by E. H. Visiak
“My journal-book!” cried he, “Where is it? Have you it here on the ship?”
I told him it was in Mr Huxtable’s cabin; and, saying that he would ask him for it, he desired me to proceed with my relation; which, accordingly, I did.
After I had ended, he sat awhile in a muse; and thereupon, observing I was very heavy, he told me to go and repose myself; for he would watch in my room.
Two other discourses I had about this time with which it is necessary to acquaint the reader.
One was with Obadiah, the other with Giles Kedgley, enquiring how they two had been preserved safe as well from the power of the light as from the sea-creatures and their cavern.
For Obadiah, however, it can scarce be called a discourse that I had with him; he answered me only with a villainous grimace. I concluded he was neither on our deck when the light shone, nor went aloft after, but lay drunken in the forecastle.
From Giles Kedgley, however, I had an answer indeed. He told me that he saw no light, but that, on a sudden, the sea was changed into a delectable land; a country of enchantment, having great tall trees, whereof the branches, with their massy broad leaves, did cast a cool delicious shade as green as emerald; and all about them, among bushes, bearing huge crimson blossoms, there appeared feminine and ravishing forms, all softness and delight, lifting up their alluring arms with a powerful strong enticement to come down to them.
He said that he was exceeding fain to yield, though an old man, and though he had confidently supposed and hoped he had long ago overcome the lusts of the flesh and the seduction of the eyes, and was, indeed, in the very action of clambering over the bulwarks to cast himself incontinently down, as the rest did, into those blissful and delusory bowers, which (as he vehemently affirmed) he beheld the arm of the Almighty stretched out before him harder than granite.
The awful spectacle took his soul with such a mighty rapture, and sense of abounding, adoring gratitude as to dispel that inordinate fleshly desire in a moment; whereupon, the airy charm dissolved and vanished away.
These, to the best of my recollection, are his very words; and, indeed, they were lively imprinted on my mind. I am only careful to set them down; not to comment upon them - nor on there substance either. Let them explicate this mystery who can; I leave it to the philosopher.
Proceeding, I come to the time, being on the tenth or eleventh day, in the morning, when the fair wind and weather that we had, was changed to foul, and the wind, after chopping about, grew stormy. Henceforth, our lot, that was sufficiently hard before, was become perfectly wretched.
Hitherto, we did, in a manner, hold a course, designing, at large, to hit the Indian coast, unless, as we rather hoped, we should happen to fall in with a ship at sea; of which the captain, being liberally dealt with, might loan us some of his men, or else receive and convey us, and Mr Huxtable’s treasure to some convenient port. But now, we roved unsteadily under no more than a topsail and a reefed mizzen-sail, not daring to set more sail, lest, the wind suddenly increasing, we should not be able to reduce it sufficiently quick.
On the morning following, we found, to our great discouragement and almost despair, that there was two foot of water in our hold; which, as we had not shipped anything considerable, imported that our ship had sprung a leak. We were not able to find it out (whether or no we could have stopped it if we had); and now it was laid upon us to work the pumps, in which heavy labour, though Mr Huxtable did discover the strength of two, we were overplied.
All the morning we toiled, except Kedgley, who took the helm; Obadiah (being sufficiently scared) going to work as earnestly as any.
In the meantime, the wind sunk; but, as we found the water in our hold to be rather more than less, it was less comfortable to us; we were, indeed, in desperate case. But, as Mr Huxtable’s strength had steaded us at the pumps, so the sprightly talk and banter of Mr Vertembrex assisted us now.
He put us in mind, while we lay, near wearied out, upon the deck about the mast, that there was no condition in the world so miserable, but that there was some good in it to set against the evil.
“For consider,” says he, with a dry cast at Obadiah, “how the fear of water may exorcize the devil of rum.”
“Ay, ay,” said Giles Kedgley, coming up to us (for Mr Huxtable, without resting himself, had taken over the helm); “but the fear of the Lord casteth out terror.”
