THE DEEP ONES: "An Itinerant House" by Emma Frances Dawson

"An Itinerant House" by Emma Frances Dawson

Discussion begins on July 11, 2018.

First published in the April 20, 1878 issue of The Argonaut (1878)



ONLINE VERSIONS

http://storyoftheweek.loa.org/2014/03/an-itinerant-house.html

BIBLIOGRAPHY

http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/title.cgi?1097538

SELECTED PRINT VERSIONS

American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps
The Collected Supernatural and Weird Fiction of Emma Frances Dawson: The Itinerant House and Other Stories

MISCELLANY

http://tellersofweirdtales.blogspot.com/2012/10/emma-frances-dawson-ca-1839-1926...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emma_Frances_Dawson
http://tinyurl.com/yaaytd5f
http://tinyurl.com/y7f37xjx

Online for me.

If the listings as isfdb are complete, oddly enough this story was never republished during the 20C, only to see a bunch of republications this century.

I'll be travelling next week, so I might have a hard time finding time to read this one.

American Fantastic Tales: Terror and the Uncanny from Poe to the Pulps for me.

I must admit that I found this one a little hard to follow, but I enjoyed it nonetheless. It might come clearer upon rereading. It seems that the whole bit with bringing Felipa back from the dead was a kind of feint, as the story turns out not to be about her, but rather the result of her curse upon the others. I like the idea of a "Flying Dutchman of a house". It's almost as if one horror story takes over where the other leaves off.

Interesting that we have had two stories in a row in which a highly detailed painting of a scene of dreadful circumstance figures into the plot.

Dawson's narrative tone is almost breathless, which I attribute in part to having so many different "set pieces" to relate. This tone accounts for part of my initial uncertainty about what to anticipate, but the fairly large cast of characters and various feints (such as the initial focus on bringing back Felipa from the dead) also contribute to that. I haven't read other Dawson works so I'm not sure whether any of these characteristics are typical of her.

I found the strongest part of the story to be the concept of the haunted house, a malefic genius loci, and Dawson's idea of joining that with the period authenticity of the "iron house". There wasn't much of a geographic atmosphere created, though I did appreciate the layering of cultural references, especially musical and poetic allusions.

Having recently re-read Our Lady of Darkness, it was fun for me to get an earlier San Francisco haunting.

Dying curses are common enough, but I don’t think I’ve encountered a reviving curse before.

Agree with Kenton that it was hard to follow at times. The allusions didn’t help, those I did get making me wonder what I missed rather than follow the narrative thread.

I found this one pretty annoying.

Dawson has an interesting idea -- a curse placed by someone who wants to die -- and a moving iron house. (Evidently, California had pre-fab iron houses from New York.) And it started out promising.

But all the allusions and the characters who just won't shut up. And when they talk, apart from the narrator's poetry, it's always with someone else's words.

Allusions can work in a weird story. Poe did it. Bierce did it a bit. But Dawson goes overboard. Her characters have little life because they're never really telling us their feelings, just alluding. It's kind of decadent classicism of a sort.

My suspicion, given that this was published in The Argonaut, is that Dawson, and possibly the intended audience, wanted to show those East Coasters that Californians were sophisticated. However, I haven't read any other Dawson. I recall Bierce throwing in some casual allusions too in some of his work, and he could have left them out with little loss.

I did like the disturbing vision of Felipa in Mexico too.

>9 RandyStafford: It's kind of decadent classicism of a sort.

Yeah, that fits. I would have liked some atmospherics to go along with that decadent strain, though, San Francisco is such a promising locale and yet Dawson squandered that potential. Fewer allusions, more a sense of place to go along with Bierce's enticing description:

To her it is a dream city—a city of wraiths and things forbidden to the senses—of half-heard whispers from tombs of men long dead and damned—

I wonder if any of Dawson's other stories deliver on that promise.

>7 paradoxosalpha:

"Synchronicity" or....? Better watch how many books you've got on your bed. Muhahahahahahahaha!

technically this was a re-read bacause I read the 1st volume of the LOA American Fantastic Tales back in 2011. But I didn't remember anything about it apart from a vague sense of it being a somewhat stilted read.

I didn't feel that on reading it again. Perhaps I'm more in tune with the rhythms of fin de siecle, Decadent prose, and the conventions and concerns of it stories. I don't know enough about 19th Century American literary history to comment on East Coast/West Coast rivalries or any imputation of provincialism or so on, but 1878 is if anything early for a Decadent tale.

I didn't look at the miscellany links, so I don't know if there's anything about the mechanics of how houses were transported to new locations. I was left in the dark - I assume houses are bricks and mortar unless told otherwise - but I understood the main point, that the protagonists kept returning to the scene of the crime (so to speak), disguised with new wallpaper or a remodelled ground floor. It's a nice "high concept" sort of idea.