In his book Weird Fiction in Britain 1880–1939 (2018), James Machin mentions Vincent O'Sullivan at the beginning of his chapter on Shiel, Stenbock, Gilchrist, and Machen.
….one could easily include Vincent O'Sullivan's A Book of Bargains (1896), advertised in the Savoy as a collection of 'Stories of the Weird and Fantastic […] with Frontispiece Designed by Aubrey Beardsley', a collection that fell into immediate obscurity with the notable exception that one of the component stories ('When I Was Dead') was included by noted weird fiction writer Robert Aickman (1914–1981) in his The 4th Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories (1967), where he advises his readers to seek out further work by O'Sullivan with the combined caveat and recommendation that 'the quest is difficult, but the product distinctive' (Symons 1896, 95; Aickman 1967, 9). All these works therefore represent a synthesis of Decadent writing with supernatural and/or horrific themes presented in the short story form, and furthermore were recognized by both their contemporaries and later critics as being produced by writers who operated in the weird mode. However, it should also be acknowledged that in the case of Shiel, Gilchrist, and Stenbock, the short stories anthologized in the above collections do not uniformly incorporate the supernatural and yet, despite this, they remain 'weird'.
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O'Sullivan's fiction is a challenge for the online hunter after strange stories. Most of the collections are out of print, but have not graduated to Project Gutenberg or Internet Archive.
I did find this very useful piece by Jessica Amanda Salmonson. Another article, "Vincent O'Sullivan: Unstrung Second Fiddle," can be found here.
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Will (1899)
"Will" is a brief, highly stylized fantasy on the "woe of marriage" theme. The husband (no background given, all motivations wonderfully arbitrary) spends the days with his wife, steeping himself in dislike.
....At sunset the river became for him turbulent and boding — a pool of blood; and the trees, clad in scarlet, brandished flaming swords. For long days they sat in that room, always silent, watching the shadows turn from steel to crimson, from crimson to gray, from gray to black. If by rare chance they wandered abroad, and moved beyond the gates of the Park of the Somber Fountains, he might hear one passenger say to another, "How beautiful she is!" And then his hatred of his wife increased a hundredfold.
....he was poisoning her surely and lingeringly — with a poison more wily and subtle than that of Caesar Borgia's ring — with a poison distilled in his eyes.
....With exultation he watched her growing weaker and weaker as the summer glided by: not a day, not an hour passed that she did not pay toll to his eyes: and when in the autumn there came upon her two long faints which resembled catalepsy, he fortified his will to hate, for he felt that the end was at hand.
...."Do you think I do not know? For days and months I have felt you drawing the life of my body into your life, that you might spill my soul on the ground. For days and months as I have sat with you, as I have walked by your side, you have seen me imploring pity. But you relented not, and you have your will; for I am going down to death. You have your will, and my body is dead; but my soul cannot die. No!" she cried, raising herself a little on the pillows: "my soul shall not die, but live, and sway an all-touching scepter lighted at the stars."
"My wife!"
"You have thought to live without me, but you will never be without me....Through long nights when the moon is hid,through dreary days when the sun is dulled, I shall be at your side. In the deepest chaos illumined by lightning, on the loftiest mountain-top, do not seek to escape me. You are my bond-man: for this is the compact I have made with the Cardinals of Death."
At the noon of night she died....
The remainder of the story shows the working-out of the wife's predictions with economy and eloquence. O'Sullivan's skill at telescoping, his clear and confident style, never releases the reader as the story works its way toward the grotesque denouement.
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The Burned House (1916)
"The Burned House" has an arresting club-story opening:
One night at the end of dinner, the last time I crossed the Atlantic, somebody in our group remarked that we were just passing over the spot where the Lusitania had gone down Whether this was the case or not, the thought of it was enough to make us rather grave, and we dropped into some more or less serious discussion about the emotions of men and women who see all hope gone, and realize that they are going to sink with the vessel. From that the talk wandered to the fate of the drowned: was not theirs, after all, a fortunate end? Somebody related details from the narratives of those who had been all but drowned in the accidents of the war. A Scotch lady inquired fancifully if the ghosts of those who are lost at sea ever appear above the waters and come aboard ships. Would there be danger of seeing one when the light was turned out in her cabin? This put an end to all seriousness, and most of us laughed. But a little tight-faced man from Fall River, bleak and iron-gray, who had been listening attentively, did not laugh. The lady noticed his decorum and appealed to him for support.
