Aickman Studies

Edited by Tom R. Baynham

Published by Gary William Crawford
Volume One, Number One, January 2014

Contents
STUDIES OF SAD BEAUTY: ROBERT AICKMAN, PHILIP STEEGMAN &
ARTHINGTON WORSLEY .........................................................................2
ALONE WITH THE (ARCHETYPAL) HORRORS: MONSTROUS WOMEN IN
ROBERT AICKMANS STRANGE STORIES ................................................... 10
SKIM MILK AS CREAM: REALITY VERSUS ILLUSION IN THE SCHOOL FRIEND ..... 19

Aickman Studies (ISSN 2330-8699) is edited by Tom R. Baynham and published by Gary William
Crawford through his Gothic Press, 2272 Quail Oak Dr. Baton Rouge, LA 70808. Baynham's
email is aickmanstudies@gmail.com. Crawford's email is gothicpt12@aol.com. The Aickman
Studies website is www.aickmandata.com/aickmanstudies.html. Essays on any aspect of midtwentieth century ghost story writer Robert Aickman are sought. Artwork by Marge Simon. The
journal has its own house style loosely based on The MLA Style Manual. The Robert Aickman: A
Database website is www.aickmandata.com. The Gothic Press website is
www.gothlitdata.com/gothicpress.html
2014 by Gary William Crawford.

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

STUDIES OF SAD BEAUTY: ROBERT AICKMAN, PHILIP STEEGMAN &

ARTHINGTON WORSLEY
Mark Valentine

This essay discusses just about ten lines in a book by Robert Aickman. In its own way, it is
a tribute to the subtlety, slyness and strangeness of his writing. It may be seen, sometimes,
to challenge how Aickman sees things and writes about them: and, more especially, what
he leaves out. It might also be thought to concentrate rather too much on a potentially
minor passage. But I hope the subjects of the passage, and the essay, will have intrinsic
interest: and I also suggest this sliver of his work is probably highly illustrative; that we
might find much more like it, with the same rather serpentine qualities. I also use the
passage to reflect briefly on the nature of (auto)biography and memory: in particular, on
the accident of what is remembered. When my biography of the diplomat and fantasy
writer Sarban was published, one reviewer (Robert Irwin, 32) said that my subject seemed
never to have done or said a memorable thing. I was a bit abashed at this, as in fact Sarban
had faced quite a few tight corners in his career, surviving angry anti-British riots in
several cities in the Middle East, and winning praise for his coolness during the turmoil of
the Azeri revolution in North Western Iran just after World War Two. Perhaps I had
failed to convey these vividly enough. It also seemed to me that a man who had risen from
a South Yorkshire working class background - the son of a railwayman - to become an
ambassador for his country, might be said to have achieved something, quite apart from his
literary work.
Even so, Robert Irwins comment does identify an important point concerning literary
biographies. Most writers lead intense inner lives: as storytellers, they are always living
with one foot in an imaginary world. Some, of course, are notoriously unworldly, and
have to rely upon capable partners, friends or others to guide them through real world
matters. In many cases, the outward lives of authors are not indeed of great moment: and
when they are, this is often for non-literary reasons. I dont think we need to go so far as
those critics who would separate the book entirely from the author, but its certainly true
that to appreciate a literary work we do not necessarily need to know very much about the
authors life. And if the author is Robert Aickman we might want to be particularly
cautious about what we think we know about him.
It has been said, therefore, that the secret of literary biography, indeed of biography in
general, lies in the treatment of the minor figures. They are the seasoning that gives a

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

study and perhaps the life studied too flavour. We may only be diverted so far by the
account of the main subject. We like also to read of picturesque characters encountered,
as it were, by the wayside. And partly, of course, this is because they can be described
with their most vivid features and qualities, without too much burdensome detail, which,
on the whole, we may not want. Some autobiographers Frank Baker and Julian Symons
being very readable examples have taken this insight further, and told their own stories
only through their encounters with others, often otherwise forgotten, who influenced or
impressed them. The result, if self-effacing, makes thought-provoking reading.
I once suggested in a short story, White Pages (Valentine, 31), that for most people only
about five facts ever survive them. Of course, a diligent researcher devoted to a single
subject can turn up a great many more. Yet what I meant was that, in the skimming of
general understanding, only a few facts stick. The internet has exaggerated this tendency.
Any search will customarily find only the few same things on a given subject, constantly
repeated. Furthermore, and what is at best disconcerting and perhaps truly chilling, we
have very little control indeed over what those facts will be. They will almost certainly not
be, as I discussed in the story, the facts we would have chosen about ourselves.
Robert Aickman himself practised this economy of facts in his memoir The Attempted
Rescue (1966), which teems with many curious individuals, not least from his family, and
the neighbours of his family home at Isleworth, a place now chiefly notable for having one
of the largest sewage works in the country. He clearly enjoys giving a few abrupt, often
incongruous, facts about these people, incidental characters in his life. Those facts often
seem designed to startle the reader and make them wonder how much more was left
untold. But how far can we trust the authors portraits? Quite apart from the natural
unevenness of memory, to what extent is Aickmans text a creative invention, a semifiction?
A brief, but instructive, example may be found in his summary (Aickman, 82-3) of a son
of a neighbour, old Dr Steegmann who had two sons, John and Philip, and a beautiful
adopted daughter, Beatrice. Philip, we are told, became a painter, and wrote a book
named Indian Ink after a short visit to that imperium. He then died. Aickman further
recounts that Philip challenged his (Aickmans) Great-Aunt (whom he describes elsewhere
as that fierce, unkind woman) to stroke his cheek, and adds that when she did she was
astonished to find the cheek bristly. Typically, Aickman leaves it unclear whether his
Great-Aunts astonishment was due to inexperience of male cheeks (he mentions that he is
unsure if his Great-Uncle had any love life), or unsuspected hirsuteness in Philip.
There we are: a sly handful of facts about a lost life. Yet see how Aickman handles them.
One is simply the baldly stated end of all lives: Philip died. Yet Aickman contrives to
imply almost a causation between this and one or both of two other facts, a visit to India
and a book. We might also think Aickmans phrasing intends to convey the arbitrary
nature of the end of lives, and how little they can seem in sum: he did this, and that was it.

