Innsmouth Book Club
Hosted by Rob Poyton and Tim Mendees, the Innsmouth Book Club is a fortnightly podcast devoted to Lovecraftian fiction and cosmic horror in general.
We discuss books, film, TV, gaming, art and music and chat with Lovecraftian creatives about their work. Episodes are free, with bonus content and other rewards available for patrons - click Subscribe or visit our Patreon page for details, and to access past episodes.
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Innsmouth Book Club
IBC125 The Demoiselle D'Ys
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We venture across the Channel for Robert W Chambers classic, The Demoiselle D'Ys. We parlez Chatto and Windus, Rabelais, Brittany, Ys, Lyonesse and Dr Who.
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Greetings, travellers, and welcome to episode 125 of the Insmith Bug Club Podcast. Today we're delving into Ah, we're delving into a right dusty old tome here, but it's for a story that's probably not one that people would expect when you talk about it.
SPEAKER_01I'm one of your hosts, Tim Mendies. And I'm the other one, Rob Poyton. Yes, we are delving into the work of Mr. Robert W. Chambers again. We had one visit before to Paris, I believe.
SPEAKER_00Was it the Court of the Dragon? Yeah, it's interesting because that's the first ever episode I did, but I was a guest, so I didn't talk about the story.
SPEAKER_01Ah wow, there we go. There we go. And uh actually, can I just say before we start, we're in the library here and I noticed they're redecorated with this rather strange yellow wallpaper. Or is it just me that you see in that?
SPEAKER_00No, it's definitely yellow, and uh it I think there's something moving behind it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'll I'm gonna sit with my back to that, I think, and just pretend it's not happening. However, before we nip over to Breton, a couple of news items. Of course, the Innsmouth Literary Festival 26 is looming large, it's getting relatively close now, isn't it? September the 19th in Oddly Moist Bedford. We're gonna be putting out some more details about guests and traders in the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for that. And you can also book your tickets on Eventbrite now as well as direct through the Innsmouth Gold site. Now, you may remember last episode we had Mike Leiden visited us in Innsmouth for an excellent chat about uh uh well, a range of things, but it most particularly his documentary on Lovecraft in Florida, or at least part one of the documentary, because part two is coming out this year. So if you haven't already, do and do go and have a listen to that. It was a really interesting hearing him describe how he walked in Lovecraft's footsteps in the old Barlow house. And I mentioned Mike because he posted something up, he joined the Innsmouth Forum recently, which all of you should do as well, of course, if you haven't already. We've got some great chats going on there. And Mike came up with a lovely idea. I'll read this out. I checked into the Gilman House in Innsmouth, room five to eight. I realized that according to Lovecraft and his drawing of the Gilman House attached, there must be at least a hundred rooms in the hotel, probably more. If Olmstead has room four to eight in the story, it must indicate at least twenty to thirty rooms per floor, although probably not mainly on the first floor, if at all. For the fun of it, you could tell people they are free to check in and take a room number, although checking out might be a bit difficult.
SPEAKER_00Nice.
SPEAKER_01So, yeah, lovely idea. Thanks for that, Mike. If you sign up for the Innsmouth Forum, then do feel free to pick a room number. Obviously, 428 is reserved for our guests, and Mike has taken five to eight and I'm on reception.
SPEAKER_00I'm in the kitchen.
SPEAKER_01Oh, we dread to think what culinary horrors you're brewing in there.
SPEAKER_00Slippery tether terrors, yes.
SPEAKER_01Now there's an event coming up in a couple of weeks' time as this goes out. That is Chaosium Con. That's being held in Bedfordshire over the weekend of sort of 23rd, 24th of May. I'm going to be there for at least one day selling some of my wares and delights, and of course, tickets for the ILF. So if you are there, do pop over and have a chat. Speaking of gaming, I'd also just like to quickly mention my We Want the Gold fantasy skirmish rules. I've just had another review. I got a very nice review from Paul Lee on the lace and steel gaming site uh a few weeks ago, and Big Lee over at Miniature Adventures has also put up a very nice review of the rules just this last week. So that's that's nice to hear. I'm sure it's the same for you, sir. You you put stuff out and then oh, a review has come in and you sort of clench a little bit.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yeah, there is that. I I used to do a lot more nowadays, and I I barely bother looking at them half the time because it because they you know, especially because people hold such stock in like Goodreads and Amazon reviews and things like that, because they are kind of like gold dust because they're what goose the algorithm. But nine times out of ten, it's just like it was alright, or liked it, or you know, it's never anything that constructive, so it's nice when you get an actually properly written review.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely, absolutely. Well, actually, this brings us nicely into the story today because I I was uh looking around at sort of King in Yellow stuff in general, I did find one of those reviews, I think it might have been, I can't remember if it was Goodreads or Amazon, that was a one-star review for Robert Chambers, The King in Yellow. Right, yeah, and it was along the lines of well, they're just these short stories and nothing much really happens. What did you expect? I I sometimes wonder if if people, because of true detective, you know, perhaps people expect this is going to be some sort of crime thriller with supernatural elements or something. I do wonder, yeah. So I'm missing the whole point of cosmic horror and and weird fiction in general, but you know, there we go. It's not for everyone, is it?
SPEAKER_00No, it's not. It's it's uh the niche of the niche, isn't it? Really, if you think about it. Because it's uh the niche part of horror, which itself is a niche, so yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we're niche squared.
SPEAKER_00Niche squared, all of it.
SPEAKER_01So, yes, Robert W. Chambers, 1865 to 1933. We did cover him before, of course, when we covered it, when we looked at him in The Court of the Dragon, but just very briefly, he was born in Brooklyn, New York. And the main thing as it as relates to today's story, well, in fact, the whole series, is that Chambers went to art school in Paris in the 1880s, and I feel that whole culture and atmosphere there had a big influence on his writing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would I would say that's a definite that's a certainty, because it has that kind of almost romanticism that that it goes hand in hand with a lot of French literature of the time. You know, it's he's definitely gonna have been inspired by a lot of that kind of thing. In fact, it suggested that uh this story was influenced by the works of Theophile Gautier. Ah, right, right. So yeah, there we go.
SPEAKER_01There's two other very direct influences here as well, because there was a French artist called Luminet who uh well he he he did a lot of paintings, but one of them particular was called The Flight of King Gravelon that was exhibited in Paris in the 1880s, and it's a depiction of a scene from the myth of the city of Is, which we we shall be talking about. And something else interesting I found there's an opera called Le Roi d'Is, the King of Is, which is an opera in three acts and five tableaus by the composer Edouard Lallo, that premiered on the 7th of May 1888 at the Theatre Lyric in Paris. So it's highly likely that Chambers would have seen that opera as well, or at least known about it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I was reading about that myself. And yeah, didn't Isha do a painting based on it as well? Ah right. In 1929, a woodcut in in Pride by Debusy's piece.
SPEAKER_01Huh? Yes. So it was definitely something in the atmosphere at that time, that that whole decadent movement as well, I guess.
SPEAKER_00Hmm, absolutely. Right, so yeah, just looking briefly at the publication history, uh, King of Yellow was first published by F. Tennyson Neely in 1895, with the British first edition being handled by Chato and Windus. Now I want to just talk very briefly about Chato and Windows because I love that name. But I didn't realise that up until fairly recently they they became an imprint of Penguin Random House after being purchased in 1987.
SPEAKER_01Oh right.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um yeah, Chatto and Windus was founded in 1855 by John Camden Houghton, before being sold to Andrew Chatto, who was a junior partner uh of Houghton's at the time, and also the poet William Edward Windows, hence the name.
