Since today is Halloween, I want to
post about a classic horror yarn that not all that many people are
familiar with. But a lot of pulp fans are. I’m speaking, of course,
of THE CURSE OF THE HARCOURTS by Chandler Whipple, a collection of
six grisly, bone-chilling novelettes originally published in the
Weird Menace pulp DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE in 1935 that fit together to
form one compelling narrative. These stories were reprinted several
years ago by Altus Press in handsome trade paperback and e-book
editions.As John Pelan points out in his excellent
introduction, despite being published in DIME MYSTERY, these are not
traditional Weird Menace stories. They have historical settings,
blatantly supernatural plot elements, and a high degree of graphic
violence that isn’t explained away in the end by some logical
resolution. No, these are straight out, full speed, blood and thunder
horror yarns . . . which happens to be the kind I like best.
The
first story, “The Son of Darkness”, appeared in the February 1935
issue of DIME MYSTERY. Set in Normandy, it tells of the visit of an
Italian nobleman, Count Pirelli, to the castle of Baron d’Harcourt
and his family in the year 1000 (approximately). The baron welcomes
Pirelli and even throws a party to celebrate his visit, but when the
count tries to seduce d’Harcourt’s daughter, the baron whips him,
humiliates him, and throws him out. That causes Pirelli to curse
d’Harcourt and all his family and vow to exterminate them from the
face of the earth, no matter how long it takes. Since it turns out
that Pirelli is in league with Satan and probably can’t be killed,
that’s liable to take a while, but he gets a good start on his
bloody vengeance in this story.
Two hundred years have passed
by the time of “Curse of the Harcourts” from the March 1935
issue. The d’Harcourt family is now English, and the current head
of the family, Sir Henry d’Harcourt is in charge of a castle on the
border between England and Wales which is besieged by an army of
Welsh rebels. Then the castle is infiltrated by Druid sorcerers bent
on revenge against the family for disrespecting their gods, revenge
that involves human sacrifice and a literal trip to Hell for
Henry.
Two hundred years after that, in “Shadow of the
Plague” (April 1935), the Harcourt family now lives in London
during the time of the Black Plague, and the evil entity that has
stalked them through time takes advantage of that deadly disease to
further his vengeance.
By the time of “White Lady of Hell”
(June 1935), the Harcourt family has shrunk to three—a brother and
sister and their mother—and has been exiled to Florence because of
political intrigue in England. More than a hundred years has passed
since the previous story, but you can bet that the evil Pirelli, who
was Florence originally and made his deal with the Devil there, will
show up again, and so he does, with the Harcourt siblings barely
surviving to carry on the line. Not with each other, mind you. These
stories are pretty lurid, but they don’t go quite that far.
In
“A Child for Satan”, which originally appeared in the September
1935 issue of DIME MYSTERY, we learn that there were Harcourts living
in Salem at the time of the witch trials, because, well, sure, why
not? This is the only story in the series with a female protagonist,
a young woman who is married to a Harcourt and has an infant son with
him. But the evil Count Pirelli wants the child for Satan and will
resort to any evil means to get him. In some respects, despite the
supernatural menace of the Count, this one does bear more of a
resemblance to a typical Weird Menace yarn.
The series
concludes with “The Last Harcourt” (October 1935), which takes
place in the Berkshire Mountains of Massachusetts in 1932 and
features the final showdown between the Harcourts and the satanic
Count Pirelli. That showdown has a pretty epic feel to it, too, and
then Whipple gives us a nice little twist in the ending.
I
enjoyed this series, but I have to give it a qualified
recommendation, that qualification being that if you want to read it
for Halloween, start at the beginning of October and space out the
stories over the entire month, rather than reading the whole thing in
less than a week like I did. The sameness of the plots tends to
weaken them, and the relentless parade of torture, misery, and death
is just overwhelming. I think the series would be more effective with
plenty of time between installments, the way the readers of DIME
MYSTERY encountered it back in 1935. That said, if you’re a pulp
fan, I really think you ought to read THE CURSE OF THE HARCOURTS,
because I’ve never run across anything else exactly like it in the
pulps. (The art on all those issues of DIME MYSTERY MAGAZINE is by
Walter M. Baumhofer, by the way.)
