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.

The Black Monk

You may have heard of something called genius and wondered why its application has broadened in recent years. Perhaps it is because science has forged ahead into blackest night and produced theories to explain why a billion stars still do not tell us precisely how we came to be on this earth. Perhaps it is also because so many nations have obtained their long-coveted self-determination and determined that their selves are no lesser entities than the selves that have existed for hundreds or thousands of years. Perhaps it is likewise because we have liberated people from the staid and dour mores that claimed, with some peremptoriness, that a woman should probably not dress like a prostitute for men to respect her. These are the same mores, mind you, that say we should work hard, share the wealth, think of others, and think of leaving our world better than how we found it, instead of simply looting it for all it could be worth. If the modern day's emphasis on sexual liberation – as if being obsessed with your sexuality could be deemed in any way liberating – non-conformity, and individual expression regardless of training, skill, or inborn aptitude seems to be not only missing the point, but obliterating it, we offer a lovely alternative. So for those of us who have forsaken sleep for life, for those of us who spend countless hours emboldened by art's eternal and indestructible magnificence, for those of us who believe that this earth is a game of shadows and that reality is but a cage, gilded or otherwise, we offer this classic story. 

The tale's first three words spell out a hero's name, a true hero's name because he will provide our narrative's epicenter from start to finish. If the story fails, it will be because Andrei Vasil'ich Kovrin has failed; were it, however, to succeed, a dubious proposition given the direction in which events career, all glory should be accorded to the same indefatigable scholar. I give nothing away by the admission that Kovrin's nerves, which betray him in the opening sentence of The Black Monk, will also betray him in its last. His remedy is an inward journey to countryside memories tucked away with the Pesotskii family, father and daughter, the former having been Kovrin's guardian through a childhood that seems in hindsight ever the more bountiful and warm, as all good childhoods do. Igor Pesotskii lost his wife to consumption, and he has always wished to give his daughter Tanya in marriage to his adopted son; the arrangement is made less unnatural by Peskotskii's primary concern: his lush and meticulously tended garden. There is nothing particularly despicable about horticulture, even if it does smack of the bourgeois hobbyist. One description of the estate boasts the indelible mark of long-proven truth:

The Pesotskii house was huge, with columns, leonine statues striped in plaster, and a tail-coated footman at the front door .... That said, next to the house itself, in the courtyard and the fruit garden ... it was merry and joyful even in bad weather. Such breathtaking roses, lilies, and camellias; such tulips of infinite colors, ranging from bright white to black as soot; Kovrin had never encountered anywhere else a wealth of flowers comparable to the Peskotskiis'. It was but early spring and the most genuine abundance of flowers still lay hidden in the hothouses, even if you could already see some of it along the pathways and here and there on the bushes. It was enough for anyone strolling around the garden to feel as if he were amidst a kingdom of gentle colors, especially during the early hours, when dew shimmered upon every petal.  

The same garden in which Kovrin, "as a child, sneezed from the smoke"; the same garden which "once made a magical, fairy-tale like impression upon [him]"; yet it is not the same garden because Kovrin is not the same Kovrin. Could it possibly be coincidence that Pesotskii is derived from pesok, "sand" – time itself, and average, nameless, indistinguishable mediocrity in a billion-year desert of the dead? Could it also just be fictional happenstance that Tanya, a woman not averse to bawling for hours on end, is presented two lines from this masterpiece that has its own Tanya? What can be said is that those melodrama set pieces have little in common with the rather fantastic eponymous anchorite. Admittedly, not all monks are anchorites, nor is the reverse necessarily true. Yet we suspect, given his antics, this one would really have to be.

