Charles Beaumont: Selected Stories Read online

  * * *

  PREFACE

  by Christopher Beaumont

  * * *

  Roger Anker has put together a good and varied collection of Beaumont short stories. But he's done something more. He's wrapped each and every story in the loving embrace of a friend. Matheson, Tomerlin, Bradhury, Nolan; all names I grew up with. Each one a distinct and pleasant piece of my memory. A memory that includes the picture of a young boy falling asleep, night after night, to the sound of his father's typewriter, the keys finally becoming a familiar lullaby. Do not think for a minute that the style and clarity found in these stories was not the result of countless hours spent shaping and reshaping, and then reshaping again, the words. But somehow, in the midst of his passion for the words, he found time enough, and love enough to be a father. And such is the quality of that love that it sustained his children; Catherine, Elizabeth, Gregory and myself, through the stormy weather that followed his death and the death of our mother. Not only sustained, but inspired and confirmed our suspicions that certain things never die: a story well told, the steadfast loyalty of a good and true friend, and the memory of a father who somewhere knew that his time was short, and so passionately shared all that he had to share. And even now, some nights, I vaguely hear the typewriter keys tapping in the other room. The single bell at the end of the carriage. The sound of the roller twisting another lucky page into the works. And then the tapping starts again and I begin to drift to sleep. Good night, Father.

  * * *

  Introduction to

  MISS GENTILBELLE by Ray Bradbury

  * * *

  It has been too many years. Quite suddenly I realize the old memory is failing. I say this because I thought I remembered everything there was to remember about Charles Beaumont and "Miss Gentilbelle." Not so. For some letters have come into my hands from that time more than 30 years ago, when Charles Beaumont was a young father and a more-than-aspiring writer. Those were the years when I promised Chuck if he showed up at my house every Wednesday evening with a new story, I would read it. It was a way of forcing him, and several other writer friends, to do one story a week, 52 weeks a year. Quality, I told them and him, came out of quantity. The more you wrote, the better you got. That is if your intentions were honorable and your dreams high and wondrous. Chuck did just that. He not only wrote 52 short stories a year, but he revised them during the same weeks. "Miss Gentilbelle" must have come under my eye on not just one or two, but three or four occasions. With this, and other stories, I wanted Chuck to learn how to cut his stories. Like every writer in the history of the world, including myself, his stories ran long, and needed shaves and haircuts. I wish I had some of the original versions of "Miss Gentilbelle" in front of me. For it is obvious, in re-reading our old letters, that he revised and cut the story three or four times. At one point, I rather rigorously insisted that if he didn't edit his stories, I wouldn't read them. That seems terribly harsh, now that I look back. But young writers are often stubborn, and remembering my own stubbornness about my immortal prose, I had to nag Chuck. It was all worth while, as can be seen by the story here. Chuck revised it at least four times, and I became its friendly agent to several magazines. My luck was not good. When I had sent it around five or six times, I passed the story on to other hands, and it finally sold. Further results can be seen in dozens and then scores of his future tales. He became, in a very short while, not only my honorary son, but first cousin to John Collier, Roald Dahl, Nigel Kneale, and a lot of other story tellers that we admired together. Until, at last, he became and stayed the one and only Charles Beaumont. I am glad that we were friends. I am proud that I gently nagged "Miss Gentilbelle" at various times. Long after the nags are forgotten, the story will stand. Here is the early Chuck Beaumont, promising even greater things that he lived just long enough, thank God, to do.