Meet The Judge
Manly Wade Wellman’s first ghostbreakers have not fared as well as his two big stars: John Thunstone and Silver John. During Wellman’s Weird Tales days he wrote fifteen tales of the ghost buster John Thunstone. Later in the 1950s he wrote twenty or so tales for Fantasy & Science Fiction about John, the wandering singer with the silver stringed guitar. Later, in the 1980s, he wrote novels about both men. But before these two great superstars there were other men who stood against the creatures of the night.
These other ghostbreakers were collected along with John Thunstone in Carcosa Press’s Worse Things Waiting (1973) and Lonely Vigils (1981). The cover art for the second book features Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant, Manly’s first ghostbreaker, armed with sword and cross. He looks like a cross between Raymond Burr and Vincent Price. In actuality, he is based on the author. (The Keith in his name made me think of Gilbert Keith Chesterton and his ghostbreaker, Father Brown. Wellman mentions Chesterton in “The Black Drama” as a late friend of the Judge.) Pursuivant is described as a large, blue-eyed man with a short mustache. He is, of all Wellman’s characters, the one based on himself. Though large, he is quick on his feet and ready to scuffle with miscreants natural and supernatural.
The Man Described
In “The Black Drama” we get a full description:
Keith Hilary Pursuivant, the occultist and antiquary, was as arresting as Varduk himself, though never were two men more different in appearance and manner. Our first impression was a huge tweed-clad body, a pink face with a heavy tawny mustache, twinkling pale eyes and a shock of golden-brown hair. Under one arm he half-crushed a wide black hat, while the other hand trailed a heavy stick of mottled Malacca, banded with silver. There was about him the same atmosphere of mature sturdiness as invests Edward Arnold or Victor McLaglen, and withal a friendly gayety. Without being elegant or dashing, he caught and held the regard. Men like someone like that, and so, I believe, do women who respect something beyond sleek hair and brash repartee.
We also learn he is the author of several books: A Defense of the Wickedest Poet (about Byron), as well as The Unknown That Terrifies, Cannibalism in America, Vampyricon An Indictment of Logic, and others.
A Distinguished Career
Of his life, his father was Major General Hilary Pursuivant of Virginia; his mother (who died when he was young) was Anne Elizabeth Keith. The Judge went to Yale at only sixteen, took the bar in 1919, was a judge by twenty-three, another degree, a Ph.D at Oxford, served in Intelligence during the First World War, and now is retired from the Law and a writer of books. Unmarried, of Protestant background, no political leanings, the Judge is a lover of good art, furniture, food and the Occult.
One of his other passions is fencing. He carries a sword cane inside his Malacca cane. The blade was made from silver by Saint Dunstan in the 10th Century. The weapon is engraved with the Latin words: Sic pereant omnes inimici tui, Domine. (So let all thine enemies perish, O Lord.)
Wellman makes reference to two actors of the 1930s. Edward Arnold was a large man who played villains. He appeared in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) opposite Jimmy Stewart as well as being the first actor to portray Rex Stout’s Nero Wolfe in Meet Nero Wolfe (1936). Victor McLaglen won the Best Actor Oscar in 1935 for playing “Gypo” Nolan in The Informer. He would play opposite Cary Grant in Gunga Din (1939). Wellman’s references date the story but these were famous large-size actors when “The Black Drama” was written. (Raymond Burr was only twenty-one at the time.)
The Hairy Ones Shall Dance
The first of the stories (written under the pseudonym ‘Gans T. Field’) was a lengthy serial in Weird Tales, “The Hairy Ones Shall Dance” (January February March 1938). I have summarized this tale before in my piece on Wellman’s werewolves. You can read it here. The Judge is not the central character of “The Hairy Ones Shall Dance”. He plays a supporting role much in the same way Dr. Von Helsing does in Dracula. He offers help to the main character, Talbot Wills, assistance that includes knowledge of evil and magic.
