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Nate:
Good evening and welcome to Chrononauts, a science fiction literature history podcast.
I'm Nate, and I'm joined by my co-host Gretchen and J.M., and tonight we're taking a look at stories that follow in the wake and legacy of "Frankenstein". If you want to listen to our previous segments on H.G. Wells' "Under the Knife", "Dr. Moreau", and Ronald Ross' "The Vivisector, Vivisected", listen to the previous segments in this episode.
This segment will be focusing on a different Dr. Morrow, and like so many of the other authors we've covered on this podcast, the most comprehensive biographical picture of W.C. Morrow comes from Sam Moskowitz, which can be found in the 50-page article "Forgotten Master of Horror: The First phase", which appears in the 1992 book "Discovering Classic Horror Fiction 1", edited by Darrell Schweitzer. Much of this information is also present in S.T. Joshi's "The Evolution of the Weird Tale", and Morrow wrote a series of autobiographical sketches entitled "Some Queer Experiences" that appeared in the December 28, 1891 issue of the Argonaut, which I don't know if they lost their movable type piece for the letter B, because all the B's are replaced by H's, makes it a little odd to read.
Like the Schachner, the Moskowitz article summarizes pretty much all of its fiction from his early period, and notes that this article is an expansion of his Morrow commentary in his book "Science Fiction in Old San Francisco, Volume 1, History of the Movement from 1854 to 1890", which in addition to Morrow details Robert Duncan Milne, William Henry Rhodes, Emma Frances Daws, and Ambrose Bierce. Bierce in particular became quite well acquainted with Morrow, as Bierce was the editor of the weekly The Argonaut, which bought Morrow's first seven stories and published them in 1879, and was very much Morrow's home for his early period. Moskowitz defines the ending of which as the publication of his story, "The Inmate of the Dungeon", in 1897. He's got an interesting and prolific body of work, so let's take a look at his life for a little bit.
William Chambers Morrow was not a Westerner, but rather born in the Deep South on July 7, 1854, in Selma, Alabama. His family owned several slaves. His father, William Sr., was a Baptist minister who married Martha Ann McCreary, a girl 15 years his junior, literally a girl as she was 14 when they married. William was the fourth child, preceded by three sisters, two younger siblings would die in childhood, and a seventh sibling, Danzilla, which is a strange name, was born later.
Two slaves were registered in William Jr.'s name as early as 1860 when he was six years old, so it definitely gave me flashbacks of Rufus from "Kindred" here. His relations with the slaves during his formative years strongly impacted his life, as in "Some Queer Experiences he writes:
"My earliest mental development was largely the work of intelligent but highly superstitious Negro women, slaves serving as nurses and housekeepers, that they filled up my keenly sensitive mind with the most dreadful stories of ghosts, witches, devils, and the like, so that my childhood was passed in terror, my youth and morbid fancies, and my manhood down to the present time, under the control of a gloomy and almost unmanageable imagination.
"In my boyhood, the most terrifying dreams would disturb my sleep ; from these, I would often wake with paroxysms of screaming that my parents could not check in an hour. Somnambulism was a common experience, leading me into perilous situations, and giving concern to those charged with my safety. The slightest fever would invariably send me into delirium, when the most grotesque and horrifying hallucinations — which would require a book to describe in detail — would haunt me.
"From all this, it may he judged that my temperament is abnormal, and that perhaps I have nervous peculiarities not common to the race; and that, this being so, I have certain — permit me to say — faculties which possibly give me capacity to see and hear things not seen and heard by all. In order that I might the better understand my own condition, I have made such study as I could of the human body and mind, giving much attention to obscure mental functions as analyzed and set forth by able writers ; and, while I have learned little with regard to myself, I am convinced that there are extraordinary things often happening and not at all understood, and that upon the imperfect glimpses which we have of them are based those natural (and, in the case of some persons, absolutely necessary) beliefs having spiritualism, theosophy, and some others as their basis."
So after the Civil War, their slaves were freed, and the Morrows actually had to do work for themselves, rather than relying on the exploited labor of others, so they went into the hotel owning business.
