The Feast of Bacchus

by Ernest George Henham, Gerald Monsman (Introduction)

In the remote hamlet of Thorlund stands the manor house known as the Strath, an eerie place that exercises a mysterious hold over anyone who enters it. The site of tragedy in 1742 when its owner, Sir John Hooper, turned highwayman and met his death on the gallows, the Strath has remained vacant for over a century, a pair of hideous masks its only occupants. When the novel opens, the Strath’s new owner has just arrived from America to take possession of the house, but he is soon found horribly murdered. Now the next heir, young Charles Conway, has come to the Strath, and the house begins to work its baneful influence on him and on the local residents, causing them to behave in bizarre and violent ways. What is the connection between the sinister power of the Strath and the ghastly masks that adorn the wall? And once Conway and the others are drawn within the evil place, can any of them possibly survive?

“One of England’s lost novelists, a writer of startling abilities” (Times Literary Supplement), Ernest G. Henham, who also published under the pseudonym “John Trevena,” was the author of bizarre Gothic fantasies such as Tenebrae (1898) and The Feast of Bacchus (1907), as well as a number of unusual and highly imaginative works set in Dartmoor. This first-ever republication of Henham’s novel includes a new introduction by Gerald Monsman.

“[A] book of strange adventures, of ghostly, nightmare visions; you will want to read it at a sitting, but do not begin it at bedtime unless your nerves are in a thoroughly healthy condition” – The Reader

“[Q]uite a remarkable book . . . Mr. Henham has the exceptional gift of lending an atmosphere of reality to the fantastic. … Some people will find the book enthralling: others may pronounce it quite mad, but everyone must recognise its undeniable cleverness.” – The Outlook

“This strange story … has a tropical luxuriance of imagination quite unusual in works by English writers. . . . an atmosphere of eeriness and mystery strongly reminiscent of Poe. The plot is clever, the characters well-drawn; but it is in his power to create an atmosphere of vagueness and suggestion that Mr. Henham may be said to possess something very like genius.” – The Publisher

Genres: Horror, Fiction, Gothic, Weird Fiction, Fantasy, Classics, Victorian

236 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1907

About the author

Ernest George Henham was a Canadian-British author who wrote novels at the beginning of the 20th century about Dartmoor and Devon, England. He also published literary works under the pseudonym John Trevena.

Ernest G. Henham was born in 1870 and his writings include a series of novels based on Dartmoor, the moorland in Devon, England, where he lived much of his life. He created a pseudonym, John Trevena, for many of his books. It was probably no coincidence that the surname he chose was the original name for Tintagel, the legendary location of King Arthur's castle.

Henham wrote more than two dozen books, which were published between 1897 and 1927. He was considered a recluse, but often used people he encountered in real life for the characters in his work. In addition to the United Kingdom, his books were also published in the United States.

Reviews

[mark monday · Rating 4 out of 5]

if you love classic Weird Fiction, do yourself a solid and check out this practically unknown treasure. Ernest George Henham should have been a boon companion to that genre's authors. he has Algernon Blackwood's mystical yearnings for transcendence, Ambrose Bierce's mordant outlook on human nature, and Robert W. Chambers' arch sensibilities (as well as his obsession with masks).

the story: a haunted old mansion "The Strath" and its fecund gardens, abandoned for ages, gets a new owner. and then another new owner. cause things go down in this old mansion.

this is not truly a haunted house story - in fact, the characters continually insist there is no haunting. however The Strath is home to something. or rather, some things. a nature spirit? a tragic young lady who died a century ago? an infernal pair of masks depicting Comedy and Tragedy?

the writing was right up my alley. I loved its elegance and its quirkiness and its languor, that sense that a la-di-da type of fellow with a deep education in the classics wrote this in between enjoying his absinthe and opium while decrying the sorry lot of mankind. a fellow who scorns his brother and sister freethinkers while extolling the virtues of "the common man."

