MAN-SIZE IN MARBLE (1887) HALLOWEEN STORY

MAN-SIZE IN MARBLE (1887) – One of the iconic Edith Nesbit’s short horror stories. This was first published in the December of 1887 issue of the magazine Home Chimes. Nesbit later included it in her collection of short stories titled Grim Tales (1893). For modern readers – and possibly Victorian Age readers, too – it’s always clear where the story is headed but it’s still worth checking out.

A pair of newlyweds – Laura and her husband, the story’s narrator – have moved down to the south of England. The loving and devoted pair are self-styled bohemians and can afford to spend their days writing (in Laura’s case) and painting (in her husband’s case). 

Considering the conventional houses of the region to be unfit for a couple of such artistic temperaments they instead choose to live in a very old stone house.

Life goes along just fine for this couple who not only can afford not to work but can also pay for a female housekeeper. One day that housekeeper quits in a panic, without wanting to discuss why. This development thoroughly distresses Laura.

After sundown the new bride is still discombobulated, so hubby suggests they take a walk in hopes that the exercise and the night air might calm Laura. Still new to the area, the loving couple come across a structure they hadn’t seen before, an incredibly old Norman church.

Our narrator and “wifey” as he calls her venture into the building. The moonlight pouring through a window bathes funerary statues of two scowling, menacing-looking knights. Laura and her husband walk back home, with her apparently calmed down but him vaguely uneasy from the pair of statues.

In that still-thriving trope of horror fiction, the husband decides to do some research into the knights and learns that they had a reputation for cruelly abusing the locals. There were also whispers of even darker deeds which the pair indulged in.   

Hubby is stunned to discover that the stone house he and Laura chose for their residence used to be part of a larger structure that served as the shared home of the late knights. A bolt of lightning destroyed much of the structure long ago, leaving just the newlyweds’ home still standing.

This revelation prompts our narrator to seek out the former housekeeper for more information. She tells him that she fled upon learning of the tradition which holds that every Halloween the statues of the two knights come to life and visit the stone house which is all that remains of the home they shared.   

The living statues are said to kill – and worse – anyone they come across on their yearly stroll. After visiting their old home, the marble knights return to the Norman church and resume their positions until the next Halloween. 

The narrator is concerned about Laura’s renewed bouts with anxiety and hopes to settle her nerves by talking the housekeeper into returning to work for them. She refuses over and over until he agrees to her terms – she will leave the house days before Halloween and will not return until a few days after.

Hubby agrees to that but only pretends to go along with the woman’s plea that he and his wife also vacate the premises days before October 31st. Instead, he refrains from telling Laura anything at all about what he’s found out to avoid upsetting her further.

Months go by and thoughts of the statues fade. A few days before Halloween the housekeeper leaves as planned, however and our narrator lies by telling the pleading woman that he and Laura will also go elsewhere before the 31st.

Halloween night arrives and the narrator proves that modern day horror films didn’t invent the cliche about characters making incredibly stupid decisions. Even though Laura is filled with unaccountable fear he takes a walk by himself, leaving her there alone.

I know Edith Nesbit is a proverbial name to conjure with in Victorian horror but in a pretty poor piece of storytelling she tells us readers that hubby has forgotten all about the legend of the statues until he comes across the Norman church on his walk. Yes, even though the housekeeper going away days ago was a very recent reminder.

The narrator fears for his wife’s safety but tries to assure himself he’s being foolish. He decides to enter the old Norman church again, assuming he’ll see the statues of the two knights in their place and laugh at himself over his sudden superstition.

Naturally, the statues are gone. In a panic, our narrator flees the church and begins racing homeward. Along the way he encounters a local doctor of his acquaintance and idiotically lets the man persuade him that he must not have seen correctly in the darkness. He also lets the man take him back to the church so he can “see for himself.” 

The statues are indeed back in place but one of them is missing a finger for some reason. That missing digit nags at the back of the man’s mind all the way on his walk back home. When he arrives, he sees the front door is open. 

Going inside, he finds Laura’s dead body lying across the kitchen table, disheveled and obviously having been ravished by the stone knights. She has a look of horror on her face and in her hand she holds the stone finger now missing from one of the statues, having apparently wrenched it loose in her death struggles.

Man-Size in Marble really surprised me with the ravishing angle. Especially since there were hints in the way the dead knights lived together and how their home was struck by a righteous thunderbolt that they must have been gay. (Presented in coded Victorian fashion, of course.) 

Naturally, the knights didn’t have to be exclusively gay but I was still surprised. I expected Laura to be dead, but her full fate hit me in the face. Readers of the 1880s must have been really creeped out by this.

*** Many more Halloween Season posts to come!