Our Lady's Hospital.

I went up the Lee Road a friend for to see,
They call it the mad house in Cork by the Lee.
But when I got up there the truth I do tell
They had the poor bugger locked up in a cell.
Johnny Jump Up, Cork folk song.

Christ, and people sometimes ask why I'm fascinated by Victorian shit- growing up in a town where this Gothic monstrosity glowers down upon all and sundry from atop its gloomy hill! If ever there was a place that was haunted, it's Our Lady's Hospital on the Lee Road. It's a (partly abandoned) real-life Victorian asylum complete with sinister towers, belfries and circling ravens. Even on a bright cheerful morning, this place oozes a delicious malevolence. It's positively eldritch, as Lovecraft would say (ever notice how the word eldritch is only ever used when talking about Lovecraft?). Our Lady's is famously the longest building in Ireland, at nearly a mile in length. Cork people often refer to the entire structure as St. Anne's, and they also tend not to diffrentiate between the grey section, Our Lady's (which is today partly renovated as apartments) and the red section, St. Kevin's, which is out-and-out abandoned.

The grey part of the building (the long part) was built in 1852 as Eglinton Lunatic Asylum, a Gothic-style building. It is situated atop the steep hill that runs alongside the Lee Road. From the asylum, there is a great view of the south side of the city. It continued to operate as an asylum under several different names before closing following almost a century of damning reports regarding the care of its patients. Today, about two thirds of it have been renovated as Atkins Hall.


You can see here where the disused wing begins...







This is St. Kevin's, the completely abandoned building. This is as close as I got on this occasion...

Eastern Approaches by Fitzroy Maclean

Who did you want to be when you were ten years old?

It isn’t a trivial question- you can tell much about someone based on who they admire. (For example, if it’s Jeremy Clarkson, then we’ve learned that this conversation is over). But there are different levels of ‘heroes’. I mean, in a very superficial way, most people wouldn’t mind being a rich heir(ess), and most guys have though at times that being Hugh Hefner would be pretty decent. But these fantasies satisfy merely the most shallow of our needs- they do not answer our burning needs to prove our worth or live meaningful lives- and what people find ‘meaningful’ will of course vary.

Some of my heroes include writers like Arthur Conan Doyle- those who created characters and ideas that have become a part of the public consciousness. But while I would be thrilled to be as talented as them, it isn’t their lives particularly that I would wish to emulate…

That lofty rank would be filled by characters like Percy Fawcett, Harry Price, Richard Burton, Tom Crean and David Livingstone- regardless of personal fame or success, they lived extraordinary lives, each endeavoring in his own way to push back the boundaries of knowledge. Whether they explored the forgotten corners of the world’s jungles or the borders of belief, they reminded us ordinary plebs that the world was a place that was still full of adventure; a place where fantastic things can still happen. Lost civilizations, haunted houses, cannibal tribes and giant anacondas- these are the things that make life worth living (or at least worth reading about).

My recent reading of the book Eastern Approaches has immediately catapulted its authur, Fitzroy Maclean, into this exclusive club. Good God, the man’s credentials are absolutely impeccable; it’s almost obscene that he hadn’t come to my attention previously. If even ten percent of what Maclean wrote about is true, the man was the greatest legend who ever blagged his way through a Soviet checkpoint- a real-life Flashman who seemed always to blunder onto the scene whenever epoch-making historical events were getting underway.

Eastern Approaches begins by chronicling Maclean’s exploits in the years immediately preceding World War 2. A member of the early 20th Century British aristocracy, he was already moving in notable circles (Winston Churchill and Evelyn Waugh were good friends of his) when his diplomatic career begun in Paris. Maclean immediately works his way into my good books by decrying his enviable lifestyle there as ‘boring’. Easy work, good pay, lots of high society champagne parties and warm summer nights on the Champs Elysee do become so tiresome, after all. So, to the amazement and delight of his supervisors, Maclean opts to be reposted to Moscow- something no British diplomat has ever willingly done. No real reason is given for this, except that he fancies a bit of adventure, and wants to find out a bit about the mysterious land of Uncle Joe.

After some time in Moscow, he decides to travel through the forbidden territories of Central Asia, which few Europeans had ever seen (especially since the birth of the USSR). Just for a bit of a laugh. Samarkand and Buhkara sound like exotic, difficult-to-get-to places, and this more than than justifies to him the dangerous journey he intends to take. I agree. This he achieves with an astonishing mix of bravado and luck. The NKVD (precursors to the KGB) follow him everywhere, but because he’s such a legend, their agents often become friendly with him (usually over a bottle of vodka, too). Maclean moves through the various ‘stans, avoiding the usual Soviet red tape by simply not informing the NKVD where his next destination is going to be, and by spoofing to border guards when necessary. This entire section of the book reads very like a real life version of Flashman at the Charge.