"You are like me — you believe in ghosts?" she asked lightly.
He hesitated, thinking it over.
"In ghosts?" he repeated slowly. "N-no; I don't know as I do. I've never had any personal experience that way. I 've never seen the ghost of any one I knew. Has anybody here?"
No one replied. Instead, most of us laughed again, a little uneasily, perhaps.
"Well, I guess not," resumed the man from Fall River. "All the same, strange-enough things happen in life, even if you cut out ghosts, that you can't clear up by laughing. You laugh till you 've had some experience big enough to shock you, and then you don't laugh any more. It's like being thrown out of a car —"
The phrase "like being thrown out of a car" is very well done.
The remainder of the story is the "little tight-faced man from Fall River" recounting his experience, an anecdote that recalls Machen's phrase "Future events cast their shadows behind."
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The Interval (1919)
The story's interval is in the life of Mrs. Wilton: the time between her husband's death and her own. The story is free of bathos; emotional weight is achieved through carefully observed behavior.
Mrs. Wilton was not exactly ill last winter, not so ill, at least, as to keep to her bedroom. But she was very thin, and her great handsome eyes always seemed to be staring at some point beyond, searching. There was a look in them that seamen's eyes sometimes have when they are drawing on a coast of which they are not very certain. She lived almost in solitude: she hardly ever saw anybody except when they sought her out. To those who were anxious about her she laughed and said she was very well.
One sunny morning she was lying awake, waiting for the maid to bring her tea. The shy London sunlight peeped through the blinds. The room had a fresh and happy look.
When she heard the door open she thought that the maid had come in. Then she saw that Hugh was standing at the foot of the bed. He was in uniform this time, and looked as he had looked the day he went away.
"Oh, Hugh, speak to me! Will you not say just one word?"
He smiled and threw back his head, just as he used to in the old days at her mother's house when he wanted to call her out of the room without attracting the attention of the others. He moved towards the door, still signing to her to follow him. He picked up her slippers on his way and held them out to her as if he wanted her to put them on. She slipped out of bed hastily...
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Master of Fallen Years (1921)
I found "Master of the Fallen Years" on Gutenberg in the anthology The Best Short Stories of 1921. It is a challenging story. I have read it twice and cannot pretend I have sounded its depths.
The narrator recounts the strange transformation of a banal clerk, Augustus Barber, after severe illness. Barber, though an individual with no curiosity above his own narrow horizons, sometimes seems to be "taken over" by what he calls the Other.
One foggy evening in January, about eight o'clock, I happened to be walking with Barber in the West End. We passed before a concert hall, brilliantly lighted, with a great crowd of people gathered about the doors, and I read on a poster that a concert of classical music was forward at which certain renowned artists were to appear. I really cannot give any sort of reason why I took it into my head to go in. I am rather fond of music, even of the kind which requires a distinct intellectual effort; but I was not anxious to hear music that night, and in any case, Barber was about the last man in the world I should have chosen to hear it with. When I proposed that we should take tickets, he strongly objected.
"Just look me over," he said. "I ain't done anything to you that you want to take my life, have I? I know the kind of merry-go-round that goes on in there, and I'm not having any."
I suppose it was his opposition which made me stick to the project, for I could not genuinely have cared very much, and there was nothing to be gained by dragging Barber to a concert against his will. Finally, seeing I was determined, he yielded, though most ungraciously.
"It'll be the chance of a lifetime for an hour's nap," he said as we took our seats, "if they only keep the trombone quiet."
I repeat his trivial sayings to show how little there was about him in manner or speech to prepare me for what followed.
