FRIDAY FRIGHT NIGHT: Lucifer and the Child - Ethel Mannin

From its first sentence (“On the 18th March, 1618, Margaret and Philippa Flower were burnt at the stake…for witchcraft.”) Lucifer and the Child (1945) sets up what ostensibly will be a novel of witchcraft, black magic and the evolution of a child cursed by her afflicted past. The title is deceptive. True there is a man with horns, there is a child, there is even a bona fide witch, but it is so much more than bubbling cauldrons, sinister incantations, a mysterious and seductive man and the child entranced with his charismatic personality and all things forbidden to her by conservative often indifferent foster parents.

 Ethel Mannin explores ethics, morality, faith, love, the inherent magic of the natural world and the ultimate mystery of devotion -- both earthly and spiritual -- and does so with stark frankness, uncensored sexuality and near mockery of convention. Jenny Flower meets the man she will come to nickname Lucifer – for he is so much like the Angel of Light fallen from grace – when she is seven years old in 1930. We follow her first meeting of the mysterious man and subsequent meetings, each taking place on one of the four witch’s sabbaths over the next seven years. Her introduction takes place in a forest and like Adam and Eve after eating the forbidden fruit Jenny has hers eyes opened to a natural world of splendor and mystery. Her first act of daring, her first lesson of this new world, involves intently staring at a toad in attempt to strike it dead. Much to her surprise she is entranced by the toad, an animal she never actually looked at before. While staring supposedly with true hate she cannot bring herself to kill it and she spares its life. But the more time she spends with Lucifer the less kind she will be with her experiments.

Later she is drawn to the hovel of Mrs. Beadle, the town crone often shunned for being a witch herself. Mrs. Beadle sees in Jenny her younger self and nonchalantly begins to impart some of her arcane knowledge to the girl. They start with astrology, the names of the fallen angels, Lucifer and his followers whose names have become synonymous with demonology, and the Chart of the Characters of Evil Spirits. It is an education in complete reversal of her school and church learning. Soon Jenny and Mrs. Beadle are practicing spells together. The crone is always standing over her bubbling pot stirring up ingredients for unctions, philtres and potions, while simultaneously feeding Jenny’s insatiable curiosity for forgotten magic and unnameable rites.

Marian Drew, a schoolteacher, begins to notice a change in Jenny. She is concerned about her desire to run off to Mrs. Beadle’s, her derision of other schoolchildren. Jenny's constant talk of the man with the horns is alarming and her eager anticipation of his return on Candlemas or Lammas or Halloween, which fatefully happens to be Jenny’s birthday, inspire Miss Drew on a mission to save Jenny from both Mrs. Beadle's baleful influence and the friendship of the mysterious man -- if indeed he even exists.

Along the way we also meet Jenny's only real friend who she thinks is her aunt. Actually Nell Flower is Jenny's real mother who gave her up to her sister to raise. Nell is a free spirit, glamorous, unconventional who can't be bothered with the responsibility of being a mother. She doesn't even know the identity of Jenny's father nor does she care. She lives for her freedom, her life as a barmaid, her elaborate head-turning wardrobe, her cosmetics. Jenny loves her. Despite Nell's surface friendship and her referring to Jenny as a brat she is devoted and protective of her daughter. However, she never wants Jenny to know that she is her real mother. In an interesting twist of the plot Nell will also try to save Jenny from Mrs. Beadle and sever what the crone and the mysterious man assure is Jenny's cursed past.

Finally there are Jenny's foster parents -- aunt Ivy and her husband Joe. Jenny has two brothers, too, in this sadly loveless household. Ivy loses her patience with her willful but friendless child and never seems able to keep her disciplined. She resorts to screaming, yelling threats, and on occasion beating. Joe, the indifferent father, is also violent. Jenny, however, is immune to punishment of any sort. She seems to be a child of the devil himself. Yet Ivy doesn't seem too worried for Jenny or her slow transformation from a misbehaving yet innocent girl to a worldly, cynical and vengeful teen.

Illustrated front board of
Swan River Press reissue

Mannin’s novel is a wondrous book that raises intriguing questions about faith and love. Miss Drew acts the voice of reason and common sense who argues with Lucifer, a literal Devil’s advocate. She and Jenny are forced to reckon with the inextricably connected dichotomies of good and evil. One cannot believe in God without also believing in the devil, Lucifer constantly reminds the woman and the girl. Are not miracles the scared version of black magic? If you believe in Jesus raising the dead, changing water into wine and walking on water how can you easily dismiss the ability to communicate with dead spirits, making love potions, and flying through the air at midnight? Angels cannot exist without devils. Light is the forever companion of dark. What you truly believe in, your faith, shapes who you are for life. And that faith ultimately makes what you believe in exist. 

