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Fantasy Commentator, v. 1, issue 6, Spring 1945
Page 114
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114 FANTASY COMMENTATOR three earlier novels that, for all their uncanniness, wear an air of everyday realism and never lose touch with the normal elements of actual earthly life. He introduced some of his verse into his last book of short stories, Captain Gault, which came out a few months before his death; but most of what he wrote in this kind is published for the first time in his posthumous Calling of the Sea. And in his poems, as in his prose, it is the mystery, the strength, the cruelty, the grimness and sadness of the sea that most potently appeal to him. He visions it as a House of Storms, a Hall of Thunders; calm at times, but with such a calm as one sees When some fierce beast veils anger in his breast, or raging and heaving and roaring tumultuously as though through its tortured waves Some frightful Thing climbed growling from cold depths. For him the voices of the sea are the sighing or calling of its multitudinous dead, and there are lines in which he hints that one day he, too, will be called down to them; but that was not the death he was to die. When the war came, he and his wife had for some while been living in the South of France, but he could not remain there in safety, with the folk at home arming for battle, and, though he was then near forty, he returned to England at once and obtained a commission, in 1915, in the 171st Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery. He put aside all literary work and threw himself heart and soul into his new duties. With characteristic simple frankness, he said his only fear was lest he should feel any shrinking when his time came---a fear that nobody who knew him could ever have had for him. In October, 1917, he went to France with his battery, and was soon in the thick of the fighting. Early in April of 1918 he and a brother officer with a few N.C.O.'s successfully stemmed the rush of an overwhelming number of the enemy who had broken through their line right up to the guns; they fought a gallantly stubborn rear-guard action, under a hail of rifle and machine-gun fire, for three miles across country. A week or two later, on April 17, 1918, Hope Hodgson was killed in action, whilst acting as an observation officer. It is hard to think of him as dead---he was so vigorously and intensely alive. That vigor and intensity of life pulses and burns in everything he has written; and I think he will still be living in, at least, those three of his novels when we who knew and loved him are passed from remembrance. In the world of letters he had only half fulfilled his promise, but in the larger world of men he left no promise unfulfilled and has an abiding place for ever among the heroic company that the seventeenth century seaman Thomas Jones commemorated when he wrote: We that survive perchance may end our days / In some employment meriting no praise, / And lie, forgotten dust, when no man names / The memory of us but to our shames. / They have outlived this fear, and their brave ends / Will ever be an honour to their friends. ---oOo--- The Lord of R'yleh---concluded from page 111 habitation which derives directly from influence of the Lovecraftian viewpoint. In conclusion, this same writer awaits with the keenest of anticipation that momentous day when some hardy Latin scholar decides to take up the fabled Olaus Wormius edition of the forbidden book, and brings forth to the startled world a translation of the Necronomicon---unabridged and unexpurgated---into English blank verse!
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114 FANTASY COMMENTATOR three earlier novels that, for all their uncanniness, wear an air of everyday realism and never lose touch with the normal elements of actual earthly life. He introduced some of his verse into his last book of short stories, Captain Gault, which came out a few months before his death; but most of what he wrote in this kind is published for the first time in his posthumous Calling of the Sea. And in his poems, as in his prose, it is the mystery, the strength, the cruelty, the grimness and sadness of the sea that most potently appeal to him. He visions it as a House of Storms, a Hall of Thunders; calm at times, but with such a calm as one sees When some fierce beast veils anger in his breast, or raging and heaving and roaring tumultuously as though through its tortured waves Some frightful Thing climbed growling from cold depths. For him the voices of the sea are the sighing or calling of its multitudinous dead, and there are lines in which he hints that one day he, too, will be called down to them; but that was not the death he was to die. When the war came, he and his wife had for some while been living in the South of France, but he could not remain there in safety, with the folk at home arming for battle, and, though he was then near forty, he returned to England at once and obtained a commission, in 1915, in the 171st Brigade of the Royal Field Artillery. He put aside all literary work and threw himself heart and soul into his new duties. With characteristic simple frankness, he said his only fear was lest he should feel any shrinking when his time came---a fear that nobody who knew him could ever have had for him. In October, 1917, he went to France with his battery, and was soon in the thick of the fighting. Early in April of 1918 he and a brother officer with a few N.C.O.'s successfully stemmed the rush of an overwhelming number of the enemy who had broken through their line right up to the guns; they fought a gallantly stubborn rear-guard action, under a hail of rifle and machine-gun fire, for three miles across country. A week or two later, on April 17, 1918, Hope Hodgson was killed in action, whilst acting as an observation officer. It is hard to think of him as dead---he was so vigorously and intensely alive. That vigor and intensity of life pulses and burns in everything he has written; and I think he will still be living in, at least, those three of his novels when we who knew and loved him are passed from remembrance. In the world of letters he had only half fulfilled his promise, but in the larger world of men he left no promise unfulfilled and has an abiding place for ever among the heroic company that the seventeenth century seaman Thomas Jones commemorated when he wrote: We that survive perchance may end our days / In some employment meriting no praise, / And lie, forgotten dust, when no man names / The memory of us but to our shames. / They have outlived this fear, and their brave ends / Will ever be an honour to their friends. ---oOo--- The Lord of R'yleh---concluded from page 111 habitation which derives directly from influence of the Lovecraftian viewpoint. In conclusion, this same writer awaits with the keenest of anticipation that momentous day when some hardy Latin scholar decides to take up the fabled Olaus Wormius edition of the forbidden book, and brings forth to the startled world a translation of the Necronomicon---unabridged and unexpurgated---into English blank verse!
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