I love the author's decision to jump right into his scenes of supernatural menace. if "menace" is even the right word. an early scene has two characters meeting in The Strath who automatically start laughing hysterically and capering around - a wonderfully off-kilter way to set the stage. a later scene has a host of characters entering the mansion suddenly take on the personas of people from ages past. there's no explicit explanation given whatsoever and barely even a transition, it just happens. that scene was fascinating - I found it to be chilling and weirdly funny. the climax is beautifully berserk: two characters don the masks of Comedy and Tragedy, lurching around the mansion, as all the other characters react schizophrenically to their influence. plots are quickly hatched, knives are clutched, new personalities are adopted, the unconscious is unleashed.

SPOILERS AHEAD:

the harshest punishments are mete out to the novel's freest thinkers: an independent young miss who scorns the idea of love and a dreamy rector disinterested in the word of God and more content to live in nature and in the past. it was a curious decision on the part of the author and I wonder if it was self-flagellating in nature. was Henham an essentialist or was he critical of that concept? hard to say. the book leaves both doors open.

The lessons of the Strath were those of the didactic drama, which teaches that mortals must submit to unchanging laws. The battle of free-will against destiny was its theme when serious, but under the teaching there lurked undoubtedly the sting of malevolence, of hatred for the actors on its stage, and a desire to destroy them if it might. It had no phantasm to show, nor could it terrify by any sound; it could only shape minds for good or evil, causing the puppets to act and speak in comic or in tragic mood, showing them that life is not a small thing, the world no passing scene, but rather a permanent stage, upon which actors pass and repass, each playing many characters, with the same passions in them, and the same destiny always behind.

[Char · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent, unique haunted house story written back in 1907 and lately resurrected by the gentlemen over at Valancourt Books. 
 
This haunted house tale is quite original in not only its telling, but in how the house is haunted and how it affects people. Another two wonderful things about it, are the beautiful writing and the astute observations of human behavior. For instance this quote about the beautiful but oh so shallow woman, Maude:

"Maude meant nothing that she said. She knew how pretty she looked in furs. She was a rattle, not understanding her own noise; but the scholar hung upon her words, and believed them inspired, and did not know they were murmurings from a shell."

Regarding the house-It's called the Strath. All the local villagers know about it. Sometimes the Strath makes people very happy, causing them to laugh uncontrollably or causing them to go into a type of giddy, dream-like state. At other times, it rocks people to their very souls. The Strath holds terrible secrets, the mysteries of comedy and tragedy, which take the faces of the age old masks from back in the day. The discovery of the story behind the masks was truly horrific.
 
As an example of the gorgeous writing, I submit this quote concerning the master (?) of the Strath and a book he was reading:

"There the book fell, and it seemed to Conway that an invisible hand had struck it out of his. He rose, leaving the journal lying open as it had fallen, and hurried from the room. A gloom filled the passage and the house was full of horror, resounding with the sufferings of its past inhabitants and dripping with their tears. His hand closed upon the damp balustrade, and the rotten wood exuded moisture like a sponge. A minute later the owner, but not the master, of the Strath was speeding through the garden, his being reaching out to find an affinity, as embryonic life must grope into the darkness for its promised soul."

Now, there were also some literary and fancy mythology references in this book. I'm not going to lie, I didn't get all of them...in fact, I probably missed most of them, however that did not take away from my enjoyment of this tale. I Wiki'd Dionysus, (God of wine) and Bacchus, (another God of wine), and that enhanced my understanding enough for me to enjoy the story even more. (As someone who has ALWAYS gotten my Greek and Roman mythologies confused, this was about as much as I could handle.) I'm sure someone more familiar with these mythologies would get even more out of this cleverly told tale.
 
Overall, I enjoyed this book quite a lot. It has convinced me that I should still seek out older works of horror because there was a lot on offer back in the day, and I don't want to miss out.
 
Recommended for fans of literary horror and haunted houses!

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A huge thanks to Valancourt for bringing the book to my attention. I can honestly say that I've never read anything like it ever. Yes, it is a novel about a house (The Strath) that is "haunted," but not by ghosties, ghoulies, or other things that go bump in the night. In fact, exactly what constitutes the source of the house's power is indeed the question that will keep you reading until the very end when all is revealed. Plot (as much as I can in all good conscience give away) can be found here; otherwise keep reading here for the quickie version.

