H. R. Wakefield has never been a favourite of mine. For me, he lacks the descriptive clarity of M. R. James or L. P. Hartley, the imaginative power of Sheridan Le Fanu, the dreamlike atmosphere of Walter de la Mare. If I had to use one sentence to describe his work, I would say, "It lacks conviction." If I had to use one word: "Hasty."
For years, I wondered if I was being unfair in my assessment, and so I went back to give several stories another try. The result? I still don't think much of H. R. Wakefield, with the exception of one story that has always impressed me.
The stories that seemed pale and thin years ago seem even duller today. For example, "The Cairn" fails because of needless shifts in point of view, because of the needless introduction of characters who offer little and then vanish, because of a needless insistence on keeping its monster out of sight and out of mind.
"Welland watched the little dark speck climbing steadily towards the cairn till it was but a hundred yards or so from it and then once again put the telescope to his eye. A few minutes later he saw Seebright reach the cairn, slap it with his hand and then turn and face towards the inn and wave his right arm above his head. And then he began rapidly to descend. Welland had started instinctively to wave back and then had smiled at his stupidity. He was just about to put the glass down again when he suddenly became tense and intent. He put the telescope down sharply and rubbed both lenses with his handkerchief, and then he put it to his eye again. For a moment he remained taut and rigid, and then he began to tremble, and then he dropped the telescope to the floor, and then he rushed from the room, out through the front door and down the village street. As it happened there was only one person who saw him pass, old Mrs Elm, who was beating a rug outside her cottage door. When she saw a hatless figure dash hobbling past, and that queer look on his face too, her mouth fell open and the rug dropped from her hands. A moment later she saw this figure turn up the lane and disappear, and then for several minutes she remained staring open-mouthed.
"Now Mrs Elm's brain never exceeded largo in its tempo, and seldom reached it. At the same time she had a sense for the unusual. She went back to her kitchen and wrestled with the problem of what to do. So presently she put her shawl around her head and trotted up to the Hare and Form, where she found Mr Reddle squeezing the digestive apparatus from a chicken.
"'Mr Reddle,' she began, and fiddled with her shawl.
"'Yes, what is it?' asked the landlord, pausing in the midst of his culinary business.
"'Well,' said Mrs Elm. 'I sees one of those young chaps who's putting up here, and I sees him running by in his slippers and without his hat and he turned up Dim Lane. I thought I ought to tell you.'"
But what does Wakefield tell us? Nothing.
As a contrast, consider E. F. Benson's "The Horror Horn": garish, perhaps, but a better development of a similar idea -- better, because it relies on images, a vivid setting, and action:
"Sliding and slipping, with the toes of my skis tripping in the obstacles below the snow, I plunged forward down the hill between the pine-trunks. The low sun already sinking behind some rampart of mountain in the west reddened the snow and the pines with its ultimate rays. My knapsack with the skates in it swung to and fro on my back, one ski-stick had already been twitched out of my hand by a fallen branch of pine, but not a second’s pause could I allow myself to recover it. I gave no glance behind, and I knew not at what pace my pursuer was on my track, or indeed whether any pursued at all, for my whole mind and energy, now working at full power again under the stress of my panic, was devoted to getting away down the hill and out of the wood as swiftly as my limbs could bear me. For a little while I heard nothing but the hissing snow of my headlong passage, and the rustle of the covered undergrowth beneath my feet, and then, from close at hand behind me, once more the wolf-howl sounded and I heard the plunging of footsteps other than my own."
Here, Benson is writing; Wakefield merely puts down words on paper. In story after story, in craftsmanship, in vision, Wakefield falls apart for me.
Another story I tried again was "Lucky's Grove," but after a few pages, I gave up: the prose limped and fumbled, brought nothing to eyes, ears, or skin, and shifted viewpoints from one suddenly-introduced character to another, which kept the story at arm's length and out of focus.
Hours later, I went back to the story, but found no change in its weaknesses. End-rhymes littered the paragraphs. One vague person after another took centre-stage, and then vanished into gloom. Above all, Wakefield strove to give nothing firm, nothing physical, nothing tangible for my imagination to seize.
