It must have been a beautiful face, no doubt, but I can honestly say that I would not have looked in that face when there was life behind it for a thousand guineas, no, nor for twice that sum. I don't think I can have seen you for the last five years? "He's gone. I always thought he was a bit queer in his head, or else had been and got into some trouble or other. coll: Aubrey Beardsley: The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light: His idea of horror and of what excites horror is so lamentably deficient. For instance, I dare say that you never heard of the Harlesden case? But the spring came, and the summer, and no Mrs. Black appeared, and at last people began to rumour and talk amongst themselves, and all sorts of queer things were said at "high teas," which you may possibly have heard are the only form of entertainment known in such suburbs. said he. The Inmost Light (1894) by Arthur Machen. "No," he answered, "not all experience, for mine counts for something. His long story The Great God Pan made him famous and controversial in his lifetime, but The Hill of Dreams is generally considered his masterpiece. ', 'No; I dare say not. Wasn't that where I left off? It was the face of a woman, and yet it was not human. It was a curious thing to say, but of course the jury brought in a verdict of death from natural causes, and, so far as the public was concerned, the case came to an end. The waiters are staring at us. I concealed nothing from her; I told her what she would become, and what would enter in where her life had been; I told her of all the shame and of all the horror. You and I, Salisbury, have heard in our time, as we sat in our seats in church in sober English fashion, of a lust that cannot be satiated and of a fire that is unquenchable, but few of us have any notion what these words mean. Even at that hour, if I had gone out and taken a rope and hanged myself, I might have escaped, and she also, but in no other way. But you're mistaken, Samindeed, I'll bear it no longer. I don't blame him if he did. The few stray passengers who had been loafing rather than walking about the street had scuttered away, like frightened rabbits, to some invisible places of refuge, and though Salisbury whistled loud and long for a hansom, no hansom appeared. When at last he held it in his hand, and turned the pages, he found that the first two leaves were blank, but the third was covered with clear, minute writing, and Dyson began to read with the light of the opal flaming in his eyes. ', 'How the dickens is that? The, , Machen, Arthur, Buch ', A good many hours after Salisbury had returned to the company of the green rep chairs, Dyson still sat at his desk, itself a Japanese romance, smoking many pipes, and meditating over his friend's story. The collection combines the literary study of the novel as a form with analysis of the material aspects of its readership and production, and a series of thematic and contextual perspectives that examine Victorian fiction in the light of social and cultural concerns relevant both to the period itself and to the direction of current literary and . Salisbury took up his position in the driest corner and looked about him; he was standing in a kind of passage contrived under part of a house, and behind him stretched a narrow footway leading between blank walls to regions unknown. Let us have Chianti; it may not be very good, but the flasks are simply charming. I had an idea that literature was not remunerative. Title: The Inmost Light Title Record # 40258 Author: Arthur Machen Date: 1894-00-00 Type: SHORTFICTION Length: novelette Language: English . And another man before that. The Inmost Light was written in the year 1894 by Arthur Machen. There was something about his look that made me curious, I don't know why, and I began to walk briskly with the idea of overtaking him, when of a sudden his hat blew off and came bounding along the pavement to my feet. 'Yes,' he said at length, 'it was a curious chance, your taking shelter in that archway just as those two went by. Then I knew what had made my very heart shudder and my bones grind together in an agony. 'What did you do then?' Click to read more about The Inmost Light by Arthur Machen. Copies and Availability. My financial state was described by a friend as "stone broke." Salisbury walks home and encounters a drunk couple. Jobs at the Library; But, Salisbury, what a change! 'Let me see,' he said at last, 'we were at the inquest, weren't we? IBut it's such a trivial matterindeed, such an absurditythat I feel ashamed to trouble you with it. He lifted the bed of wool on which the opal had reclined, and saw beneath, no more jewels, but a little old pocket-book, worn and shabby with use. There was an angry hiss, as of steam escaping under great pressure, and as he gazed, motionless, a volume of heavy yellow smoke was slowly issuing from the very centre of the jewel, and wreathing itself in snake-like coils above it. He hailed the first hansom he could see and drove home, and when he had lit his hanging lamp, and laid his parcel on the table, he paused for a moment, wondering on what strange thing the lamplight would soon shine. ', 'No; no, I don't remember anything about it. He propped his stick carefully against the counter and leaning over it, said slowly and impressively, 'Once around the grass, and twice around the lass, and thrice around the maple-tree.'