The Black Reaper: Tales of Terror by Bernard Capes. Bernard Capes

also uses words in a curious way at many places; as if he were writing under the influence of drink, as perhaps he was, when one considers his basic attitude.’

      Intrigued by Aickman’s insight (I had not told him of Capes’s long record of failure), I asked him to elaborate for the benefit of this book when it finally appeared. His reply deserves reprinting:

      Consider the opening paragraph and second paragraph in ‘The Green Bottle’. When Capes describes himself as ‘happening to be grinding his literary barrel organ – always adaptable to the popular need’, this is not character drawing but an expression of rueful awareness that the words are largely true. Similarly, the contempt expressed for Sewell is partly self contempt and partly contempt for the awful people one has to mix with in the awful trade of popular authorship. Thus again with the first paragraph of ‘An Eddy on the Floor’; these words do not even pretend to be in character. They are Capes speaking. No man who sees himself as even reasonably content or fulfilled writes like this. The entire atmosphere is saturated with disappointment, disillusionment, and despair. None of this means that Capes’s stories are without good qualities. Still less does it mean that Capes was necessarily justified in his apparent estimate of his powers and deserts. Least of all does it mean that you have to accept a word I say on the subject.

      Anyone who knew Robert Aickman would accept his word on this like a shot. Aickman did his fair share of research into ghost stories and knew his authors well.

      If you examine Capes’s tales, you won’t find any conventional heroes or conventional happy endings. His protagonists wander into situations or are obliged to take action almost by default, while suffering humanity gets short shrift as well. He also seems to reserve harsh fates for gentlemen of the press – consider ‘The Green Bottle’, ‘An Eddy on the Floor’, or ‘William Tyrwhitt’s “Copy”’. Capes hardly needed to populate the moon with lost souls – he sends them wandering blindly through the pages of his stories down here on earth.

      Perhaps it is his basic pessimism that gives Capes’s stories their undoubted power. Few authors from the time conjured up such dark canvasses as he paints in ‘A Gallows-bird’ or ‘The Sword of Corporal Lacoste’. However, this dark vision never seemed to extend to his novels, which are often lighter, less grim, historical follies. The Pot of Basil (1913), for instance, is an airy, whimsical piece about eighteenth century court life in Italy – a long way from the grinding horror of ‘A Gallows-bird’. And the lovers in The Story of Fifine (1914) are in a world far removed from the blossoming courtship we see outlined in ‘The Accursed Cordonnier’.

      Capes soon passed into the neglect so common in this field. After The Skeleton Key was published in 1919, nothing more appeared in Britain until a couple of re-issues in 1928 and 1929 – and then that was it. His neglect over the years is strange indeed, especially when other authors from the same era are reprinted mercilessly.

      I hope that this new edition of The Black Reaper will bring Bernard Capes back into the eye of the ghost story enthusiast, and a wider public. He deserves reprinting and a second chance. We must hope that his usual bad luck died with him.

       Hugh Lamb

      Sutton, Surrey

      February 2017

       THE BLACK REAPER

       Taken from the Q— Register of Local Events,

       as Compiled from Authentic Narratives

      Now I am to tell you of a thing that befell in the year 1665 of the Great Plague, when the hearts of certain amongst men, grown callous in wickedness upon that rebound from an inhuman austerity, were opened to the vision of a terror that moved and spoke not in the silent places of the fields. Forasmuch as, however, in the recovery from delirium a patient may marvel over the incredulity of neighbours who refuse to give credence to the presentments that have been ipso facto to him, so, the nation being sound again, and its constitution hale, I expect little but a laugh for my piety in relating of the following incident; which, nevertheless, is as essential true as that he who shall look through the knot-hole in the plank of a coffin shall acquire the evil eye.

      For, indeed, in those days of a wild fear and confusion, when every condition that maketh for reason was set wandering by a devious path, and all men sitting as in a theatre of death looked to see the curtain rise upon God knows what horrors, it was vouchsafed to many to witness sights and sounds beyond the compass of Nature, and that as if the devil and his minions had profited by the anarchy to slip unobserved into the world. And I know that this is so, for all the insolence of a recovered scepticism; and, as to the unseen, we are like one that traverseth the dark with a lanthorn, himself the skipper of a little moving blot of light, but a positive mark for any secret foe without the circumference of its radiance.

      Be that as it may, and whether it was our particular ill-fortune, or, as some asserted, our particular wickedness, that made of our village an inviting back-door of entrance to the Prince of Darkness, I know not; but so it is that disease and contagion are ever inclined to penetrate by way of flaws or humours where the veil of the flesh is already perforated, as a kite circleth round its quarry, looking for the weak place to strike: and, without doubt, in that land of corruption we were a very foul blot indeed.

      How this came about it were idle to speculate; yet no man shall have the hardihood to affirm that it was otherwise. Nor do I seek to extenuate myself, who was in truth no better than my neighbours in most that made us a community of drunkards and forswearers both lewd and abominable. For in that village a depravity that was like madness had come to possess the heads of the people, and no man durst take his stand on honesty or even common decency, for fear he should be set upon by his comrades and drummed out of his government on a pint pot. Yet for myself I will say was one only redeeming quality, and that was the pure love I bore to my solitary orphaned child, the little Margery.

      Now, our vicar – a patient and God-fearing man, for all his predial tithes were impropriated by his lord, that was an absentee and a sheriff in London – did little to stem that current of lewdness that had set in strong with the Restoration. And this was from no lack of virtue in himself, but rather from a natural invertebracy, as one may say, and an order of mind that, yet being no order, is made the sport of any sophister with a wit for paragram. Thus it always is that mere example is of little avail without precept – of which, however, it is an important condition – and that the successful directors of men be not those who go to the van and lead, unconscious of the gibes and mockery in their rear, but such rather as drive the mob before them with a smiting hand and no infirmity of purpose. So, if a certain affection for our pastor dwelt in our hearts, no tittle of respect was there to leaven it and justify his high office before Him that consigned the trust; and ever deeper and deeper we sank in the slough of corruption, until was brought about this pass – that naught but some scourging despotism of the Church should acquit us of the fate of Sodom. That such, at the eleventh hour, was vouchsafed us of God’s mercy, it is my purpose to show; and, doubtless, this offering of a loop-hole was to account by reason of the devil’s having debarked his reserves, as it were, in our port; and so quartering upon us a soldiery that we were, at no invitation of our own, to maintain, stood us a certain extenuation.

      It was late in the order of things before in our village so much as a rumour of the plague reached us. Newspapers were not in those days, and reports, being by word of mouth, travelled slowly, and were often spent bullets by the time they fell amongst us. Yet, by May, some gossip there was of the distemper having gotten a hold in certain quarters of London and increasing, and this alarmed our people, though it made no abatement of their profligacy. But presently the reports coming thicker, with confirmation of the terror and panic that was enlarging on all sides, we must take measures for our safety; though into June and July, when the pestilence was raging, none infected had come our way, and that from our remote and isolated position. Yet it needs but fear for the crown to that wickedness that is self-indulgence; and forasmuch as this fear fattens like a toadstool on the decomposition it springs from, it grew with us to the proportions that