Maclean provides an absolutely fascinating document of Soviet life during the 1930’s. Though he deplores the Soviet system, he is never jingoistic or partronising. In fact, he pretty much never has to say a bad word about the Soviets, as the facts of the case speak for themselves- everywhere he goes, movement is restricted for both locals and foreigners, NKVD are an oppressive presence, peasants are relocated en masse and treated like prisoners, and shops are empty as food shortages are standard. He enjoys the company of pretty much every nationality he meets, having good things to say about Afghans, Tajiks, Uzbecs and other unfortunate citizens of the great Soviet experiment. And for an upper-class Brit, Maclean appears to have been remarkably laid-back, especially considering the time. Not a page goes by that he isn’t cheerfully slumming it over a bottle of vodka with a couple of Kyrg peasants in the back of a truck or train.

One other thing needs to be mentioned- Maclean occasionally notes the presence of attractive ladies he meets along the way. After noting them in the text however, they shortly fade form the narrative, seemingly without function. Is there something here that needs to be read between the lines? Something that the author couldn’t make overtly clear when the book was published? At these times I tend to turn to the only picture of Maclean included, at the front of the book-



-and then I just know he tapped that.

My absolute sole criticism of this portion of the book is that it contains one chapter so gripping and terrifying, it stops the narrative dead in its tracks- a detailed description of Stalin’s show trials. After much light-hearted bouncing about Central Asia, this chapter comes as a bit of a shocker. Maclean finally lets a more serious tone creep into his writing, which is fair enough given that he's dealing with one of the most blood-chilling aspects of Stalin's reign. Given a ringside seat, as it were, Maclean reports the trials lucidly and without colour. Former high-ranking Party officials are hauled bleary-eyed into the court to testisfy to absurd (and often impossible) crimes. According to this testiomony of the damned, the Soviet Party was riddled, almost from before its conception, with traitors and conspiracies. Any citizen who was ever known to have dealings with foreigners was a spy; every food shortage was deliberately caused by malicious inside jobs, not government mismanagement. Maclean's narrative deepens considerably here as he leaves high-spirited hijinks to one side and instead delivers a fascinating physocological deconstruction of the Soviet regime. He tries to explain how living in a state of constant terror and misinformation has made it possible that, in some horrible doublethink manner, the audience (and even the accused) actually do believe the absurd deceit they are constructing. Positively chilling.

After this exercise in real-life horror, the madcap central Asian backpacking that Maclean indulges in over the next few chapters seem a trifle thin.

Strangely, the other 2/3rds of the book didn't strike me as being quite as interesting. Perhaps if they had been published separately, they might have had more impact. Anyway, when World War 2 begins, Maclean turns down his position as a local politician, and sign up for the army. Despite his privileged background, he willingly joins as a private and gets sent to North Africa to fight against Rommel's troops. Cue lots of strangely repetitive missions sneaking into desert cities and bluffing past German and Italian troops.

After this, in a truly Flashman-esque move, Churchill himself asks Maclean to parachute into Bosnia to meet the mysterious Tito. Tito is the leader of the Partisans, a guerilla movement who are fighting the Nazi occupation. Trouble is, nobody outside Yugoslavia knows who Tito really is. When Maclean finally meets him, he is impressed by Tito's leadership skills and independent streak. Maclean hides out in the Yugoslav hills for several months, fighting with the Partisans and trying to talk Tito out of his Communist ideals. Again, Maclean does not come across as a condescending, jingoistic Brit- he really does respect Tito, and his fear of Communism is based on experience, not xenophobia.

Even if his WW2 adventures were less interesting to me than his Central Asian odyssey, Fitzroy Maclean is never less than entertaining, and he has solidified his position as one of the great characters of the 20th century.

To The Devil A Daughter- The Church, Moral Panics and Fighting Fantasy

So, it’s 2010, and the Church here in Ireland is in trouble once again following another peek by the government into the more unsavoury aspects of their track record. It’s another bout of (probably necessary) naming and shaming that has the whole country on a bit of a downer, this time because the recent revelations make it quite clear that knowledge of the crimes and corruption extended to the highest levels of the establishment, and can no longer be viewed as the actions of a few bad eggs.

