Imagine a Man in a Box (1931) by H. Russell Wakefield
A mid-life collection of odd, funny, strange, and uncanny short fiction
Readers unfamiliar with Imagine a Man in a Box (1931) by H. Russell Wakefield may prefer to read these notes only after reading the collection.
Imagine a Man in a Box (1931) by H. Russell Wakefield
Imagine a Man in a Box (1931) by H. Russell Wakefield is the strangest collection of short stories I have read since 2018, when I read several collections by Gerald Kersh and The Other Passenger by John Keir Cross.
Many stories in Imagine a Man in a Box employ a droll or whimsical authorial voice. The effect is not always successful. Still, a collection not to be missed, demonstrating again that Wakefield accomplished much more than writing "The Red Lodge."
Macabre touches, grotesque climaxes and weird predicaments multiply and predominate in these stories.
Imagine a Man in a Box (1931)
A mirthless bend-over-backward attempt at a droll H.G. Wells-style scientific fantasia. Wakefield enjoys goring governments, scientists of various nationalities, and the multitude. But the punchline is small beer.
Mr. Bellows, the Monkey and the Turtle (1930)
The closest comparison I can make to "Mr. Bellows, the Monkey and the Turtle" is to one of Gerald Kersh's deeply strange stories in collections like Men Without Bones.
The Central Figure (1929)
"The Central Figure" is macabre psychological horror in the tradition of Poe. A man becomes obsessed with the theatrical world in his youth, motivated by early play with a toy theatre set. He becomes a multilingual theatre expert by early adulthood, at ease with theory and practice in all available languages.
But in an alternate and simultaneous stream of consciousness he also becomes obsessed with figures he sees who once appeared on the toy theatre stage and seem to reenact a showdown.
The 'Swimease' (1931)
The closest comparison I can make to "The Swimease" is one of Gerald Kersh's sui generis strange stories, perhaps "Thicker than Water''? It is an adventure story, with the adventure taking place in retail, specifically stunt advertising. Charming fun.
Day-Dream in Macedon (1930)
"Day-Dream in Macedon" is a brief, masterful sketch of one young officer's peripatetic experiences during the First World War. One landscape reshapes itself into the next, from the western front's strange silences and pulping carnage to the foetid heat of rural Macedonia.
There, during a week's leave after eighteen months of counterintelligence work, young Eastleigh
[....] forced his way through a huge patch of reeds onto a clear, sandy spit which ran out some way into the lake, and from there he noticed a clearing he hadn’t detected before. It was about fifty acres in extent, not unlike a stretch of English park-land in general, but in detail absolutely different. Eastleigh knew that it was quite probable no one had set foot there for five hundred years, for Macedonia is a haunted, lonely land, its mighty past forgotten; it seems always in an unquiet doze. Eastleigh had learned to love it—that menacing, shadeless dreamland, in which, if one met a man, he seemed but a slippery phantom without a past or a future, a furtive flicker in a land of ghosts populated by the half-dead....
The reverie Eastleigh experiences in that isolated pocket of Macedonia is no dream or hallucination. It is a slingshot fragment of clairvoyant seeing, shocking in its matter-of-fact actuality.
In "Day-Dream in Macedon" Wakefield has created a brilliant story that conveys a genuine sense of the uncanny.
The Sun in their Eyes (1931)
"The Sun in their Eyes" is a tragi-comedy of manners about flirtation with the prospect of adultery, giving in to desire, then pulling away after an hour of bliss. This isn't Somerset Maugham, so no one cuts their throat; the moral for husbands is to be a friend to your younger wife's even-younger male friends.
The Frontier Guards (1929)
I have read "The Frontier Guards" and puzzled over it several times. I have also listened to an audio version and puzzled over it, though I think this was the result of me falling asleep before it finished--I began listening to the audio version at bedtime.
My reading of "The Frontier Guards" yesterday finally dispelled my accumulated readerly confusions.
When Brinton and Lander discuss the "charming little house" at the start of the story, they are not discussing Lander's cottage. They are referring to a house they pass on the way to Lander's cottage after golf. This house, called Pailton, is described by Lander in lines that look forward to Matheson's Hell House:
[....] The majority of haunted houses are harmless, the peculiar energy they have absorbed and radiate forth is not hostile to life. But in others the radiation is malignant and fatal. Pailton has been rented five times in the last twelve years; in each case the tenancy has been marked by a violent death within its walls. For my part, I have no two opinions concerning the morality of letting it at all. It should be razed to the ground.’
Pailton is a trickster, as the men find when Brinton begs Lander to take him for an interior tour. The climactic final lines look forward to the cut-off endings later employed by Ramsey Campbell to such strong effect.
The Only Way Out (1931)
If there is a contest for the story that out-Saki's Saki, I'll put my wager on "The Only Way Out." It is insidiously cynical and radioactive with misogyny. The authorial voice is at once arch and contemptuous. What could be better?
