The Drenthian: A Gothic Pastiche

Editor’s note: The following story first appeared in the premier issue of Gundersen’s Christmas Annual, published in Kalamazoo, Michigan, in December 1894. 

One of the myriad general interest periodicals that flooded the market during that era, the magazine came out at irregular intervals through 1914, its producers apparently feeling themselves constrained neither by the “Christmas” nor by the “Annual” of its title.

As for Gundersen, clearly the driving force in a provincial attempt to emulate Godey’s or The Delineator, only fragmentary evidence exists of a literary dilettante and poseur, with tantalizing hints of travel and varied activities, some of them more curious than admirable.

Arthur M. Gundersen, (or M. Arthur Gundersen in a few later references) was born in Kalamazoo in 1873. His name appears on the roster of the Michigan Military Academy along with that of Edgar Rice Burrroughs, shortly before both boys were expelled for their parts in a duel they seem to have staged as a hoax. Gundersen then became a jeweler’s apprentice, though not for long, since the next mention of his name places him among the company bandsmen at a buggy whip factory. 

Somewhat later we find him recorded as a trespasser on the Connecticut property of Rudyard Kipling, and as an assistant to William Temple Hornaday in perhaps the most discreditable venture in the history of the New York Zoological Park. From there he made his way to England, where the record becomes even more fragmentary, but includes evidence of time spent among undergraduates at Jesus College, Cambridge, and with a cell of exiled Russian anarchists. Gundersen is almost certainly the “importunate American” complained of in a letter written by the theosophist George Griffith for having weaseled a first-class fare from Portsmouth to New York out of the elderly Florence Marryat.

Contributions to his eponymous Annual for the period 1894-1901, published under a variety of pseudonyms and representing all the current popular genres, are characterized by optimism, naiveté, and a nascent interest in the occult, which perhaps accounts for his association with Marryat.

The example below originally bore the title “The Devilish Predicament of Miss Edna Sylvester” and the pseudonym Ulysses G. Mordant, a frequent recourse of Gundersen for essays in this style.

———

Any young lady of position in society who may claim, by Christian upbringing and a natural generosity of disposition, a willingness to find points of admiration in those she meets, might have found any number of such points in Giles Willoughby.

Yet while Edna Sylvester surely possessed both of these prerequisites in abundance, she felt little remorse at the utter failure of her efforts on behalf of Mr. Willoughby. She acknowledged the pleasant manner, robust frame, and full head of hair that would recommend him to others in her circumstances, even without considering his respectable fortune. And further, his voice, accompanied by her sister Gwendolyn on the fortepiano, was mostly free of the raucous striving in fashion among the youth of less refinement. In a particularly generous mood, and with the encouragement of her mother, Mrs. Dorothea Sylvester, Edna might even admit of his patience — or at least persistence, which quality some include among the virtues.

All these, however, counted for naught in Edna’s heart, and were quite outweighed by Willoughby’s insensibility to her indifference and failure to perceive how tedious his frequent calls had become, how much wear to the spirit the constant attention cost her, and how she increasingly resented the hours, lost to happier pursuits, when she must confine herself to polite responses and expressions of interest in his dull conversation, bounded by the dreary sitting room for the duration of each unwelcome visit.

Her efforts to divert his attention to Gwendolyn having met with incomprehension on his part and offended pride on her sister’s, Edna had given up any hope short of a final refusal should he make an explicit offer.

But how long must she endure for even this boon? She could not tell, for in this regard the young man evinced a timidity out of keeping with his proven persistence, despite Mrs. Sylvester’s approval.

“Will you attend at the opening for Madame Brumaire at Van Duiken’s?” he inquired, naming the most exclusive gallery of which Grand Rapids could boast. He leaned forward in the small, hard-backed chair he preferred on these calls to add, “We are told she possesses an exquisite touch with the brush.”

“Why, Edna,” her mother exclaimed. “It is the very event for which we received a most particular invitation from the owner of the gallery. I should quite like to attend.”

“It would honor me beyond telling to serve as your escort. Mrs. Sylvester. My brougham and poor self I set entirely at your disposal.”

Thus before Edna quite knew how, she found herself promising to join the party the following Wednesday afternoon to admire Madame Brumaire’s artistry.

