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The Three Impostors, even though it failed to set Fleet Street afire, did add to Machen’s stature. It gave him something of a reputation in certain quarters which, if not exactly fashionable at the moment, were not on the side of the Philistines. The failure, if it was one, of The Three Impostors Machen attributes to a contemporary crisis in literary circles. “There were,” he says mildly, “scandals in ’95—which had made people impatient with reading matter that was not obviously and obtrusively ‘healthy.’”
The several tales or episodes that make up The Three Impostors, while they may be neither obviously “healthy” nor obtrusively “healthy,” were much less unwholesome than most of the literature that was then circulating in London. Based for the most part on early Celtic folk-lore and legends of the Welsh border, they developed the theme of primitive races, of “little people” who have, in some out of the way places, managed to survive to the present day.
The nature of the tales does indeed tend toward the horrific and even the “unhealthy,” but the manner of their telling and the presence of the almost “deadpan” Dyson in most of these episodes results in a rather curious blend of pedantry and unpleasantness. Moreover, so faithfully did Machen follow a Stevensonian pattern that even the Marquis of Queensbury, had he not been otherwise occupied at the moment, could have taken no offense. It would seem, then, that it was this almost sedate treatment that failed to set the bookstalls ablaze. A less restrained publisher than John Lane would have had Beardsley do the illustrations for the book—with quite predictable results. There are those, Grant Richards and George Bernard Shaw among them, who suggest that Lane was rather afraid of Beardsley—and not without reason. For Beardsley was an unpredictable and vindictive chap. He was once criticized for having drawn a Pierrot for a cover design of the “Savoy”—it was not the sort of thing, he was told, that would appeal to the British public.
A sketch of John Bull was substituted, accepted and sent out to subscribers. It was then discovered that Beardsley had taken his revenge by subtly indicating that John Bull was in a condition in which no Briton would willingly appear in public. For such sophomoric shenanigans Lane had given Beardsley the sack. There was never any question of Beardsley illustrating The Three Impostors, nor could there be any question of the result. Nevertheless The Three Impostors rates perhaps third among Machen’s works, and has been frequently reprinted.
The story did cause publishers, from time to time, to ask Machen if he had something else in “the manner of The Three Impostors.” This was not as flattering to the author’s vanity as might seem. Having gone through the tale once Machen had no wish to “re-cook the cabbage which was already boiled to death.” Nevertheless, one doesn’t speak thus bluntly to publishers—even when they solicitously seek manuscripts. There was another and, on the whole, very attractive proposition. Two gentlemen, obviously with an eye for such things, proposed a new weekly paper for which, they further proposed, Mr. Machen and a Mr. Wells should do a series of stories—and in their familiar manner, of course. Thus Mr. Machen was to do a series of horror stories in the manner of The Three Impostors and Mr. Wells was to do stories in the manner of The Time Machine.
The Time Machine had appeared about the same time as The Great God Pan. While Machen’s story was stirring up its teacup tempest, a young gentleman named H. G. Wells had made a very real, and a most deserved sensation with a book called The Time Machine. Mr. Wells had written his story at a time when he was living from hand to mouth as a journalist at lodgings in Kent. And so the new paper, to be called the Unicorn, was to feature the works of these two young men who had recently created something new and exciting and not, as was too often the case in those days, unfit for general circulation.
Machen admitted that he was cheered and elated at the prospect ... until he began to re-cook the cabbage. Possibly Mr. Wells felt the same way, for the Unicorn ceased to exist before a single one of Machen’s tales (he wrote four of them) appeared in it, while Mr. Wells contributed but one story, called The Cone.
Machen realized that the Stevensonian had been done to a turn—and so he had done with it—there would now be something new. He had already written The Shining Pyramid for The Unknown World, edited by his friend A. E. Waite, and one or two other tales—but now, once again—and this time there was no doubt about it—The Great Romance.
Once again there was the question—what was it to be about? Machen labored mightily over the beginnings of this new book. He sat at his Japanese bureau in his rooms at Grays Inn, he roamed the deserted streets and squares of Bloomsbury and pondered at great length the problem—what would it be like?
I suppose Dyson would have sympathized deeply with these soul searchings and solitary soliloquies—for Dyson, too, had often wondered what his books would be like, and Dyson had his Japanese bureau. At any rate, and before too long, Machen had the idea. His book would be “a Robinson Crusoe of the mind” ... and for such a book, Machen had traveled well.