"Their dreams were harsh and unhallowed, yet oddly related, being concerned with dim, uncertain, and yet somehow urgent happenings in and around the house, as though some thing or things were stirring while they slept and communicated their motions to their dreaming consciousness. They awoke tired with a sense of unaccountable malaise."
Unaccountable. Sounds right to me.
As in too many of his other stories, Wakefield, here, seemed unable to describe events on the page. Instead, he withdrew into his turtle-shell of abstraction.
"If on the preceding night the rest of the sleepers had been broken by influences which had insinuated themselves into their dreams, that which caused the night of that Christmas Eve to be unforgettable was the demoniacal violence of the elements. The north-easter had been waxing steadily all the evening and by midnight reached hurricane force, driving before it an almost impenetrable wall of snow. Not only so, but continually all through the night the wall was enflamed, and the roar of the hurricane silenced, by fearful flashes of lightning and rattles of thunder. The combination was almost intolerably menacing."
Almost? Almost.
"As the great house shook from the gale and trembled at the blasts and the windows blazed with strange polychromatic balls of flame, all were tense and troubled. The children fought or succumbed to their terror according to their natures; their parents soothed and reassured them."
What I miss, here, is any sense of living inside the story as a participant, as a dreamer. Wakefield offered nothing for my imagination; he offered lectures. Instead of making me feel events, he told me how I should feel about them.
Even during the few passages where he did offer something vaguely tangible, he hurried past the moment as if any hint of sensory detail embarrassed him.
"He went to the windows and flung another open, and as he did so he glanced out. His room looked over the rock garden and down the path to the maze. Something moving just outside it caught his eye. He thought he knew what it was, that big Alsatian which had been sheep-worrying in the neighbourhood. What an enormous brute. Or was it just because it was outlined against the snow? It vanished suddenly, apparently into the maze."
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"The last scene was meant as an appropriate prelude to the climax of the festivities. It showed Curtis and his crew digging up the tree from Lucky's Grove. Out they came from the holm-oaks straining under their load, but close observers noticed there was one who remained behind, standing menacing and motionless, a very tall, dark, brooding figure."
This is dull, dead prose, and the result, for me, is yet another dull, dead story. When someone writes as if he had no interest in writing, how can I take interest in reading him?
Still, few writers can be lousy every time, and even H. R. Wakefield actually wrote something worth revisiting: "Look Up There!"
Like "The Cairn," like too many of his other stories, "Look Up There!" refuses to confront its nightmares. Yet here, to my surprise, the effect works. "Look Up There!" takes the old concept of indescribable horror, and makes it lively on the page.
"I do not remember whether I spoke a word throughout that meal, but I do know that I was under such a strain that I had to grip my chair to stop myself running from the room. The women were on the verge of hysteria, the men drank feverishly and, as time went on, a dreadful vague, inane babble came from all of them. The woman on my right -- she had a high, thin voice -- suddenly gulped down a full glass of champagne, some of which swilled over her chin and neck, and shouted, 'Well, when does it begin?' and then went off into peals of hysterical laughter. We did not move from the table, and from half-past ten onwards, Relf kept getting up to ring the bell, but no servant appeared. 'Where are those bloody slaves?' he cried each time, and staggered back to the table and filled his glass again. From half-past eleven I was no longer master of myself. The room was thick with smoke which wreathed itself into fantastic patterns. The pressure grew unendurable, and suddenly my resistance broke, and I ran from the Great Hall up to my room and lay cowering on my bed. I could still hear the crazy, chaotic babble from those I had left, and then a great bell crashed out. One-two-three -- and each mighty stroke followed so hard on its predecessor that the vile jangle almost seemed an undivided sound. It was as if a murderer was hammering in my brain. Suddenly it ceased, and I heard no sound from below, and then came one high, piercing scream from a woman: 'Look up there!', and then every light in the house went out."
"Look Up There!" is that rarest of things, a story by H. R. Wakefield that unsettled me. If you find his work unimpressive, unconvincing, or just plain dull, I recommend this one for its unexpectedly powerful use of evasion.