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

There is a touch of tough, brusque sympathy there. But Aickman also cannot resist a slight
hint of wryness. Philip wrote his book after only a short visit to India. And the most
significant fact about Philip, the one he might have regarded as most important, that he
was a painter, is passed over with no further elaboration. Instead, Aickman gives us the
slightly odd and unexplained anecdote about the cheek-brushing, and the unsurprising fact
that the mans cheek was bristly. Is he trying to illustrate the inconsequentiality of
memory? Perhaps, and thus are lives condensed to a mingling of the obvious, the
unexplained, the odd and the overlooked.
If we were to make the audacious attempt to summarise Aickman himself in the same way,
we might say that Robert became an author, and wrote some books of strange stories,
after reading those of Elizabeth Jane Howard, whom he once loved. He liked canals and
persuaded the government to keep some open, though later deploring those who
afterwards used them. He was possessed, a fellow author once observed, of the worst
teeth he had ever seen in a living human face. This last recollection, by Ramsey
Campbell, has deservedly become a strong image in all Aickman lore.
An unjust and incomplete summary, no doubt, but certainly no more so than that by
Aickman of Philip Steegmann, as we shall see. We omit that his grandfather was the
novelist Richard Marsh, and that he had an odd father, with secrets; we pass over that he
quarrelled with L T C Rolt, another canals campaigner, and fellow ghost story writer; and
we might have more kindly said that Robert was one of the most original writers of
strange stories in the 20th century. To this might be added, not so much facts as
impressions, that Aickman was a traditionalist in politics and in principles (it is necessary
to distinguish the two), and that he was in person quite as strange as his stories, but could
be charming. There could, of course, be much more; there certainly was much more of
Philip.
When World War Two broke out, Philip Steegmann had volunteered as an ordinary
seaman. Owing to an injury, he was not on board when his ship, HMS Hood, sailed out in
May 1941 for a secret and urgent mission. And days later the battle cruiser was to be sunk
by the German warship the Bismarck, with only three survivors from the crew and
Steegmann, because of his shore leave. News of the sinking was received in Britain with
great shock, but the effect on Philip of this mass loss of his shipmates can scarcely be
imagined. J.M. Richards, in his Memoirs of an Unjust Fella (1980) gives a brief vignette of
Philip, still in uniform, cap embossed with the HMS Hood name, finding strangers staring
at him in the street in a way that made him feel he was being reproached for not being
dead also. Richards adds: he went back to sea and was killed soon afterwards. Compare
this to Aickmans slightly comic linking of Steegmanns death to his book on India. Why
on earth, we might wonder, didnt Aickman give the braver and more tragic truth? Was it
too hard to tell, or is Aickman testing the reader how much do you care about Philip,
are you going to find out more about him? That is a literary sleight of which Aickman,
usually a sophisticated writer, might well be capable.

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

However, it proves to be not quite so simple. We may still think it odd that Aickman did
not mention Philips naval service, or his link to the doomed ship. But Philip Steegman
was not killed soon afterwards. There is a photograph of him, catalogued by the National
Portrait Gallery, on 12 February 1951 on a balcony in New Orleans with Edith and
Osbert Sitwell, David Horner (Osberts partner) and a lady identified as Mrs Philip
Steegman (her name was Elizabeth). Philips lifetime is dated as 1903-1952. Apparently
the photograph was donated by his brother, John, in 1952. Perhaps it was a memento
mori.
The bristly aspect of his cheek is the only physical description of Philip we are given by
Aickman. But elsewhere he is described as fair, boyishly good-looking. The description
comes from a light-hearted article in the unexpected source of the Ottawa Courier of 4th
March 1938, as part of a summary of British news. Under the headline Artist Shows
Portrait of His Broken Romance, readers in the Canadian capital were told: Friends of
Philip Steegmann, thirty-three-year-old society portrait painter, were invited to his studio
in Gordon street, W.C., recently for the viewing of one picture. It was his oil painting of
a blondeMost of the painting was completed on foggy afternoons in January, yet it is a
painting of sunlight.
The girl, we are told, painted in a summer dress in a lovely garden, was Miss Alfhild Dahl,
one of three beautiful daughters of a Norwegian shipping magnate, though she was born
in England. The two had had an understanding, an unofficial engagement, until Miss
Dahl fell in love with another man. Philip is quoted as saying this was a very great blow
but they agreed to show the picture as a proof that we were still very good friends. Miss
Dahl is, he says, the most beautiful woman I have ever paintedI will never part with
the picture. He has, the newspaper adds, recently returned from India, where he was the
guest of many Indian princes. He painted portraits of six maharajahs. Finally, one of his
most celebrated portraits is of Somerset Maugham. So that makes seven, then, we might
be tempted to add.
Philip might have had a certain flair for piquant gestures that would also get publicity. The
Border Watch, a South Australia newspaper, of 16th August 1938 reported, under the
heading Artist to be Bargee: A young society artist who obtains three-figure
commissions for painting the portraits of the great is a bargee. He will be paid 10/- a week
plus his keep. Philip recently signed on as one of the crew of a Thames sailing barge and
will be coasting round England with cargoes of coal, clay, gravel, and Portland stone for
three months. The artist, the report adds, is an expert yachtsman, the son of a naval
commander and grandson of an admiral. Life on board is tough, with no radio or lifeboat,
and no room for passengers. Philip is quoted as saying: I have recently been illHard
physical work at sea will be the best way of getting fit again. How odd: Aickman only
talks about Philips father as an old widower with a house full of curiosities, not as a navy
commander. Was Philip romancing, or Robert diminishing, seeing Steegman senior only

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

in his retired later life?

What about Philips book? It does exist, by the way: Indian Ink was published by CobdenSanderson in 1939, and by William Morrow in the USA in 1940, as India Ink. The
authors surname is given as Steegman, without the second n (Ive probably used both
spellings indiscriminately, or as the context requires). Did Aickman get it wrong, perhaps
thinking of his own family name of Heldmann? Or did the Steegmans vary theirs, perhaps
to make it less Germanic in the milieu leading up to World War 2? If so, why did
Aickman use the earlier form in his 1966 memoir? Was he consciously refusing the
changed identity of his friends, or simply remembering things as they were?
The book had an introduction by Hugh Walpole, who offered a picturesque summary
(Steegman, vii-viii): The India that Mr. Steegman found, with its leperous fakirs, its
bejewelled princes, its dust and English snobbery, its patience and its sinister undertone,
this India is alive and exotically flaming with colour brilliance seen through dust. Was it
the hasty travelogue that Aickmans rather tart mention of a short visit implies?
Not according to an Indian scholar, Dr Ila Rao, Reader of English at Andhra University,
India. She observes that Philips book presents a very sensitive and picturesque view of
the country Philip Steegman is least concerned with any imperialistic and political view
of the country. His view is the painters view, the sensitive and artistic attitude that can
discover beauty in every nook and corner of life. She adds: No writer can help noticing
the dirt, the disease, the ignorance and the squalor of India, but behind all this is the
essential beauty of the Indian spirit, and Philip Steegman understands this quality and he
tries to bring it out in his book. The sense of disillusion that had come over him in the
highly artificial social life of the West gives place to a sense of beauty and peace after his
experiences in India.
Rather uncannily, in view of his later fateful escape from the sinking of the Hood, Philip
recounts in his book how he averted another deathly encounter. He had visited a sadhu - a
Hindu holy man - who warned him not to go out that night, as he would be killed.
Persuaded by Indian friends to respect the warning, the author reluctantly abandoned
plans for a trip to Agra. An English friend went on alone: and on the return journey is
killed in a car accident. A coincidence? Philip thought it suggested forces working in his
life which he could not know.
Incidentally, it is interesting to see the few facts force at work in Dr Raos account.
Nothing is known of this authors life beyond the fact that he was born in the year 1903,
and that he is an English portrait painter, she comments. Not quite, but one can see why
she might think so.
A young Anthony Powell reviewed the book in his habitual rather feline way for The
Spectator of 24th February 1939 (Powell, 30), and is somewhat tepid about it. He tells us:

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

The author of Indian Ink was in the East for about two years - not exactly the short
visit Aickman suggested - and he had plenty of odd experiences with every variety of the
populationConsidering the word-picture he draws of himself - which, rightly or
wrongly, suggests a figure that cannot have been too sympathetic to some of the Empirebuilders with whom he came in contact - he shows himself sometimes a little severe to
people whose worst crime was a lack of imagination. His book is at times a trifle diffuse.
Philip may also have written more. The National Archives have the papers of his brother
John, one item of which, dated 1938-43, is labeled rather mysteriously Philip Steegman
was the brother of JEHS. The file comprises autograph manuscript and copy typescript
poems (The National Archive, untitled but referenced STE/1/43). John himself is
rather acidly dismissed by Aickman in the same breath, almost, as he despatches Philip: he
became Art Director of the National Museum of Wales and other famous places where
pictures hang before the public, (we detect a slight sniffishness here) and from which he
picked up an OBE (82-3). There is a distinct suggestion from Aickmans phrasing that the
medal was somehow lying around in the gallery, and that John was a kind of upmarket
litter-sweeper. As for Beatrice, the beautiful adopted daughter, Aickman is even more
ruthless. We learn only that she married Stanley Lief of the Tomato Cure at Champneys.
The reference is to a noted spa and dietary regime.
It will be seen that both John and Beatrice get even shorter shrift than Philip, who at least
is made to seem interesting, though even more interesting aspects of his life were left out.
Robert, we might reasonably suspect, wants us to see John as a timeserving arts
administrator and gong-snuffler, and Beatrice as, well, just as a wife - with a hocus-pocus
husband. I suppose I need hardly say by now that neither images give quite the full picture.
John was also the distinguished author of a handful of books, including ground-breaking
studies of taste (in the artistic sense) in society, and was editor of numerous art catalogues.
While Beatrice is not so readily traced, her husband was a highly eminent naturopath, a
pioneer in the field. Like some of Aickmans ancestors, he was of Eastern European origin
(he was born in Latvia), and had made his way from poverty to prosperity with
considerable effort and resourcefulness.
Nothing in Aickmans ten lines on the Steegmanns is strictly untrue. But his description is
highly selective; partial in both senses of the word. We may doubt that this was because
the author only wrote what he could remember, or valued concision above a more
comprehensive portrayal. No, these cameos are artful miniatures, silhouettes carefully
worked by Aickman to depict only the particular image he wants us to see.
And even when we are told somewhat more about a figure in the memoir, we may sense
that there is still much to question. In the passage preceding the one discussing the
Steegmanns, Aickman writes of another neighbor and visitor: Mr Arthington Worsley,
elephantine, bald, shambling, self-important and extremely unsuccessful. Though coming
from one of the genuinely oldest families in Britain (Aickman means no doubt, with a

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

documented pedigree, rather like horses or prize dogs), this gentlemen was in
considerable poverty, the cause of constant discussion by his Great-Aunt. This was
despite, or conceivably because of, the fact that he was the author of a long
bookentitled Concepts of Monism. Similar to the way he despatched Philip, Aickman
concludes his description with the comment that in the end, Mr Worsley solved it all by
dying. My Great-Aunt told me the funeral was pathetic (81-2) Aickman said his GreatUncle spoke respectfully of the book, but characteristically added that he also admitted he
had never read it. This book also does indeed exist: Arthington Worsleys 356 page study
of Monism was published by T. Fisher Unwin in 1907. It was also his only substantial
publication. But the British Library has two others by him, which we might suspect were
both in some measure funded by the author. One of these is a monograph, issued by A.
Worsley in 1915, with the delightful dual places of issue of Isleworth (Middlesex) and
Allahabad: A Synopsis of the Persian Systems of Philosophy (Reprinted from The
Hindustan Review). The other, from a publisher called Walker & Co, appeared from
Twickenham in 1917: Recognition: with an outline of a theory of knowledge.
What these works tell us is that Mr Arthington Worsley, besides perhaps being all the vain
and physical things Aickman describes, was also a philosopher, and one who maintained
his esoteric interest over at least ten years; perhaps, we might infer, throughout his life.
And we could surmise that a man so absorbed in the abstruse would have little interest in
outward appearances or material things. If that in itself seems fanciful, we may remind
ourselves that in Monism all things ultimately proceed from the same ineffable source. So
persuaded, would the sage of Isleworth worry if he himself might strike a youth in the
neighbourhood as shuffling and unworldly? Indeed, Aickman suggests he might have liked
to have known him better. He notes he was not given a copy of the study of Monism, in
part because he could never strike the right note with Mr Worsley. Perhaps, we might
infer, he has not quite done so here either, and his neighbor was not wholly the rather
dejected, down-at-heel figure that he conjures up.
Still, we must also concede that, but for Aickman, neither Philip, nor the philosopher,
might ever have come to our notice. Why did Aickman write his memoir as he did, with
all these briefly evoked quaint or tragic characters? Partly, I think, because it deflected
undue attention upon himself. We are told very little directly about Robert. Doubtless,
also, because he had a genuine delight in (and what his dust-jacket flap justly calls an
outstanding skill in) portraiture. As in his stories, Aickman has a keen eye for the
peculiarity of persons, the quirks that make them distinctive. He is also able to convey the
impression that his characters have a hinterland, that there is much still to be known
beyond their frontiers.
But mostly I suggest these lives gave him, or fortified him in, an outlook on life. In writing
of W.H. Mallocks book The New Republic or Culture, Faith, and Philosophy in an
English Country House (1877), a favourite of his from school-days, Aickman said it was
much more than the clever satire on a group of famous men that it appears to be because

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

behind the follies and light caricatures which are the ostensible subject-matter, one feels,
though in the most delicate way, the tragedy, futility, and sad beauty of mans aspirations,
especially at their highest. In virtually every character study Aickman gives us in his
memoir, these qualities are present. There is, in these brief examples, the sad beauty of
writing books (whether on Monism or a visit to India); the futility of picking up a medal
or marrying the marketer of a tomato cure; the tragedy that, after all such activities, all
lives are only solved by dying. Most notable, though, is that phrase in the most delicate
way. Aickman also said of Mallocks book that it had a subtle and unique poetry,
underlying but ever glimmering through. And he famously said that the ghost story at its
best was akin to poetry. We may see from these remarks that to Aickman poetry was a
term of high praise, and meant something elusive and luminous. So in The Attempted
Rescue he does not choose to tell us all he can about the people he knew - of how Philip
died, for example, or of how he might earlier have died, had it not been for two strange
twists of fate. He seeks a poetic brevity. As in his stories, we have to find our way, if we
can, to the unsaid and unseen - for he prefers reticence, allusiveness, and mystery.

