Walter de la Mare's "The Recluse"
commentary to rbadac
with a woodblock illustration by Elizabeth Rivers for "The Recluse" from On the Edge
The days of stopping in one's journeys at the houses of strangers to spend the night are gone forever. Many of you have probably never even heard a Traveling Salesman joke. But you will have noticed this quaint old device in ghost stories, relics of a time when such hiatuses (hiati?) were necessary, & the courtesy not the atrocious & unthinkable naivete it is today.
Even so, the practice took on a desperate aura near the period of its demise, with the actual event becoming more or less an involuntary one (remember James Whale's film The Old Dark House?); unexpected breakdowns, inclement weather, the loss of direction & the fast approach of the nebulous night persuading the hapless victim -- er, traveler -- to seek shelter where he could, until the breaking dawn of a new day might put a better face on the situation.
Suspend your modern disbelief then, & hearken back to a time such as this; consider the plight of poor Mr. Dash, the "I" of this story, who, in a perfectly innocent desire to have a closer look at a secluded house that has somehow caught his fancy, has placed himself in the characteristic peril by availing himself of the hospitality of its owner, a Mr. Bloom.
"Which of the world's wiseacres," I wonder, was responsible for the aphorism that "the best things in life are to be found at its edges"? It is too vague, of course. So much depends on what you mean by the "best" & the "edges." And in any case most of us prefer the central. It has been explored; it is safe; you know where you are; it has been amply, copiously corroborated. But, "Amusing? Well, hardly. Quite so !" as my friend Mr. Bloom would have said. But then Mr. Bloom has now ventured over the "borderline." He is, I imagine, interested in edges no longer.
Mr. Dash, thinking the house is untenanted, is on the point of getting back into his car when the aforementioned Mr. Bloom appears on the porch. Invited in, Mr. Dash hesitates, but succumbs as all protagonists of the forward-seeking narrative must, & is left alone for a brief period inside to inspect the library & its faded Persian rugs, armchairs of vermillion morocco leather, mezzotints, & the curious plaster relief above the chimney-piece, with its motif of a pelican feeding its young (a theme repeated throughout the house which has disturbing adumbrations for the narrator), while Mr. Bloom goes to shut the front door.
Mr. Dash suffers as much of a tour of the strange cluttered house as he can politely countenance before attempting to take his leave. Imagine his consternation at finding that the gear-key needed for the operation of his vehicle (which he keeps by the dashboard) has somehow become misplaced.
Let us pass quickly through the inevitable sequence of events following this sad discovery; Mr. Dash, who can no longer, now must be entertained this evening by his peculiar host, who, while being possessed of a prodigious knowledge of various subjects, keeps a very respectable board, & offers the more than adequate comfort of his home for his guest, is nevertheless the source of a mounting terror which has Mr. Dash as its sole & undefended subject.
Mr. Bloom & his recently deceased secretary Stephen Champneys conducted certain experiments in the occult, experiments which Champneys recorded in the mysterious volumes labeled "Proceedings." But Champneys died in his bed of "lung trouble," leaving Mr. Bloom alone with his dog Chunks, "a yellowish dog with a white-gleaming sidelong eye," to which Mr. Bloom seems to delight in prompting "Where's Steve? Where's Steve?"
Not a restful evening would Mr. Dash spend in the former bedroom of the departed secretary, despite his host's attempts to keep him up as late as possible. Behind his mask of hospitality Mr. Bloom apparently dreads the oncoming night himself.
"The Recluse" will be found in On the Edge (Faber & Faber; London, 1930), also in Cynthia Asquith's Ghost Book & the Dennis Wheatley-edited A Century of Creepy Stories. Robert Aickman fans take note: in a direct line of descent, Walter de la Mare is where Aickman comes from.