As I’ve noted before (when writing about the TV show Father Ted), allegations of improper conduct by Irish priests on a mass scale first came out in the 1990’s. Prior to this, the Irish public, somewhat conditioned by the decades of virtual Church rule, were slow to criticize or speak out against them. But once the first scandal erupted, hundreds more followed, as if some infernal floodgate of misery and suffering had been opened. Suddenly, people who had been abused, often many years ago, were everywhere. If you followed the story based on media coverage alone, it seemed as though there must hardly have been a one decent priest in the whole country.

Does this pattern sound familiar?

Firstly, I’d like to state that I’m not particularly inclined towards or against the Church. In this day and age, they are quickly becoming a somewhat irrelevant and powerless institution as far as many forward-thinking Irish people are concerned. So while I’m glad they no longer run the show, neither do I believe that they're all necessarily bad people.

I’m not particularly concerned in this article with whether or not the majority of Church scandals are based on real happenings (at the moment it certainly seems as though they are, unfortunately). What I am concerned with is how the pattern of Church scandals matches several other events that have occurred in the past.

‘Moral panic’ is the term given to those occasions in which the public and the media create a lot of hype over some new ‘threat’ to society. Typically, a fear will arise and very quickly spread, concerning some danger that was not present (or not known) previously. Large numbers of people will report having come into contact with this new threat. Sometimes the threat is real, but there are a surprising number of cases in which the moral panic was revealed to be ‘much ado about nothing’.

Some examples-

When I was a child in the early 90’s, there was a brief concern about child abductors who traveled in a white van. Children were warned not to talk to anyone who drove a white van- I remember being unable to understand why anyone would use this highly distinctive m. o. if everyone knew about it! Far from being local-specific, this panic has also occurred in the US and Australia over several decades, making it also a kind of urban legend. No white-van child abductors were ever linked to any real cases, so either this story is a kind of Chinese whispers corruption of a true story, or else child abductors internationally like to behave very suspiciously when they're on the job.

Day care abuse- these cases involved the 'ritualised abuse' of children on a massive scale in Australia, New Zealand and the US in the early 1980's. Again, there was a single well-publicised case, followed by many more. 'Coercive' questioning techniques were frequently used to get appropriate testimony from children, which rapidly began to include some pretty extravagant claims. If these stories were true, then day-care centers across the world were involved in incredibly well-organised paedophelia, child prostitution, cannibalism, animal sacrifice, abduction and blood-drinking on a massive scale, which they frequently carried out in enormous secret underground chambers (that never materialised upon inspection), and all without being noticed until roughly 1982. Hmm.

Out of all cases, many concluded without convictions, while some accused persons spent years in jail before having their convictions overturned. While some real cases of paedophelia were uncovered, the hysteria that accompanied these cases elevated them to an almost mythical, all-powerful network of Satanists.

Satanic abuse- oh boy. It gets even more unbelievable here, as allegations of Satanic covens exploded across Canada and America in the wake of the book Michelle Remembers, published in 1980. Turns out that Michelle remembered quite a bit. The boundary between reality and fantasy became completely destroyed in some of these cases when psychiatrists begun use 'recovered memories' as a tool for uncovering past atrocities by these groups. And what stories the children spewed- I really couldn't do it justice here. Suffice it to say that it will enlarge your view of the possible; the possible lengths the human mind will go to in order to construct a false reality. I have no beef with hypnotherapy- practitioners today understand that what comes out of a patients mouth while they are 'under' are as likely to be a product of their fear or longing as a true memory- but in those days, it seems to have been used pretty irresponsibly.

It has been noted before that the victims in these cases are almost unanimously white, middle-class women. It's almost as if the most well-off section of American society decided that it needed a reason to feel sorry for itself and get attention. And listening to these womens' stories, it really is all about attention. They are always the centre of attention. Entire cults dedicated masses of time and energy organising complex and lengthy rituals just for them.

One web site cannily puts it-

But why have only the stars of the rituals come forward to tell their stories? Where are all the minions? Where is the third torch-bearer from the right? The handmaiden, the second banana, the also-ran? No one's come forward to say, "Yeah, it was my job to bring the snacks," or "I set up the sound system."

Is this really any different from the narcissistic roots of many other strange phenomena, such as alien abductions and contactee cases? It seems to be a fact that people who are profoundly ordinary, who may have known no real trauma in their lives, often manufacture their own dramas in which they are the stars (or the victims) in order to fill some subconscious void. And once some new 'treat' meme is released by word of mouth or the media, it can shape the form that these fantasies take.

