Knopf had, by this time, published quite a number of Machen’s earlier books. Three books were published in 1922, four in 1923, four in 1924 and four in 1925, of which The Shining Pyramid, with its introduction, was one. The “yellow books” were finding their way to the more discriminating and discerning readers in America.
The publication of two books bearing the same title, one issuing from Chicago, the other from London and New York, stirred up a controversy. How far this went and how it terminated is not public knowledge. In April of 1924 Knopf circulated to the trade a letter on the Alfred A. Knopf-Arthur Machen versus Covici-McGee-Vincent Starrett controversy. According to Paul Jordan-Smith the whole thing was the result of a misunderstanding. “This much I know. Starrett had been given the manuscripts of two or more books to get published as he could, at a time when publishers were shy of Machen. Years ago I saw them and at least one letter advising Starrett to do what he thought best about publishing them. Then Knopf came along with an offer to publish anything of Machen’s he could find. How Machen answered this I do not know, but he did give the rights to Knopf. But in the meantime Starrett had made arrangements with Covici, his Chicago friend and former book seller. It was unfortunate, and I fancy Machen’s poverty and Knopf’s established position made Machen want to transfer to him. Both were rather bitter. But as I recall the matter over the years I was impressed with the fact that both had acted in good faith until Knopf’s money made Machen jump. I think he would not have embarrassed Starrett if he had not been utterly lacking in money and had not had two small children to feed.”
Apparently the whole matter was settled amiably, for one of the subsequent Knopf editions is dedicated to Vincent Starrett. The “controversy,” such as it was, is not a matter to be revived, nor is it my intention to do so. Machen, and all who know him, owe too much to both Mr. Knopf and Mr. Starrett.
Another early worker in the Machen field was Carl Van Vechten. Besides making Machen a sort of intellectual “prop” for his precious Peter Whiffle, Mr. Van Vechten wrote some of the earliest appreciations of Machen. I must confess that there was a time when V. V.’s eyes seemed to me a trifle jaundiced in his estimate of Machen, and there was a time when I rather hotly resented the implications of the title Excavations. But time mellows most of us, Machenites especially, and I have come to regard and to welcome Mr. Van Vechten as a trail-blazer. It is true that I cannot accept some of his estimates of Machen, and I dare say I have often thought that he liked Arthur Machen for all the wrong reasons. However, let the student of Machen the Silurist decide for himself. Excavations, containing reprints of Van Vechten’s earlier reviews and articles, was published by the alert Mr. Knopf in 1926.
Vincent Starrett’s study of Machen is, I think, more in sympathy, or at least more to my taste. The title of the book in which his essay on Machen appears is Buried Caesars—it enraged me no less than Excavations, and at one time I regarded these books as two voices in a chorus that had come not only to praise Machen but to bury him in rather extravagant prose.
3
There has been little news of Arthur Machen or about Arthur Machen since the late 1920’s. He enjoyed a certain popularity for perhaps five years, a popularity that lingered much longer in more literary circles. For the most part Machen had disappeared from the world of literary figures just as his books had disappeared from the bookshops. That he is still read today we know, and we know too, that he has been slowly gaining new readers through the years. In 1933 Machen published his last novel, The Green Round. This has not yet been published in this country, although it is scheduled for publication this year by August Derleth’s “Arkham House.” In 1936 there were published in London two collections of his stories, most of which were reprints of earlier stories with the addition of some new pieces. These books are The Children of the Pool, published by Hutchinson, and The Cosy Room, published by Rich and Cowan. Within the past few years Machen’s stories have appeared in anthologies put together by Dorothy Sayers, Somerset Maughan, Phillip Van Doren Stern, Will Cuppy and, of all people, Boris Karloff!
August Derleth, the youthful sage of Sac Prarie, has been more active than anyone else in recent years in his efforts to spread the magic of Machen. Back in 1937, in the November issue of Ben Abramson’s “Reading and Collecting,” Derleth published an article on Machen, to which was appended a bibliography by Nathan Van Patten. Derleth’s article, the first to appear in almost a decade, followed the pattern of most previous articles about Machen. But Derleth has gone beyond prose. He has, from time to time, included Machen’s more macabre pieces in his various collections of supernatural stories. He has also published, or is planning to publish, reprints of several Machen books.
The late H. P. Lovecraft was an admirer of Arthur Machen’s work and a foremost exponent of the Machen manner in modern fiction. It is difficult to apply the epithet “pulp writer” to Lovecraft, but that is, after all, what he was. Recent appraisals of his work, and the publication in book form of his stories, have done much to raise him out of this category. It was Lovecraft who introduced Machen to August Derleth and to who knows how many thousands of other readers. In his essay, recently republished by Ben Abramson, Supernatural Horror in Literature, Lovecraft supplies one of the most up-to-date, if perhaps one-sided, appraisals of Arthur Machen’s work. Lovecraft concentrates his attention, naturally enough, on Machen’s tales of horror and the supernatural. The result is a valuable piece of Machenania but one that should be approached only by an adept. The chance reader or the casual reader would receive a rather specialized view of Machen.