"Bertie's Christmas Eve" by Saki 1908

I noticed Mel u in a rare display of good taste on his part has posted on a number of stories by the great gentle Edwardian satirist of upper crust society Saki.  Saki's central characters are often adolescents or adults stiff chaffing at the constraints of social adulthood having fun with their elders.

"Bertie's Christmas Eve" begins at a Christmas Eve dinner with the members of a large extended family.  Everything is as John Bull as it could be and everyone is happy but Bertie.   Bertie, his parents have evidently passed, is at his uncle's for Christmas.  Bertie has been over much of the British colonial world in the tradition of young male relative people don't want around much and he finds this family fuss dinner a huge bore.  Then someone says that the Russians belief that on midnight on Christmas Eve for one hour animals can talk.  One of the more dottie Aunts, though I doubt she is a match for my Aunt Euphemia, suggests they all  go to the cow barn to see if this is true.  Compressing a bit, Bertie locks the whole family in the barn for several hours, just for a lark.  Of course the family sees little humor in this and I will leave the rest of this really fun story unspoiled for you.

Read "Bertie's Christmas Eve" here 

"The She-Wolf" by Saki

Supernatural Saki?

My Prior Posts on Saki

"The She-Wolf" (1912-7 pages)  is a really well done twist ending story by Saki (Hector Munro-1870-1916-UK).    I have been having a lot of fun reading and posting on older paranormal short stories for Carl V's RIP paranormal reading event.    Many people, including myself until recently, never associated Saki with the paranormal.   Most all of his many short stories are gentle satires of the follies and vanities of the upper class of his day.   

Russian "gurus" were very much in fashion in England in the first two decades of the 20th century.  "The She-Wolf" is in part a satire of that vogue.   Just imagine great hairy Rasputin like figures spewing forth mystical profundities at tea parties and you get the setting.   

As the story opens we meet Leonard Bilster.   Leonard finds the "real world" uninteresting and has taken refuge in an "unseen world".    Of course Leonard knows his views are only for the very few, those few being any who will listen to him explain the occult wisdom he acquired while on a trip to Siberia.   Here is a very representative sample of Saki's prose (some like me love his prose style but some do find it too mannered):

In company with a friend, who was interested in a Ural mining concern, he had made a trip across Eastern Europe at a moment when the great Russian railway strike was developing from a threat to a reality; its outbreak caught him on the return journey, somewhere on the further side of Perm, and it was while waiting for a couple of days at a wayside station in a state of suspended locomotion that he made the acquaintance of a dealer in harness and metalware, who profitably whiled away the tedium of the long halt by initiating his English travelling companion in a fragmentary system of folk-lore that he had picked up from Trans-Baikal traders and natives. Leonard returned to his home circle garrulous about his Russian strike experiences, but oppressively reticent about certain dark mysteries, which he alluded to under the resounding title of Siberian Magic. 

When Leonard gets back home he begins to tell others, reluctantly of course, of his great new wisdom.   He gets very peeved when no one really seems interested in his remarks so he states at a party that he can turn a woman into a she-wolf.   Of course people are very skeptical nearly laughing at him. Leonard goes to a friend who has a very large private zoo and asks if he has a tame she-wolf he could borrow for an evening.   Remember this is Saki so there is a twist coming.    

At a party Leonard does the magic he knows is fake and plans to substitute the wolf for one of the ladies at the party, getting her out of the room on a ruse.    Then it appears the lady has really vanished and a snarling she-wolf is in the midst of the party.  Maybe  Leonard really had invoked dark powers?   I will leave the ending unspoiled but it is very clever and leaves you wondering what really happened.    

In a way Saki may be telling us that a lot of the interest in the paranormal really comes from boredom and a wanting to feel you are important because of some occult knowledge you and only a few others possess.   It is hard to see him as wrong in this.

"The She-Wolf" is for sure worth reading.    

You can read it HERE.

Mel u

"The Hounds of Fate" by Saki

"The Hounds of Fate" by Saki (1911, 5 pages)

A Very UnSaki like Story

More Saki Posts

I like Saki a lot (1870 to 1915).   Most of his stories are gentle (OK some can be a bit malicious!) satires of the follies and pretensions of Edwardian society.   He is famous as a surprise ending short story writer.   (There is background information on him in my prior posts).    

This week my understanding of the range of Saki has been expanded considerably.   His story, "The Cobwebs" has a very Gothic supernatural feel to it and his "The Comments of Moung" is not set in London on the banks of the Thames but in Burma (I do not use the current name for the country) on the banks of the Irawaddy River.  

Yesterday I checked one of my favorite sources for short stories, East of the Web:Short Stories, and saw a new to me Saki story, "The Hound", was one of the features for the day.    This, I think, is a must read story for Saki fans.   It is not at written in the mannered very smart arch prose Saki does use (I love it but I can see how some might see it as "school boy smart"  and tire of it after a while).

"The Hound" sounds almost like something Thomas Hardy might have written.   It opens with a man very down on his luck, homeless and with only a few pennies to his name.     Saki does a wonderful job setting things up for us in the opening paragraph so I will let him speak (and I also want readers to see his prose style in this story):

In the fading light of a close dull autumn afternoon Martin Stoner plodded his way along muddy lanes and rut-seamed cart tracks that led he knew not exactly whither. Somewhere in front of him, he fancied, lay the sea, and towards the sea his footsteps seemed persistently turning; why he was struggling wearily forward to that goal he could scarcely have explained, unless he was possessed by the same instinct that turns a hard-pressed stag cliffward in its last extremity. In his case the hounds of Fate were certainly pressing him with unrelenting insistence; hunger, fatigue, and despairing hopelessness had numbed his brain, and he could scarcely summon sufficient energy to wonder what underlying impulse was driving him onward. Stoner was one of those unfortunate individuals who seem to have tried everything; a natural slothfulness and improvidence had always intervened to blight any chance of even moderate success, and now he was at the end of his tether, and there was nothing more to try. 

