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    The Angels of Mons The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War
    The Angels of Mons The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War
    The Angels of Mons The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War
    Ebook60 pages49 minutes

    The Angels of Mons The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War

    By Arthur Machen

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    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherArchive Classics
    Release dateJun 1, 1977
    The Angels of Mons The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War
    Author

    Arthur Machen

    Arthur Machen (1863-1947) was a Welsh mystic and author. Born Arthur Llewellyn Jones, he was raised in Monmouthshire in a prominent family of clergymen. He developed an early interest in alchemy and other occult matters, and obtained a classical education at Hereford Cathedral School. He moved to London, where he failed to gain admittance to medical school and soon focused on his literary interests. Working as a tutor, he wrote in the evening and published his first poem, “Eleusinia,” in 1881. A novel, The Anatomy of Tobacco (1884), soon followed, launching his career as a professional writer. Machen made a name for himself as a frequent contributor to London literary magazines and achieved his first major success with the 1894 novella The Great God Pan. Following his wife’s death from cancer in 1899, he briefly joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn and began conducting research on Celtic Christianity, the legend of the Holy Grail, and the stories of King Arthur. In 1922, after a decade of working as a journalist for the Evening News, he published The Secret Glory—a story of the Grail—to popular and critical acclaim. This marked the highpoint of his career as a pioneering author of fantasy, horror, and supernatural fiction whose work has been admired and praised by William Butler Yeats, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Stephen King.

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    Reviews for The Angels of Mons The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War

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    • 3/5
      I read an edition of this book available legally and for free from Archive.org.Machen's work is a fast read, with about half the volume as an introspective on the phenomena he touched off. He wrote a story about a British soldier in the trenches who called upon St. George, to be answered by an ethereal force of archers who slaughtered the encroaching German units. To the modern reader, it's a story with no real substance--it's fluff and optimism with no plot. However, following its publication during the War, the story went viral. People started saying they had a friend or cousin or a preacher who vouched the incident really happened, but the actual witnesses never managed to speak up. This genuinely baffled the author of the original tale. As he observes, "... how is it that a nation plunged in materialism of the grossest kind has accepted idle rumours and gossip of the supernatural as certain truth? The answer is contained in the question: it is precisely because our whole atmosphere is materialist that we are ready to credit anything--save the truth."The booklet includes two other stories of his as well which are likewise light on plot or much else but sentimental and optimistic in a way that would comfort worried readers during the War.
    • 2/5
      I picked up this collection of short stories because the story "The Bowman" took on a life of its own and was considered by many to be true. As a curiosity, it is great. As something I would read, not so much. Let me state that I don't normally read this genre. The stories give me the same feeling as did the "House of Horror" comic books from my childhood. By the time I start to get into the story, it is over. The longest story seems to be about five pages, which is about half, maybe a quarter of what I need to care about a story. Maybe I will try to read it again down the road, but it is unlikely.

    Book preview

    The Angels of Mons The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War - Arthur Machen

    The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Angels of Mons, by Arthur Machen

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.net

    Title: The Angels of Mons

    Author: Arthur Machen

    Release Date: November 14, 2004 [eBook #14044] [This file last updated: February 14, 2011]

    Language: English

    ***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE ANGELS OF MONS***

    E-text prepared by Tom Harris

    THE ANGELS OF MONS

    The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War

    by

    ARTHUR MACHEN

    1915

    Introduction

    I have been asked to write an introduction to the story of The Bowmen, on its publication in book form together with three other tales of similar fashion. And I hesitate. This affair of The Bowmen has been such an odd one from first to last, so many queer complications have entered into it, there have been so many and so divers currents and cross-currents of rumour and speculation concerning it, that I honestly do not know where to begin. I propose, then, to solve the difficulty by apologising for beginning at all.

    For, usually and fitly, the presence of an introduction is held to imply that there is something of consequence and importance to be introduced. If, for example, a man has made an anthology of great poetry, he may well write an introduction justifying his principle of selection, pointing out here and there, as the spirit moves him, high beauties and supreme excellencies, discoursing of the magnates and lords and princes of literature, whom he is merely serving as groom of the chamber. Introductions, that is, belong to the masterpieces and classics of the world, to the great and ancient and accepted things; and I am here introducing a short, small story of my own which appeared in The Evening News about ten months ago.

    I appreciate the absurdity, nay, the enormity of the position in all its grossness. And my excuse for these pages must be this: that though the story itself is nothing, it has yet had such odd and unforeseen consequences and adventures that the tale of them may possess some interest. And then, again, there are certain psychological morals to be drawn from the whole matter of the tale and its sequel of rumours and discussions that are not, I think, devoid of consequence; and so to begin at the beginning.

    This was in last August, to be more precise, on the last Sunday of last August. There were terrible things to be read on that hot Sunday morning between meat and mass. It was in The Weekly Dispatch that I saw the awful account of the retreat from Mons. I no longer recollect the details; but I have not forgotten the impression that was then on my mind, I seemed to see a furnace of torment and death and agony and terror seven times heated, and in the midst of the burning was the British Army. In the midst of the flame, consumed by it and yet aureoled in it, scattered like ashes and yet triumphant, martyred and for ever glorious. So I saw our men with a shining about them, so I took these thoughts with me to church, and, I am sorry to say, was making up a story in my head while the deacon was singing the Gospel.

    This was not the tale of The Bowmen. It was the first sketch, as it were, of The Soldiers' Rest. I only wish I had been able to write it as I conceived it. The tale as it stands is, I think, a far better piece of craft than The Bowmen, but the tale that came to me as the blue incense floated above the Gospel Book on the desk between the tapers: that indeed was a noble story—like all the stories that never get written. I conceived the dead men coming up through the flames and in

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