"All Souls' Night" (1945) by A. L. Rowse

"All Souls' Night" (1945) by A. L. Rowse

From Cornish Tales of Terror (1970) edited by R. Chetwynd-Hayes

For readers who prize the "pleasing terror" school of supernatural fiction, Rowse begins "All Souls' Night" in a very agreeable style:

      They were sitting—the Dean and two of his colleagues— in the quiet of a summer evening upon the terrace of that college, that quadrangle which gives you a panorama of the spire of St Mary's, with its gathered pinnacles clustered at the base, the light and classical elegance of Aldrich's spire of All Saints in the background, the bulky Roman magnificence of the Radcliffe Camera in the foreground, and away to the innumerable crockets and finials of the Bodleian Library....

Rowse here seems to endorse the strategy outlined by M. R. James in his introduction to Ghosts and Marvels:

....Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings....

Rowse continues:

....It was that hour of summer evening when the late light lit up the clock upon the northern face of St Mary's tower: a rare and disturbing thing to the hearts of those few whose attention was caught by it. Somehow it brought home to them, in an inexpressible way, the feeling of the transcendence of things, the mutability of the temporal order, the immutability of the eternal.

     Nine was striking upon all the brazen tongues of the clocks of Oxford. There was the old-lady-stepping-up-stairs chime of New College that began the clamour, followed by the lugubrious descent and ascent of St Mary's like going down into the tomb. Last of all, the deliberate, suspensive, velvety boom of Tom from Christ Church.

The Dean, his senior colleague the Classic, and the young English don are smoking outdoors after dinner, "so warm was the evening."

The hush is soon drawn to a close. The Classic asks, "By the way, what was it that overtook young Colenso?"

And so the Dean's story commences. The prospects of young scholar Tristam Colenso are outlined.

....'And he had a very good subject for research right on his own doorstep, so to speak. You know the old Cornish family, the Lantyans, of Carn Tyan, who were the greatest landowners in Cornwall in the Middle Ages—though they have lost a good deal of their property there since. They were absentees from the county for a long time, from the sixteenth century to the eighteenth. They were Catholics, and during the years of Elizabeth's war with Spain they were not allowed to live in so dangerous an area, so remote from the centre, so near the sea, and with the sympathies of their peasantry all Catholic like their own. It was for them a prohibited area—as for strangers today. How little things change in human affairs!' (The Dean enjoyed a good ripe platitude as it might be a peach or a nectarine.) 'Well, the Lantyans have gone on being Catholic in an unbroken tradition—and very proud they are of the fact. They say that in their chapel at Carn Tyan there is a lamp that has never been allowed to go out since the Reformation.

     The old Lady Lantyan bore an extraordinary character in those parts. Jane Lucinda: she was the last representative of the Blanchminsters who owned a great deal of land in North Cornwall in the Middle Ages, and also one half, the secular half, of the Scilly Islands. The old lady was a regular termagant, a well-known character all over the West Country. For one thing she had a terrific temper; was immensely family-proud and haughty; a dominating old woman who lived to be ninety and led her household and servants and everybody near her the devil of a life. Particularly, for some odd reason, her chaplains. She seemed to hate them; she certainly persecuted them. Yet it never occurred to her to dispense with them: there always had been a priest in the household, and she simply couldn't conceive of a house without one—for her. It may be that she wanted somebody or something to torment. She had no children. Her husband had died years before, leaving her in control of the money. So she remained on in possession, keeping her heir, an elderly cousin of her husband's, at arm's length. He couldn't have afforded to dispossess her anyway; he was entirely dependent on her for what would, or might, come to him after her death.

     'So she lived on at Carn Tyan, tormenting priests her chief pleasure in life, you might say. One after the other they left her, driven to distraction. One poor man, the last of them, a French priest, a cultivated, quiet, melancholy sort of man, who already seemed to have enough on his mind—as if there was a something in the background—was driven over the edge. He became stark raving mad. To begin with, she starved them. It wasn't that she was mean. It was just that she had very odd views about diet. She lived on next to nothing herself, with the aid—it is true—of the very best old cognac, such as she had a good store of in her cellars. You never come across brandy like that nowadays.' The Dean gave a heartfelt sigh.

     'The old lady was immensely aristocratic; she couldn't believe but what suited her very well must be good for everybody else. She fed her priests mostly on rice and currants, relieved with brandy at every meal to wash it down. She insisted that to keep your health you had to drink brandy five times a day. Such of them as survived the endless rice and currant puddings became hopeless topers on the brandy. The combination was too much for her last priest. But then he had something else on his mind.

     'Not that that much worried the old tartar, Jane Lucinda. Protest after protest at her treatment of her priests had been made by her bishop, the Bishop of Lysistrata. Without the slightest effect. At last a writ of excommuniction was made out to be served upon her. Did that defeat her? Not a bit of it. On the' threshold of ninety, she called for her carriage and at once drove off to a Carmelite convent the other side of the county, to enter upon a long retreat, leaving instructions that on no account should any correspondence be forwarded. So that the writ never reached her. When the bishop at length learned where she was, she left for the house of a relation in Worcestershire. By the time it reached Worcestershire she was in London. For the bishop it was a regular wild-goose chase, making him look ridiculous in the eyes of the whole Catholic community who knew perfectly well what was going on. I believe the old termagant thoroughly enjoyed the last months of her life. Having outwitted her ecclesiastical superiors, she took to her bed at her town house in London and died still officially at peace with the Church, and fortified with all the accustomed rites....

Tristam Colenso is sent to isolated Carn Tyan on a cold early November night to inspect the  Lantyan family archives. But within the "gloomy splendour of a former age" Tristam has a late night encounter with one of Lady Lantyan's victims.

"[T]here was no mystery attached to it,' the Dean was saying. 'But it was certainly a very curious story.

*   *   *

According to the isfdb, A. L. Rowse wrote eight supernatural stories in forty years. Considering the scope of his academic responsibilities and the size of his professional bibliography as a historian, this is an admirable accomplishment. 

"All Souls' Night" is the one A. L. Rowse story I could find in my anthologies. The deferential, acutely observant, and understated style - which he clearly aspires to - is the element in supernatural fiction I look for first.

Jay

31 May 2022