I remember that the first number on the programme was Beethoven's Seventh Symphony. This work, as is well known, is rather long, and so, at the end of the third movement, I turned and looked at Barber to see if he was asleep. But his eyes were wide open, feverish, almost glaring; he was twining and untwining his fingers and muttering excitedly. Throughout the fourth movement he continued to talk incoherently.
"Shut up!" I whispered fiercely. "Just see if you can't keep quiet, or we shall be put out."
I was indeed very much annoyed, and some people near by were turning in their chairs and frowning.—
I do not know whether he heard what I said: I had no chance to talk to him. The applause had hardly died away at the end of the symphony when a singer appeared on the stage. Who he was, or what music he sang, I am utterly unable to say; but if he is still alive it is impossible that he should have forgotten what I relate. If I do not remember him, it is because all else is swallowed up for me in that extraordinary event.
Scarcely had the orchestra ceased preluding and the singer brought out the first notes of his song, than Barber slowly rose from his seat.
"That man is not an artist," he said in a loud and perfectly final voice, "I will sing myself."
"Sit down, for God's sake!—The management—the police"—
Some words like these I gasped, foreseeing the terrible scandal which would ensue, and I caught him by the arm. But he shook himself free without any difficulty, without even a glance at me, and walked up the aisle and across the front of the house toward the little stairs at the side which led up to the platform. By this time the entire audience was aware that something untoward was happening. There were a few cries of "Sit down! Put him out!" An usher hastened up as Barber was about to mount the steps.
Then a strange thing happened.
As the usher drew near, crying out angrily, I saw Barber turn and look at him. It was not, as I remember, a fixed look or a determined look; it was the kind of untroubled careless glance a man might cast over his shoulder who heard a dog bark. I saw the usher pause, grow pale and shamefaced feel like a servant who has made a mistake; he made a profound bow and then—yes, he actually dropped on his knees. All the people saw that. They saw Barber mount the platform, the musicians cease, the singer and the conductor give way before him. But never a word was said—there was a perfect hush. And yet, so far as my stunned senses would allow me to perceive, the people were not wrathful or even curious; they were just silent and collected as people generally are at some solemn ceremonial. Nobody but me seemed to realize the outrageousness and monstrosity of the vulgar-looking, insignificant Barber there on the platform, holding up the show, stopping the excellent music we had all paid to hear.
And in truth I myself was rapidly falling into the strangest confusion. For a certain time—I cannot quite say how long—I lost my hold on realities. The London concert hall, with its staid, rather sad-looking audience, vanished, and I was in a great white place inundated with sun—some vast luminous scene. Under a wide caressing blue sky, in the dry and limpid atmosphere, the white marble of the buildings and the white-clad people appeared as against a background of an immense blue veil shot with silver. It was the hour just before twilight, that rapid hour when the colors of the air have a supreme brilliance and serenity, and a whole people, impelled by some indisputable social obligation, seemed to be reverently witnessing the performance of one magnificent man of uncontrollable power, of high and solitary grandeur.—
Barber began to sing.
Of what he sang I can give no account. The words seemed to me here and there to be Greek, but I do not know Greek well, and in such words as I thought I recognized, his pronunciation was so different from what I had been taught that I may well have been mistaken.
I was so muddled, and, as it were, transported, that I cannot say even if he sang well. Criticism did not occur to me; he was there singing and we were bound to listen. As I try to hear it, now, it was a carefully trained voice. A sound of harps seemed to accompany the singing; perhaps the harpists in the orchestra touched their instruments.—
How long did it last? I have no idea. But it did not appear long before all began to waver. The spell began to break; the power by which he was compelling us to listen to him was giving out. It was exactly as if something, a mantle or the like, was falling from Barber....
The narrator is nonplussed by the incident.
I could not help feeling sorry for him. The poor creature evidently suffered from megalomania—that was the only way to account for his pretentious notions of his own importance, seeing that he was just a needy little clerk out of work.
Later, the narrator and another of Barber's friends, Mr. G.M., go to see him at the house where he is lodging.