The Gulf City Hotel was constructed in Mobile, Alabama in 1868. This building was demolished in 1934. Some sources say the building was built in 1837, but this is not true, as a book published by the Mobile First National Bank in 1940, entitled "Highlights of 75 Years in Mobile" states, "Mobile's first sewer was laid down Conti street in 1868, at the time the famous old Gulf City Hotel, later known as the Southern Hotel, was erected at the southeast corner of Conti and Water Streets. And goes on to say, the hotel being constructed by Mr. D.O. Grady at the southeast corner of Conti and Water Streets is rapidly approaching completion, and when finished will present a very credible appearance.
And indeed, a photograph of the building a few months before it was demolished exists, and it does have a very credible appearance. The Morrows managed the hotel for some time, with William Sr.'s health rapidly declining, and William Jr., his sister, Georgiana, and his mother assume the management role in 1869.
From 1869 to 1879, aside from this hotel management piece, details are rather sparse about his life. He graduates from Howard College in 1869 and also attended the University of Tuscaloosa for some time, and it's almost certain that he started writing during this period, though it doesn't appear that he had anything published. The family opens up another hotel in 1878 in Meridian, Mississippi, and William Sr. dies in 1879, a few months after William Jr. moves to the west coast, with Moskowitz speculating that his family continued in the hotel management business after William Jr. left.
Upon his move to the west coast, he immediately impressed Ambrose Bierce and Fred Somers, who was one of the founders of the Argonaut, and his material started appearing in the Argonaut shortly afterwards. Bierce resigned from the Argonaut in late 1879 and starts a magazine called The Californian, which also publishes a bunch of Morrow's stuff along with Milne, so it seems that the three were playing off one another for a while. Morrow publishes two novels in the early 1880s, "A Strange Confession", which was serialized in The Californian in 1880 and 1881.
JM:
A novel probably is what this should have been.
Nate:
Yeah, yeah, I'd say so. Yeah, this is definitely an interesting one in a lot of ways, but we'll get to that in a minute.
"Blood Money" was the other one in 1882, which was published in standalone book form. And while his productivity lulled in the mid 1880s, he wrote a number of his best received stories in the late 1880s and early 1890s, including the one we're doing tonight.
By 1899, he had moved on to teaching writing, which Ambrose Bierce remarked, "Yes, it's a pity that Morrow teaches others to write badly instead of himself writing well." The end of his career, he switches to adventure novels and doesn't look like he published anything after 1908. Ironically, the largest bibliography of his stories is on fantlab.ru, which lists nearly 70 short stories and four novels, with some of them having been translated into Russian. The one we're looking at tonight having four separate Russian translations all done in 2016, which is kind of strange.
In anthology of his best stories, "The Ape, The Idiot, and Other People" was published in 1897, and early on became a bit of a collector's item for those interested in weird fiction, and is one of the many republications of the story that we're reading tonight.
The story we're looking at tonight was originally published as "The Surgeon's Experiment" in the October 15, 1887 issue of the Argonaut, and was retitled "The Monster Maker" when published in the 1897 anthology, and apparently all subsequent republications afterwards. It was republished in Weird Tales in the December 1928 issue, and what appears like countless anthologies, including one called "Christopher Lee's X Certificate".
So yeah, I don't know, "The Monster Maker"? I thought it was fun, again a little silly, but I enjoyed the ride.
Gretchen:
Yeah, I agree with that. I think that the pacing is a little weird, but I think it's a fun story as well.
Nate:
Yeah.
JM:
Well, it's too bad. There are certain aspects of this story that are really good, but it doesn't want to commit to being what it needs to be, which is a short story that packs a punch to it and focuses on something, and I think the best parts of this story are all pretty much in the first part of the story. And I don't know, I think that the entire way it's structured just undermines how good the story could be.
Nate:
I agree, yeah.
JM:
And it's funny because I had forgotten about this, but I actually did read most of "The Ape, The Idiot, and Other People" collection about somewhere between 20 and 25 years ago. It was a long time ago. It was one of those things that was available on Project Gutenberg, and they go like, you know, sounds kind of interesting, I wonder what this is like, and I read it. I don't know, I'm a big fan of short stories, I'm a big fan of classic short stories, I'm a big fan of people who love to write short stories, and Morrow is definitely one of those guys. And I like the compilation, but I don't remember any of the stories particularly standing out to me as being great. And I think that this story should have been great. I really liked certain aspects of it. I really liked the description of the guy dying.
