The owl and the nightingale; or, more thoughts on Witching Hill

[regshoe]

I've just re-read Witching Hill by E. W. Hornung, ahead of nominating it for Yuletide. This was one of my favourites when I did my Hornung read-through project, and having this chance to appreciate it better, I now like it even more. (In objective quality I think it ranks below Fathers of Men—but it's more inventive, besides being intriguing and loads of fun.)

Perhaps it's a fortunate coincidence that I've recently watched the 1970 TV adaptation of The Owl Service (thoughts to follow in a general TV post once I've finished the new series of Doctor Who), and that sovay was just talking about re-reading the book, because Witching Hill is really rather an interesting book to put next to it. Both are about past events replaying themselves, the inexorable ongoing presence of the past in a particular place, 'not haunted' (as Gwyn puts it in The Owl Service), 'more like—still happening?'. In The Owl Service it's suggested that Huw and Gwyn are descendants of Lleu or Gwydion, and their presence in the valley starts off the mythological events repeating again; in Witching Hill Uvo Delavoye is a descendant of Lord Mulcaster, and it's suggested that his presence on the Estate similarly revives the past. Witching Hill doesn't have the numinous menace of The Owl Service—it's not that it isn't serious in approaching its subject matter, nor that the stakes are any lower, but it is basically a set of fun adventure stories rather than a weird disturbing mythological-fantasy-horror novel. And yet...

The characters in The Owl Service talk about their situation in terms of hydroelectric dams, batteries and plug wiring, and the replaying myth can perfectly well accommodate tampering with the brakes of a motorbike among its significant events. The contrast between present and past—the difference in time being much less, only a little more than a century, but strong enough in mood—was something I noted in Witching Hill the first time through; it's sometimes comic in its juxtaposition of late-Victorian suburban respectability with larger-than-life Georgian aristocratic depravity, but I think it goes a bit deeper too. I appreciated Uvo Delavoye better this time round, and much of what I appreciated was how modern he is psychologically and temperamentally; how significant is the connection between him and the past; how those two things interact with each other, and the role of his not-very-subtle subtextual queerness in this situation. Uvo lives with his mother on the Witching Hill Estate, after having suffered a vaguely-described physical illness whose long-term effects keep him from being fit for work; he's seriously unhappy about this state of affairs, apparently less because he loves work for its own sake and more because of ideas about being useless/a burden/not a proper man ('And I'm such a help to them [his mother and sister] as I am, aren't I? Think of the bread I win and all the dollars I'm raking in!'); his mental illness reaches a peak of suicidal prominence and severity in 'Under Arms', under the influence—at least so he believes—of his 'old man of the soil'. Uvo and his narratorial foil Gilly argue about the happenings on the Estate, Gilly refusing to accept the supernatural explanation of which Uvo is convinced; Gilly repeatedly describes Uvo's preoccupation with it using words like 'morbid' and 'unwholesome', and both he and Uvo himself use the word 'degenerate'. Earlier in the book we had a reminder from the conservative, ultra-conventional Berridges that mental health problems are, culturally, a modern phenomenon ('We don't believe in them. We think they're a modern excuse for anything you like to do or say; that's what we think about nerves.'), and in that same story, 'A Vicious Circle', Uvo says this, contrasting his own mental constitution vis-a-vis heterosexual relationships with that of Guy Berridge (who's being pulled out of happiness in his engagement, clearly against his own nature, by the old man of the soil):

'What has he ever done, in all his dull days, to make that harmless mind a breeding-ground for every sort of degenerate idea? In mine they'd grow like mustard and cress. I'd feel just like that if I were engaged to the very nicest girl; the nicer she was, the worse I'd get; but then I'm a degenerate dog in any case. Oh, yes, I am, Gilly.'

(this passage follows on some quotations from The Ballad of Reading Gaol, btw)

...What I'm saying is that all this is terribly interesting when you start to pull at it a bit, right???

In The Owl Service Huw says of the still-happening Blodeuwedd, 'She is coming, and will use what she finds...'; I think Lord Mulcaster is using what he finds in the modern morbidity of Uvo Delavoye's psyche too.

And then there's the final story, 'The Temple of Bacchus', in which Uvo has not quite begun, but is being tempted towards, an unwise relationship with an unhappily married woman, Mrs Ricardo. We might remember that the last time Lord Mulcaster influenced someone's love life it was against the man's own nature—conventionally heterosexual in that case, with plenty of significant Oscar Wilde quotations to hint at what Lord Mulcaster's undermining of it might mean. Uvo himself identifies this affair as the influence of the 'old man of the soil' on them both, and escapes from the endlessly-repeating pattern of the past by exerting his own will to give up Mrs Ricardo, leave Witching Hill itself, and run away to Scotland with his best friend Gilly (who earlier in this story is more-or-less explicitly jealous of Mrs Ricardo, whom he describes as having usurped his own place in Uvo's life and heart).