The Halifax Slasher- probably the strangest, and most telling example of all. In Halifax, England in 1938, women began reporting attacks by a mallet-wielding man. Within one week of the first report, ten men and women claimed to have been attacked, many of them providing quite specific details about the assailant. But when one early victim admitted that he had inflicted his wounds himself and made up the story, others soon admitted that they had, independently, done the same thing. What does this strange tale tell us about the unconscious wish of the public to be 'involved' in a big story, whether pleasant or unpleasant?

It must be stated that in most of these cases, the ‘victims’ appeared to have themselves been convinced of the reality of the threat. They frequently exhibited fear, stress and other symptoms of psychological trauma. Moral panics are not frequently thought to be a simple case of fraud or hoaxing- on some subconscious level, the threat is real to the ‘victims’. So while I’m not saying that this is the case with the Catholic Church scandals, I certainly do find the parallels striking. Victims of clerical abuse, however, have never had dodgy 'memory regression' techniques used on them in order to bolster their claims, neither do their stories have that kind of 'me, me, me' touch about them.

So strong was the belief during the 1980’s of the existence of a vast satanic conspiracy that it left a noticeable mark on the popular culture of the time. Movies that ripped off the late 70’s Satanist-themed classics Rosemary’s Baby and The Omen flourished. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and the 80’s remake of Dragnet certainly helped convince me at a young age that dodgy underground cults were an accepted reality. When Hollywood recently decided to re-create an ‘authentic’ early-80’s horror film with The House of the Devil, they chose for their subject a coven of Satanists who require a young girl to sacrifice. But my personal favourite cultural artifact of 80's Satanism panic was something else...

Someone very clever once said that the meeting of two minds is like the meeting of two chemical elements; if there is any reaction at all, both are changed forever. When the 80’s phenomena of Fighting Fantasy books and Satanic worship hysteria collided, the result was something that is still considered staggeringly inappropriate for children: House of Hell. Have a look-



I don’t know if anyone outside the Bible belt would consider this book inappropriate now; I certainly believe that a fascination for the macabre is a healthy interest in a young child. All the same, I don’t believe that this is the kind of book that would get greenlit now. At the time, even the name was considered beyond the pale- hence the publication of the book as House of Hades in America; obviously one mythical afterlife location was considered offensive while another was not. Though some of the artwork was admittadly strong stuff-



Most of the FF gamebooks take place in a Tolkien-esque fantasy world. House of Hell is the only one that takes place in the 'real world', ie, planet Earth circa the 1980's. The plot is a classic 'haunted house' set-up- the player's car breaks down in a remote area, and they enter a big ol' spooky house looking for a telephone. Instead, they find a host of horrors that trap them within the house. Most of the enemies in the game are classic stereotypical boogeymen- zombies, ghosts, vampirs, etc. But the main plot involves a group of Satanists (the word itself is not used, but c'mon, just look at the illustrations!). They dress in white robes with goat heads, and gather in covens to sacrifice young girls on altars. At the end, the heads of the manor turn into huge, cloven-footed demons, and the book distinctly mentions a smell of sulphur as he does so. The unspoken message is that this stuff is not just an invention of the author of a fantasy book, but in fact, by the consistency of such details, is based on aspects of the real world. ’s amazing to think that this version of ‘Satanism’ was taken so seriously at the time- was nobody aware that all of this stuff can basically be traced back to Dennis Wheatley in the 1930’s?

As a gamebook, House of Hell is notoriously difficult. The house itself is maze-like and the creature battles are cruelly difficult. I was slightly intimidated by it when playing as a youngster- even with the aid of self-drawn maps, I always felt as if the house was huge and unknowable, so cleverly was it designed. So punishing were it's traps and creatures that exploration was seldom rewarded. I still recall the feeling of being helplessly lost, opening doors blindly and waiting for some cruel executioner or hooded cultist to deal me the final blow.. Fans have been known to be unable to complete it after literally years of trying- and that’s scary enough even without the Satanism.

(Here's a link to an article by the great Mike Dash about an outbreak of Satanic Panic in Wales)

The Wolfman

Pity the poor lycanthrope. With no distinguished source material to draw upon, and no big-name author to place before the title, it seems the wolfman is barely holding onto his position among the monstrous big-hitters. Dracula and Frankenstein must shun him at parties. Hollywood has had to base their recent wolfman effort on the 1941 original, and though the charmingly low-tech practical-effects wolfman is present and correct, it isn't the 1940's feel that causes the viewer to howl.


