Wed 28 Oct 2015
Reviewed by Dan Stumpf: D. SCOTT-MONCRIEFF – Not for the Squeamish.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[5] Comments
D. SCOTT-MONCRIEFF – Not for the Squeamish. Story collection. Background Book Ltd., UK, paperback, 1948.
I can’t find out much about D. Scott-Moncrieff except that it was a pen name for one William Hardy, and not the Scott Moncrieff who translated Proust. Nor can I discover the origin of the stories that appear in this book. They have the look of having appeared in the British equivalent of pulp magazines, but I can find no reference to them.
Whatever their origin, the nine stories in Not for the Squeamish are in the classic Weird Tales style, tight and chilling narratives of “cannibalism, vampires, a leper island… robots and a twentieth century auto da fé†to quote the blurb, with sundry demons and voodoo curses thrown in for gratuitous thrills.
Scott-Moncrieff deals all this out with a certain amount of style as well. For example, when recounting the excesses of a zealous Nazi SS officer, he mentions, “…a long love poem, written on a large piece of human skin, removed from a prisoner’s back for that purpose. One of our corporals whose German is perfect says that it was very bad poetry and a lot of it was lifted bodily from Schiller.â€
I should perhaps fess up to a certain cruelty of my own because a little more research has shown that Squeamish is not an easy book to find, nor a cheap one to acquire. I picked up mine in a grubby used-book store / porno shoppe back in the 1970s, when they were still selling things like this on the cheap-o table, and only after I’d passed it up for several visits.
Whatever the case, I’m glad I got it, happier still that I finally read it, and urge you to do the same should you be so lucky or so rich.
October 28th, 2015 at 12:41 pm
I haven’t found a reference to William Hardy yet, Dan That may be in error.
From the online Encyclopedia of Science Fiction:
Scott-Moncrieff, D. (1907-1987) UK vintage car restorer and author, who hyphenated his surname for his books, which included some nonfiction. In Not for the Squeamish (coll 1948), the first of his two volumes of stories, of direct sf interest is “Count Szolnok’s Robots”, in which Robots are terminally evil, with several other tales edge into the realms of Gothic SF; his second collection, The Vaivaisukko’s Bridge (coll 1949 chap), focuses on weird fiction. [JC]
David William Hardy Scott Moncrieff
born Egham, Surrey: 1907
died 28 June 1987
works (selected)
Not for the Squeamish (London: Background Books, 1948) [coll: pb/uncredited]
The Vaivaisukko’s Bridge (Glasgow, Scotland: Scots Digest, 1949) [coll: chap: pb/uncredited]
October 28th, 2015 at 12:43 pm
Doh. I didn’t see that “William Hardy” consists of two of his middle names.
October 28th, 2015 at 12:49 pm
Also online is a list of the stories in both collections. There is no indication of prior publication for any of them.
http://www.philsp.com/homeville/isfac/s278.htm#A4432
Not for the Squeamish. C. K. [sic] Scott-Moncrieff (Background, 1948, 1/6, 108pp, pb)
Not for the Squeamish · ss
Count Szolnik’s Robots · ss
Dating Feature · ss
No Return Ticket · ss
A Baroque Tomb · ss
Schloss Wappenburg · ss
After the Auto-Da-Fe · ss
The Tale of the Long Knives · ss
They Shine by Night · ss
The Vaivaisukko’s Bride. C. K. [sic] Scott-Moncrieff (Horror Club, 195?, 1/-, 63pp, pb)
The Vaivaisukko’s Bride · ss
An Unimaginative Man · ss
Strange Shelter · ss
Not Forty Months Ago · ss
She’ll Never Leave You · ss
They Kept to Their Bargain · ss
Diamond Cut Diamond · ss
The Agnostic Chess Player · ss
The Man with the Flaxen Hair · ss
Mind Over Matter · ss
October 28th, 2015 at 3:38 pm
That’s what puzzles me; some of the stories have interconnected frames (different stories told in the same pub and that sort of thing)in the manner of a continuing series, and Scott-Moncrieff’s writing is good enough that I can’t believe he only published in these obscure collections.
October 28th, 2015 at 9:29 pm
A good example of civilized British writing in the genre.