THE DEEP ONES: "The Music on the Hill" by Saki

"The Music on the Hill" by Saki

Discussion begins October 20, 2021.

First published in The Chronicles of Clovis (1911).



BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?74132

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

The Moonlight Traveler: Great Tales of Fantasy and Imagination
The Screaming Skull and Other Classic Horror Stories
100 Tiny Tales of Terror
The Complete Saki

ONLINE VERSIONS

http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/MusHil.shtml

ONLINE AUDIO VERSIONS

http://thoughtaudio.com/?p=365
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g5pAyITNYtQ

MISCELLANY

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saki
https://weirdfictionreview.com/2015/07/101-weird-writers-36%E2%80%89-%E2%80%89sa...
https://horrordelve.com/2016/09/18/saki-weird-tales/
https://tinyurl.com/5r3pryum

Reading this out of my edition of Short Stories of Saki.

Starting to think sylvan dread isn't my thing; I didn't like this too much either. Certainly not anywhere as much as "Sredni Vashtar", which we did a while ago.

While he does offer advice, Mortimer doesn't seem to concerned to protect his wife. Just how did she engineer their marriage?

Yeah, sylvan dread is certainly mild, though I do appreciate it. I perhaps should have nominated another Saki tale in its place, "Gabriel-Ernest", which has a similar theme but packs a little bit more punch -- similar to "Sredni Vashtar".

The commentary on class and social mores is a key theme in these tales, and I think appropriate given the concern about a declining reverence for Pan. Mortimer appears to have "gone along to get along" and seemingly considers whatever befalls Sylvia to be deserved (if only because eminently predictable). He tells Sylvia, "I don't think you will ever go back to Town" after hearing she's disturbed his offering of grapes.

I found the ending to be swifter than anticipated, and more direct. Though the story generally was heading in a predictable direction, I arrived somewhat unexpectedly -- and that ending was all the more effective for its abruptness.

I love Saki and this has always been a favourite of mine. I like this much more than 'Gabriel-Ernest' (good though that is)—it's much less straightforward and always leaves me with questions.

What exactly is Mortimer's relationship with Pan? Or, to put it another way, how honest are his remarks to Sylvia on the subject?

What is Mortimer's relationship to Yessney? The facts that Mortimer has no title while his mother is a dowager suggest that he is a younger son and that Yessney is not his ancestral home; yet, from his mother's remarks, he had clearly lived in it at times before his marriage. Is it some sort of family 'secondary' home—perhaps a bit of a dark secret in the family—or did he find it for himself? And what's with the name, 'Yessney'—a play on 'yes, no' for some reason?

Clearly, neither Mortimer nor Sylvia loves the other. It's implied that Sylvia has bullied her way into the marriage; Mortimer was a 'good catch'. But why has Mortimer let her? Saki was gay in a time when it was very much beyond the pale. Lots of men in Saki/Mortimer's circumstances must have been driven by societal pressure into 'marriages of convenience' (for want of a better phrase, offhand). To repent at leisure.

Sylvia seems to have pushed her way in where she isn't wanted in several ways, though. Why did his family not want the marriage? She may have been a social climber but there are a few little hints in there that she is upper crust herself. And is Saki's depiction of her saying something about the Edwardians' relationship with the countryside? She clearly knows a bit about stag-hunting, and clearly knows nothing about farm lifestock—surely some sort of comment on her attitude to the countryside.

Questions, questions: this story always leaves me pondering.

Oops. I only set out to write a few, quick lines ...

>5 alaudacorax:

These musings and questions are a big part of why the story resonates with me, too. I've seen comments that the story is too wordy or meandering, but it seems to me that no detail is not deliberate. A lot of thematic layering.

It's a bit of a sore point with me that there seem to be no relatively new, hardcover, collected editions of the short stories. My Bodley Head is now pretty scruffy, and probably was when I bought it, and is quite a number of stories short of being a complete edition. An unjustly neglected writer, I feel. A digression, sorry.

I'll follow into that digression: my Viking Press edition of the collected "Short Stories of Saki" is in good shape ... but it's from 1930, and advertised as a supplement to a "Complete Works" set "in eight uniform volumes". I wonder if the set is still considered complete, and also curious that the volume of short stories is separate from the eight-volume set. Certainly it overlaps with it, but unclear what may be missing.

It's probably enough Saki for me, though.

This is my Saki collection in hardcover (it's supplemented by one paperback: the Penguin complete short stories is still unread, so far, and boxed up in the loft). The book with the blue cover is the novel The Unbearable Bassington and the Tartarus press collection includes the other novel, a Future War/ anticipation of war with Germany novel entitled When William Came.

As one might expect, there's a lot of over overlap between the three short story collections, and the do not constitute a "complete" between them.



>8 elenchus:
The 1976 Folio Society short stories indicates where the contents are drawn from. Adding the two posthumous collections to the list of publications in Saki's Wikipedia entry suggests the "complete works" consists of the titles below in bold or italics:

1899 "Dogged" (short story, ascribed to H. H. M., in St. Paul's, 18 February)
1900 The Rise of the Russian Empire (history)
1902 "The Woman Who Never Should" (political sketch in The Westminster Gazette, 22 July)
1902 The Not So Stories (political sketches in The Westminster Annual)
1902 The Westminster Alice (political sketches with illustrations by F. Carruthers Gould)
1904 Reginald (short stories)
1910 Reginald in Russia (short stories)
1912 The Chronicles of Clovis (short stories)
1912 The Unbearable Bassington (novel)
1913 When William Came (novel)
1914 Beasts and Super-Beasts (short stories, including "The Lumber-Room")
1914 "The East Wing" (short story, in Lucas's Annual / Methuen's Annual)
1923 The Toys of Peace
1924 The Square Egg

Edited - to correct a malicious autocorrect: "in the loft" not "in the lost".

The illustrations for the Folio Society editions indicates the - entirely justified - view of Saki as a humourist focusing on the English upper and upper-middle classes, sitting between Oscar Wilde and P. G. Wodehouse, and not primarily a writer of Weird Tales.

That said, "The Music on the Hill" can be read as a straight forward example of what would now be classed as Folk Horror or Rural Horror. The humour is, perhaps, in the idea that the reader would be so silly as to take it seriously. Or maybe we're supposed to quietly enjoy Sylvia's downfall. Would that be misogynistic - a pushy woman getting her just desserts? Or some class-based satisfaction at...a pushy woman who is not quite the right sort getting her just desserts?

Actually, although both readings are possible they both seem far too reductive. Saki play his cards too close to his chest and, as alaudacorax notes, reflecting on this seemingly limpidly clear and strightforward story opens up lots of questions.

>7 alaudacorax: onwards -

I recently finished what I believe is a 'complete' edition* on my Kindle (come to think of it, I left out 'The Unbearable Bassington'—a bit too much of a mouthful for snacking, which I was). Okay, perhaps I'm a bit out of kilter with the modern world, but I think he's brilliant and I'm still feeling sour that there isn't a good hardback 'complete' currently in print.

Stories that are Gothic or Weird or just horror are few and far between (I think they, when they do come, probably fit best under Weird); but, as >10 housefulofpaper: implies, there always seems to be a big question mark over how seriously we are meant to take them in those genres. Or do I mean they fit better in Weird rather than straight-up horror exactly because of that question mark? It's confusing. Read 'Laura', for instance. Is that a humorous tale with some horrific undertones, or a rather funny horror story? It's a favourite, but as to defining what kind of beast it is ... And that, for me, is what makes all these outliers of his even more delicious than the rest of his stories. And I think 'The Music on the Hill' is probably the furthest outlier; but still with the humour in there somewhere.

* ETA - For some reason, I can't force a touchstone.
ETA, again - It seems that all collections of Saki have been grouped together as editions of the same book. No comment.

>9 housefulofpaper:

And now I find myself wondering how much it would cost me to get myself good-condition copies of all your bolds and italics. Hide the plastic cards!

>12 alaudacorax:

I've just looked for the Bodley Head collected edition on AbeBooks. The volumes that came up are not expensive. I have to amend my list in >9 housefulofpaper::

(dates are still 1st book publication per Wikipedia)
1902 The Westminster Alice (political sketches with illustrations by F. Carruthers Gould)
1904 Reginald & 1910 Reginald in Russia (short stories)
1912 The Chronicles of Clovis (short stories)
1912 The Unbearable Bassington (novel)
1913 When William Came (novel)
1914 Beasts and Super-Beasts (short stories)
1923 The Toys of Peace
1924 The Square Egg (short stories, three plays, Saki's biography by his sister)

or

The Bodley Head Saki (published as a collected edition. Impressions between 1963 and (?)1973. 1973 editon is on AbeBooks. Description says it includes the short stories and The Unbearable Bassington).

or

The Complete Works of Saki (Doubleday, 1976)

or

a Franklin Library collected stories (illustrated by Edward Gorey!)

>13 housefulofpaper:

An indefatigable researcher! Thank Andew.

Unfortunately, I have the Bodley Head and it's missing quite a few short stories, and likewise the Franklin Library (which I may well have shelled out one of those prices for had it been a 'complete') is a selection by, if I remember correctly, Graham Greene. I was tempted by one or two of the Doubledays; but where there were decent photographs I wasn't happy to shell out the money for the conditions they were in.