There are a number of factors that elevate this novel from being yet another simple haunted house tale. I'll list a couple of them here. First, the house is the stage for a contemporary tale related in the form of classical Greek drama, complete with all of its component parts. It doesn't take the reader long to figure this out; if nothing else, the chapter headings are constant reminders -- the book is structured into acts, scenes, scene-shifts, incidentals, etc. Another factor that elevates this novel way beyond the norm is the shifting atmosphere of the house, denoting some strange force that takes control of and fashions the players' personalities depending on the current whim of the house. As the introduction states, "the ceaseless interaction of comedic and tragic is the human condition," and in the case of the Strath, this idea takes on some very dark overtones. I will leave it for the reader to discover how and why. There are other indicators of the uniqueness of this story as set apart from "normal" haunted house tales, but those I will also leave for other readers to discover.

I was both fascinated and disturbed by this novel for many reasons, most of which I can't explain without giving away the show. I will just say that Feast of Bacchus is a book that once you've read it, sticks in your head for a very, very long time -- it's that good. A word, though, about the book itself. It was written in 1907, so the writing may come across as a bit archaic to modern readers. If you can get past the style though, it's a book you definitely do not want to miss. Creepy, weird, strange, way out of the ordinary yes, but definitely a fine read.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a brilliant gothic read, with an altogether "different" type of haunting.

The manor house known as the Strath, has a terrible history surrounding it. Mysterious moods and forgetfulness come upon any who linger near to it or its grounds. For over a century, ghastly masks of tragedy and comedy were the sole guardians of this place. Is it their presence that is responsible for the strange altering of minds, or is something deeper at work?

Even those that "own" the Strath, come to quickly realize their place there. Charles Conway, the latest to inherit the grounds and manor, accepts his role without question: "...the owner, but not the master, of the Strath..."

In others, it empowers them to see depth and intelligence where there is none. The rector, and scholar, that lived next door to the Strath, perceived and intelligence in the gaudy and air headed Maude that she simply did not possess. "Maude meant nothing that she said....She was a rattle, not understanding her own noise; but the scholar hung upon her words, and believed them inspired, and did not know they were murmurings from a shell."

The true secret behind the masks and the Strath, itself, is revealed slowly, in a beautiful--yet horrifying--manner. A great literary read with an unpredictable mystery surrounding it.

Recommended!

[Yules]

“the past speaks in us all our lives. We return by the same way that we came. Could we look back we should understand all things; but, lest we should grow too wise, we are made to look forward”

This is a well-done novel of ideas that I wish I could have appreciated more. Alas, I was working on my own writing while reading this, and as a result I was going in and out constantly distracted. For an insightful, non-distracted review, see: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

The premise of the novel is that a pair of masks — comedy and tragedy — haunt the house they occupy and possess its inhabitants. As I understand it, these masks represent the “forces” that operate through human beings, maybe in the way that ideas do (a meme-centric view of human life), or in the way that nature does (we are warm-blooded creatures, no matter how we try to hide behind cerebral scholarship.) Though really the novel deals in a variety of possessing forces, it generally groups them according to the kinds of plays performed at the Dionysia, the Greek festival dedicated to the god Dionysus (aka Bacchus.) Bacchus himself does not appear in the novel, since the forces are immaterial elements influencing material humans — we cannot see them except through the “masks” of the human faces they hide behind.

In Greek mythology, those who forego the release valve offered by Bacchus will suffer his wrath. But there are also extremes to his revelry, leading to mania, frenzy, and violence. Likewise, in the novel, characters who completely resist these forces end up dead, but characters who completely capitulate to them go mad. Some characters find a middle ground but I’m not entirely sure how they do it!

[Hon Lady Selene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Behold, I show you a mystery: We shall not all sleep; but we shall all be changed
in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.

The Feast of Bacchus by Ernest George Henham is a forgotten wonder of a book that brings back the old Greek myths of bacchanalia.

In antiquity, Bacchus was a projection of mankind’s primitive sense of the seasonal cycle of summer and winter, water, wind and light coalesced into an anthropomorphic god of the vine, a power beyond social control. Hither, modernity is shadowed by the survival of an unsuspected divine-natural force in which life and death, beauty and horror pass into each other.

