Episode 21: 'By One, By Two, and By Three' by Adrian Ross a.k.a Arthur Reed Ropes
For Episode 21 we have a rollicking tale of demonic sorcery from 1887 - one that starts, mundanely enough, as a story of friendships forged in the corridors of Cambridge University and ends as full-blown gothic horror in the wilds of Scotland (with a telegram from India along the way); all in under thirty pages.
By One, By Two and By Three first appeared, uncredited, in the pages of Temple Bar magazine, somehow became attached to the name of Stephen Hall (it was attributed thus in The Second Pan Book of Horror Stories), and resurfaced in the 1970s as an episode of Rod Serling's Night Gallery before it was established as the work of one Adrian Ross (itself a pseudonym of Alfred Reed Ropes). Ross/Ropes was a contemporary of M.R. James at Kings' College and a celebrated academic and librettist in his own right. Indeed, while he wrote lyrics for a string of West End smashes over the course of four decades (and was a founder of the Performing Rights Society), he does not appear to have written extensively in the supernatural tradition. His one other notable horror story is the 1914 novella The Hole in the Pit.
I like to think there is a trace of Ross's theatrical background in By One... Notice the use (not too subtle to our twenty-first century tastes perhaps, but, I like to think, macabrely amusing) of dramatic foreshadowing by Ross with characters who will end up dead playing a card game called "cutthroat" and one anticipating his own demise when using the phrase "dead for a ducat". Note also the allusions to Shakespeare (especially Macbeth).
For an entertaining discussion about the story and its progenitor, head over to A Podcast To The Curious (Episode 72), but not until you've listened to the story in full, lest there be spoilers (spoiler: there are).
As with the last episode (Pargiton and Harby), I appear to be the first/possibly only YouTube narrator to have recorded this story (as far as I can ascertain with a cursory search), in which case I am pleased to help others discover it.
I hope you enjoy it.
Your friend,
Jasper
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licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Scott Buckley – www.scottbuckley.com.au
licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4297-road-to-hell
License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
The recording was created using Audacity and BandLab. Podcast hosted by Anchor.
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