Martin decides to stop off at a farm house he passes and ask for a meal.    When he comes to the door and old man, seemingly a family employee, greets him as "Master Tom" and says he always knew he would return from Australia one day.  He offers to get him dinner and serves him the best meal he has had in years.   He then tells Martin that his employer, a very old woman and seemingly the mother or grandmother of Tom, had told him that if Tom ever returns he is to stay and be told he will inherit the property one day just as planned before he left.  Martin has now figured out they are mistaking him for someone else but he sees no reason to explain the error.     One day he looks at a number of old family photos and the resemblance of himself and Tom is striking.   Soon Tom is told by the old family servant and farm manager that people in the community have not forgotten the terrible thing he did that made him flea to Australia.   We never learn what that was but everywhere he goes people give him hate- filled looks.   Martin is worried over what Tom did but he cannot ask as it would expose his false identity.  I will leave the rest of the plot untold.      There is a surprise ending to the story but it is organic to the plot.

I think even those who have read a number of Saki's stories will be very impressed by "The Hound".

This story, and I think all of his fiction including his novels, can be read HERE.

Please let us know of your experience with Saki.

Does the picture of Saki in uniform look wrong to you?

Mel u

Two Stories On The Partition of India by Two Very Different Writers Who Are Closer than we might Think

"Dog of Tithwal" by Saadaat Hasan Monto (5 pages, 1955)
"The Comments of Moung" by Saki  (1906, 4 pages)

BBAW Day Two
Reader's Suggestion Day

Two Stories Set in India 

both suggested by Book Bloggers  from India

Today is day two of BBAW.   Today has been set aside for posting of interviews with other bloggers.   In 2009 I participated in this event but this year I decided not to be interviewed or interview anyone else.    But I am not at all ignoring BBAW.   In fact I think my plans for today might be a good idea for next year!   Today I am going to post on three short works of fiction that I learned about through either readers of my blog or blogs I follow.   If it were not for these fellow bloggers I would have missed out on these three  works.   (I will do a separate post on Anton Chekhov's powerful and very dark work set in a mental hospital, "Ward 6".)

"Dog of Tithwal" by Saadaat Hasan Monto was suggested to me by Wordsbeyondorders who is from Tamil in southern India.   It is a very keenly observed story that finds a dark humor in the shooting of a dog during the war that resulted from the 1947 partition of India.

Saadat Hasan Monto (1912-1955-Samrala, Punjab, India) was a very prolific writer but it  is for his work as the literary chronicler of the terrible human consequences of the 1947 Partition of India into the two countries of Pakistan and India that he is best known.  (There is some additional background on him here)


"Dog of Tithwal" opens in a military camp on the Indian side of the Pakistan-India border in 1947 right after the Partition of India.    Both sides have military camps facing each other and every morning they go through the show of shooting some shots at each other.    One day a friendly stray dog wanders in the camp and the soldiers give him some food.   He then leaves and comes back the next day (compressing a bit here-I will have a link at the close of the post to read this work) with a note on his collar.   The  note makes no sense but the men assume he has been in the enemy camp.   They take the note and give it to  their captain.   The next day the dog comes back wagging his tail as he approaches the camp.   The Indians begin to yell at him that they will shoot any Pakistani, even a dog, who approaches their camp.   In sport first they shoot near him, then they shoot him in the leg but he comes forward still and still wags his tail in friendship.   He is then shot dead.   This story is a wonderful account of the absurdity of war.

"The Comments of Moung" by Saki was suggested to me by Rohan of Rest is Still Unwritten from Mumbai, India.  Here is the comment that lead me to this story

"Saki is master at twisted endings,it is trait of his writing. Irony is despite knowing this; in the end we are left nothing but to admire them.
Shredni Vestar is good,but being learner of a confused democracy,as India,I admire his "The Comments of Moung Ka" most of all. It is surprising to know that even after 100 years,his politically incorrect observations about democracy still stand time-test with no difficulty".

Before India was partitioned in 1947,  the large province of Bengal was partitioned along religious lines from 1905 to 1912 when the partition was abolished.   "The Comments of Moung" is not set in India, but in Burma (I prefer to use the old name) in a village on the shores of the Irrawaddy River.  (Saki was a military policemen in Burma from 1893 to 1895, just like his father was.)    Moung is a prosperous rice merchant who travels quite a bit in his business so when he comes home people ask him what is going on in Indian and England.   He tells everyone how the province of Bengal is going to be partitioned.   He says even though the people do not want it the English do and they must know best.     Now he explains that he heard that England is also to be partitioned into two countries.   I will quote a bit as Saki really does a great job with this:

‘The other matter,’ said Moung Ka, ‘is that the British Government has decided on the partition of Britain. Where there has been one Parliament and one Government there are to be two Parliaments and two Governments, and there will be two treasuries and two sets of taxes.’
Moung Thwa was greatly interested at this news.
‘And is the feeling of the people of Britain in favour of this partition?’ he asked. ‘Will they not dislike it, as the people of Bengal disliked the partition of their Province?’
‘The feeling of the people of Britain has not been consulted, and will not be consulted,’ said Moung Ka; ‘the Act of Partition will pass through one Chamber where the Government rules supreme, and the other Chamber can only delay it a little while, and then it will be made into the Law of the Land.’
‘But is it wise not to consult the feeling of the people?’ asked Moung Thwa.
‘Very wise,’ answered Moung Ka, ‘for if the people were consulted they would say “No,” as they have always said when such a decree was submitted to their opinion, and if the people said “No” there would be an end of the matter, but also an end of the Government. Therefore, it is wise for the Government to shut its ears to what the people may wish.’
‘But why must the people of Bengal be listened to and the people of Britain not listened to?’ asked Moung Thwa; ‘surely the partition of their country affects them just as closely. Are their opinions too silly to be of any weight?’

