Comments on: HAUNTOGRAPHY: Count Magnus https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/11/hauntography-count-magnus Lollards in the high church of low culture Wed, 22 Jun 2016 17:34:36 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 By: Brian_Artillery https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/11/hauntography-count-magnus/comment-page-1#comment-1882972 Wed, 22 Jun 2016 17:34:36 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16266#comment-1882972 I was always struck by the thought that Count Magnus was ‘cleaning up’, ensuring that nobody knew that he was abroad. Mr. Wraxall was the last person to know conclusively of the Count’s resurrection, and was taken out of the equation. Which leads me to the most chilling part: The Count, and his ‘friend’ from Chorazon are, presumably, still roaming about somewhere…

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By: a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/11/hauntography-count-magnus/comment-page-1#comment-663783 Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:15:44 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16266#comment-663783 My thesis is that yes! there are rules here, but CM, at the ruthless heart of the aristocracy, has to power effectively to manipulate them at his whim. So it’s like aristocrats hunting grouse before the glorious 12th: it’s against the rules, but if you’re powerful enough no one can actually stop you — the rules are there really to amuse CM himself, as part of the elaboration of frivolity. There’s no hint that the poachers in the tale the landlord told “called him up” by repetition or indeed were Wraxall types; they entered the forest and alerted the squid-weapon, who set upon them with sucky relish — while Magnus doubtless leant on his stick and watched with “interest”!

But it may be that, yes, like Dennistoun in re Alberic, the magic is set in motion by cupidity of some kind: tho Wraxall’s villainy is vanishingly minor! Not much more than a faintly patronising attitude towards the locals and their foolish tales!

I’m interested how other readers interpret the fact that the locks appear to be “spring loaded” or whatever MRJ says. Of course, as I noted above, he gives deliberately unreadable “clues” now and then — not red so much as BLACK herrings! — and this may be one of them. But I think we’re meant to read something into it: I read a kind of Houdini machinery into it, where the apparently bound man is perfectly able to free himself when he feels like it. And “feels like it” is when the right kind of prey happenes along. Poor Wraxall!

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By: tom wootton https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/11/hauntography-count-magnus/comment-page-1#comment-663767 Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:42:30 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16266#comment-663767 I’m not sure he is free. Most ghosts require some sort of invitation. (‘Be sure, there are RULES’ as James once said.)This is one of the aspects of James that has recently interested me – the complicity of the character in their own demise.

Magnus requires someone to set him free, and, rather like the E war Woo war character in the Wicker Man, the victim has to be someone of a specific type.

Academics are peculiarly suited to fill this role – they have a sort of sceptical curiosity, they are both innocent and drawn in by apparently dry mysteries. Their attempts to understand the past can result in them making semi-faustian wishes for knowledge beyond that which they can reasonably be expected to have (‘How I would like to see you, Magnus’ etc). In this respect he is somewhat similar to Magnus himself – who has pursued secret knowledge beyond that which mankind is supposed to have.

But he also utters his wishes to see Magnus in semi-dream states, which suggest that he is in some way being lured to release Magnus.

(see also Maurice Allingham’s sudden realisation at the end of The Green Man – he thinks he has been investigating Dr Underhill, but realises that in fact he was chosen for his special suitability – alcoholic, unwilling to open up to other people, teenage daughter etc.)

Uncertainty in this area is not just to be expected, it is to be desired – it contains in it the germ of the nightmare where you know the terror is coming, but you can do nothing to avoid it – the events tend inexorably to doom.

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By: ledge https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/11/hauntography-count-magnus/comment-page-1#comment-663564 Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:40:03 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16266#comment-663564 But if he’s free, why the charade with the three padlocks and their unlocking via the three repeated wishes to see the Count?

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By: a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/11/hauntography-count-magnus/comment-page-1#comment-663438 Mon, 30 Nov 2009 19:01:20 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16266#comment-663438 I have always read it that CM and his squat squidbot were able to get out any time they chose: this is bascally about hunting and hunting rights; the count enjoys watching his beasts bring down their quarry, though for various reasons he chooses not to do it every day… wraxall is GAME, and there are rules set on when and what he hunts, though they are entirely self-policed, presumably so as not to denude his woods of game entirely, or upset the delicate ecological-political balance

that great work QUEEN OF THE DAMNED is abt a struggle between vampires who wish to farm the huntable human and vampires who prefer to go hog wild on em…

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By: ledge https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/11/hauntography-count-magnus/comment-page-1#comment-663413 Mon, 30 Nov 2009 16:57:40 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16266#comment-663413 I do have a small problem with an apparent lack of motivation in this tale. Most of James’ baddies either have a specific grievance against their target, or are more mindless creatures giving the willies to whoever crosses their path. Magnus isn’t mindless but nor does he seem to have much a reason for killing Wraxall – indeed shouldn’t he be grateful to him for setting him free? And what happens to Magnus afterwards, is he still at large?

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By: marna https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/11/hauntography-count-magnus/comment-page-1#comment-663362 Mon, 30 Nov 2009 12:02:42 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16266#comment-663362 The devil-fish tentacle reference makes me think of the vampire squid from hell.

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By: a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/11/hauntography-count-magnus/comment-page-1#comment-663242 Sun, 29 Nov 2009 19:19:57 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16266#comment-663242 I love that the landlord here — compared to Number 13 — is pretty much “plz to f.off you total English tw@t…”

Also inspired by this story, of course: “Spectre vs Rector”: The Rector was the Hampshire! The spectre was from Chorazina!