The plotline of the novel involves a dilapidated manor house, the Strath, that according to the locals, is most surely not haunted. Complications emerge when people make their way into the Strath and the house starts working its spell on them, causing them to act in bizarre and/or violent ways, depending on its current whims. They become puppets, acting out strange dramas while inside, whereas outside they return to their normal selves, but with only a vague recollection of what had transpired in the house. A house with a soul. But what kind of a soul? And what is the source of the house’s dramatic power?

All drama in its original form is a direct result of idol-worship, and not only in drama, but all the arts: sculpture, architecture, poetry and painting, all came into existence by the worship of false gods. Unable to form any clear notion of divinity, men tried to represent the subject of their thoughts under human form. The divinity would need their own accommodation among them, therefore they built temples. He would require gratitude and worship, and so poetry and music came to being. The earliest state of drama was therefore a hymn to Bacchus, (called Dithyramb) who was known as the Deliverer, because he brought people safely through winter.

The novel’s uniqueness and complexity emerges particularly in its structural parallel of modern life with great classical drama. The bold plot is a gratifying narrative as to how ancient patterns will express themselves in modern social roles.

This is a Myth disguised as a Play then disguised as a Novel!

As the mundane and dream-like interweave throughout, the line blurs where reality ends and something else, something fantastic, begins. As the garden of Eden grows wild, it encourages freedom without rules or restrains, projecting an addictive sense of wild gaiety, a lifting of inhibitions more characteristic of Bacchic rituals.

Henham cannot resist ending his novel with a masquerade, in which the forces of Good and Evil are personified by two characters wearing masks of Comedy and Tragedy. A Bacchanal festival though and through, as knives and swords are brandished to accompany the mad giggles, bells and perturbations. Each character is controlled by the forces of Comedy or Tragedy, depending on their closely guarded secrets and the personified characters of Comedy and Tragedy are there to lead them on their path of madness and mayheim, in a game of life and death where eros and anteros are masters of ceremony.

I haven’t the vocabulary to sing this book’s praises enough. I’m a reader, not a writer. But The Feast Of Bacchus worked its classical charms on me, and I wish I was the one who wrote it. However, a 19 year old beat me to it in 1907 and may he walk with Pan in bucolic gardens and merrily drink Bacchus's sweetest wine for all eternity for it!

For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality.

[Leah Polcar · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book just did not work for me. While I guess this is a prime example of literary horror, a genre I usually like, I felt Henham was just trying too hard to make this a "serious" book. My opinion seems to differ quite a bit from the reviews I see here, so maybe I am just unsophisticated, but my oh my can Henham ramble on. While his character descriptions were outstanding -- especially of the frivolous Maude -- the seemingly endless discourses on philosophy and the arts made my eyes glaze over. I am somewhat familiar with many of the concepts he introduces during these tedious dialogues, but even that couldn't pique my interest.

I couldn't finish the book and that is unusual for me. Even when I am hating what I am reading, I tend to solider on, but that was just impossible for me with The Feast of Bacchus . I was worried I would gouge my own eyes out. Apparently this is a shame since I never got to the explanation of the actual haunting, which according to the reviews I disagree with, was interesting and non-traditional. Oh well. I give it two stars however since, as I said, the characters were quite nicely developed and there is the possibility I am just a simpleton.

[Andy Weston · Rating 2 out of 5]

Would be much better suited to a short story, or short novella.
Lost in the minutae, there were times when I found my attention wandering.

[Brucifer · Rating 4 out of 5]

Thanks again to my favorite reprint publisher for bringing another excellent "lost" novel out of obscurity and back into print. Henham's 1907 philosophical horror novel isn't entirely successful, but overall it's an enjoyable, atmospheric, and surprisingly thoughtful haunted house story. The novel concerns the Strath--your typical huge gothic English manor house in the middle of nowhere--and what happens to those who inherit it when they decide to inhabit it again after over 100 years of vacancy and neglect. The first inheritor, an American who begins the renovation process, dies under mysterious circumstances after only a few weeks in the house, while the second, a young English playboy named Charles Conway, is the house's occupant, along with various friends and visitors, throughout most of the novel's length. Key to the novel are two Dionysian masks (the familiar comedy and tragedy masks of Greek theater) and the hypnotic, sometimes hallucinatory, influence they seem to have over anyone who stays at the house for any period of time. The novel meanders a bit in an attempt to balance the paranormal experiences of perhaps a few too many characters (including a young woman who lived there centuries before and whose diary entries tell a story that is in the end not all that relevant). But it does all come together nicely at the end thanks to an antiquarian detection plot line brought in about halfway through the book in the form of a new character--aristocrat Mr. Biron, who has been searching all of his life for the otherworldly masks his grandfather created. In addition to having too many characters, the novel digresses into pretentiousness on occasion as Henham waxes philosophic about the origin and significance of Greek theater (the novel is itself structured like a classic Greek play), but thankfully those areas can be easily enough passed over. All in all, a good yarn with nicely-drawn characters (particularly the loopy vicar and would-be poet, Mr. Berry, who has lived in close proximity to the Strath for much too long) and a nice early 20th century ghostly atmosphere that will please anyone who likes a good classic English ghost story.