The writing often transcends a deceptively straightforward didactic style to achieve true poetry, especially in the sequences when Mannin celebrates the creatures of the forest, the flowers of a spring afternoon, the wild fury of the ocean where Lucifer who says he is a merchant seaman spends much of his life. The words carry a rhythm like beautifully constructed verses, and her frequent repetition of phrases like “the ice-green, ice-cold waters of the Gulf of Finland’ are like the chanting of Mrs. Beadle over her pot of mystery potions. Mannin calls on myth and legend when describing “the bells of lost Atlantis ringing under the sea.” She resorts to ancient archaic spelling like magicke and is compelled to quote Marlowe’s Faustus. Miss Drew cannot help but recall the line “Tis magic, a magic that hath ravished me” when she discovers that she has been willfully seduced by Lucifer despite all her attempts to resist him and draw him away from Jenny. In uttering that line Marian comes to realize that she welcomed the seduction and longs to see him again with a fervor almost as powerful as Jenny’s rabid devotion.

The conflict comes in the fight for Lucifer's attention. Jenny grows ever jealous of his closeness to Marian Drew. Marian slowly realizes she cannot save Jenny and must resort to bargaining. When she asks Lucifer to promise to leave Jenny alone for seven years she cannot foresee that promise will set in motion a fateful plot that will be the undoing for the trio.

Lucifer and the Child uses a supernatural motif that makes one recognize that magic is ever present in the world. That the wonders of the natural world are as hypnotic as any spell or incantation chanted in a candlelit kitchen. And yet there is danger in that attractiveness and seduction of the unknown. In the hands of Mannin's contemporary writers of supernatural and horror this novel might have become a lurid piece filled with gruesome scenes and nightmarish apparitions. But as Mannin would have it the horror is more subtle, heartwrenching rather than blood spilling. We watch the irrevocable destruction of a soul, the dissolution of friendships, and a fulfillment of what amounts to a fatalistic worldview.

After being out of print for decades Lucifer and the Child has been reissued.  The adventurous Swan River Press based in Dublin, mostly devoted to reprinting forgotten works by Irish writers of supernatural and fantasy fiction, has published a gorgeous new volume of Ethel Mannin's cult masterpiece. Only available for purchase directly from the publisher ordering info can be found on their website here. The book includes a well researched foreword by scholar Rosanne Rabinowitz which sheds light on the novel's re-discovery and Ethel Mannin's fascinating life as an iconoclast and counterculture figure.

FRIDAY FRIGHT NIGHT: The Come Back- Carolyn Wells

Boo!

It's October, the season of of black cat and witch inflatables on front lawns, jack-o'-lanterns on front porches and pumpkin spice in everything. October and especially Halloween will be different in this age of the COVID pandemic. Maybe there will be fewer jack-o'-lanterns on front porches and definitely fewer children trick-or-treating door-to-door but that doesn't mean we can't still keep the Halloween spirit alive on our vintage mystery blogs. Curtis Evans of “The Passing Tramp” proposed a "Friday Fright Night" meme for the entire month in which we will celebrate all things spooky, eerie and perhaps even terrifying. Right up my alley, friends! I jumped on board in an instant. Without further ado here is this week's contribution...one day late.

The Come Back (1921) is one of the books in my favorite short series from the indefatigable Carolyn Wells. Her most interesting books are those that feature her detective Pennington Wise and his enigmatic, quasi-psychic assistant Zizi. In each of the Penny Wise books this detective duo faces apparently supernatural happenings while Wells presents her murder mystery plot. Often the ghosts, haunted rooms and apparitions turn out to be rationalized.  I have previously reviewed two books in the series: The Room with the Tassels and The Man Who Fell through the Earth.  The Come Back is the fourth book in the eight book series and deals with spiritualism (a favorite topic of early 20th century mystery writers and a blog topic worthy of a post all its own) and the ghost of a dearly departed relative.

Like many of Well's better written books the plot is intricately complex. The story begins with the tale of three friends who go to Labrador in Canada on a hiking and camping trip and fall victim to severe snowstorm. One of the three, Peter Crane, is separated from the group and cannot be found afterward. When months pass and no word is heard from Peter his family and friends give him up as lost and presumed dead. An attempt to find his body when the snow melts in spring turns up nothing. Essentially Peter Crane has vanished.

