Lot No. 249
"Lot No. 249" | |
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Periodical ) | |
Publication date | September 1892 |
"Lot No. 249" is a
Written during a period of great European interest in Egyptian culture known as
Synopsis
In 1884, Abercrombie Smith, an athlete and medical student at the
Over the next few weeks, Smith is frequently disturbed by the sound of mumbling and muttering from Bellingham's room. The building's caretaker, Thomas Styles, confides in Smith that he has heard something walking around Bellingham's room while Bellingham is out. Shortly afterwards, a student called Long Norton, against whom Bellingham bears a long-standing grudge, is violently attacked by a mysterious and seemingly inhuman figure. Suspecting Bellingham is connected with the assault, Smith vows to avoid his neighbour entirely.
Not long afterwards, Monkhouse Lee issues a warning to Smith against Bellingham. He explains that he has called off his sister's engagement to Bellingham, after Bellingham confided in him a terrible secret about which he has sworn to keep silent. Later, when passing Bellingham's room, Smith witnesses the mummy seemingly vanish and inexplicably re-appear in its sarcophagus.
After discovering that Lee has been attacked in a similar manner to Norton, Smith concludes that Bellingham has brought the mummy to life and is sending it to attack people whom he dislikes. Smith confronts Bellingham angrily about the attack on Lee, but Bellingham denies any involvement. The following evening, Smith is pursued by the mummy while strolling along a dark country path. Fleeing in terror, he narrowly escapes the creature. He realises that his own life is now in danger and he must take action to stop Bellingham's evil. The next day Smith enters Bellingham's room and forces him at gunpoint to burn the mummy and all items associated with its animation. Once everything has been destroyed, Smith vows to return if Bellingham attempts any such activity again. Bellingham quits the university immediately and flees to Sudan.
Background
During the nineteenth-century,
"Lot. No. 249" was not the first work of
Themes
Imperialism
Near the end of the nineteenth-century, many British people felt that Britain was in decline due to a belief that the world was morally and culturally degenerating even as the British Empire expanded. This fear, captured in Max Nordau's influential book Degeneration (1892), was aided by the fact that Britain faced economic threats from Europe and the United States. These circumstances led to a sub-genre of Gothic fiction that Emily Adler refers to as the "Imperial Gothic", which is concerned with British fears of being invaded by foreign cultures. Adler cites "Lot. No. 249" and Rider Haggard's novels King Solomon's Mines (1885) and She: A History of Adventure (1887) as examples of this sub-genre.[9] Deaglán Ó Donghaile, however, sees Doyle's story as a critique of imperialism. In Blasted Literature, he writes that "The story calls into question to what extent colonialism, with its absorption of the cultures of the colonised, destabilises the perspective of the imperial, metropolitan subject position. While the process of imperial assimilation is symbolised by the private museum Bellingham keeps in his rooms ... it seems in the end that it is the mummy, and not Bellingham, who is in control."[10]
Masculinity
Rafe McGregor notes that Abercrombie Smith is a stereotypical "image of a man's man that Doyle admired, and tried to project of himself" and that many Doyle stories, particularly his works of weird fiction, lack such characters.[11] In Masculinity and the New Imperialism: Rewriting Manhood in British Popular Literature 1870–1914, Bradley Deane writes that the mummy from "Lot No. 249" is one of the first fictional mummies to be presented as a "masculine competitor".[12] Deane opines that some earlier works of British popular literature, like She, characterised the British as masculine and their enemies as feminine; he feels that Doyle subverted this expectation by making the mummy a "male, mindless but strong and swift [figure] who threatens to defeat a young Oxford athlete in a terrifying footrace." Deane argues that the lack of a masculine/feminine distinction between Smith and the mummy "suggests a darker fragmentation of identity and an emasculating reversal of the imperial hierarchy."[13]
Critical reception
Rudyard Kipling said that the short story gave him his first nightmare in years.[14] In his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature" (1927), H. P. Lovecraft writes that: "Doyle now and then struck a powerfully spectral note, as in 'The Captain of the Pole-Star', a tale of arctic ghostliness, and 'Lot No. 249', where the re-animated mummy theme is used with more than ordinary skill."[5] Anne Rice called the story "great".[15] David Stuart Davies enjoyed the subtlety of Doyle's prose and the tale's "growing sense of horror and unreality," adding that Doyle "carried on the tradition of the great ghost story writers ... by allowing the reader's own imagination to enhance the misty picture painted by the writer."[14] Rafe McGregor writes in The Conan Doyle Weirdbook that "Lot No. 249" "remains a highly entertaining – not to mention spine-tingling – weird tale." McGregor adds that, thanks to "Lot No. 249" and his other contributions to the genre, Doyle should be seen as a master of weird fiction.[5] Andrew Barger said that
- "Not only does this excellent mummy story need more visibility, this Doyle spinetingler is one of the best horror short stories for the last half of the nineteenth century."[16]
In a mixed review, Richard Bleiler praises the tale's "narrative vigor" and "brisk" pace. However, he also feels that it is a minor work of Victorian literature remembered primarily due to its author and subject matter, and is neither Doyle's best work nor the best work of fiction involving re-animated mummies.[6]
Adaptations
The story is a possible influence for the lost short film Robbing Cleopatra's Tomb (1899).[17] The tale was adapted into a 1967 television production for the BBC programme Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,[18][19] as well as the lead segment from Tales from the Darkside: The Movie (1990).[7] The Tales from the Darkside segment contains slapstick and slasher film elements.[20] According to Mark Browning's Stephen King on the Big Screen, the "mummy horror sub-genre" was "largely played out" by the time the film was made.[21] An adaptation of the story, Lot No. 249, was made for the BBC and aired on Christmas Eve 2023.[22]
Legacy
"Lot No. 249" has been widely anthologised,[23] and its titular mummy has become an icon of horror.[6] Rafe McGregor writes in The Conan Doyle Weirdbook that "Lot No. 249" is "One of the most significant [stories] in the history of supernatural fiction [for] being the first to depict a re-animated mummy as a sinister, dangerous creature."[5] It was also the first work of fiction to feature a modern man reviving a mummy with ancient Egyptian texts as opposed to electricity.[7] Emily Adler notes that Doyle's story pre-dates Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897) and Richard Marsh's The Beetle (1897) in its portrayal of foreign monsters invading Britain.[9] McGregor identifies the short story as a significant influence on other mummy-related media, such as Stoker's novel The Jewel of Seven Stars (1903) and the Boris Karloff film The Mummy (1932), as well as zombie fiction.[5] Bradley Deane feels that the masculinity of Kharis from The Mummy franchise as played by Lon Chaney Jr. was inspired by Doyle's story,[12] while Matthew Coniam feels that Hammer Film Productions' The Mummy (1959) draws from the atmosphere of "Lot No. 249".[24] Anne Rice cited "Lot No. 249" and "The Ring of Thoth" as inspirations for her novel, The Mummy, or Ramses the Damned (1989), which she dedicated to Doyle.[15]
See also
References
- ^ a b Cardin 2015, p. 275.
