Our latest “Document of the Week” was chosen by our Marketing and Editorial Assistant, Laura Wales. It is the first published work of Walter de la Mare, written under the pseudonym Walter Ramal. The story appeared in The Sketch on 7 August 1895.
De la Mare was a poet, novelist, and writer of short stories. Perhaps most notably, he was a writer of ghost stories. Employing supernatural themes rather than overt horror, de la Mare’s works often possess a haunting quality. Featuring tropes of ghosts, eerie natural settings, and death, his stories and poems invite readers to consider the boundaries between reality and the supernatural.
“Kismet”, described as “a novel in a nutshell” that only takes up one page of the periodical, follows several of these conventions. In the short story, a cart driver encounters a seaman travelling in the same direction as him through the night. The driver decides to offer the seaman a lift to Barrowmere, their shared destination. He instructs his passenger to sit on a “canvas-wrapt box at the bottom of the cart”, and the two journey on together. The driver is solemn and reserved, despite the seaman’s efforts to converse. The seaman decides to continue his journey home to his wife by foot when he reaches the village. Approaching his house, he sees that the cart driver has beat him to it. The seaman climbs a tree outside, to peer through the bedroom window, perhaps fearing an affair. Instead, he sees the dead body of his wife being uncovered by her mother. The driver carries a coffin past the window, on which the seaman had sat during “his joyous ride to his home”. The seaman realises, and in shock, falls out of the tree to his death.
Those familiar with de la Mere’s later poem, “The Listeners”, will identify similarities between the works. For example, both feature a traveller arriving at a house, only to be met with fear and an atmosphere of mystery.
Where to find this document
This document is from our collection, The Sketch, 1893–1958. Replete with photographs and illustrations, and featuring contributions on fashion, literature, and gossip, The Sketch was a periodical that provided extensive coverage of aristocratic and celebrity culture for nearly seven decades. This collection contains almost 170,000 images from approximately 3,500 issues of The Sketch, published between January 1893 and December 1958. Visit the collection page to learn more.