Nate:
Yeah, there's some great over-the-top villain moments. Again, they all come in the first half. The shift to the detective stuff in the second half, I don't know, it just doesn't really work for me, I don't think.
JM:
The best things about this were definitely made me think of Poe, but also the hint of something new and something maybe a little bit more modern. There's aspects of the story that are really cool.
Nate:
Yeah, this is not a bad story. I mean, it's not a great story. I had fun with it. It could be better for sure. But yeah, there's definitely a lot of positives here. And I think, again, if you're a fan of 19th-century horror stories, you could do a lot worse than this one.
JM:
Yeah, he even seems to acknowledge some of the faults of the story. He doesn't really apologize for it and don't do anything about it. It's really weird. He's like saying at the beginning, you know, oh, this person's part of the story doesn't matter. And you have to be okay with that because this is the kind of story that this is. And I can't tell if he's being like facetious or just kind of, I don't know. It's really strange. It's really strange. Let's get into that.
Nate:
Yeah, I mean, my notes on this aren't really that long. It's not that long of a story. Again, it's one of these ones that are going to take you 20, 30 minutes to read. But this young man calls upon a mysterious old reclusive surgeon who lives in a scary gloomy house. And it's just one of these classic spooky mansions that are dreadful to look at and behold and all that. It's a great spooky horror story house.
But this young man wants a surgeon to do a job for a high price. Something the surgeon initially rejects and spurs an argument between the two of them. It's going to be quite the serious undertaking and the young man has even faked his own death and made sure that there can be no connection between the two.
So he's immediately ready to go. His body seems okay. And he's given a glass to drink and the young man thanks the surgeon profoundly. The glass knocks him out and this is the surgeon's first step. But he wonders if his wife heard anything. Suddenly framing it, of course, he gets confirmation that she didn't. So all is well, though the wife did hear somebody knock at the door initially.
The surgeon, however, is giddy as this is a perfect specimen. The young man paid him $5,000 to kill him. The fool, he doesn't realize he's still alive and will be used for horrible experimentation. And he jokes, "how should you feel without a head?" He begins to operate.
The story could have ended here and it would have been great, I think. Great over the top horror villain, ridiculous setup, nice little twist for our young man who apparently is just hell bent on dying and killing himself, but he has to do it in this overly convoluted way that involves paying $5,000.
JM:
He's like a useless sad boy. I enjoyed this entire aspect of the story. I thought it was cool. It was like he was trying to make a point too with the wife's non-involvement in the story. It was like he was trying to highlight that it wasn't right and it wasn't good. And the first half of the story is amazingly good, actually.
Gretchen:
I gotta say, I do think I prefer "The Vivisector Vivisected" just because I think it's fun and I like a lot of the absurd moments. And this had just been this story, I would have liked this one more.
Nate:
Yeah, I agree, yeah.
Gretchen:
But I think the latter part just kind of bogs it down.
Nate:
It feels extraneous and almost tacked on in a way.
JM:
It's two different stories basically and it needs to focus on one of the two and be that. And it seems to not be able to decide that that's what it needs to do.
Nate:
Yeah, so I mean we get this shift between two of them by a time skip, so it's now three years later and these two cops are talking about the wife and her story, which is probably insane maybe. But there could be something to it, so it seems like the husband is keeping something prisoner, but what?
And the detective needs more evidence and a few days later the wife sends him pages torn out from his manuscript which detailed progress notes on the experiment from three years ago.
Gretchen:
This reminds me a little bit of that section of "Heart of a Dog". Yeah, I will say like those notes. I just thought of "Heart of a Dog" when he's like updating the progress on his experiment.
Nate:
And it's cool to have details like that integrated in the story when they can be like epistolary novels that have the notes published for us like in text when the author gets really into that. I think is a cool aspect of the story which could have been utilized a lot more here. We don't really get to see too much from the mad surgeon of how he keeps his notebook. That might be a nice personality touch to add to the surgeon, you know what I mean?