- ^ a b c Cardin 2017, p. 564.
- ^ a b Luckhurst 2005, p. xxvii.
- ^ "Doyle, [Sir] Arthur Conan". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Retrieved 16 November 2018.
- ^ a b c d e f g h Doyle 2010, p. 67.
- ^ a b c Cardin 2015, p. 95.
- ^ a b c Cardin 2017, p. 565.
- ^ Thornton 2018, p. 265.
- ^ a b Hughes, Punter & Smith 2016, p. 249.
- ^ Ó Donghaile 2011, p. 66.
- ^ Doyle 2010, pp. 67–68.
- ^ a b Deane 2014, p. 251.
- ^ Deane 2014, p. 193.
- ^ a b Davies 2004, p. xii.
- ^ a b Cardin 2015, p. 358.
- ^ Barger 2016, p. 22.
- ^ Schablitsky 2007, p. 21.
- ^ Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Drama), Keith Buckley, Michael Latimer, Michele Dotrice, British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), 15 January 1967, retrieved 31 July 2023
{{citation}}
: CS1 maint: others (link) - ^ Cardin 2015, p. 291.
- ^ Browning 2009, p. 79.
- ^ Browning 2009, p. 78.
- ^ Whittock, Jesse; Goldbart, Max (19 October 2023). "Sherlock' Co-Creator Mark Gatiss To Adapt Arthur Conan Doyle's 'Lot No. 249' As BBC Christmas Ghost Story; Kit Harington & Freddie Fox To Star". Deadline Hollywood. Retrieved 14 November 2023.
- ^ Thornton 2018, p. 197.
- ^ Coniam 2017, pp. 110–111.
Sources
- Barger, Andrew (2016), Best Horror Short Stories 1850-1899: A 6a66le Horror Anthology, United States of America: Bottletree Books LLC, ISBN 978-1-933747-57-6
- Browning, Mark (2009), Stephen King on the Big Screen, Chicago, USA: Intellectual, Ltd., ISBN 978-1-84150-327-1
- Cardin, Matt (2017), Horror Literature through History: An Encyclopedia of the Stories that Speak to Our Deepest Fears: Volume 1, Santa Barbara, California: Greenwood, ISBN 978-1-4408-4756-1
- Cardin, Matt (2015), Mummies around the World: An Encyclopedia of Mummies in History, Religion and Popular Culture, Santa Barbara, California: ISBN 978-1-61069-419-3
- Coniam, Matthew (2017), Egyptomania Goes to the Movies: From Archaeology to Popular Craze to Hollywood Fantasy, Jefferson, North Carolina and London: ISBN 978-1-4766-2986-5
- Davies, David Stuart (2004), Return from the Dead: A Collection of Classic Mummy Stories, Hertfordshire: Wordsworth's Editions Limited, ISBN 1-84022-452-5
- Deane, Bradley (2014), Masculinity and the New Imperialism: Rewriting Manhood in British Popular Literature, 1870-1914, Cambridge, United Kingdom: ISBN 978-1-107-06607-6
- Doyle, Arthur Conan (2010), The Conan Doyle Weirdbook, Birmingham: Theaker's Paperback Library, ISBN 978-0-9561533-2-6
- Hughes, William; Punter, David; Smith, Andrew (2016), The Encyclopedia of the Gothic, Chinchester, West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell, ISBN 978-1-119-06460-2
- ISBN 978-0-199-53887-4
- Ó Donghaile, Deaglán (2011), Blasted Literature: Victorian Political Fiction and the Shock of Modernism, Edinburg: Edinburgh University Press, ISBN 978-0-7486-4067-6
- Schablitsky, Julie (2007), Box Office Archaeology, Left Coast Press, ISBN 978-1598740561
- Thornton, Amara (2018), Archaeologists in Print: Publishing for the People, London: University College London Press, ISBN 978-1-78735-260-5
- van Heerden, Bill (1998), Film and Television In-Jokes: Nearly 2,000 Intentional References, Parodies and Homages, Jefferson, North Caroina and London: McFarland & Company, ISBN 978-0-7864-3894-5
External links
- Media related to "Lot No. 249" at Wikimedia Commons
- The full text of "Lot No. 249" at Wikisource
- Lot No.249 at Project Gutenberg Australia
- Lot No. 249 public domain audiobook at LibriVox