Renaissance Woman Issue 3
Real Buildings That Helped Inspire Shirley Jackson’s The Haunting of Hill House Part 1
The Petit Trianon at Versailles - The Petit Trianon is a château on the sprawling grounds of Versailles that was known to be a special favorite of first Madame de Pompadour and later Marie Antoinette. Its reputation of being haunted was solidified by two Edwardian women (Miss Moberly and Miss Jourdain) in their book An Adventure (1910). An Adventure recalls their visit to Versailles in 1901 where they claim an unusual “psychic experience” occurred while walking the grounds in search of the Petit Trianon. Having seen that Shirley Jackson is said to have thought that An Adventure is “one of the greatest ghost stories of all time” I decided to read the slim booklet myself. It is such a subtle ‘ghost story’ that its hard not to be a little disappointed at first. The women’s experience seems almost normal if not for a few odd anachronistic encounters that were barely of note to them at the time. They discuss places and structures they came upon that they later learn have not existed in Versailles for many years, as well as several people with notably out-of-place uniform. Upon secondary visits they are unable to find any of the landmarks they came across on their first visit and that the dress of the people they had met is similar to what would have been worn in the days of Marie Antoinette. It reads like The Invention of Morel in that they seem to be witnessing and interacting with a memory of someone else’s from a long time ago. It is often referred to as one of the few non-fiction accounts of time travel. An Adventure is a brief and only very slightly eerie read if you don’t mind extensive descriptions of landscape and maps…
An NYC Apartment Building - Quote from Shirley Jackson's essay, "Experience and Fiction":
[M]y husband and I . . . were on the train which stops briefly at the 125th Street station, and just outside the station, dim and horrible in the dusk, I saw a building so disagreeable that I could not stop looking at it; it was tall and black and as I looked at it when the train began to move again it faded away and disappeared. . . . From that time on I completely ruined by whole vacation in New York City by dreading the moment when we would have to take the train back and pass that building again. . . . [E]ven after we were home it bothered me still, coloring all my recollections of a pleasant visit to the city, and at last I wrote to a friend at Columbia University and asked him to locate the building and find out, if he could, why it looked so terrifying. When we got his answer I had one important item for [The Haunting of Hill House]. He wrote that he had had trouble finding the building, since it only existed from that one particular point of the 125th Street station; from any other angle it was not recognizable as a building at all. Some seven months before it had been almost entirely burned in a disastrous fire which killed nine people. What was left of the building, from the other three sides, was a shell. The children in the neighborhood knew that it was haunted.
Slightly Lesser Known Gothic Books Part 2
Lot No 249 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - A delightful short story with lots of dark academia vibes about a supernatural mummy.
The Bloody Chamber by Angela Carter - I highly doubt this can be categorized as ‘lesser known’ but I will throw this book at anyone I can. A series of dark, erotic, feminist fairy tale retellings. JUST GO READ IT ALREADY!
The Night of the Hunter by David Grubb - A twisted southern gothic classic inspired by serial killer Harry Powers, "The Bluebeard of Quiet Dell." This novel was later turned into the excellent (and very disturbing) 1955 film with Robert Mitchum.
“Spooky” Books I’ve Read So Far This Season
The Vampire Maid by Hume Nisbet - 4 Stars
Lot No. 249 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle - 5 Stars
Thornhill by Pam Smy - 3 Stars
An Adventure by C.A.E. Moberly & E.F. Jordain - 3.25 Stars
Pedro Páramo by Juan Rulfo - 4 Stars
Crooked House by Agatha Christie - 3.5 Stars
Mary Reilly by Valerie Martin - 3.5 Stars
Ten Days in a Mad-House by Nellie Bly - 3.5 Stars
The Diviners by Libba Bray - 3.5 Stars
The Professor and The Madman by Simon Winchester - 3.75 Stars
Currently Reading
The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness