Sleepy Hollow

The global problems of today may be imputed to many ills – industrialism, usury, ignorance, inter alia – but among those countries of Christian heritage, the problem is one: the acceptance or denial of the Bible's literality. You will not have to look far to find the deniers, who seem to believe the most scientific arguments are the ones yelled most loudly and most frequently (for people who worship dark and endless silence, they are conspicuously noisy). Their primary mistake, of course, is thinking that the non-occurrence of a Biblical event argues the non-occurrence of all Biblical events and an invalidation of the religion itself, which is a little like not finding a particular glossy leaf and denouncing an entire forest. Those who take the Bible as the infallible word of God, however, deem the practical impossibility of some Biblical events a mere avocation from their task of gospel-spreading and brimstone-throwing. As such, both sides are far off the mark. The Book of God for the Christian is a tome of moral principles, illustrated in many cases by what we suspect are fables, and in many others by what we believe are the greatest events in the history of mankind. It would be too easy to accept all this literally, and, indeed, literal truth is best found in the concrete jangle of numbers, formulas, and measurements. Figurative truth is a much more elusive quarry; a fine way to approach the nightmarish happenings of this film.  

We begin with a scene which I cannot spoil since it will be repeated with varying effect more than a half-dozen times. What we can reveal is the date: July 15, 1799, a decade and a day after the French decided that neither cake nor bread could console them. Since our film does not seem to be overtly political, we do not immediately understand the implication of this detail, but its importance will manifest itself in due course. Six months shy of its first century (never mind those who would correctly begin count in 1801) as a free nation (never mind that truly free were only Christian white men of Northern European stock), America's United States still have a very European marrow, the region of our concern being the Dutch settlements of upstate New York. It is then of little surprise that the main signatory to the last will and testament that captions our opening sequence is a certain Peter van Garrett. What is a surprise, however, is what soon befalls this hitherto omnipotent landlord, whose last glimpse of earth involves a scarecrow that could not possibly have been designed for birds alone. We next meet Ichabod Crane (Johnny Depp), an idealistic forensic mortician who reviles the iniquitous interrogation methods of the New York City police – where he just so happens to be employed. Crane's squeaky defiance is nothing new, yet he manages to rile a Burgomaster (Christopher Lee) to such a degree that the latter opts to dispatch him to a "mostly Dutch" community, "two days' journey to the north," where "three people have been murdered in the last fortnight, their heads lopped off as clean as dandelion heads." The old functionary punctuates his harangue with a long finger and the warning, "Remember it is you, Ichabod Crane, who is now put to the test." (Crane is a proponent of post mortems and other such ghoulish scientific work, which the Burgomaster labels "experimentations.") Crane accepts this unusual assignment as an indication that science can triumph anywhere over any obstacle; we are later provided, in the film's worst parts, psychobabble-inspired nightmares that should have been excised, with a reason for his blind faith in science (which will also account for the curious puncture marks on his hands; the less said about this plot detail, the better). Yet for what he is about to witness, we and the steadily dwindling population of Sleepy Hollow sense that Ichabod Crane's library might not have a ready diagram.  