Instead, it feels as though the filmmakers have taken a cheesy 70's Hammer script- a relic of a simpler time when certain tropes were not quite as hackneyed as they are today- and filmed it in 2009, with a decent budget and played absolutely straight. It's the only explanation for the way the film plays every single Victorian horror cliche without irony and without any attempt to present them in any new way.

Decaying Gothic mansion? Check. Fair enough. Fog-shrouded moors? Check. That's allright, too. But in the same movie as mystic gypsies, torch-wielding superstitious villagers and cruel Victorian asylum 'scientists'?

Damn, I'm making this sound like the greatest movie ever. Any film containing such a cornucopia of treats should be a winner. But believe me- whatever you have in your head right now is almost certainly a thousand times more entertaining than the Wolfman actually is. There's something about how these elements are presented- I feel they would only work if the audience had absolutely never seen a horror movie (or a Saturday morning cartoon, which is where most of these elements now belong) before. Maybe if this movie had been made in 1941, or in 1971, it would have been a masterpiece, its strong visual style setting trends for decades to come. But The Wolfman instead trots out time-worn plotlines and expects us to be affected by them.

Ditto for the dialogue- maybe I'm just close-minded, but I feel as though the day has passed when you can put such downright corny words into a script and still play it straight. When Anthony Hopkins first appears (wearing a hideous tiger-skin jacket that in no way telegraphs the later 'revelation' of his bestial nature) to greet his recently returned son, I literally begged him not to quote 'the Prodigal son returns'. Just as he said it. The film is full of moments where you think 'ah, now if this were a cheesy movie made before 1979, they would say X here'- and The Wolfman never disappoints. As soon as Emily Blunt is shown researching werewolf lore in a dusty library, we know that we're gonna be confronted with this:

































Yeah, so there hasn't been a werewolf movie made yet that doesn't feature this woodcut: So far, I've noted it in The Wolfman, The Howling, and the X-Files episode 'Shapes'. But usually the pain is eased somewhat by having it introduced by Dick Miller (everything is better with Dick Miller).

The key to where it all goes really wrong lies in the asylum scene. Del Toro, who knows by now what he has become, is being studied by a demented 'doctor'. He's one of those Victorian sadist scientists who thinks that the best way to cure dementia is to cut out the patients' brain, or dunk them in freezing water. This particular trope has been used in From Hell and other movies to great effect, but here, the scientist is a ridiculous cartoon character who understates the horror we should be feeling. He straps Del Toro into a chair before an audience of doctors and students, in order to prove that no transformation will take place when the moon turns full. Of course, Del Toro knows all too well what will happen, and his desperate pleading is taken as being no more than proof of his dementia. It ought to have been a tense, physchological scene with the scientists waiting to be proven right, and Del Toro (and the audience) waiting for the carnage they know is about to occur. Instead, everything happens in a rushed manner reminiscint of a music video. Del Toro is strapped in, he warns the scientists, the moon appears immediately, he wolfs out within seconds. The resulting violence (and it is a great scene) feels light and pointless because of the botched foreplay.

The Wolfman does look great- dark and brooding- but ultimately, this is another slick trick to distract the audience from the fact that there is no substance. The edits are cut so tight that the film seems afraid to linger on anything for more than a moment, as if aware of how hollow the plot is. And apart from some howlers (the dodgy-looking were-Gollum should never have got past the script stage), the use of CG is mostly used to augment the wolfman as he leaps about, while he is portrayed for the most part using practical effects. And if I haven't mentioned any characterisation yet, well, that's because there isn't any.

The Downfall of Professor Challenger: Arthur Conan Doyle and Spiritualism

For nearly one hundred years, Professor Challenger, the gruff but loveable hero of Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, has thrilled successive generations of readers with his crackpot zoological adventures. But less famous are the ends to which his creator used him in later works- works that explore the darkest crevices, not of the world’s forgotten places, but of Doyle’s own psyche.

The Lost World has long been considered a classic by those who enjoy old-time adventure novels. It features Doyle's not-quite-as-famous-as-Sherlock-Holmes character as he sets off on an expedition to discover living dinosaurs in the Amazon rainforests of South America. Challenger is a big, burly bear of a man with a booming voice and an arrogant, ignorant manner. He’s a scientific colossus whose genius does not extend to include such overrated virtues as modesty or politeness. Just as legend has it that Sherlock Holmes was inspired by one of Doyle’s professors at Edinburgh, it is also said that the description of Challenger chimes with that of one Professor Rutherford, who also taught there during Doyle’s studentship.