Works Cited
Aickman, Robert. The Attempted Rescue. London: Gollancz, 1966.
Irwin, Robert. Consuls and Catwomen. Literary Review, March 2011.
Mallock, W.H. The New Republic: or, Culture, Faith and Philosophy in an English Country House.
London: Chatto and Windus, 1877.
[The National Archives]. The Papers of John Steegman.
http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/A2A/records.aspx?cat=272-steegman&cid=1&Gsm=2012-06-18#-1
Powell, Anthony. Times and Places. The Spectator, 24 February, 1939.
http://archive.spectator.co.uk/article/24th-february-1939/30/times-and-places
Rao, Dr Ila. A Little Known Anglo-Indian Writer.
http://yabaluri.org/TRIVENI/CDWEB/alittleknownangloindianwriteroct68.htm
Richards, J.M. Memoirs of an Unjust Fella. London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1980.
Steegman, Philip. Indian Ink. London: Cobden-Sanderson, 1939.
Valentine, Mark. The Nightfarers. Bucharest: Ex Occidente Press, 2009.
Worsley, Arthington. Concepts of Monism. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1907.
Worsley, Arthington. Recognition: with an outline of a theory of knowledge. Twickenham: Walker &
Co., [1917].
Worsley, Arthington. A Synopsis of the Persian Systems of Philosophy (reprinted from The Hindustan
Review). Isleworth and Allahabad: A. Worsley, 1915.
Note: All digital sources retrieved 31 December 2013.

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

ALONE WITH THE (ARCHETYPAL) HORRORS: MONSTROUS WOMEN IN

ROBERT AICKMANS STRANGE STORIES

Anthony J. Fonseca
Elms College, Chicopee, Massachusetts

To appreciate the representation of women in Robert Aickmans short stories, it is

necessary to understand the tales in their contemporary context, particularly in respect to
the sexual revolution of the 1960s and 1970s. Aickmans contemporary, fantasist Angela
Carter, stated in her essay Notes from the Front Line that the two decade era, which
marked the most recent wave of feminism, was in effect Year One for women (70). In
retrospect, Carters words ring even more true than they did when they were published,
given the fact that along with the newly discovered feminine powers linked with sexuality,
a stronger political voice, and reproductive freedom, women were also witnessing the
rebirth of a more egalitarian religious experience, for what Cynthia Eller terms feminist
spirituality began to prosper (3). As Riane Eisler explains in The Chalice and the Blade,
feminist historians such as Merlin Stone, and many post World War II anthropologists
before her, including James Mellaart and Walther Hinz, were re-discovering the feminine,
as it were, as they unearthed and began to more accurately interpret various Neolithic
religious artefacts which were obvious testaments to the once acknowledged power of the
goddess figure (17-28), a power that figures greatly in Aickmans tales. Unfortunately, the
backlash which accompanied the discovery of feminine power resulted in a patriarchal
urge to squelch it, leading to what Karl Stern called in 1965 the flight from woman. For
some men, the issue was not so much one of power as it was one of fear. In Danse
Macabre, Stephen King expresses this succinctly when he writes that Carrie is largely
about how women find their own channels of power, and what men fear about women
and womens sexuality, adding I was fully aware of what Womens Liberation implied
for me and others of my sex (171).
Aickman composed what he himself, and later Peter Straub in his Introduction to The
Wine-Dark Sea (1988) termed strange stories, or what Joseph Andriano argues are
modern fables (139). These tales are imbued with what S. T. Joshi, in Studies in Weird
Fiction, theorizes is a conscious imprecision; in point of fact, the tales often have
ambiguous endings, or more specifically, ambiguous or indefinite implications. Aickmans
weird tales, to use the phrase coined by H. P. Lovecraft, are a marriage of the E. T. A.
Hoffmann or Edgar Allan Poe school of the grotesque, the Jamesian psychological horror
tale, and a little Hawthornesque romanticism. Straub, in his introduction, asserts that
Aickman, who has heretofore been pigeonholed as a horror writer, cannot be categorized
at all because he uses almost none of the conventional imagery of horror and his aim is
10

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

not to invoke fear of the supernatural, the monstrous, or the unknown, but to show that
ordinary life can be horrific and tedious at once (7, 8). This also ties Aickmans style
with that of Ramsey Campbell - an appropriate comparison.
As Gary William Crawford notes, Aickman captures the consciousness of the 20th
Century, specifically with an eye towards surrealism, noting Aickmans particular affinity
with the surrealists use of myth and superstition (1, 25). Virtually all of Aickmans tales
were published between 1968 and 1980, and many of them are informed by the sexual
politics of the 1960s and 1970s. Virtually all examine men who are divorced from the
feminine because either they fit into Sterns flight into work pattern (1-2), or they have
lost the real women in their lives to divorce or death. Some of his protagonists are simply
of the type, a real mothers boy, as the narrator of The Swords professes himself to be.
Confused by gender issues and sexuality, Aickmans male protagonists often find
themselves attempting to re-discover the feminine through their interaction with female
characters that are anima projections; these projected females often manifest as goddesses,
but they lead to destruction, sometimes utter annihilation for Aickmans male
protagonists, who fail to assimilate the power of the feminine into their own psyches.
These male characters are both attracted to and fear feminine sexuality and the inevitable
Chthonicthe natural cycle of life and death.
Succinctly stated, Aickmans female characters are more symbolic than real. In The
View, for example, Carfax, one of Aickmans workaday, Jamesian male protagonists, is
charmed by a woman who, when he first meets her, is his version of the feminine ideal:
She stood there like a pre-Homeric goddess, or Greta Garbo in Anna Christie, her oilskin
glistening, her hair streaming, her eyes shining, her voice soft but unfailingly distinct:
unforgettable (Painted 62). When Carfax returns from Fleet, the castle surrounded by an
ever-changing view, he is Aickmans version of Rip Van Winkle, his reverse Dracula, a
man who has speed aged, while life literally passes him by. The feminine in The View is,
as in one of Aickmans earliest tales, Ringing the Changes, associated with change, the
passage of time, and as in many of Aickmans stories, death. Aickmans male protagonists
are almost always middle class, middle aged, individuated characters, but his women are
obvious larger-than-life symbolsthe marriage of horror imagery with Jungian
archetypes. In fact, the women in these strange stories exemplify James Hillmans
definition of the archetypal, as expressed in The Dream and the Underworld: Underworld
images are nonetheless visible, but only to what is invisible in us. The invisible is perceived
by means of the invisible, that is, [the] psyche. Psychic images are not necessarily pictures
and may not be like sense images at all. Rather they are images as metaphors (54).
In order to better understand the Jungian implications of Aickmans fiction, it is necessary
to review C. G. Jungs archetypal theory. In The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious,
Jung defines an archetype as an idea which exists in all individuals, regardless of heritage
or nationality. The actual image or series of images through which the idea is manifested in
tribal lore, myth, fairy tales, and esoteric teaching are projected by an individual