The Black Drama
The second outing for the Judge was “The Black Drama” (June July August 1938), another lengthy serial. It is the story of out-of-work actor, Gilbert Connatt, who is hired to star in a newly discovered play by Lord Byron. This horrific drama is to be verified by the Judge, who comes in as a supporting character. Wellman gives us the entire plot with excerpts. Ruthven is based on Dr. John Polidori’s “The Vampyre” but Wellman does a great job of almost convincing us that Byron wrote it as was assumed for years after it appeared. The play shows how Ruthven, a very evil man, died and came back to life. We follow him through generations where he lunches on pretty girls, but in the end blesses one of them instead of cursing her. This causes him to deteriorate into a pile of ash.
Gilbert Connatt and his former lover, Sigrid Holgar, are to play the original couple in the first thirds of the play. Ruthven, who does not appear a lot (like Dracula) will be played by the play’s director, Varduk. After Pursuivant attests that the play was in fact written by Byron, the director announces he is the great-grandson of the poet. The play was written at Lake Deodati as was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley. We learn that Claire Clairmount had had two children, not one, a son that was Varduk’s ancestor. The family has kept the play for a hundred and fifty years as Byron had wished.
Connatt goes with Pursuivant for a late night drink. The Judge tells the actor that the play is certainly one written by Byron. What is more interesting is the paper it was written on was watermarked as being only ten years old.
Off to the Woods
Connatt takes the train to Lake Jozgid, where the theater lies alone in the deep woods. The actor is joined by Pursuivant, who is going up to review the play. He has borrowed a cabin from a friend who lives near the lake. Jake Switz, Sigrid’s agent, meets Connatt at the theater. He has a story to tell. The previous evening, Sigrid had wandered out on the dark beach, against Varduk’s advice. She was attacked by a strange shining tentacular beastie though Jake tried to save her. It was Varduk who drives the beast away, saying, “Get out! By what power do you come for your victim now?”
The story continues in the next issue of Weird Tales, with all the actors assembling at Lake Jozgid, learning their parts. Varduk surprises them all when Connatt drives a sword through his body. The director explains it is a special effect but everyone is upset over the incident. He also cryptically avoids the final lines of the play. When Connatt rejoins the Judge to discuss what is going on with Varduk (Pursuivant thinks it is a family curse descended from Byron), they are confronted by Elmo Davidson, Varduk’s Renfield. The man tells how he met Varduk in college. Varduk studied magic and when the frat boys came to haze him, one of the bullies ended up dead. After this, Davidson became his henchman. He did not dare to defy his new master.
Pursuivant joins them for dinner, where he shows Varduk his sword cane. It is time for rehearsal and the Judge must leave. Walking back to his cabin he is attacked by the weird monsters that Jake Switz witnessed. Connatt and Switz drive off the “non-shapes” with the silver sword. The men hide and discuss what has been going on. Connatt has an unshakable feeling that something terrible is going to happen, and happen to Sigrid. The Judge agrees, figuring it will happen on opening night. He also is sure the “non-shapes” are elementals and under Varduk’s control.
A Diabolical Plot Unfolds
The rehearsals continue. Gilbert and Sigrid rekindle their love. The couple broke up five years before when Sigrid’s fame outshone Connatt’s. At the final rehearsal, Varduk instructs Sigrid to stand in a chalk circle. Pursuivant wants to get a look at the Bible that the actress will swear her allegiance to Satan. He warns Connatt to shield his eyes. The last man to look into the book had died in Varduk’s college days. The book is a witch’s Bible. Inside it there is an explanation of everything. When Sigrid says her lines she will become cursed in Varduk’s place for a hundred and fifty years. Varduk has signed the book as Lord Byron, his true identity. (The book smacks of H. P. Lovecraft’s The Necronomicon but I think Wellman was inspired more by G. K. Chesterton’s Father Brown story, “The Blast of the Book”, a haunted book inspire not by the Cthulhu Mythos, but the same author as HPL, Robert W. Chambers and The King in Yellow (1895).