The three victims, we read in Crane's journal, are Peter van Garrett ("a prominent land owner"), Dirk van Garrett ("his son"), and Emily Winship (merely "a widow," a woman not even defined by herself or anyone living, although the same could be said of Dirk van Garrett). Crane arrives at Sleepy Hollow and notices what one is supposed to notice in films of immense foreboding: namely, that everyone ogles the newcomer then shuts her windows before he can ogle back; that extreme measures are being taken (an odd makeshift fortification suggests a turret) against the evil; and that amidst the approach of death, people seem to be more amenable to indulging in some last-minute vices, such as the lusty couple straddling the darkened doorstep that opens onto a very civilized ball at the house of Baltus van Tassel (Michael Gambon). Van Tassel is van Garrett's proprietary successor and, as the de facto lord in this fiefdom, will head the cabal of village elders, none of whom would be mistaken for a paragon of righteousness. There is the Magistrate Philipse (the late Richard Griffiths), who enjoys idle gossip as much as any stereotypical chambermaid; Doctor Lancaster (Ian McDiarmid), who has a bad habit of looking over his shoulder; Reverend Steenwyck (Jeffrey Jones), as upstanding a citizen as most priests are in thrillers; and the dead-eyed, grizzled notary Hardenbrook (Michael Gough), who must be the luckiest man in Sleepy Hollow to have lived to such a ripe old age considering his perfect firetrap of a hut. At the ball Crane also makes the acquaintance of van Tassel's young daughter Katrina (Christina Ricci), who comes complete with jealous beau, a proclivity for spells and other occult appurtenances, and a recently acquired stepmother (Miranda Richardson). The unanimous elders expound their theory on the murders to Crane, even going so far as to thump a Bible in his vicinity, but the coroner remains convinced that the perpetrator is "a man of flesh and blood" (he is, as it turns out, only half-right). It should be noted that a crucial detail in the narrative of the Hessian mercenary who would go on, local legend insists, to become the ghostly killer that haunts these parts, is seen but not discussed. This information is so vital to the plot that one cannot fault the first-time viewer who either does not register the detail or only recurs to it hazily once its significance becomes obvious. The slayings of course continue, including the film's one really objectionable scene implying the death of a child, and Crane has a lot more dots on his hands to connect. 

While critics concur that, fifteen years after its release, Sleepy Hollow persists as one of the most visually pleasing films you will ever experience (I have seen it four times and it remains sensational), some have lambasted Burton's "infidelity" to the original story. But this is all hogwash. Irving's seminal tale implies something rather unfortunate about more than one of the characters, a scarcely-concealed reality that would play poorly on screen (although one brief scene offers a taste). No, Burton's vision has it right: the best tales do not undermine, but overmine, overreach, and overdo their passion. The trick to tempering those sentiments is to have superbly drawn characters, a tight plot, and, most importantly, a moral bearing, and what Sleepy Hollow does very well is allow Crane initially to exist in a parallel dimension. He does not believe, or does not want to believe, a word the locals tell him about the killer despite what we may justly term overwhelming physical evidence. When, at the film's midpoint, Crane comes to lend credence to the legend, he deduces the pertinent minutia – before the killer actually appears – with the same cold logic he sought to impose on the villagers. This is the script's finest touch: a skeptic contemning the people for believing what he deems a myth, yet once the myth seems true, expressing even greater contempt for their not combating it more vigorously. And what about that cardinal in a cage? Perhaps Crane's notion of truth and appearance might be better than we first thought. 

Number 13

Admirers of Germanic Scandinavia – I am fortunate enough to count myself among their numbers – will all concur that what distinguishes this miraculous swath of civilization from the rest of our globe is something we may term secularity, but what is better understood as modernity. Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and my beloved Denmark have all endured enormous changes when one considers at what juncture of development these countries lay just a century ago (as depicted, for example, in this film). Yet peace and prosperity, both of which have been showered on Scandinavia for almost seventy years, have that funny tendency of making the beneficiaries forget about basic values. Scandinavians have dammed that slippery slope by the sanest hybrid of capitalism and social welfare the world has ever seen, and while a few are frightfully rich, far fewer can be deemed frightfully poor. Such is the point of government: help the weak, allow the strong to flourish only when they simultaneously aid society, and allow everyone the same opportunities. The results, of course, will necessarily not be the same. There will be still be arrogant peeves over materialism, individual freedoms, and the separation of Church and state, and there is little we can do for people so devoid of imagination that they need their neuroses ballasted in law. Which brings us to this old tale.

