'The Beetle' by Richard Marsh 1897

                                                         A Lost Occult Horror Classic 

                     John Atkinson Grimshaw 'Nightfall on the Thames' 1880 in the public domain courtesy of Wikipedia

Richard Marsh was born Richard Bernard Heldman in London  on 12th October 1857. The son of a lace merchant who married a lacemaker. The Heldman family were Jewish converts to Christianity. His father went bankrupt not long after Richard's birth, and became a school master. From 1880 up to 1883, Richard Heldman had short stories published in boy's fiction and adventure magazines, but appears to have stopped writing in June 1883. For the rest of the year, Heldman drifted through Britain and France, living from the proceeds of forged cheques. In February 1884, he was arrested and then convicted for forgery in April of that year at Maidstone Quarter Sessions, and sentenced to 18 months hard labour. 

Upon leaving prison, Heldman adopted his mother's name, and started writing as 'Richard Marsh'. His literary output included some seventy books and countless short stories, published in magazines such as 'Cassell's Magazine', 'The Strand Magazine', 'Cornhill Magazine', 'Household Words'. Marsh's career as a writer continued to his death from heart failure in 1915 with some work published posthumously, but by the 1930's Marsh joined the ranks of the forgotten novelists.

The Beetle originally appeared as serial in the weekly magazine 'Answers' in 1897 under the title The Peril of Paul Lessingham:The Story of  a Haunted Man. There were fifteen installments. In September 1897 the tale became The Beetle and published as a novel.( The American edition was titled 'The House with the Open Window'.) Possibly fair to call the book an  'Edwardian best seller' and firmly established it's place in the genre of the 'occult horror novel' : For further biographical information and list of Richard Marsh's work, please see VUOHELAINEN and BASSETT. 

The novel opens with the wretched plight of Robert Holt. A respectable clerk who ended up as unemployed, homeless, and unable to get a bed in a  London doss house. A hopeless and helpless figure ravaged  by ill fortune. Perhaps Marsh's time in prison made him sympathetic to such dire circumstances. After trudging the streets on a wet night, on the point of starvation, Holt notices a house in darkness which has a window open. Desperate for shelter, he decides to climb in. 

In the darkness Holt can get little rest, a giant insect climbs up his body. He tries to beat the creature off him. Just when Holt is ready to leave via the window, a light is switched on, There is a figure in a bed, seemingly male, ugly, and speaks with a foreign accent. Very soon the man dominates Holt. He is made to undress completely,and the strange being humiliates him further by mocking his white sin. Holt is then ordered put on a cloak, is given instructions on how find food and drink in the room. Then Host is hypnotised into an extremely deep sleep. Holt gradually wakes up to sense that he was undressed and the mysterious man's fingers were prodding him "as if he had been some beast ready for the butcher's stall." Holt eventually becomes aware that he had died and been brought back to life by this creature who tells him " For you are my slave,-at my beck and call,-my familiar spirit, to do with as I will" .

Though nothing  explicit is ever mentioned, the undercurrents of sexual domination never seem far away in this part of the novel. 

Robert Holt is ordered to seize some documents belonging to a prominent politician called Paul Lessington. He has to enter Lessington's house at night, after walking through the streets in only his cloak and barefoot. His controller advises "I will stalk beside you,and will lead you to where I would have you to go." The essential story is recounted from four different angles, and ends with a proverbial  'race against time'.Lessington, Sydney Atherton-an inventor, Augustus Champnell -private detective and Marjorie Lindon-a young woman with quite feminist principles, all play significant parts. 

The Beetle contains some quite unpleasant racial stereotyping,  It's not a surprise to learn that Lessington has been travelled in Egypt and faced the workings of a disturbing underground movement. Holt's controller transpires to be Egyptian, capable of changing from a human to giant insect. Also belongs to a key member of a cult dedicated to  the goddess Isis, who seek out Europeans, particularly women, to be sacrificed. Holt's controller also changes gender at times, and the theme of crossing gender divides is an important theme.

In some respects The Beetle draws on 'reverse colonisation', to use a term devised by Jonathan David Barid.   By the time of publication -1897- Egypt was under British rule. Britain invested heavily in the building of the Suez Canal.  An Egyptian nationalist rebellion had been crushed by the British at Tel-El-Kebir in 1884. Britain was committed to retaking the Sudan after General Gordon's failure to hold Khartoum in 1885. Yet firstly not everyone was comfortable with this new Imperialism , sometimes for political reasons. Gladstone for example seems to have many reservations on this score.  Secondly, there was a fear that the occupation of other lands might breed costly resistance as in the Sudan in the 1880's. It is highly possible that Marsh's frightening scenario -with adherents of a dark Egyptian Pagan cult- reaching London, the heart of empire, preying and feeding on its inhabitants, exploited existing cultural fears.

It is not known how Marsh personally obtained his interest in Egypt. An Egyptian Hall had opened in Piccadilly in 1812 and flourished for decades. Amelia B Edwards, who would become well known as writer of ghost stories, had her book 'A Thousand Miles up the Nile' published in 1877 to great acclaim as well as contemporary news coverage. 

But it's one of the strengths of the novel is that the author's perspective is not clear. Though Egyptians are operating in some dangerous shadow realm, London at the height of British imperialism is portrayed as bleak, uncaring, claustrophobic, quite indifferent to the Robert Holt figures who flounder and suffer in the most crushing poverty and loneliness. The scene in which Holt has the doss house doors closed to him could have come from the works of Dickens or Hardy. Inhumanity prevails on both sides as it were.  

Ultimately, The Beetle  is an absorbing 'occult horror ' novel. It builds on the cultural prejudices and anxieties of its time, yet offers a lot more besides. 

Afterword

There are kindle versions of The Beetle available on line at cheap prices. 

There is also a four part audio version of the book by Greg Wagland available on Youtube, (accessed 10th August 2023)

Richard Marsh's 'The Houseboat' is available  in audio version via the Youtube  Bitesized Audio channel here

Richard Marsh's 'Lady Wishaw's Hand' is also available via Bitesized audio here

(Both accessed 11th August 2023).

SOURCES 

Troy C. BASSET     Victorianreaserch.org entry   At the Circulating Library: A Database of Victorian Fiction, 1837—1901, 25 June 2023 

Jonathan David Baird ' The Beetle : A Forgotten Classic', from 'A Wolf in Petticoats ;Essays Exploring Darwinisn, Sexuality, and Gender in Late Victorian Horror', by Jonathan David Baird and Coleman Eugene Trantham, Crosstime Publishing, 2016. 

Mina  VUOHELAINEN , 'Richard Marsh' Victorian Fiction Research Guide  #35

More sources

Amelia B Edwards  A Thousand Miles up the Nile is now on line, thanks to Project Gutenberg 

Thank you to my good friend Mark Foster for mentioning The Egyptian Hall ; Lost London website has a useful introduction to this topic. 

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