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Seven short stories with a supernatural theme told in a matter of fact way. There is no feeling that the supernatural might not exist.
All stories are written in the past tense and third person, although they may contain first person perspectives. May Sinclair was the author who first used the term ‘stream of consciousness’ in a literary context when she reviewed the first volume of Pilgrimage (Pointed Roofs) by Dorothy Richardson. However, there is little hint of modernism or experimental writing in her style.
The stories are very much of their period in terms of the tension
generated at a time when sexual transgression generated high levels of social disapproval. They are also contemporary in terms of the social hierarchies: the characters (except in The Victim) are well-educated upper-middle-class people who don’t really need to earn their living and have servants to assist them with the earthier aspects of life.
It's also of its time in the number of semi-colons the author uses.
The stories:
Where their fire is not quenched
Harriott Leigh is unlucky in love. Her father said she was too young for George Waring and, as she was waiting to grow up, George died. She is sure that Stephen Philpotts will propose marriage to her but instead he tells her he is in love with someone else. So she becomes the mistress of married Oscar Wade, an affair which has its moments of horror. But when she dies ...
The token
A man who can't express his feelings. A wife who longs to be sure of his love. They row about a paperweight. That night she dies. And her ghost haunts the room where he works, forever hoping to know whether he loved her.
The flaw in the crystal
The longest story in the collection. Agatha has the gift of making people well. But when she tries to cure Harding of his insanity, things start to go wrong. How can she help others and at the same time protect herself?
The nature of the evidence
A barrister’s adored first wife dies. Her ghost then prevents him having sex with his second wife.
If the Dead Knew
Organist Wilfred Hollyer’s mother who raised him from a sickly child, protecting him ... or over-protecting him and preventing him from being able to earn a decent living. As as result he can only marry love-of-his-life Effie Carroll when his mother dies which might be twenty years away. But he loves his mother. But ...
Guilt in the form of supernatural phantasms.
The Victim
Chauffeur Steven Ackroyd becomes violently angry if he perceives anyone coming in between him and his girlfriend, Dorsy, a fellow servant. So when she leaves Mr Greathead’s employ, he plans the perfect murder to revenge himself upon his master. What could go wrong?
The Finding of the Absolute
Mr Spalding develops his own metaphysical consolation in place of religion after his wife leaves him for an Imagist poet. Then he dies. Heaven seems remarkably like the role-playing computer simulation Second Life, decades before it started. With Kant.
Selected quotes:
“Women never seem to consider that a man can get all the talk he wants from other men.” (Where their fire is not quenched)
“Sleep made him beautiful and innocent; it laid a fine, smooth tissue over his coarseness; it made his mouth gentle; it entirely hid his eyes.” (Where their fire is not quenched)
“Then, suddenly, the room began to come apart before her eyes, to split into shafts of floor and furniture and ceiling that shifted and were thrown by their commotion into different planes. They leaned slanting at every possible angle; they crossed and overlaid each other with a transparent mingling of dislocated perspectives, like reflections fallen on an interior seen behind glass.” (Where their fire is not quenched)
“The revolving doors caught her and pushed her out into the street.” (Where their fire is not quenched)
“The strange quality of her state was this, that it had no time. ... She was aware of things happening and about to happen; she fixed them by the place they occupied, and measured their duration by the space she went through. So now she thought: If I could only go back and get to the place where it hadn’t happened.” (Where their fire is not quenched)
“Their passion weighed on them with the unbearable, unescapable boredom of immortality.” (Where their fire is not quenched)
The stories:
Where their fire is not quenched
Harriott Leigh is unlucky in love. Her father said she was too young for George Waring and, as she was waiting to grow up, George died. She is sure that Stephen Philpotts will propose marriage to her but instead he tells her he is in love with someone else. So she becomes the mistress of married Oscar Wade, an affair which has its moments of horror. But when she dies ...
The token
A man who can't express his feelings. A wife who longs to be sure of his love. They row about a paperweight. That night she dies. And her ghost haunts the room where he works, forever hoping to know whether he loved her.
