On the other hand: one cannot always agree with the idolizers and the cultists. These are, at times, even more annoying and sometimes rather embarrassing.
The admirers of Arthur Machen are probably as heterogeneous a collection as one is likely to find anywhere outside the membership lists of the Book of the Month Club, the Literary Guild and a distinguished After Shave Club. There are, among the more ardent Arthurians, poets and pedants, dilettantes and divorcees, men of letters and three-letter men from the universities, reviewers and romanticists, critics and connoisseurs, columnists and collectors of every description—a rare assemblage that numbers sincere admirers, warm friends, not a few dreads and some drolls. Mr. Machen’s works are known to the Librarians at Yale and at Stanford. They are known also to the librarians at Liggetts and Walgrens—for recently several anthologies have appeared on the forty-nine cent table and several Machen stories have made the grade in the corner drug store through the medium of the quarter pocketbooks. This is passing strange company for a man whose first editions were published in Vigo Street under the Sign of the Bodley Head and whose American triumphs were under the auspices of the aristocratic Borzoi.
Mr. Machen’s published works have fared as variously. His stories have appeared in anthologies whose sales have run into thousands, and there is noted in Van Patten’s bibliography a small work published in an edition of two copies.
How does one decide upon an edition of two copies? It must be admitted that, to his fervent admirers at least, the peddling of Machen to the millions along with the malteds and lunches at Liggetts is to be preferred to the arch-conservativeness that confines a Machen item to a very limited edition of two copies. It may cause shudders to run up and down the arthritic vertebrae of many a venerable Machenite to suggest such a thing, but I find myself wishing that Winchell would one day give Machen “the works.” And who knows but that he may? With realism and the realists in disorder, if not retreat, in disarray if not utter rout, with realism seen from a rapidly shifting focal point, with reviewers suggesting that the work and the world of our realists may be, after all, allegory—who knows but the Sunday Night Sage may not admonish Americans from coast to coast to demand from their bookseller a copy of Dog and Duck, or the Anatomy of Tobacco (LSMFT) or even Hieroglyphics?
Such unscholarly suggestions may seem unworthy, may even draw the fire of many Machenites who will deeply resent such facetious flippancy—but they are offered merely as an antidote to the equally absurd and equally unworthy tactics of some collectors who come to praise and to bury Machen in the same devout breath.
I must confess that, while I envy certain men and mausoleums the possession of many a Machen item, I am pleased beyond measure to find The Great God Pan or The Cosy Room or The Novel of the White Powder in the gaudiest, grizzliest anthology of horror stories displayed for the delight of the drug store trade.
However, to return to the Arthurians, whether of the cultivated or the common garden variety. The response to a prospectus describing this volume when it was in its projected state was enlightening. There were letters on fine paper bearing the crests of famous colleges and libraries, there were scribbled notes from, obviously, “stfans” in Kansas City, Dallas, Scranton and the Coast. These letters did affect the construction of this book in one important respect. I determined then to add to the book a bibliography that would direct the reader of Machen to the stories and essays of Machen wherever they may be found. The scholars and the specialists know in which vaults the more valuable manuscripts are under lock and key. Let them rest in peace. One day, perhaps, they will be released and they will be read as it was intended, by the man who wrote them, that they should be. Meanwhile it may be amusing to compile a list of the unlikely and out of the way corners of literature in which there are mentions of Machen—and to the true Machenite the mere mention of Machen is rewarding.
We’ve wandered from Wilde to Winchell, but there are many more unexpected encounters awaiting the ardent Arthurian. For example, Tiffany Thayer, enfant terrible of the late Twenties and early Thirties, whose books were rather lurid things, made use of Machen in certain passages. We find, if we dredge deep enough, a passing reference to Machen, and one that might conceivably outrage the true believer.
An even more strange, and not too flattering, reference is found in one of the books of William Seabrooke. Mr. Seabrooke, who visited strange places and saw strange things, once visited, as a client, and I violate no confidence, an asylum. Since Mr. Seabrooke wrote a book about his experiences therein, any hesitation on my part would be a needless delicacy.
Mr. Seabrooke’s mention of Machen is even given a title: Self-Portrait of a Dementia Praecox Case on First Reading the works of Machen. The “self-portrait” follows: “Sweet spirits of my own dementia praecox! womb-wailing guide calls reechoing throughout sub-cavernousterraneous! fuga, fugae. Corncopios fugalations in depths arbeitung verstaltheight.... I have just read The Hill of Dreams! By the brazen buttocks of that brimstone bellona who lolls in lakes of lava, never in my life have I read or even imagined that such a piece of escapist literature existed. He is superior to Dunsany and to Algernon Blackwood who though almost not an escapist may be classed with them. The book is filled with black magic. The man’s powers of psychotic invention are almost unbelievable and his familiarity with certain phenomena of abnormal psychology is creepy. Are you acquainted with Tchaikovski’s scherzi? especially the waltz-scherzo of his Fifth? It moves in this same weird, uncanny way. Now I wish I were dead....”