Both of these stories are very much worth reading.

"The Comments of Moung" by Saki  can be read HERE

"Dog of Tithwal" by Saadaat Hasan Monto can be read HERE

In the last few days my regard for Saki has gone up quite a bit and I wish there was more Monto online I could read.

Mel u

Dickens, Saki and Algernon Blackwood-An All English Paranormal Day

"Keeping His Promise" by Algernon Blackwood (1914, 8 pages)
"The Trial for Murder" by Charles Dickens (1866, 11 pages)
"Srendi Vashtar" by Saki (1910, 5 pages)

An All English Paranormal Short Story Day

Can Saki Really Triumph Over

Charles Dickens and Algernon Blackwell?

I am having great fun participating in Carl V's RIP 6 reading event (Sept 1 to Oct 31)  devoted to horror, Gothic, and paranormal literary works.   (The rules are on the RIP 6 web page.  Carl has made it easy and fun for all to join in and does a great job as a host.)   Today will be an all England paranormal read off with a visitor from Mount Parnassus, Charles Dickens being taken on by one very odd (and scary looking) gentleman, Algernon Blackwood, and  our own gently witty   Saki.   

Algernon Blackwood  (1869 to 1951-UK) is one of the founding fathers of the "Weird Story" genre, along with Arthur Machen and H  P Lovecraft.    He wrote hundreds of short stories,  twelve novels, and numerous plays in addition to a vast amount of journalism.   He is best know for his collection of paranormal short stories, Incredible Adventures (1914), which  is considered by many the best collection of weird stories ever published by a single writer.    His most famous work is, I think, a long short story, "The Willows".    (There is a good story about his interesting life and his work here).    Waite, like Machen was interested in the occult and was influenced by The Order of the Golden Dawn lead by A. E. Waite. (I think when the dust over the history of occult literature in the late 19th and early 20th century settles this order  will be seen as huge "background influence".   If you look hard enough you can see it in even as a strong influence on Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield.)    Blackwood was also a TV and stage actor.   

This morning  I checked  Americanlit.com to see what their short story of the day was and when I saw it was a story by a famous paranormal and new to me writer, Algernon Blackwood, I took it as an omen and I read "Keeping His Promise" right away.   I am glad I did as it was fun if not real scary story.   The story begins in the college rooms of a young man studying for the finals in medical school.   He is not the best of students but he is not the worst either.    He has been cramming for two weeks now and all his friends know to leave him alone as he must pass these exams or he is out of school.   He hears a knock at his door and he wonders who it could be.    He is so shocked to see an old once very close friend he has not seen in seven years at his door.   He is even more shocked when he sees his once well off friend now dressed in rags and looking very unhealthy with his skin a clammy white.   He sees his friend looks like he is starving and he feeds him.   He looks exhausted so he puts him in his spare bedroom.    He  wonders why his friend never spoke to him.   He hears his heavy breathing and goes in the room to check on him.   He cannot find him but the heavy breathing can be heard anywhere in his apartment.    A neighbor in the dorm rooming house stops over and he asks what is that noise.   Fearing he is going mad, the narrator tells him to go in the bedroom to see the man but he still cannot be found.   Then his neighbor notices blood coming from the wrist of the narrator.   Upon closer examination under the new cut on his wrist is an old scar.    Now he recalls seven years ago he and his strange visitor became blood brothers through cuts in their wrists.   Things turn weird now and I do not want to spoil it for new readers but when he writes his old friends sister to find out how he is doing, she tells him he killed himself years ago in a fit of despair.  

"Keeping His Promise" is a good story, not a great one, entertaining and well written.   

About twelve or so years ago I read all of Dicken's novels in publication date order.   It was one of the great reading projects of my life.   I have revisited him twice on my blog in posts on Oliver Twist and Sketches by Boz.   "Trial By Murder" is a pretty simple story (there will be links to read all the stories at the end of the post).     A man is called to jury duty on a murder case and he begins to see the murder victim in the court room.   (It does sound sort of like a Ghost Stories plot.)    Dickens does a great job of describing the mix of people on the jury.   The trial lasted ten days and the jury (all men of course) slept on the tables at an inn with a guard to make sure they did not leave.   This is kind of a two note story.   The first note is the appearance of the ghost of the murder victim.   The second note comes in a pretty good twist at the end and I will leave it unspoiled.   This is a very much an OK story but not great at all.   Algernon Blackwood's story is better done (I think I can say this as I totally love Dickens).