SPEAKER_01I didn't know he was a poet. I I have seen that name before as a publisher, but I I didn't know Windows was a poet.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. So yeah, it's quite um it's quite a big publisher, really, because they they publish such names as Mark Twain, Wilkie Collins, H. G. Wells, Aldous Huxley, Samuel Beckett, Robert Lewis Stevenson. Wow, that's quite a roster, isn't it? Isn't it? So Mr. Chambers was in pretty damn good company there.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And as we know, one thing about Chambers that uh disappoints in a sense, although you can't really blame him, is the King in Yellow stands out as a classic of weird fiction and cosmic horror, but the vast majority of the rest of his output was historical fiction and romance, which he made a very successful career with.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, you say that, but he did actually do quite a lot of weird stories. It's just nobody remembers them. Um there's a collection put out by Hippocampus in 2021, under the classics of Gothic Horror series, called The Harbormaster: The Best Weird Stories of Robert W. Chambers. And um yeah, there's 12 stories in there, along with an introduction by S. T. Joshi and a bibliography and all that good stuff. But yeah, there were some really good stories amongst them because obviously I was only really familiar with the King and Yellow stories when I picked it up. But obviously, they're all in there, the ones you'd expect. But then, yeah, it was stories like The Maker of Moons, I thought was really, really good. Yes. Yeah, and The Harbor Masters, a classic, which was believed to have influenced Lovecraft with Innsmouth and things like that. So, yeah, there's some really some really good stuff in it. So I urge people to check it out. It's a really good book.
SPEAKER_01Now, at the start of this story, we have two epigrams, the first of which is in French, which I don't think either of us is going to attempt. I'm not attempting it.
SPEAKER_00Why do you think I've looked up the English translation of it?
SPEAKER_01Me too, me too. Now, patrons might remember for the last bonus episode I actually did a reading of this story, and I have to apologize for the any mispronunciations in that story. I did actually manage to get a friend to read the poem at the start, so that was something I wasn't going to attempt that. But even so, throughout, there's a lot of well, not just French terms, but archaic French terms dealing with falconry and the like. Yes. So uh I I just made my best guess, most of those.
SPEAKER_00I've got to I have got to say that when I was reading this this morning, I was chuckling to myself, just imagining what you're I want to hear the unedited version because I imagine there was a lot of sort of pauses of like, oh for fuck's sake, how'd you say that?
SPEAKER_01What's that expression? Pardon my French. So kind of double application there, really. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I imagine the blooper reel on that one would be quite entertaining.
SPEAKER_01I've I've seen a few translations of this, everyone is slightly different, so what what I'd be interested to see what you've gone for.
SPEAKER_00Well, I've gone for the one that I think I don't know, just I I liked it the best. Um especially is because I'm not entirely sure if it's meant to be meant to sound how I'm gonna say it. Down on the tenebrous one who said Heraclitus is the hidden truth. Oh, that's nice. Tenebrus is I think that's a good word, isn't it? Yeah, but the hidden truth ties in with the the whole king in yellow, it's the phantom of truth and all that. It ties in with the play.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00So that's why I think that one works. I'm not entirely sure about that, but I believe that I went down on the tenebrous one.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I I did see that one as well, and I thought I'm not gonna say that because Tim will giggle. The the the kind of most different one that I found was I will seek out the resolution even unto the bottom of the undrainable well, where Heraclitus says the truth lies hidden. So every translation seems to have a slightly different meaning or interpretation, but I I like your one better than that, I think.
SPEAKER_00Well, I think that one's more of just a direct translation, because looking at the words in the original French, I mean Suite descendu, I descend, I went down. Yes, you know, uh so yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh and and this is where we've been talking about this recently on Strange Shadows, particularly the recent bonus episode, where Smith was talking about his translations of Borderlea and how it's possible to translate that literally, but then you lose the whole atmosphere of the piece and a lot of the associations. Yes, yeah, very difficult to translate poetry, I should think.
SPEAKER_00Especially as well, if you're trying to keep it to a metre or something, it must be an absolute nightmare.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes. And this saying is actually from Arabale, who was a late Middle Ages or Renaissance writer. Well, he was known. This is one well it's a Renaissance man, right? So he's a physician, a scholar, a diplomat, and a Catholic priest. Later, he became better known as a satirist for his depictions of the grotesque and his larger-than-life characters, basically very bawdy humour, hence the expression Rabalasian. His most well-known series relates the adventures of the giants Gargantua and his son Pantagruel. Apologies for the pronunciation there. Now, this is this is where it got interesting for me as well, because this there's a little connection that I wasn't aware of. In the second novel, Gargantua builds the Abbey of Thelema.
SPEAKER_02Ah, nice.
SPEAKER_01The inscription at the gate first specifies who is not welcome. Are you ready for this?
SPEAKER_00Go on.
SPEAKER_01Hypocrites, bigots, the pox ridden, goths, magoths, strew chewing law clerks, usurious grinches, old or officious judges, and burners of heretics.
SPEAKER_00Amazing. That's amazing.
SPEAKER_01I don't know what the goths did to upset him. And who are the Magoths? M-A-G-O-T-H-S.
SPEAKER_00Like, do they wear red caps? Yeah, I was gonna say, I think I've seen a group of them on Facebook. Then they've got their own chat room. Make goth great again.
SPEAKER_01And the thalamites in the abbey live according to a single rule, do what you want. Or as uh someone else a little later phrased it, do what thou wilt, I believe.
SPEAKER_00Do what thou wilt, indeed. 'Tis the whole of the law.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, a very nice little connection there.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, brilliant.
SPEAKER_01So that's the first epigram. This this story, I mean, in a way, it's a very simple, straightforward story, but already we've got these two things at the start that can provoke a lot of discussion, you know.
SPEAKER_00Yes, yeah.
SPEAKER_01So here's the second one. Now I'm gonna read this because it's in English, and even then, you know, things might not go right. There be three things which are too wonderful me, yea, four which I know not the way of an eagle in the air, the way of a serpent upon a rock, the way of a ship in the midst of the sea, and the way of a man with a maid. That's uh Biblical, Proverbs thirty.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Verses eighteen to nineteen, apparently. In the King James Version.
SPEAKER_01Uh-huh. And I mean it's very easy to see in in a sense how that ties in with the story.
SPEAKER_00It's classic foreshadowing. It really is. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01They all crop up, don't they? Each of those things crops up.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01I couldn't help but think that the way of a man with a maid of the Monty Python sketch. Your wife, is she a goa? Yeah. Right? You know what I mean? You've done it with a lady. What's it like? Yeah, what's it like? Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more. So that brings us into chapter one. The utter desolation of the scene began to have its effect. I sat down to face the situation and if possible, recall to mind some landmark which might aid me in extricating myself from my present position. If I could only find the ocean again, all would be clear, for I knew one could see the island of Gua from the cliffs. So we've got a man with a gun and a pipe, lost on the moors, basically. It's quite Victorian melodrama at the start, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00It is, it is. It's um it's almost homesian, really, in it in a weird way. It brings to mind Hound of the Baskervilles. Pretty sure there's a scene exactly like that at the start of that. You know. The poor unfortunate one who gets done in wandering about on the moors with his pipe and his gun, isn't he?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, what's that distant howling? Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_00I had to look up this, the island of Groa, or however you pronounce it. Um, but I would say this is actually all real places, isn't it? Like uh Kurselec and all that, they're all actual real-world places.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes. And um I I believe Chambers had travelled to Brittany. We'll talk about Brittany in a little bit because there's a lot of obviously myth and legend in there. But I I think this was a place he had personally experienced. And uh I I like this. We get we're into the yokel knowledge very early on. It's a bad place for a stranger, old Gulverne have said. You better take a guide, and I had replied, I shall not lose myself. Now I knew that I had lost myself. So straight away is is kind of uh hoist by his own petard, isn't he?
