Arthur Machen's The Inmost Light: A Detailed Summary and Literary Analysis

 It was incumbent upon most Victorian supernaturalists to – sooner or later – create an occult detective who merged the qualities of Poe’s Dupin, Doyle’s Holmes, and Goethe’s Faust. Bohemian, charismatic, and ludicrously well-read in metaphysics, these dashing mavericks approached ghosts, elementals, and Lovecraftian terrors with the same hutzpah with which Sherlock Holmes handled bank heists and purloined documents. Blackwood had his “John Silence, Physician Extraordinary”, Stoker his Van Helsing, Le Fanu his Dr. Hesselius, and Hodgson his “Carnacki the Ghost-Finder” (the best of all of them).

As a species, these bohemian geniuses were usually the worst part of their stories: preachy, overbearing, annoyingly perfect, ridiculously-credentialed buzz-kills, their lengthy and overly detailed explanations of the mystery typically watered down the fascinating horrors that they tackled (this was certainly true of Silence and Hesselius). Arthur Machen’s orphic investigator was no different. His occult detective was Dyson, the self-proclaimed “Wellington of mysteries,” who appears in a number of Machen’s works, beginning with “The Inmost Light.” Dyson is a bored bohemian who spurns work (in spite of a classical education) out of laziness, has a taste for Chianti, shag tobacco, and Oriental furniture, and pursues cases without clients to fund or commission them (he is more of a busybody than a detective, typically stalking persons of interest for days and weeks with no hope of being paid for his time).

He has the personality of a mild-mannered sociopath: in “The Shining Pyramid,” he studiously observes a girl being burned alive as a human sacrifice with scientific interest, and – like Holmes – he frequently solves murders and kidnappings without bothering to let the police or worried family members know his findings. Don Herron describes Dyson as being initially introduced as “a parody of the idle London bookman in search of esoteric adventure” who is gradually fleshed out into a vigorous (if socially irresponsible) investigator in “The Red Hand,” “The Inmost Light,” and “The Shining Pyramid.” Never given a first name,

Dyson is nearly as enigmatic as the mysteries he pursues, which typically involve him tussling with Pagan cults, murderous troglodytes, the archeological traces of pre-Christian civilizations, and ill-starred alchemists. The following tale – loosely based on elements in Edgar Allan Poe, R. L. Stevenson, and Nathaniel Hawthorne – is a study in the bipolarity of the human condition: the coexistence of good and evil, immortality and mortality, innocence and corruption, physicality and spirituality. In typical Dyson style, he learns of the curious death of a strange woman married to an even stranger physician, and – for want of anything better to occupy himself with – barges into their private lives.

SUMMARY

We begin our story with the London bohemian and man of letters, Mr. Dyson, running into his old friend, the stable suburbanite, Salisbury, whom he hasn’t seen for five years. Dyson explains that after a period of financial difficulty, struggling to make it as a writer, he was blessed with an inheritance that has allowed him to spend his time as he pleases (not unlike Machen himself). Independently wealthy, he now wanders the London streets in search of mysteries and adventures, convinced that it is as exotic and decadent a place as an exotic bazaar in an ancient land. Salisbury is pleased to hear this, but after picking up on Dyson’s obsession with inner-city enigmas, he politely dismisses his friend’s romantic notions as the result of an overactive imagination: London is simply another dull, industrialized metropolis where – attractions, fashions, and politics aside – nothing wonderful ever happens.

Dyson, however, declares that even in its quaintest, most unassuming corners, miracles and horrors brood. He illustrates this by describing one such riddle that took place far from the rush of cabs and hawkers, in the nearly-rural suburb of Harlesden. It is here, in this dull, remote “city of the dead” that a suburban doctor – given the alias Dr. Black – recently raised a stir that would put Soho to shame. Black and his beautiful young wife moved to the quiet burb two years prior and became fixtures of the streets, which they affectionately strolled arm-in-arm. Last winter his wife appeared to vanish, however, and Black dodged inquiries by claiming that she was dealing with health problems, but the local scuttlebutt is that he killed her.

This rumor is both disproven and exceeded in drama when – one June afternoon – Dyson glances up at Dr. Black’s home and sees, framed in the upper story window, his wife’s face. However, it is no pretty face: although it is still evidently, her, her visage has been somehow transformed, as – “with a nameless terror” Dyson notes that, aside from the misty halo of her flowing blonde hair, she leers down at him with the savage face of a “satyr” (a libidinous, mythical goat-person).

The shock of the sight wears off as life goes on, but when the papers report that Mrs. Black has died and the autopsy has shown her to have a shockingly devolved brain (the grey matter has been reduced down to that of a beast). Cause of death appears to be natural, though and she is buried without further fuss. Dyson and Salisbury ponder the case and decide to look into it further, with Dyson offering to do the footwork and report back.

