Chambers and Gibson returned to America in 1893, it was Gibson who got the lucky break into an art career. Chambers turned to writing instead. His first book, In the Quarter (1894), was based on his experiences in France. It sold fairly well, enough to encourage him to try his hand at a second book based on his French sojourn. The King in Yellow (1895) turned out to be an instant success and set Chambers on a writing career that lasted forty years. It was also one of the most successful books of the macabre, a genre to which Chambers would return only occasionally during his life.
Out of the Dark contains the best of Chambers’s work in this field, taken from books as far apart in publication as 1895 and 1920. By the time of his death on 16 December 1933, Robert W. Chambers had produced nearly 100 books (88 are listed in the British Library Catalogue in Britain alone). Sadly, only a very few dealt with the macabre.
The tradition of the American in Paris – the expatriate enjoying himself in one of Europe’s most appealing cities – goes back way beyond such luminaries as Henry Miller or Ernest Hemingway. So many Americans got to know the place as a result of the First World War that it was quite forgotten that others had been there before, under less trying circumstances.
When Robert Chambers and Charles Dana Gibson went there to study art in 1886, we must hope they had as good a time as Miller (while perhaps not so athletic). They stayed there for seven years, after all. What did come out of it was a book of tales of terror seldom surpassed in the genre, yet in its own way a very unsatisfying work, making the reader wish for more. Which statement just about sums up the writing career of Robert W. Chambers, as far as enthusiasts in this genre are concerned.
Chambers, despite displaying an early, unique talent for tales of terror, returned to them very seldom in later life. He was an astute writer, who knew what sold well, and produced the goods accordingly. Spy novels, adventure stories, society dramas, social comedies – if that’s what the public wanted, then Chambers was happy to oblige.
He was one of the authors featured in ‘How I “Broke into Print”’, an article in the Strand Magazine’s November 1915 edition, and had this to say on his first major success:
My most important ‘break into print’ was with a collection of short stories of a weird and uncanny character, entitled The King in Yellow, which the public seemed to like. So flatteringly was it received, indeed, that it decided me to devote all my time to fiction, and so I have been writing ever since. I cannot say which of my books I prefer, because just as soon as I have finished a story I dislike it. I am continually trying to do something better, so that I presume my ‘best’ book will never be written.
The King in Yellow (1895) is at the same time one of the most enjoyable yet one of the most irritating books in the fantasy catalogue. At its best – as in ‘The Yellow Sign’ – it is genuinely scary, with original ideas seldom equalled. At its worst – as in ‘The Prophets’ Paradise’ (not included here: think yourselves lucky) it is obscure, pompous, and overwritten.
The title refers to a play, rumoured to be so evil that it shatters lives and lays waste souls. We never get to see much of it; in fact, this much-vaunted evil work doesn’t even appear in some of the stories. Where it does, as in ‘The Yellow Sign’ or ‘The Mask’, it adds untold atmosphere. Where it doesn’t, as in ‘The Street of the First Shell’ (again not included), then the book is a distinct let-down. At times, it is hard to see what Chambers is intending with this erratic book. While it is an indispensable part of any self-respecting horror reader’s library, I have to say that it does not live up to its reputation.
And yet, as strange as anything (and at a time when M.R. James was just starting his ghost story career), there comes a line in ‘In the Court of the Dragon’ which could not be more Jamesian:
… I wondered idly … whether something not usually supposed to be at home in a Christian church, might have entered undetected, and taken possession of the west gallery.
‘The Yellow Sign’ is by far and away the most reprinted story from The King in Yellow, and earned the praise of H.P. Lovecraft, among others. It very quickly conjures up an atmosphere of death and decay (count the words in this vein that appear in just the first few paragraphs) and, in the form of the church watchman, one of the genre’s most disturbing figures.
‘In the Court of the Dragon’ and ‘The Demoiselle D’Ys’ are lesser items, though ‘In the Court of the Dragon’ has its own scary church figure. ‘The Mask’ limply trails its fingers in the waters of science fiction, like so many tales from the 1890s. (An odd fact: Chambers mentions Gounod’s ‘Sanctus’ in ‘The Mask’, as a symbol of purity; Werner Herzog used the music over the closing credits of his film Nosferatu in 1979, a most un-pure film.)
While Chambers borrowed various things from Ambrose Bierce to embellish The King in Yellow, like the names Carcosa and Hastur, he has inspired precious few imitators himself. There may be one: Sidney Levett-Yeats, the British writer, introduces a book written by the devil (in his story ‘The Devil’s Manuscript’ (1899)) which ruins lives when read. It is titled The Yellow Dragon.
As The King in Yellow proved to be a winner, Chambers turned to writing full-time, while still keeping up his artistic habits (though, oddly, he never seems to have illustrated any of his own books, Charles Dana Gibson certainly illustrated some for him). He supplied illustrations for magazines such as Life, Truth, and Vogue, and was photographed for The King in Yellow, palette in hand.
He married Elsa Vaughn Moller in 1898, and they spent their married life at Broadalbin, an 800 acre estate in the Sacandaga Valley, northern New York State. Broadalbin had been in the Chambers family since his grandfather William Chambers first settled there in the mid-1800s. This beautiful country estate in the Adirondacks included a game preserve (where it seems Chambers never shot) and a fishing lake.
Broadalbin House was remodelled by Chambers’s architect brother, William Boughton Chambers, and was crammed with the family’s and Chambers’s collection of books, paintings, and Oriental objets d’art. His collection of butterflies was said to be one of the most complete in America.
Chambers spent most of the year at Broadalbin, travelling into New York to work in an office which he kept secret from his family (so much so that they had trouble finding it when he died). His chauffeur would drop him off and pick him up again at a spot some distance from the office.
Chambers lavished much care and affection on Broadalbin, planting thousands of trees on the estate. When he died, he was buried under one of the oaks.
Not all his time at Broadalbin was contented. He saw 200 acres of the estate vanish under the waters of the Sacandaga Reservoir which now covers much of the valley. He would have been even more desolate at the fate of his carefully planted trees (see Part Two).
Though part of the house at Broadalbin was demolished, the building still stands, now owned by the Catholic Church. It was abandoned (literally overnight, on the death of Chambers’s widow in 1938) for some years, and was vandalised terribly. It is reported that Chambers’s papers were used by intruders and squatters to light fires.
Chambers loved the outdoor life: it shows up in his writing time and again, where his descriptions of nature, scenery and forests are superbly evocative. A keen hunter, shooter and fisher,
