''The Lair of the White Worm'' is a
horror novel
Horror is a genre of fiction which is intended to frighten, scare, or disgust. Horror is often divided into the sub-genres of psychological horror and supernatural horror, which is in the realm of speculative fiction. Literary historian J. ...
by the Irish writer
Bram Stoker
Abraham Stoker (8 November 1847 – 20 April 1912) was an Irish author who is celebrated for his 1897 Gothic horror novel '' Dracula''. During his lifetime, he was better known as the personal assistant of actor Sir Henry Irving and busine ...
. It was first published by Rider and Son of London in 1911
[ – the year before Stoker's death – with colour illustrations by ]Pamela Colman Smith
Pamela Colman Smith (16 February 1878 – 18 September 1951), nicknamed "Pixie", was a British artist, illustrator, writer, publisher, and occultist. She is best-known for illustrating the Rider–Waite tarot deck (also called the Rider–Wait ...
. The story is based on the legend of the Lambton Worm
The Lambton Worm is a legend from County Durham in north-east England in the United Kingdom. The story takes place around the River Wear, and is one of the area's most famous pieces of folklore, having been adapted from written and oral tradit ...
. It has also been issued as ''The Garden of Evil''.
The book is widely considered one of the worst books ever written.
Plot summary
The central character of the book is Adam Salton, an Australian at the outset living there, who in 1860 is contacted by his elderly great-uncle, Richard Salton, a landed gentleman of Lesser Hill, Derbyshire
Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...
, England, who has no other family and wants to establish a relationship with the only other living member of the Salton family. Although Adam has already made his own fortune in Australia, he enthusiastically agrees to meet his uncle, and on his arrival by ship at Southampton the two men quickly become good friends. His great-uncle then reveals that he wishes to make Adam the heir to his estate, Lesser Hill. Adam travels there and quickly finds himself at the center of mysterious events, with Sir Nathaniel de Salis, a friend of Richard Salton's, as his guide.
Edgar Caswall, the new heir to a neighboring estate, Castra Regis or Royal Camp, is in the process of making a mesmeric assault on a local girl, Lilla Watford. Meanwhile, Arabella March, of Diana's Grove, is running a game of her own, perhaps angling to become Mrs. Edgar Caswall. He is a slightly pathological eccentric and has inherited Franz Mesmer
Franz Anton Mesmer (; ; 23 May 1734 – 5 March 1815) was a German physician with an interest in astronomy. He theorised the existence of a natural energy transference occurring between all animated and inanimate objects; this he called " ani ...
's chest, which he keeps in the Castra Regis Tower. Caswall seeks to make use of mesmerism
Animal magnetism, also known as mesmerism, was a protoscientific theory developed by German doctor Franz Mesmer in the 18th century in relation to what he claimed to be an invisible natural force (''Lebensmagnetismus'') possessed by all livi ...
, a precursor to hypnotism
Hypnosis is a human condition involving focused attention (the selective attention/selective inattention hypothesis, SASI), reduced peripheral awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion.In 2015, the American Psychologica ...
, and, obsessed with Lilla, attempts to break her using mesmeric powers. However, with the help of Lilla's half- Burmese cousin, Mimi Watford, he is thwarted time and again.
Caswall has a giant kite built in the shape of a hawk to scare away pigeons that have attacked his fields and destroyed his crops. For lack of anything better to do, he obsessively watches the kite and begins to believe that it has a mind of its own and that he himself is a god.
Adam Salton finds black snakes on his great uncle's property and buys a mongoose
A mongoose is a small terrestrial carnivorous mammal belonging to the family Herpestidae. This family is currently split into two subfamilies, the Herpestinae and the Mungotinae. The Herpestinae comprises 23 living species that are native to so ...
to hunt them down. He then discovers a child who has been bitten on the neck and who almost dies as a result. Adam learns that another child has already been killed by a snake bite and that animals have also been killed mysteriously throughout the county.
Caswall's Black African
Black is a Racialization, racialized classification of people, usually a Politics, political and Human skin color, skin color-based category for specific populations with a mid to dark brown complexion. Not all people considered "black" have ...
servant, Oolanga, a man obsessed with death and torture, prowls around the Castra Regis estate, enjoying the carnage left by the White Worm. Adam's mongoose attacks Arabella, who shoots it to death. Adam buys more mongooses and keeps them locked in trunks when not using them to hunt. Arabella tears another mongoose apart with her hands. Oolanga takes a liking to Arabella, perhaps sensing something violent in her, and makes advances. Arabella scorns Oolanga and is deeply insulted that he would dare to approach her. In an attempt to win her over, Oolanga steals one of Adam's trunks (which he believes is filled with treasure, but is actually just another mongoose), and Adam follows Oolanga. Arabella lures Oolanga to a deep well in her house, then in rage and disgust murders him by dragging him down into the deep pit tunneled through a bed of white china clay. Adam witnesses the murder, but has no evidence of it apart from his own word. Arabella writes him a letter the next day, with the previous night's events twisted, claiming her complete innocence. Adam and Sir Nathaniel begin to suspect that Arabella is guilty of other crimes and that she wants to murder Mimi Watford.
Adam and Sir Nathaniel then plot to stop Arabella by whatever means necessary. Sir Nathaniel is a Van Helsing
A van is a type of road vehicle used for transporting goods or people. Depending on the type of van, it can be bigger or smaller than a pickup truck and SUV, and bigger than a common car. There is some varying in the scope of the word across th ...
-type character who wants to hunt down Arabella, who he believes, with increasing conviction, is the White Worm of legend.