....It was a shepherd's cottage, standing quite lonely. Far down below the village could be seen with the smoke above the red roofs.
The woman told us that Barber was in, but she thought he might be asleep. He slept a lot.
"I don't know how he lives," she said. "He pays us scarce anything. We can't keep him much longer."
He was fast asleep, lying back in a chair with his mouth half open, wrapped in a shabby overcoat. He looked very mean; and when he awoke it was only one long wail on his hard luck. He couldn't get any work. People had a prejudice against him; they looked at him askance. He had a great desire for sleep—couldn't somehow keep awake.
"If I could tell you the dreams I have!" he cried fretfully. "Silliest rotten stuff. I try to tell 'em to the woman here or her husband sometimes, but they won't listen. Shouldn't be surprised if they think I'm a bit off. They say I'm always talking to myself. I'm sure I'm not.—I wish I could get out of here. Can't you get me a job?" he asked, turning to Mr. G.M.
"Well, Gus, I'll see. I'll do my best."
"Lummy!" exclaimed Barber excitedly, "you ought to see the things I dream. I can't think where the bloomin' pictures come from. And yet I've seen it all before. I know all those faces. They are not all white. Some are brown like Egyptians, and some are quite black. I've seen them somewhere. Those long terraces and statues and fountains and marble courts, and the blue sky and the sun, and those dancing girls with the nails of their hands and feet stained red, and the boy in whose hair I wipe my fingers, and the slave I struck dead last night—"
His eyes were delirious, terrible to see.
"Ah," he cried hoarsely, "I am stifling here. Let us go into the air."
And indeed he was changing so much—not essentially in his person, though his face had become broader, intolerant, domineering and cruel—but there was pouring from him so great an emanation of power that it seemed to crack and break down the poor little room. Mr. G.M. and myself had no desire to thwart him, and it never occurred to us to do so. We should as soon have thought of stopping a thunderstorm. We followed him outside on to the space of level ground before the house and listened humbly while he spoke.
As well as I can recollect, he was lamenting some hindrance to his impulses, some flaw in his power. "To have the instincts of the ruler and no slaves to carry out my will. To wish to reward and punish and to be deprived of the means. To be the master of the world, but only in my own breast—Oh, fury! The ploughboy there is happy, for he has no longings outside of his simple round life. While I—if I had the earth in my hand, I should want a star. Misery! Misery!"
He leaned upon a low stonewall and looked down on the town, over the pastures blurred with rain.
"And those wretches down there," he pronounced slowly, "who jeer at me when I pass and insult me with impunity, whose heads should be struck off, and I cannot strike them off! I loathe that town. How ugly it is! It offends my eyes."
He turned and looked us full in the face and our hearts became as water.
"Burn it," he said.
Then he turned away again and bowed his head in his arms on the wall.
I don't remember anything clearly till a long time afterward, when I found myself walking with Mr. G.M. in the wet night on a deserted road on the outskirts of the town. We were carrying some inflammable things, flax, tar, matches, etc., which we must have purchased.
Mr. G.M. stopped and looked at me. It was exactly like coming out of a fainting fit.
"What are we doing with this gear?" he said in a low voice.
"I don't know."
"Better chuck it over a hedge.—"
We made our way to the station in silence. I was thinking of that desolate figure up there on the hill, leaning over the wall in the dark and the rain.
We caught the last train to London. In the carriage Mr. G.M. began to shiver as though he were cold.
"Brrr! that fellow got on my nerves," he said; and we made no further allusion to the matter.
But as the train, moving slowly, passed a gap which brought us again in sight of the town, we saw a tongue of flame stream into the sky.
That instant when the narrator and Mr. G.M. realize they have been about to set fire to the village at Barber's command, and are carrying the tools of arson, is a show-stopper. O'Sullivan's unemotional handling serves perfectly to magnify the moment's power.
"Master of the Fallen Years" ends on an apocalyptic note: "we saw a tongue of flame stream into the sky." The full implications of the story are only suggested in that statement; it epitomizes the tale's shock of terror.
Jay
23 April 2021
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