THE DEEP ONES: "The Tenants of Broussac" by Seabury Quinn

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THE DEEP ONES: "The Tenants of Broussac" by Seabury Quinn

2paradoxosalpha
Ago 31, 2022, 10:29 am

I was not expecting Quinn's incidental slam at benighted American Christianists near the end of chapter 5: "Today your American courts convict high school-teachers for heresy far less grave than that charged against our Jeanne. We may yet see the bones of your so estimable Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin exhumed from their graves and publicly burned by your heretic-baiters of this today." Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!

3paradoxosalpha
Ago 31, 2022, 10:41 am

I note that Quinn landed the cover of WT, as was apparently typical for him, and with the scene calculated to fire the prurient imaginations of readers: the monster embracing the naked girl in chapter 10.

4RandyStafford
Set 3, 2022, 9:57 am

And this all might have been avoided if the abbess had kept her mouth shut and not cursed de Broussac.

5housefulofpaper
Set 4, 2022, 7:18 pm

I like the de Grandin stories, despite the obvious derivativeness of the characters: in essence a more dashing and multi-talented Hercule Poirot and an American Dr Watson (rather than a Captain Hastings); and often formulaic storylines. This would be my kind of unchallenging beach or poolside reading.

I have wondered how well the stories would stand up to rereading, but I have read this one before, in the The Horror on the Links and enjoyed it on this second encounter (caveat: I've had cause to mention/bemoan before now my middle-aged memory: there's many a story and novel I've read where I retain little or no memory of it).

I know not to take these yarns too seriously. I'm sure Quinn didn't. The story that Virgil Finlay found models for de Grandin and Trowbridge in a couple of middle-ages gents grimacing manfully for a hemorrhoid cream magazine ad seems so appropriate I fear that it's too good to be true.

As for this particular story, it's an early one (only the second to be published) and pre-dates de Grandin and Trowbridge setting up house together like Holmes and Watson in Harrisonville,N.J. I said that the characters are derivative and the storylines formulaic. Actually the storyline is derivative here, drawing heavily on Dracula's assaults on Lucy Westenra, unless I miss my guess.

Anyway, I'm here for the pleasures of de Grandin righteously bawling out idiots (I was a fan, from an early age, of Jon Pertwee's Doctor Who and Margaret Rutherford's Miss Marple doing the same), of de Grandin (once ensconced in Harrisonville) cocking a snook at Prohibiton, at Quinn's occasional shafts of sly humour (for example the vampire story where Trowbridge diagnoses a range of serious illnesses in a couple he and de Grandin are observing, but de Grandin, and the reader, knows that their real problem is that they are (un)dead), and the comfortingly Watson-like narrative of Dr Trowbridge, who like his literary model is sharply observant when his pen is in his hand, but not so sharp when in the midst of the action.

>4 RandyStafford:
And such a stupid curse too! It doesn't seem that de Broussac much minded being a snake, and he got to kill a lot more people. It's also lucky that De Grandin took the trouble to read up on the very specific way in whch de Broussac had to be dispatched.

6paradoxosalpha
Modificato: Set 5, 2022, 12:11 am

I finished the book in which I read this story and posted my review: The Adventures of Jules de Grandin.

7RandyStafford
Set 5, 2022, 3:27 pm

>5 housefulofpaper: Yes, parts of it very much reminded me of Lucy in Dracula.

8paradoxosalpha
Nov 16, 2022, 10:40 am

I just read and reviewed another de Grandin collection: The Hellfire Files of Jules de Grandin.