Algernon Blackwood has a special place in the annals of the strange Northerns. He wrote “The Wendigo”, one of his two most famous stories (The other is “The Willows”). He had two others in his first collection, “A Haunted Island” and “Skeleton Lake” but he wasn’t quite done with the Canadian wilds yet. In The Wolves of God and Other Fey Stories (1921) with Wilfred Wilson, he gave us “First Hate”. (This book was dedicated thus: “To the Memory of Our Camp-Fires in the Wilderness”.)
The story begins with that old chestnut of a tale told in a London club. The narrator:
The speaker was Ericssen, their host, a great hunter before the Lord, generally uncommunicative but a good listener, leaving the talk to others. For this latter reason, as well as for a certain note of challenge in his voice, his abrupt statement gained attention.
Ericssen establishes first that animals that are natural enemies instinctively know each other. A rat who has never seen a weasel will know it is an enemy and fight. He calls this “First Hate” as opposed to “love at first sight”.
Next Ericssen tells how he saw a man named Hazel and instinctively hated him. Hazel, too, felt this instant dislike:
“It didn’t surprise me, for my own feeling, the instant I set eyes on[78] the fellow, was one of violent, instinctive dislike that amounted to loathing. Loathing! No. I’ll give it the right word—hatred. I simply couldn’t help myself; I hated the man from the very first go off. A wave of repulsion swept over me as I followed him down the room a moment with my eyes, till he took his seat at a distant table and was out of sight. Ugh! He was a big, fat-faced man, with an eyeglass glued into one of his pale-blue cod-like eyes—out of condition, ugly as a toad, with a smug expression of intense self-satisfaction on his jowl that made me long to——
Ericssen avoids the man but he keeps running into him at the club, at the opera. After his brother passed away, the narrator left England to travel abroad. He ends up on Vancouver island near Campbell River, hunting elk (or wapiti to use the First Nations name). He rejects one Siwash guide because of his lousy reputation and hires another man. They shoot several elk but Ericssen wants a truly magnificent head for his parlour. They keep looking despite the fact that Ericsson has lost his ammunition in a river and only has two shells left.
After negotiating a log jam, he climbs a hill sees an elk. He decides not to shoot it, almost as if a voice tells him to save the bullet. He goes on and– after insisting to his audience that he possesses no imagination or supernatural beliefs — he feels “creepy”. There, below him is Hazel, with the Siwash guide Ericssen rejected. The narrator confesses he can’t shoot Hazel down in cold blood, no matter how much he hates him, and waits until the man sees him. Hazel shoots first but misses. Ericssen drills him in the head and shouts, “You are not fit to live!”
The audience is appalled at the story. One of the listeners, Lawson, asks about the Siwash guide. Ericssen reminds him, he still had one bullet left.
I always enjoy a strange Northern when it takes place in a place I have been. Campbell River is not so remote these days. The Roosevelt elk still live there, though when they become a problem for locals they get shipped to the mainland. As for Blackwood’s supernatural hatred, I think psychologists can explain that today. Algie was a confirmed believer in psychic phenomenon (even if Ericssen claims not to be) so he found his answers in the unknown.