Famous (Kardashian-level at least) twin sister socialites Dandylion and Clytemnestra (old family names)Potthesley-Houseley hit Chartered Accountant Joshua Roll with their car. Attraction to his classical good looks sows the seeds of animosity between the "Pot-House'' twins.
Roll, broken-legged and feverish with all the attention, cannot tell the twins apart.
‘Look here,’ said Clytemnestra, ‘you’re very British, and therefore unable to perceive subtle distinctions where women are concerned. In reality I am quite different from Dandylion. I learnt the Black Bottom in two lessons; she required four. My permanent waves last a fortnight longer than hers. We both wear size two and-a-half shoes, but hers pinch, mine don’t. I don’t want to put ideas into your head, because it’s not that kind of head, but my figure is more essentially boyish. I have no mole at the base of my spine, and I am convinced I am the better qualified to make a good wife for a Turf Accountant. And now I shall go. Think it over....’ [....]
‘Now, Joshua,’ said Dandylion, kindly but firmly, ‘you’re ill, and naturally find it hard to concentrate and see things clearly. But I can assure you, Clytemnestra and I are not so indistinguishable as you fancy. Let me give you a few instances: my imitation of Beatrice Lillie is streets ahead of hers; I outdrive her by ten yards; I have a jolly little mole low down on my back, and I measure one-eighth of an inch less round the hips. These advantages may seem small to you, but I am certain that they would make me a more appetising spouse...."
The solution the twins arrive at to regain their own mental balance may ultimately look harsh, but that's the fun. And Wakefield is clearly enjoying himself
The Lazaroid (1931)
"The Lazaroid" begins as a mirthful Wells-type comedy of scientists developing and testing an anti-death technology during the 1980s. The machine works. Headlines next day in the press proclaim:
“FAMOUS SCIENTIST RISES FROM DEAD!” and, “NO LIFE BEYOND THE GRAVE”.’
Here the story shifts to higher gear. In fact, this is the first story I have read where the slingshot ending begins at the halfway point.
[....]it is necessary to realise the economic and social conditions prevailing during the eighth decade of the twentieth century in Great Britain.
The Five Years’ War which, through exhaustion and attrition, ended in a truce which passed everyone’s understanding, left dangerously antagonistic legacies. These were a great increase in the birthrate, and an unparallelled extension of the mechanisation of industry and the affairs of life. The paradoxical population increase was due, partly to heedless and headstrong feminine promiscuity, born of nerve-strain and compassion, and partly to the fact that hundreds of thousands of women forced their way to the battle-fronts in various capacities and incapacities, and in innumerable cases formed temporary unions with the troops. The result was a horde of unwanted children and a strange, grim outbreak of infanticide….
A revolt fueled by hunger and unemployment is sparked by no-afterlife headlines. It leads to ransacking of churches and lynchings of clergy. The government stands at the precipice of overthrow.
"The Lazaroid" might be accused of lack of seriousness: its point of view and authorial voice are distanced, objective, and caustic, cold-bloodedly detailing the complications and crises its characters and their nation face. Such an aesthetic stance contradicts the tone of dystopian melodramas we have today, but it makes "The Lazaroid" all the stronger by comparison. We cannot--after all--distract ourselves forever.
Epilogue by Roger Bantock (1930)
A useful list might be compiled by young scholars of horror stories that begin along the lines of:
When my doctor ordered me to leave London and settle in the country I did not hesitate about where to look for a house...
"Epilogue by Roger Bantock" would be worth including. Set in 1923, it follows novelist ‘Philip Purcell’ as he settles at Gap House, near his friend Roger Bantock, in Sussex.
Readers of spectral fiction will appreciate a feature of Gap House:
The rent was surprisingly low, and I gathered it had only been occupied for three weeks out of the last two years....
Rooms in the house each have their own atmosphere, the strongest breeding depression and insomnia. Apparitions appear indoors and out.
Gap House has about an acre of rather featureless garden, but it is open to the south and the view; though what morbid taint persuaded its creator to allow a thick and unlovely yew to split the exquisite expanse, passed my comprehension. I hate yews; they suggest most obviously burial grounds and more subtly darkness and spiritual desolation. I used to sit in the garden on fine mornings much muffled up, and often I would cease the laborious concoction of magazine fiction and glare morosely at this malaprop obstruction.
Three days after Bantock’s visit I so glanced up. It was a cloudless, utterly still late autumnal morning. The year seemed very old and enjoying a light, senile doze. As I glanced up I was at once compelled to pay some attention to a flickering disturbance which was developing between the crowded and stooping lower branches of the yew and the discoloured and faded turf beneath it. There were things in motion. Well, what were they? They seemed to me anxious to make and fix a pattern. What sort of pattern? After half a minute’s close observation, I was reluctantly forced to the conclusion that the wavering and stippled semblance of a woman was regarding me intensely—a creature of sun and shade. Once I had faced and accepted that fact I fought down a certain ghostly terror and continued my scrutiny of that dappled and undesired visitor. She reminded me of a Signal—I was glad to be able to make such an obvious comparison—that speckled broken image. But it was December, not high and flaming summer. Why was she there? What did she want of me? She was only made of sun and shadow, but she had a purpose in being there, and she could move. I had vaguely hoped she wouldn’t move, but she seemed to drop to her knees and begin to scratch at the soil beneath the tree, thinly and transparently. And then she seemed to break up into her component particles of light and shade, and was gone.
