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Fantasy Fan, v. 2, issue 6, whole no. 18, February 1935

Page 83

February, 1935, THE FANTASY FAN     83

land with peculiar ruthlessness from its original settler, Matthew Maule, whom he condemned to the gallows as a wizard int he year of the panic. Maule died cursing old Pyncheon-- "God will give him blood to drink" --and the waters of the old well on the seized land turn bitter. Maule's carpenter son consented to build the great gabled house for his father's triumphant enemy, but the old Colonel died strangely on the day of its dedication. Then followed generations of odd vicissitudes, with queer whispers about the dark powers of the Maules, and peculiar and sometimes terrible ends befalling the Pyncheons.
The overshadowing malevolence of the ancient home--almost as live as Poe's House of Usher, tho in subtler way--pervades the tale as a recurrent motif pervades an operatic tragedy; and when the main story is reached, we behold the modern Pyncheons in a pitiable state of decay. Poor old Hepzibah, the eccentric reduced gentlewoman; childlike, unfortunate Clifford, just released from undeserved imprisonment; sly and treacherous Judge Pyncheon, who is the old Colonel all over again---all these figures are tremendous symbols, and are well matched by the stunted vegetation and anaemic fowls in the garden. It was almost a pity to supply a fairly happy ending, with a union of sprightly Phoebe, cousin and last scion of the Pyncheons, to the prepossessing young man who turns out to be the last of Maules. This union, presumably, ends the curse. Hawthorne avoids all violence of diction or movement, and keeps his implications of terror well terror well in the background; but occasional glimpses amply serve to sustain the mood and redeem the work from pure allegorial aridity. Incidents like the bewitching of Alice Pyncheon in the early eighteenth century, and the spectral music of her harpischord which precedes a death in the family --the latter a variant of an immemorial type of Aryan myth--link the action directly with the supernatural; whilst the dread nocturnal vigil of old Judge Pyncheon in the ancient parlour, with his frightfully ticking watch, is stark horror of the most poignant and genuine sort. The way in which the Judge's death is first adumbrated by the motions and sniffing of a strange cat outside the window, long before the fact is suspected either by the reader or by any of the characters, is a stroke of genius which Poe could not have surpassed. Later the strange cat watches intently outside that same window in the night and on the next day, for--something. It is clearly the psychopomp of primeval myth, fitted and adapted with infinite deftness to its latter-day setting.
But Hawthorne left no well-dined literary posterity. His mood and attitude belonged to the age which closed with him, and it is the spirit of Poe-- who so clearly and realistically understood the natural bassis of the horror-appeal and the correct mechanics of its achievements--which survived and blossomed. Among the earliest of the earliest of Poe's disciples may be reckoned the brilliant young Irishman Fitz-James O'Brien (1828-1862) who became naturalized as an American

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February, 1935, THE FANTASY FAN 83 land with peculiar ruthlessness from its original settler, Matthew Maule, whom he condemned to the gallows as a wizard int he year of the panic. Maule died cursing old Pyncheon-- "God will give him blood to drink" --and the waters of the old well on the seized land turn bitter. Maule's carpenter son consented to build the great gabled house for his father's triumphant enemy, but the old Colonel died strangely on the day of its dedication. Then followed generations of odd vicissitudes, with queer whispers about the dark powers of the Maules, and peculiar and sometimes terrible ends befalling the Pyncheons. The overshadowing malevolence of the ancient home--almost as live as Poe's House of Usher, tho in subtler way--pervades the tale as a recurrent motif pervades an operatic tragedy; and when the main story is reached, we behold the modern Pyncheons in a pitiable state of decay. Poor old Hepzibah, the eccentric reduced gentlewoman; childlike, unfortunate Clifford, just released from undeserved imprisonment; sly and treacherous Judge Pyncheon, who is the old Colonel all over again---all these figures are tremendous symbols, and are well matched by the stunted vegetation and anaemic fowls in the garden. It was almost a pity to supply a fairly happy ending, with a union of sprightly Phoebe, cousin and last scion of the Pyncheons, to the prepossessing young man who turns out to be the last of Maules. This union, presumably, ends the curse. Hawthorne avoids all violence of diction or movement, and keeps his implications of terror well terror well in the background; but occasional glimpses amply serve to sustain the mood and redeem the work from pure allegorial aridity. Incidents like the bewitching of Alice Pyncheon in the early eighteenth century, and the spectral music of her harpischord which precedes a death in the family --the latter a variant of an immemorial type of Aryan myth--link the action directly with the supernatural; whilst the dread nocturnal vigil of old Judge Pyncheon in the ancient parlour, with his frightfully ticking watch, is stark horror of the most poignant and genuine sort. The way in which the Judge's death is first adumbrated by the motions and sniffing of a strange cat outside the window, long before the fact is suspected either by the reader or by any of the characters, is a stroke of genius which Poe could not have surpassed. Later the strange cat watches intently outside that same window in the night and on the next day, for--something. It is clearly the psychopomp of primeval myth, fitted and adapted with infinite deftness to its latter-day setting. But Hawthorne left no well-dined literary posterity. His mood and attitude belonged to the age which closed with him, and it is the spirit of Poe-- who so clearly and realistically understood the natural bassis of the horror-appeal and the correct mechanics of its achievements--which survived and blossomed. Among the earliest of the earliest of Poe's disciples may be reckoned the brilliant young Irishman Fitz-James O'Brien (1828-1862) who became naturalized as an American