. Even a stray drop or two of rain blown into his face did not rouse him from his meditations, and it was only when with a sudden rush the storm tore down upon the street that he began to consider the expediency of finding some shelter. No, when men say that there are strange things in the world, they little know the awe and the terror that dwell always with them and about them." And when I knew this, I knew also on whom this fate would fall; I looked into my wife's eyes. You heard what I said perfectly well. ', 'Yes. Here's the address. The Inmost Light Itself: 9:31: All The Pretty Little Horses: 2:32: Patripassian: 5:52: The Stars Are Marching Home: The Stars Are Marching Sadly Home: 22:19: Credits (27) Geoff Cox-Dore. Rent or Buy The Inmost Light - 9781419167324 by Machen, Arthur for as low as $14.36 at eCampus.com. Damn you, you dirty thief, I've done with you and your master too, so you can go your own errands, and I only hope they'll get you into trouble.'. Jan 10, 2021, 1:23pm "The Inmost Light" by Arthur Machen Discussion begins on January 13, 2021. Here again was life; rare vintages of France and Italy, at prices which seemed contemptibly small, allured the passer-by; here were cheeses, vast and rich, here olive oil, and here a grove of Rabelaisian sausages; while in a neighbouring shop the whole Press of Paris appeared to be on sale. As he passed along, hurrying, and shrinking from the full sweep of the rain, he noticed the innumerable bell-handles, with names that seemed about to vanish of old age graven on brass plates beneath them, and here and there a richly carved penthouse overhung the door, blackening with the grime of fifty years. You know perfectly well that in your heart you think the oddness in that case is of my making, and that it is all really as plain as the police reports. I suppose it would before long have faded into the background of my brainI should not have forgotten it, for such a thing could never be forgottenbut one morning as I was looking over the paper my eye was caught by a heading over some two dozen lines of small type. And yet the story is a curious one. You pass instantly from town to country; there is no transition as in a small country town, no soft gradations of wider lawns and orchards, with houses gradually becoming less dense, but a dead stop. Salisbury looked out after him and saw him maundering along the pavement, halting now and then and swaying indecisively, and then starting off at some fresh tangent. Arthur Machen. Dyson was shocked at the result of his own audacity. I need not specify these appearances at present, it will be sufficient for me to state that as I proceeded in my task I could scarcely believe that the brain before me was that of a human being at all." It has a velvet back, you know. Do you believe, then, that this woman was something too awful, too terrible to be allowed to remain on the earth? The Inmost Light: (Illustrated)and millions of other books are available for Amazon Kindle. There are the rows of red houses and the rows of white houses and the bright green Venetians, and the blistering doorways, and the little backyards they call gardens, and a few feeble shops, and then, just as you think you're going to grasp the physiognomy of the settlement, it all melts away. LibraryThing is a cataloging and social networking site for booklovers. The vendor of miscellanies gasped, open-mouthed like a fish, and steadied himself against the counter. I was wondering as I walked down whether the corner table were taken. But the power to draw back, the power to stand before the doors that now opened wide before me and not to enter in, had long ago been absent; the way was closed, and I could only pass onward. Well, I determined that my first step must be to try if I could get something more definite and intelligible out of that doctor. I have always been firmly opposed myself to any partnership between physiology and psychology. I didn't quite catch it. The bizarre quality of the inscription which had annoyed Salisbury was to him an attraction, and now and again he took it up and scanned thoughtfully what he had written, especially the quaint jingle at the end. The Inmost Light. And then he just dropped down in the passage, and we thought he was dead. This page intentionally left blank Ghos t-Se e r s, De t ec t i v e s, a nd Spi r i t ua l is ts This is an original study of the narrative techniques that developed for two very popular forms of fiction in the nineteenth century - ghost stories and detective stories - and the surprising similarities between them in the context of contemporary theories of vision and sight. An influential writer of supernatural fiction, Arthur Machen was born in Wales, in 1863. Yes, I was hard up. Of course he wasn't to be found in Harlesden; he had left, I was told, directly after the funeral. He spoke quite coolly, and never moved a muscle. The Great God Pan and The Inmost Light: 1894-00-00: Arthur Machen: John Lane : 168+ 4+ 16 hc? When the first shock was over, I thought once or twice that I should have fainted; my face streamed with a cold sweat, and my breath came and went in sobs, as if I had been half drowned. Reiter's thesis is twofold: (1) that critics have seen Machen's fiction, written during a career of around forty-five years, as something all of which may be interpreted in the light of Machen's lit-crit book Hieroglyphics (written 1899); and that (2) it will be more profitable to consider Machen's writing as showing changes in his concerns and Let's have the bill and be gone.'