We find ourselves in this town, somewhere between the Great Wars, but definitely far out of the reach of current events. Our protagonist is a certain Mr. Anderson, a Church scholar and linguist particularly enamored with the migration of faiths through these Northern lands. His current journey is justified by the news that "in the Rigsarkiv [National Archive] of Viborg there were papers, saved from the fire [of 1726], relating to the last days of Roman Catholicism in the country." Of course, there is no such thing as the "last days of Roman Catholicism," simply the first days of another, closely related system of beliefs – but let us be more precise. What should be understood here is that the original formations of faith are never swept away by novelty, however long novelty has been around; they invariably persist in some form or another. Hence the omission of room 13 from circulation at our destination, the Viborg lodge the Golden Lion, something "which Anderson had already noticed half a dozen times in his experience of Danish hotels." Anderson wishes himself a larger room, and gets it: room twelve, "fairly high and unusually long" with three windows on its side. Very satisfied with this arrangement, he plans his long workdays with that mirth unique to scholars. And since he first entered his quarters during daytime, it is only at night that he remarks the anomalies:

It was not difficult for him to find his way back to his own door. So, at least, he thought; but when he arrived there, and turned the handle, the door entirely refused to open, and he caught the sound of a hasty movement towards it from within. He had tried the wrong door, of course. Was his own room to the right or to the left? He glanced at the number: it was 13 .... [Later] it occur[red] to him that, whereas on the blackboard of the hotel there had been no Number 13, there was undoubtedly a room numbered 13 in the hotel. He felt rather sorry he had not chosen it for his own. Perhaps he might have done the landlord a little service by occupying it, and given him the chance of saying that a well-born English gentleman had lived in it for three weeks and liked it very much. But probably it was used as a servant's room or something of the kind. After all, it was most likely not so large or good a room as his own. And he looked drowsily about the room, which was fairly perceptible in the half-light from the street-lamp. It was a curious effect, he thought. Rooms usually look larger in a dim light than a full one, but this seemed to have contracted in length and grown proportionately higher.

Nowadays, of course, Danes couldn't care less whether an Englishman – well-born or otherwise – stayed in a hotel or, for that matter, did anything at all. Our scholar betakes himself to the National Archive the next day and represses this oddity.

What happens subsequently is, for the most part, what one can expect to happen in a story by James, that is, fantastic eloquence striped with utter dread. As is also common in his work, the tale is related by someone who did not experience it – the very hallmark of ghost stories who nourish themselves on the amplifications of word-of-mouth. In this case, the narrator is Anderson's cousin who later reveals that he possesses a tome whose frontispiece ("representing a number of sages seated around a table") was made by this infamous engraver. Strange things begin to occur in their habitual fashion and yet the anxious reader may become puzzled that Anderson, as someone clearly with a sideways interest in the occult, would not detect the hints. One in particular that perhaps should remain undetected:

The light was behind him, and he could see his own shadow clearly cast on the wall opposite .... Also the shadow of the occupant of Number 13 on the right ... Number 13 was, like himself, leaning on his elbows on the window-sill looking out into the street. He seemed to be a tall thin man – or was it by any chance a woman? – at least, it was someone who covered his or her head with some kind of drapery before going to bed, and, he thought, must be possessed of a red lamp-shade – and the lamp must be flickering much. There was a distinct playing up and down of a dull red light on the opposite wall. He craned out a little to see if he could make out any more of the figure, but beyond a fold of some light, perhaps white, material on the window-sill he could see nothing.

Should we add that the Golden Lion is "one of the very few houses that were not destroyed in the great fire of 1726"? It was right around that time that a hideous pact was completed between a future scholar at this university and, well, the being you would normally associate with hideous pacts. But we – and Anderson – still cannot account for that one night when he hears a song.  

A Warning to the Curious

As I know very little about English geography – somewhat, I suppose, to my disappointment – it was not surprising to learn that the town of Seaburgh in this tale is really the town of Aldeburgh, Suffolk (Seaburgh does sound a mite Teutonic for an Anglian port). Further research informs me that the three crowns of Anglia, allegedly to be found in Suffolk, Norfolk, and Essex, do not fill the tomes of legend as one might have hoped – but all this is irrelevant. We do not need ancient Anglian monarchs, invading Vikings, or pristine topographical nomenclature to enjoy this author. Yet we do need England, and that we get in spades.

