In A Glass Darkly

In a Glass Darkly: meaning

Sheridan le Fanu was the son of the Dean of the Irish Episcopal College and was home-educated, so he would have been very familiar with St Paul:

In the title for his collection, Le Fanu changes ‘through’ for ‘in’: as Robert Tracey explains:

The stories of In a Glass Darkly each mirror the darker aspects of human nature, life, and death. These may be repressed emotions and urges, a guilty conscience, or a portal to the other side.

In A Glass Darkly: the book

In A Glass Darkly was published in 1872 and is a collection of five short stories. They are ‘cases’ collected by the narrator, who was secretary to Dr. Hesselius.

• 'Green Tea'.
• 'The Familiar'.
• 'Mr. Justice Harbottle'.
• 'The Room in the Dragon Volant'.
• 'Carmilla'.

The first three stories are introduced in a prologue, followed by a note from Dr. Hesselius offering a rational explanation. The last two cases are presented as stories, introduced with a brief note on the opinions or theories of Dr Hessilius.

Dr Hesselius

Dr Hesselius is a psychiatrist, who discusses the ‘inner eye’ (or ‘interior sense’) as described by Swedenborg, and offers a scientific solution:

In a Glass Darkly: summary and quotes

In a Glass Darkly features five stories: 'Green Tea', 'The Familiar', 'Mr Justice Harbottle', 'The Room in the Dragon Volant', and 'Carmilla'.

Green Tea

Mr Jennings is a clergyman Hesselius meets at a social gathering. Jennings has occasional breakdowns both in conversation and during his sermons:

After some hesitation and apparent recovery, Jennings contacts Hesselius and explains his situation. He has been doing research for a work on paganism and developed the habit of drinking green tea as a stimulant for his brainpower.

Returning home late after picking up some books, Jennings takes an omnibus. He takes a seat near the door, and after the one other passenger gets off, Jennings observes two red lights in the opposite corner. He puzzles about these in the gathering dark. Finally, Jennings realises the red discs are the eyes of a small black monkey. He pokes at it with his umbrella:

Horrified, Jennings gets off the omnibus and walks the rest of the way. He is convinced the phantom monkey has vanished, and, relieved, reaches home. However, he discovers the monkey is still following him. Jennings finds he can not escape the monkey – it comes and goes, and when present, accompanies his travels.

Initially listless, it becomes increasingly aggressive, particularly when Jennings says prayers or even just meditates. Worse, it speaks to him, telepathically ordering him to commit crimes and injure those around him, or himself.

Hesselius advises Jennings to inform him the minute the phantom monkey returns. Hesselius is convinced the cause is physical, (i.e. some nervous disorder) and leaves orders with Jennings’ servant to check regularly in on Jennings in his room. Hesselius then retires to an inn with his notes and proceeds to study Jennings’ case.

He goes home the next day and finds a note from Jennings:

Hesselius returns to Jennings’s house, but arrives too late, as Jennings has killed himself. Hesselius closes with a note on hereditary suicidal mania, which he is convinced was the true cause of Jennings’ death.

The Familiar

The second ‘case’ is described by a clergyman of Dublin and concerns a navy captain, James Barton, who returns to Dublin in 1794 after a distinguished career in the American wars. He is described thusly:

Captain Barton takes a house in a fashionable quarter of the town and keeps one servant. He lives carefully and quietly, does not drink, gamble 'nor any other vicious pursuit (Chapter 1)'. He becomes engaged to a penniless social beauty, Miss Montague.

Miss Montague lives with her aunt, Dowager Lady L, in the north part of Dublin, while Barton lives in the south. His walk home passes through a street that is under construction. One evening, after a conversation about the supernatural (which he treats with complete scepticism), Barton takes his leave and walks home:

Barton turns a couple of times to see who is following him, but sees nobody. He finally reaches home, and, once recovered, decides it was an illusion. At breakfast the next day Barton receives an anonymous letter of warning from somebody called ‘The Watcher’.

The captain assumes the letter to be a hoax, and the footsteps some sort of prank or trick of the imagination. He therefore tells nobody about either. He does however avoid the street. The footsteps continue to follow him, and he receives another letter:

The Captain begins to hear the footsteps by day as well as night. One day while walking with the clergyman and several friends, the group is approached by a man:

The man walks up to Barton, stares at him, then walks away. According to the clergyman, Barton seems terrified by the encounter. His companions suggest he is unwell and he returns home. Miss Montague's father General Montague finally arrives in Dublin. He has known Barton briefly in the past and laughs at the idea of ghosts – he is determined to catch whoever is at the bottom of these visitations:

Both Barton and the General see the man, but fail to capture him. The General suggests a trip abroad to raise Barton’s spirits. They get as far as Calais when the man appears again to Barton. They return to Dublin, with Barton convinced he is to die.

Lady L- has a house outside of Dublin, which she offers to Barton. His doctor advises rest, seclusion, and plenty of cheerful company. A month passes and Barton appears to be recovering. Then one day Lady L sends her maid out to the herb garden. The maid returns with a disturbing tale:

The little man has a message:

Lady L forbids the maid from telling anyone else of this. Barton also sees the little man while walking in the courtyard, and faints. He is carried to his room. Later Barton is found dead, huddled up against the head of the bed, his hands clenching the sheets:

Shortly before, his servant had heard two voices in the room, Barton’s and another’s, but only Barton is found. Miss Montague's pet owl had fluttered in and now flies out again. Later it comes to light that six years before, Barton had been involved with the daughter of one of his crew. The girl’s father treated her so badly that she died:

The man escaped the ship in Naples but died later in a hospital there.

