Victorians! discussion

Links to “A Night on the Borders of the Black Forest:”

Internet Archive: Monsieur Maurice V2: https://archive.org/details/monsieurm...
Scroll to page 164 of the scan (which is page 147 of the original text)

YouTube: https://youtu.be/nPQRjODUZD4?si=yAIil...

Summary of “A Night on the Borders of the Black Forest:”

The narrator begins a tale from his own history, and gives more detail than usual for these stories. While hiking in Germany, Hamilton asks directions of a fellow traveler and they strike up conversation. They exchange some personal details and decide to travel on together. They find Niedersdorf crowded with festival goers, but secure a coach with two other travelers, who soon fall into a deep sleep. Hamilton falls asleep as well, and is awakened in time to disembark with Bergheim after dark with directions on which path to take through the Black Forest. The road is long, the forest deep, and the travelers are hungry & tired, so they gladly stop when Bergheim spies a farmstead.

The farmer agrees to put them up for the night. The proprietors seem to be two gruff brothers, Karl & Fredrich, with a woman in the kitchen who brings out ham and eggs. The travelers find that both the wine and the coffee taste odd. Soon, Bergheim passes out and Hamilton realizes that they are in danger for their lives. While he takes what precautions he can, Bergheim begins to mutter in his sleep about a murdered man beneath the hearth and four more beneath the pond. Perhaps his dreams are portents of murders past…. Or murders yet to come!


In spite of this not being a “ghost story,” what elements of horror or supernatural did Edwards apply?

Yet another ‘travellers’ tale’ by Amelia Edwards. Her own spirit of adventure is always close to the surface of this story, with more images of beautiful scenery and the travellers’ enjoyment of the open air life. I enjoyed the stories of the travellers’ lives as much as the terrible predicament they found themselves in later.

I was reminded, even if it sounds a little incongruous, of Alfred Wainwright’s book A Pennine Journey: The Story of a Long Walk in 1938. The walk was undertaken with the shadow of a world war hanging over everyone. Wainwright would walk from village to village over the moors, hoping that someone would put him up for the night at the end of each day. It was usually a family, solitary widow or farmstead that took him in, but the mutual trust that was apparent by this arrangement was quite revealing.

The murderous brothers seemed anything but congenial hosts from the start and I thought that the stark reality of their evil was more horrific than the ghost stories that we have read before. The tension was expertly built up to a crescendo by the growing realisation of the brothers’ intentions, capped by the burning of the inn.

Agreed! The growing tension and suspicion was very taut, and the knowledge of their despicable intentions made this a very scary story, indeed. Even more so than the “Illusion” story, where the horrible murder and disposal of the boy’s body had already taken place.

I’m sad to see that this story did not get as much interest as some of the others. It was quite scary.

I'm still planning on reading it, Renee, since I've actually been in the Black Forest. It's a beautiful place.

Ooo. I’m quite jealous of your travels. Germany is one of the places I have yet to visit.

I’m glad to hear that this one is in your future. There’s a fun little festival at the midway point.

I was born in Germany. There are a lot of great places to visit there.

I've just finished the story and those brothers gave me the creeps! The only really supernatural part was the dream.
It took me a while to figure out what "voorst" was- it's Wurst! (Sausage in English)

I like her descriptions of nature-and I really liked the story, maybe because it's in an area I've visited before.

Ha! I didn’t connect “voorst” with wurst. I thought it was some local dish of which I’d never heard and just went with it. SMH. I should have known.