On the way home from Dyson’s bohemian bachelor pad, Salisbury – who, though less imaginative, also delights in rubbing elbows with the London demimonde – wanders through the streets and accidentally finds himself in a seedy neighborhood where a domestic fight between a man and woman has caught his attention. The man is drunk and is being chased out of their home by the sobbing woman who – after accusing him of being a thief and a wastrel who has blown his earnings on prostitutes – she hurls a wadded paper at him. The couple part ways, and Salisbury – unnoticed but curious – locates the paper and pockets it for later perusal. The following morning he reads it and wakes his neighbors up with his uproarious laughter: there is no scandalous message or romantic missal (Dyson, it would seem, is all wrong about London) – it is just a scrap of senseless gibberish:

'Q. has had to go and see his friends in Paris,' it began. 'Traverse Handle S. "Once around the grass, and twice around the lass, and thrice around the maple tree."'

Soon after, the friends reunite, with Dyson eager to report his findings. He has hunted down the coroner who told him, off the record, that he believes Black killed his wife. Interestingly, however, he intimates that he thinks the verdict was correct, and that the murder was justified. He curiously remarks that he has always had a distaste for scientific theories which argue that the soul and body are inextricably united; rather, he believes that there is “an impassable gulf” between spirit and form and that the two are not tied together. He goes on to state that he does not believe that the brain in Mrs. Black’s skull was human, and says that nothing could tempt him to look again at her face, in spite of her beauty (which, in death, was entirely unblemished).

Meanwhile, in Harlesden, Dyson finds that Black has abandoned his home and that his wife hadn’t been seen by the family servants for months prior to her death. Shortly after returning to his inner city neighborhood – in a bizarre coincidence – Dyson helps a haggard old man recover his hat, and recognizes him as Dr. Black.

Prematurely aged and dressed in rags, Black allows Dyson to escort him back to his “miserable” pauper’s garret in a shabby part of town. Through his show of empathy, Dyson finds Black inviting him into his confidence, although he never realizes that he knows much about his past or that he is literally investigating his wife’s murder. Dyson owns that Black is bizarre man whose imagination has been infected by his obsessive study of alchemy and the occult, and Black confesses that his experiments have ruined his life, the results of which – “more awful than death, to those who gain it” – would cause “your very soul [to] shudder and faith within you.”

Dyson parts on friendly terms with the old doctor, and is surprised when – after leaving the metropolis for several weeks – he learns that Black has died. His landlady reports that – on the night of his death – Black was heard to shriek, before rushing downstairs in a fury, yelling about having been robbed, then dying of a stroke. She recalls his jealous protectiveness of a certain tin box and decides that he must have been keeping some kind of valuable there.

Dyson and Salisbury lament that the mystery will probably never be resolved at this point, so Salisbury recalls the next-most-recent “mystery” he tried to solve – that of the crumpled paper with the gibberish riddle – and jokingly shows it to Dyson along with the backstory. Dyson is not amused, but intrigued, and copies the note down.

Describing himself as the “Wellington of mysteries” (inverse of Doyle’s “Napoleon of crime”), Dyson believes that he has caught the scent of his quarry, and descends into the seedy bowels of Soho, where he finds a signboard for “Handel Street, W. C.” perched over a pawnshop owned by a man named Travers. Dyson thinks that this is the spot alluded to in the note – a place of secret crime, decried by the weeping woman – and he repeats the riddle to the Travers who is stunned by the words.

Dyson refuses to have mercy on the stunned man unless he cooperates with him – primarily by explaining if he knows what “Q” means. Travers responds by calling him “Mr. Davies,” apologizing for not recognizing him, and handing over a parcel and promising to never again take on “jobs of this sort.”

[Travers is implied, then, to be a fence who accepts stolen goods from desperate men (like the drunk who is implied to be one of his clients), and Dyson receives the parcel stolen from Dr. Black because he has the code phrase used by Mr. Davies, the thief, who is implied to also be the identity of the drunk]      

The package proves to be the key to the mystery: it is a letter, written by Dr. Black, accompanied by a psychedelic, multi-colored opal:

“within it shone the blue of far skies, and the green of the sea by the shore, and the red of the ruby, and deep violet rays, and in the middle of all it seemed aflame as if a fountain of fire rose up, and fell, and rose again with sparks like stars for drops.”

The letter explains that his heart was always in the study of the occult – specifically the source of the soul – but his marriage to his wife required him to hold down a respectable job, so he began an ordinary medical practice, though he continued to pursue his forbidden studies at night. At first he was satisfied by this balance, but one night he found himself hopelessly drawn back to his pursuit of the dark arts, and begins weeping as he knows that he will not be able to continue his practice – or remain in a normal, well-ordered marriage to his loving bride.

Determined to solve the puzzle of consciousness, he – Frankenstein-like – sets up a laboratory and pores himself into monomaniacal studies. But he can only go so far: eventually he needs a person to experiment on. Instead of using himself, he turns to his wife – a decision about which he says he wishes he had killed himself before he made – and asks her to be his guinea pig. But he tries to be as honest about the process as he can, describing “what would enter in where her life had been; I told her of all the shame and of all the horror.” In short, he explains that he will bifurcate her soul from her body, and that her body will be possessed by a savage, vestigial anima of rage and desire.

