6
Back in 1880, while his family were making plans for him, plans involving the Royal College of Surgeons, Machen used to walk to the Pontypool Road station to pick up the London papers. On his way back he would rest for awhile, (it was an eight mile walk) under the hedges and turn to the theatrical pages which seemed to him by far the most interesting parts of the paper, and the stage the most fascinating part of the Fabulous City of the West. And so, in a sense, he followed the bright lights to London, and then, having arrived there, set to work in the dark caves (HERE DWELL PUBLISHERS) of Chandos Street, Leicester Square and Catharine Street.
There is not the slightest bit of evidence that Machen ever thought longingly of footlights and grease paint or, for that matter, that he ever even thought of them at all after he arrived in London. Yet here in 1901 he dons buskins or whatever and prepares to tread the boards, and in a travelling company. His first engagements were with the Benson Shakesperean Company and with them he travelled the length and breadth of England for several season. He seems to have enjoyed it all tremendously, although it does not seem to have affected or influenced his later work. As a matter of fact, with the exception of a brief chapter and a half in one of his autobiographical books, he does not refer to his career on the stage at any great length. Sufficient unto the days....
And then one day, perhaps when the trees were beginning to put forth, Machen resumed the London Adventure. In 1902, and without fanfare of any sort, Grant Richards brought out a remarkable book with a strange title. It was called Hieroglyphics, and it was subtitled A Note Upon Ecstasy in Literature, by Arthur Machen. The book was born, as so many books are, while the author was reviewing books for a weekly journal. It was written in the happy period following his release from “the detestable office life” and as a perfectly normal reaction against it, and it remains to this day one of the best, and the least known and the most sadly neglected books of English criticism.
A noted publisher once told Machen that Hieroglyphics had “influenced the whole standpoint of English literary criticism.” One wishes it had! At any rate, Machen read proofs of the book while playing in “The Varsity Belle,” and he read reviews of it while playing in “Paolo and Francesca.” And then, when Hieroglyphics seemed unlikely to set Fleet Street afire, or even to start a small blaze in one of the University debating clubs, Machen began once more to write and to publish.
His old friend, A. E. Waite, a distinguished writer in the field of the occult and the mystic, began to publish Machen’s stories. Waite, who was also manager for Horlick’s Malted Milk, had managed to persuade the malted milk magnate to sponsor or subsidize a magazine. This was certainly the strangest commercial venture on record, for the magazine published material concerning the occult and mystical topics that appealed to Waite. Horlick was, presumably, happy to see his name on the cover and on the masthead of the magazine. It was in this esoteric little journal that some of Machen’s work first appeared ... The White People, A Fragment of Life and, at long last, The Garden of Avallaunius.
Machen remarks, somewhere, that he did not know that the sale of Malted Milk was unfavorably affected by the publication of these tales. As a matter of fact, the stories were quite well received. Such things get around and, in 1906, Grant Richards collected the best of them, plus Pan, The Inmost Light, The Red Hand and published them in a book called The House of Souls. Richards had changed his mind about Machen, but apparently with reservations, for in 1906 another Machen book, Dr. Stiggins, appeared, but under the device of a little-known publisher. This book is, in effect, an amplification of some views set forth in the Preface to The House of Souls. Mr. Richards wouldn’t touch this, but he did bring out The Hill of Dreams in the following year.
And then there was another change in Machen’s life. He fell into journalism ... something that had once been devoutly wished for by the dear, dead folk of Caerleon.