[Aaron · Rating 4 out of 5]

Henham often looses momentum with this one, but the characters entice you through the slow spots, and the building eeriness tickles your curiosity. The finale of chaos is fairly chaste but completely fascinating and unique.

[Latasha · Rating 3 out of 5]

this book was slow but then ending was very interesting. I would've liked to seen a little bit more hellraiser style horror but this was wrote many, many, many years ago.

[Sandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Tenebrae" (1898), by the London-born writer Ernest G. Henham, had turned out to be one of my favorite reading experiences of 2023, and I had been wanting to read another book from this same author ever since. A Gothically inflected tale dealing with fratricide, madness, and a 20-foot-long spider monstrosity, "Tenebrae" was a deliciously morbid treat; one that had been rescued from over a century's worth of oblivion by the fine folks at Valancourt Books. Now, I'd like to tell you of my follow-up Henham experience, this one in the supernatural vein and released almost a decade later. And that book is "The Feast of Bacchus."

The publishing history of this particular book is an easy one to set down. "The Feast of Bacchus" was originally released in 1907 by the British publisher Brown, Langham & Co. It would then go OOPs (out of prints) for 107 years, till Valancourt opted to resurrect it. ("Tenebrae," by the way, was rescued from its oblivion after 111 years!) This was the eighth and final novel that Henham wrote under his own name. After moving from Canada back to his native Devonshire, the author wrote another 20 novels under the pseudonym John Trevena, many of them set in the Dartmoor region that he knew so well. The Valancourt edition from 2014, besides being (realistically speaking) the only choice for prospective readers today, also includes a highly literate/borderline impossibly erudite introduction by Henham authority Gerald Monsman; a spoiler-laden intro that is best read as an afterword, as the Valancourt editors suggest. As it happens, this latter Henham novel is not the 5-star masterpiece that I deemed "Tenebrae" to be, although it just might be a more formally accomplished piece of work. More on that in a moment.

Like "Tenebrae," "The Feast of Bacchus" is largely set in a gloomy old house in the English countryside. The Strath, we learn, in the hamlet of Thorlund (population: 30), was built in 1670 and, as Henham's story opens at the beginning of the 1900s, has been an abandoned wreck for over a century...abandoned, but not entirely empty, it would seem. Though considered to be not haunted by the locals, an undeniable something emanates from the center of the Strath, influencing for both good and ill everything and everyone in the area. Okay, I might as well tell you up front what the source of those influences are right now, since the information is revealed on the book's back cover as well as in Monsman's introduction. A pair of tragedy and comedy masks, which had been fashioned from human skin by a mad German toy maker in the 18th century, are ultimately revealed to be the source of the emanations, and the eight characters who come under their influence soon find their lives forever changed as a result.

First up we have the Reverend Berry, a middle-aged scholar who lives next door to the Strath and has spent the last 30 years of his life walking in the Strath's gardens and translating the poetry of Sappho and other Greeks of antiquity. When the Strath's new owner, Reed, arrives from America with big plans for renovating the property, Berry warns him against doing so, and within days, the American is found dead, strangled, in front of his dilapidated house. Reed's nephew, Charles Conway, a debauched wastrel from London, soon arrives to take possession (or, should I say, become possessed?), later joined by his impecunious writer friend, Drayton, and the two are soon seen to be dreamily ensconced in the Strath, working on a play (in the case of Drayton), reading the diary of Winifred Hooper, the unhappy daughter of the Strath's original highwayman owner (in the case of Conway), and strolling around the garden.