And when the day arrived, Edna further found that glowing health forbade absenting herself from the expedition, and she briefly wondered which would be more wicked: to pretend to a sudden illness, or to pray for a sudden indisposition to befall her in all actuality.

The brougham in question, although comfortable enough when occupied by two, or even three, people of normal stature, became crowded with four, when one bore the bulk of Mr. Willoughby and another Mrs. Sylvester’s unfashionably voluminous skirts. Arriving at the gallery, therefore, Edna and Gwendolyn exited the conveyance with something like a pop before Willoughby could extricate himself from his place next to the skirts to hand them down.

Edna immediately remarked that the gallery appeared oddly uninhabited for the opening of an exhibit, and upon further reflection, bethought herself of the strange Wednesday afternoon timing of the event, when a Friday or Saturday would be far more usual.

Mijnheer Van Duiken met them cordially enough, and, perhaps because the paucity of other visitors left him otherwise unoccupied, gave Edna’s party his entire attention.

“Madame Sylvester! Miss Sylvester and Miss Gwendolyn! I am so grateful you accepted my invitation,” he enthused, almost twirling his long, carefully waxed mustachios. “I hope you will allow me to guide you personally to the remarkable paintings of Madame Brumaire. Mr. Willoughby, your servant.”

He gestured them into the principle chamber, hung with light satin the shade of the midday sky, and brought them before a canvas on the southern wall. The guests contemplated a scene of idyllic rural life from another age, a gold-infused image of village folk sharing in the work of a wheat harvest.

“Delightful! How very like the tone of my youth,” exclaimed Mrs. Sylvester, who had never, to her eldest daughter’s knowledge, been closer to a farm than her grandfather’s country house.

“Truly, it puts one in the midst of the toilers,” Willoughby said, as Gwendolyn toyed with her parasol.

Edna might have done the same, for she found nothing remarkable in the painting, whose like she had seen any number of times before. Indeed, a brief glance around the room promised several repetitions of the subject before them. However, a single visage in the corner of the canvas caught her eye, and she examined it more closely. Although the tiny size of the figure of one lounging peasant admitted of little detail, with the merest touches of paint to indicate its expression, Edna thought she detected in it a malevolence out of keeping with the rest of the composition.

“Come along, Edna,” called her mother from the group that had moved on past a few more of the rustic scenes. As Edna passed to join them, she fancied she saw one such incongruous, smirking tiny figure within each frame. But none of the other visitors seemed to remark anything unusual, and they continued to express their pleasure or disinterest as before, according to their particular tastes.

The owner, however, followed her gaze to the latest of the paintings and raised his voluminous eyebrows.

“Ah, I see you have noticed the Drenthian,” he said.

“The Drenthian?” Edna repeated, a slight shiver accompanying the unfamiliar word.

“A theme, you might say? Madame Brumaire included him in almost all of her paintings.”

“Almost all, Mr. Van Duiken?”

“Indeed, he is absent from only one,” he replied, this time raising just one of those impressive eyebrows. “And even in that, there is room to wonder.”

By now the little group of family had moved on to another part of the gallery.

“But surely, sir, one could see plainly enough if a figure stands depicted on a canvas,” Edna countered, as Giles Willoughby strode diffidently up to the two interlocutors.

“There you are, Miss Sylvester,” he said, displaying the wonted intellectual penetration and keen power of observation that Edna found most trying. “We had quite lost you. Your mother is very taken with a picture of dancing farmers I am certain you would admire.”

“I was just telling your friend about a rather unusual example of our Madame Brumaire’s work. Would you care to see it?”

“By all means,” Willoughby said airily, attaching himself definitely to the group, and Edna nodded agreement, curiosity overcoming her slightly diminished enthusiasm.

Rather than indicating one of the paintings in their present gallery, the dapper Dutchman pulled back a heavy twill curtain nearby to reveal a narrow door, which he then unlocked with a key pulled from his brocaded waistcoat. Stepping aside, he gestured his guests to enter.

Edna found herself in an interior chamber without windows, lit by a single lamp in a sconce near the door, turned rather lower than would allow it to reveal clearly all the corners of the room. She saw that a single painting adorned each wall, but cloth draped over all four prevented any observation of their subjects.