11

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

consciousness, so that the individuation of the archetype can take on different recognizable
forms (3, 5, 42). Archetypal images are projected from the psyche and are recognizable or
familiar, but are often unacknowledged by the individual as being part of him/herself. This
repression of the archetypal by an individual, when coupled with the fact that the first
meeting with oneself is often the meeting with ones own shadow (21), results in an
experience which, particularly when created literarily, borders on the uncanny. Emma
Jung notes this connection in her essays on the animus and the anima. The male projection
of the feminine, the anima, can therefore result in either a positive, healing image, or a
negative, destructive image, depending upon the individuals psychic abilities to claim his
shadow self, which is in itself frightening. As James Hillman succinctly writes, union with
anima also means union with my psychosis, my fear of madness, my suicide (Anima 135).
The anima thus can be manifested, according to C. G. Jung, as a nixie, a mermaid, a
wood-nymph, the Erlkings daughter, or even a lamia or succubus figure (26-27). Jung
notes, for example, that the Terrible Mother figure may connote anything secret, hidden,
dark; the abyss, the world of the dead, anything that devours, seduces, and poisons, that is
terrifying and inescapable like fate (82).
In Aickman's short stories in Sub-Rosa, Cold Hand in Mine, Tales of Love and Death, and
Painted Devils: Strange Stories, published between 1968 and 1979, the number of horrific
women increases with the passage of the decade. The physical manifestations or
individuated image - to use Jungian terms - of these women can be divided into four
recognizable horror types: the harpy, the vampiric female, the Terrible Mother figure,
and death personified. One could say that Aickmans women are projections of the
eternal, as well as the internal, feminine. They are recognizable mythological symbols, and
because his male protagonists are products of (and are immersed in) the culture of the
1970s, often these feminine projections are reified as the goddess figure - but not
necessarily in the form of virgin, mother, and crone. Aickman, like Hawthorne, relies
upon polarization, or duality, to symbolize the psychic and moral forces in battle.
Challinor, in his book Akin to Poetry, has already examined the dual nature of the
feminine in Aickmans Niemandswasser and The Unsettled Dust. Here, I concentrate
on the goddess-as-woman (or woman-as-goddess, as the case may be) in his tales, which
manifests in the form of the dual goddess associated with the cycle of life and death. She
becomes the Shiva-like (or Janus-like) creatrix/destroyer, as in Ravissante (1968), The
Fetch (1972), Raising the Wind (1977), and The Stains (1980). Even in Marriage
(1977), perhaps the best example of an Aickman tale where the goddess exists as a triad,
the bulk of this story emphasizes feminine duality, as represented by the roommates Helen
Black and Ellen Brown. Aickmans male protagonists in these tales view the feminine in
diametrically opposing images related to virginity and promiscuity; these are traits which
Edward C. Whitmont in Return of the Goddess notes were often simultaneously attributed
to archaic goddess figures (viii).
In Ravissante, the polarization of the feminine occurs in the second section of the story,
which is in the form of a document found by the tales narrator. In this journal entry, the

12

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

surrealist chronicles what seems like a dream sequence journey to Belgium to view
paintings by a deceased painter of the grotesque. Upon reaching his destination, he
encounters the painters wife, Madame A., a dwarfish old who attempts to seduce him
(the goddess as sexualized crone). She succeeds, eventually, by having the artist serially
fondle the clothing and then the undergarments of a mysteriously absent figure she calls
her daughter, Crysotheme, an action which Philip Challinor equates with a rape
(Ravishing 9). The tale ends with the artists punishment - a symbolic castration at the
hands of the phallic/terrible mother. His final glimpse of Madame A. as he retreats from
the house is of her waving a pair of shears in the air and inviting him back, perhaps to cut
him down to size so to speak, as she has done with the many artists whose paintings she
routinely dismisses. Andriano argues that the surrealist painter suffers his fate at the hands
of Madame A. because he never divorces anima from the mother figure. His muse, then, is
the Terrible Mother (141-42). This would align her with the monstrous or grotesque
version of the Great Mother, a symbolic figure which, as Camille Paglia notes, was the
master image from which developed surrogate subforms of female horror, like Gorgon
and Fury (47). Elaine Jordan offers some insight into how these images are created,
suggesting that the creation of such grotesques occurs when marginalized others (in this
case, women in a patriarchal era) are polarized into ideals or horrors (35). It is no
accident therefore that Madame A., and here the A could represent the Greek symbol
alpha, or the primary cause, in other words the universal motheror the A could stand
for the anima as Andriano suggests, perhaps even the Anima Mundi or world soul, is
projected by the surrealist as an instrument of destruction. She destroys the creative
impulse of artists through both derisions and what seems a supernatural power to control
the artistic vision. Perhaps she is the dark version of the muse, represented by the absent
daughter: from destruction is born creation, and vice versa, given the events of the tale.
The Fetch is the story of Brodick Leith, who as a young boy grew up with a deathly fear
of his father, which was intensified by his dependence on his mother. His mother,
however, is often ill, and while she is on her deathbed, she is visited by her doppelganger,
the witch-like carlin (doppelgangers also play a role in Compulsory Games, discussed
later). The auld carlin, commonly known as the fetch, is a crone figure of Scottish folklore
who visits the living when they are to meet their death. Brodicks mother fixation never
disappears, remaining even after her death: It causes him to dislike his stepmother when
his father decides to remarry, and it causes his marriage to Shulie, his first wife, to fall
apart. The fetch reappears at the end of the story to collect Brodick, right after he has an
argument with Clarissa, his second and present wife, who has left him as well. Because
Brodick cannot release himself from the maternal, he remains, like the surrealist in
Ravissante and Laming Gateshead in Marriage, fixated on the mother imago.
Accordingly, the final woman in his life is the fetch, who represents the abyss, the world
of the dead, the destructive aspect of the Great Mother. The fetch represents all that is, to
borrow the words of C. G. Jung, terrifying and inescapable like fate (82). Like the
Manitou (a manifestation of the archetypal female) in Peter Straubs Ghost Story (1979),
the fetch shows her victims their own faces at death; hence, she is Brodicks psychic