The beginning will not be easy to follow, a stratagem that is wholly intentional. About our first narrator we know almost nothing save a predilection since his earliest days for the Eastern port of Seaburgh ("It is not very different now from what I remember it to have been when I was a child"). Although lush details "come crowding to the point of the pencil when it begins to write of" this salt-swept town, our nameless first narrator will soon pass the baton to a second, equally anonymous storyteller who had a very odd experience in Seaburgh with his now-deceased friend Henry Long one April month not so far back in our collective memory. Long and he pass the day in quiet boredom between golf rounds in a small hotel where they are some of the few lodgers. One fine day they receive a visit from one of the only other tenants:

So the ordinary public rooms were practically empty, and we were the more surprised when, after dinner, our sitting-room door opened, and a young man put his head in. We were aware of this young man. He was rather a rabbity anaemic subject – light hair and light eyes – but not unpleasing. So when he said: 'I beg your pardon, is this a private room?' we did not growl and say: 'Yes, it is,' but Long said, or I did – no matter which: 'Please come in.' 'Oh, may I?' he said, and seemed relieved. Of course it was obvious that he wanted company; and as he was a reasonable kind of person – not the sort to bestow his whole family history on you – we urged him to make himself at home.

This young man, whose name turns out appropriately enough to be Paxton, will become our third narrator, and when he buttonholes a local rector in conversation about the Ager family, we have our fourth degree of narration in as many pages. The intention of such distancing is clear: if we are to feel drawn into a world that existed twelve centuries ago, our direct experience will be less useful than a pungent relay of generations imbuing the narrative with vitality and significance. No one at any time denies Paxton his claims, which are fantastic, nor the tale of the crowns themselves, "buried in different places near the coast to keep off the Danes or the French or the Germans." Why? Because while the first crown "was dug up at Rendlesham ... and melted down before it was even properly described," and the second lost in a "Saxon royal palace ... now under the sea," the third crown has been "left doing its work, keeping off invaders." And it just so happens that our third narrator was able to guess – well, perhaps that's not quite the right word – where its work was being done.

The rest of the story has much to do with an old Latin adage about character – but anyway, back to our man Paxton. Paxton's destiny is determined by his insatiable curiosity, hence our title, but we never get a clear picture of why he is so eager to know the secrets of the past, and this is the story's masterstroke. An explanation of his motivations would have isolated him among thousands of similar dramatis personae who want to know too much, as well as made for a rather non-universal ghost story. Paxton is no better or worse than any other mild-mannered, educated person; his only flaw is that he does not comprehend what even the feeblest display of arrogance might earn him. So when a local man jowers about a church's coat of arms and Paxton correctly identifies it as the three crowns of Anglia, he is then ushered to the rector who tells him in detail of the wilting Ager family and its role as the guardians of these crowns. The last of this line is Willam Ager, "who has only died fairly recently," and who apparently lived close on the burial spot of that third jewel. "So the last of the holy crowns," concludes the clergyman, "if it's there, has no guardian now." Thus perhaps we should not snicker at Paxton's odd coincidences in the days that followed that report:

'That was what the rector told me, and you can fancy how interesting I found it. The only thing I could think of when I left him was how to hit upon the spot where the crown was supposed to be. I wish I'd left it alone. But there was a sort of fate in it, for as I bicycled back past the churchyard wall my eye caught a fairly new gravestone, and on it was the name of William Ager. Of course I got off and read it. It said "of this parish, died at Seaburgh, 19–, aged 28."' There it was, you see. A little judicious questioning in the right place, and I should at least find the cottage nearest the spot. Only I didn't quite know what was the right place to begin my questioning at. Again there was fate: it took me to the curiosity-shop down that way – you know – and I turned over some old books, and, if you please, one was a prayer-book of 1740 odd, in a rather handsome binding.'

What they find in that prayer-book will not be revealed here, but a page is kept open – come wind or weather, literally – with a razor blade for the duration of Paxton's suffering, with the razor blade at length offering our prospector an easier exit. The second narrator and the late Henry Long are helpful in their good-natured way, but even they recognize that in divulging their plans to save Paxton, "whispering seemed the proper tone," an opinion with which the reader will likely concur. 

