Short Stories 1895-1926 Read online

  Walter de la Mare

  SHORT STORIES 1895–1926

  Edited by

  GILES DE LA MARE

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Introduction

  Abbreviations

  STORIES IN COLLECTIONS

  THE RIDDLE AND OTHER STORIES (1923)

  The Almond Tree

  The Count’s Courtship

  The Looking-Glass

  Miss Duveen

  Selina’s Parable

  Seaton’s Aunt

  The Bird of Travel

  The Bowl

  The Three Friends

  Lispet, Lispett and Vaine

  The Tree

  Out of the Deep

  The Creatures

  The Riddle

  The Vats

  DING DONG BELL (1924, 1936)

  Lichen

  ‘Benighted’

  Strangers and Pilgrims

  Winter

  THE CONNOISSEUR AND OTHER STORIES (1926)

  Mr Kempe

  Missing

  The Connoisseur

  Disillusioned

  The Nap

  Pretty Poll

  All Hallows

  The Wharf

  The Lost Track

  UNCOLLECTED STORIES

  Kismet (1895)

  The Hangman Luck (1895)

  A Mote (1896)

  The Village of Old Age (1896)

  The Moon’s Miracle (1897)

  The Giant (1901)

  De Mortuis (1901)

  The Rejection of the Rector (1901)

  The Match-Makers (1906)

  The Budget (1907)

  The Pear-Tree (1907)

  Leap Year (1908)

  Promise at Dusk (1919)

  Two Days in Town (1920)

  Bibliographical Appendix

  Chronological List of Earliest Known Printed Versions

  Copyright

  INTRODUCTION

  When Walter de la Mare brought out his first collection of short stories called The Riddle in 1923 at the age of fifty, it would have been a surprise to some to discover how long he had been attracted by the genre. Few people would have guessed that his earliest published works had been stories. His first printed story, ‘Kismet’, had appeared in The Sketch in August 1895, and at least seven others had been serialized before the publication of Songs of Childhood in 1902. De la Mare continued writing and re-writing stories throughout the rest of his life. The Riddle was followed in quick succession by Ding Dong Bell, Broomsticks (for children), The Connoisseur, On the Edge, The Lord Fish (for children), and The Wind Blows Over in the 1920s and 1930s; and his very last major work, A Beginning, came out in 1955 less than a year before his death.

  Apart from the Collected Stories for Children of 1947, he did not publish any comprehensive collection of stories comparable to the Collected Poems of 1942, although there were several selections from the eight main collections. The most important of these (since de la Mare was involved in the choice on both occasions) were Stories, Essays and Poems of 1938 published in the Everyman series and Best Stories of Walter de la Mare of 1942 published by Faber – who brought out all the major collections after The Connoisseur. The latter came out with Collins in 1926, The Riddle and Ding Dong Bell having appeared with Selwyn and Blount in 1923 and 1924, and Broomsticks with Constable in 1925. All in all, seventy-nine stories were published in collections, and over a score of them have never been reprinted elsewhere. The three volumes making up the first complete edition, include all these stories together with all the uncollected stories that have been found and a few unpublished ones.

  De la Mare was as assiduous in serializing his stories before publication as he was in serializing his poems. Indeed, no less than sixty of the seventy-nine ‘collected’ stories were first published in magazines, newspapers or collections compiled by other people. When they appeared in volume form, which might be over fifty years later as happened with ‘The Quincunx’, they were often revised. (The interval between writing and serialization or publication in a collection could also be enormous: for example, ‘A Beginning’, which was published in the volume of that title in 1955, seems to have been written in about 1900, and ‘The Miller’s Tale’, which was serialized in December 1955, was probably written about then as well.) But not all the stories that were serialized were collected. This is particularly true of the period 1895–1910 and altogether eighteen uncollected stories have so far been found. In all likelihood, de la Mare deliberately did not reprint some of them. There is, however, clear evidence that he intended to publish certain stories like ‘Kismet’, which was revised for publication in A Beginning but omitted from it at the galley-proof stage. Others may well have been forgotten in the course of time. As it is no more possible to determine the exact reasons for stories remaining uncollected than it was in the case of the poems, all the stories found have been included. They are printed in the order in which they were first serialized or published – in sections at the end of Short Stories 1895–1926 and Short Stories 1927–1956.

  Although a number of stories in manuscript and typescript form were discovered among de la Mare’s papers, there only seemed to be good grounds for publishing four of them. Three of these had been omitted from A Beginning at the galley-proof stage, and the fourth was the second half of ‘The Orgy: An Idyll’ which was cut in two when it was published in 1930, probably because it was too long. The unpublished stories follow the uncollected ones at the end of Short Stories 1927–1956.

  The same general arrangement has been adopted as in the Complete Poems. The stories have been grouped chronologically according to the volumes in which they originally appeared. Short Stories 1895–1926 includes the first three main collections and uncollected stories from the earlier period; Short Stories 1927–1956 the last three main collections and uncollected and unpublished stories from the later period; and Short Stories for Children the two children’s collections. To give an indication of the order in which the stories were written or revised, a chronological list of earliest known printed versions has been included on page 495.