I really enjoy reading the short stories of Saki.    Yesterday I read and posted on my first Saki (1870 to 1916) short story with a paranormal element, "The Cobweb".   Yesterday Tom Conoboy suggested I read Saki's "Srendi Vashtar".   I did and it is the best Saki short story I have ever read (out of 30 or so-270 or so to go!).   It is just perfect and a great paranormal story.   The best paranormal writers often leave it up to decide what happens in the story and Saki does just that.   There are two lead characters in the story, a boy of maybe 10 to 14.  and his adult female cousin who tries to run his life.   The boy pretty much hates her.  Saki has been called a "malicious boy delighting in being in smarter than the real adults" and I guess that is accurate.

The boy gets a pet ferret.   He begins to worship ferret as a god, calling him "Srendi Vashtar".   As the story goes on it seems the boy really does begin to worship the ferret.  His female cousin does not know about the ferret and would make him get rid of him so he keeps him locked in a tool shed and hides the key in his own room.    Every day he begins to pray, "Great Srendi Vashtar grant me one wish".   The boy clearly believes the ferret is a god.   One day the cousin finds the key and opens the took shed.    When he hears a horrible scream from his cousin and sees the ferret has blood on his mouth and is running to the woods he is very happy.   When the family maid announces the cousin is dead on floor the boy knows the ferret god has granted his wish and will now return to the woods, having fulfilled his mission

Saki's story is way better than  those of Dickens and Blackwood.   

Link to "Srendi Vashtar"-best Saki story I have read so far

Link to "Keeping His Promise" by Algernon Blackwood-decent Gothic horror short story.

Link to "Trial by Murder" by Charles Dickens-read it because of who wrote it and it does give us a look at jury duty in England in the 1860s that I found interesting.

I hope to read Blackwood's most famous work "The Willows" before October 31.  

Mel u

Two Edwardian Englishmen take on Haruki Murakami in a Paranormal Short Story Match

"The Cobweb" by Saki (5 pages, 1902
"The Bowman" by Arthur Machen (4 pages, 1917)
"The Elephant Vanishes" by Huruki Murakami (1987, 17 pages)

Can Two Odd Englishmen from the 1910s

Really Stand up to Huruki Murakami

A Paranormal Contest

I am really enjoying participating in Carl V's R I P reading event devoted to Horror and Paranormal Literature.   My last post for it was devoted to short stories by two American authors, O Henry and Sherwood Anderson, and the world's second best short story writer, Guy de Maupassant from France.   

Today I plan to look at two short stories written during the early years of the 20th century by Englishmen and one from the towering Japanese writer Huruki Murakami.   Can two maybe a bit odd Englishmen stand up to one of the world's greatest living authors.

I have posted extensively on Saki and Huruki Murakami in the past (I think I have more posts on Saki than any other book blog) so I will  focus first on Arthur Machen.

"The Bowman" by Arthur Machen

"The Bowman" by Arthur Machen was totally loved by the English reading public on its first publication.   It has to be one of very best uses ever of the short story as  a device for raising public morale during a war.   

Machen (UK-Wales-1863 to 1947) had a huge influence on paranormal writing.   He is best known for his novella The Great God Pan which Stephen King has called possibly the best horror story ever written.   He was a strong influence on P. K. Lovecraft and almost every writer who published in the pulp magazines where horror and paranormal stories got there start.   His life is interesting.  It seems he first developed an interest in the occult when his wife died of cancer.  He was for a time involved with The Order of the Golden Dawn headed by A. E. Waite.   He had a life time belief in "little people" only some can see.  (There is a very good article on his life, background and influence here.)

The story begins on a WWI battleground in France.   The English are being slaughtered in the 1000s by a much larger German army. (This work is understandably very anti-German).   Thousands of brave Englishmen are being cut down by German machine guns and canons.   A highly educated Englishmen recalls the very famous battle of Agincourt in France in 1415 when a greatly outnumber army of English men destroyed a much larger and better equipped French army through the use of long bows.   Every soldier had learned of this battle in school and it is great source of pride to the English.   Suddenly this man calls out, in Latin,  to St George (the patron saint of England) for the help of the Welsh and English archers from this battle just as all seem doomed to a certain death.   Suddenly thousands of what are described as "shadowy" archers appear among the English.   The air darkens completely as millions of arrows are launched at the Germans.   Everywhere on the battle ground we here shouts of "The Archers are here" and "St George has saved us".  The English soldiers were saved.   The German soldiers attempt to retreat but their officers begin to shoot their own men in mass for cowardice but soon the all  the Germans run from the battlefield.  Hundreds of thousands of Germans are found dead on the battlefield but none has a mark on their bodies.   The German  authorities attempt to claim it was a gas attack.    

I think  "The Bowman" was in its place and hour of need, a work of genius.   I think even now anyone who feels he is of English inheritance at all will be moved by this story.  I can see how one could say it is jingoistic but that is what was needed.   I will take a look very soon at Machen's most famous work, The Great God Pan.     My guess, forgetting who is a better writer, that Machen's story will be read widely long after Saki and Murakami are read only by specialists in ancient literature.   

"The Cobweb" by Saki

I really like Saki (Hector Munro 1870 to 1916-UK) a lot.   He wrote a lot of short stories, pretty most all with surprise endings.    Most of the stories are set among the upper crust of society in England in the early years of the 20th century.   His works tend to be gentle satires.   His prose style is very mannered and he may seem effete to some but I love his stories.   He was over the draft age for WWI (43) but he volunteered for service and was killed during the war.   One thing nobody associated him with, including me until I read "The Cobweb", was the paranormal.   One of the unfortunate associations in paranormal/Gothic/occult stories is the assumption that quite old unattractive women are sinister.   "The Cobweb" takes place on a remote farm.   It has passed from hand to hand in a family as people die off.  The only fixture is an old woman who works there.   No living person  can be found who knows how she got to the farm.  It just seems like she has always been there.   The atmosphere of the story is very Gothic.   The woman begins to see traditional occult images of coming death.  Everyone just takes it for granted she is seeing signs of her own death.    This Saki and there is a twist but unlike all of his other stories, it will not make you smile.   This is a story for Saki fans and those who want to read a story of the occult from England in 1902.   