James is always wonderful reading, some say the best to have around a wintry hearth and deathly stillness of a snowbound night, but I will leave that decision to how well you want to sleep. There is a faithful film version extant of A Warning to the Curious, back when the BBC was cultivating programs other than moronic miniseries on moronic monarchs, and when we were not quite as skeptical of the phenomena a good haunting entails. Why be skeptical? After all, believing that our world and its endless impediments conceal another, less objective reality seems to the modern mind to be a matter of choice. Paxton acted of his own free volition and paid oh so dearly. And if fata volentem ducunt, you should see what the fates do to the unwilling.

Lot No. 249

Why are some of us so attracted to tales of the supernatural? The easy answer is that we are fools. We believe in a world far greater and more profound than what senses may perceive, but are informed by a loud and rather unpleasant faction that there is no rational foundation for such a belief. Mired in delusions as were, it appears, countless generations of our elders, we have proceeded in stupidity through this life with the silly expectation of another life to follow, or at least a chance to break into that shadowy realm. We are told that we suffer from faith; we are told we deny history; and we are told that we should feel relieved that the religions of all states and empires past and present are nothing more than hardly distinct pebbles in a massive mosaic at once utterly fictional and utterly fraudulent. What the allegedly brave and intelligent pundits of such a strategy fail to see is, in considering us mere links on a billion-year chain of death, they bring relief to absolutely no one save the most deranged and masochistic. That is not to say that our world has not been our world for a billion years or more, or that there is no chain of development between the man of yesterday and the man of today (not to mention the ape or amphibian of lost millennia). Simply that there is much more than what meets the scientist's eye beneath his microscope. Which brings us to this seminal tale. 

When we have a protagonist with the plain and solid name of Smith, we must expect someone very bad or very good. And in Abercrombie Smith, a "strong, unimaginative man," we get a decidedly dull if at times brazen and arrogant fellow, which may be as suitable a metaphor for the modern man of science as one may find. His temperament does not lend itself to the arts or even what will confront him, namely the black arts of the occult; it surprises us in no way to learn he is a medical student; thus, to figure in our story in any productive manner, he must be coerced into belief by the foulest enormities:   

With his firm mouth, broad forehead, and clear-cut, somewhat hard-featured face, he was a man who, if he had no brilliant talent, was yet so dogged, so patient, and so strong that he might in the end overtop a more showy genius. A man who can hold his own among Scotchmen and North Germans is not a man to be easily set back. Smith had left a name at Glasgow and at Berlin, and he was bent now upon doing as much at Oxford, if hard work and devotion could accomplish it.

Compounding his reliance on the body's whims, Smith is also one of those hale and hearty males "whose minds and tastes turned naturally to all that was manly and robust." We might swiftly dismiss such a fellow nowadays as a half-witted athlete (Smith is fittingly a competitive oarsman); nonetheless, Smith evinces some Renaissance qualities that grant him our admiration without the palest stripe of envy. His foil is Edward Bellingham and, for reasons that need not be revealed here, the first person mentioned by our narrator. As fat, pasty, and negligent of his physical well-being as he is committed to a life of the mind and the soul, Edward Bellingham knows more about Ancient Egypt "than any man in England." In Bellingham's case, however, his soul may be a movable commodity:

'There's something damnable about him – something reptilian. My gorge always rises at him. I should put him down as a man with secret vices – an evil liver. He's no fool, though. They say that he is one of the best men in his line that they have ever had in the college .... [in] Eastern languages. He's a demon at them. Chillingworth met him somewhere above the second cataract last long, and he told me that he just prattled to the Arabs as if he had been born and nursed and weaned among them. He talked Coptic to the Copts, and Hebrew to the Jews, and Arabic to the Bedouins, and they were all ready to kiss the hem of his frock-coat. There are some old hermit Johnnies up in those parts who sit on rocks and scowl and spit at the casual stranger. Well, when they saw this chap Bellingham, before he had said five words they just lay down on their bellies and wriggled. Chillingworth said that he never saw anything like it. Bellingham seemed to take it as his right, too, and strutted about among them and talked down to them like a Dutch uncle. Pretty good for an undergrad.'