Peter's mother Helen is a devout believer in spiritism. Peter's fiancée has an affinity with the Ouija board and the two women begin experiments in contacting Peter. When they start receiving messages from Peter via Ouija communication Helen Crane aches to find out exactly what happened to her son on that trip.

Of course there are skeptics and doubters. Christopher "Kit" Shelby, one of Peter's friends who survived the disastrous camping trip, loathes "spook idiots" and tries his best to warns the Crane family and Carly, Peter's fiancee, against accepting the messages from Peter as genuine "words from the beyond world." Julia Crane is Peter's sister and she resents Carly's introduction of the Ouija board into her house, dredging up supernatural nonsense, and making her parents into superstitious obsessives. Gilbert Blair, the third member of the camping trip and other survivor, is also suspicious of the spirit messages. Still, he makes his move on Carly now that she is apparently available for other men.  We know that he expressed an interest in her during an intimate conversation he had with Peter back in the camping trip section of the book.

Meanwhile, Benjamin Crane at the suggestion of a friend involved in the Society of Psychic Research visits the renowned medium Madame Parlato. He wants the help of an expert to prove that Peter's messages are real. She impresses him immediately when she contacts Peter and reveals his nickname "Peter Boots" known only to immediate family members, and details of how he died freezing to death in the snowstorm. How could she know any of this with no time to do any research other than hearing the stories from Peter's own ghostly lips?  Crane continues to visit the medium and becomes as devout in spiritism as his wife. He writes a book about his experiences, it becomes a huge bestseller and revives a nationwide interest in spiritism.

The plot thickens when Gilbert Blair is poisoned in an impossible crime situation. This may or not be related to an architectural prize that Blair was competing for with his jealous architect/illustrator roommate McClellan Thorpe. Blair had recently accused his roommate of stealing ideas. Perhaps someone in Madame Parlato's close circle of friends killed Gilbert because he was close to exposing her as a fraud.  Or... Is Peter's ghost seeking revenge?  Or --even more miraculous -- is Peter still alive and out for retribution for those he feels abandoned him months ago in Labrador?

The book is filled with all sorts of seance sequences, and the kind of spook busting detective work that is the hallmark of early 20th century mystery novels involving mediums and contact with the dead. The characters who disbelieve the supernatural elements, Kit and Julia are intent on exposing Madame Parlato as a fraud.  At one of the seances a tobacco pouch with Peter's initials materializes. Mr Crane begins to suspect that Peter is alive and hires a private detective. This is where Penny Wise and Zizi enter the book (very late in the story as per usual with Wells). Oddly, Wise himself does very little in this story.  It is Zizi and Julia who are the detectives and they do some admirable sleuthing.

The overall mystery is not difficult to figure out and all supernatural elements, of course, are in the end rationalized and the mediums exposed as frauds. But that doesn't take away from its genuinely entertaining story. Many unusual twists and complications enliven the story and make for some page turning excitement. There is a mysterious man named John Harrison, a reporter named Douglas who shows up at the Crane house asking prying questions, a movie called Labrador Luck that becomes all the rage and, in a reverse of most spook-buster mysteries, a blackmail scheme that involves enlisting the help of Madame Parlato to entrap the murderer.

Zizi is fast becoming one of my favorite female sleuths in early American 20th century mystery fiction.  She has intelligence, sarcastic humor, spunk and a fertile imagination. She often resorts to chicanery and con artistry with her boss in order to unmask the villains and miscreants in the books in which she appears. I highly recommend investigating these little known books. There are the best of Wells' early mystery writing career and do not infuriate the reader with the kinds of fantastical and improbable murders that arise from ludicrous motives in her later books of the 1930s and '40s.

Like many of Carolyn Wells' early novels The Come Back is in the public domain. It appeared at the Project Gutenberg over a decade ago and as a result has been pirated by profiteering "reprint publishers" who download the entire novel and repackage it under their "publishing name." So you have myriad editions to choose from. You can buy a pirated copy from about ten different repackagers of free content or download the book for free from Project Gutenberg.  Local libraries may have a copy on their shelves. A few actual used copies of the 1921 editions are out there for sale as well, including an A.L. Burt reprint in a beautifully intact and colorful DJ.

For more ghosts, monsters and things that go bump in the night visit Cross Examining Crime, My Reader's Block, The Passing Tramp and Clothes in Books.  And tune in next week for more Vintage Horrors!