The play opens to great success. Varduk asks the Judge to speak at the beginning of the play (which reminded me of the opening seconds of Universal’s Dracula.) The play goes along from scene to scene (Switz shows Connatt the elementals gathering outside in anticipation.) until the part where Connatt is supposed to stab Varduk with the sword. The Judge switches the prop sword for his own sword cane. Connatt stabs Varduk and the vampiric Lord Byron crumbles to dust.
The opening scene of this story, with down-and-out actor in a bar, reminds me of a later Fredric Brown piece used on Alfred Hitchcock Presents, “The Cream of the Jest” (March 10, 1957). It was based on “Last Curtain” (New Detective, July 1949). In Brown’s story an out-of-work actor, Sir Charles Hanover Gresham, played by Claude Rains, is hired to play a thug in a play. He has to audition for the play’s financier, a real mobster. The actor is so good, he convinces the killer he knows stuff he shouldn’t know and gets whacked.
The Dreadful Rabbits
The Judge also appears in two short stories, the first of which is “The Dreaded Rabbits” (Weird Tales, July 1940). No longer is he a background character but the star of the show. Pursuivant is visiting a rural area known as “Hungry Hill”. The local people have a strange custom of never hunting rabbits. When they see one, they bow and introduce themselves. The Judge does some research at the local records hall and discovers the custom was part of the First Nations deal when the first settlers bought the land. (Wellman does a good job of siding with the Indians here, pointing out how the deal did them poorly. His respect for First Nations culture and folklore is evident throughout his Fantasy works.) Rankine goes off hunting while the Judge is away and pays the price. They find his body in the local cave, stripped of all its skin by a million little bites and scratches. The Judge’s local friend is quick to bow to the rabbits when the two are surrounded. The Judge is not and tries to swat them with a rifle stock. The weapon passes right through them. He is forced to bow or die. Later he writes to Dr. Trowbridge (of Jules de Grandin fame) about the affair. Trowbridge explains the local native word ototemon that the Judge found in the local history is derived from totem. The rabbits are totemic spirits.
Wellman wrote a lot of stories with this structure. First you learn of an old legend, then see someone destroyed by it. The ghostbreaker wins not by conquering it but accepting it. He used it in Silver John stories like , “Shiver in the Pines” (Fantasy & Science Fiction, February 1955) as well as “Frogfather” and “Dhoh”. I doubt it had anything to do with other killer rabbits.
The Half-Haunted
The last story is”Half-Haunted” (Weird Tales, September 1941). This tale begins with the Judge driving in New Jersey, looking for Criler’s Mill, a haunted house. Instead he finds a brand new house on the site. He knocks at the door and meets the owner, Scrope. The man seems stand-offish. Once Scrope realizes that Pursuivant is a real man his attitude changes. He invites the Judge to stay the night. Since it is snowing, he accepts.
Now that the Judge is in the house, Scrope becomes quite chatty. He learns that the new house was built over the old mill site. All should be comfy and modern, but the owner admits something has scared off his house boy. The Judge offers to use a spell of exorcism. As he recites the lines he feels a presence. Further exploration shows him that the ghostly figure rests in the part of the house where his guest bedroom is located.
Scrope fills us in on the history of the mill. During the Revolutionary War, Criler and his son joined George Washington’s army, leaving their women folk alone in the mill. The two women devise a plan to murder a terrible Hessian soldier from the area. After his death, both women commit suicide. When the son returns, his father slain in battle, he, too, kills himself.
The Mystery Solved
Pursuivant repeats the spell, again, for it must be said three times, an hour apart, to work. He is attacked by a ghostly hand. Pursuivant detects a second presence, this one kind. It begs him to finish the spell. He now realizes he is facing off against the ghost of the Hessian and that the other voice is one of the women who are trapped here by the terrible soldier.
Before a third recital, Pursuivant and Scrope figure out that the ghost only haunts the part of the new house where it sits over the old mill site. As the Judge puts it, “You are half-haunted.” The two wait in the safe part of the hour for the last hour. Entering the haunted half of the house, it turning back into the old mill, the Judge begins the last recitation. This time the Hessian appears fully formed except for his face. The brute attacks the Judge, trying to strangle him. Pursuivant is a “bear of a man” and punches back. The room catches fire.