Soon drawn into the Strath's orbit as well is the Reverend Price, the squire/parson--or squarson, as Henham calls him (and yes, that is an actual word)--of the nearby village of Kingsmore; a kindly old man who cannot understand Berry's, uh, burying himself in isolation. Price's niece, the proto-feminist Flora Neill, later arrives for a visit, and she, despite her vow to never marry, quickly becomes interested in the Strath's handsome new owner. And Flora is soon joined by her vain and foolish friend Maude Juxon; a woman without a serious thought in her head, on holiday in the country to get away from her young daughter and her decent but boring husband Herbert. Herbert, it seems, is a stockbroker whose business is on the verge of failure, and he too soon arrives on the scene, most particularly to observe Maude's obvious infatuation with the handsome scholar Berry. And to round out the octet, we have Lone Nance, aka Nancy, a teenaged girl who lives in the area, who spends all her time communing with nature, and who is clearly suffering from some kind of mental disorder. Eventually, the twin masks of comedy and tragedy will gather all eight of these folks under the crumbling roof of the Strath, for a bemused evening of 18th century costumes, dance, harpsichord music...and attempted murder....

Now, perhaps I should admit right here that "The Feast of Bacchus" will probably not prove an "easy book" for the average reader, unlike the extremely reader-friendly "Tenebrae." I haven't mentioned that the novel is patterned after those ancient Greek works that the Reverend Berry studies (Berry himself being referred to as an "exarchus" somewhere) and with numerous allusions to the dramatists and tragedians of over two millennia back. Monsman's pedantic-beyond-belief intro isn't as helpful as it might be, and his reference to the novel's "Aeolic iambo-trochaic scansion patterns" will most likely elicit a groan from most. The novel will thus be appreciated variously by two separate groups: by the more scholarly readers with a thorough knowledge of the Greek classics and who are alive to all the book's manifold subtleties, and by the average readers who just want to revel in Henham's beautiful prose and enjoy a creepy tale of the supernatural. (Need I even mention which of the two camps I fall into?)

Henham, to his great credit, has done an impressive job of research as regards Greek drama and 18th century period décor. His prose really is wonderfully detailed here. Thus, Maude doesn't just pick some flowers at one point, but rather "marguerites and ragged-robins," and Berry's small church is said to feature "a canopied memorial, adorned by miniature fluted columns and capitals of spiral volutes, acanthus-leaf bosses, brackets of decorated foliage, grape pendants, and crotchets terminating in mitre-headed finials...." And the Strath, it must be said, is a wonderfully creepy abode in which to set the center stage for Henham's play; a house in which bats flutter through the halls, fungi and nightshade sprout from the mildewed carpets, and cracks and gaping holes riddle the walls and flooring. Early on, Berry tells Reed "You are not strong enough to fight the place," prefiguring Roddy McDowall's famous line "You do not fight this house" from the classic 1973 film "The Legend of Hell House." And it's true: The Strath's influence seemingly cannot be fought, and those who enter become wholly different inside than they were outside...and with zero recollection of what transpired indoors once they depart. ("Inside the Strath they were puppets; outside they resumed...their normal selves.") Again, it is a house not haunted in the traditional sense, but one whose competing masks of comedy and tragedy influence its visitors back and forth, for better or (usually) worse.