"The Elephant Vanishes" by Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami (1947-Japan) is by far the most read Japanese writer in the world today.   Some see him as one day the 3rd Japanese Nobel Prize winner for Literature.    I think his forthcoming IQ84 (October 2011) will be one of the most blogged on books for the rest of the year.     (There is additional background information on him in my prior posts on his work.)

"The Elephant Vanishes" (translated by Jay Rubin) is a very well done and set up story.    To compress things, an old elephant is given to a town by the owners of a local zoo when the land the zoo  is on was sold to developers.   At first the town leaders did not know what to do with the elephant.   No zoo will take him as he is old and they all already have elephants.    To kill him is out of the question so they set up a house for him with airtight security.     He is taken care of by the same elderly man who cared for him many years at the zoo.    One day the elephant just disappears (he was also chained up by his leg with a key only the city leaders had).   Everyone assumes somehow the keeper stole him but it just seems impossible.     The narrator of the story develops an obsession with trying to figure out how the elephant disappeared.   Murakami does his normal great job with the characters in the story.   There is even a failed romance.      I want to leave the ending of this story unspoiled.   Murakami makes use of magic-realism to explain how the elephant disappeared and I found this ending a little forced.

OK how does the dust settle in this read off?

For sure I think "The Bowman" has had and will continue to have the most readers.  Of this story many of its readers love it and that includes new readers.   It has been and will continued to be read by people who see Saki as a bit silly (OK sorry for that) and Murakami as over their head.   (It will probably never be taught in German High Schools!)   People will like the stories by Saki and Murakami but they will not love them they will not tell others about them.   As I said, "The Bowman" is a war time story and it screams that out to us.    Murakami's  story is the best plotted and the only one with any real character development.   The Saki story is clever and well written but no more.

You can read "The Bowman" and "The Cobweb" at East of the Web:  Short Stories.   There a lot of short stories that would be perfect for the R I P challenge.

I read "The Elephant Vanishes" in The Oxford Book of Short Stories and it also is included in other collections.  

Has any one any experience with Arthur Machen to share with us?  

Mel u

"The Jesting of Arlington Stringham" by Saki

"The Jesting of Arlington Stringham" by Saki  (1908, 4 pages)

One More from Saki

Saki on The Reading Life

The same people that E. M. Forster and Ford Madox Ford wrote oh so serious works about Saki (pen name of Hector Munro-1870-1916-UK) had  a good natured time having some fun with.    Since my blog began in July 2009 I have posted on 13 of his stories and read 10 more that I did not post on.   Saki is a "surprise or twist ending" short story writer and is sometimes looked down on for that reason.   This is the readers loss as his stories are wonderfully written and often a very funny exposure of the foibles of the upper classes in Edwardian England.   Angus Wilson said Saki is kind of like an annoyingly clever and a bit  of a devilish child making fun of the real adults.

When I saw East of The Web:  Short Stories was featuring one of his stories I decided it would be a nice change of pace.

As "The Jesting of Arlington Stringham" opens Mrs Stringham and her mother are talking about something that Arlington had did that he had never done before in his many years in House of Commons, he made a joke during one of his speeches.   It might have not been meant as a joke but that is how the press reported it.   Mrs Stringham tells her mother she sees this as very bad omen:

" "Arlington made a joke in the House last night," said Eleanor Stringham to her mother; "in all the years we've been married neither of us has made jokes, and I don't like it now. I'm afraid it's the beginning of the rift in the lute."

     "What lute?" said her mother.

     "It's a quotation," said Eleanor.

     To say that anything was a quotation was an excellent method, in Eleanor's eyes, for withdrawing it from discussion, just as you could always defend indifferent lamb late in the season by saying "It's mutton."

When  he comes home he makes a remark that makes no sense to his wife and she takes that as him showing off how clever he has suddenly become.

His wife is really suspicious now and she strikes back by with this nasty bit  of business that most long married men can probably relate to a bit:

     "You had better tell it to Lady Isobel. I've no doubt she would appreciate it.".

     Lady Isobel was seen everywhere with a fawn-coloured collie at a time when every one else kept nothing but Pekinese, and she had once eaten four green apples at an afternoon tea in the Botanical Gardens, so she was widely credited with a rather unpleasant wit. The censorious said she slept in a hammock and understood Yeats's poems, but her family denied both stories.

(Spoiler alert)-I will tell a bit more of the plot-there are 100s of Saki stories online you can read if you like)

A few days latter Mr. Stringham makes another joke in the House of Commons as he is enjoying his reputation as a wit that is considered quite brilliant.   Mrs Stringham's good friend Gertrude tells her when she complains about it that she has heard Lady Isobel say the same thing numerous times.   The ending is pretty dark for a Saki story.