Purcell discovers an empty tin of weed killer buried under the yew tree. Which spurs him on to discover what happened to the last long-term residents of Gap house.
Corporal Humpit of the 4th Musketeers (1930)
If it's an interwar UK short story collection, we must have reached the Ruritarian tale.
"Corporal Humpit of the 4th Musketeers" is a first-person traveller's story that takes place in a blind corner of continental Europe.
Now, I don't know the name of that city, and I don’t even know in what country it is, or how I got there or how I slipped away from it. And I don’t believe that country is on any map, and all the better, say I....
The unnamed country has just emerged from the carnage of total war with a neighbouring state.
[....] ‘the King couldn’t afford another such war, so he started “Never Again Day”, which is celebrated on the anniversary of the day the war ended. And a busy day it is! First thing in the morning, the warning bombs are fired, and over come the Sky-fliers, and presently carts full of corpses are driven through the streets, but everyone knows they’re only dummies and hardly bothers to look at them—I think that’ll be given up next year. And a bit later everyone has to buy a Never Again flower and pin it on his chest and pay a tenth of all he’s got for it. And at eleven o’clock everyone must say, “Never Again” without stopping for two hours. And in the square a big, stuffed figure is set up, and it has a round collar on its neck buttoned at the back and a red coat with medals. And it has this inscription on it, “All those who wish to live peacefully with their neighbours should walk about with a pistol in one hand and a spear in the other.” And then this figure is shot and stabbed. And at night a Field-Marshal is roasted whole....
Our narrator is an accidental witness to a secret public ritual the night of Never Again Day. Its implications for the state, and for the experience of reality itself, beggar belief.
[....] I do know I was standing in that great square, just as the clock of St Nero’s was thumping out twelve strokes, a sullen, steady patter of inter-echoed throbbing. And I thought I was alone there. But the moon strained itself past the fine campanile of St Nero’s and flooded down upon those huge stone blocks, so that it was light as day could ever be in that land, and more than bright enough for me to spy a shifting shadow which flickered in from a street—maybe not a street—but round a corner into the square, and, head down, staggered droopingly and desperately somewhat in my direction, seeking sanctuary in St Nero’s, it seemed to me.
He hadn’t gone ten yards before the others were at his heels—a pack of them, swinging menacingly such a little way behind him and gaining upon him. As he staggered, they gained and they caught him within ten yards of St Nero’s. They got round him and how they beat him, that bedraggled posse, clad in gray and rotting rags. Some were hobbling and swaying as they lashed out with their crutches; some, armless, swung their broken boots to good purpose; and others might have been blind from the way they ran round with their arms outstretched and groping till they found a grip on this fellow, and then they struck at him in such a way I found it hard to watch. How he dodged, how he swerved, struck back feebly, round and round the square for me to see, and those after him; and presently he slipped and fell, and they swooped upon him. I can tell you, I was glad when he squirmed through that pack and hurled himself through the great door of St Nero’s….
The Inevitable Flaw (1929)
The murderer--and we see him in action Columbo-style in the story's first half--carries out his plan flawlessly. But once he has time to reflect, it is about the unknown-unknowns that have thwarted so many in his position:
[....] The whole thing seemed invulnerable, and yet they said there was always some flaw, some detail overlooked which brought the murderer to that Shed. Curnott shivered slightly and once again went over and over it all in his mind. At last, tired out but satisfied, he went to bed and dreamless sleep.
Damp Sheets (1929)
An unhappily married couple--wife of feral green eyes, husband with a disastrous record as a bettor--organise a visit from his wealthy hypochondriac uncle.
The Coroner always considered it one of the most inexplicable cases into which he had ever inquired. As he pointed out at the inquest, the sheets, wrapped in paper and resting on their shelves some feet from the ground, had apparently slid from their receptacles, knocked Mrs Stacey down, and then, as it were, billowed out over her head, so stifling her. He could not see how this could possibly have happened. He closely cross-examined the maid who had first found the body, but her tale never varied….
* * *
Most of the stories in Imagine A Man In A Box are not supernatural, though affect horror is a dominant mood in several. Wakefield in these stories is testing himself, and reveals real talent for airy social comedy.
In her introduction to the collection, Barbara Roden indicates Wakefield had an increasingly unsuccessful battle with alcohol, which led to the collapse of his first marriage, his finances, and any sustained effort as a professional writer.
Imagine A Man In A Box, published midway through its author's life, is an atlas of roads not taken.
Jay
22 May 2023