SPEAKER_00Yes, and it's the first thing I thought about reading it, I was like, here we go again. Why does nobody ever listen to the yokel knowledge? It's just you know, it oh god, you'd think we'd learn, wouldn't you? But I like this now because he's done what any hardy chap would do in that kind of situation. He's found a nice stout rock, perched himself on it, and had a smoke. Pondered his situation, puffing on his pipe.
SPEAKER_01It's a two-pipe problem, yeah. Yeah, two-pipe problem, ah, absolutely. And I thought something that Chambers doesn't often get credit for, but I thought his description of the environment here was was very nice. As I walked, my own gigantic shadow led me on, seeming to lengthen at every step. The gorse scraped against my leggings, crackled beneath my feet, showering the brown earth with blossoms, and the brake bowed and billowed along my path. From tufts of heath, rabbits scurried away through the bracken, and among the swamp grass I heard the wild duck's drowsy quack. So yeah, it's very picturesque, but it's also starting to get cold, and he's starting to get a bit damp as well because it's quite a marshy sort of place. As you say, is is sat down and he starts to relax even a little bit despite his predicament. My eyelids began to droop, then as I shook off the drowsiness, a sudden crash amongst the bracken roused me. I raised my eyes. A great bird hung quivering in the air above my face. For an instant I stared incapable of motion. Then something leapt past me in the ferns, and the bird rose, wheeled, and pitched headlong into the break. And it's uh a falcon that has just taken a hair, which is uh I suppose not an unusual sight in the countryside necessarily.
SPEAKER_00No, I mean what I'm I'm liking this, because I've never been to that part of the world, never been never been there to Brittany anywhere like that. But this to me is very much the same landscape as the Scottish Highlands. Yes. And like the reference to clouds of midges dancing above him, and things like that, and bats high in the air, and all that, and the because it says here that the um there was sound of a struggle from a bunch of heather close by, and then all went quiet. I stepped forward, my gun poised. When I came to the heather, the gun fell under my arm again, and I stood motionless in silent astonishment. A dead hare lay on the ground, and on the hare stood a magnificent falcon. And again, that's not an uncommon sight in the highlands, birds of prey.
SPEAKER_01Yes, true.
SPEAKER_00It's uh you know, it's uh it's one of those things. It's very the way he's written it is very evocative of that kind of landscape because it you could translate I assume you could translate it to a lot of different places. It's not that dissimilar to sort of Bodmin Moor, Exmoor, Yorkshire Moors, anything like that, you know?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, very true. I I have been to Brittany. I went to Oren in the what have been the mid eighties, late eighties. Mm-hmm. It was actually for a martial arts event. So outside of the town of Rennes, which was a beautiful medieval town on the coast, didn't really get to see much. We drove past the Mont Saint-Michel, um, but didn't have time to go in and see it, which i is kind of the same as the one in Cornwall. It's the same, exactly the same setup, both called uh Mont Saint Michael, of course, which is interesting. Well, let's mention that now because Brittany and Cornwall have got a very close connection. So Brittany is the part of France that juts out into the Atlantic in the the northwest. The people there are culturally Celtic, sharing more with music, language, and folklore and the customs of Wales Island and Scotland than with France. And in fact, in the 5th and 6th centuries, there was a mass migration of people from Cornwall to what was then called Armorica, which later became known as Brittany. And in fact, there is a place or an area in Brittany called Cornwall, the spelling is French, but basically it reads as Cornwall. So yeah, um, very close links. And when we were there, part of the thing they did for the visiting teacher was um bagpipes, playing bagpipes. Ah Breton bagpipes.
SPEAKER_00That's amazing.
SPEAKER_01So yeah, very close ties with with the Celtic cultures in the UK.
SPEAKER_00And also they both have another connection as well. They both got a mythical lost land just off their peninsulas. Because you got Lioness and Cornwall and Deese in Brittany.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and I understand uh Chambers was fascinated by the the legend of East.
SPEAKER_00He was, yeah, from what what we gather. Yeah, East was a mythical metropolis built below sea level on the coast, where the sea was beheld back by towering dikes. It was essentially a Brett Brittany's version of Atlantis, that kind of thing. And it was known for decadence and its catastrophic destruction, very similar to a lot of these places. They all you can see why Chambers would be inspired by it when you look at his work. It always has that sort of decadent feel to it, doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Legend says that East was at one time the preeminent city in all of Europe, but became the site of violent orgies organized by the king's daughter, Dahut, who was infamous for killing the men that she slept with the morning after their drunken revels. So an yeah, an early version of the um the Black Widow myth, I guess. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. There are several different versions of the legend, but they all share several basic elements. King Gradlon, or Gralon in Breton, ruled in East, and yeah, he's disc was described as rich in commerce and the arts, with the palace being made of marble, cedar, and gold. And in some versions of the myth, he built the city upon the request of his daughter, who loved the sea. Most versions say that Gradlon was a pious man, and that his daughter was wayward. Let's put it let's put it like that. It marked me. Yeah, yes. Uh often presented as frivolous, an unrepentant sinner, or sometimes even as a sorceress. Ah, right, right, yeah. Yeah. And like all these grand places of decadence and all that, it it got swallowed up by the sea. Uh legends and literature uh obviously go back a lot further, but the story, the main the like the main tellings of the story appear to have been developed in the end of the 15th and 17th centuries.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and as you mentioned, Lyoness, that's the kingdom which, according to legend, consisted of a long strand of land stretching from Land's End at the southwestern tip of Cornwall to what is now the Isles of Scilly in the Atlantic Ocean. And the same story that was basically swallowed by the ocean in a single night due to the uh the sins, perhaps, of its inhabitants. So, yeah, very uh a real parallel story. Uh and this is not an uncommon legend around the world, is it really?
SPEAKER_00No, it's not. There's even one in Wales.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Oh that was like Cantrare Gwelod or something like that. I don't know the pronunciation. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01There is yeah, there is something. I can't remember the name, but that does ring a bell. And then, of course, we have real life episodes such as Danitch, which basically got destroyed in two or three big storms.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Well, interestingly, in 2025, so last year, marine scientists discovered submerged ruins near Seine Island, approximately six miles from the Bay of Duanes. I'm not sure about the pronunciation on that. And uh they speculate that a real-world city lost to rising sea levels could be the origin of the myth of East, and that it was based on that sunken settlement.
SPEAKER_01Interesting. Yeah, who's gonna take a submersible down there first, I wonder? Yo Anatolai Beckons.
SPEAKER_02Doesn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yes. Uh oh, and I should mention Jack Vance, one of my favourite authors, uh, the Leoness trilogy. That's a group of novels by Jack Vance set in the European Dark Ages in uh yeah, the mythical isles, west of France and southwest of Britain. And that it is just before the Arthurian time as well, so that there is a kind of tie-in with the Arthurian legends, which uh really themselves owed a lot to France. Yes. Uh in fact, the the main Arthurian legend was largely developed in 12th century France, which sort of shifted it from the earlier Welsh chronicles and added in all the the chivalric romance element.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because that's where the uh Gawain and the Green Knight and all that comes from, was coming came from the French end of it. Because I ended up doing a lot of research on that when I wrote a mythos story about that.
SPEAKER_01Right, right. And I think one of the knights, it might Tristan was born in Lyonesse, I think, or was from Lyonesse. I can't quite remember. I'm pretty sure one of the knights was from there. So we're already in this kind of mythical landscape, and we're out on the moors, which, as you said, whether it's Bodmin or Yorkshire or whatever, have that certain quality of isolation and desolation, and he's nodding off. So, well, we'll speculate at the end as to what happened here, but it's possible that this is all a dream, right? That's one possibility.