Now about that monk. About a fifth through our story, Kovrin, who purportedly came back to his childhood home to soothe his nerves, has reassumed his manic, almost insomniac schedule ("In the countryside he maintained that unrestful and nerve-inducing lifestyle"). His days and nights are devoted to that sweetest of fruits, knowledge in its purest form of language, literature, and philosophy. Precisely at this moment, when reality and dream have begun to blur, he recalls a legend that is so ridiculous and un-legend-like as to persuade the reader of one of two possibilities. Firstly, that the "legend" he mentions is nothing more than a fictional strand unravelled from a rather gigantic ball of yarn in Kovrin's mind; secondly, that this same mind may be close to unravelling itself entirely. We will not say which interpretation Tanya, who has little to recommend her except typical bucolic frankness, chooses for Kovrin, who to no one's surprise will become her husband. But we do know what the monk, an omnipresent, water-skimming figure in a cowl, thinks of Kovrin, which may or may not be what Kovrin thinks of himself:

You are one of the few whom we may justly call God's chosen. You are in the service of eternal truth. Your thoughts, your intentions, your surprising knowledge, and all your life bear a divine, heavenly stamp, since they are devoted to the logical and the beautiful, that is, to that which is eternal.

Readers may find the words maudlin, but consider what you would anticipate hearing from what has been portrayed in descendant literature as a spectre on stilts. Our monk and Kovrin will convene on several occasions (precipitated by the very odd detail that the monk initiates each encounter by nearly running Kovrin over) and discuss what lurks in Kovrin's soul, which has its doubts like all intelligent people do from time to stressful time. And for Professor Kovrin it has been a most stressful time. The only question is whether the doubts he expresses are doubts in line with his own intellectual ambitions. 

The Black Monk remains one of Russian literature's greatest stories, which isn't to say it is necessarily one of its best. It is great because the story is about how greatness, or a delusion of greatness, is wrested away from one strange and intellectually curious man who may or may not be a scholar of genius (it also strikingly illustrates a famous quote on geniuses by this author). Chekhov's works invariably lend themselves to simple recapitulation because they are never abstract or impressionist: their brilliance lies in how blunt they allow themselves to become, what hatefulness or loveliness they permit the world to espy, a world, we should mention, that has come to expect literature to furnish it with vague images, inscrutable ideas, or mirages of remembrance upon which we are entitled to project our own visions. Kovrin makes a series of fateful decisions in the two years the story arc encompasses, but none more telling than the opening (raspechatat') of a sealed letter echoing the "divine, heavenly stamp" (pechat') that allegedly "distinguished him from ordinary people." Ordinary people who just want to plant a garden and watch it grow. 

The Judge's House

Happy people will agree that life above all other things is sacrosanct; unhappy people will care about little details or none at all. The qualms of conscience from which the vast majority of us suffer should therefore reflect our concerns, and the unhappy cannot be expected to worry themselves about the big picture. That is to say, if what plagues you is your coworker's hairstyle, salary, or ability, we cannot hope that you will have empathy for those who cannot afford meat much less envy. Some particularly woeful shades will even look down upon those who have nothing and claim that they are lazy and complacent (and I think I need not share my opinions on that approach to humanity). Yet it is true that we all quietly mete out imaginary sentences to those who have offended or betrayed our ideals or pride – which brings us to this terrible tale.

The premise is plausible enough: Malcom Malcomson, an advanced student of that coldest of sciences, mathematics, frets over his upcoming exams for which he needs absolute serenity. As such, the young man betakes himself by train to "the first name on the local time-table which he did not know." I say plausible enough because an utterly unfamiliar location would be as time-costly as one's own neighborhood, if in a very different way. In any case, Malcomson is convinced, perhaps foolishly, that all English villages have enough in common to allow for easy adaptation. When he arrives in Benchurch, he puts up at the town's only inn all the while looking for "quarters more isolated than even so quiet an inn as 'The Good Traveller' afforded." As it were, there was "only one place which took his fancy," a house that has been empty for so long that it has made itself a victim of "absurd prejudice." What type of "absurd prejudice," you may ask? One can well imagine what the villagers have in mind; but the only details provided to Malcomson relate to a nameless Judge who was particularly cruel and bloodthirsty to anyone unfortunate enough to cross his docket. He is warned that staying in such a residence might be detrimental to his spiritual well-being, an admonition he summarily dismisses. A man reading for his mathematics exams "has too much to think of to be disturbed by any of these mysterious 'somethings.'" A bold statement made, of course, well before he has encountered any of the somethings in question.