In short, The Lost World is an absolute classic, and beats anything by Doyle’s nearest rival, H. R. Haggard, into the ground. It's genuinely thrilling, funny, has great characters, and plenty of that fin-de-siecle adventurous spirit that characterizes British fantastic fiction of the period.

Challenger disappears into the wilds with scant regard for personal safety like a true son of the British Empire, taking with him only a small group of those he trusts the most. The camaraderie between the characters is a big part of what makes the novel great. It touts without irony the old-fashioned idea that when you've got your trusted friends on board, you can take on the world (as long as there are no troublesome women around, of course!). The boys-own feel is laid out clearly in the brief and whimsical verse that opens the narrative-

I have brought my simple plan
If I give one hour of joy
To the boy who’s half a man,
Or the man who’s half a boy.

Fortunately for those generations of man-boys who grew up regarding Challenger’s Lost World exploits as the epitome of naïve entertainment, his other adventures have rarely seen print. But there’s a shock in store, in the form of a 'classics' edition, adorned with a nauseating blue cover, called The Lost World and Other Stories, placed innocently on the shelf, like a landmine of bilge hiding amidst the snow-white flowers of the beautiful Yugoslavian landscape.

Most of the stories are, on the whole, brief and unremarkable. When the World Screamed and The Poison Belt are serviceable, but they both find the Professor leaping to ridiculous conclusions without evidence. He is, of course, constantly proven correct simply because the writer makes it so.

No matter, the reader will reassure himself. There is one final story left in the collection, and it’s a whopper- The Land of Mist; the only story in the book of comparable length to The Lost World. Ah yes, the reader thinks. Doyle has been holding out on us, but here’s where the real meat is. This is where he’s been hiding his aces. Everything’s going to be okay.

Sigh.

See, between writing The Lost World and The Land of Mist, Doyle became pretty heavily involved with spiritualism. This interest had begun to bleed, more than a little, into his writing. He turned his considerable talents of propaganda-writing towards promoting his new religion, giving lectures to packed halls on sell-out tours all over the Empire. This happy thought is never more than the length of a silver-cord from the mind of the reader who peruses the pages of The Land of Mist.

Now, one of the chief pleasures of reading turn-of-the-century fantastic fiction is the wealth of bizarre ideas which were still taken for granted at this time- ether, spirit-writing, mesmerism, the hollow Earth, social Darwinism and the like. Science was in its adolescence, and was confidently expected to finally prove things that everybody already knew- that God was in his Heaven, white men were fit to rule the world, and that the lower classes were happy with their lot. Souls could be weighed and fairies and spirits could be photographed (because the camera never lies, right?) It's a unique period, and in a way, Arthur Conan Doyle served as an apt representation of it as a whole.

As a young man, Doyle turned his back on his Catholic faith. Nobody in his day and age could believe such nonsense, could they? As far as he was concerned, science (and Darwin in particular) had banished the age of superstition. The future creator of Sherlock Homes declared that he would never again believe anything that could not be proven. But fast-forward to the end of the Great War, and the picture is very different. With Europe in ruins; with every last Victorian ideal of decency and honour lying strangled and mashed in the muck of the Somme, and with his beloved son dead from Spanish flu, Doyle discovered (as much of the world did) that the gap left by religion has to be filled by something else. But not just anything- for once you embrace rationalism, there’s no going back. Traditional Christianity would clearly not do. Some new idea that could return meaning to life, but which was amiable to the new mechanistic nuts-and-bolts universe that science was revealing, was in order.

Over the course of the 20th century, many people would come to fill this hole with UFO’s, automatic writing, electronic voice phenomenon, new age-ism, star people, Scientology, creation ‘science’, intelligent design, and dancing statues at Ballinspittle. But Doyle filled it with Spiritualism.

From its humble beginnings in rural upstate New York in 1848, spiritualism had grown to become, in the eyes of many, a legitimate counter to science’s gloomy claim that life was material and nothing more. After all, spiritualism was a religion that didn’t ask its followers to believe anything beyond that which they could experience themselves firsthand. Any doubting Thomas who wished to be convinced could take part in a séance, during which a medium would contact spirits from the other side, and those spirits would manifest themselves, in various ways, in the physical realm. There would be knocks and raps. Furniture (and sometimes people) would levitate.