SPEAKER_00Liminal space is the other one, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01Yes. And I thought the interesting thing with the Falcon in this, it's a predator, isn't it? Yes. There's there's this little rabbit or hare lost on the moors, and the predator goes, Aha, thank you very much. I'll have that one. So again, it's uh it's quite easy to draw parallels because a lady turns up now, rather unexpectedly. But what astonished me was not the mere sight of a falcon sitting upon its prey. I'd seen that more than once. It was that the falcon was fitted with a sort of leash about both talons, and from the leash hung a round bit of metal like a sleigh bell. At the same instant hurried steps sounded among the heather, and a girl sprang into the covert in front. Without a glance at me, she walked up to the falcon, and passing her gloved hand under its breast, raised it from the quarry. Then she deftly slipped a small hood over the bird's head, and holding it out on her gauntlet, stooped and picked up the hare. And she does all of this without any acknowledgement that he's there even until he talks to her, which is quite strange.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and the only because he's kind of mesmerised by the whole scene, isn't it? Here's this woman seemingly from out of nowhere, quite a striking looking lady, um with a with a falcon, who you know, and a dead rabbit, and he's kind of like, what the hell's going on here? And and it's only that I love this line actually, but as she moved away, I recollected that unless I wanted to sleep on a windy moor that night, I had better recover my speech without delay. It's one of those completely dumbstruck by the whole scene, you know.
SPEAKER_01If he hadn't, we can only wonder, would she have just wandered off and he would have been left there?
SPEAKER_00You know? Very probably by the looks of it.
SPEAKER_01But is this part of the lure, do you think? This sort of feigned indifference or pretend indifference? I don't know. Well we can we can get into that later, I suppose.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So he he says, Yeah, oh look, I'm here, I'm lost on the moors, can you help me? And the first thing she says is, Surely you did not come from Kurselec. And she hasn't got a Breton accent. In fact, he doesn't recognise her accent at all, yet there's something familiar about it. He describes it like the theme of an old song. And he explains that he's an American, and she replies, An American! I've never before seen an American. Now, given that uh Armorica was the name of Brittany before, you it's it's Chambers is having a little play on words here, I think.
SPEAKER_00Yes, I think so. Yeah. I like this little bit of interaction now. Cause she's just, you know. She's like, well, well, you've got a long bloody walk back to Kursilec, I kind of think. But he our narrator comes out. If I could only find a peasant's hut where I might get something to eat and shelter. The falcon on her wrist fluttered and shook its head, which I thought was a nice little touch. The girl smoothed its glossy back and glanced at me. Look around, she said gently. Can you see the end of these moors? Look north, south, east, west. Can you see anything but moorland and bracken? No, I said. It's why it's that bonnox.
SPEAKER_01And this slightly chilling line of the moor is wild and desolate, it is easy to enter, but sometimes they who enter never leave. Royce very royst and vasy, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there are no peasants' huts here. It's this is why you say this, you know, to me, it's your classical liminal space, isn't it? It's very night and malmyon.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah. Uh and then we get this strange uh expression from her as well. Uh to come is easy and takes hours, but to go is different and may take centuries. So already we've got this impression of of something askew in time, or it exists outside of time.
SPEAKER_00That's why I think this story, because uh a lot of people kind of dismiss this as part of the King in Yellow over. Um, I think it fits in really nicely because they're all again, it's all very dreamlike and uncanny. Yes, it's got that same feel that the other the central stories have, to me, anyway. I think it fits in really nicely with that whole thing.
SPEAKER_01I I totally agree, and I think as we go through, we're gonna pick up little things that are nice references. And I have another theory which I'll save to the end, but what I will say now is just her name, Jean Dis Jaundis.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, Jawn Dis. Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's brilliant. It's it's nice to see it when authors are having a bit of a a game with the reader, you know. I mean, I do it all the time just for my own personal amusement, and I guarantee most of the stupid little Easter eggs and things like that that I put in my stories, people won't notice, but they're there and they amuse me, you know. But when someone does notice, then you know that's nice.
SPEAKER_01That's a nice thing, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00It's nice, isn't it?
SPEAKER_01And um, I I don't know what his experience is with the opposite gender. Um, I mean, is a chap with a pipe and a gun, uh, he's got to be dressed in tweed, right? Well, he he says about the the bracken rubbing up against his woolen socks and all that. You can just picture him, can't you? Oh I and I imagine he's he's flustered here, isn't he? Yes. I can almost imagine him sort of stammering a bit over his words. Yes. And she says, Oh, the moors are very beautiful, and he replies, beautiful but cruel to strangers. Well, a moor is a moor, it can't be anything but what it is, it's not trying to be anything. She repeats dreamily, beautiful and cruel, and he says the most stupid line you could say in that circumstance. Oh, just like a woman. I know. Well, we've all been there, we've all been there, let's be honest.
SPEAKER_00We've all met somebody like that, right? We've all either said something like that or know somebody who has, and it seldom ends well. It usually ends with a a nice outstretched palm connecting with a cheek or a knee brought up sharply in the nether regions.
SPEAKER_01So that doesn't go down too well, and she accuses him of being cruel, so he he stumbles through an apology, but is kind of saved at this point by the sound of voices from across the moor, and the girl rose to her feet. No, she said with a trace of a smile on her pal face. I will not accept your apologies, monsieur, but I must prove you wrong, and that shall be my revenge. Look, here come Hastur and Raoul. Ah it's Haster.
SPEAKER_00Yep, yep. Yeah, the pale face, the pallid mask. Yeah. I mean, I think this one was intended to sit with the others. Yes. Because I think that for me, the King in Yellow cycle ends with the previous with the preceding story. Well, it's not really a story, it's a prose poem, The Prophet's Paradise, I would say.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Because I I don't see much connection in the others.
SPEAKER_01So these two men who loom up in the twilight, they're they're kind of servants. One's carrying a sack, the other's just carrying the falcons. And did Chambers ever go falconing? Is that the word? Let's go a falconing. A falconing we shall go. I don't know, I'm sure someone can correct me out there. Well, it's falconry, so yeah, falconer, falconry, falconer. Um, but he seems to know about it, doesn't he? Because what he writes here, to my mind anyway, seems very uh accurate. And she introduces these as these are my pi these are my piqueurs. Royal is a good falconnier, and I shall someday make him grandeur. Pasteur is incomparable. This is the danger I start veering into hello, hello territory with the French accent.
SPEAKER_00I was just about to say good meaning.
SPEAKER_01One thing I like about this is Hasteur is kind of described as tall but silent. I don't think he says a word in the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00No, and incomparable. Um yeah, he he just kind of lurks on the I mean, yeah, he's just kind of lurking. It's a presence, isn't he? He's a presence rather than an active participant in the events, which to me would suggest that that's by design. Yes.
SPEAKER_01So she basically says, Well, come back to our place, we'll feed you, you can stay there overnight. And and again, we get this nice description of this whole party going back. Uh, when we get hounds dashing out, there's a it's a full-on hunt kind of going on, and she's obviously the person in charge in this place. Well, in fact, we know that a demoiselle, uh originally uh a young unmarried woman or young lady, though most often it referred to a noble woman. And of course, I I sort of hit my forehead when I said this, it's where dams all comes from, isn't it? Of course it is. And we do find out in this that she's 19 years old as well. So this plays very much into that Arthurian uh as we mentioned before, chivalry and all the rest of it. But this is uh knights pliging their troth, isn't it, and that kind of atmosphere.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, totally. Totally. But I I actually love this bit, uh this whole like journey to her domain, so to speak. It's incredibly evocative. Then the falcons on the circlet borne by the falconer ahead began to beat their wings and scream, and from somewhere out of sight the notes of a hunting horn floated across the moor. The hounds sprang away before us and vanished in the twilight. The falcons flapped and squealed upon their perch, and the girl, taking up the song of the horn, began to hum. Clear and mellow her voice sounded in the night air. And I'm not gonna attempt to read the read what follows.