I am naturally loath to reveal too much of a bad thing, but I will add a few more pieces to our puzzle. The general temperament of the house is transformed by a loving charwoman whom Malcomson hires, and he falls into the very student routine of work, dinner, more work, and tea (some prefer coffee, but that would be a tad continental). Slowly Malcomson realizes that he is not alone. His company is a pack of hateful plague-carrying rodents who at first do not scare as much as annoy him. Yet a strange occurrence attends his unwillingness to rid himself of these beasts and instead examine his shadowy surroundings:

The carving of the oak on the panels of the wainscot was fine, and on and round the doors and windows it was beautiful and of rare merit. There were some old pictures on the walls, but they were coated so thick with dust and dirt that he could not distinguish any detail of them, though he held his lamp as high as he could over his head. Here and there as he went round he saw some crack or hole blocked for a moment by the face of a rat with its bright eyes glittering in the light, but in an instant it was gone, and a squeak and a scamper followed. The thing that most struck him, however, was the rope of the great alarm bell on the roof, which hung down in a corner of the room on the right-hand side of the fireplace. He pulled up close to the hearth a great high-backed carved oak chair, and sat down to his last cup of tea. When this was done he made up the fire, and went back to his work, sitting at the corner of the table, having the fire to his left. For a little while the rats disturbed him somewhat with their perpetual scampering, but he got accustomed to the noise as one does to the ticking of the clock or to the roar of moving water, and he became so immersed in his work that everything in the world, except the problem which he was trying to solve, passed away from him.

He suddenly looked up, his problem was still unsolved, and there was in the air that sense of the hour before the dawn, which is so dread to doubtful life. The noise of the rats had ceased. Indeed it seemed to him that it must have ceased but lately and that it was the sudden cessation which had disturbed him. The fire had fallen low, but still it threw out a deep red glow. As he looked he started in spite of his sang-froid. There, on the great high-backed carved oak chair by the right side of the fire-place sat an enormous rat, steadily glaring at him with baleful eyes. He made a motion to it as though to hunt it away, but it did not stir. Then he made the motion of throwing something. Still it did not stir, but showed its great white teeth angrily, and its cruel eyes shone in the lamplight with an added vindictiveness.

Those familiar with how such narratives function will come to conclusions which they will wonder why Malcomson himself did not entertain. And yet he goes on in his studies, flinging books at the rats that seem to come from the very darkness that wreathes the top of his study like, well, a giant noose.

Our tale is collected in this slender tome, long since relegated to the dusty shelves of more eccentric booksellers because its first story is improved upon in the opening chapter in this most famous of horror novels. Stoker's style is better when he observes from a neutral perspective, as his first-person narratives tend to be overwrought with the emotion a conventional Victorian mind would never openly admit it enjoyed (although it would have likely comprised a secret pleasure). When separated by third-person distance, he paints in much more terrifying colors because so much of horror stems from not knowing your adversary. And even that ignorance doesn't stop some very bright people.

Crooken Sands

I am quite happy to report that according to the intergalactic weapon known as Google, the eponymous town of this story does not seem to exist. Why should I be so pleased? Because there is something wholesome about wholly devised fiction unfettered by the necessity of deferring to historical fact or, much more egregiously, of drawing its power from it. Admittedly, this sounds like a distinct paradox since what feeds fiction – real faces, real tones, real words, real emotions – is undoubtedly derived from the banalities of the everyday. The difference is that first-rate fiction tilts objects, obscures gestures, and drowns out voices to achieve the maximum aesthetic effect.  Some mechanized minds might interrupt at this point and spout off a long German word which they claim, with some pomposity, has 'no equivalent in English'; others, even less original, will drone on about a mysterious 'circle of thinkers' collectively summoned as the Russian structuralists, a name which always reminds me for some reason of a mechanical brassière. The truth is that these 'circles' invariably involve no thought whatsoever, being simply staffed by backslapping mediocrities huddled together like prepackaged ballot boxes, so their reinventions of many a wheel should not distract the discerning reader from his enjoyments. And in a lovely little work like Crooken Sands, we do not wish to be distracted at all.

