Roslyn D’Onston himself only wanted to be a magician because he read Bulwer-Lytton when he was a boy. Otherwise, maybe he’d have stuck with being a Customs officer and would never have dreamed of re-animation and human sacrifice and the rest of it.
While I am at it, maybe I should add Harry Stubbs to that list of unfortunates whose lives were derailed by reading too much of the wrong stuff. I don’t see myself any closer to a decent clerical position now than I was before. Everyone knows I was in some sort of punch-up; they assume it was some business of Arthur’s. It won’t help my reputation.
At any rate, it’s too late to change the story now. I told Arthur yesterday that it was nearly finished.
“Well done Stubbsy,” he said, patting me on the shoulder. “He’ll be very glad to read it.”
“I still wish I knew who ‘he’ was and why he wants to reads it.”
Arthur smiled knowingly.
“Think of it,” he said, “as a job application.”
Editor’s Note
As usual, Harry Stubbs's account appears accurate as far as it can be checked.
Madame Helena Blavatsky, founder of modern Theosophy, lived in Maycot in Norwood while assembling her notes for The Secret Doctrine, “the synthesis of science, religion and philosophy,” in 1887. During this time she was visited by WB Yeats. She had been accused of fakery and was widely considered to be a charlatan. During her stay her assistant, Mabel Collins, who owned the house, formed a relationship with Robert D’Onston Stephenson.
Collins came to believe that Stephenson carried out the Jack the Ripper killings in 1888, a theory supported by Aleister Crowley and explained in detail in Ivor Edwards’s book Jack the Ripper's Black Magic Rituals (2001). The theory relies on Stephenson’s own doubtful testimony.
Stephenson, who wrote under the pen name of Roslyn D’Onston, published many accounts of magic in West Africa and elsewhere. These fantastic tales appear to be fabricated for a credulous readership. His occult writings are collected in Crowley’s Ripper (2006) at http://kobek.com/crowleyripper.pdf.
The Si Fan is a fictitious organisation, invented by Sax Rohmer for his Fu Manchu series of novels (1913-1959). The name is a typically heavy-handed joke of Stubbs’s, his way of concealing the true identity of Yang’s employers. Of course, no such organisation has ever existed.
Palingenesis is an alchemical process with no scientific standing and is purely pseudoscience. The only modern claim that a human can be resurrected in this way is in H. P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927); this is now considered to be purely a work of fiction.
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Harry Stubbs first adventure: The Elder Ice
Harry Stubbs is on the trail of a mysterious legacy left by a polar explorer. Harry's informants are talking in riddles, and the legacy leaves a trail of mutilated bodies. An old Arabian book proves to be the key to an enigma more horrifying than Harry could ever have imagined, and he finds himself facing an enemy older than humanity…
The Elder Ice is a novella of mystery and horror drawing on Ernest Shackleton's incredible real-life Antarctic adventures and inspired by HP Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. Available in paperback and as an Amazon Kindle e-book.
Coming in August 2015 from PS Publishing: The Dulwich Horror and Others, a collection of seven stories by David Hambling
Broken Meats: A Harry Stubbs Adventure Page 13