Algernon Blackwood's "The Chemical"

commentary by rbadac

   

A reader can't help but presuppose a ghost will appear in any ghost story -- most especially if the knowledge that it is one is held beforehand, as it must ever be. They cannot hide, poor defenseless outcasts of literature. Were they ever loved as much as they were hated, they would still be just as naked, to the ridicule of "loftier" tastes or the adoration of rarefied ones. Under the opposing stresses of the demands placed upon them, it is a tribute to their vitality that they survive at all.

They do survive & their authors have been uniquely faithful to them, hardly ever writing only one or two but going so far as to tramp those lich-ridden paths so many times that they end up specializing in them, beyond all reason & common-sense, & usually with a good deal more artistic success than can decently be expected. It's for the same reason no one need complain about a bad tightrope-walker; the easy majority of them have earned a modicum of respect if they're still alive & working in the first place.

It is odd how trivial a thing can cause a first, instinctive dislike: the way a man wears his hat, the smirk with which a woman uses her mirror & lipstick in a public place -- & the aversion is suddenly aroused. Later knowledge may justify this first dislike, but the actual start has been the merest triviality.

Some think, however, this cause has not been so trivial as it appears; that gesture, being an unconscious expression of the entire personality, may betray far more than speech, which is calculated.

But is this dislike merely "chemical," as Moleson has heard, or does it point to more legitimate cause? Blackwood is a character in his own story, hearing fom Moleson the details of the latter's experiences in a boarding-house, and his interaction with the lodger across the hall, whose previous room he has apparently been given. Moleson is some time bringing up the subject of the other to his landlady, too polite, too uncertain, too untoward; & his landlady has her own reasons not to broach it:

... her question was an approach to the real one she wanted so much to ask. That, of course, he realized. Terror lay in it; it was wrapped round with terror as in a cocoon. Once the cocoon burst, was broken, out would come all the hideous wriggling things that lay concealed inside...

The landlady presupposes the mysterious tenant, Moleson presupposes the landlady, &, God help us, Blackwood presupposes Moleson. He is, as you may recall, hearing the story from Moleson's lips. It is a humorously exasperating yet effective structure, a minor subtext of ersatz suspense that distracts from the major counterpart. We are all in chorus with the characters & their author, themselves all going "And then -- ? And then -- ?" until the entire process overloads & shuts down out of pure unproductive spite.

And surprise, this is what Blackwood intended all along. Because there is something wrong with this picture, there is something malign & horrible about that other tenant, & this is a ghost story.

"Chemical" it is. A reagent, in fact.

In Cynthia Asquith's Ghost Book, Blackwood's own Shocks, who knows where else.

copyright © 2000 by rbadac, all rights reserved

   

There is usually something or another by Blackwood in the
Catalog of Vintage Weird Fictions For Sale

Read also rebadac's commentaries on
Mike Ashley's Equation Chillers selection of Algernon Blackwood
and onAlgernon Blackwood's "The Other Wing

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