Robert W. Chambers is a wonderful writer, and more of a pioneer in his way and his day than Lovecraft in his. This is true even though Lovecraft and the Mythos cottage industry has spread and indeed exploded into as close to the mainstream as it is likely to get, while the Fin de Siecle and Gilded Age psychological horror and doomed romances of Chambers have either been forgotten or assimilated by the box ticking sub-genre of the Cthulhu Mythos.
The King In Yellow is an amazing work of horror to me. And unlike many people offering views or critiques of it, I see all of its stories as horror stories. In the same way that some of the best of the Agatha Christie stories are, at the same time, crime stories AND horror stories, Chambers in his doomed romance or decadent artist short stories in King really does, as Lovecraft said, achieve notable heights of cosmic fear.
The central fascination that endures in my mind is La Demoiselle D'Ys.
Chambers named his country estate in New York Ys, and returned in several stories to this same figure of the ghost girl, fey, lost love, unobtainable or charisma (in the classical sense) who phantom-like fades, is lost, departs or otherwise vanishes. In Maker of Moons his protagonist seems to have won his ghostly girl, but I wonder sometimes whether that is not his psychologically healthy compromise and an autobiographical note. From his youth and whoever the prototype of the lost love was, to his later wife, I feel that Chambers may have exchanged an impossible dream lover for a flesh and blood paramour, whilst remaining, as one surely always must, somewhat haunted by La Demoiselle.
In terms of The King In Yellow, the great horror elements for me are not those usually offered by appraising critics or reviewers. The obvious horror elements of the Repairer of Reputations are less impactful in my opinion than the Paris of the Franco-Prussian War or the lost Rue Barrie. And my most often quoted passage is that of the Clown and his powdered face, and the narrator calling for the arrest of Truth.
He smiled, saying, “Seek her throughout the world.”
I said, “Why tell me of the world? My world is here, between these walls and the sheet of glass above; here among gilded flagons and dull jewelled arms, tarnished frames and canvasses, black chests and high-backed chairs, quaintly carved and stained in blue and gold.”
“For whom do you wait?” he said, and I answered, “When she comes I shall know her.”
On my hearth a tongue of flame whispered secrets to the whitening ashes. In the street below I heard footsteps, a voice, and a song.
“For whom then do you wait?” he said, and I answered, “I shall know her.”
Footsteps, a voice, and a song in the street below, and I knew the song but neither the steps nor the voice.
“Fool!” he cried, “the song is the same, the voice and steps have but changed with years!”
On the hearth a tongue of flame whispered above the whitening ashes: “Wait no more; they have passed, the steps and the voice in the street below.”
Then he smiled, saying, “For whom do you wait? Seek her throughout the world!”
I answered, “My world is here, between these walls and the sheet of glass above; here among gilded flagons and dull jewelled arms, tarnished frames and canvasses, black chests and high-backed chairs, quaintly carved and stained in blue and gold.”