You can read this story here

Please share your experience with Saki with us-

Mel u

"

Three Surprise Ending Short Stories-American, English and French

"Two Thanksgiving Day Gentleman" by O. Henry (1905, 6 pages)
"Cousin Theresa" by Saki (1908,  5 pages)
"The Adopted Son" by Guy de Maupassant (1881, 4 pages)

Ocean Hopping with Three Surprise

Ending Short Stories

Magazine editors have had a lot to do with the way the short story has developed.   During my reading project on short stories of the Australian Bush (Outback Tales from 1870 to 1920 or so) I found the Australian short story first began to blossom when a nationwide weekly publication, The  Bulletin,  began to  publish short works of fiction about "real life" in the Australian outback.   The stories had to be of a certain length and style to be accepted.    During Irish Short Story Week I became aware of how important The New Yorker has been for sustaining the quality of the Irish Short Story.    The standards of the magazine were high and so was the pay.

In India, The Hindu published many of the short stories of R. K. Narayan and others.    They imposed length requirements on their writers and catered to readers whose first language was not English.    Magazine editors liked surprise ending short stories or for sure they thought that is what magazine buyers wanted.   The modern short story almost began to develop in revolt against the surprise ending short story.    This morning I want to spot light three surprise ending short stories by three very famous short story writers.

"Two Thanksgiving Gentlemen" by O. Henry (1862 to 1910-USA) is a classic surprise ending short story.   (There is some background information on O. Henry in my prior posts on him.)   Almost the whole point of the story is building up to the surprise ending.   I sort of saw it coming but not totally.   The story opens on the very American holiday of Thanksgiving.    The central character of the story is a homeless man.    We never learn how he wound up homeless.    For the last nine years a man  has found him on his park bench on Thanksgiving day and taken him out to an elegant Thanksgiving Day lunch (it is a big feasting day).    O. Henry does a great job of bringing the mysterious benefactor to life.   We learn this annual gift of a lunch is the biggest thing in his life.     Maybe the surprise ending is very sentimental and half predictable but the story is worth reading for the people it creates.   O. Henry some times seems like he is just going through the motions of pleasing his editors but there are moments of real brilliance in his work.

All of O.  Henry is in the public  domain.    I read this story HERE.   You can find nearly all his stories online.

"The Adopted Son" by Guy de Maupassant (1850 to 1893-France-he  wrote about 300 short stories) is a classic surprise ending, tear the rug out from under you short story.     Maupassant is often listed as the world's second best short story writers, right behind Anton Chekhov.   (There is some background information on him in my prior posts on him.)      Maupassant supported an expensive life style through the sales of short stories and novellas.     He wrote to please the public and magazine editors.   A number of his short stories (I have read 14 of them since I began my blog  on July 7, 2009) do seem like they were written by a formula and rely on melodrama and the evoking of feelings of guilt for their power.   A lot of them are surprise ending short stories.   At his best he a great master of the genre.   As the story opens we meet two poor country families who had sons about the same time.
Both families struggle to survive.   One day a wealthy woman passes in her carriage and the lives of one of the families is changed forever while the second family endures on in resentment of their luckier neighbors.    There is sentimentality about the poor in France in Maupassant for sure.   At the ending of the story a terrible surprise is brought down on one of the families but I did not really see it coming.   This is a decent story and though not a work of genius.

You can read "The Adopted Son" HERE

"Cousin Theresa" by Saki (Henry Munro-1870 to 1916-UK)  is very much a typical Saki surprise ending short story.   (There is background information on Saki in my prior posts on him.)     Saki's stories are normally gentle social satires on the foibles of the upper and middle classes in Edwardian England.   Nobody is poor in his stories, unlike those of  O. Henry and de Maupassant.    There is no playing on guilt and little real characterization.    The pleasure of his stories, which is very genuine, is in his elegant prose and the kind of "super smart child" feel that his stories seem to have.     His stories are fun.   Some will find the prose too mannered.    Some will lollipop there way to the end of a Saki story to see what the surprise ending will be.    "Cousin Theresa" is a pretty self indulgent story.     It is about a father and his two sons.    One of the sons has just returned from a long posting at some remote place in the British Empire.  The son had some sort of big accomplishments or other.    His other son seems to be a lay about who devotes all his time to scribbling out plays.   The father tells himself, "OK one of my sons may be wasting his life but at least the other will bring the family fame through his governmental service."     The slacker son's play "Cousin Theresa" gets preformed on the stage in front of the Royal family.   I bet you can probably see the ending coming now.   "Cousin Theresa" exists pretty much just for the surprise ending.   It takes only a moment or two to read it and it will make you smile (and feel smart if you see the ending coming).

You can read "Cousin Theresa" HERE.

What are your feeling about "surprise ending" short stories?

Mel u

Two by Saki-"Herman the Irascible" and "The Purple of the Balkan Kings"

"Herman the Irascible   (5 pages, 1904) and "The Purple of the Balkan Kings"  (1902, 4 pages)  both by Saki

This my 12th post on Saki (Hector Munro 1870 to 1916-UK).   Almost every day I check the great web page East of the Web: Short Stories  to see what their short stories of the day are.   Normally they have one classic and one modern story.    It was on this web page that I first discovered Katherine Mansfield.   The webmasters at East of the Web clearly like Saki a lot as he often the author of the story of the day.    Saki wrote nearly 300 short stories so they have a lot to pick from!

Saki is a "surprise ending" short story writer.    The whole point of his stories is setting  us up for the often hilarious ending.    I know Saki is not on any list of best short story writers.    I probably would not read one of his stories   a second time.    His prose style is sort of a parody on High British Historians.   I think after reading a few of his stories you would be able to recognize his work.   I can accept that some might be put of by what may be an overly mannered prose style.    Anyway a lot of people, including me, do enjoy reading his good natured stories once and a while.