JM:
Like there's two distinct half of the story and they relate to one another, but they're also like completely separate things and he's like trying to change the nature of the story halfway through into something else. And I don't get it. The thing that I like most about this story was where he was pretty much dying and describing what it was feeling like, I guess. And again, I really got vibes of "The Case of Monseur Valdemar from Poe. And it was definitely my favorite part about this story. And I wish that, I don't know, like that had been maintained because I actually got chills a little bit reading that part. Like that was really well done. And I wanted to see more of that, that kind of macabre quality of the story that's really dark. Like just saying, okay, this guy wants to commit suicide and this mysterious physician is acting all moral and wanting to do it. But he's putting up an act because that's not really the way he is. You know what I mean? He's not like that at all. He actually just wants to make sure that this is a good guy to experiment on and, you know, he does this thing and it's powerful and it's well done. And I just don't really, like, this is just too short to really convey all the power of that and it changes so quickly to something else. I mean, I remember the story a little bit from back then when I first read it, but I don't remember that well. And I don't remember exactly why I didn't maybe like it as much as I could have. And I guess that's probably why because, yeah, it just has that switch over suddenly. And it doesn't really like it turns into a psychic detective story, which is cool. I mean, I could get into that, but it should be one or the other.
Nate:
Yeah, I don't know why he went in this direction either. It doesn't really work for me.
But yeah, I guess they figure out that some creature is increasing in strength and hunger. And the detective wants to make a raid on the house and he needs three men. But when they get there, they can't find the surgeon. The wife is living in fear of her husband. And here's them come in and ends up tripping over a huge body that crushes the life out of her. And the surgeon is alerted by all this racket and grabs his knife and encounters a monster who has...
Gretchen:
I've got to say, I love this. None of the characters have names. I know that. But like my favorite part of this and it's like the part that made me laugh is even when she's like dying and like dead. He shouts out "wife!", like you can't.... He can't even like, I mean, you could have just said like "dear!" or something, but it's so.
Nate:
It's like they're almost archetypes rather than actual characters. "The Detective, the Surgeon and the Wife". It sounds like a romantic comedy or something like that.
And I don't know, the monster reveal that we get here makes the experiment feel a little bit sillier because it's this huge hulking creature. Who has no head but a steel ball. And I don't know, it's kind of a silly image where the first half of the story just leaves it on a nebulous note. Like what is this mad scientist going to do when your mind goes to like all these like horrible situations that it could be. And I don't know, I could see cases where a lumbering creature with a steel ball for a head could be terrifying. But it just feels a little silly.
Gretchen:
You expect something more grizzly. It's just such a kind of clean. It feels kind of sterile. And so you're like, oh, well, that's not what I thought.
Nate:
Yeah, why a steel ball? What kind of experiment's that?
JM:
I don't understand why he keeps highlighting how the wife should have a part of the story. And then in the end she sort of does, but it's still like...
Gretchen:
She dies.
Nate:
So like in a really stupid way.
Gretchen:
Yeah, this story could have been fixed if instead of just going right to the police's perspectives, we got the wife's.
Nate:
Yeah.
Gretchen:
I think it would have been a lot better to see her trying to get this evidence.
JM:
It's so weird. It was like making exquisite pains to make sure we noticed that.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
I don't know. I guess that's cool in its way that he is doing that, but it doesn't follow through with it. The second part of the story is like it's something you could almost imagine in Carnaki or something like that, right?
Nate:
Yeah. There's really not much meat to it though, because I mean, this is right at the end here where we get the monster reveal and the surgeon tries to stab the monster to death. But breaks his lantern and the house blows up with everybody inside, but the officers and it's a very Carnaki like ending. But even, I don't know, the weakest Carnaki stories have a bit more personality, I guess, in atmosphere than the second half. It just feels very flat.
Gretchen:
You know, "The Horse Invisible" is a really silly story, but it's fun. I would prefer to read that again than this.
JM:
I mean, while it's worth pointing out that the wife doesn't get a name, none of the other new characters do either.
