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Algernon Blackwood was born in 1869 at Shooter’s Hill, then part of Kent but now of London, the middle of five children, to parents that were wealthy, strict and Christian. Blackwood was well-educated. His father sent him for a time to a rigorous German school (later remembered in the tale “Ancient Sorceries”), whose somewhat monastic standards were a bracing influence for the dreamy and undisciplined Blackwood.
Back in England, he took an interest in the Society for Psychical Research, a serious-minded organization that studied the paranormal. Blackwood helped its members investigate reputed haunted houses and took down the testimony of their residents. Over the years to come, he involved himself with the Theosophical Society, the Golden Dawn, G.I. Gurdjieff and P.D. Ouspensky. He was never wedded to any of these teachings, or not for long, but picked over each for whatever seemingly useful ideas or hints they contained. His most enduring belief was in the mystical power of nature, and it is this, rather than any particular occult doctrine, that most consistently marks the subjects of his stories and their treatment.
When he came of age, he tried to make a living as a farmer. He had studied agriculture and in Canada went into partnership with a dairy farmer. The partnership failed and he turned to journalism, working as a reporter in New York and often covering notorious crimes. He disliked New York and escaped when he could to the Canadian wilderness, where he gained the setting and inspiration for “The Wendigo.”
When he left New York, he returned to England but never ceased to wander. He visited Egypt and Italy, walked the mountains of Jura and the Caucasus. He made two trips down the Danube and gained the setting of another of his greatest stories, “The Willows.”
Besides his well-known short stories, Blackwood also wrote numerous novels, including Julius LeVallon, a story of three souls linked by previous incarnations in the ancient past, now rejoined in the present and fated to correct the mistake of a past life. The novel does not rate with his best short stories because it reiterates and makes obvious faults of style that are less noticeable in the shorter works, but is worthwhile to read for the light it throws on those works, and for its sustained atmosphere and often excellent prose.
He was engaged in a wide variety of activities over the course of his life. He managed an English branch of the Horlicks powdered milk company, served during WWI as a secret agent for the British government in France, gave a series of popular “talks” for BBC radio, in which he told stories and personal anecdotes, and later did a storytelling series for BBC television.
Possibly the greatest factor in bringing out Blackwood’s best work was his father. It was his parents whose stern religious conviction gave darkness to Blackwood’s imagination and it was darkness that gave power to Blackwood’s most successful works. Blackwood would later say of their religion, “I never shared the beliefs of my parents with anything like genuine pleasure. I was afraid they were true, not glad.”
Then, too, it may well have been his father who opened his eyes to the possibilities of storytelling, literary and oral, since the elder Blackwood enjoyed telling weird stories to his son. Blackwood recalled one of these in his last BBC television broadcast:
A man suffers from epileptic fits, and doctors cannot cure him. He consults a spiritualist who gives him a locket, which he must wear against his chest at all times and never remove it. Nor should he open the locket. He must simply trust in its power. It works. Over time the fits cease and the man feels cured. Eventually, however, curiosity wins out and he opens the locket. Inside is some extremely small writing, which he could read only with a magnifying glass. It said: “Let him alone till he drop into hell.”
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Blackwood’s work expressed a compelling combination of idealism and fear, boyish dreams and worldly knowledge. He combined the habits of a journalist with a subtle mind and often fine style. And he gave the world at least one story that should be unforgettable.
The eeriness of this lonely island, set among a million willows, swept by a hurricane, and surrounded by hurrying deep waters, touched us both, I fancy. Untrodden by man, almost unknown to man, it lay there beneath the moon, remote from human influence, on the frontier of another world, an alien world, a world tenanted by willows only and the souls of willows.
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| Sources |
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- Best Ghost Stories of Algernon Blackwood, edited by E.F. Bleiler
- Algernon Blackwood: An Extraordinary Life, by Mike Ashley
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