Arthur Machen: Weaver of Fantasy

by William F. Gekle

When the Allied armies achieved the break-through at Saint Lo some few years ago in that war we call Second, our armored columns fanned out over the Brittany peninsula and thrust deep into the river valleys of France. Most of us watched the drive for Paris, shook our heads over that nasty business at Avranches, and breathed more freely when Paris fell. From then on it was largely a matter of following, as closely as the security blackout permitted, Patton’s progress toward the Rhine and the star-shaped forts at Metz.

Few of us were then aware of the column under Hodges that began first to probe, then to thrust northward into Belgium. At the time it was briefly noted that our push to the Belgian border was even more rapid than the German drive southward in 1940. And so our entry into and beyond Mons passed almost unnoticed. Even the Germans were not too well aware of it, apparently, for it was outside Mons, you will recall, that German tanks were waved on by American MPs and obligingly clanked into bivouac areas with the General Shermans and the half-tracks of the American First Army.

There were, if I remember correctly, and I am sure that I do, one or two references to the Angel of Mons incident of the last war, but these were merely notes in passing. The mere mention of Mons meant Machen to me, and I suppose that, like many another Machenite, I waited with something like bated breath for a sign of some sort, or a sequel to the legend that had been born just thirty years ago that very month of September.

And, I suppose, devout Machenites the world over re-read in that September of 1944, the invented tale of the wonderful Welshman, the tale that was at first called simply, The Bowmen and which came to be called, by popular demand, The Angels of Mons.

It was one of the strangest stories of that first World War and a story pure and simple it was. But it so captured and fired the imagination of all Englishmen, and of the world, that people were unwilling for it to remain merely a magical tale by a Welshman writing strange tales in the city of London. People must have their miracles, and so Machen’s invention of the Bowmen became one of the hallowed legends of the war. You may remember the story, for you must have heard it, in one version or another, even if you had never even heard of Arthur Machen.

It was during the Retreat of the Eighty Thousand, the tale begins. The English were in danger of annihilation. At a particularly important point in the line the German guns had thundered and shrieked all morning. Finally, their numbers greatly reduced, the English saw a tremendous host moving against them. German infantry—as far as the eye could see. Well—the English fought on. One of the riflemen, who happened to know Latin and other useless things, recalled a motto he had once seen in a restaurant, Adsit Anglis Sanctus Georgius, which motto he said, uttered or shouted. As he did so he felt “something between a shudder and a shock” and behold! the roar of battle died down to a gentle murmur and a great voice and a shout louder than the thunder cried, “Array, Array, Array!” This was followed by other battlecries in English and in French—cries to Saint George. And then he saw, “beyond the trench, a long line of shapes, with a shining about them. They were like men who drew the bow,” and their arrows flew toward the German host. Who, as it happened, were stopped in their tracks.

Now this invention served its purpose, no less than any inspirational tale or legend or truth or half-truth. But it became a matter of great controversy because, as it happened, Arthur Machen, when questioned about it, blithely revealed that there was not an ounce of truth in it. The story was pure invention, a piece of fiction which was not, he added, entirely to his satisfaction as a writer.

This discrediting of a miracle soon got abroad, and there was a great hue and cry and indeed a notable hullabaloo about the matter. Machen was taken to task ... the clergy thundered against him and many a pulpit was pounded by many a pudgy ecclesiastical fist. Gentle ladies began to produce “evidence” that the event had actually taken place—that they had had it from a soldier who was there. A great many witnesses, once or twice removed, were found and quoted. The controversy grew and with it the legend.

As for Machen, he finally wrote a preface to a new American edition to The Bowmen, now called The Angels of Mons, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons in 1915. In it he wrote:

“This was in last August, or to be more precise, in the last Sunday of last August. There were terrible things to be read on that hot Sunday morning between meat and mass. It was in the Weekly Dispatch that I saw the awful account of the retreat from Mons. I no longer recollect the details, but I have not forgotten the impression that was then made in my mind. I seemed to see a furnace of torment and death and agony and terror seven times heated, and in the midst of the burning was the British Army. In the midst of the flame, consumed by it and yet aureoled in it, scattered like ashes and yet triumphant, martyred and forever glorious. So I saw our men with a shining about them, so I took these thoughts with me to church, and, I am sorry to say, was making up a story in my head while the Deacon was singing the Gospel.” Well—that is the genesis of The Bowmen or, if you insist, The Angels of Mons.