The feast of Bacchus : $b A study in dramatic atmosphere

"The feast of Bacchus" by Ernest G. Henham is a novel written in the early 20th century. It is an atmospheric, theatrically structured tale in which a neglected country manor called the Strath exerts shifting moods of comedy and tragedy over those who enter it, especially the reclusive classical scholar Dr. Berry and the blunt new owner, Henry Reed. Threaded through are sharp social conversations about love, marriage, and modernity, setting reason against mysticism and appetite against restraint.

The opening of the novel drifts from a languid river scene—where Maude Juxon and her friend Flora Neill spar over flirtation, convenience in marriage, and “spiritual” love—into the secluded valley of Thorlund and the uncanny garden of the Strath. There the gentle rector-scholar Dr. Berry, long inspired (and subtly ruled) by the garden’s alternating gaiety and gloom, meets Henry Reed, who has returned to occupy the long-deserted house; together they enter a dust-locked dining room eerily preserved as if a century-old feast had just ended, and find a leering comic mask on the wall. Outside the gate, Reed’s practical, defiant streak reasserts itself—he talks of felling trees and breeding poultry—while Berry warns that the place will break him, recounts the manor’s dark lore, and tests Reed’s soul with Greek verse to no effect. As a storm gathers, Berry yields to the garden’s tragic pull, burning incense at the sun-dial, then meets Lone Nance, a wild, visionary girl, and hears the flat fatalism of a hay-cutter about the “broken” old being sent to the workhouse; that night, Berry collapses over his manuscripts, and by morning Reed is found dead across the hall threshold. An interlude shifts to London, where the dissipated Charles Conway—Reed’s relative and heir—receives news of the murder and sets out for the Strath, as the local inquest returns the familiar verdict against unknown hands. (This is an automatically generated summary.)