Thereupon, on a sudden, moved with an intense excitement, that made his eyes to shine like lamps, he rehearsed, with lofty and enthralling accents, those verses of the psalm:
I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and fortress; my God; in him will I trust.
Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.
He shall cover thee with his feathers and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be they shield and buckler.
Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day;
Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noon-day.
He held us like men enchanted, not only by the tone of his voice, but also by his aspect, standing, with his hoary head and long beard, like an ancient prophet amid that sea-wilderness; and when he ended, we continued awhile silent and still. Even Obadiah was reached by the mighty song.
The first to speak was Mr Vertembrex.
“The wind is rising” said he. “Let us set more sail, and run the hazard. Perhaps we shall outrun the leak. Do you not think, Kedgley, that we had better?”
The aged sailor simply nodded his head, and immediately after ascended the mast to set our main-course, being followed by Obadiah.
They were scarce gotten up, but we heard them crying to us as with one voice:
“A sail! A sail”
“Why, we shall be saved, in spite of all!” said Mr Vertembrex; and I said:
“It is like the words of the psalm come true!”
In the next moment, our ship swerved from her course, and, with a great shock of the waves upon her side, violently heeled.
Being overset, I was thrown into the scuppers. When I was able to recover my feet, supporting myself by the bulwarks, our ship was slowly righting, and Mr Vertembrex, followed by Giles Kedgley and Obadiah (having let themselves summarily down from the mast) were running to the helm; where I beheld Mr Huxtable fallen upon the deck, against the compass-stand.
I started off after them; and when I was come up, Kedgley and Obadiah were heaving on the tiller with all their force, and Mr Vertembrex, kneeling down by his side, was observing Mr Huxtable with an aspect of amazement.
“Sure it is nought!” cried I, casting myself down on the other side. “He is only stunned with knocking on the deck when the ship heeled.”
“Nay,” said he, “he was fallen before. The ship broached to because he left hold. I do think he is dying. Hush!”
While he spoke, I observed Mr Huxtable’s eyes, that were closed before, to open wide, shining with a sort of veiled lustre; and, in low tones, with such gentle, loving accents as fell like music on my ear, he said:
“Ay, Philip, the boy is much like you. I would you were able to behold him, as you do me.”
And, a moment after:
“That’s very like”; said he, “if you had known him in the world.”
He spoke no more, and his eyes closed. They presently opened again; but he was dead.
Mr Vertembrex was gone away; but there was no strength left in me to have risen up from the deck, where the labouring of our ship swayed me to and fro. Giles Kedgley spoke to me kindly while he stood steering, telling me that we were certainly descried, since that ship which he had seen had altered her course to come to us. But, though I understood the sense of his words, the matter signified nothing to me; for, at the feverous approach of that distemper which long held me, I imagined that I was in the kitchen of Mr Huxtable’s farm which he uttered those affectionate words:
“If God send that I
find my son, you two shall be as brothers.”
END
Afterword
(Poorly translated and adapted from the Epilogue to the 1991 German edition, by Hugh Lamb and Frank Rainer)
“Ignored Through Life It Seems, said I,
That even death
Has passed me by. “
Edward Harold Visiak (20 July 1878, London - 30 August 1972, Hove / Sussex) wrote these bitter verses shortly before his ninety-third birthday. In a resigned tone they take stock of the long life and the literary work of a man who enjoyed an international reputation as an expert on John Milton, but whose own literary works were never particularly noticed.
E H Visiak was actually E H Physick - he adopted the old, Miltonesque formal name of his parents as a nom de plume in 1910, but then also adopted it in everyday preference. The son of a sculptor and nephew of renowned cultural editor W H Helm (for whose memoirs he wrote a biographical note in 1937), Visiak spent a carefree and serene childhood, sheltered by his grandparents.
