Gaston Leroux published his novel, “Le Fantome de l’Opera,” or “Phantom of the Opera,” in 1911.

Earlier he had worked as a theatre critic for a French newspaper, the “L’Echo de Paris,” and had heard talk of a chandelier, fastened above the crowd, in the Paris Opera House, that had crashed down, killing one, injuring others. He also learned of murders and kidnappings at the theatre.

He then heard rumors of a ghost that haunted the Paris Opera House, who lived near an underground lake, deep below the opera house, who in secret, interacted with audiences, theatre officials, and actors.

Leroux pulled these isolated facts and rumors into a tale of mystery and horror, in the same order as Edgar Allen Poe or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In Leroux’s telling, the Opera Ghost instructs those with mediocre talents and brings out their best on stage, if they will allow him.

The Opera Ghost hesitates to show himself to many, because he suffers from a disfigured face, that he covers with a partial mask.

One current literary critic, Patricia Drumright, pointed out that Leroux’s story has remained popular for over a hundred years, because it offers “something for just about everyone,” mystery, Gothic horror, music, theater, melodrama, tragedy, and, above all else, romance.

In his mystery novel’s prologue, Leroux claimed that he had investigated the facts and rumors and concluded that it was all true, even though his novel is a work of fiction.

The romance is three-sided: Christine Daae, a young and dazzling soprano, from Sweden; Rauol, Christine’s childhood friend, who now professes his intense love for Christine; and the Opera Ghost, whom Christine calls her Angel of Music, who also professes his everlasting love for Christine.

Drumright says, “Rauol offers romance, but the Phantom offers passion.”

In Leroux’s beginning pages, Christine sings in place of Carlotta, who had failed to show for a performance, and Christine brings down the house. The audience is astonished at Christine’s voice, her exceptional talent, and wonders why she has not sung before.

Seated in the audience that evening is Rauol, a young man who recognizes Christine as a childhood friend. After the performance, he goes to her backstage room and is about to knock on the door, when he hears a conversation between Christine and a man, both inside the room.

The man says, “Christine, you must love!” She replies, “How can you talk like that? When I sing only for you!” He says, “Your soul is a beautiful thing, child. The angels wept tonight.”

Christine leaves the room, fails to see Rauol, who then steps into the room, wanting to meet and confront this mysterious man, whom he now despises, but the room is empty. When Rauol confronts Christine about the man in her room, she is vague, evasive, not forthcoming with information.

Gothic horror novels are “expected to be dark and tempestuous and full of ghosts, madness, outrage, superstition, and revenge.” Drumright says, “this tale contrasts ugliness with elegance, genius with madness, and ruthlessness with compassion.”

In 1984, Andrew Lloyd Weber, a Broadway musical producer, famed for “Cats,” was busy writing a different musical, when he found a copy of Leroux’s long-out-of-print novel in a second-hand store.

Lloyd Weber said, “I realized that the reason I was hung up was because I was trying to write a romantic story. With the Phantom, it was there.” The musical producer transformed Leroux’s novel into a spectacular musical extravaganza.

Drumright says that Andrew Lloyd Weber’s stage version of Leroux’s novel is now considered “the most successful musical of all time.”

But, “Phantom of the Opera,” Broadway’s longest-running show ever, after 35 years, will close on February 18, 2023, with a record 13,925 performances. “It has sold nearly 20 million tickets and grossed $1.3 billion.” “This winter the Phantom will haunt the Paris Opera house for the last time.”

I will say that Andrew Lloyd Weber’s music is haunting. The “Overture” features a pipe organ solo with crashing chords that step up the musical scale and then step back down. Think Vincent Price and Edgar Allen Poe. The two most admired songs are “All I Ask of You,” and “Music of the Night.”

In that latter song, the masked Phantom sings his love to Christine.

“Nighttime sharpens, heightens each sensation. Darkness stirs and wakes imagination. Silently the senses abandon their defenses. . . . Let the dream begin, let your darker side give in, To the power of the music that I write. The power of the music of the night.” It is haunting.

Of Leroux’s novel, one critic pointed out that it is a story of “a misunderstood monster who only needs love,” a nod to “Beauty and the Beast.” Another said of the Phantom, “He had a heart that could have held the entire empire of the world; and in the end, he had to content himself with a cellar.”

Have a safe and happy—if not a Phantom-filled—Halloween! “Let the dream begin.”

In the year 2000, the horror fiction writer Stephen King came out with a different kind of book, a nonfiction book that he entitled, “On Writing: a Memoir of the Craft.” He begins with a series of scenes from his childhood, and explains how he launched his career of writing popular fiction.

King uses a metaphor, that of a toolbox, to describe how he works when he writes. At the bottom of the toolbox lie the fundamentals: appropriate vocabulary, sticking with accepted grammar, the use of active verbs rather than passive, and avoiding adverbs.

The toolbox’s second layer contains distinct styles: light, thin, and airy fluff; or serious and detailed information. Often the reading audience determines an appropriate style. King points out that dense and packed paragraphs are for scholars, but thin, underweighted paragraphs make reading easier.

King offers an opinion. “The paragraph, not the sentence, is the basic unit of writing.” In other words, he urges writers to write a functional paragraph—one with a topic sentence and a number of supporting sentences—rather than a series of sentences strung together without reason.