The White Worm is a large snake-like creature dwelling deep under Arabella's house at Diana's Grove. It has green glowing eyes and feeds on whatever living creatures it can find to eat. Sir Nathaniel believes the Worm is descended from dragons, who traded their physical power for cunning. The Worm ascends from its pit and seeks to attack Adam and Mimi Watford in the forest of Diana's Grove.
Adam is able to foil Arabella's multiple attempts to murder Mimi, and Arabella offers to sell Diana's Grove, which Adam buys with the aim of destroying the White Worm. He plans to fill the pit with sand and set dynamite to kill the Worm while it is underground.
Caswall's last visit to Lilla ends in her death. In the final chapters, Mimi Watford confronts Caswall who has finally succumbed to madness. He lures her onto the roof of Castra Regis House as a storm approaches and shows off his kite, despite the thunderheads building in the sky. Arabella, who had been stalking Mimi, watches from nearby and steals some of the wire holding the kite, apparently unspooling it all the way back to her house. When Mimi discovers Caswall has locked her onto the roof she shoots off the lock with a gun Adam gave her for her protection and flees home. Adam convinces her to go back outside with him, and they witness the following events: a massive thunderstorm breaks over Castra Regis House, a lightning bolt is grounded by the kite and demolishes the Castra Regis tower; it then travels through the wire Arabella had run to Diana's Grove and ignites Adam's dynamite, which pulverizes the White Worm and destroys the house and Arabella at the same time. After this, Adam and Mimi Watford are married.
File:Lairwhiteworm.jpg, 1911 illustration by Pamela Colman Smith
Pamela Colman Smith (16 February 1878 – 18 September 1951), nicknamed "Pixie", was a British artist, illustrator, writer, publisher, and occultist. She is best-known for illustrating the Rider–Waite tarot deck (also called the Rider–Wait ...
, facing page 222 in the first edition (viewed at HathiTrust
HathiTrust Digital Library is a large-scale collaborative repository of digital content from research libraries including content digitized via Google Books and the Internet Archive digitization initiatives, as well as content digitized locally ...
)
File:Lairworm2.jpg, 1911 illustration by Smith, facing page 86 in the first edition
Reception
Les Daniels
Leslie Noel Daniels III, better known as Les Daniels (October 27, 1943 – November 5, 2011), was an American writer.
Background
Daniels attended Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, where he wrote his master's thesis on ''Frankenstei ...
noted that while ''The Lair of the White Worm'' had "potential", it was undermined by the "clumsy style" of the writing.[Les Daniels, ''Living in Fear: a history of horror in the mass media'', New York: Scribner, 1975, , p. 63.] The horror critic R. S. Hadji placed ''The Lair of the White Worm'' at number twelve in his list of the worst horror novels ever written.[R. S. Hadji, "13 Worst Stinkers of the Weird", in '']Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone Magazine
''Twilight Zone'' literature is an umbrella term for the many books and comic books which concern or adapt ''The Twilight Zone'' television series.
Comics
Gold Key Comics published a long-running ''Twilight Zone'' comic that featured the likene ...
'', July–August 1983, TZ Publications, Inc., pp. 86-87.
 
groups.google.com
/ref> Historian of the horror genre H. P. Lovecraft, in his essay "Supernatural Horror in Literature
"Supernatural Horror in Literature" is a 28,000 word essay by American writer H. P. Lovecraft, surveying the development and achievements of horror fiction as the field stood in the 1920s and 30s. The essay was researched and written between Nove ...
", stated that Stoker "utterly ruins a magnificent idea by a development almost infantile."[H. P. Lovecraft, "Supernatural Horror in Literature". Reprinted in Stephen Jones & Dave Carson (eds.) ''The World's Greatest Horror Stories''. New York: Barnes & Noble Books, 2004. . p. 45]
Adaptations and popular culture
*In 1925 a highly abridged and rewritten form was published by Foulsham
Foulsham is a village and civil parish in the English county of Norfolk. The village is located north-east of Dereham and north-west of Norwich. Foulsham is renowned in the local area for its unspoilt nature and the number of Sixteenth and Sev ...
. It was shortened by more than 100 pages, the rewritten book having only 28 chapters instead of the original 40. The final eleven chapters were cut down to only five, leading some critics to complain that the ending was abrupt and inconsistent.
*''The Lair of the White Worm'' was very loosely adapted by Ken Russell
Henry Kenneth Alfred Russell (3 July 1927 – 27 November 2011) was a British film director, known for his pioneering work in television and film and for his flamboyant and controversial style. His films in the main were liberal adaptation ...
into a 1988 film of the same name.
*The first episode of the German radio drama "Die schwarze Sonne", produced by the label LAUSCH, is loosely based on the events of ''The Lair of the White Worm.'' The main characters of the radio drama are also based on the protagonists of the novel and feature in the rest of the episodes even though the plot turns away from Stoker's original story.
*The White Worm makes an appearance in one optional encounter in Jonathan Green's ACE gamebook ''Dracula: Curse of the Vampire'', where it has taken possession of the body of Count Dracula
Count Dracula () is the title character of Bram Stoker's 1897 gothic horror novel '' Dracula''. He is considered to be both the prototypical and the archetypal vampire in subsequent works of fiction. Aspects of the character are believed by som ...
.[''Dracula: Curse of the Vampire'' (2021, Snowbooks, )]
References
External links
*
''The Lair of the White Worm''
(ebook) – full text of the 1911 edition
Illustrations by Pamela Colman Smith
– all six illustrations of the 1911 edition
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lair of the White Worm, The
1911 British novels
1911 fantasy novels
20th-century Irish novels
British horror novels
Fiction set in 1860
Fictional worms
Irish novels adapted into films
Novels adapted into radio programs
Novels by Bram Stoker
Novels set in Derbyshire