The memory of those early years, situated in a village near Deal Mongeham (Kent) remained for him a dream refuge into old age. For hours he would bury himself in the works of Jules Verne, H Rider Haggard, Robert Louis Stevenson or Frederick Marryat, and the young Harold (as he was called) would also daily roam along beside the sea, viewing the proud sailing ships.
This childhood experience of the ocean instilled in Visiak a fascination which lasted his whole lifetime; it pervades his lyrical works as well as his short stories, and finds expression in his special appreciation for Joseph Conrad, the great epic poet of the sea (The Mirror of Conrad, 1955).
In 1897 Visiak joined the Indo-European Telegraph Company. For seventeen years, the whole of his youth, he served there - dutiful and unobtrusive, the vey picture of a poorly paid employee whose literary ambitions remained a private matter. This uneventful life suited the quiet sensitive until the First World War: then, for reasons of conscience, Visiak refused to enter military service. In those extremely nationalist days, this had severe consequences. The cable company dismissed all pacifist employees, and the commission before which he had to appear sent him to a preschool, where Visiak passed the war years - and some time afterwards - teaching children to read and write.
Around the year 1920, Visiak took the decision to devote himself to literature and literary criticism. This was not so daring a step as it might initially seem, for the financial support of his brother, a successful businessman, gave him some security. For several decades, his life flowed quietly. Visiak lived with his parents, then for a long time after his father's death with his aged mother, and finally alone in the Sussex town of Hove. There he remained at his desk until his last day of life, at the end of August 1972; tired indeed, but working tirelessly on his literary interests, as documented in the verse "At Over Ninety": "I now Could pass my days in sleep / Till it be everlasting deep: / Nothing could be better-worse, / at once a blessing and a curse.”
Visiak’s literary output commenced in 1910 with two works: the poetry collection Buccaneer Ballads and the novel The Haunted Island, the latter a thematic finger exercise to Medusa. In it we read of a 17th century voyage into uncharted waters, a pirate island and a scholar named Copicus, who is inspired by a delusional desire to destroy England. It is a rather romantic yarn, although roughly woven. It was well received in reviews, however, and was in accordance with late Victorian tastes.
Over the next two years Visiak published his initial modest successes, the poetic experiments Flint and Flashes (1911) and The Phantom Ship (1912) and, in prose, The War of the Schools (1912; with C V Hawkins). His experience of conscientious objection then drew his attention to ethical issues, documented in the book of poems The Battle Fiends (1916), followed by 1919’s Brief Poems.
Unlike in Europe, the British literary community did not sharply separate the critical work of “academics” and “laymen”. Nevertheless, for a person, such as Visiak, to approach a national figure and icon such as John Milton, without university qualifications and in ignorance of the usual practices of academic style, and to succeed, demanded an almost unconscious confidence. Visiak possessed this. He mastered the necessary expertise and at the same time knew how to give his Milton treatises a very personal tone. With Milton Agonistes (1923), The Animus Against Milton (1945) and The Portent of Milton (1958), accompanied by two editions of Milton (1935 and 1938), he gained an academic reputation based on an unusual empathy. The shy solitary, for whom the bustling 20th century was like an exotic shadow play, was at home in the 17th century and drew from such intimacy those nuances of Milton which eluded conventional interpretation.
The first great crisis in the silent life of E H Visiak has already been mentioned: the First World War and the writer’s consequent pacifism. In 1929 came his greatest literary crisis - a defeat from which Visiak was never able to fully recover. In October of that year Medusa appeared, the novel that conveys his vision more so than any other work of the author. Visiak’s pensive childhood lives on here, and by extension, his empathic love for post-Elizabethan England, for the world view of the 17th century and for the stateliness of that era. The London "Times" September 1972 obituary for visit described the work as a “tour de force”; however 43 years earlier, the Times then-reviewer had downright mocked the work, as did other critics of the time. The romantic Victorian approach of the author was now considered by reviewers to be antiquated, almost embarrassing. In the hard boiled Times the prevailing New Objectivity style of criticism meant that the work could seem, at best, quaint and touching.