SPEAKER_01Oh I was hoping you were gonna sing it. I'm gonna say like chasseur, like chicken chasseur, you know. Yeah, well, you know. Well, it's like a stew kind of thing. Yeah, right, right. Well, this song, in interestingly enough, I found out Chasseur, Chasseur, Chasseur encore is a real song. It's a French hunting song that was composed by Pierre Jean de Berganger, and he wrote it in prison when he in the 1820s he spent time in jail for publishing political songs. Apparently, de Berenger was extremely popular in his day, he was the elvis of his time, very, very well known. And I think the interesting thing with this is this gives us a date. This was written in the 1820s, so that's something we can talk about later. She wasn't around in the 1820s, as we find out, spoiler alert.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yes, yes. Oh, that's a very, very good point. Well, well, maybe she met him, maybe he drifted into the domain at some point. There we go.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, and uh we we get a description here. This is like I was uh channel surfing the other day, and there was an old Tony Curtis film on called it wasn't the Black Knight, but it was one of those Hollywood medieval uh actually, I believe it was set in France, and it was Revenge Against Sir Whatever, and Tony Curtis is the avenging knight. Of course, yeah. There's something about the the technicolour and those sets and the the sword fights where they hit each other's swords a lot. Yes. Just the the colours and the pageantry that really put me in mind of what we see here. A torch glimmered at the gate, a light streamed through an opening door, and we stepped upon a wooden bridge which trembled under our feet and rose creaking and straining behind us as we passed over the moat and into a small stone court, walled on every side. From an open doorway a man came in and bending in salutation, presented a cup to the girl beside me. She took the cup and touched it with her lips, then lowering it, turned to me and said in a low voice it's hard not to do this in this accent. I bid you welcome. Oh God. Actually, we're we're in we're in kind of dracular time here, aren't we? Yeah. I wonder if that was a little nod. I don't know. And he gets a bit flustered again because he doesn't know what's going on with his cup. Does he should he take the cup? Does he bow? Does he offer the cup? What does he do? There's there's obviously an etiquette here that he's not aware of. But he does save himself this time, I think. He comes out with a much better line than the woman. Madam as well, I faltered. A stranger whom you have saved from dangers he may never realise, empties this cup to the gentlest and loveliest hostess of France.
SPEAKER_00Flattery will get you everywhere. Yeah, there we go.
SPEAKER_01And that's where we get the name of this place because she says you are welcome to the Chateau de Chapter 2. I awoke the next morning with the music of the horn in my ears.
SPEAKER_00I'm a child, I know. I can't help it. We've all woken up with the music of the horn in our ears at some point, haven't we?
SPEAKER_01I thought you did well to get through towering dykes myself, but I didn't well. And again, this is a scene from one of those medieval films, right? We've got a hunting party basically waiting to go out, and lots of French phrases. Yes, lots. Oh, we get this reference as well. Was I dreaming the old language of falconry, which I had read in yellow manuscripts, the old forgotten French of the Middle Ages was sounding in my ears while the hounds bade and the hawk's bells tinkled accompaniment to the stamping horses. So very evocative again, but yellow manuscripts. Come on.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01This is where he finds he's got no clothes. Well, i he doesn't have his own clothes anymore. On a settle near the door lay a heap of garments which I inspected with astonishment. As my clothes had vanished, I was compelled to attire myself in the costume which had evidently been placed there for me to wear, while my own clothes dried. Everything was there, cap, shoes, and a hunting doublet of silvery grey homespun, but the close fitting costume and the seamless shoes belonged to another century, and I remembered the strange costumes of the three falconers in the courtyard. I was sure that this was not the modern dress of any portion of France or Britain. So again, something that's very out of time.
SPEAKER_00I mean that's a that's a common trope of gothic literature and weird fiction that we don't talk about a lot, but it happens all the time. A traveller ends up in a weird place, he goes and has a bath, he gets out, and his kit's been replaced with something.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00It actually pops up quite a lot. It pops up a lot in film, it pops up a lot in Doctor Who, it pops up in everything somewhere along the line.
SPEAKER_01Oh well, is it something about losing your own identity or something, or your identity's being changed, you're not that person anymore, perhaps, or something?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's it's often that the protagonist ends up in a house or something where they're having a party. You know. Um a great example actually is Doctor Who's Black Orchid, which was a two-part historical story set in the Peter Davison era, and they turn up this house and there's a bit of mur there's a murder and all this kind of stuff going on. But Peter Davison goes and showers, and his his usual cricketing outfit has been taken, and all he's got in place is like a Harlequin costume. Oh, nice. You see, so that happens quite a lot, doesn't it? They'll go this place and all of a sudden all their clothes and personal bloggies have gone, and there's a clown outfit, or you know, you know, some something weird and outlandish they've got to wear. Yeah. And this is this one it really just reminded me of.
SPEAKER_01Personally, I choose a Harlequin outfit over a cricket outfit any day. But yeah.
SPEAKER_00Well, yes.
SPEAKER_01In fact, I think they should play cricket in Harlequin outfits. That would be hilarious. If I was in charge, I'd enforce that as law.
SPEAKER_00Fancy dress cricket, that'd be that'd be amazing.
SPEAKER_01Well, it's the only the only good type of golf is crazy golf, right?
SPEAKER_00Absolutely.
SPEAKER_01And a demoiselle is waiting for him. Uh alongside an old Breton woman who seems to be like a personal servant or a maid, I guess you'd call her. My hostess appeared and returned my salutation with a grace and dignity that sent a thrill to my heart. Her lovely head with its dark curly hair was crowned with a headdress which set all doubts as to the epoch of my own costume at rest. Her slender figure was exquisitely set off in the homespun hunting gown edged with silver, and on her gauntlet covered wrist she bore one of her petted hawks. That's um a few times we've had the gauntlet and glove mentioned, isn't it, as well? Which obviously is uh a little bit of foreshadowing, I suppose.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And we find that the maid is called Pelagie, or old Pelagie. And uh Pelagie has taken his old clothes and just chucked them out. That was my finest tweet.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we will throw them away, she said in a quiet voice. In my astonishment, I attempted to explain that I not only could not think of accepting clothes from anybody, although for all I knew it might be the custom of hospitality in that part of the country, but that I should cut an impossible figure if I return to France, clothed as I was then. I'll look alright, tulip, if I turn up in Paris dressed like this.
SPEAKER_01Come capering through the streets of Paris like Yeah. If he'd come back to London in the eighties, he could have gone to the Blitz Club, couldn't he, or something?
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, no, absolutely to fit it in there. Or even at Brighton now, you could just give him a petty farther that he could be a hipster.
SPEAKER_01So we get this exchange between them now, and I thought this this is something I actually missed maybe the first or second time I read this. Was he gets breakfast served to him, but he hesitates, he he can't eat. And basically he can't eat because he is so enchanted with her, it's almost like all other normal function has broken down. And she asks him why he won't eat and why he looks so troubled, and he professes his love for her, and she responds, I love you as well. So you think, okay, alright. But then you get this just after. As her eyes looked into mine, I knew that neither she nor I had spoken human speech, but I knew that her soul had answered mine, and I drew myself up, feeling youth and joyous love coursing through every vein. She, with a bright colour in her lovely face, seemed as one awakened from a dream, and her eyes sought mine with a questioning glance, which made me tremble with delight. So, according to our narrator, is that this sort of psychic conversation with her, where I love you, I love you, this is all gone on, but they're just sitting there eating breakfast.