13

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

projection, just as Alma Mobley is arguably a product of the collective unconscious of

Straubs Chowder Society. Because of his inability to escape the mother, coupled with his
vision of woman as being completely other, what he calls a different zoological species
(Wine 181), the beauty of Brodicks early relationship with his mother transmogrifies into
his marriage with the grotesque, the auld carlin.
Raising the Wind, from Tales of Love and Death, could also be grouped into this category,
though the Terrible Mother figure here would be nature personified, or Mother Nature
herself. In the tale, Fillbrick, the narrator, a man who has been emasculated by marriage,
agrees to help move the Dorothea, a Thames barge, for a newly married friend. He
encounters an old hag, who, like many goddesses, is associated with the water, albeit in
this case the polluted Thames, and she takes him to a ruined church, where she apparently
blows a sweet smelling wind into an empty bottle. When later opened by the narrator on
a windless day, the bottle releases the sweet smelling wind, which moves the barge.
Tragedy strikes, however, when the winds cause the barge to sink. The tale offers no
answers to the riddle it poses, but the implication is that the old woman represents the
duality of the maternal figure, the anima, and nature itself. Women often serve as muse in
Aickmans fiction; as in his life, they also become a source of creative distress.
The Stains begins with an immediate reference to the Chthonic in the form of death by
natural causes; the opening sentence refers to the death, following a prolonged terminal
illness, of Stephen Hoopers wife, Elizabeth. To escape his own grief, Stephen journeys to
the countryside to visit his brother, the Rev. Harewood Hooper, who is an expert on rock
growths and lichens. During one of his walks to Burtons Clough, Stephen sees a young
woman who is dressed in such a way as to be indistinguishable from the natural scene
around her. It quickly becomes apparent that the girl, Nell, is a projection, because she
mirrors his every move: She glances up although he casts no shadow, just in time to see
him looking downward. She returns his wave, and when he purposefully runs across the
girl on his way back to the Rectory, the reader is told: One might have thought that the
girl had been waiting for him. She was standing at much the same spot, and looking
upwards abstractedly (Wine 344). The word abstractedly is important here because, as
James Hillman emphasizes in Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion, women (for men)
can best play this anima part by being empty themselves (55). Her first question
toStephen is a tell-tale one, for she asks him if he is lost. She is his mediatrix to the
unknown, a numinous being who will help him to find meaning when faced with the
meaninglessness of his wifes death. Stephen quickly recognizes Nell as a version of the
feminine ideal, realizing that although Elizabeth was a big part of his life, perhaps the
greater part of him, she was not mysterious, not fascinating (Wine 346), like Nell, who
is described by Stephen as being sweet, calm, and changeless (Wine 379). Nell,
comparable to the ideal woman in Aickmans The View or Alma Mobley in Ghost Story,
is later characterized by Stephen as a maenad, or an oread. In the scene where he makes
love to her, she becomes the covertly seductive child-woman, an obvious stereotype. She
is the death knell, the fetch.

14

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

Like Henry Fern in Aickmans Never Visit Venice, Stephen follows his death wish and
actually begins to court death. He seduces Nell, thereby incurring the wrath of her
mysterious and monstrous father, who along with her sister (never seen but often
discussed), represents the repulsive side of death. The deep, clear spring, another example
of Aickmans associating his goddess figure with water (and perhaps mirrors), is brought
to Stephens attention by Nell, and is a clear indication that when he looks at her, he is
actually looking into his own psyche. When he gets on his knees in order to look into the
spring, this is perhaps in a symbolic motion of kneeling at the altar of the goddess/anima
figure, as the surrealist does in Ravissante when fondling Chrysothemes dress, or
perhaps indicative of a narcissistic male tendency to project his own feminine psyche onto
woman. Stephen notices that on the edge of the rising ground behind the girl stood a
small stone house, one that he is sure was not visible before. This so-called house is
encircled by flying birds, possibly vultures, that he is also sure was not visible before. In
short, after looking into the mirror (water), Stephen becomes aware of his own role in the
chthonic cyclehe realizes his mortality. This stone cottage with a dirt floor and only one
door is likely a foreshadowing of Stephens future tomb. His death wish, metaphorically
represented in his making love to Nell, leads to his eventual physical state of decay:
Afterwards, the mold-like substance on the skin between her right shoulder and her right
breast . . . a curious, brownish, greyish, bluish, irregular mark (Wine 357) is slowly
transferred from her body to his body, even to his surroundings. The Stains is much less
ambiguous than most of Aickmans stories because at the end, Stephens body is found in
an advanced degree of decomposition, and his car is rusted beyond recognition, implying
that his death may have actually occurred upon or before his first meeting with Nell, well
before the intervention of her father, a cold mortal (Wine 345). If indeed the tale is
filtered through Stephens consciousness after his death, then hehimself may even be the
cold mortal who fathers Nell, who is then his feminine side or the goddess within him.
Marriage, more than any other Aickman tale, uses the symbol of the tripartite goddess in
its depiction of women. Aickman, however, updates the goddess triad based on the
Womens Movement, for instead of the traditional virgin, mother, and crone figures, he
has Laming Gatestead objectify women into the professional, and the carnal, and the
phallic-maternal. In Marriage, Aickman exposes the male failure to reconcile the
professional and the sexual aspects of womanhood. The story begins when Laming
Gatestead meets the ironically named Helen Black, a slightly austere, highly independent
career woman who is described as having a marked bone structure, pale eyes, a pale
complexion which is emphasized by her habit of wearing her hair off her face, and pale
ears. She works for the civil service and is described by Gatestead as having a dry, bony
hand and an expressionless face; her frigidity is further accented by the fact that she always
wears simple dresses. When the two meet in a theater gallery, she is tellingly clothed in
a simple black dress, which unfortunately plays up the fact that she is taller than Gatestead.
It becomes obvious that Helen Black is Gatesteads projection of the feminine when her
roommate, Ellen Brown, is introduced into the tale. During the storys sex scenes

