1) "What Was it?" (pdf) (html) (Google Books)

Despite being described variously as "a lion of literary New York", "a Poe in the minor mode", and "the writer who to the weird and supernatural gave a setting definitely localized in time and place",¹ Fitz-James O'Brien's name seems scarcely recognised in the province of his birth. I know because I have (over the last few days) asked around and been met with nothing but blank looks. Not the most rigorous approach to research I'll grant you, but it does hint at a certain obscurity.

The facts of his short life are rather hard to discern (he himself was, apparently, a great embellisher of his own legend) but here's a brief chronology that I managed to glean from online sources.

Born in Cork (1828); moved to Castleconnell (Co. Limerick) in his teens (after the death of his father and his mother's subsequent remarriage); splashed about in the waters of the Shannon for a bit; took off up to TCD to study something or other; headed to London and blew an inheritance of £8,000 (no mean feat in the mid 19th century); was either embroiled in a scandal or suffered a broken heart; set sail for America; started writing more earnestly and became a member of the New York literati; fought in the American civil war; was wounded in a skirmish; lingered on for a while; died – aged 34. The end.

Three years prior to his untimely death he was kind enough to pen "What Was it?"² – the tale that is to be the focus of the Dreadful Thoughts Story Club's inaugural discussion:

Though I won't say much more about it here (as this is, after all, a place for conversation, not oration), a few brief observations might help to get our juices (or fluids) flowing (*spoilers follow*).

1) According to several sources the story was pioneering in its use of invisibility. Alan Gullette has this to say:

"What Was It? A Mystery" (March, 1859) caused a minor sensation, being one of the first to deal with an invisible creature. (It predated Maupassant's "The Horla," and while it is not known to have been translated, it is still possible the French short story master heard about the earlier tale. On the other hand, it is fairly certain that Ambrose Bierce was familiar with the story when he wrote "The Damned Thing.").

While the grand-daddy of the modern invisibility narrative seems to be James Dalton's (cautionary) The Invisible Gentleman (1833), the (supposed) originality of FJoB's story appears to lie in its use of a non-human entity.

2) The grounding of the "supernatural" (if you can call it that) in the physical – the creature sleeps, wants for food, is clearly mortal etc. – makes the story feel (to me at least) far more contemporary than it actually is.

3) While the creature is clearly aggressive and hostile, its motivations are never discussed or contextualised. It simply appears, horrifies all present, and then departs (in this case, by slowly dying). In this I'm reminded somewhat of M.R. James (of whom we'll be hearing much more I'm sure). He was a great man for "demonic" entities who, far from revelling in their malevolence, seem wretched and tormented by their diabolical natures. A slightly similar feel is present in "What Was it?" – although the tragic aspects of the unseen monster are much more to the fore.

Anyway, enough of my yappin'. Over to you folks.

"What was it?" – discuss.

1. Wolfe, Francis, "Fitz-James O'Brien in Ireland and England, 1828-1851″, in American Literature, Vol. 14, No. 3. (Nov., 1942), pg. 234. [back]
2. Harper's. March, 1859. [back]

Of course if you're a James Last enthusiast, a collector of ornamental Flamenco dancers, or a devotee of the work of Jeffrey Archer, then this consistency is no bad thing. You'll be spoiled for choice and skipping merrily out the door with three bags full. However if, like me, you live in hope of finding an inexpensive monkey's paw (or a mint-condition Necronomicon) then you're probably better off with eBay.

What keeps me doing the rounds is that every not-so-very-often I stumble across an object that makes me stop, stare and push prospective old lady buyers out of the way. Today's donation to The Museum of Cultural Waste (snapped up in The Irish Cancer Society Shop, William St.) may not quite be worth abusing the elderly, but it does exude an undeniable strangeness. More importantly, it cost 50 cent.

Yes, it's a manky Native American "Action Man" – standing proudly before an atmospheric backdrop of pasta, lentils and couscous. The woman who sold him to me confidently declared him an "Apache", before pointing out (quite despondently) that his leg was hanging off. She was spot on about the damage to the leg (it got me a discount), but I'm not so sure about her swift assessment of his tribal affiliations. More research is required.

After getting him home and getting him nekkid I discovered the mark of "Kid Kore 1994″ stamped indistinctly on his arse. Though the name was new to me I hazarded an educated guess that "Kid Kore" was a) Chinese & b) unlikely to be one of Mattel and Hasbro's main global competitors. As with almost all Manky Toy makers, "Kid Kore" don't appear to have invested any of their profits in a company web site – leaving precise details hard to come by.

I can, however, confirm that they don't just limit themselves to plastic "Apaches". They also produce the "Little Ones" range of dolls – notable for being cute, colourful and (according to EU consumer affairs) stuffed to the gills with phenol.

The product poses a chemical risk because the shoes of the doll contain phenol at level of 980 mg/kg whereas the limit is 150 mg/kg. Phenol can cause various poisoning symptoms.

