The Angels of Mons

The Angels of Mons, by Arthur
Machen

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Title: The Angels of Mons
Author: Arthur Machen
Release Date: November 14, 2004 [eBook #14044]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE
ANGELS OF MONS***
E-text prepared by Tom Harris

THE ANGELS OF MONS
The Bowmen and Other Legends of the War

by
ARTHUR MACHEN
1915

Introduction
I have been asked to write an introduction to the story of "The
Bowmen", on its publication in book form together with three other
tales of similar fashion. And I hesitate. This affair of "The Bowmen"
has been such an odd one from first to last, so many queer
complications have entered into it, there have been so many and so
divers currents and cross-currents of rumour and speculation
concerning it, that I honestly do not know where to begin. I propose,
then, to solve the difficulty by apologising for beginning at all.
For, usually and fitly, the presence of an introduction is held to imply
that there is something of consequence and importance to be introduced.
If, for example, a man has made an anthology of great poetry, he may
well write an introduction justifying his principle of selection, pointing
out here and there, as the spirit moves him, high beauties and supreme
excellencies, discoursing of the magnates and lords and princes of
literature, whom he is merely serving as groom of the chamber.
Introductions, that is, belong to the masterpieces and classics of the
world, to the great and ancient and accepted things; and I am here
introducing a short, small story of my own which appeared in The
Evening News about ten months ago.
I appreciate the absurdity, nay, the enormity of the position in all its
grossness. And my excuse for these pages must be this: that though the
story itself is nothing, it has yet had such odd and unforeseen
consequences and adventures that the tale of them may possess some
interest. And then, again, there are certain psychological morals to be
drawn from the whole matter of the tale and its sequel of rumours and
discussions that are not, I think, devoid of consequence; and so to begin

at the beginning.

This was in last August, to be more precise, on the last Sunday of last
August. There were terrible things to be read on that hot Sunday
morning between meat and mass. It was in The Weekly Dispatch that I
saw the awful account of the retreat from Mons. I no longer recollect
the details; but I have not forgotten the impression that was then on my
mind, I seemed to see a furnace of torment and death and agony and
terror seven times heated, and in the midst of the burning was the
British Army. In the midst of the flame, consumed by it and yet
aureoled in it, scattered like ashes and yet triumphant, martyred and for
ever glorious. So I saw our men with a shining about them, so I took
these thoughts with me to church, and, I am sorry to say, was making
up a story in my head while the deacon was singing the Gospel.
This was not the tale of "The Bowmen". It was the first sketch, as it
were, of "The Soldiers' Rest". I only wish I had been able to write it as I
conceived it. The tale as it stands is, I think, a far better piece of craft
than "The Bowmen", but the tale that came to me as the blue incense
floated above the Gospel Book on the desk between the tapers: that
indeed was a noble story--like all the stories that never get written. I
conceived the dead men coming up through the flames and in the
flames, and being welcomed in the Eternal Tavern with songs and
flowing cups and everlasting mirth. But every man is the child of his
age, however much he may hate it; and our popular religion has long
determined that jollity is wicked. As far as I can make out modern
Protestantism believes that Heaven is something like Evensong in an
English cathedral, the service by Stainer and the Dean preaching. For
those opposed to dogma of any kind--even the mildest--I suppose it is
held that a Course of Ethical Lectures will be arranged.
Well, I have long maintained that on the whole the average church,
considered as a house of preaching, is a much more