15

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

between Laming Gateshead and Ellen Brown, and afterwards, he begins to see Helen
Black everywhere, even when she cannot possibly be there. She may be his projected
feminine self (she, like him, is attracted to sexuality but unable to act on it or appreciate
it), perhaps even his conscience, or even a projected version of his mother, with whom he
still lives. During his first dinner date with Helen Black, Gatestead finds himself
instinctively attracted to Ellen Brown, who is described as having large, brown eyes, dark
hair, a gentle nose, and an elfin smile. She is always seen wearing jumpers and fawn skirts,
Ellen Brown is the child-woman, the seductress or nymphet.
Moreover, she is a manifestation of the second aspect of the goddess. Besides being more
beautiful and feminine than Helen Black, she is an excellent cook, and she concocts a
brilliant meal with no smell of cooking and no sign of overall or a tea-cloth (Tales 57). In
addition, she has the potential to become maternal, for she works as an advisor on baby
clothes. She is the flesh and bones representative of Levins Stepfords wives. She meets
Gatestead by chance the day after the dinner party, and she quickly and easily seduces him,
in broad daylight, so that despite his sense of propriety, he becomes her willing consort as
they have sex in a public park (in a scene that establishes Ellens tie with nature). And, as
in all of the sex scenes between Laming Gatestead and Ellen Brown, Helen Black, the
virgin figure manifested as the professional woman, takes on a mysterious, voyeuristic role
(again the question is always raised as to whether she is really there watching, as Ellen
Brown never sees her).
As the story progresses through Laming Gatesteads sexual encounters, he begins to die
symbolically as he grows lame in one leg. Unfortunately, he lacks the ability to be forever
reborn, as the son and/or consort counterpart can be, perhaps because he fears the
feminine. Eventually, Helen Black decides to discontinue her voyeurism, and she tries to
become a suddenly sexual woman. In a scene filled with pathos, she is rejected by a
lamed Laming Gatestead. While attempting to follow him after he rejects her, she
becomes his Eve, and takes a literal fall down a flight of stairs. He, still on the run,
immediately meets Ellen Brown, who greets him like a mother, but when he goes to her
for comfort, he discovers that she has a past filled with sexual promiscuity. Lamed
physically, emotionally, and sexually, he returns home to his mother, who, because of her
white dress, look[s] like a bride (Tales 84). The story ends with the mother climbing into
bed with him, to comfort him in his despair with a symbolically incestuous embrace.
Helen Black, Ellen Brown, and his mother become party to his self-destruction. Nothing
in the story indicates that his climbing into bed with the woman who originally gave him
life has the potential for rebirth; rather the action seems tantamount to his resigning
himself to the grave (womb/tomb).
Compulsory Games is singular interesting in Aickman oeuvre as it relies heavily on
ambiguity to indicate the potentiality of lesbianism or bisexuality as a product of the sexual
revolution. The tale is filtered through the consciousness of Colin Trenwith, a middleaged man who loses his wife, Grace, to a female amateur aviator, Eileen McGrath, a well-

16

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

to-do, eccentric, widowed landlady. Eileen falls into the category of the psychic vampire:
Colin sensed that in Eileens loneliness was included the demanding element that
loneliness fosters. When Graces mother dies, she begins spending an inordinate amount
of time with Eileen McGrath, during which Grace becomes obsessed with flying. This
preoccupation provides Aickman with the central image in the tale, that of the big, red,
noisy Moth, the single engine plane which Colin calls a buzzing horror. Grace
eventually leaves to live with the other woman, at which time the Moth begins to fly
lower and lower, often casting a great shadow over Colin Trenwith, reifying his nagging
suspicion that there is more than simple friendship between the two women. As the male
protagonist grows more wan and pale, literally speaking, he falls from Grace and begins to
lose his sanity. By the final scene of the story, he meets his doppelganger in the garden,
and the sudden buzzing of the Moth causes the absorption of Colin into his Other, a man
who is left smiling dumbly, emotionlessly, as he hears both the familiar buzzing and a
quasi human shriek. The implications of lesbianism abound in this tale in which the male
consciousness, Colin Trenwith, expresses a fear of the Otherness of woman.
Through these character studies of the male psyche confronted with the possibilities of the
feminine, Aickman exposes the myth of Otherness, the belief in woman-as-enemy, set
against the backdrop of the sexual revolution and the womens liberation movement.
Through his creation of symbolically castrated surrealists, multiple divorcees, emasculated
sailors, widowers, workaholic mamas boys, and men simultaneously attracted to and
repulsed by unbridled female sexuality, Aickman gives a spot on portrayal of a masculinity
that fails to reconcile itself with the feminine. To a man, these protagonists suffer tragic,
albeit pathetic fates at the hands of diverse personified manifestations of the goddess, in
either the figures duality or tripartite qualities. Each of these protagonists are fated to fail
as the son/consort figure - because each is unable to understand, appreciate, and
incorporate the feminine into his psyche; all are crushed by the powers of the goddess-aswoman.

Works Cited
Aickman, Robert. Painted Devils: Strange Stories. New York: Scribners, 1979.
---. Tales of Love and Death. London: Gollancz, 1977.
---. The Wine-Dark Sea. New York: Arbor House, 1988.
Andriano, Joseph. Our Ladies of Darkness: Feminine Daemonology in Male Gothic Fiction. University
Park: Penn State UP, 1993.
Carter, Angela. Notes from the Front Line. On Gender and Writing. Ed. Michelle Wandor.
London: Pandora P, 1983. 69-77.
Challinor, Philip. Akin to Poetry: Observations on Some Strange Tales of Robert Aickman. Baton Rouge,
LA: Gothic Press, 2010.
Challinor, Philip. Ravishing Art: On Robert Aickmans Ravissante. Studies in Weird Fiction 27

17

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

(2005): 1-9.
Crawford, Gary William. Robert Aickman: An Introduction. Baton Rouge, LA: Gothic Press, 2002.
Eller, Cynthia. Living in the Lap of the Goddess: The Feminist Spirituality Movement in America. New
York: Crossroad, 1993.
Eisler, Riane. The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future. San Francisco: Harper, 1987.
Hillman, James. Anima: An Anatomy of a Personified Notion. Dallas: Spring, 1985.
---. The Dream and the Underworld. New York: Harper and Row, 1979.
Jordan, Elaine. Enthralment: Angela Carters Speculative Fictions. Plotting Change: Contemporary
Womens Fiction. Ed. Linda Anderson. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1990. 19-40.
Joshi, S. T. Robert Aickman: So Little Is Definite. Studies in Weird Fiction 18 (1996): 22-33.
King, Stephen. Danse Macabre. New York: Everest House, 1981.
Jung, C. G. The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious. Trans. R. F. C. Hull. 2nd ed. Bollingen
Ser. 20. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1969.
Paglia, Camille. Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson. London; New
Haven: Yale UP, 1990.
Stern, Karl. The Flight from Woman. New York: Farrar, 1965.
Whitmont, Edward C. Return of the Goddess. New York: Crossroad, 1982.

