Published in Woman, December 1926
Collected in Spook Stories (1928)
5,225 words
(First read 30/09/2012)
Our roving Unnamed Narrator goes to visit his old pal Hugh Granger, his dogs and his wife (yes, in that order). In a stroke of typically Bensonian good fortune, the cove Hughie has just inherited a delightful little Queen Anne manor-with-estate in Surrey¹. Within the bounds of his demesne stands a (pardon the terminology) doughnut-shaped wood which, we soon discover, harbours something live, vile and evil which, so as to put his dogs' and wife's (in that order) minds at rest, Hugh resolves to destroy with the aid of the trusty if somewhat lily-livered U.N. So they do. The End.
Even the inclusion of Granger's theory² about what the beast actually is³ doesn't do much to dispel the story's essential humdrummery.
It's available online here.
¹ Current [2014] estimated market value £35bn.
² He does like his theories, does Hughie. See also (e.g.) The Bus-Conductor.
³ As usual, H.G. is far more clued-up on this kind of twaddle than U.N. It should really have been him writing the spook stories.
THE CRITICS
[Benson's ghost] stories are extremely varied in content, ranging from the horror of vampires, homicidal ghosts and monstrous spectral worms and slugs (in the classic Negotium Perambulans and 'And No Bird Sings') to the satire of humorous tales which poke fun at charlatan mediums and fake seances (Spinach and Mr Tilly's Seance).
~Richard
Dalby in introduction to The
Collected Ghost Stories of E. F. Benson,
1992
Unlike the uniquely Gothic
disaster of The Face, the subsequent contributions [to Spook
Stories] “And No Bird Sings” (which features an estate
rather than a house), Bagnell Terrace, and The Temple
are jolly frontier tales in which the bourgeoisie successfully impose
their suburban will on to a place which is still haunted by ancient
forces. Significantly, after the monstrous spectral slug is
exterminated in “And
No Bird Sings” (even this is more of a gardener’s
nuisance than a mythical dragon), Daisy spies a pair of robins and
she chirps that they are “Evidently house-hunting.” Perhaps
songbirds are the original little middle-class citizens, or else we
have found the bourgeois desire for pleasant houses which recurs
throughout Spook Stories residing in the bosom of Mother
Nature herself.
~James Mooney at “Tychy”,
25/07/2011. Quoted from here
Hugh
Lamb* once observed: "the narrator of A
Tale Of An Empty House
not only hears and sees the ghost of a murderer, but finds himself
wrestling with it. And here we come to one of the keys to Fred's
success in this field: his ghosts are very physical". In other
frequently anthologised stories - The
Face, 'And No Bird Sings', The Temple -
the threatening entities are also vengeful, tactile, malign.
~Alexis
Lykiard. Quoted from his
review of Ash-Tree Press' The
Face,
first published
in All
Hallows
magazine, 10/2003.
*Mr
Lamb is an anthologist of ghost stories