John Silence

A late March post. This month was one of those jarring times in which you’re suddenly forced to view your place in the world from an entirely new angle. So it was good to delve into Algernon Blackwood, and if I’d been able to dwell entirely in the zone I might have managed to read everything extant and post about it by April Fool’s Day.

But pranks will have to wait for next year, and I’ve read or re-read only 5 Blackwood volumes so far. Here’s the first.

Blackwood, Algernon, The Complete John Silence Stories, (Dover Horror Classics), edited & with an introduction by S. T. Joshi, Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc. 1997, originally John Silence, Physician Extraordinary, 1908 and Day and Night Stories, 1917.

The John Silence stories feature an investigator of psychic phenomena who is a contemporary of Sherlock Holmes, almost an alter ego. His maxim: If you pay attention to impressions, and do not allow them to be confused by deductions of the intellect, you will often find them surprisingly, uncannily, accurate.

By his friends John Silence was regarded as an eccentric, because he was rich by accident, and by choice—a doctor. That a man of independent means should devote his time to doctoring, chiefly doctoring folk who could not pay, passed their comprehension entirely. The native nobility of a soul whose first desire was to help those who could not help themselves, puzzled them. After that, it irritated them, and greatly to his own satisfaction, they left him to his own devices.

Dr. Silence was a free-lance, though, among doctors, having neither consulting-room, bookkeeper, nor professional manner…He argued that the rich could pay, and the very poor could avail themselves of organised charity, but that a very large class of ill-paid, self-respecting workers, often followers of the arts, could not afford the price of a week’s comforts merely to be told to travel. And it was these he desired to help…

…the cases that especially appealed to him were of no ordinary kind, but rather of that intangible, elusive and difficult nature best described as psychical afflictions…

The tales are less polished than Doyle’s, rougher in some places, but in others they soar into poetry which compels in part because you feel the author’s own keen yearning astonishment at the wonders of consciousness or the glories of an untamed land.

…presently…a sound of horns and strings and wood instruments rose to his ears, and the town band began to play at the far end of the crowded terrace below to the accompaniment of a very soft, deep-throated drum. Vezin was very sensitive to music, knew about it intelligently, and had even ventured, unknown to his friends, upon the composition of quiet melodies with low-running chords which he played to himself with the soft pedal when no one was about. And this music floating up through the trees from an invisible and doubtless very picturesque band of townspeople wholly charmed him. He recognized nothing that they played, and it sounded as though they were simply improvising without a conductor. No definitely marked time ran through the pieces, which ended and began oddly after the fashion of wind through an Aeolian harp. It was part of the place and scene, just as the dying sunlight and faintly breathing wind were part of the scene and hour, and the mellow notes of old-fashioned plaintive horns, pierced here and there by the sharper strings, all half smothered by the continuous booming of the deep drum, touched his soul with a curiously potent spell that was almost too engrossing to be quite pleasant.

There was a queer sense of bewitchment in it all. The music seemed to him oddly unartificial. It made him think of trees swept by the wind, of night breezes singing among wires and chimney-stacks, or in the rigging of invisible ships; or—and the simile leaped up in his thoughts with a sudden sharpness of suggestion—a chorus of animals, of wild creatures, somewhere in desolate places of the world, crying and singing as animals will, to the moon…

Blackwood was a Theosophist and a member of the Golden Dawn; under the auspices of the Society for Psychical Research he investigated reports of paranormal activity. Silence is based on someone he knew, and full of Blackwood’s own earnest ideals.

Of one of Silence’s clients he writes: He was on the way home when it happened, crossing northern France from some mountain trip or other where he buried himself solitary-wise every summer. He had nothing but an unregistered bag in the rack, and the train was jammed to suffocation, most of the passengers being unredeemed holiday English. He disliked them, not because they were his fellow-countrymen, but because they were noisy and obtrusive, obliterating with their big limbs and tweed clothing all of the quieter tints of the day that brought him satisfaction and enabled him to melt into insignificance and forget that he was anybody. These English clashed about him like a brass band, making him feel vaguely that he ought to be more self-assertive and obstreperous, and that he did not claim insistently enough all kinds of things that he didn’t want and that were really valueless, such as corner seats, windows up or down, and so forth.

So that he felt uncomfortable in the train, and wished the journey were over…

The tales open with the authenticity of his insider’s view, yet depart into a glowing weirdness that is dark fantasy at its best.

One concept stressed throughout is the power of positive—or negative--thinking:

Thought is dynamic and can accomplish material results.

Learn how to think… and you have learned to tap power at its source.

All perception… is the result of vibrations…

…time and space are merely forms of thought.

This was the first of Blackwood’s works to be published in the U.S., where nasty rumors that he was involved in black magic only added a cachet to his reputation. Like Conan Doyle, he was contacted by people in strange circumstances who were desperately seeking help, and like Doyle, he apparently took up those cases which seemed to merit his intervention. Taking into consideration the nature of the requests it isn’t surprising that he kept no record. Mike Ashley has done a superb job of ferreting out what details remain.

What are your thoughts about "thought"?

More from me later this month. Thanks for stopping by!