Of these two stories, "Herman the Irascible" is the best.    Women might be offended by it but it all mean  in fun.     There is a great plague among the Royalty in England and the 23rd in line for the thrown, Herman the Irascible, a very minor German prince becomes King of England.    There is a big movement in the country to give women the vote.   Herman does not really like the idea but he does not feel he is in a position to reject the idea.     He gives women the right to vote but they are required by the law to vote in all elections from dog  catcher on up.   Men can vote if they want to but they are not required.     Now comes the twist.

"The Purple of the Balkan Kings"  is a story seemingly about a great player in Balkan politics, exiled for now, waiting to return to his throne.   Saki likes to write about government officials and royalty.    The ending is pretty good.


Do you have favorite Saki story?

"Saki, I like you even if you are not  Irish"

Mel u

"The Interlopers" by Saki

"The Interlopers" by Saki (1910, 7 pages)

Please consider participating in Irish Short Stories Week

"I would be honored if you
will join me on March 14 during
Irish Short Stories Week"-Maria

The more I read Saki the more I like him.     (Hector Munro-1870-to 1916-UK-his pen name comes from the ring bearer in "The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam") .   In the last year I have read about 15 of his short stories and posted on 10 of them.   I really intended to stop posting on his stories once I had posted on  (they are a bit alike I will admit) three of them  even as I kept reading them (they are often the story of the day at East Of the Web:  Short Stories) but I kept finding stories I wanted to share with readers of my blog.  

Saki's short stories are in the surprise or twist ending short story category.They are usually gentle satires about the gentility of the Edwardian Era.  His prose is written to a very high standard.   I think after just a few stories you could probably pick one out of literary lineup.        As you read them you do begin to try to anticipate what the twist will be.     I prefer his stories to those of O Henry, if I had to choose.   If you do not like surprise or twist ending short stories, then you will not probably like Saki.    If you like well written prose, enough detail and characterizations to make things come alive for you and enjoy seeing if you can come up with the ending, the you should give Saki a try.  

As the story opens, set in the forests of the Carpathian Mountains, we meet two local noble men.   They have a long standing legal feud over a large parcel of forest.   One of the men's grandfather lost it in a suit to the other but the loser has never accepted the judgement of the courts as valid.    There is a blood hatred between the men that started two generations ago.  

One day both men happen to be on a solitary hunt in the disputed forest.   Suddenly they see each other.   Both begin to ask themselves if it right to shoot the other without warning.    While they hesitate a huge tree crashes down on each of them, injuring and trapping them.    Here is where the story gets very interesting.    The twist ending was just wonderful and really made me think.    Once you read the story, stop for a second and reflect on the fact that Saki was killed in battle just a few years after this story was written and it will seem   really pretty deep and prophetic for just a "twist ending short story".  

I think this would be a good "class room story" for those 12 and up-it is in the public domain and can be read online here.     You can read this story in just a few minutes.    I will be reading more Saki and I will share the ones I like best with readers of my blog.


Mel u

"Quail Seed" by Saki- A Really Funny Story

"Quail Seed" by Saki (1911, 7 pages)

Every morning almost I check the web page East of the Web: Short Stories to see what they have selected as their story of the day.      I would suggest anyone interested in reading more short stories and for sure anyone just getting into short stories who might not know what to read to check it out.   "Quail Seed" by Saki (1870 to 1916-Hector Munro-UK) is the story of the day this morning.  

Saki is one of the most popular of all short story writers.   He is famous for his great twist or surprise endings.   So far I have posted on nine of his stories.       I would say his stories are very well written in a prose style that will make you smile.    All that I have read  so far have been good natured satires set in comfortably middle class or above Edwardian England.    

This story is set in a small grocery store trying to compete against new much bigger stores.    The next time you go into a giant super market type grocery store think back on these lines from Saki in 1911:

"The outlook is not encouraging for us smaller businesses," said Mr. Scarrick to the artist and his sister, who had taken rooms over his suburban grocery store. "These big concerns are offering all sorts of attractions to the shopping public which we couldn't afford to imitate, even on a small scale -- reading-rooms and play-rooms and gramophones and Heaven knows what. People don't care to buy half a pound of sugar nowadays unless they can listen to Harry Lauder and have the latest Australian cricket scores ticked off before their eyes.

What happens next is really funny.   This might be the funniest of his stories I have read so far.   I do not want to spoil any of the story for you.     The ending is a very well done surprise.    

"Quail Seed" can be read online.      Give Saki a chance and he just might get to be a habit.  

If anyone has any suggestions as to short stories I can read online, please leave a comment.

"Shock Tactics" by Saki

"Shock Tactics" by Saki (1913, 6 pages)

I am developing a fondness for Saki's short stories (Hector Munro-1870 to 1916-UK).    Whenever East of the Web:  Short Stories selects one of his stories as the story of the day, I read it.    This will be the 9th story by Saki I have posted on.     I have posted some biographical data in earlier posts on Saki you can read if you want.  

Yesterday I read Angus Wilson's  introduction to Collected Stories by Elizabeth Bowen and was very taken by a passing remark he makes about Saki.  He says  Saki's central characters or tricksters (he is the epitome of a trick ending short story writer)are malicious excessively refined  near but not quite adult children just learning that the adults in their world can be made objects of fun with a bit of ingenuity.    Maybe they have not seen the irony in the fact that they are utterly dependent on those the mock or have not thought through what they will be come one day.  

