A Book of Bargains

by Vincent O'Sullivan

Vincent O'Sullivan (1868-1940), an American-born writer and long resident in Europe, was a central figure of the English Decadent Movement. His early books of (mostly fantastic) verse -- POEMS (1896) and THE HOUSES OF SIN (1897) -- were among the movement's key documents, as was his first story collection, A BOOK OF BARGAINS (1896).

The morbid stories in this collection were written under the shadow of Poe but are distinctly fin de siècle in their sin-soaked diabolism. The after-death nightmare "When I Was Dead" is a minor masterpiece.

Genres: Horror, Short Stories, Fiction, Classics

71 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1896

About the author

Vincent O'Sullivan was an American short story writer, poet and critic. Born in New York City to Eugene and Christine O'Sullivan, he began his education in the New York public school system and completed it in Britain. He lived comfortably in London, traveling often to France, until in 1909 he lost his income from the family coffee business when his brother Percy made a spectacularly mistimed futures gamble at the New York Coffee Exchange. The entire family was ruined, and Vincent was destitute for the remaining years of his life.

His works dealt with the morbid and decadent. He was a friend of Oscar Wilde (to whom in his disgrace he was often generous), Leonard Smithers, Aubrey Beardsley and other fin-de-siècle figures. O'Sullivan produced his first collection of supernatural fiction, A Book of Bargains, in 1896. It contains the pact-with the devil story "The Bargain of Rupert Orange", and The Business of Madame Jahn and "My Enemy and Myself", which both feature reanimated corpses. "When I Was Dead" (1905), "Verschoyle's House" (1915) and "The Burned House" (1916) are ghost stories, while "Will" is a tale of psychic vampirism.

Librarian note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

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Reviews

[Bill Kerwin · Rating 3 out of 5]

Vincent O’Sullivan was one of the last of the decadents. A rich young American, the heir to a coffee fortune, he studied briefly at Oxford before leaving for London to become “a man of letters.” He frequented—as did most of the decadents—Leonard Smithers’ bookshop, and it was there he met Pater, Yeats, Dowson, Beardsley, and Wilde.

Wilde considered O’Sullivan a good dinner companion, in spite of the air of melancholy about him. ““He was really very pleasant,” Oscar remarked, “for one who treats life from the standpoint of the tomb.” O’Sullivan was notably generous to Wilde in the years following his imprisonment; it was he who gave Oscar the money to visit Lord Alfred Douglas for four months in Naples.

In 1896, Smithers published O’Sullivan’s first two books, each with a frontispiece by Beardsley. One was a book of verse entitled Poems, and the other was this collection of fiction, The Book of Bargains.It is a grim little book written in cool, clear prose, consisting of seven stories of people who bargain with the devil, either literally or figuratively. Most commit crimes, primarily murders, usually with a knife. What little compassion O'Sullivan shows is always for the murderer, never for the victim, and only before he commits his crime, never after.

The most memorable of the seven stories are: “The Business of Madame Jahn,” in which a ghost actually ages, appearing first as a young woman, and growing progressively older on successive nights until she takes on the appearance she held after her death; “Original Sin,” in which a young man is obsessed by the idea of killing a four year old girl (“Oh, to crush that satin throat!”); and “When I was Dead,” which gives a unique view of life immediately after death, one more unsettling than the typical near death experience. The four other tales are worth reading too.

I will end with Oscar Wilde’s comment on his work: “What a midnight his soul seems to walk! And what maladies he draws from the moon.”

[Warren Fournier · Rating 4 out of 5]

This may be one of the better collections of supernatural and weird fiction from the very end of the 19th Century that you've likely never read.

Each story is supposed to center around an unholy "bargain", though the only one that features a classic "deal with the Devil" is the first one, titled "The Bargain of Rupert Orange".  This entry is particularly notable for being eeriely prophetic of the author's own future.  The story concerns a high-society New Yorker who is cheated out of his inheritance by a scheming aunt, plummeting him into destitution.  The story is themed around how differently society treats the same person when they have wealth as opposed to when they have no influence at all.  Vincent O'Sullivan would personally discover just how true this was a little over a decade after he wrote this story.  He was an American poet and author who lived comfortably in Britain and France off a family fortune--that is until his brother made a bad investment at the New York Coffee Exchange in 1909 and ruined the family.  

The rest of the "bargains" are pretty much your standard ghostly revenge stories with a few exceptions, such as one featuring a narrator who manipulates a "friend" to commit suicide, and the worst case of "cute aggression" imaginable. 

Though you aficionados of short horror stories won't necessarily find anything new here, I think you'll appreciate the style of writer Vincent O'Sullivan.  Try this opening of the story "When I Was Dead":

"That was the worst of Ravenel Hall. The passages were long and gloomy, the rooms were musty and dull, even the pictures were sombre and their subjects dire. On an autumn evening, when the wind soughed and wailed through the trees in the park, and the dead leaves whistled and chattered, while the rain clamoured at the windows, small wonder that folk with gentle nerves went a-straying in their wits! An acute nervous system is a grievous burthen on the deck of a yacht under sunlit skies: at Ravenel the chain of nerves was prone to clash and jangle a funeral march. Nerves must be pampered in a tea-drinking community; and the ghost that your grandfather, with a skinful of port, could face and never tremble, sets you, in your sobriety, sweating and shivering; or, becoming scared (poor ghost!) of your bulged eyes and dropped jaw, he quenches expectation by not appearing at all."

I do not scare easily, but O'Sullivan delivers not only great autumnal and Victorian atmosphere, but some genuinely chilling and shocking moments.  I also found some of these entries to be surprisingly gory and gruesome for the era!

Every story has something to commend, but none of them are perfect either.  Sometimes, they seem to end so abruptly that they feel like the author forgot to finish them before publication.  At other times, a great idea seems half-baked.  But overall, I found these entries less cozy and more unsettling than I usually expect from vintage horror.  In short, this book is surprisingly effective.  

If you are looking for a few quick classic scares on a lazy night, but want something a little different from your usual offerings of Poe, Lovecraft, Blackwood, and James, give this one a try.  The book is in the public domain, and there are many free or insanely cheap e-book versions available, so it's a bargain you can't miss!

SCORE: 3.5, rounded to 4 bargains out of 5

[Jay Rothermel · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Weird and the Wonderful YouTube show has a brief overview of A Book of Bargains here. O'Sullivan had not been on my radar before, but this is an exciting collection of stories.

O'Sullivan's bargains naturally have their hidden costs. Sometimes they are hidden from protagonists, sometimes by them. 

In the world of O'Sullivan' characters, payoffs are always steep. Some succumb in the pitiless steel mesh of personal logic or social consequence. Others race toward suicide like it's the last plane out.

A Book of Bargains gives us a look at various insiders, outsiders, successes, failures, and those lumpen figures who've simply fallen off the bottom rung of class society. The stories are bleak, brief, and direct in their evocation of life in its febrile succulence.

Full: http://jayrothermel.blogspot.com/2021...

[Bill Borre]

When I Was Dead is also printed in the Big Book of the Masters of Horror