"There would be tokens and talismans of the true country ..."
--- from "The House of Flame"
9781783800476
Swan River Press, 2024
198 pp
hardcover
It's no secret that Mark Valentine is one of my favorite writers and now, with Swan River's publication of Lost Estates, I've added another gem of a book to my collection of his works. If you haven't yet bought a copy, go to Swan River Press and get one now. Seriously.
In an insightful and informative conversation between this author and writer John Kenny, Valentine pleads "not guilty" to labeling the stories in this collection as "folk horror." He would rather use the term "borderland" or "otherworld" stories, which he
"came upon in contemporary 1923 reviews of Uncanny Stories by May Sinclair and Visible and Invisible by E.F. Benson,"
saying that these were "terms then in use and understood for occult and supernatural fiction." In Valentine's opinion, "they do convey better the sense that can sometimes be felt in certain places of being close to a different realm." I like it.
It's not long into the first story before this notion of "being close to a different realm" makes itself known. "A Chess Game at Michaelmas" finds our narrator leaving the train at Abbotsbury, where he has come at the invitation of a Mr. Winterbourne, with whom he had been corresponding about Winterbourne's "house and its particular custom" as part of his research. The train was only the first part of the journey; he still has a five-mile walk to make, which he doesn't mind. It is as "the grey chalk of dust" was being drawn across the day" that he felt not only a "change come over the country" through which he was traveling, but also a gradual sense of passing "into a different sort of space, a pause in the usual order of things." The feeling lasts for only a moment, but "the impression lingered..." He eventually makes his way via the hand-drawn map he was given to an old and somewhat shabby Georgian house where he and the owner discuss the unusual "rent" on the place. It seems that that his family holds this place "from the King in return for a service or duty." The narrator offers his opinions about the history of this particular sort of "custom," but what he doesn't realize is that before his visit ends, the rent is about to come due. This story is absolutely fascinating, not just for the weird elements and the lore, but for me it's much more about the historical components and especially the yews. "A Chess Game at Michaelmas" happens to be one of my favorite tales, but it's another longer story at the end, "The Fifth Moon," that takes my number one spot, pondering the lost treasure of King John. As part of the Hambledon's Mysteries of History series that explores "historical mysteries" that also features the local landscape, a writer takes on the disappearance of the wagons and carts ("the baggage train") carrying treasures belonging to King John in 1612 that were traveling through The Wash, an estuary in the marshy area along the West Norfolk coast of the North Sea. The story goes that John had arrived at King's Lynn (at the time known as Bishop's Lynn) where his entourage had divided into two groups. The King and one group took the safer but longer road around through Wisbech heading for their destination, while the other took a "short cut" heading for Sutton across the estuary in a spot that was "passable for a few hours at low tide," getting stuck and sinking "into the salty mire." Taking along a photographer, and temporarily borrowing another friend's old houseboat that had been beached on the marshes as a base, the writer makes his way to the area where he points out that "out there ... if the tales be true, lies the most fabulous hoard ever known." While investigating the landscape and the story for themselves, the plan is also for the two to interview a couple of local "experts" on the lost treasure for their opinions on the matter. But it isn't long before another, much darker, diabolical account of the story crops up that is vastly different than any they've heard. It is a stunner of a story, and I was so taken with it that right away on finishing it I made an intense trip down the rabbit hole for anything connected to the lost treasure of King John and the area of the Wash itself. Just as an FYI, by way of more explanation about Valentine's interest in the subject, check out this article written by Valentine for Wormwoodiana.
 |
| from Meandering Through Time |
Between these two outstanding tales, there are ten more, and while won't go into all of them, there are a few I'll highlight, beginning with "Worse Things Than Serpents." At a crossroads with a signpost offering "Church" one way and "Garden" the other, the narrator of this story examines the church first, since "Norfolk churches are usually worth stopping for," then afterwards decides to go on to the garden. Turns out there is no garden, but once back on the road he sees a "homemade roadside notice" calling his attention to "Brazen Serpent Books." He makes his way to the empty old shed that is the book store, no proprietor in sight. Eventually making a selection, he leaves a note that he is "Happy to Pay What is Due." Given his experiences in the store, the price might just be a bit on the high side. In "Fortunes Told: Fresh Samphire" there are actually two narrators, one from a man searching for his friend Crabbe, who "has vanished from his small house near the sea, and yet he is still here," and the other from Crabbe himself. Here, landscape, history, lore and of course the other-worldly all come together, making for an eerie and quite honestly extraordinary piece of writing. One of the darkest (at least for me) entries in this volume is "And maybe the parakeet was correct," involving a journalist hoping to come up with something different by exploring European football. Traveling through a few countries, he ends up in Paris where in the back streets looking for "narrow passages where the enfants, shall we say not-quite-so-good, might be found, the sort that kick a ball around in the street" while treating strangers with "insolence and derision." He gets his wish, watching "six or seven urchins" at the end of an alley, but realizes that what he is seeing is no ordinary game. For "The Readers of the Sands," the best description I can offer is "haunting," which is actually an understatement now that I'm thinking about it again. It begins as
"three travellers headed by their different ways to a causeway leading them to the house called Driftwood End, which stood on a spur of land above a vast canvas of sand."
The first is a guide through the hazardous sands of the estuary, the latest "holder of an ancient office" known as "Bishop's Sandman." The next is a "seer" who employs sand along with the patterns in the sand in her profession, and the third a woman who creates "hour-glasses" and "egg-timers" from "sea-wood and blown glass." She has also discovered a somewhat strange ability she has which she keeps to herself, one which she will have opportunity to use at a particularly critical moment during the gathering. Their host is a certain Phillip Crabbe (and I have to wonder if this is the same Crabbe who vanished in "Fortunes Told: Fresh Samphire") who lives at Driftwood End, and he has brought them all there for a particular purpose. The remaining stories, "The House of Flame," "The Seventh Card," "Laughter Ever After," "The Understanding of the Signs," the titular "Lost Estates" and "The End of Alpha Street," are all excellent as well but I'm running long here.
The blurb for Lost Estates notes that these tales offer "antiquarian mysteries, book-collecting adventures, and otherworldly encounters," as well as "mysterious landscapes, places of legend, and secret history." Valentine has an incredible abundance of knowledge about ancient customs, history and lore that inform his stories; the joy is in seeing the connections he forges between that knowledge and the characters who interact with the landscapes which he so expertly renders here, either rural or city. The stories themselves have a truly special quality that I appreciate, meaning that once I start one, I'm deep into it and the outside world just vanishes. He makes me feel like I am right there with the characters as they approach that (as the dustjacket blurb states) "unusual terrain," making it beyond difficult to put this book down at any time during the reading. And if you get a Machen vibe, well ...
Very highly recommended -- Lost Estates is most certainly one of the best collections by this author I've read.
