Weird Tales Author
Gordon Philip England was a writer who lived in Quebec, Canada and contributed seven stories to Weird Tales. (He wasn’t the only Canuck who supplied Farnsworth Wright with copy.) I always thought he was a relative of George Allan England, the American SF writer, but this is not the case. In fact we know very little about GPE except where he lived and died. He only published one story outside of Weird Tales, but his letters suggest he was a big fan of Weird Tales and Oriental Tales. The other story was “They Buried Her Body” for Ray A. Palmer at Fantastic Adventures also out of Chicago. Perhaps with Farnsworth Wright long gone from Weird Tales, their offices moved to New York, he didn’t feel any loyalty to Dorothy McIlwraith.
1925
“The Master of Hell” (Weird Tales, February 1925) is not much of story, more like a prose poem. A man leaves his body to explore the universe in astral form. He enters Hell, witnesses the souls being tortured, sees the massive evil of Satan and his dog, Cerberus, before being spotted by the demons. A man rush home to his body and the vision ends.
“Adventures of an Astral” (Weird Tales, March 1925) feels like an expansion on “The Master of Hell”. Again the story concerns a man who likes to explore the universe in astral form. His young wife forbids him enjoying this wicked pleasure. In spite he turns to gambling and loses all his money. A Russian loan shark wants his clothes as partial payment of his debt. When the man refuses to give him his “B. V. D.s” he escapes via astral projection. He discovers another astral traveler who has designs on his wife. The narrator’s body is sent back home on a ship that sinks. In the end, the traveler steals the body of his rival and never uses projection again, happily remarrying his own wife.
“The House, the Light and the Man” (Weird Tales, June 1925) has the author point out a window that is always illuminated. He then tells of Gibson Jenkins, a cowardly man who gets lost in a dark building at night. He ends up in a room filled with coffins and is attracted to a presence in one of the coffins. The next morning they find him, his hair turned white, a gibbering mess. There is an explanation: a thief had hidden with his stolen jewels in the coffin then frightened Jenkins. The window with the light is from the madhouse where Gibson will spend his final days.
“The Acid in the Laboratory” (Weird Tales, November 1925) has scientist Harley Dunston Grimsby writing out his confession as he awaits his doom. (This will become the shape of all GPE stories, always having a pair of opposed combatants.) The man confesses to killing his rival, George Hannington. The man stands between Grimsby and the apple of his eye, the blond beauty, Emily Lammerford. He invites Hannington to his lab at one in the morning, strangles him and puts his body in the bath tub, which is filled with powerful acid. When he drains the tub, all evidence of the crime goes down the drain.
With Hannington out of the way, Grimsby gets Emily to marry him. Despite this, she is still in love with the dead man. Grimsby has nightmares in which Hannington’s spirit attacks him. Later when he finds Emily crying over a picture of his rival, Grimsby cuts her throat and gives her the acid treatment too. The cops are suspicious until they find an actual note that Emily wrote saying she is leaving her husband.
After this, Grimsby keeps a tub full of acid in case he needs to remove anyone. The dreams become intolerable, with both George and Emily haunting him. They tell him he will die on Friday night. He dozes off and wakes just in time to see he is standing over the tub. Grimsby refuses to sleep for days and is writing his confession in an attempt to stay awake. He slowly falls asleep. The story ends with an extract of a letter by a neighbor. She tells how Grimsby’s confession was found and the man had thrown himself into the acid.
Grimsby is totally unlikable so you have no problem with him getting his comeuppance, but you would think he was smart enough to empty the bath and make it harder for the ghosts to kill him.
1926
So ends the creative burst that was 1925. England won’t publish another story until 1927, but he does write Farnsworth Wright a letter.
Letter (Weird Tales, October 1926)
1927
1927 would see another burst of creativity with two stories for Weird Tales, including what must be England’s best piece, “White Orchids”:
“The Fourth Victim” (Weird Tales, January 1927) has three friends in Redvale: John Sparling, Robert Comstack and George Mackenzie facing off against a rich man, James Ralston. When Robert wins the hand of Edith Bentley, Ralston attacks him. Comstock gives the man a thrashing. Ralston disappears after this, leaving his mansion, The Lodge, empty. He reportedly ends up in Asia, studying magic.