SPEAKER_00Now, this to me, like you said it earlier, siren call. I do wonder if this was an intentional harking back to the legend of East. Because one of the one of the popular tellings of the story, uh, of the actual calamity that swallowed it, was that Dahut was one night during a terrible storm, bedded a knight dressed in red, who tempted her to steal the key to the floodgates, uh, which she did. She handed it to her new lover as a gift, and the knight turned out to be Satan himself. Uh-oh. He unlocked Yeah, he unlocked the gates, letting the sea swallow ease, which is said to still be intact under the water, where Dahut remains enthroned as a wicked mermaid.
SPEAKER_01Ah, because there are a lot of mermaid legends in well, France, very similar. I can't remember the name, it begins with Mel Meren or something like that. So, yeah, I mean, I I guess I suppose in most coastal areas you can have that sort of legend, but that is uh that is one from that region particularly as well. So, yeah, it's like a tying together a lot of a lot of these myths, isn't it? Yes, and then adding on his own mythology as well, very subtly.
SPEAKER_00Mmm, and uh and a little bit of Ambrose Bears as well.
SPEAKER_01Yes, yes, of course, of course. So we get her backstory now. She's an orphan, she's 19, and she has never been out from this place. The only people she's ever seen are the servants and the the falconers and so on. She's never seen anyone apart from those. She don't know how she heard of Kersilac, perhaps one of the falconers spoke of it. She knew the legends of Loup Garoux and Jean Le Flamme from her nurse Pelagie. So Loup Garou is obviously the werewolf, right? And I I thought instantly of Averroin. Of course.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And Jean Leflame, well, that's uh uh an actual person, that's Joan of Flanders, who in the 14th century was the Duchess of Brittany. She was uh a major player in the War of the Breton Succession, which was part of the Hundred Years' War, and she was known for a fiery personality, hence the name, I suppose. And some say she was a major inspiration on Joan of Arc.
SPEAKER_00Ah nice.
SPEAKER_01I did um wonder if, as part of that Hundred Years' War, if they had a unit of like pikemen in their army, would they be the Brittany Spears?
SPEAKER_00Nice, I like it. I like it. The Brittany Spears. Oh dear, oh dear.
SPEAKER_01I do apologize. I don't, I don't apologize. Sorry, not sorry. And I thought this this was quite a haunting one as well for me. She had, it was true, seen ships at sea from the cliffs, but as far as the eye could could reach, the moors over which she galloped were destitute of any sign of human life. There's there's something about that. I mean, obviously, where you live, you can get that thing where you can look out and there's a big ship on the horizon. You know, it's quite where's that going? Who's on that sort of thing? It it can create uh uh almost like a little story in your mind or something.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah, absolutely. I sort of get that quite a lot here out because I go on my balcony and the the seas there. So yeah.
SPEAKER_01And of course, that reference to a historical figure gives us another date, another very specific date as well, uh, which we'll we'll come back to at the end. Uh, this is where we learn that our our hero is named Philip. Uh so she says, Well, you must have French blood because you've got a French name. She did not seem curious to learn anything about the outside world. And another little interesting thing here, while we were still sitting at the table and she was throwing grapes to the small field birds which came fearlessly to our very feet. That's a very common fae fairy quality, isn't it? The animals are are your friends.
SPEAKER_00It is, yeah.
SPEAKER_01And he starts to talk about leaving, but she would not hear of it, and before I knew it, I had promised to stay for a week and hunt with hawk and hound in their company. That's quite hard for an East Ender to say, I might add. There's a great Stanley Holloway. If you don't know Stanley Holloway is, then have a have a YouTube. He did a load of monologues, and there was one about the Battle of Hastings, and it was Harold on his horse with his orc on his hands.
SPEAKER_02That's a great one. That's brilliant.
SPEAKER_01Before he got hit in the eye, of course, by an arder. So he says, Well, if I do go, I'll come back and see you. Will you come very often? She asked. Very often, I said, Every day, every day. Oh, I'm very happy. Come and see my hawks. There's a euphemism for you. There's another one. I've heard them called a lot of things, but that's a new one on me, love. And we get this quite detailed of explanation of how hawk how falcons and hawks are trained, right? Which again, I assume, is quite accurate. Yes. And this I I don't know, this exchange is I'm not sure what's going on here, but she's talking about where you have to catch the falcon. Oh, I'm already caught, then you have to tame it. Oh, I'm already tamed. Obviously, there's uh there's uh a double meaning going on here, and he seems to be totally surrendering himself to her at this stage.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, it's um obvious flirting going on here. I am already tamed, I replied. Jest and belled. She laughed, delighted. Oh my brave Falcon, then you will return at my call. I am yours, I answered gravely. It's like it is you know, it's it's basically roleplay, isn't it? Yes.
SPEAKER_01Let's play the falconer and the lady. Yeah, yeah, there we go. Right. I almost expect someone to say forsooth, didn't you, at some point or something?
SPEAKER_00Oh aye, yeah.
SPEAKER_01But now we get the uh well, this is the serpent in the Garden of Eden, right? Yes. A squirrel from one of the falcons interrupted her, and she arose to adjust the long which had become whipped about the block, but the bird still flapped its wings and screamed. What is the matter? she said. Philip, can you see? I looked around and at first saw nothing to cause the commotion. Then my eye fell upon the flat rock beside the stream from which the girl had risen. A grey serpent was moving slowly across the surface of the boulder, and the eyes in its flat triangular head sparkled like a jet. I thought this was a bit odd, because he says he's oh, this is a harmless snake, right? And she says no. It's got a V shaped figure on the neck, it's certain death, it's a viper. So it goes in to have a closer look at it. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Not a smart move. But he's like, Don't, Philip, I'm afraid. For me, for you, Philip, I love you. Yeah, don't be a dickhead. Stop playing with the snake.
SPEAKER_01So they start to kiss, just ignoring the snake, and he feels it. I think it bites him twice.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01A sharp pain shot through me. I looked into the face of Jean Dis and kissed her, and with all my strength lifted her in my arms and flung her from me. Then bending, I tore the viper from my ankle and set my heel upon its head. I remember feeling weak and numb. I remember falling to the ground. Through my slowly glazing eyes, I saw Jeanne's white face bending close to mine, and when the light in my eyes went out, I still felt her arms about my neck, and her soft cheek against my drawn lips. So is that it? Then comes the final scene. He awakens, he looks around in terror, and things aren't quite the same as they were. In fact, he's got the stream and the rock, he's got the crushed viper in the grass beside me. Everything else has disappeared. The garden, the fruit trees, the drawbridge, the walled court are all gone. I stared stupidly at a heap of crumbling ruins, ivy covered and grey, through which great trees had pushed their way. So again, that's uh telling us that a long, long time has passed.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01Though he does see a falcon up above the ruins, soaring and mounting in narrowing circles. He stumbles forward and trips over and finds that he had fallen kneeling before a crumbling shrine carved in stone for our mother of sorrows. I saw the sad face of the Virgin wrought in the cold stone. I saw the cross and thorns at her feet, and beneath it I read Pray for the soul of the Demoiselle Jeandis, who died in her youth for a lover of Philip, a stranger, AD fifteen seventy-three and the final twist but upon the icy slab lay a woman's glove, still warm and fragrant. Nice. So classic kind of ending for that sort of story, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Yes, yes. Um, and it's something that instantly I remember when I remember when the first time I read this, I instantly thought an inhabitant of Carcosa. Yep. Yeah. The ending to that. The tree with the gravestone. Very much, very much.
SPEAKER_01And it's something used by a lot of other authors. I mean, the one that springs to mind for me is uh Robbie Howard, the frost giant's daughter, where you know, oh you were delirious, you got hit on the head, but then what's this in my hand is still got a uh a piece of a scarf or clothing in the hand, you know, yeah that have never been spun by humans.