The flaw in the crystal
The longest story in the collection. Agatha has the gift of making people well. But when she tries to cure Harding of his insanity, things start to go wrong. How can she help others and at the same time protect herself?
The nature of the evidence
A barrister’s adored first wife dies. Her ghost then prevents him having sex with his second wife.
If the Dead Knew
Organist Wilfred Hollyer’s mother who raised him from a sickly child, protecting him ... or over-protecting him and preventing him from being able to earn a decent living. As as result he can only marry love-of-his-life Effie Carroll when his mother dies which might be twenty years away. But he loves his mother. But ...
Guilt in the form of supernatural phantasms.
The Victim
Chauffeur Steven Ackroyd becomes violently angry if he perceives anyone coming in between him and his girlfriend, Dorsy, a fellow servant. So when she leaves Mr Greathead’s employ, he plans the perfect murder to revenge himself upon his master. What could go wrong?
The Finding of the Absolute
Mr Spalding develops his own metaphysical consolation in place of religion after his wife leaves him for an Imagist poet. Then he dies. Heaven seems remarkably like the role-playing computer simulation Second Life, decades before it started. With Kant.
Selected quotes:
“Women never seem to consider that a man can get all the talk he wants from other men.” (Where their fire is not quenched)
“Sleep made him beautiful and innocent; it laid a fine, smooth tissue over his coarseness; it made his mouth gentle; it entirely hid his eyes.” (Where their fire is not quenched)
“Then, suddenly, the room began to come apart before her eyes, to split into shafts of floor and furniture and ceiling that shifted and were thrown by their commotion into different planes. They leaned slanting at every possible angle; they crossed and overlaid each other with a transparent mingling of dislocated perspectives, like reflections fallen on an interior seen behind glass.” (Where their fire is not quenched)
“The revolving doors caught her and pushed her out into the street.” (Where their fire is not quenched)
“The strange quality of her state was this, that it had no time. ... She was aware of things happening and about to happen; she fixed them by the place they occupied, and measured their duration by the space she went through. So now she thought: If I could only go back and get to the place where it hadn’t happened.” (Where their fire is not quenched)
“Their passion weighed on them with the unbearable, unescapable boredom of immortality.” (Where their fire is not quenched)
"All Milly's plans had been like that; they fell to dust; they were dust. There had always been that pitiful, desperate stirring of the dust to hide the terror; the futile throwing of the dust in the poor thing's eyes. As if he couldn't see through it." (The Flaw in the Crystal)
"The Easter moon, golden-white and holy, looked down at her, shrined under the long, sharp arch of the beech trees." (The Flaw in the Crystal)
"It was now as if her being drunk with every pore the swimming darkness." (The Flaw in the Crystal)
"This is the story Marston told me. He didn't want to tell it. I had to tear it from him bit by bit. I've pieced the bits together in their time order, and explained things here and there, but the facts are the facts he gave me." (The Nature of the Evidence) It seems a nice way of asserting that this is gospel truth while leaving room for an unreliable narrator. But I couldn't help feeling that the reader might have had more fun if they had been presented with Marston's incoherent jumble and had to organise it themself.
"He was one of those bigoted materialists of the nineteenth century type who believe that consciousness is a purely physiological phenomenon, and that when your body's dead, you're dead." (The Nature of the Evidence)
"The library was the room Rosamund liked best, because it was his room. She had her place in the corner by the hearth, and they were always alone there together in the evenings when his work was done, and when it wasn't done she would sit still with him, keeping quiet in the corner with her book." (The Nature of the Evidence) Very few of the women in this collection have any agency in this world. Many of them achieve it in the next.
"Before they could marry, they would be fifty-five and forty-five; old, old; too old to feel, to care passionately." (If the dead knew) I'm 68. Hmmm.
"His beliefs were always the expression of his fears." (If the dead knew)
"He knew the joy that made Jerry, the black cat, dance on his hind legs and bow sideways and wave his forelegs like wings." (The finding of the Absolute)
July 2025; 197 pages
First published in 1923
The paperback edition was issued by Renard Press in 2025
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