  With one or two exceptions, the text is based on the latest printed versions worked on by de la Mare, Stories, Essays and Poems (1938), Best Stories of Walter de la Mare (1942) and Collected Stories for Children (1947) being the three chief sources for these apart from the eight main collections. For further details, see the Bibliographical Appendix on page 483.

  The contents of the three volumes are as follows:

  I SHORT STORIES 1895–1926

  Stories in Collections

  The Riddle and Other Stories (1923)

  Ding Dong Bell (1924, 1936)

  The Connoisseur and Other Stories (1926)

  Uncollected Stories

  II SHORT STORIES 1927–1956

  Stories in Collections

  On the Edge: Short Stories (1930)

  The Wind Blows Over (1936)

  A Beginning and Other Stories (1955)

  Uncollected Stories

  Unpublished Stories

  III SHORT STORIES FOR CHILDREN

  Stories in Collections

  Broomsticks and Other Tales (1925)

  The Lord Fish (1933)

  I am very grateful to the late Dorothy Marshall for help in tracking down uncollected stories and checking references, and to Theresa Whistler for information about early manuscript versions. The late Leonard Clark’s Checklist for the 1956 National Book League exhibition of de la Mare books and MSS has been a useful source of information.

  Giles de la Mare

  ABBREVIATIONS

  MAIN COLLECTIONS

  R The Riddle and Other Stories (1923)

  DDB Ding Dong Bell (1924, 1936
)

  Br Broomsticks and Other Stories (1925)

  C The Connoisseur and Other Stories (1926)

  OE On the Edge: Short Stories (1930)

  LF The Lord Fish (1933)

  WBO The Wind Blows Over (1936)

  Beg A Beginning and Other Stories (1955)

  OTHER COLLECTIONS

  SSS Seven Short Stories (1931)

  SEP Stories, Essays and Poems (1938)

  BS Best Stories of Walter de la Mare (1942)

  CSC Collected Stories for Children (1947)

  CT The Collected Tales of Walter de la Mare (1950)

  SSV Selected Stories and Verses of Walter de la Mare (1952)

  GS Walter de la Mare: Ghost Stories (1956)

  uncoll uncollected

  STORIES IN COLLECTIONS

  THE RIDDLE AND OTHER STORIES (1923)

  The Almond Tree1

  My old friend, ‘the Count’ as we used to call him, made very strange acquaintances at times. Let but a man have plausibility, a point of view, a crotchet, an enthusiasm, he would find in him an eager and exhilarating listener. And though he was often deceived and disappointed in his finds, the Count had a heart proof against lasting disillusionment. I confess, however, that these planetary cronies of his were rather disconcerting at times. And I own that meeting him one afternoon in the busy High Street, with a companion on his arm even more than usually voluble and odd – I own I crossed the road to avoid meeting the pair.

  But the Count’s eyes had been too sharp for me. He twitted me unmercifully with my snobbishness. ‘I am afraid we must have appeared to avoid you to-day,’ he said; and received my protestations with contemptuous indifference.

  But the next afternoon we took a walk together over the heath; and perhaps the sunshine, something in the first freshness of the May weather, reminded him of bygone days.

  ‘You remember that rather out-of-the-world friend of mine yesterday that so shocked your spruce proprieties, Richard? Well, I’ll tell you a story.’

  As closely as I can recall this story of the Count’s childhood I have related it. I wish, though, I had my old friend’s gift for such things; then, perhaps, his story might retain something of the charm in the reading which he gave to it in the telling. Perhaps that charm lies wholly in the memory of his voice, his companionship, his friendship. To revive these, what task would be a burden? …

  ‘The house of my first remembrance, the house that to my last hour on earth will seem home to me, stood in a small green hollow on the verge of a wide heath. Its five upper windows faced far eastwards towards the weather-cocked tower of a village which rambled down the steep inclination of a hill. And, walking in its green old garden – ah, Richard, the crocuses, the wallflowers, the violets! – you could see in the evening the standing fields of corn, and the dark furrows where the evening star was stationed; and a little to the south, upon a crest, a rambling wood of fir-trees and bracken.

  ‘The house, the garden, the deep quiet orchard, all had been a wedding gift to my mother from a great-aunt, a very old lady in a kind of turban, whose shrewd eyes used to watch me out of her picture sitting in my high cane chair at meal-times – with not a little keenness; sometimes, I fancied, with a faint derision. Here passed by, to the singing of the lark, and the lamentation of autumn wind and rain, the first long nine of all these heaped-up inextricable years. Even now, my heart leaps up with longing to see again with those untutored eyes the lofty clouds of evening; to hear again as then I heard it the two small notes of the yellow-hammer piping from his green spray. I remember every room of the old house, the steep stairs, the cool apple-scented pantry; I remember the cobbles by the scullery, the well, my old dead raven, the bleak and whistling elms; but best of all I remember the unmeasured splendour of the heath, with its gorse, and its deep canopy of sunny air, the haven of every wild bird of the morning.