SPEAKER_00Well, there's a lot of parallels with a lot of the ghost stories, doesn't it? Of people like Wilkie Collins and M.O. James, you know, is it a pen wiper? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I think it's interesting because on the one hand you can say, well, this is you know, it's just sort of standard fairy story for want of a better word. Um, you can think of lots of things like this, people go into the fairy lands and they come back and 50 years have passed and all that side of kind of stuff. But the more I've read this story, the the more I think there's more to it than that. And I think, as you said, this subtle underpinning of the King in Yellow mythos or mythology does add something else to it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, it if you read this story in complete isolation, you would see it for what it is. It's a doomed love romance-y, time travelly thing. Where but if you read it as a whole with the rest of the stories, um certainly certainly with things like the mask and even even the Court of the Dragon, you know, it has that liminal space kind of quality to it that you know he's ended up somewhere he shouldn't be. Has he read something he shouldn't? You know, he's talking about reading the old yellowed manuscripts. Is that why he's there? That's where my brain goes, having read the other stories.
SPEAKER_01That's one of the theories. I I basically think there's four maybe more, but I can think of four theories here. So that is one, did he read The King in Yellow yesterday?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And and has that pushed him into this world, this time and this place. So that that that's one possibility for me. He was falling asleep at the start, so it's all a dream. He fell asleep, he had a dream, a snake bit him, he woke up, maybe, but then how does that account for the glove? Assuming we is is a reliable narrator. Some other people have said this is a time travel story. They've gone through a time slip. Philip time travelled, changed history, and was bitten by a non-venomous snake just before being ejected from the time warp, leaving her with no body to bury and no clear understanding of her lover's disappearance. This would explain the vague phrase died for love, which suggests a waiting rather than a mourning.
SPEAKER_00Hmm, no, I'm not buying that one. I'm not buying that. I'm not buying that. Sorry. That doesn't ring right to me somehow.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, time slips are a thing, right? There's a phenomenon of I think the Court of Versailles, yeah, it's a very famous one.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah, that's fine. It's the grave. Yeah. It's the gravestone that doesn't ring right to me because it just reads like somebody's come up with a reason to explain away why the gravestone is there. That's how it seems to me. It doesn't quite work.
SPEAKER_01So another possibility is Jean is a ghost and Philip is a reincarnation, and they just re-enacted their medieval romance because we do have this thing of it it all seems vaguely familiar to him. Yeah. And his familiarity with medieval French and falconry and all the rest of it. So maybe that's more of a sort of supernatural uh element.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, that's more plausible to me. But I mean the time slip thing, like I say, in isolation that's fine, but the changing the past thing doesn't work. No.
SPEAKER_01No. And and I think at this time we're not really into time travel stories generally. I think this actually came out about the same time as HG Wells' time machine.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Which was I wouldn't say it was the first time travel story as such, if we take a vague definition of that. But I think it was the first one where there's a time machine.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01And it was very much about that, rather than this idea of you go to sleep and you wake up 200 years later, kind of thing. Yeah. Uh another possibility which I kind of lean to is she exists out of time. This is, as you said, the liminal space, is wandered into another place here.
SPEAKER_00Yes.
SPEAKER_01And he's the potential victim. Uh, because as you mentioned, with the hoot lures men to a bed only to kill 'em, tricks men into joining her in our underwater city. And it does feel like she is quite siren-like in this.
SPEAKER_00It does, like the the no words and all that kind of stuff. And there's a lot of talk of her eyes and and of the haunting melody that she sings on the moor, you know, the hunting song and all this. And that that to me would explain why, you know, it's an anachronism. Why would she be singing that song? She's not. That's just how he's interpreting it.
SPEAKER_01Oh, nice. Yeah, that's good. Yeah, yeah. And apparently I I didn't pick it up, but there is uh an allusion in there to Keith's La Belle d'Anne Son Merci, which of course is a poem about a fairy or ghostwoman who lures brave men to a lair where she seduces them into worshipping her for eternity. That's that's a possible source as well. Nice. None of those or all of those. Yeah. That's the great weird fiction thing again, right? Any of those interpretations you can kind of work in.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I like I like the liminal space, but I also like the the reason he's been drawn to the liminal space is because he was reading those yellowed manuscripts, because that fits in with the rest of the the run.
SPEAKER_01And and that's what I say gives it that extra edge, I think. The fact that if you've read the other stuff and you come to this as as whatever it is, it's towards the end of the collection, I think, isn't it?
SPEAKER_00Well, it's um it's the fifth story, I think. It's um yeah, because it goes Repair of Reputations, The Mask, Court of the Dragon, Yellow Sign, Democell Dis, Prophet's Paradise.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then you've got Street of the Four Winds, Street of the First Shell, Street of Our Lady of the Fields.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Which don't seem connected to the others, to me, anyway. And I think that's what a lot of people say, that they're kind of not.
SPEAKER_01They're quite quite different. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00We're saying that done in one of them, isn't there? There's a doomed love and uh in one of those, isn't there? Very similar kind of thing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, which I think is something Clark Ashton Smith picked up on, right? Because that's a major feature of a lot of his work. But I suppose we can go back to Poe as well for that, can't we? The lost love.
SPEAKER_00Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_01It definitely fits into that romantic decadent genre, doesn't it? That feeling, the whole feeling of it.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_01There we go then.
SPEAKER_00You notice how I studiously avoided trying to pronounce anything French.
SPEAKER_01I don't blame you. It's just I'm terrible.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. It's uh and the the funny line in the story is he does mention about what is it, the pitfalls of uh the foreigner speaking French kind of thing. Yeah. So what do you think, dear listener? What is your take on that story? We've got a few options there. Perhaps you uh you like one of those or Perhaps you have something of your own as well. Be very interested to hear. Speaking of hearing from people, we've had some mail in the old mailbag. Dagon sack has yielded a number of treasures again. It's bulbous and fit to burst yet again. And uh we start with uh reference to episode one two three, which says the water of knowledge. And on Patreon, Alan Brignall wrote Watch you both. I've just listened to IBC one two three. Thanks. I will be looking out for Mr. Seawright's books. In my present home, the geological map tells me we are above Triassic Rocks. So I'll also be looking out for any shards while digging the garden. Is a brave man, is Alan. Thanks too for the memory of Ilford Library, the long corridor round the back of the town hall, the smell of polished wood, and all the little tickets. I recall circa 1970 discovering a shelf of mystical books about Moo, Lemuria, and the mysteries of Britain. Happy days. Now, when I learnt that Alan was a fellow Ilfordian, which was an area I grew up in in my teenage years, I thought, oh, that was great. And I asked Alan if he used to go to Terry's, which was one of those fantastic old-fashioned second-hand bookshops uh in Ilford, and he replied to that as well. Ah, yes, I used to go to Terry's with the proprietor hidden inside an island of shelves in the middle. He certainly was. I have a few books still which came from there. Of course, trying not to let anyone see you eyeing up the lurid covers on the piles of American true crime mags. Yes, yes. Um, that was as we've said before, that was great, you know. Your cheap novels out the front, your thrillers, your war, your fantasy, science fiction, then the smut.
SPEAKER_00Yes, indeed. Indeed. But he's not wrong about those American true crime mags. I've got a bunch of them, like uh going back decades, but they're they're all the same. It's what we were talking about. I can't remember what episode it was on, we were talking about them, but we were talking talking about them covers, and it was always a very booksome lady pouting while in uh while in bondage, for want of a better term.