The fire spreads as the Judge and host flee. Scrope lets the house burn to the ground. He will rebuild, with no specters haunting him now. With the spell finished, the ghosts disappear, one thankful, the other cursing. Scrope realizes what these cries mean. The two women, though murderers in a good cause, are free. The Hessian fights and curses because he is destined for a much hotter and unpleasant place.
The format of this story, like the last one, shows off the Judge as the main character. This is the same plot form the later Silver John stories will take, with John visiting some remote place haunted by evil.
Chastel
The Judge appeared in one last story (as Charles Rutledge kindly pointed out. Thanks Charles!) “Chastel” appeared in Year’s Best Horror Stories VII (1979) edited by Gerald W. Page. This tale feels a little like a shorter version of “Black Drama” because it involves a play being performed in a remote location. This time the play is based on Dracula, and it is a musical, which can be quite amusing at times. What isn’t amusing is the star of the show is Gonda Chastel, daughter of Chastel Roy, the Judge’s love-of-his-life, long ago. He admits he probably never married because of the torch he carried for her. She is dead now (the Judge is a feisty 87!) and buried in a tomb near the converted barn that is the theater.
The Judge is not working alone. He has Lee Cobbett (from the Witch For All Seasons series from 1973-1983) with him as well. The two ghostbreakers share the stage, making the Judge feel at times like the old supporting character of the first stories but also more important than that and the star of the show. It is a strange blend that we all know so well from superhero team-ups.
Lee and the Judge notice that there are new vampires lurking in the darkness about the theater. Chastel, the queen vampire, has been feeding, growing her flock. Lee is unable to enter the crypt and end her because he promised Gonda he would not. The Judge goes alone and destroys her with his silver sword. Later he reveals to Laurel, Lee’s girl, that Chastel was Gonda. There was only one of them. (This is one of the same ideas in “Black Drama” where Varduk is actually Lord Byron.) Laurel asks him how he can possibly know this? “My dear, don’t you think a man always recognizes a woman he has loved?”
Final References
Pursuivant wasn’t quite done. Wellman included a guest appearance in the Silver John novel, The Hanging Stones in 1982:
…He was of a good height, not as tall as I am, but tall. He was thick but not fat in his body. He wore a dark suit with old-timey white edging on the vest, and nowhere as expensivelooking a rig as Kottler’s, but a right good suit at that. In the buttonhole of the lapel was a bit of dark red ribbon which, as later I heard tell, meant that he’d won the French Legion of Honor decoration. His face was square and rosy pink, with strong lines in it, and he wore silver-rimmed glasses. He had a heavy white mustache, pointyended but not waxed up like Kottler’s. Under one arm he carried a knotty brown cane with a crooked handle and a silver band on the shank, but he didn’t seem to need it to walk or either stand. All the way round, he looked old, all right, but old-seasoned, not old-shaky.
Not such a bad description of the author.
Another 1982 reference to the Judge comes in a latter day John Thunstone tale, “Rouse Him Not” (Year’s Best Horror Stories XI, edited by Karl Edward Wagner). In that tale Thunstone has a silver cane made by Saint Dunstan. He says when asked about the unique weapon:
“No, there’s another.” Thunstone smiled under his mustache. “It belongs to a friend of mine, Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant. Once I defeated a vampire with this blade, and twice I’ve faced werewolves with it. As well as other things.”
Conclusion The Ghostbreaker Mythos
In another piece I discussed how Manly and his friend, Seabury Quinn, liked to include references between their stories. John Thunstone and Judge Keith Hilary Pursuivant would reference Jules de Grandin for instance. Later stories matched Silver John with the Judge, and the Judge with Lee Cobbett. I called this the Ghostbreaker Mythos. That cycle of stories also links all of Wellman’s own ghostbreakers together in one universe. This multiverse idea has become quite common in superhero movies but the old Pulpsters like Edgar Rice Burroughs, and later ones like Philip Jose Farmer and Michael Moorcock also did it.