Henham's octet of characters are all finely drawn, especially so the Reverends Berry and Price and that empty-headed chatterbox Maude. And all eight become changed people as a result of their stay at the Strath. The author also provides his readers with at least four scenes of undeniable eeriness. In the first, Berry, in a kind of swoon, engages in some "automatic writing" and receives messages from some cosmic entities who endeavor to tell him what's going on in the house next door...followed by a message from the deceased Reed! And then there's the remarkable scene in which Berry, Price and Flora visit Conway at the Strath, and before long are dressed in 18th century garb and perukes, and discussing the health of their current king...George the Second! Maude's first visit to the Strath, during which she is compelled to believe that she has tragically murdered her own husband and daughter, is truly nerve racking. And, of course, nothing can top the hours-long masque that our octet holds in the house near the book's end, with one and all going out of their minds, to violent effect. And I would be remiss if I failed to mention those exquisitely written and heartbreakingly sad passages that we get to see from Winifred's diary of 1742; some of the most achingly poetic love musings that you have ever been privy to, trust me. Just Henham's way of letting us know that even before the advent of the masks, the Strath had been the scene of great misfortune and tragedy. "The Feast of Bacchus" may not be as wonderfully Gothic in feel as "Tenebrae," nor can it boast as many sequences of dramatic incident, but it still does have atmosphere to spare. (The novel is subtitled "A Study in Dramatic Atmosphere.") Henham, rather than copying the Gothic style here, was more in tune with the Greek tragedy, and I suppose it's a matter of taste as to which one you prefer. In "Tenebrae," a gnawing sense of guilt results in madness; here, no matter what acts are committed inside the Strath, there is forgetfulness outside (although it is true that one of the characters does ultimately go quite mad...and no, not the madwoman Nancy).

I am certain that a repeat reading of "The Feast of Bacchus" would reveal subtleties and foreshadowings not immediately apparent during the initial perusal...such as when Berry tells Reed "...the Strath has its moods. Sometimes it is happy, and often it is sorrowful. It must either laugh or groan...." The book is assuredly an example of great literature, just as it is undeniably not for all tastes. Indeed, the book at times can be a bit of a slog, and will demand much of the average reader in terms of research for a full appreciation. Henham assumes that his readers are intimately acquainted with such Greek figures as Archilochus, Aeschylus, Thucydides, Amphis, Lycambes, Menippus and Alcman, as well as with such Greek locales as Mytilene and Hymettus. I found that I could never read more than 25 pages or so at a sitting, and felt at times to be as much of a translator as Dr. Berry! Another problem that I ultimately had is the fact that the origin we are given for those darn masks does not satisfactorily explain how they are able to affect human destiny for good or ill. In other words, Henham's back story for the masks, gruesome as it is, does not go far enough in explaining its seemingly supernatural effects over the centuries. Still, this is nitpicking, and "The Feast of Bacchus" remains a beautifully written and impressive piece of work, when all is said and done...no matter which intellectual level you are approaching it from. Valancourt has several of the John Trevena titles available as part of its hugely impressive catalog, but what I would like to read next, despite my difficulties with this book, is Trevena's 1911 novel "The Reign of the Saints," which supposedly--set in a futuristic England as it is--contains some almost science fictional content. Hopefully, the folks at Valancourt will be making it available one day soon. If that book is anywhere near as memorable as "Tenebrae" or as accomplished as "The Feast of Bacchus," I just know that I will enjoy it....

(By the way, this review originally appeared on the FanLit website at https://fantasyliterature.com/ ... a most ideal destination for all fans of supernatural horror....)

[Eggp · Rating 3 out of 5]

A play in five acts
fidelity lost and gained
possessed, not haunted.

[Boris Cesnik · Rating 3 out of 5]

Great conception and idea, execution not up to standards and expectations.

The writing style reminded me of the rural gothic fiction of a Sheridan Le Fanu but pointless here - too anachronistic for a turn of the century novel; a Poe could have saved the narrative and development if not the ending; but what we would have needed here was a Machen to rightfully restore the mythological basis and the decadentism of the story. Not to mention the psychological insight of a Shirley Jackson and the smoothing hermetism of a Richard Matheson.

Too much, too detached and too little story telling technique. Too many elements shovelled into a big cauldron without proper thought. Characters do not come alive - silly pawns without a face or brain.

All the peculiarities drawn from Greek literature and theatre struggle to create an interesting framework for the story to take off and unfold harmoniously.

But I do have to take my hat off to the originality of the idea. It would have beeb a smashing novel, one of a kind perhaps...Could have, Should have, Would have....

[Arka Chakraborty · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have a love and hate relationship with this one..loved it for its content, the idea, the paganist undercurrent..hated it for being too dragging at times. But the ending was thunderous...so Encore for that.

[Ron Kerrigan · Rating 2 out of 5]

I found it tiresome and tedious and not at all scary. I'm thinking I just wanted something to happen instead of listening to boring dialogues and having to infer what was going on. I did find some of the writing interesting in its descriptions, but gave up about a third of the way through.