Ella D'Arcy has written a haunted house story with a particularly French twist. Set in the South of France, a genteel family look around an empty house which is to be rented out but no one seems to want it. The caretaker is a weird individual, but the memories the house holds are weirder still.
I picked this story up from The Virago Book of Ghost Stories, edited by Richard Dalby. Now, Richard Dalby had edited many volumes of ghost stories for various publishers and he is an excellent curator. I never fail to find some really enjoyable stories in his collections. They're worth looking out for.
Ella D'Arcy was born 1857 in London and died 1937 (or another source has 1851 to 1939). She was one of nine children and educated in London, Germany, France and the Channel Islands. Her family were from Dublin. She spent her last years in Paris, but returned to London to die in hospital there. Despite her exotic upbringing, and successful career, after 1900, she published very little and is said to have lived in poverty.
She studied fine art, but gave up that career to become an author because she had problems with her eyesight. She became a celebrated author in her time. She never married.
Ella D'Arcy travelled a lot and lost contact with her friends for long periods of time, turning up unannounced to surprise them, a habit that earned her the nickname "Goblin Ella." She was one of the late Victorian 'new women'. These women rejected the mores of Victorian society and they were unconventional, independent, open-minded and a bit of a rebel. It goes without saying that to be a New Woman you had to have some family money behind you.
She was associated with the Yellow Book crowd. She was sub-editor on the Yellow Book for a time. The Yellow Book was a magazine that came out towards the end of the 19th Century and hosted the most modern, aesthetically pleasing art and literature. Its twin themes were aestheticism and decadence.
She was a short-story writer, not primarily a ghost story writer and this Villa Lucienne was published in the Yellow Book in 1896, but has been reprinted since.
Critics have pointed out her style is reminiscent of the New Naturalism of the French fiction that was being published during her lifetime, particularly Zola and Balzac.
It's a very subtle story, because no ghost is seen by the protagonist. Instead the horror, or rather the uneasiness and disquiet arise from the descriptions of the setting.
I wasn't sure she needed the little summary at the beginning of the story, which in effect told us that nothing bad really happened.
But, I liked the way the party is described, walking up the hill until the see the Villa Soleil. They mistake this Villa and its perfection for the dismal Villa Lucienne. The two houses are twins, but one is light and the other dark. We go through an obscure overgrown hole in a laurel hedge, along a slimy tunnel-like overgrown arbour to see the overgrown garden and the dark Villa Lucienne.
The narrator stepping in a nest of woodlice is bound to have raised a few shudders in readers as is the description of the slime.
Then they see rather awful old Laurent. The personality of Laurent represents the soul of the Villa Lucienne, dark and surly and hiding terrible secrets. Most probably, because we're never actually told.
We know that Old Madame Grey died, and she was the last owner before it was let out. We presume that Old Madame Grey is the ghost seen by the child Renee. Renee is frightened as Madame Grey comes towards her, but whether Madame Grey's intent is malevolent, we never find out.
It's so subtle that the story is never explained, just left to the reader's imagination. What did the gardener Laurent do? Not much of a gardener either given the state of the place, more a squatter. Did he murder the old-lady so he could live in the villa for the rest of his natural?
Did he actually bury the old lady in the pavilion.
I particularly liked the traces of the rose, in a small heap of dust, the rag of lace, caught as someone went by and the sense that the person who left, didn't know they were leaving for the last time.
Very nuanced and delicate.
You will know I like ghost stories about houses, Blind Man's Buff, Fullcircle and Kipling's They.
This story also reminded me of a reportedly true story of a time slip at Versailles which happened to two Englishwomen of about the same period as this story. That is An Adventure, and it is very intriguing.
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5 сен 2024