Hesselius notes that he can only conjecture, as he was not present during the case. He suggests hereditary conditions and brain disease, although he also allows that the 'inner eye' may lose its protective layer.

Mr. Judge Harbottle

Hesselius’s opening note on this third case states:

The story is told by a Mr. Harman, who learns of a house in Westminster that is haunted by two men in 18th-century clothes, one of them carrying a rope. Curious to discover the history of the house, Harman writes to a friend (apparently a historian of sorts) who sends back a detailed account of the judge who lived in it during the eighteenth century.

One evening in 1746 the Judge receives a mysterious visitor. When the visitor leaves, servants notice that the Judge looks frightened. The Judge sends one of his footmen to accompany the visitor to his home:

The visitor has hinted at a secret tribunal, a Jacobite group, that seeks revenge on judges such as Harbottle. They call themselves the High Court of Appeal. He has also mentioned a prisoner, Lewis Pykeham, whose case the judge is to try shortly at Shrewsbury.

The footman attempts to accompany the visitor who escapes. The Judge dismisses the whole incident as some kind of trick set up to frighten him. He remembers Lewis Pyneweck rather uncomfortably. Some six years earlier, the Judge lodged in Pyneweck’s house and had an affair with Pyneweck’s wife:

Mrs Pyneweck is now the Judge’s ‘housekeeper’, and although she has no love for her husband, she asks the Judge to do his best for him. The Judge responds by ensuring that Pyneweck is hanged.

On the Judge’s return to London and the Old Bailey, he is astonished to see Lewis Pyneweck in court:

The judge sends clerks of the court to find the man, but he has vanished. The judge then receives a letter of warning: he will be tried before the High Court of Appeal, and it is signed Caleb Searcher, "Officer of the Crown Solicitor in the Kingdom of Life and Death" (Chapter 5). The judge laughs it off as a prank but is a little pale.

He goes to the theatre and arranges to pick up two friends in his carriage. He waits a while, and dozes off. He is awoken by his two friends getting into the carriage. They slam the door shut and the carriage sets off. He discovers, however, that the two men in the carriage are not his friends, and that he has been taken to a court of law in another dimension, ruled over a phantom Judge Twofold:

Judge Harbottle is pronounced guilty by a jury of shadows and sentenced to be hung in a month’s time. He is taken to be put in chains, only the chain is welded to his ankle. His roar of pain transports him back to his carriage:

He is diagnosed with gout and advised to rest. Phantoms are seen around the house: Mrs. Pykeweck sees a long, thin man with a rope who leans over the stairs, and he turns and goes into a room. However, when Mrs. Pykeweck follows him, he vanishes, leaving only the rope.

Fig. 3 - Judge Harbottle receives a judgement.

In the morning the judge is found:

The Room in the Dragon Volant

Hesslius’s interest, in this case, is the use of drugs that induce a catatonic state. The story is more of a mystery or tale of suspense, although Beckett’s experience suggests he (briefly) becomes one of the undead, thus echoing the supernatural.

It’s 1815 and a naive young Englishman (Richard Beckett) is travelling through France when he witnesses an accident, an overturned carriage with its passengers stranded. One of the passengers is an elderly gentleman, and the other is a beautiful young woman. Beckett, fascinated by the woman, follows them to an inn called the Dragon Volant. He is tricked into believing he is rescuing the unhappy young wife of the villainous Count St. Alyre.

He ends up staying at the Dragon Volant, where apparently on three previous occasions, lodgers have vanished after spending the night in a particular room. He is drugged with coffee and liqueur, which induces a cataleptic state: he remains conscious yet unable to speak or move. The Countess appears alarmed at first, and calls out his name:

The Count and the rest of the gang appear and proceed to go through Beckett’s money chest and luggage. They change his clothes for a nightdress and cap and he can hear them dragging something in from the adjoining room:

The gang plans a sham funeral to dispose of Beckett. They place him in the coffin and have only finished screwing the lid down when the gendarmes arrive and Beckett is rescued, although he becomes a figure of fun for Parisian society and leaves as soon as he can.

Carmilla

Briefly, Dr Hesselius makes his notes on the case:

Carmilla is set in Styria, yet Laura, the narrator is English:

Her mother was descended from the Karnsteins, whose ruined castle lies in the area. She and her father live isolated in another castle with an abandoned village:

The villagers, fearing vampires, have abandoned the place. They receive news from a family friend, a general, who is to visit them with his niece. However, the niece has died under mysterious circumstances, which their friend will explain on his arrival:

Meanwhile, a carriage accident occurs outside the castle. Its passengers are a young girl called Carmilla and her mother. Carmilla is injured and is left in the care of Laura and her father while Carmilla’s mother continues on her urgent journey:

The mysterious Carmilla reveals nothing about herself, and has a tendency to sleep all day and sleepwalk at night. Laura falls ill, and the doctor observes two puncture marks on her neck and warns her father. They meet up with the General, who explains his niece had been the victim of a vampire. His description matches Carmilla. They find the tomb of Carmilla (who is Mircalla, Countess Karnstein):

They destroy the body after driving a stake through her heart and beheading her.