The Outcast and The Rite:
Stories of Landscape and Fear 1925 – 1938
by Helen de Guerry Simpson
edited by Melissa Edmundson
Editor
Melissa Edmundson continues her fruitful collaboration with Handheld Press with
another scholarly edition of speculative fiction by an underrated female
author. Helen de Guerry Simpson (1897 –
1940), an Australian writer who spent most of her life living in England, was a
veritable Renaissance woman with widely diverse interests. She was a biographer, politician, a lecturer
and broadcaster, a failed composer (but talented amateur musician), linguist,
expert on cookery and homecraft, and collector and connoisseur of occult and
magical texts. She published several
works of historical fiction and an autobiographical novel, besides
working with the playwright and novelist Clemence Dane on a popular
series of detective novels, some of which were adapted into movies (including
Hitchcock’s Murder). Simpson’s
fascination with witchcraft partly inspires her novel Cups, Wands and Swords
(1927) but, quite surprisingly, apart from this, her only published book of
supernatural fiction is the short story collection The Baseless Fabric (1925)
issued by William Heinemann in the same year as her novel Aquittal. The
Outcast and The Rite: Stories of Landscape and Fear 1925 – 1938, editor
Melissa Edmundson couples the stories in The Baseless Fabric – never again
republished since 1925 – with two later
supernatural tales by Simpson: The Pythoness and An Experiment of the
Dead.
In her useful and erudite introduction to this new collection, Edmundson refers to several early reviews of The Baseless Fabric, including commentaries published in Australia, where Simpson was regarded as something of a national literary treasure. These reviews are remarkably insightful on Simpson’s very particular voice, especially her “impressionistic” approach rooted in the psychology of her characters. Indeed, Simpson taps into some well-established Gothic tropes, such as ghosts and possessions, but her style is never over(t)ly horrific. Of course, there is much weird fiction which is subdued and merely suggestive, but in Simpson this becomes a defining trait. Take the haunted house tales As Much More Land, Teigne and Disturbing Experience of an Elderly Lady. In none of the three stories do we meet actual ghosts, and any otherworldly happenings could be easily explained away as tricks of the imagination. In As Much More Land, the “rational” protagonist spends the night in a locked room with a bad reputation and his sanity starts to unravel. In Teigne, a stately house inflicts its curse on the latest owner. In Disturbing Experience, perhaps the most enigmatic of the lot, the main character acquires a “manor visited by Kings” but is, at least initially, unenthusiastic about her acquisition. A sceptic could explain her gradual but noticeable change of mind to the normal process of getting used to an unfamiliar building. However, the shocking, concluding sentence leaves us in no doubt that the house is “alive” and that, in an uncanny overturning of roles, it has “possessed” its supposed mistress.
I must admit that with some stories, understatement left me underwhelmed. Unfortunately, a case in point was the very first story, Grey Sand and White Sand. This tale of an artist obsessed with the coastal landscape he is trying to capture on canvas left me unimpressed, and almost put me off this book. This would have been a pity, as there are several strong stories here. I have in mind, amongst others, Good Company, in which a young woman on a walking holiday in Italy becomes possessed by the spirit of a Catholic saint. Yes, the negative Mediterranean/Southerner stereotypes jar (although as a fan of Gothic fiction, I’ve long been immune to that), but with its strange combination of folk-horror vibes and dubious Catholic theology, it makes for a compelling story. Another quietly unsettling entry is Young Magic, a disturbing variation on the trope of the “imaginary friend”.
The final two pieces in the volume reveal a markedly different approach, possibly because of their intended (magazine) audience, with Simpson opting for more explicit horror in these tales of occult rituals gone askew. Perhaps this was a sign of a different path Simpson might have taken in her supernatural works had her life not been cut prematurely short by cancer.
Edmundson’s
notes on the text complement this attractive collection. My advice to prospective readers is that
these stories need some time to grow on you. Don’t give up on the volume just
because one or two stories seem short on narrative. It’s well worth the time and attention.
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