Does it matter who utters this description? Not really; as it were, it leaves the lips of another oarsman and outdoorsman by the name of Hastie, as a warning to Smith that Bellingham, who happens to be Smith's neighbor one floor down, should be subject to sedulous avoidance. Yet in his manly heart Smith feels more than a mild tenderness for the neighbor, "whose lamp threw a golden bar from the old turret even after he had extinguished his own." This "community in lateness," a neologism to which any serious man of literature should possess lifetime membership, forms "a certain silent bond between them." To our well-rounded and academically ambitious Smith it was a "soothing" thought that another person "set as small a value upon his sleep as he did." It has been said by many that no greater friendship can be formed than what may arise between two men sharing the same intellectual and spiritual interests. Unfortunately for Smith, he will soon find out that his and Bellingham's only commonality is a rigorous nocturnal schedule.

We have yet to explain the title, one of Conan Doyle's least elegant, if nevertheless well-chosen. Why should we explain the title? Because, one assumes, titles foreshadow their works' contents and themes, and to this hard and fast rule Lot No. 249 cannot possibly comprise an exception. Take, for example, Bellingham's quarters as Smith first observes them:

He could not but take an amazed glance around him as he crossed the threshold. It was such a chamber as he had never seen before – a museum rather than a study. Walls and ceiling were thickly covered with a thousand strange relics from Egypt and the East. Tall, angular figures bearing burdens or weapons stalked in an uncouth frieze round the apartments. Above were bull-headed, stork-headed, cat-headed, owl-headed statues, with viper-crowned, almond-eyed monarchs, and strange, beetle-like deities cut out of the blue Egyptian lapis lazuli. Horus and Isis and Osiris peeped down from every niche and shelf, while across the ceiling a true son of Old Nile, a great, hanging-jawed crocodile, was slung in a double noose.

Given his obsession with all things Pharaonic, Bellingham may be considered just as much of a "true son" of the Old Nile. And didn't Hastie just refer to him as "reptilian"? And what about that double noose? Without giving too much away – and in this age of big search engines that could, this simply means holding the reader's curiosity for a few more seconds – we should say that despite its unfortunate name, Lot No. 249 would launch a trend in supernatural literature and film that has persisted to the present day. We may also come to ask ourselves who but a "bold and confident man" like our Smith would "put a limit to the strange bypaths into which the human spirit may wander." Even if we know there is one path Smith will never walk again.  

The Lair of the White Worm

We cannot realistically expect trifles in a work with such a name. There should be a gigantic worm and a commensurate lair (and here I find myself already echoing a famous review of the novel's loose and dreadful movie adaptation); there should also be victims for that worm – ideally, lured to the lair and left to scream themselves into agonizing death – a simple formula that could easily be botched by too much meddling and melodrama. There is, wonderful to say, only a moderate portion of the latter among pages of sparkling prose in this author's final novel. 

Our protagonist is Adam Salton, a young, roughly hewn Australian of proper upbringing who stands to inherit substantial wealth and territory from his British forebears. His plans for this turn of fortune are no different than those of any callow Victorian hero: survey the lay of the land, see what benefits might exist to abandoning the volatile adventure of youth for a sedentary life as a member of the provincial gentry, gain the trust and succor of the commonalty, and, of course, keep his eyes peeled for a nubile lass with whom his house can be made into a home. Two lovely possibilities immediately appear. Lilla Watford, "as good as she is pretty," and, a less obvious choice, her first cousin Mimi, half-Burmese with "black eyes [that] can glow .... as do the eyes of a bird when her young are threatened." As bright as the prospects for Adam and one of these women remain – being a man of inexperience, he is instinctively more attracted to the blonde Lilla – a long aquiline shadow is cast by the form of Edgar Caswall. I struggle now to recall a literary Edgar who was both gentle and sane, but no matter. The "history of the Caswall family is coeval with that of England," and our Edgar has been generated from like-minded snobs unaccustomed to challenges or laughter. In fact, their only custom seems to have been one of acquist:

Now, it will be well for you to bear in mind the prevailing characteristics of this race. These were well preserved and unchanging; one and all they are the same: cold, selfish, dominant, reckless of consequences in pursuit of their own will. It was not that they did not keep faith, though that was a matter which gave them little concern, but that they took care to think beforehand of what they should do in order to gain their ends. If they should make a mistake someone else should bear the burthen of it. This was so perpetually recurrent that it seemed to be a part of a fixed policy. It was no wonder indeed that whatever changes took place they were always ensured in their own possessions. They were absolutely of cold, hard nature. Not one of them – so far as we have any knowledge – was ever known to be touched by the softer sentiments, to swerve from his purpose, or hold his hand in obedience to the dictates of his heart. Part of this was due to their dominant, masterful nature. The aquiline features which marked them seemed to justify every personal harshness. The pictures and effigies of them all show their adherence to the early Roman type. Their eyes were full; their hair, of raven blackness, grew thick and close and curly. Their figures were massive and typical of strength.

It takes no great effort of our imagination to ponder the "idea that in the race there is some demoniac possession"; indeed, the experienced Gothicist would anticipate nothing less. Caswall will pin his cruel eyes on several characters, and they will squirm in various degrees of mesmerism until a filthy secret of his family's legacy is partially revealed, at which point Caswall assumes in our tale a very different role. But it is the appearance of an even more cunning and wicked character that unbalances our equation, and that being is Lady Arabella March.

Even if the contours of her thoughts are allotted relatively few paragraphs, Lady Arabella is one of literature's vilest creations. No one is surprised that her looks have the baleful sleekness and refinement of nature's most devilish predators, nor that her history with these lands – the ancient pagan Kingdom of Mercia, we are duly informed – seems to stretch as far back as that of dear old Edgar. Lady Arabella develops two mortal foes in the course of her attempts to get the very wealthy Edgar to marry her and forgive the mounting debts of her freshly deceased ex-husband: Oolanga, Caswall's ferocious and calculating African man-at-arms, and Sir Nathaniel de Salis, diplomatist, scholar, and President of the Mercian Archaeological Society. Sir Nathaniel is also necessarily somewhat of an expert on the local occult, making him a dramatic counterpart to this famed doctor. The diplomatist will consult regularly with Adam and smartly keep his distance from Lady Arabella, about whom he weaves theory and odd fact into terrible conclusions, but Oolanga cannot seem to let the woman out of his sight. Perhaps it is owing to her excitement at the portage to and fro of an old family chest said to contain "the secrets of Mesmer" himself; perhaps to the simple intuition that once Lady Arabella has Edgar and his rapidly declining mental health in her power, neither Caswall nor his new wife will have any use for an erstwhile witch doctor. Luck will be pressed, as well as a few triggers (rarely outside of modern noir novels does one find so many references to concealed revolvers), and unfortunately for some, most of the village is quite out of earshot.     

Modern readers will surely be repulsed at some of the characterizations of women, and, especially, of dark-skinned Africans, but the novel does not make our man-at-arms into anything more than a vulgar mercenary, which, if he's supposed to be friendly with Edgar Caswall, is well in keeping with the personalities of both villains. What is more, almost all the deprecations directed at him come from an even more abhorrent source. Lair of the White Worm may never be counted among Stoker's masterpieces, but it contains a fullness and ease that eluded many of his earlier works. Sumptuous lines, sometimes on the most banal of topics, are strewn on every page ("He found Sir Nathaniel in the study having an early cup of tea, amplified to the dimensions of possible breakfast"; "He was on the high road to mental disturbance"; "The rest and sleep in ignorance would help her and make a gap between the horrors"; "I don't believe in a partial liar. This art does not deal in veneer"). The storytelling vacillates at the natural unevenness of oral narrative, and confusion over some of the details forces the careful reader to retreat and verify just as a rapt listener would have asked a speaker to revisit a certain scene. Praise should likewise be accorded for the restraint through which our eponymous reptile crawls, literally and figuratively, to the surface towards all the other players. There is also an almost understated deduction that begins with, "if we followed it out" and ends with "is a snake." Even in books of this subject matter, logic has no true peer. And some islands, we remember, don't have snakes for a reason.