She is understandably distraught: “She shuddered, and wept, and called on her dead mother for help, and asked me if I had no mercy” – a reaction which calls into question how voluntary this experiment actually was – but eventually, though burning with shame and sorrow, she consents. Her only condition is that when the transformation is complete, that he will kill what is left of her body.

This he does, but her soul is consigned to the opal – or the thing in the parcel which, at least, looks like an opal. Disgusted, Dyson crushes the gem, freeing Mrs. Black’s soul in a gush of yellow smoke and steam, after which a white flame flashes, leaving behind “a thing like a cinder, black and crumbling to the touch.”

ANALYSIS

The duality of the human condition has always been a popular theme in world literature – especially for writers of speculative and supernatural fiction. Machen was keenly aware of its history, and stories like “The Great God Pan,” “The Inmost Light,” and “The White People” revel manically in this topic like a cat wallowing in catnip: you can almost feel Machen wanting to cease the literary metaphor to break into a dense philosophical treatise. However, he restrains himself from rambling speculations and keeps to writing fiction. “The Inmost Light” was just one of many Victorian stories which used a similar plot to explore the metaphysics of consciousness. Nathaniel Hawthorne (“Rapacinni’s Daughter,” “The Birthmark”), E.T.A. Hoffmann (“The Sandman,” “Councilor Krespel,” “The Lost Reflection”), and Fitz-James O’Brien (“The Diamond Lens,” “The Bohemian”) all employed themes of beautiful, frail women who are destroyed by the careless men who love them (usually destroyed due to a lack of appreciation of the balance between the spirit and flesh, the essence and form).

Of course, though, Edgar Allan Poe was one the chief influence: his best horror fiction almost always dealt with the study of mankind’s dual nature – the struggle to reconcile the spiritual (idealism, beauty, innocence, youth, life, purity) with the material (cynicism, ugliness, corruption, aging, death, depravity). Some of his most popular works are metaphors for this struggle (“House of Usher,” “Morella,” “Ligeia,” “William Wilson,” “The Raven,” “Annabel Lee,” “Berenice,” “Pit and the Pendulum,” etc.).

The clearest parallels to “The Inmost Light” can be found in “The Oval Portrait.” One of Poe’s shortest stories, it tells of a married couple – a beautiful, innocent, physically-fragile, spiritually-heavy woman, and a brutish, vulgar, physically dominating, spiritually-bankrupt artist. The artist decides to paint his wife’s portrait in order to freeze her spirit in time – to capture her essence for perpetuity rather than love and appreciate her in real life. Forgoing food and sleep, he powers through his portrait while his wife dutifully sits for him (regardless of how terrified she is of his mania). Starved and exhausted nearly to death, she remains in place until he makes the final flourish of his brush. Stunned by the beauty of the painting, he declares the dead canvas and pigment to be “life” – and with that, his wife’s soul is transferred to the art: he looks over to her fresh corpse.

This theme is also heavily dealt with by Machen’s other go-to inspiration, Robert Louis Stevenson, especially in “Markheim,” “Olalla,” and “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde” – a particular favorite of Machen’s. Machen based several of his best stories on the structure and philosophy of “Jekyll and Hyde” – especially this one. Like Dr. Jekyll, Dr. Black struggles to split the spirit from the flesh – the good from the evil – but only manages to imprison the spirit and hand the keys to manifested Corruption. Like Edward Hyde and Helen Vaughan, Mrs. Black comes to embody pure carnality (even her brain is malformed: “the brain of a devil”), and like Hyde and Helen, her destruction is seen as a benefit to the moral security of the race of men. He spiritual half is trapped in a gem (the perfect metaphor for its indestructability, purity, and beauty), while her physical half is bound to her rotting body (the perfect metaphor for its mortality, corruption, and vulgarity).

Like “The Oval Portrait,” Dr. Black is left with a wife who has been split into her two parts: the spiritual one is inaccessible, untouchable, while the physical part is decaying in a box below ground. Machen, Poe, Hawthrone, Stevenson, and Hoffmann frequently tackled the inevitability of death, and the denial that we curse ourselves with when we take our loved ones for granted. They remind us to appreciate them as they are (flaws, imperfections, and all) while they are here, because although we can treasure portraits, letters, and memories, the spirit-side (our ideal version of them) is impossible to grasp, and the physical side (their purely carnal nature) would be repellent if we could bifurcate them. The best chance at real human connection – Machen urges us to understand – is to engage ourselves with our loved ones’ immortal spirits through the metaphor of their mortal flesh for as long as we are lucky to have them by our side. What happens after “death do us part,” however, is the realm of other philosophers’ speculations.

You can read the original story HERE!

And you can find our annotated and illustrated edition of Machen’s best weird fiction HERE!