A decade later Raltson returns in style. He has an Indian valet named Ramda Das, who is fond of clutching his knife, and a large tiger as companions. Ralston invites the three men to The Lodge, wishing to make up for his earlier misdeeds. After a sumptuous dinner, their host shows them his Oriental Room, and offers to tell fortunes. Comstock agrees, and goes off behind a curtain alone with Ralston. Returning, he is white-faced and seems ill. Later that night, Bob cuts his own throat. Edith dies from the shock of his gruesome death. It is ruled suicide.
Another visit to The Lodge has Sparling and Ralston discussing Egyptian mummies. Mackenzie gets bored and wanders off. Later, Sparling walks off a cliff like a man in a trance, falling to his death. Again suicide is the verdict. Another tragedy follows. The tiger goes berserk and attacks Ralston. Ramda Das kills the beast with his dagger before dying himself. Ralston, gasping out his last, tells Mackenzie he is coming for him June 1st.
Now Mackenzie remembers he too had spent time with Ralston and his fortune-telling. He woke from a sudden sleep, unable to remember what had happened. The man knows that Ralston, using his hypnotism had killed his friends, and left a command in Mackenzie’s mind too. He can’t stop himself from loading his automatic and pulling the trigger. (In true Lovecraftian style, he writes all this down as he does it.)
Letter (Weird Tales, August 1927)
“White Orchids” (Weird Tales, December 1927) begins with the narrator and orchid collector telling us he is in an asylum. Before that he had received a map from another collector named Matthewson. He makes a copy but puts the original in his pocket. At his club he gets drunk and tells his chief rival, Carrington, all about it. When he wakes up from his boozing he finds the map gone. Carrington has left town to go to his estate where he keeps his plane. The airplane was recently used in a long-distance flight and needs repairs.
The narrator heads out on a ship immediately. Soon he is in the jungles of Brazil. His native guide is killed by an anaconda . (The scene Hugh Rankin chose for the illustration.) Eventually he finds the white orchids Matthewson told him of. There is just one problem. They give off a narcotic scent so strong you pass out before you can approach them. This is what happens to our collector, though he manages to crawl to safety.
While recouping, Carrington shows up in his plane. He is made of sterner stuff, and manages to get to the flowers and pull one up by the roots. He passes out crawling back. The narrator uses a rope from the plane to drag him clear. He takes the orchid and allows Carrington to see he has the flower before abandoning him.
The collector puts the flower in a manilla envelope to press it. He would rather take back a living specimen but all his collecting equipment sank to the bottom of the river in an accident. He will be satisfied with a pressed flower. Unfortunately he catches a fever and loses his mind. He wakes up in the tent of some American hunters, his flower envelope gone. He savagely attacks his rescuers. He is put in a madhouse.
There is a final scene. The mad man plans to escape the loonie bin. A bar in in his window is loose and a tree grows nearby. They find him the next morning on the ground below his window. The branch snapped and he broke his neck.
1931-1932
GPE doesn’t contribute any more tales to “The Unique Magazine” until 1936 but he does write letters to Wright’s other magazine, Oriental Tales.
Letter (Oriental Tales, Summer 1931)
Letter (Oriental Tales, Winter 1932)
1936
“The Blue Room” (Weird Tales, November 1936) was the last of the Weird Tales stories. Jimmy Pollock accepts Duquette and Creighton’s bet to spend a night in the haunted blue room at Doom Manor. Two hundred pounds is the fee. Pollock can not bring any lights or matches. He will be given a gun to protect himself. The last man to try the bet, Adams, was currently in a nut house.
Pollock inspects the room. It has a closet and a four poster bed, a night stand with a telephone. There is a bookshelf full of ghost story collections like Uncanny Yarns and Tales of Wandering Spirits. If at any time he wants to quit he can pick up the phone and call. The other two men will be in Jasmine Cottage nearby.