But like any work of literary power succumbed Medusa refused to succumb to the zeitgeist. In 1946 the novel was republished in Britain, and for a third time in 1963. Following the 1991 German translation (and the subsequent 2010 Centipede Press edition), the novel has now for more eighty years exerted its strange charm, and the “forgotten, arcane” writer Visiak has now achieved honour; from "a unique and irritating story" (Mike Ashley, Who's Who in Horror and Fantasy Fiction, 1977), to "perhaps the most successful novel of a fantastic voyage" (Rein Zondergelds, Encyclopaedia of Fantastic Literature, 1983).
For Visiak, such eulogies came too late. Following Medusa’s reception he angrily withdrew from any further publication in the realm of the fantastic, focusing instead on his Milton research. Only the energetic anthologist John Gawsworth (pseudonym for T I F Armstrong, 1912-10) managed to wrest more fantastical prose from the literary loner and publish it in his collections.
“Medusan Madness” appeared in Gawsworth’s New Tales of Horror (1934). It is a dark, symbolic short story that fully reveals itself only on a second reading, but thereafter remains in the memory: the patient of a mental hospital describes to his visitor, the narrator, a Pacific female figure which he saw in a vision. Obvious is a “fascinated fear” of the opposite sex, which indeed also characterises the key scene of Medusa.
In the same year Visiak’s story "The Cutting” appeared in Gawsworth’s anthology Thrills. Again, it is about the boundaries between sanity and madness, by a mentally sick man who appeared in a bizarre Students' Institute students during the war. Of the two Visiak contributions to Gawsworth’s next collection, titled Masterpieces of Thrills (1936), the fragment "A Good Reprisal" is rather minor; much more memorable, however, is the story "In the Mangrove Hall" in which a group of pirates in the South American jungle encounters a lycanthropic monster. As in "Medusa" the narrative principle is disciplined and romantic; the abbreviated summary does not indicate the intelligent subtlety representation of the story. A year later Gawsworth’s next anthology, “Creeps and Thrills" featured Visiaks complex short novel "The Shadow," which deals with the machinations of a demonic artist. - The same volume contained the short story "The Uncharted Islands", a collaborative effort between Visiak and Gawsworth. Again a voyage to strange, distant waters is described, with the figure of Captain Blythe indicating a connection to Medusa as that is the name given to the captain in the sixth chapter of Medusa. The voyage l
eads into the Indian Ocean, to islands that - just as The Haunted Island in 1910 - eventually perish in a volcanic eruption. It is clear here that Visiak’s sea fantasies unfold in intersecting circles.
Finally, with the re-release of Medusa in the mid-sixties, Visiak gained the courage to express himself in the fantastic on last time, after twenty-five years of silence. ”The Queen of Beauty", was not actually published until 1976 in Hugh Lamb’s anthology The Taste of Fear. It is about the discovery of a lost island -how could it be otherwise? - where the heroine encounters a native idol. The polarisation of Visiak’s image of woman between admiration and frightful retreat thus once again finds expression
(Several other short stories were apparently scattered over short-lived literary magazines. Besides the main novel the 2010 edition of Medusa included total of 13 shorter works.)
In the centre of the referenced thematic variations is Visiak’s masterpiece Medusa. The novel is - as the reader has likely already been convinced - quite a strange book, a very individual creation.
If you are looking for strictly literary references or traditions with which to connect Medusa - such as Robert Louis Stevenson’s "Treasure Island" (1883), Herman Melville's"Moby Dick" (1851) or Edgar Allan Poe's "Arthur Gordon Pym“ (1838) - it should be remembered that these three works are all of the 19th century. There are few opportunities for comparison with works published in the 20th century. Visiak is, however, comparable to David Lindsay (1878-1845), like Visiak a literary loner who, in his classic novel A Journey to Arcturus (1920), similarly presented fantasy in parable-like expression.