Gretchen:
Yeah, no one gets a name in this. There's no names.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
The anonymous horse story, I guess.
JM:
Captain something.
Nate:
Yeah, Captain, Detective. Surgeon, young man.
JM:
That's what it comes down to. The story could have worked pretty well as either of those things than it was. It's two distinct parts. They never came together at any point, really, in terms of the mood of the story.
Nate:
Yeah, I don't know. The detective portion would need a lot of work, I think. The first portion is just great as a standalone, I think. You could easily read that and just stop at the time skip and have a satisfying experience, I think. Whereas the detective portion, I don't know, just none of it really works.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
The first part could have almost worked as its own story. Like, maybe it didn't even need the second part.
Nate:
Yeah, I'd argue it doesn't, yeah.
JM:
There are certain aspects of that that were just really well put together and well done. I don't know. It's like, where do you cut off a story, right? What happens...?
Gretchen:
Yeah, I mean, even if they had used those notes that we see, instead of the police, we had gotten those notes, and I think it could have worked if it was expanded more, but it just doesn't work in the form that it's taken.
Nate:
Yeah, a perspective that's switched to the wife and just eliminate the cops altogether would have been a great second half. Now we have this person who we're in her head. We can sympathize with her plight. She's in a horrific situation, you know, there's opportunities for suspense and like that kind of thing. You could easily see it playing out in a very satisfying way. It just doesn't.
Gretchen:
Yeah.
JM:
That's also weird because she just like finds...
Nate:
She literally trips over the creature. That's what does her in.
Gretchen:
You know, a lot of horror characters get flack when they're like running and they trip over a branch or something and then, you know, whatever murder it is gets them, but she actually trips over the murderer.
Nate:
It's impressive when you think about it. Considering she's been suspicious for three years, you know, wouldn't you be like on the lookout for a murderer?
Gretchen:
Yeah.
Nate:
I don't know.
Gretchen:
Yeah. Overall, I think, again, the story could have worked and choices were made and it kind of ruins it a little bit.
Nate:
Well, none of all more perfect. It's fun. Again, it's short. Can't really complain too much.
JM:
Yeah. It's an interesting collection if you want to get into something like the sort of forgotten 19th century horror, chiller kind of writer, right? I feel like this story, "The Monster Maker", is probably his most well-known story.
Nate:
It seems that way. It definitely seems that way, yeah.
JM:
Yeah.
Nate:
I'm not sure what else is in "Christopher Lee's X Certificate", but I kind of want to get the table of contents because that's a really good title for anthology.
JM:
Yeah. It kind of seems like one of these writers who's capable of putting together some cool atmosphere and phrases, but maybe not necessarily able to put it all together. I really like the first part. I thought that the way he described the physician and his kind of coldness and unwillingness to actually help someone. And it was like, it felt like he was testing him. It was testing to see whether he was serious about wanting to die. But then also, like, he's right to get so upset about it and be like, who are you to get all moralizing about me wanting to commit suicide? You have a horrible reputation for whatever experiments that you're committing. It doesn't really go into that, but I don't know. Apparently this doctor has a reputation for euthanasia, I think.
Nate:
He seems to be doing some favors under the table. That's the impression that I'm getting.
JM:
Yeah, probably.
Nate:
Yeah, that's all right. Bierce seems to like him. He definitely seems to be competent enough. I'm not sure what the other authors are like that Sam Moskowitz talks about in those books. Really, the only person that I'm familiar with is Bierce. Yeah, interesting stuff, I guess. So all right, I guess in this one we are presented with a man without a head, but now let's get into a man without a body.
Gretchen:
Yes.
Bibliography:
Joshi, S.T. - "The Evolution of the Weird Tale" (2004)
Mobile, AL First National Bank - "Highlights of 75 Years in Mobile" (1940) https://archive.org/download/75yearsinmobile/75yearsinmobile.pdf
Morrow, W.C. - "Some Queer Experiences" (1891) https://archive.org/details/1891somequeerexperiencesmorrowargonaut
Moskowitz, Sam - "Forgotten Master of Horror - The First Phase" in "Discovering Classic Horror Fiction I" (1992)
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