. The inmost light. Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for The Inmost Light by Machen, Arthur at the best online prices at eBay! 19th Century, Comprehensive Exam List, Gothic Literature, Horror, Victorian List, 19th century, Arthur machen, british gothic, dangerous knowledge, decadence, degeneration, fin de siecle, london, pagan, race, science, urban gothic, weird fiction, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Mr. Salisbury, as may have been gathered from the few remarks which he had found it possible to introduce in the course of the evening, was a young gentleman of a peculiarly solid form of intellect, coy and retiring before the mysterious and the uncommon, with a constitutional dislike of paradox. Again had the reluctant lips of Salisbury slowly to stammer out the rubbish that he abhorred, while Dyson jotted it down on a slip of paper. '"Well," he said, "as I fancy your motive in inquiring into the question must be mere curiosity, I think I may tell you my opinion with tolerable freedom. I managed to get up at last, and walked round to the street, and there I saw the name "Dr. Black" on the post by the front gate. Only at the end of the room was it possible to stand upright, and the sight of the wretched bed and the odour of corruption that pervaded the place made me turn faint and sick. However, his wife's uninhabited body becomes a. What the link between them is, or why they occur together, we do not know, and most authorities believe that we never can know. He was of a type rather common in London; long and thin, with a pasty face and a dull black moustache. The Inmost Light, The Inmost Light is a 1894 short novel by Welsh author and mystic Arthur Machan, originally published along with The Great God Pan in John Lane's Keynotes Series. Where we fail is for want of Homers, not Agamemnons. His face was white with terror as he turned away, and for a moment stood sick and trembling, and then with a start he leapt across the room and steadied himself against the door. I used to grumble in my ignorance at not having completed my education. That must have been convenient. Decadent authors were concerned with the topic of racial degeneracy and decay, so it makes sense for Machen to depict the wild and sinister Dr. Black as a racially inflected white character. Access codes and supplements are not guaranteed with used items. Salisbury turned away in disgust, and settled himself in the easy-chair, upholstered in a bright shade of green, and decked with yellow gimp, which was the pride and attraction of the apartments. No, no more; that stuff of yours is pretty strong. And now before me there crouched this wretched creature, bent and feeble, with shrunken cheeks, and hair that was whitening fast, and limbs that trembled and shook together, and misery in his eyes. I'll get it in a moment.'. It seemed almost hopeless, but Dyson regarded himself as the Wellington of mysteries, and went to bed feeling assured that sooner or later he would hit upon the right track For the next few days he was deeply engaged in his literary labours, labours which were a profound mystery even to the most intimate of his friends, who searched the railway bookstalls in vain for the result of so many hours spent at the Japanese bureau in company with strong tobacco and black tea. I hope you never may, for as I saw that face at the window, with the blue sky above me and the warm air playing in gusts about me, I knew I had looked into another worldlooked through the window of a commonplace, brand-new house, and seen hell open before me. Calligraphy [All Calligraphy By] Andria Degens. He is best known for his influential supernatural, fantasy, and horror fiction. "It struck you as peculiar, did it?" "There's no Mr. Black lives here," she said. The shop-keeper seems distressed when Dyson appears and relays the rhyme, but gives him the box anyway. I fancy that he supposed me ignorant of the matter, or thought that if I had heard of it, I should never connect the respectable Dr. Black of Harlesden with a poor garreteer in the backwoods of London. The Inmost Light by Machen, Arthur Seller Bonita Condition Good ISBN 9781528704090 Item Price $ 41.24. The Inmost Light was written in the year 1894 by Arthur Machen. The Inmost Light, one of Arthur Machen's most disturbing stories, involves a doctor's scientific experiments into occultism, and the vampiric force instigated by his unrelenting curiosity regarding the unseen elements. ', 'I see you are Dyson, unchanged and unchangeable,' said Salisbury, slowly sipping his Chianti. FNH Audio presents an unabridged reading of Arthur Machen's story, The Inmost Light. Dyson smashes the jewel to pieces, allowing the glowing essence within to be released. The Great God Pan: And The Inmost Light : Arthur Machen : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive The Great God Pan: And The Inmost Light by Arthur Machen Publication date 1895 Publisher Roberts Bros. Collection americana Digitizing sponsor Google Book from the collections of Harvard University Language English I turned to the bed where my wife was sleeping peacefully, and lay down again, weeping bitter tears, for the sun had set on our happy life and had risen with a dawn of terror to us both. I won't ask you to come in now, but perhaps some other day" I caught him up at that, and told him I should be only too glad to come and see him. Salisbury took up the paper and crumpled it as the angry woman had done, and aimed it at the fire. I had come up from the Holborn end, and I had almost got to Theobald's Road when I noticed a man walking in front of me, leaning on a stick, and to all appearance very feeble. ", 'It was a queer sort of opinion to get from a man of science, wasn't it? I had gone out myself early in the morning, and had had a long ramble, and somehow or other as I was steering homeward I found myself in this very Harlesden we have been talking about. Of course I rescued the hat, and gave it a glance as I went towards its owner. Well, well, it's no good discussing it any more. It was a token, a symbol, he decided, and not a cipher, and the woman who had flung it away was in all probability entirely ignorant of its meaning; she was but the agent of the 'Sam' she had abused and discarded, and he too was again the agent of some one unknown, possibly of the individual styled Q, who had been forced to visit his French friends. dark 100% tense 100%. To be exact, I had a glass of beer in the "General Gordon," the most flourishing house in the neighbourhood, and as I was wandering rather aimlessly about, I saw an uncommonly tempting gap in a hedgerow, and resolved to explore the meadow beyond. His landlady said that once or twice when she had had occasion to go into his room (to dun the poor wretch for his rent, most likely), he would keep her at the door for about a minute, and that when she came in she would find him putting away his tin box in the corner by the window; I suppose he had become possessed with the idea of some great treasure, and fancied himself a wealthy man in the midst of all his misery. The Inmost Light, one of Arthur Machen's most disturbing stories, involves a doctor's scientific experiments into occultism, and the vampiric force instigated by his unrelenting curiosity regarding the unseen elements. Dyson's abode was in one of the quietest of the quiet streets that led down from the Strand to the river, and when Salisbury passed from the narrow stairway into his friend's room, he saw that the uncle had been beneficent indeed. Just repeat it again, will you, and I will write it down. He gave me an odd sort of glance, as if he were wondering what on earth I or anybody else could care about him, and I left him fumbling with his latch-key. Here he composed himself to his morning's occupationthe perusal of a novel that dealt with sport and love in a manner that suggested the collaboration of a stud-groom and a ladies' college. In the 1920s Machen resorted to humor and satire to convey his dissatisfaction with the increasing secularization of his era, which he felt was robbing the imagination of wonder and mystery. Enjoy our complete collection, Gothic, Ghost, Horror & Weird Library, Return to the Arthur Machen library , or . But I don't think I quite follow you. But you don't look very well, Salisbury. The story follows a scientist who incarcerates his wife's soul in a beautiful shining jewel. Machen's final war tale, the short novel The Terror (1916), is an imperishable depiction of the revolt of animals against humanity's rulership of the earth. said Dyson at length. The song features a guest appearance by HELLOWEEN singer Michael Kiske. And then a thin white flame burst forth from the smoke, and shot up into the air and vanished; and on the ground there lay a thing like a cinder, black and crumbling to the touch. It was a chance if he were ever heard of again, and it was by a mere chance that I came across him at last. Once home, Dyson opens the box. Plot Summary Mr. Charles Salisbury happens to run into his friend Dyson one night in London. ", '"My dear sir," I said, "you surprise me extremely. Salisbury was a man of habit. Soft grass is very grateful to the feet after the infernal grit strewn on suburban sidewalks, and after walking about for some time I thought I should like to sit down on a bank and have a smoke. But suppose we go in; there might be other people who would like to dineit's a human weakness, Salisbury. The Inmost Light The Inmost Light by Arthur Machen The Inmost Light is a masterful story revealing the confessions of a scientist of the occult-- pieced together clues by two busy-body acquaintances, who turn nothing into something.terrifying. He used to go out every morning from ten till one, and one Monday morning we heard him come in, and go into his room and shut the door, and a few minutes after, just as we was a-sitting down to our dinner, there was such a scream that I thought I should have gone right off. The Inmost Light by Arthur Machen It's not a book in and of itself, but it is a story that you'll find in several old books that collect and anthologize Machen's stories. 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