18

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

SKIM MILK AS CREAM: REALITY VERSUS ILLUSION IN THE SCHOOL

FRIEND
Rebekah Memel Brown

Readers unfamiliar with the style and the mythological, symbolic core of Robert
Aickman's fiction could easily be forgiven for believing his short story The School Friend
to be an outr, yet simple tale, recounting the events that befall two schoolfriends. After
all, Aickman has written other stories of an outwardly similar nature. However, Aickman
is a master of literary subterfuge, using constant misdirection and implication of a deeper
truth. While reading his strange stories, one must use deduction to separate the facts from
the disinformation and be willing to make, at best, an educated guess at the true story and
underlying figurative meaning of the piece. This is often based on mere inferences. There
are always unresolved loose ends.
A first-person narrative is rare for Aickman, and The School Friend is even more
distinctive due to the narrator being female. Few male authors, writing without a
pseudonym, have attempted this, and of those that do, few succeed. Needless to say, in
the case of Aickman, both the inner female voice and the female characters are completely
convincing.
The story was originally published in 1964 and was written perhaps a few years earlier.
This date is significant when discussing the tale. Mal, the narrator, is forty-one years old at
penning of the account, and therefore she and her friend Sally would have attended school
during the 1930s. Mal is an intelligent young girl, of comfortably wealthy parents,
attending public school and preparing for university. Sally Tessler is the cleverest girl in
the school, excelling in both Mathematics and Classics. The girls soon develop a bond and
pass through school as good friends. However, there are a number of odd things about
Sally which, by themselves, would hardly be worthy of further mention, but when taken
together imply a stranger personal story. Sally has no memory of her mother - not unusual
if her mother had died in childbirth - but instead Sally had never come across any trace of
her. Her father, Tessler, is a reclusive German doctor. His name is perhaps an allusion to
the famous mad scientist Nikola Tesla.
Sally is potentially attractive but is completely indifferent to her appearance. Her style of
grooming seems to have been learned by rote. She wears the same dress every day,
changing it only in size through the years. Her study of the Latin classics has given her a
complex and intense knowledge of sexuality, yet she seems completely disinterested in
any personal way in experiencing it in any form. When she shares this knowledge with
Mal it is as if she is talking about botany.
19

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

Sally, aged sixteen or seventeen, has not yet reached puberty when she accepts a
scholarship with a university. Although this may seem somewhat strange to the modern
reader, the average age of puberty in the 1930s was sixteen. Sally and Mal go their
separate ways, keeping track of each other through their publications: Mal's novels and
Sally's classical studies and translations. Sally never marries, despite society expectations of
the time.
At age forty-one, Mal, having suffered some great catastrophe, probably a failed marriage,
returns home to live with her parents in the town where both she and Sally had grown up.
She is childless. She feels that her life is rather over.
Soon Sally's father dies and Mal watches the horse-drawn hearse pass through the streets of
the small town. Sally arrives home, looking to Mal absurdly virginal, unchanged since
their time together at school. Sally announces to Mal that she intends to live in her father's
house. I dont think my life has ever begun.
Mal attempts to renew their friendship, accepting an invitation to tea. She finds the living
room dirty and disorganized. Sally's appearance has deteriorated in the three weeks since
her return. Both her hair and her clothes are badly in need of a wash. A concerned Mal
invites Sally to stay with her in her parents house, but Sally gently refuses.
A few weeks later, Sally is hit by a car. After an unsuccessful attempt to visit her, Mal is
asked by the hospital matron to look after Sally's house and is given a ring of keys. She
goes to house, but finds it to be more like a house of horrors.
Every room in the house has a separate lock, except one. One of the rooms on the second
floor showed every sign of having been forcibly burst open; and from the inside. The
room looks to have been a nursery at some point, but the windows are heavily barred and
the floor is littered with stuffed animals. Some of them appeared also to have been
mutilated. Mal leaves, but realizes that she had relocked none of the inside doors.
Returning to the house to rectify this, Mal discovers that Doctor Tessler's library is
barricaded, resembling an air raid shelter with no windows. Sally has moved her quarters
into this makeshift fortress, almost as if she feared an attack from some enemy. As she
leaves, Mal sees, or thinks she sees, one of the occupants of the house. But is it an
hallucination? A ghost? A biological monster? I conclude, based on the clues and inferences
within the story, that Doctor Tessler had been conducting biological experiments similar
to Doctor Frankenstein but, due to his meddling, ended up being killed by one of his own
creations. Sally has decided to continue her father's work. Returning to the hospital, Mal
is told that Sally is pregnant. Was she, perhaps, raped by the creature that Mal saw in the
house?

20

Aickman Studies: Volume One, Number One, January 2014

Returning one final time to the house to check the basement, Mal hears footsteps
descending from above and faints. She awakens to the sound of a snuffling, grunting cry,
and sees an almost unrecognizable Sally standing over her: Her eyes had a repulsive
lifelessness The bone structure of her face, previously so fine, had altered
unbelievably [She] stretched out her hand. It had become gray and bony, with
protruding knotted veins. Sally tells Mal that it is possible for a child to be born in a
manner you'd never dream of.
Calling to the creature, Sally attempts to drag Mal upstairs to reveal her handiwork. Mal is
terrified and tries to fight Sally off. Sally calls the creature again, and scratches Mal's face
and neck in the scuffle. Mal pushes her off and succeeds in fleeing the house.
Sally is not a biological woman but one of her father's creations, convincing enough to pass
muster in human society, but not able to transcend her artificial origins and pass into the
stage of fecundity. Still, Doctor Tessler has come as close as possible to perfection with his
prized creation. Comparison may be drawn to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. Readers will
remember that Doctor Frankensteins monster, while horrible in appearance, was
intelligent and articulate, not the dumb brute popularized by the movie adaptations.
Time jumps to several months later, and Sally has returned to her normal physical
appearance. Now clean and well groomed, she comes to Mal to ask her to go away with
her. She has sold her father's house and instead purchased a house in the Cyclades, for her
work. Mal, feeling lonely and useless, and bearing the sadness of her empty womb, may
someday join her school friend there.
Since the beginning of human consciousness, the human male has been both fascinated and
horrified by woman's ability to conceive and bring forth life, and the dichotomy of the
male perspective is clearly evident in the story. Pregnancy is shown to be both a woman's
greatest blessing and her greatest curse. Regardless, every woman must come to terms
with her reproductive ability, and decide whether to use this power or not. In The School
Friend, Aickman employs the tropes of Gothic fiction - haunted houses, man-made
monsters etc. - to discuss one of the greatest of lifes mysteries.

Work Cited
Aickman, Robert. The Collected Strange Stories, Volume One, Second Edition, North Yorkshire,
U.K.: Tartarus Press/Durtro Press, 2001.

21