"Shock Tactics" is another very well written (I think once you read a few of his stories you could pick one out of a literary line up) satire on the moneyed class in Edwardian England.     Our central male character, a man about 20, is complaining to his friend that his mother reads all of his incoming mail.  (No E Mail, no phones  and even no Face Book in this era so letters were very important).    He has told her over and over not to but she persists in reading his mail, insisting he is too young to go be allowed to receive letters on his own.    His friend basically says what kind of man lets his mother read all of his mail and taunts him for it.

One day the two young men are conversing over the fact that a young lady wants to send the first man a letter but he does not feel comfortable doing that as his mother may not approve the content of the letter.    The world of Saki is also a world where people have plenty of time on their hands to debate such matters.   The friend comes up with a great way to break the mother of her habit of reading her son's mail.   I will let you learn the plot on your own if you wish.

I know Saki's stories are not considered great art.   I have not seen his work listed on any top short story lists.     To me his stories are fun, well written and  gentle satires of the human condition.     His stories are maybe a little predictable.   I will continue to read and post on them.  

"Shock Tactics" can be read online

if any have suggestions as to other short stories I might like, please leave a comment

Mel u

"The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat" by Saki

"The Philanthropist and the Happy Cat" by Saki (1911, 4 pages)


Most days I check the website, East of the Web:Short Stories to discover what they have selected as their short stories of the day.    It was this way I first read Katherine Mansfield.     If I like their selection (and especially if it is not real long) there is a good chance I will read it.     Saki (Hector Munro-UK-1870-1916-killed in WWI) is often featured and so far I have posted on seven of his stories.    The more I read Saki the more I like and I hope understand his stories.    It would be easy to dismiss his stories as simple pre-modern twist ending short stories aimed at a small class of English society but if you do that you will miss out on his gentle (though he can be wicked) satire and his very relaxing prose style.   His stories have so far all made me smile and think a bit.   Plus in two of the seven I have read a cat plays a central part! 


The central character in "The Philanthropist and the Cat" is Jocantha Bessbury , the contented wife of an affluent kind man who loves her and provides her with a life of comfort and leisure.    One day in a reflective mode the wife decides that the only one she knows who might be more contented than her is her cat, Attab.

"He lies there, purring and dreaming, shifting his limbs now and then in an ecstasy of cushioned comfort. He seems the incarnation of everything soft and silky and velvety, without a sharp edge in his composition, a dreamer whose philosophy is sleep and let sleep; and then, as evening draws on, he goes out into the garden with a red glint in his eyes and slays a drowsy sparrow."

One morning Jocantha looks around her lovely house (imagine something out of the set of the movie The Age of Innocence) and decided when she is out and about today she will do something nice for a shop girl (as they were called).     She decides to buy a theater ticket (way beyond the reach of the shop girl) and give it away.    She imagines how terribly enriched the recipient's life will be by this gesture.   Of course things do not work out the way Jocantha had in mind and it turns out to be her whose life will be changed by what happens-It is just a five minute read so I will not tell more of the plot.

OK I concede Saki's stories may not be canon status works and they are kind of escapist reads but they are fun, well written if  you can accept the mannered Edwardian prose, expose the silliness of people in a kind way and have cats in them!     I will be reading and posting on more of his stories.   Teachers should take note that there is politically incorrect language in some of his stories, including this one.  

This story can be read online




Mel u

"Mrs Peckletide's Tiger" by Saki-UK/USA 1910 Short Story Shoot Out-Round One

Saki-UK-1870 to 1916

Round One- Trans-Atlantic Battle of the Twist Ending Short Stories from the 1910s

O Henry-USA-1862-1910

The U.K. is represented by the elegant  Edwardian, Saki

The USA is championed by a writer of the common man, O Henry


"Mrs Peckletide's Tiger" by Saki (1913, 6 pages)




Almost by accident this is the seventh story by Saki I have read and posted on in the last few months.  
Hector Munro (1870 to 1916)  writing under the pen name of Saki is considered a master of the very short story (under 5 pages)and is often mentioned as an English O Henry.   Saki was born in Burma (I prefer the old name) in 1870 where his father was serving as inspector general for the Burmese police.   Burma was part of the British Empire at that time.   At age two Saki is sent back to England to be raised by his grandmother when his mother died as a result of an incident with a cow.   His father later retired to England and he and Saki appeared to have had an amiable relationship as perhaps indicated by Saki also joining the office of the Burmese police inspector at age 23.   Saki caught malaria at age 25 and returned to England where he would become journalist.   He worked for a couple of years as foreign correspondent in Russia where he witnessed the infamous bloody Sunday episode.   He also gave that up and for about the last ten years of his life he was not formally employed on a regular basis  and was supported by family wealth.   It is during this period that he wrote most of his work. 





I am reading this story based on a suggestion of Risa of Bread Crum Reads that we read and both post in the same time frame on this story of Saki and "Ransom of Red Chief", one of the most read short stories by the very famous American writer, O Henry.     Both writers wrote brief stories for popular magazines and both are famous for twist endings.    I hope to explore a bit more their similarities and differences in my next post.


As the story opens we meet Mrs Peckletide  on a trip in India.  She is in a dither because her arch-rival and close friend Loona Bemberton was written up in newspapers all around the world  because she rode eleven miles in a plane with an Algerian aviator.   Mrs Peckletide has decided that if she shoots a tiger and lots of pictures of the event get in the Texas newspapersshe will be over Mrs Bemberton in status.  It  is never made real clear why she decided on this.   .    How the tiger hunt is arranged and what happens next is really a lot of fun so I will not reveal more of the plot.   Like the other Saki stories I have read, it is entertaining and the ending will make you smile and maybe even think a bit.    


The story can be read online here

Mel u