  ‘Martha Rodd was a mere prim snippet of a maid then, pale and grave, with large contemplative, Puritan eyes. Mrs Ryder, in her stiff blue martial print and twisted gold brooch, was cook. And besides these, there was only old Thomas the gardener (as out-of-doors, and as distantly seen a creature as a dryad); my mother; and that busy-minded little boy, agog in wits and stomach and spirit – myself. For my father seemed but a familiar guest in the house, a guest ever eagerly desired and welcome, but none too eager to remain. He was a dark man with grey eyes and a long chin; a face unusually impassive, unusually mobile. Just as his capricious mood suggested, our little household was dejected or wildly gay. I never shall forget the spirit of delight he could conjure up at a whim, when my mother would go singing up and down stairs, and in her tiny parlour; and Martha in perfect content would prattle endlessly on to the cook, basting the twirling sirloin, while I watched in the firelight. And the long summer evenings too, when my father would find a secret, a magic, a mystery in everything; and we would sit together in the orchard while he told me tales, with the small green apples overhead, and beyond contorted branches, the first golden twilight of the moon.

  ‘It’s an old picture now, Richard, but true to the time.

  ‘My father’s will, his word, his caprice, his frown, these were the tables of the law in that small household. To my mother he was the very meaning of her life. Only that little boy was in some wise independent, busy, inquisitive, docile, sedate; though urged to a bitterness of secret rebellion at times. In his childhood he experienced such hours of distress as the years do not in mercy bring again to a heart that may analyse as well as remember. Yet there also sank to rest the fountain of life’s happiness. In among the gorse bushes were the green mansions of the fairies; along the furrows before his adventurous eyes stumbled crooked gnomes, hopped bewitched robins. Ariel trebled in the sunbeams and glanced from the dewdrops; and he heard the echo of distant and magic waters in the falling of the rain.

  ‘But my father was never long at peace in the house. Nothing satisfied him; he must needs be at an extreme. And if he was compelled to conceal his discontent, there was something so bitter and imperious in his silence, so scornful a sarcasm in his speech, that we could scarcely bear it. And the knowledge of the influence he had over us served only at such times to sharpen his contempt.

  ‘I remember one summer’s evening we had been gathering strawberries. I carried a little wicker basket, and went rummaging under the aromatic leaves, calling ever and again my mother to see the “tremenjous” berry I had found. Martha was busy beside me, vexed that her two hands could not serve her master quick enough. And in a wild race with my mother my father helped us pick. At every ripest one he took her in his arms to force it between her lips; and of those pecked by the birds he made a rhymed offering to Pan. And when the sun had descended behind the hill, and the clamour of the rooks had begun to wane in the elm-tops, he took my mother on his arm, and we trooped all together up the long straggling path, and across the grass, carrying our spoil of fruit into the cool dusky corridor. As we passed into the gloaming I saw my mother stoop impulsively and kiss his arm. He brushed off her hand impatiently, and went into his study. I heard the door shut. A moment afterwards he called for candles. And, looking on those two other faces in the twilight, I knew with the intuition of childhood that he was suddenly sick to death of us all; and I knew that my mother shared my intuition. She sat down, and I beside her, in her little parlour, and took up her sewing. But her face had lost again all its girlishness as she bent her head over the white linen.

  ‘I think she was happier when my father was away; for then, free from anxiety to be for ever pleasing his variable moods, she could entertain herself with hopes and preparations for his return. There was a little summer-house, or arbour, in the garden, where she would sit alone, while the swallows coursed in the evening air. Sometimes, too, she would take me for a long walk, listening distantly to my chatter, only, I think, that she might entertain the pleasure of supposing that my father might have returned home unforeseen, and be even now waiting to greet us. But these fancies would forsake her. She would
speak harshly and coldly to me, and scold Martha for her owlishness, and find nothing but vanity and mockery in all that but a little while since had been her daydream.

  ‘I think she rarely knew where my father stayed in his long absences from home. He would remain with us for a week, and neglect us for a month. She was too proud, and when he was himself, too happy and hopeful to question him, and he seemed to delight in keeping his affairs secret from her. Indeed, he sometimes appeared to pretend a mystery where none was, and to endeavour in all things to make his character and conduct appear quixotic and inexplicable.

  ‘So time went on. Yet, it seemed, as each month passed by, the house was not so merry and happy as before; something was fading and vanishing that would not return; estrangement had pierced a little deeper. I think care at last put out of my mother’s mind even the semblance of her former gaiety. She sealed up her heart lest love should break forth anew into the bleakness.

  ‘On Guy Fawkes’ Day Martha told me at bedtime that a new household had moved into the village on the other side of the heath. After that my father stayed away from us but seldom.

  ‘At first my mother showed her pleasure in a thousand ways, with dainties of her own fancy and cooking, with ribbons in her dark hair, with new songs (though she had but a small thin voice). She read to please him; and tired my legs out in useless errands in his service. And a word of praise sufficed her for many hours of difficulty. But by and by, when evening after evening was spent by my father away from home, she began to be uneasy and depressed; and though she made no complaint, her anxious face, the incessant interrogation of her eyes vexed and irritated him beyond measure.