This long story by Sheridan Le Fanu is considered among his best, in part because it’s in his rightly much-celebrated collection,
In a Glass Darkly. Many of the stories feature the German psychic investigator / occult detective Martin Hesselius. “Green Tea” is first up and thus has a few things to do, introducing Hesselius and his case study approach. It’s good when it’s on the case under examination. But it’s hampered by awkward construction, hemming and hawing and dancing around the subject a lot. It takes too long to get to the good stuff, which may or may not be that good. A minister is haunted by a malevolent monkey only he can see, which randomly appears to him even in public, staring and glowering. Understandably, it unnerves him. The result is that the minister often freezes up and/or breaks down and can’t be trusted to do Sunday church services without incident. After introducing Hesselius and his case study approach, the story spends some time on some metaphysical / philosophical business about duality and materialism and such. The proto-theosophist Emanuel Swedenborg is a recurring reference. The influence on Lovecraft and the occult detective subgenre generally is obvious but with all the setup “Green Tea” can be slow going. Once the minister finally stops being evasive and we get to the monkey, however, it’s not bad. The clinical tone works well—it just needs to be quicker getting to the point (according to my impatient modern sensibility). It reminded me in some ways of Nathaniel Hawthorne, especially the tormented minister. As a 19th-century Irishman, Le Fanu occupies an interesting place, outside of the British mainstream but not Continental or American either. Some Irish writers register strongly as Irish (J.P. Donlevy, for example, or Joyce) but I never get much of that from Le Fanu. I like his case study approach, which often feels close to detective fiction or true-crime fare, especially when it gets down to accounts. As the first of the five stories in the collection, you have to grant “Green Tea” some leeway for its setup work. Doubtless that explains a lot of the throat-clearing. The stories in the collection get better as they go—the last, “Carmilla,” is the best, an essential vampire story.
Sheridan Le Fanu, In a Glass DarklyRead story online.Listen to story online.
One of my favorite episodes of The Twilight Zone, or the one most imprinted in my memory, was this one where a guy on a plane sees, or thinks he sees, a ferocious flying gargoyle monster on the wing of the plane. But no one else on the plane can see it and they all think the guy is having some kind of mental breakdown. He's sweating, stricken with terror. And everyone around him tries to humor him or calm him like a very sick child. When they're finally helping him off the plane, a shaken wreck, he takes one last look at the wing and sees one engine has been destroyed, torn away. But they leave out whether anyone else sees the same thing, or in my memory anyway. A mystery to the end.
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