Closing the door behind him, Van Duiken turned up the lamp, hardly relieving the gloom, and crossed to the opposite wall, where he carefully but quickly removed the cloth concealing the painting there.

Edna and Willoughby took several steps, as it were unconsciously, towards the painting thus brought to view.

They perceived a scene entirely unlike those occupying the walls of the outer gallery. For instead of jolly rusticity, the canvas held a shadowy depiction of low, hulking shapes; great quadratical stones piled into sepulchral heaps to surround a pitch-black maw. The nearly colorless image seemed to flicker in the lamplight, although in course no wind stirred within the closed chamber.

“Whatever is it?” Willoughby asked, drawing away a little nervously.

“It is called a ‘hunebed.’ Some say they were set into the landscape of my country by the giants who dwelt there long before men,” Van Duiken explained.

Seeing no human figure of any sort, Edna peered more closely into the frame and asked, “But where is your Drenthian?”

“Do you not see him? Look you more closely.”

And then in the flicker of shadows between the central stones, Edna thought she decried a face, only to lose sight of it as she blinked, and again she almost started back when the face reappeared.

“How extraordinary!” She said, turning her head, only to find that the owner himself had disappeared, and she stood alone with Willoughby in the chamber, which seemed to have grown suddenly colder.

“Hey, there,” exclaimed the young man, himself noticing Van Duiken’s sudden absence. Willoughby crossed to the door, but finding it locked, he jiggled the handle in frustration.

“He has vanished again,” said Edna, whose attention had already returned to the strange painting.

“The deuce you say!” Willoughby exclaimed, misinterpreting her comment before hastily adding, “Oh, I beg your pardon.”

Edna, to all appearance unconcerned either about Willoughby’s lapse or the impropriety of their situation, moved yet closer to the painting. She felt the cold increase and the darkness around her deepen, even as details in the imaginary scene grew sharper, revealing a featureless vista interrupted only by a few low, leafless trees all the way to the surrounding horizon and past the forgotten confines of the frame. A draft rustled the fine strands of hair hanging over her forehead.

Abruptly, something caught at her wrist and arrested its upward motion. Edna saw she had raised her hand, all unawares, towards the surface of the canvas, and Van Duiken stood again beside her.

“If I may,” said Van Duiken, who released her wrist after drawing her gently away a pace.

“Where is Mr. Willoughby?” Edna asked. 

“I’m afraid your friend was a trifle overcome,” came the answer. “I really must see to the gas lines in here. He is just resting in my office. Are you quite well yourself? Perhaps we should return to the main gallery.”

Looking a little askance, Edna suggested, “Maybe we could look at these other paintings while he recovers.”

Van Duiken lowered the cloth over the hunebed scene and smoothed its surface.

“I hope you will favor us with another visit,” he said. “On that occasion …”

Edna considered a protest, but could only nod in tacit acquiescence.

Once through the narrow door, they found Mrs. Sylvester still engaged in her familiar chatter and Gwendolyn in her equally familiar sullen silence. More guests now occupied the room, filling it with gay conversation.

Making Willoughby’s excuses and apology, Van Duiken ushered them to the main entrance, rather more quickly than strictly needed, as Edna thought. Indeed, on their way past she barely had time to recognize the first of Madame Brumaire’s paintings they had looked at, although she had a fleeting impression that the expression on the particular, incongruous figure’s face had changed to one of confusion and terror.

Once outside, they found a smart dog cart just drawing up in front of the building.

“My man … Jan … will see you home,” Van Duiken said, indicating the driver.

This worthy, his face mostly hidden by the drawn-up collar of a dun-colored overcoat, turned partway around to favor them with an ambiguous grin, just too brief to consider uncouth. 

With further inane courtesies, the gallery owner helped his visitors to their places, handing Edna up last.

“I hope Mr. Willoughby is not too unwell,” she remarked, hastily remembering their original escort.

Leaning a little closer, Van Duiken touched the side of his nose and said quietly, “There may be places, Miss Sylvester, where we belong, but ought not remain.”

With which remark he closed the door of the trap to let her puzzle out as she may, while Jan clucked his tongue and set the cart in motion.

The End