Our protagonist is a certain Arthur Fernlee Markam, whom I ought to describe in extenso as his image will prove to be a monument amidst the plot's wafting winds. Markam is an English merchant ("essentially a cockney") whose abiding dream is "to provide an entire rig-out as a Highland chieftain." Markam is also a dutiful husband and father of three, if by dutiful one understands that while he needs his space and quiet every evening after a long and profitable business day, he buys his family all the best clothes and appurtenances so that they may join him in the glorification of their social status ("The prosperity of the business allowed them all sorts of personal luxuries, amongst which was a wide latitude in the way of dress"). Readers of these pages will know what I think of such persons, and they will also know what fate tends to befall them. In any case, Markam, as stereotypical a Philistine as one could possibly find in the annals of literature, decides that his crowning achievement as a man of culture is to don the tartan of a clan to which he has never belonged and parade around a Scots fishing village in full regalia. Some faint apprehension, however, prevents him from simply borrowing the Royal Stuart pattern – probably the only one Markam could ever distinguish from a pincushion. Instead, and just as appropriately, he orders for a "pretty stiff" check a custom design:

Mr. Markam foresaw difficulties if he should by chance find himself in the locality of the clan whose colours he had usurped. The MacCallum at last undertook to have, at Markam's expense, a special pattern woven which would not be exactly the same as any existing tartan, though partaking of the characteristics of many. It was based on the Royal Stuart, but contained suggestions as to simplicity of pattern from the Macalister and Ogilvie clans, and as to neutrality of colour from the clans of Buchanan, Macbeth, Chief of Macintosh and Macleod. When the specimen had been shown to Markam he had feared somewhat lest it should strike the eye of his domestic circle as gaudy; but as Roderick MacDhu fell into perfect ecstasies over its beauty he did not make any objection to the completion of the piece. He thought, and wisely, that if a genuine Scotchman like MacDhu liked it, it must be right—especially as the junior partner was a man very much of his own build and appearance.

"The MacCallum," by the way, is neither a pub nor an inn, but the "junior partner very much of" Markam's "build and appearance"; almost as importantly, the sartorial deputy also speaks "with a remarkable cockney accent." Markam makes his purchase but does not "take his family into his confidence regarding his new costume" as he could not be certain that he would remain "free from ridicule." Once at the sands, Markum does indeed insist on wearing his outfit and his children laugh their necks red about it. A tableware accident invites more mockery from his wife, and it is at this point that Markum, by all indications pig-headed in that manner particular to smug, clueless boors, decides that on all outings henceforth he and his martial dress shall not be parted.

That our description has barely passed the first page of the text of Crooken Sands is cogent testimony to Stoker's foresight. The story ambles at an easy pace – almost as a metronome of Markum's aimless strolls near and around the village cliffs – and concludes at precisely the same speed, although by then our (and our English merchant's) pulses are beating noticeably faster. Without slipping into sly hints at the story's arc, one would do well to brush up on one's Scots, both the tongue and the nomenclature, before tackling this tale. And while I generally abhor dialect as a stooge-like conceit of the uninspired author, a cat's paw to generate some ancient truism from infallible rustics, it earns its place here. In fact, the very likelihood that Markum does not quite fully comprehend the local speech seems to heighten the danger in which he soon finds himself. What sort of danger? Well, one of the sorts you associate with 'sands,' although perhaps not the first that comes to mind. Thus during the plight – it does become a plight for more than one reason – of our Mr. Markum, we may find ourselves recurring to Kipling: "He may be festooned with the whole haberdashery of success and go to his grave a castaway." If that be his besetting sin, then surely we can forgive him.