The Cat

Fiction ~ short story
First published in Illustrated London News, 27th November 1905
Collected in The Room in the Tower (1912)
5,510 words
(First read 14/06/2012) 

More a psychopathological mystery than a spook story ~ in fact there aren't any spooks at all in it.  Jack Dick Alington Alingham, a portrait-painting toff, is on the rebound from Lady 'Society Hag' Madingley, who jilted him for someone with more dosh, as Bensonian society hags have a habit of doing.  Nevertheless, observes his doctor pal Merwick, he's made a miraculous recovery from the trauma ~ to hear them talk you'd think Dick had witnessed the machete-massacre of his entire family rather than merely being dumped by a worthless cow.  Anyway, Dr Merwick reckons he's in a (kind of) physiopsychiatrical state of shock (or something) and is bound to come a cropper sooner or later.  Confident that he's fully and permanently recovered, our Dick agrees to complete a portrait of the said witch; everything's going fine until ... a cat appears ...
This one has to be read to be believed: apart from 'the shock thing', which probably wasn't new even in 1905, it's entirely devoid of sensible, coherent or even interesting ideas; the 'climax' is laughable; the pace is sluglike, and it is absurdly over-long.
Well, you may think differently: it's available online here.


THE CRITICS

The same criticism ['an uncustomary failure in artistic judgement'] applies to the third story [in The Terror by Night and Other Stories (1999)], The Cat. As a lover of both women and cats, I'm somewhat out of sympathy with the Fred who can write: 'She was one of those blonde, lithe, silken girls who, happily for the peace of men's minds, are rather rare, and who remind one of some humanised yet celestial and bestial cat.' Here again, a sensitive artistic chap is laid low by powerful natural urges, most often sexual, if always fatally repressed . . . Readers may still enjoy the skilful writing and the predictably ghastly conclusion, provided they can accept the general misogyny and lads-togetherness for what they are—all-too-sadly widespread Edwardian attitudes. Such attitudes were by no means exclusive to Fred Benson, though in his case—life and writings—they often quite openly erupted despite himself, whether quasi-hysterically or in the more controlled guise of satire.

~Alexis Lykiard. Quoted from his review of Ash-Tree Press' The Terror by Night, first published in All Hallows magazine, 02/1999