But these were mere parlour tricks- the real meat of the thing was the communication with the spirit-folk. They spoke through the mediums, who gave messages to those present from loved ones who had passed on. Readers adept at detecting connections between cultural trends will probably notice that this shameful manipulation of grieving patrons has not entirely ceased today.

In The Land of Mist, Professor Challenger examines this strange phenomenon. Of course, he begins as a skeptic. He applies the correct amount of caution. He is a scientist, after all, and he knows that spiritualism is a minefield rife with cads and charlatans. After attending several séances and witnessing the manifestation of his dead wife, he decides that the phenomenon is genuine. Doyle then gets up on his soap-box, and allows Challenger to make the case clear- death is not the end, spiritualists and mediums are really in contact with the dead, and a new and better world is around the corner for those of us who accept that this is really happening. Challenger (and thus Doyle) believes that this is the most important breakthrough in history.

As you are reading this, remind yourself of one thing- this writer was knighted for his ability to create propaganda (which he did during the Boer War and the Great War). And were it not propaganda, The Land of Mist would be a great book. Nobody wrote supernatural fiction as well as Doyle, and in this book he really excels himself. In one standout chapter, Malone and Roxton spend a night in a haunted house, and encounter a ‘degraded spirit’. In any other context, it would be a sterling example of a spine-chilling ghost story. But when Doyle uses such incidents as examples of his own worldview rather than as a fictitious device, the result is a depressing yet fascinating example of a flawed masterpiece. It’s literally heart-breaking to see beloved characters reduced to mouthpieces for such hokum.

By the 1920’s, Doyle’s ‘simple plan’ for his novels had become anything but. The very opening of The Land of Mist announces that, while Challenger and his friends are real in the world of the book, their previous adventures (i.e., the events of The Lost World and the other Challenger stories) are to be considered nothing more that the exaggerations of certain zealous pressmen. This incredible piece of ret-con serves to indicate that The Land of Mist is somehow more important and ‘real’ than the other stories, as it ostensibly takes place in the ‘real’ world and not the world of fantastic fiction, being that it is dealing with the important ‘realities’ of spiritualism. It seems that Doyle wished to use the character of Challenger to lure the reader into his lecture, while jettisoning the ‘baggage’ of his previous unlikely adventures.

I can think of no surer way to alienate fans of The Lost World.

I enjoy Spiritualism as one of the bizarre ideas that gives the Victorian literary period its flavour, but this book is just sad.

It’s sad that Doyle really believed that a bunch of fakers shaking tables in dark rooms were going to change the world.

It’s sad that the creator of the most famously logical character in history also created this misguided polemic.

And it’s especially sad that he hijacked a bunch of my favourite characters to do it.

A recent book by one Dr Andrew Norman makes the case that Doyle was slightly schizophrenic. Such torturous explanations are unnecessary. Quite apart from the fact that, as one wit put it, ‘psychology should not be a long-distance sport’, even the briefest glance at the world around us should be enough to convince that people will always need strange things to believe in. Doyle truly believed that he had met and conversed with apparitions. He saw, smelt and touched them. In his own head, he was completely convinced. We know now, of course, that spiritualism was no more than a bunch of cads and charlatans; we also have a deeper understanding of how the human mind can be fooled when it really wants to believe. It seems that even a fictional character, created by the brain behind Sherlock Holmes, is not immune from this yearning.

King Solomon's Mines by H. R. Haggard

Nothing works perfectly the first time you try it out, right? Doesn’t matter if you’re fumbling with a girl in the backseat of a Fiesta or shooting at a lion in the African svelt, the first time you do it, you probably won’t get it quite right. Such is the case with King Solomon’s Mines, the famous first ‘lost race’ novel. Written by H. R. Haggard in 1889, it features his hero Allen Quatermain, who would go on to star in a number of other tales of high adventure set in Africa. While an entertaining novel, Mines features many devices and tropes that have had their effectiveness blunted by years or re-use.

Things get started when Quatermain meets Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good on board a steamer leaving Cape Town. He learns that they intend to locate Good’s brother, who went searching for the legendary mines of the biblical King Solomon. The mines are supposedly located in an interior kingdom never before seen by white men. Trouble is, it’s surrounded by treacherous mountains and an impassable desert, and anyway, nobody really knows exactly where it is located. Except that Quatermain then reveals that he knows where it is, because some time ago he came into possession of a map made by a Spaniard called Jose da Silvestre two hundred years earlier. Silvestre died upon finding the exact spot, and in a nice dramatic touch by Haggard, the map is written in his own blood. Being a sensible man, and by nature no seeker of dangerous adventure, Quatermain has thus far had no reason to test the map’s accuracy for himself. But being a poor man, he agrees to accompany the two on their trek upon securing a handsome payment, with which he intends to pay for his son’s education. Decent chap, Quatermain.

