The house of silence, p.28
The House of Silence, page 28
window-tax: the Act to tax the number of windows in a house was brought in in England in 1696 and repealed in 1851. Existing houses that already had more windows than their owners wanted to pay tax on had some of the windows bricked up, and newer houses were built with the window spaces already filled in with the building stone, leaving the impression of a symmetrical arrangement of spaces.
17 The Pavilion
Quand je suis morte: From the poem ‘Lucie’ by Alfred de Musset; ‘When I am dead, my friends, plant a willow in the churchyard’, a very Romantic sentiment.
qui vive: Latin, the sentry’s challenge of ‘Who goes there’, transmuted to a slang term for being on the lookout.
tatting: the craft of making edgings and decorative trimmings out of thread, rather like lace-making.
18 The Detective
pinchbeck: an alloy of copper and zinc that closely resembles gold; its inventor’s name became a byword for something that was cheap or valueless.
stones for bread: from Luke 11:11–13, a parable about the generosity of fathers, but the narrator here has mangled the story slightly in his passion.
tile: slang for a top hat.
the gods L, S and D: pounds, shillings and pence, which the narrator, a reluctant and not very good accountant, has to wrestle with.
ducking: curtseying.
The Living Stone
Stories of Uncanny Sculpture, 1858–1943
Edited by Henry Bartholomew
A fearful anthology of forgotten stories to persuade you that a stone hand has been placed on your shoulder when you least expect it, or that something heavy is scraping its way up the stairs. Well-known authors of the uncanny and mistresses of supernatural short stories to frighten the heart into some loud thumpings.
Authors include:
Sabine Baring-Gould, E F Benson, Nellie K Blissett, Bernard Capes, James Causey, Robert W Chambers, N Dennett, W W Fenn, Hazel Heald, H P Lovecraft, Arthur Machen, W C Morrow, Oliver Onions, E R Punshon, Eleanor Scott, Clark Ashton Smith, and Edith Wharton.
Strange Relics
Stories of Archaeology and the Supernatural, 1895–1954
Edited by Amara Thornton and Katy Soar
A new anthology of twelve classic short stories combining the supernatural and archaeology. Never before have so many relics from the past caused such delicious and intriguing shivers down the spine. From a Neolithic rite to Egyptian religion to Roman remains to medieval masonry to some uncanny ceramic tiles in a perfectly ordinary American sun lounge, the relics in these stories are, frankly, horrible.
Stories include:
‘The Ape’, by E F Benson, ‘Roman Remains’, by Algernon Blackwood, ‘Ho! The Merry Masons’, by John Buchan, ‘Through the Veil’, by Arthur Conan Doyle, ‘View From A Hill’, M R James, ‘Curse of the Stillborn’, by Margery Lawrence, ‘Whitewash’, by Rose Macaulay, ‘The Shining Pyramid’, by Arthur Machen, ‘Cracks of Time’, by Dorothy Quick and ‘The Cure’, by Eleanor Scott.
From the Abyss
Weird Fiction, 1907–1945
By D K Broster
D K Broster was one of the great British historical novelists of the twentieth century, but her Weird fiction has long been forgotten. She wrote some of the most impressive supernatural short stories to be published between the wars. Melissa Edmundson, editor of Handheld’s Women’s Weird, has curated a selection of Broster’s best and most terrifying work. Stories in From the Abyss include these tales of particular archaeological and architectural interest:
• ‘The Window’, in which a deserted chateau exacts revenge when one particular window is opened.
• ‘The Pavement’, in which the protectress of a Roman mosaic cannot bear to let it go.
• ‘Clairvoyance’, in which the spirit of a vengeful Japanese swordmaster enters an adolescent girl.
• ‘The Pestering’, in which a cursed hidden treasure draws its victim across centuries to find it.
• ‘The Taste of Pomegranates’ draws two young women into the palaeolithic past.
E Nesbit, The House of Silence