SPEAKER_01Restrained in some way. Yeah, we we we were talking about Margaret Brundley, jointly, and the weirdness covers. I guess that the start of that. Yes, thank you for that, Alan. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Our next one comes from the Innsmouth Forum from Alter. I really enjoyed the last episode where you talked about the older Mr. Seawright, so much that I searched the shelves of my bookshelf and found a volume from Hippocampus Press called The Lair of the Dreamer, a Cthulhu Mythos Omnibus. As it turns out, it's one of over a hundred volumes waiting to be read on my personal list of shame. But your encouragement regarding the author's father, as well as Robert M. Price's introduction, elevates it to a higher position on the list. And then there's the mention that the younger Mr Sea Wright's protagonist fits into the pulp tropes of Karnaki, Jules de Gradin, Anton Zarnac, and Titus Crow. Now I just have to finish my current reading and tackle the Sea Wrights. Yes, there's some great he did some great stuff. They both did. They both did some absolutely tremendous stories. It's um yeah, but I find uh tracking down actual collections of either of them really hard. That's why I ended up spending quite a lot of money at one of the ILFs on that rare uh the cosmic horror and others that I got. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. Well, this is the issue. I mean Hippocampus Press have got a ton of great books out, of course, which you know uh are well priced, but then the postage is more often than the book, you know. It usually doubles the doubles the price.
SPEAKER_00That's the problem.
SPEAKER_01Steph, who I roleplay with, is going over to Necrocotonomicon this year. He's running a caller Cthulhu game over there, I think. So I might give him a shopping listing and an extra suitcase. Oh, nice. He doesn't know it yet. He's gonna become a book smuggler. I'm gonna use him as a mule. A mythos mule. Mythos mule, I like that. And our old pal Niels writes on the Innsmouth Forum as well. Another great introduction to an author I hadn't heard of, although, like many, I'd heard of the Elkdown Shards. Learning their history reminded me of Quatamas and the Pit. And it turns out I have the Fedigan and Bramer Hardback edition of Towers of the Lovecraft Mythos, which you were reading from. The description of the writing on the shards sounds a lot like the descriptions of Lovecraft's and Tolkien's own handwriting. Yeah, if you've seen pictures of either of them. Tolkien Tolkien, especially. They should have been doctors, they really should. Absolutely. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_00When does writing become hieroglyphics? That's what I want to know.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I can't quite remember, but I'm sure M. M. R. James, I can imagine, wrote in a perfectly fine, sort of that real, very neat, old-fashioned copper plate kind of style, you know. Cursive. Yeah. But Niels concludes, as Nils often does, of course. And finally, a story suggestion for Tim's next Nookie Nomican anthology, an M. R. James erotic story called No Dog in Ear.
SPEAKER_00Lovely stuff, sir. Bravo. I love it. I love it. No dog in here. No dog in ear. I'm sure I'm sure I'm sure many of uh oh god.
SPEAKER_01For American listeners or anyone not in the UK, if you're not sure what dogging is, then Google it, but don't Google it at work. Or put the safe search on. Yeah, don't click on images. Oh god.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Neils. How I described in one of my stories which concerns that uh that subject is about dogging. Um I described it as the pursuit of anonymous alfresco grumpy pumpy. Yes, yes, that's a very accurate description, I must say.
SPEAKER_01Fucking grim.
SPEAKER_00It can be, yeah. I'll tell you the story about when I accidentally stumbled across it. It's when I first moved down to Devon and I was staying at Bicton College where I was working. And I'd gone down, I got a bus down into Budley Sultan, did a bit of shopping, and and as you do, checked out the local pubs. Didn't realise that the buses after a certain point stopped in the middle of nowhere. So I had to walk along the River Otter back to it. But to get down to the River Otter, I had I went down this little side street in this car park, and as I was coming down, I just heard this commotion, a door slamming, and all the rest of the thing. And obviously, somebody had clocked me coming down the road and they'd panicked. And I was just giggling to myself. You didn't hang around. No, no, no. A couple of really clapped out Ford Fiestas and a Volvo. It's like that.
SPEAKER_01Dear, I dear. Yeah, sounds about right. So, yes, we are delighted to receive your correspondence, of course, be it uh scholarly or be it scurrilous, you can get in touch on the Innsmouth Forum. You can drop us an email at insmithbooklub at outlook.com, or you can put something up on our YouTube or the Patreon page. Speaking of which, we would like to welcome a new patron, a new supporter to the show, Kenneth Creppen. Thank you, Kenneth. Thank you very much for joining. And if you would also like to support the show, do check out our Patreon page. When you sign up, you get access to bonus content for the Innsmouth Book Club and Strange Shadows, free entry to the Innsmouth Literary Festival, and uh one or two other things as well. Oh, your quarterly copy of Innsmouth News, of course. And I know I've been saying it for ages and ages and ages. I am looking at um redoing the the tiers, the backer tiers, to see if we can get some extra stuff in there. But uh, it's just one of those jobs, you know, that's on the list.
SPEAKER_00Oh, like every time we've got to update the website.
SPEAKER_01Oh I know, I know. Yeah, it's like Alta said he's got a list of a hundred volumes waiting to be read. That sounds good. I've got a hundred things to do. Yeah, you've got a big reading list as well, have you said?
SPEAKER_00Oh god, yeah. I have a small mountain in the corner of the bedroom because I've run out of space on the bookshelves. He keeps growing, it's a it's becoming a pyramid. Yeah, it's uh I'm I'm half expecting that when I sort of start moving things about, there's gonna be some small Lovecraftian horror living amongst it.
SPEAKER_01Nice, nice spider with a human face or something.
SPEAKER_00Like Natchez, yes, indeed. Oh, we do, yeah. That ties in with the next episode of Strange Shadows quite nicely, doesn't it? Funnily enough, it does.
SPEAKER_01Yes, the weaver in the vault, yes. Well, that's strange shadows next time. What are we looking at on our next visit to Innsmouth?
SPEAKER_00Well, on the next episode of the IBC, I've decided because I had such echoes of Ambrose Beast this time around, and obviously Ambrose Bear was where the whole yellow mythos comes from. So I thought let's go right back to the start and we're gonna look at the two stories that are often that were a big influence on people, such as Lovecraft. We're gonna look at Heicha the Shepherd and An Inhabitant of Carcosa.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. It's been a while since I read either of those, I think. So uh yeah, I look forward to reading those again.
SPEAKER_00Inhabitant of Carcosa is a beautifully moody little piece. It's uh yeah, I read I read it again today after I'd read that. And I yeah. And um you can see the influence on Smith. You really can.
SPEAKER_01I think Smith, especially with these uh sort of romantic, for want of a better word, artists. There is a very strong, you can draw the line quite easily there, can't you? Yeah, yeah. I think Lovecraft has an element of that, but then he brings in that strange materialism and non-supernatural element. Yes. Like, I don't think Lovecraft could have written a story like this.
SPEAKER_00No, no.
SPEAKER_01Well, there's a woman in it for a start. A woman that actually speaks as well. A woman that has dialogue, I guess. As some agency, yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_00And that isn't uh actually an Eon's old sorcerer inhabiting her body.
SPEAKER_01Yes, we should get around to the thing on the doorstep at some time. That's one of his most disturbing stories, I mean, actually.
SPEAKER_00It's one of my favorites. I love the thing on the doorstep.
SPEAKER_01We'll line that up again. As people have reading lists, we also have lists of things to go on the show, as you can imagine, which include books and films and people. There's so many people to interview, so many films to see, and of course, there's new things coming out all the time. So uh if you do have something in particular for our patrons, especially, then do let us know. Uh, we'll always be interested to hear your suggestions for books and films to cover because uh we know a fair bit, but we don't know everything.
SPEAKER_00It's one of the reasons I'm shoehorning the beer stories in because they've been on my list to do since I joined right up the top of this ever-growing list, and it'll be nice to cross a couple off.
SPEAKER_01Yes, well, there we go. It's gonna take us a few eons to work through that list, isn't it? A few strange eons, I think. Alright, on that cosmic note, thanks again for joining us today, folks. We'll see you next time. It's goodbye from me, Rockwell.
SPEAKER_00And it's goodbye from me, Tim Mendys.
SPEAKER_01Au revoir.
SPEAKER_00Salute!