The three Englishmen pick up a Zulu named Umbopa to accompany them, and all four brave the terrors of the desert and the mountains and eventually discover a new country, Kukuanaland. There, they become embroiled in intrigue that climaxes in a civil war.

It’s hard to imagine the reaction this book must have provoked in its day, as so many of the tropes it uses have since become standards. The mere idea of white men going off into uncharted Africa and having adventures was a groundbreaker for the literature of the time (though not, I note, for real life). Haggard lived in South Africa for six years, and was present during the British takeover of Bechuanaland. He even read out the declaration of the takeover, as the officer who ought to have done so was sick on the day. His love for Africa, its landscape and cultures, shines on every page, but his writing style is so plain that it often does not overcome the familiarity modern readers will have with almost every situation in the book. In terms of style, he’s certainly a full step down from the likes of Wells and Conan Doyle. There are some great touches, such as the map written in blood, and the dying man who presents it to Quatermain, pointing to the far-off mountain top as the sun goes down. The perilous trek through the desert is also suitably hair-raising. But there are also some childish ‘humorous’ parts that have aged badly, such as the Kukuanas’ awed reaction to John Good’s lack of trousers.

Quatermain himself is quite a likeable character. While no coward, he’s genuinely humble (instead of just continually saying that he’s humble, like some fictional characters I could mention). He’s certainly not afraid to admit when he’s quaking in his khakis, and though he usually swallows his fear and does the right thing (he is a Victorian gentleman, after all), he indulges in heroics and violence with a certain reluctance that makes him far more realistic than the likes of, say, John Carter. He’s pretty much the first and archetypal ‘great white hunter’ character in fiction. As for the rest, they’re a distinctly more forgettable bunch than their counterparts in the later Lost World. Apart from Umbopa, who’s got his own plot-o-matic storyline going on, they simply exist to provide a bit of banter for Quatermain to indulge in.

The Kukuanas in particular are a perfect example of the totally generic ‘African tribe’ in literature. They live in huts, they have a corrupt king who needs to be deposed, and they worship the white men as gods because of their superior weaponry. Yawn. Haggard heavily based them on his own experiences with the Zulus, but their culture is never really explored in any more depth than the plot calls for. Umbopa, to the surprise of no reader over the age of ten, turns out to be the true king of Kukuanaland, precipitating the inevitable climax. Surely, this kind of thing was already old hat in 1889. Also, the lack of any truly fantastic elements make the novel less dramatic than those that followed it (including even Haggard’s own novels). The Kukuanas are, really, just another tribe.

Haggard has often been complimented for his comparatively progressive attitude towards race. For the most part, Quatermain recognizes a ‘gentleman’ whatever his colour, and he respects the pride and bravery of many of the natives he meets. He knows the different tribes of South Africa well, and differentiated between them in terms of character based on experience, not prejudice. As I said above, he’s a pretty likeable guy. But, like most ‘lost race’ novels before and since, the Kukuanas live in the shadow of a distinctly white civilization that scored pretty much all the major achievements in the kingdom. In particular, there is a long, wide Roman road running through their valley, lined with impressive statues. Now, one of the real-world inspirations for Mines was the discovery of the ancient city of Zimbabwe in what was then Rhodesia. At the time, it was unthinkable to European archaeologists that a black civilization could have built such a grand structure. Right up until the independence of Zimbabwe, great leaps in logic were employed to convince the populace that a white or even Arab civilization was responsible. It seems that even Haggard was not immune from this kind of thinking. But compared to other literature of the period, his books still provide a refreshing and humane depiction of black Africa.

King Solomon’s Mines is a largely enjoyable read, but its now-common tropes and somewhat childish tone marr it somewhat. It provides an interesting base from which to compare his later, better novels.

(check out this here comic while you're at it...)

Big Game

Here's a silly little cartoon I did this morning. Been reading King Solomon's Mine's recently, and there's an awful lot of gratuitous hunting in it, so I had this little idea for a comic about conservation-minded 19th century hunters. I had to use a really bad pen for most of the inking though, and it shows. You'll have to click on it to view- I'm working on making it full-size on this page.