘Know?’ said the stranger suddenly. ‘What do you know?’

The conductor was trying to draw his fare’s attention to the ticket, but could not make him look round.

‘I suppose I know you are a clever chap,’ he remarked. ‘Look here, now. Where do you want this ticket? In your button-hole?’

‘Put it here,’ said the passenger.

‘Where?’ asked the conductor. ‘You aren’t a blooming letter-rack.’

‘Where the penny was,’ replied the passenger. ‘Between my fingers.’

The conductor felt reluctant, he did not know why, to oblige the passenger in this. The rigidity of the hand disconcerted him: it was stiff, he supposed, or perhaps paralysed. And since he had been standing on the top his own hands were none too warm. The ticket doubled up and grew limp under his repeated efforts to push it in. He bent lower, for he was a good-hearted fellow, and using both hands, one above and one below, he slid the ticket into its bony slot.

‘Right you are, Kaiser Bill.’

Perhaps the passenger resented this jocular allusion to his physical infirmity; perhaps he merely wanted to be quiet. All he said was:

‘Don’t speak to me again.’

‘Speak to you!’ shouted the conductor, losing all self-control. ‘Catch me speaking to a stuffed dummy!’

Muttering to himself he withdrew into the bowels of the bus.