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![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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 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.)
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.)
