Fri 20 Nov 2015
Stories I’m Reading: ALGERNON BLACKWOOD “The Camp of the Dog.”
Posted by Steve under Stories I'm Reading[9] Comments
ALGERNON BLACKWOOD “The Camp of the Dog.” Reprinted in The Complete John Silence Stories, edited by S. T. Joshi (Dover, 1997). First published in John Silence, Physician Extraordinary (Nash, UK, 1908). Available online here.
I’ve never been a big fan of occult detective fiction. It’s always seemed to be a contradiction in terms to me. But from the little in the field I’ve read, this one I think is one of the better ones.
I know little about John Silence, except by reputation as the “Psychic Doctor,” and his name, which is an absolutely perfect one for someone in his profession. He doesn’t show up until somewhere around the halfway point in “The Camp of the Dog,” a novella nearly 60 pages long, but at the beginning he serves full notice to Hubbard, his personal secretary and often companion in his adventures into the world of the supernatural, that he will be available on a moment’s notice, if needed.
Hubbard’s destination: a deserted island in the Baltic, together with a married couple, their daughter, and Peter Sangree, a young man who is the other man’s pupil and who is infatuated with the daughter, but only at a distance. At first all is well, but by a clever means and ability with words I do not yet understand, Blackwood gradually makes the reader know that something is amiss in this otherwise idyllic paradise.
Something sinister is growing and about to happen. There is no animal life on the islands, but then howling in the night is heard, then footprints around their tents at night, then abortive attacks again at night from something that seems to be a large ferocious dog. When Silence is at last called upon, he is able to be there the next day.
And of course Silence knows what is going on immediately. There is no detective work involved on the part of anyone, but the first half of the story — a long, slow evocative buildup to the eventual revelation to the horror that awaits — is both creepy and chilling. The vacationers are not trapped on the island, but the isolation it does provide adds immensely to the sense of dread that Blackwood is able to produce.
I think readers today would be impatient with the pace, and would want the events on the island to happen more quickly and be a lot more gruesome. I don’t think the second half of the story is as effective as the first, as Silence immediately puts into action a plan to stop the menace without causing either physical or psychic harm to anyone on the island.
November 20th, 2015 at 10:01 pm
I much prefer Blackwood to Lovecraft and rank him only a little behind Machen and M.R. James. The Silence stories are not detective fiction, not even to the extent of Hodgson ‘ s Carnaki, but there is a sense of dread and a genuine feeling for the unexplained unique to Blackwood that with his literacy I will take any day over the majority of today’s gore, pop psychology, half digested knowledge, bad writing, and illiteracy.
There are even better stories than this one that leave you quietly shaken in a way today’s horror seldom achieves.
November 21st, 2015 at 8:49 am
I was going to mention CARNACKI, THE GHOST HUNTER.
November 21st, 2015 at 7:02 pm
I think I mentioned somewhere before that many classic ghost stories are also detective stories; someone has to figure out what the ghost (or relevant monster as the case may be)is, exactly, then what it’s doing there, what it wants, and what dark secret from the past must be addressed to put things right –a process that often involves collecting and evaluating clues as carefully as any sleuth from Christie to Conman Doyle has done.
November 21st, 2015 at 7:24 pm
I agree wholeheartedly with David Vineyard. Blackwood was one of the greats. Oddly enough his most famous stories (THE WENDIGO and THE WILLOWS) are not his best. They’re great stories but he wrote even better ones.
November 21st, 2015 at 11:35 pm
For my money, I’d say that “A Descent into Egypt” is one of A. Blackwood’s best stories
November 22nd, 2015 at 2:20 pm
I also prefer Blackwood to Lovecraft, based on what I’ve read of the former so far. (I concur on Jonathan’s opinion of “A Descent into Egypt.”)
The latter depends too much on unmentionable curses, unnameable beings and unspeakable horrors, or so it seems to me. I still haven’t determined how Blackwood does it, but he uses ordinary words and phrases and still manages to get under my skin.
November 22nd, 2015 at 2:22 pm
Dan
I like your analysis of ghost stories as a special category of detective fiction. If I’d had that in mind when I read the few Carnacki stories I have, I may have enjoyed them more.
November 22nd, 2015 at 2:52 pm
In terms of the John Silence stories, I suspect that I did not choose the best one to begin with. It’s the fifth of six stories in the Joshi collection, so by the time the reader has worked his way through the book, he is expected to already be familiar with the character. Nor does he appear until halfway through the story. His only role at that point is to effect a cure.
November 22nd, 2015 at 6:34 pm
Silence is proactive in only a few stories and not always the best ones. In several stories the protagonist consults with him only to try and understand his encounter with the supernatural.
Blackwood remains a master of the frisson creating an unease that becomes palpable.