Algernon Blackwood (14 March 1869 - 10 December 1951) may not be a name you’re familiar with but when it comes to supernatural tales of horror, he is in good company with old-school writers Lovecraft and Machen, both considered great-granddaddies of the grotesque.
Prior to The Garden of Survival, I had read half a dozen other stories written by Blackwood between 1907 - 1914 including:
- The Willows (1907)
- The Insanity of Jones (1907)
- The Glamour of the Snow (1912)
- The Man Whom the Trees Loved (1912)
- The Damned (1914)
- A Descent Into Egypt (1914)
Each tale had its very own peculiar but exquisite piquancy of horror --Blackwood is the count of creepiness, after all-- And although I have read the above referenced books over a period of the past four years or so, I am still haunted by the likes of Jones and, especially, both of the trees stories. Blackwood had the ability to conjure in the reader’s imagination a perfectly tranquil, wooded place of verdant serenity and then mutate it into a panorama of psychosis. (Or is that just me?)
As a point of reference for the uninitiated of either the writer or the genre, understand that these books contain absolutely none of the worthlessness written by Stephen King who, incidentally, during his heyday in the eighties, had borrowed heavily from past horror writers whose stories had conveniently passed into the public domain thereby leaving King free to plunder ideas, add his own smattering of ephedrine-induced cheese, and, to otherwise pass off the ideas as his own with impunity. (Yes, I’m letting you know how I really feel.)
The Garden of Survival, written in 1918, began in Blackwood’s usual polished and expressive style. His protagonist, Richard, a former military man now making a living as a foreign diplomat in Africa, details in epistolary format his musings of life and love. We are informed of his having been married for a very short time --his wife, a vision of beauty and possessing a special talent to bewitch admirers by playing her alluring harp for them is Je ne se quoi personified, it seems. And given the short duration of the marriage, as well as a few well-placed ominous descriptions of her penchant for attracting the opposite sex, the reader soon gets the idea that this woman is most definitely not what she seems.
In fact, even long after her death, Blackwood spends a good third of the book recounting for us the extent to which Richard truly believes his soul has been positively vanquished and seduced by his wife. Personally, I was expecting her to be revealed as a succubus put on earth for the sole purpose of ensnaring men and dragging them back to Hell with her. But then again, is that not the same impression you would get from a writer who looked like this?
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But then Blackwood segues from idealizing Richard's dead wife to sentimentalizing his frail, elderly mother living alone on her estate in England with her memories of having raised her sons, and, then back to his angelically described twin brother again which we eventually determine is also dead. The last third of the book seemed to me like I was reading a eulogy of sorts.
Come to me instead—or, rather, stay, since you have never left—be with me still in the wonder of dawn and twilight, in the yearning desire of inarticulate black night, in the wind, the sunshine, and the rain. It is then that I am nearest to you and to your beneficent activity, for the same elemental rhythm of Beauty includes us both.The story is both enticing and ethereal. The description of Richard’s childhood garden is vaguely remniscent of the biblical Garden of Eden. And while we don't really connect the title of this story to the plot, the tale beguiles the reader, nonetheless, to press on with the expectation that something Big and Sinister is about to transpire if we will just be patient. And therein, I suppose, lies the rub. Richard’s deceased wife does not actually turn out to be anything but a catalyst for a rather elegant epiphany which concludes that as much as we may imagine/obsess about loved ones who have since passed into the Hereafter visiting us --whether it is in our dreams or while we are walking down a misty, water-colored path in the garden of our imaginations-- the fact is, they do not. They, instead, only seem to come back each time we remember the effect they had on us while they were alive. It’s a beautiful story, but not the ending I had envisaged.
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