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By: Tom https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/11/hauntography-count-magnus/comment-page-1#comment-663236 Sun, 29 Nov 2009 18:35:50 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16266#comment-663236 Two things make this the scariest James for me (it’s also up there as one of my favourites).

i. The way the pursuit of Wraxall slips into nightmare logic: there is no reason whatsoever for the Count and his mysterious henchthing to wait until Wraxall is back in England to eat his face up, so there’s a sense of being toyed with by something unspeakable which is quite unpleasant. Particularly effective is the scene where Wraxall, having got the fastest possible transport once back in England, looks out of his coach window and glimpses the pursuers idling at a crossroads.

(it’s cartoon-logic as well as nightmare-logic of course – the more you try and get away from Droopy, the surer you are to encounter him)

ii. For James, this is a curiously linear and merciless story. There is no twist: the protagonist does something stupid and dies horribly for it. It’s obvious fairly early on that he’s going to do it, he does it, and the story continues on for several more pages, with James’ own voice somewhat amused by his own character’s silliness (“Poor Mr Wraxall!”). Most horror stories have this Zone of Inevitability between the curse being triggered and its falling, but a lot of them hinge on successful attempts to escape the zone. No such luck here!

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By: tom wootton https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/11/hauntography-count-magnus/comment-page-1#comment-663200 Sun, 29 Nov 2009 14:34:24 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16266#comment-663200 Great stuff. Count Magnus was always one of my favourites. Re-reading it recently for a blog post here –

http://theidiotandthedog.wordpress.com/2009/10/31/james-kipling-welch-three-ghost-stories-for-all-hallows-even/

I think one of my favourite details was when he inspects the brass engravings on the sarcophagus, and expecting to see… well, here it is –

“Let us see how the huntsman is pictured: doubtless it will be a demon blowing on his horn.” But, as it turned out, there was no such sensational figure, only the semblance of a cloaked man on a hillock, who stood leaning on a stick, and watching the hunt with an interest which the engraver had tried to express in his attitude.”

That ‘interest’ is chilling.

Incidentally, of all the ghost stories that might serve as an inspiration for Kingsley Amis’s The Green Man, it’s this one that is the most likely – the use of a conjured familiar, and the implication of eternal life (or an inhuman form of it) both reflect aspects of Amis’s novel, and, once again, that studied ‘interest’ seems very much a part of The Attitude of Dr Underhill.

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By: a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/11/hauntography-count-magnus/comment-page-1#comment-663184 Sun, 29 Nov 2009 12:01:47 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16266#comment-663184 I’ve banged on about this before, but I am reasonably confident that the section in Eliot’s “The Wasteland” where he talks about there being another being walking beside them — which he obfuscates in the notes as merely being a reference to something in one of the accounts of the various South Polar Expeditions* — also has a touch of Wraxall’s extra travelling companions:

Who is the third who walks always beside you?
When I count, there are only you and I together
But when I look ahead up the white road
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded

*It’s actually in the the Shackleton expedition, when Shackleton, Worsley and Crean are crossing the mountainous central plateau of South Georgia together: hallucinating with hunger, exhaustion and probably mild oxygen starvation, they feel someone else is with them, which they all interpret religiously. Eliot emphasises the Christian reading in his gloss, but it’s surely not the only thing there. (After all, the notes also omit the poem’s rather obvious little bob towards Dracula hmself…)

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By: lonepilgrim https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/11/hauntography-count-magnus/comment-page-1#comment-663182 Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:36:50 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16266#comment-663182 Perhaps worth linking to the story here:

http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~fadey/magnus.html

I find the details of the tall figure in the ‘broad hat’ disturbing for some reason – perhaps that sense of the uncanny where familiar objects become displaced.
Suggestion is almost always more disturbing than explicit horror – I can recall being more chilled by the glimpse of the red coated figure scuttling in the background towards the end of ‘Don’t look now’ than the final scenes.

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By: a tanned rested and unlogged lørd sükråt wötsît https://freakytrigger.co.uk/ft/2009/11/hauntography-count-magnus/comment-page-1#comment-663181 Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:34:22 +0000 https://freakytrigger.co.uk/?p=16266#comment-663181 I think the tidiest future-horror device he invents is the point where he realises the sarcophagus is opening and flees: “I only know that there was something more than have written that alarmed me, but whether it was sight or sound I am not able to remember.” My instinct with this kind of thing is to hunt for clues what the “something more” is: but while in Kipling or a similar proto-modernist of similar date, we would find it, even f it meant decoding hints from things said, or the the tiniest element of setting, here with James, the purpose is to leave us unsettled and grasping round, filling in the horror with our own — far more terror-ridden — imaginations. We know what we’re scared of: this must be something like, and in it goes, and here’s the fear.

This is the opposite of Lovecraft, who slathers “unspeakable horror sauce” over every rattled doorknob, and you can’t reach and supply the fear, because no one has ever encountered “cosmic terror”.

Sociologically, we are moving from the era when any reader would have had intimate memory of death in the home, and the phyisical fact of the dead — would have seen bodies and so on. Within a generation — excluding wars and epidemics — this would begin hugely to recede: we are now quite hygienically sundered from such things; and cope with them via horror films or via the telly. James is think writing right on the cusp of the start of this change: he can dwell on grisliness very effectively, given his somewhat mannered Victorian air — which also functions as a device, even if it also reflects his character

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