Yikes! From the look of the "Apache's" head our cats may have spent most of this afternoon happily gnawing his hair…little realising it may have been dripping in life-threatening toxins. The EU rather vaguely refers to "various poisoning symptoms". What are these exactly?

Listlessness? Ennui? Gassiness? Death?¹

For anyone who wants to try out their own chemical experiments the below "Kid Kore" doll is on sale at ioffer.com for a mere 50 cents (US).

The seller's sales pitch seems aimed at a rather disturbed niche market:

This cute little red head measures approximately 5 inches tall.

She has no clothes and is looking for a good home.

One presumes that her (phenol-soaked) clothes were seized by EU agents and destroyed.

Before we finish, let's briefly return to our Native American friend. There's something both unsettling and enigmatic about his face.

A touch of the "John Cusack wearing a Michael Myers mask" perhaps? Certainly an intense melancholia. Could the (surprisingly sensitive) "Kid Kore" designers have deliberately set out to capture the ineffable sadness of a people's loss and displacement?

P. S: By the time you read this I may have succumbed to phenol vapours and slipped into a coma.

1. The ultimate "poisoning symptom". [back]

Way back in October 2005, when fustar.info was but a mewling babe, I related the blood-curdling (1922) tale of The Mystery of the Monster of Limerick Docks. At the time I promised to dig out a copy of Denis O'Shaughnessy's Limerick: 100 Stories of the Century to flesh out the rather sketchy details I'd gleaned from Graham J. McEwan's Mystery Animals of Britain and Ireland and the Limerick Leader. Despite my half-arsed efforts the book had remained, like mystery beasties themselves, frustratingly elusive. That is, until now.

Goodbye sketchy details, hello not-very-detailed sketch:

The artist was one Stephen O'Gorman (a Limerickian who'd emigrated to Birmingham) and the above depiction was submitted to the Limerick Leader after they'd reprinted the story in 1974. The original witness was Mr. A. E. Aldridge (of Gloucestshire), master of a schooner docked in Limerick at the time. A quick (updated) recap of his account is in order:

He and his crew were getting the ship ready to sail on high tide in the afternoon when the mate called him from the cabin: "Captain! Come up here at once!"

"When I reached the deck I saw the quays on both sides of the river crowded with people and they were watching the most amazing sea creature they or I had ever seen or read about. The object was close alongside my vessel [resembling] in size and shape…a small submarine. It was large and black and shining and it had a very long neck, at least twelve feet long, held proudly erect and shaped like a swan's. It waved its small head from side to side and its bright shining eyes seemed to express alarm.

"Behind its long neck for a distance of ten or twelve feet was a massive black cone-shaped hump."

Mr. Aldridge then stated that at this stage the monster was heading upstream at a very slow speed and seagulls in the vicinity flew off in fright. He then described how the creature eventually turned and headed downstream.

My original post on the incident ended there, but (as Mr. O'Shaughnessy tells us) "this extraordinary story was not yet concluded". Back over to you, A. E. Aldridge:

"After we had passed Foynes [on the Shannon Estuary] it was nearly dark when I and the crew heard a blowing sound, like a porpoise makes when it surfaces for air, and we saw the long neck of the sea creature shoot out of the water; then it disappeared. It returned within a few seconds surfacing to blow and take in air again. This it did again and again and we eventually left it behind. This was the last we saw of it." (O'Shaugnessy, p.7)

As Aldridge notes, the banks of the river were teeming with (presumably) agog locals. One of them was the afore-mentioned Stephen O'Gorman, and his recollections colourfully corroborate those of the bould Capt. Aldridge.

Stephen was a teenager at the time and was playing handball in Shannon Street with several of his pals when suddenly they noticed that people were gathering in large numbers at the quayside. "We immediately joined them and to our amazement saw this strange creature in the middle of the river. It was travelling very slowly towards Sarsfield Bridge."

"The creature travelled as far as Limerick Boat Club and then turned back[...]A group of Free State soliders with rifles came dashing by (I believe they came out of the Strand Barracks) and they kept pace with the creature. When it passed the end of the Docks…they opened fire from Cleeve's Bank and every so often they repeated the shooting until the creature passed Barrington's Pier and finally disappeared into the distance."

"They did not hit it, merely content to hit the water just behind it. I believe they were just trying to encourage it on its way".

Nice to see that the Free State soldiers were operating on a principle later prevalent in 50s B-Movies: "It's something that defies our understanding! Quick, Shoot it!"

So there you have it. What makes the tale so fascinating and unusual is that the incident took place in the middle of a city, apparently in full view of dozens of witnesses. I'm not sure if O'Gorman's sketch was done at the time, or not till 1974 when he offered his account. I suspect the latter, so it's likely his depiction was influenced both by Aldridge's story and the "Nessie" lake/sea monster template that had (by then) become prevalent.

Whatever the case may be, it sure beats readin' or writin' about the terrifying, unstoppable behemoth that is Fianna Fáil.