Duquette sends Creighton off to get the gun, which he grabs without putting on the lights. Duquette tells him the history of Doom Manor and the Blue Room. It had belonged to a Sir Austin Fairholm. On his wedding night, his bride, Ann Fenriss strangled him to death. People say she hanged herself in the closet afterward on a big iron hook. Pollock has enough brains to write out the terms of the bet on a card along with a waiver that states he is not responsible if he shoots someone. Duquette and Creighton willing sign the document then leave.
There is a painting in the room that Pollock then looks over. It is of a demon killing a child. The eyes of the demon light up when the lights go out. He laughs. Phosphorescent paint, of course. He waits. He hears noises in the closet and investigates. He sees nothing except the iron hook. He waits again. This time the spectral form of a woman appears, her hands reaching to strangle him. Jimmy pulls the gun from under his pillow and fires. The ghost falls to floor bleeding. He calls the cottage and Creighton comes.
The ghost is Duquette, deader than a door nail. In the closet Jimmy sees the trapdoor Duqette entered by. The whole thing is a scam for fleecing unwitting fools. The over-heard conservation at the club and been meant for Pollock to hear. Creighton realizes this is all his fault. Duquette had two guns, one filled with blanks and another. In the dark, he had grabbed the wrong gun.
1948
“They Buried Her Body” (Fantastic Adventures, February 1948) is the closest GPE came to writing a Northern. You would assume since he lived in Quebec he might produce any number of tales of Canada’s North. The hero, Keith Edwards, is obviously a romanticized version of Gordon Philip England himself. Edwards lives in the beautiful woods of Eastern Quebec. He is upset because his fiancee, Sheila Brown, dumped him. In a fit of anger he sends a letter to a self-professed witch living in California named Irma Dane. A local widow named Louise Simmonds has her eye on Keith but he doesn’t act on her advances. Instead he writes back and forth with Irma, who plans to come see him in Canada. Irma is quite commanding, possessive and powerful. Keith never meets her because her airplane crashes on the side of mountain and she is killed.
Another new person is camping out in the area. Lorraine Hudson, a redhead, is there with her mother and her nurse. Lorraine suffers from cataleptic fits, where she freezes up. Upon waking she can’t remember anything she has done. Keith decides to avoid the woman. With news of Irma’s death, Louise makes her move, inviting herself over to Keith’s that night. As she is paddling her canoe over, she is attacked by a woman swimming in the water. It is Lorraine Hudson, but not as she was. She declares she is Irma Dane and she has taken possession of Lorraine’s body. Irma tells the widow she can’t have Keith. The two fight, but only Irma emerges from the water. Irma goes to Keith. She explains that she knew Lorraine back in California. Irma had astralized herself into the other woman’s body before she died.
The next morning Keith learns that Louise is dead. That night and many nights after Lorraine Hudson/Irma Dane visits him. At the end of summer, Irma gets ready to leave him. Keith doesn’t want her to go. Irma makes a pact with Keith. Every July 15 to August 15 the two of them will meet at the camp in the woods. The rest of the year they are free to see whomever they want. Keith’s writing career explodes after this. He marries Sheila Brown, who he forgives her fling with an older man. And every July he disappears to woods to go fishing. Except he never brings back any fish.
England has returned to where he started, stories of astral projection. “They Buried Her Body” is a less pleasant version of “Adventures of an Astral”. What makes this story so different is that Louise dies, Irma is never punished and Keith stays a prisoner of the witch’s charms. Usually in a Pulp, and especially a Ray Palmer Pulp, the good guys win and evil is defeated.
Conclusion
And so Gordon Philip England, Canadian Weird Tales writer goes off into the Pulp oblivion that claims so many writers. We can’t be too sad about this. His stories were middling at best. It is when you read stories by writers like England (or Galen C. Colin or Wilford Allen) you realize just how talented the best of Weird Tales were, H. P. Lovecraft, Frank Belknap Long or Robert Bloch.