This is really pretty interesting, right...???

(And I suppose the resolution of The Owl Service can also be understood as a choice to reject the destructively heterosexual narrative of the present past: Roger resigns his place in the manly love rivalry with Gwyn and reminds Alison/Blodeuwedd that she is flowers on the mountain, and not what either of the men made her.)

Comments

[sovay]

...What I'm saying is that all this is terribly interesting when you start to pull at it a bit, right???

It absolutely is, and I was already going to read this novel, but what sounds like its fairly overt linkage of queerness and susceptibility to the supernatural makes me ask if you have read any of Sarah Monette's Kyle Murchison Booth stories, mostly available in the collections The Bone Key (2007/2011) and Unnatural Creatures (2011) and the novella A Theory of Haunting (2023); the protagonist began life as an explicitly queer riff on the homoerotically inflected narrators of H. P. Lovecraft and M. R. James and it sounds like Hornung was tapping into a similar kind of tradition.

(And I suppose the resolution of The Owl Service can also be understood as a choice to reject the destructively heterosexual narrative of the present past: Roger resigns his place in the manly love rivalry with Gwyn and reminds Alison/Blodeuwedd that she is flowers on the mountain, and not what either of the men made her.)

I think there's pretty good textual support for that:

"She was made for her lord. Nobody is asking her if she wants him. It is bitter twisting to be shut up with a person you are not liking very much. I think she is often longing for the time when she was flowers on the mountain, and it is making her cruel, as the rose is growing thorns."

The love triangle is one of those false binaries: it wouldn't work out better if Blodeuwedd-in-Alison ended up with Roger instead of Gwyn. Stepping aside from the whole paradigm is the only way out. (And there is almost no fic for The Owl Service on AO3, but then it probably isn't accidental that one of the few is future fic where Roger is definitely oriented toward men.)

[regshoe]

I have not read any of those, no—nor any Lovecraft or James. This is Hornung's only overtly supernatural book, so it would be interesting to consider what might have influenced him to go in that direction!

Stepping aside from the whole paradigm is the only way out.

Yes, exactly! And I do like that fic very much, and I think Roger/Gwyn does make an awful lot of sense when the book is considered this way.

[sovay]

I have not read any of those, no—nor any Lovecraft or James. This is Hornung's only overtly supernatural book, so it would be interesting to consider what might have influenced him to go in that direction!

Hornung and James were contemporaries and Lovecraft a generation later, so in terms of influences I would definitely look at James; he would have published his first two collections by the time of the writing of Witching Hill and was a pretty much instant sensation in terms of redefining the modern ghost story.The unwholesome persistence of the past was his recurring theme, which is why he's considered one of the major strains of the substrate of folk horror and the reason I vectored through Monette to think of him.

P.S. Having begun Witching Hill:

"That morning! It seemed days ago, not because I had met with any great adventure yet, but the whole atmosphere of the place was changed by the discovery of a kindred spirit. Not that we were naturally akin in temperament, tastes, or anything else but our common youth and the want in each of a companion approaching his own type. We saw things at a different angle, and when he smiled I often wondered why. We might have met in town or at college and never sought each other again; but separate adversities had driven us both into the same dull haven—one from the Egyptian Civil, which had nearly been the death of him; the other on a sanguine voyage (before the mast) from the best school in Scotland to Land Agency. We were bound to make the most of each other, and I for one looked forward to renewing our acquaintance even more than to the sequel of our interrupted adventure.

"But I was by no means anxious to meet my new friend's womankind; never anything of a lady's man, I was inclined rather to resent the existence of these good ladies, partly from something he had said about them with reference to our impending enterprise."

And the other part-reason, Gilly?

[regshoe]

That sounds relevant and good! I've downloaded those two collections from Gutenberg, will see what I make of them :)

And the other part-reason, Gilly?

:D

[luzula]

Did not read most of the review, because I do intend to read this book some day, and I didn't want to be spoiled. But hey, maybe I should put the Garner one on my list, too. : )

[regshoe]

I do intend to read this book some day

Oh, I hope you enjoy it! It's a good one.

[garonne]

I have not read either Witching Hill nor The Owl Service recently enough to offer any sort of intelligent comment, but I very much enjoyed reading your thoughts.

What strikes me about both books is how strong an impression the atmosphere (the vibe, I guess, for want of a better word) of each book left on my mind, even as details of plot and characters have faded. I should read them both again. (The Owl Service was 25 years ago!)

Also, your comment on Fathers of Men makes me want to read it. I had never heard of it before, but looked it up and it sounds excellent. Just found it on Gutenberg!

[regshoe]

'Memorable atmosphere' is definitely true :) Glad you enjoyed the post!

Fathers of Men really is excellent—I think it's probably one of the best boarding school novels I've read, albeit less OTT slashy than some.