Hip Priest

Another short story which was included in the Edgar Allan Poe collection I was sent recently was The Masque of the Red Death (1842). The thoughtless (and perhaps oblivious) defiance of Prince Prospero reminded me of several literary party throwers. However it was clear from Poe’s description that his parties would be the envy of any of them:

He had directed, in great part, the moveable embellishment of the seven chambers, upon occasion of this great fête; and it was his own guiding taste which had given character to the masquerades. Be sure that they were grotesque. There were much glare and glitter and piquancy and phantasm - much of what has since been seen in “Hernani”. There were arabesque figures with unsuited limbs and appointments. There were delirious fancies such as the madman fashions. There was much of the beautiful, much of the wanton, much of the bizarre, something of the terrible, and not a little of what might have excited disgust. To and fro in the seven chambers there stalked, in fact, a multitude of dreams.

A good friend posted a collection of Edgar Allan Poe tales to me whilst I was in Sweden, after hearing me express my dismay at being ignorant of his work. Although the copy was slightly less grand than the one pictured above, it did include the The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841), The Purloined Letter (1844), The Fall of the House of Usher (1839), The Tell-Tale Heart (1843) etc.

I found them quite enthralling. And whilst I was expecting them to wield an influence over subsequent gothic tales, the bodies walled up in family mansions and murders involving rogue apes certainly made David Renwick (the creator of Jonathan Creek, one of my favourite TV shows) seem a little less inspired.

Having said that, there were fruits that hung higher, such the story on which Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window (1954) was based:

This hideous murder accomplished, I set myself forthwith, and with entire deliberation, to the task of concealing the body. I knew that I could not remove it from the house, either by day or by night, without the risk of being observed by the neighbours. Many projects entered my mind. At one period I thought of cutting the corpse into minute fragments, and destroying them by fire. At another, I resolved to dig a grave for it in the floor of the cellar. Again, I deliberated about casting it in the well in the yard - about packing it in a box, as if merchandise, with the usual arrangements, and so getting a porter to take it from the house.

- The Black Cat (1843).