Recently I purchased a copy of Robert W. Chambers’s The King in Yellow, a classic work of “weird fiction” that would inspire writers like H.P. Lovecraft.  It’s a book I’ve wanted to read for sometime, especially with the idea of a malevolent play that is so terrible and beautiful, it drives anyone who reads it mad.  That play, of course, is the titular The King in Yellow, the text of which—beyond a couple of snippets—is never quoted in the book.

The book is a collection of ten stories, the first four of which share the thread of the infamous play.  The rest of the book consists of stories that take place mostly in Paris, specifically the Latin Quarter, and revolves around the lives of young American art students in the City of Light.  Indeed, Chambers published In the Quarter, a collection of stories about the Bohemian lives of the Latin Quarter’s residents, a year prior to the publication of The King in Yellow.

The four proper TKiY stories are quite good, and succeed as horror stories that unsettle, more than they scare.  The hidden gems of this collection, however, are the Latin Quarter stories, which depict a freewheeling, fun-loving period in French history before the unhappy days of the First World War ruined France and the West forever.

Of those stories, my favorite is “The Street of the First Shell,” which takes place during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71.  It is a thrilling depiction of the privation and struggle of that conflict, and of the doomed Parisian defense against the Prussian siege.

The story relates the struggles of a number of Americans living in the Latin Quarter during the siege, examining the privations of wartime Paris.  Food is limited, so much so that rat-catchers sell parts of rats as meat, and the Americans do their best to help out, having greater access to funds and resources as upper class art students caught in the war.  One American, Hartmann, is a possible German spy; even if he is not, he’s an unscrupulous character who takes advantage of the wartime situation to enrich himself from relief funds, an all-too-common occurrence in war zones.

The hero of the story is Jack Trent, an American artist residing with his model, Sylvia, with whom he is very much in love.  Sylvia fears for Jack’s life, as he assists with an American relief and ambulance service that volunteers on behalf of the beleaguered French.  Jack finds himself in a number of fisticuffs in this story, and even escapes the noose of a cowardly rat-catcher who attempts to rob him.

Through a series of brash decisions, Jack finds himself joined up with a sorry French regiment hastily making its way to the front to fight the Germans.  Instead of the glory of war—Jack imagines at one point the satisfaction of killing a hated Prussian—Jack finds himself in a brutal crossfire, the implication being that some of it is friendly fire caused by the confusion of battle.  Against wild odds, he manages to survive his mad dive into urban warfare, and makes it back to the Quarter.

Already, Prussian looters have descended upon the city, and several of Jack’s friends must take refuge in a root cellar.  Unfortunately, the old landlord of the place hid all of his life’s savings in the cellar, and the greedy Germans have somehow gotten word of the potential for treasure.  Jack and his friends narrowly escape from their would-be-coffin by climbing through a manhole cover to the street above.

At this point, Jack realizes that his beloved, Sylvia, is still waiting anxiously for him at their flat, the building of which has already been shelled.  He comes upon the rat-catcher, grimly painting a sign proclaiming the street “The Street of the First Shell,” as the first Prussian shell to hit the Latin Quarter fell there.  To Jack’s great relief, Sylvia has survived, along with their child.

As part of the twist of this story, it turns out that Sylvia’s child is the result of the cruel seduction of Hartmann some years earlier.  The implication is that he got Sylvia pregnant under false pretenses of love and fidelity, and abandoned her as soon as she was with child.  Sylvia reveals all to Jack before his night of slaughter, and he stoically takes it upon himself to care for the child.  He also testifies to the American Embassy on behalf of Hartmann, arguing he is not a spy, at the urging of Sylvia, who fears her child will be abandoned should Hartmann die.

Nowadays we’d call Jack a simp, but in the context of the times and the story, he made a massive sacrifice for Sylvia and her child, agreeing to raise the child as his own and marry Sylvia, even with the threat of scandal.  Greater than his battlefield heroics, this act of sacrifice is Jack’s most heroic act.

The story is full of drama and pathos—and cool battle scenes.  It highlights that, contrary to Jack’s expectations, war is not glamorous or fun.  It is brutal and chaotic, especially as the French fumble their defense (spoiler alert:  the French lost the Franco-Prussian War, with the Prussians proclaiming the new German Empire in the Palace of Versailles at the humiliating peace conference that ended the war; this defeat held within it the seeds of the First World War, when an embittered France sought revanche—revenge).

As a history buff with a particular soft spot for French history and the doomed reign of Napoleon III, I really loved this story, but I think any reader will be able to appreciate the themes with which Chambers wrestles.  There are no hideous Old Ones or squid-faced nightmare creatures in this story, just humans, good and bad, struggling to make the best of a terrible situation, and emerging victorious in the face of great evil.

I highly recommend “The Street of the First Shell.”

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