Friends at Stratford

This year the Friends AGM was in Stratford-on-Avon was held as usual as close as possible to Machen's birthday on March 3rd. Machen visited and acted here with the Bensonian company of actors in the early 1900s. We used the haunted 17th century Mecure Shakespeare Hotel as venue for the AGM it was a favourite drinking den of Machen and was about 50m away from the site of Shakespeare's final home. Machen loved Stratford and Shakespeare so it was an excellent choice. Attended by Machen's elderly daughter Janet the patron of the society, it was an enjoyable weekend with much drink and fine talk from the assembled company featuring as well a dramatic performance which recreated Machen's final moments on the stage. This year by lucky chance the AGM fell on St David's Day too.

The venue for next years AGM is sinister Whitby. Why not join the The Friends of Arthur Machen and come along?

Latest edition of Friends of Arthur Machen publications

"In the run up to the year the Friends of Arthur Machen went to Stratford upon Avon our latest hard backed publication Faunus 17 features extracts on Machen from Lady Constance Benson's memoirs relating to his time with the famous Bensonian company of Shakespearean actors. Another article relates Machen's own reminiscences of his time upon the stage in Stratford upon Avon. Faunus also contains writer Frank Baker's fascinating extended recollections of Machen from his autobiography. Baker, a sometime actor himself, reflects on the influence of the stage on himself and on Machen, and it provides an enchanting depiction of the power of Machen's works and personality on the shamefully neglected author of Miss Hargreaves and The Birds (1936).

The companion pamphlet Machenalia includes a full set of the recently discovered Little Fables by M published in the late twenties in the literary magazine John O’ London’s Weekly, a periodical which frequently published Machen. Are the Fables a lost work by Machen? Much furious debate on the matter is under way by Machen scholars. There is more news on the Angels of Mons saga, a new stage adaptation of Machen’s The Great God Pan in Chicago, news on a strange rite to summon Pan involving Frank Baker and Crowley which led to a terrible death, details on the terrifying Caerleon catacombs, and another article on music inspired by Machen, alongside the usual reviews of Machen related works.

Plus it contains a cryptic numerological inscription written by Machen, found in a collector’s library. Now known as The Machen Code it is already arousing much interest from cryptoanalysts - proffered solutions to the code have connected it to Aztec sacrifice, Scottish use of occult rituals to destroy the English, a clue that finally reveals the location of the San Graal, or possibly just Machen's record of the results of a drinking game."

To get these fine things subscribe to the The Friends of Arthur Machen at this link.