Winston Churchill once glared at a dessert, and shouted, “Take away this pudding. It has no theme.”

The toolbox’s third and top layer contains wisdom and good judgment; in other words, selecting the right tool for the job. A hammer will nail down a screw, but a screwdriver works better.

For example, leave out humor, satire, and ridicule when describing a crime or battle scene, and steer clear of a hostile, strident, or even angry tone. Leave that for the zealots and demagogues.

Stephen King advises all want-to-be writers to “Read a lot, and write a lot.” He says to read all kinds, good or even excellent written works, as well as mediocre and rotten, just to gain the experience of knowing what sparkles and what shines dim.

He says that he “reads seventy to eighty books every year, mostly fiction.” Because he writes for several hours every morning, he reads every afternoon.

King remains infatuated with Strunk and White’s small text of 78 pages, “The Elements of Style,” a standard for College Freshman composition classes. Although some writers have jettisoned this classic work, King believes that the list of 21 suggestions at the book’s end points writers in a good direction.

“1. Place yourself in the background. 2. Write in a way that comes naturally. 3. Work from a suitable design. 4. Write with nouns and verbs. 5. Revise and rewrite. 6. Do not overwrite. 7. Do not overstate. And, 21. Prefer the standard to the offbeat. ie. Steer clear of the eccentricities in language.”

Stephen King’s advice to writers holds merit, but not all enjoy his horror fiction. Others may prefer non-fiction: an essay, an opinion column, a history, a memoir, a sketch of an event, or a biography. Yet, King’s tool box remains, for the most part, the same for both fiction and non-fiction writers.

In 1946, a British author named George Orwell wrote an essay that he entitled, “Why I Write.” He gave four reasons: sheer egoism, a desire to seem clever; aesthetic enthusiasm, the beauty in words and phrases; historical impulse, a wish to identify “true facts and store them up for posterity’s use.”

His fourth reason, political purpose, is “a desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other people’s idea of the kind of society that they should strive after.”

Orwell wrote in the mid-twentieth century, a time when the democracies of the world were under attack, when totalitarian governments were on the rise, when the outcome of the conflict was unknown.

He said, “The Spanish war and other events in 1936-7 turned the scale. Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written against totalitarianism and for a democratic” form of government. “It seems nonsense to think that one can avoid writing of such subjects.”

Toward the end of the essay, Orwell underscores Strunk and White’s first suggestion. He writes, “And yet it is also true that one can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality.” In other words, he wants to “place himself in the background.”

Orwell then finishes the essay, with a startling sentence.

“And looking back through my work, I see that it is invariably where I lacked a political purpose that I wrote lifeless books and was betrayed into purple passages, sentences without meaning, decorative adjectives, and humbug generally.”

Orwell believed that he wrote his best pieces when he wrote with a political purpose, when he tried, “to push the world in a certain direction, to alter people’s idea about the proper society,” to suggest a better path for a government and its people to follow. Courageous he was.

Although Stephen King wanted to entertain, and George Orwell wanted to change the way people thought about political issues, yet each relied upon tools from similar toolboxes.

One final thought, writing well requires years of diligent effort. Chaucer said, “Not years enough, in life so short, to learn a craft so long.”

Bill Benson, of Sterling, is a dedicated historian.

Queen Elizabeth passed away last week, Thursday, September 8, 2022, at 96. She was born on April 21, 1926, and had one sibling, a younger sister named Margaret, born August 21, 1930.

When ten, Elizabeth discovered she was next in line to inherit England’s throne, whenever her father, King George VI, would pass away. Eight-year-old Margaret asked Elizabeth, “Does this mean you have to be the next Queen?” Elizabeth replied, “Someday.” Margaret said, “Poor you.”

When a child, Elizabeth understood that her life was mapped out in front of her.

On November 20, 1947, when twenty-one, Elizabeth married Philip, and they had four children: Charles, Anne, Andrew, and Edward.

Her father, King George VI, passed away on February 6, 1952, and that same day her privy and executive councils named her Queen of England. At twenty-five, she ascended to the throne.

Her coronation though did not convene until June 2, 1953, and was held at Westminster Abbey, in London. At Prince Philip’s suggestion, it was televised, and millions across the world watched as the twenty-seven-year girl and mother was crowned Queen of England.

She marked her silver jubilee, after twenty-five years, in 1977; her golden jubilee, after fifty years, in 2002; and her platinum jubilee, after seventy years, on the first weekend in June 2022. She sat on England’s throne for seventy years, 214 days, the longest of any British monarch.

After the Queen passed forty years on the throne, she gave a remarkable speech on November 24, 1992, and said, “1992 is not a year on which I shall look back with undiluted pleasure. It has turned out to be an ‘Annus Horribilis.’” a Latin phrase meaning a “horrible year.” What was going on?

On Friday, November 20, 1992, a tragic fire broke out in Windsor Castle, her main residence, and destroyed 115 rooms. The fire had started when a spotlight had pressed against a curtain.

Beyond that, and more at home, in 1992, three of her oldest children’s marriages were unravelling: Charles and Diana, Anne and Mark Phillips, and Andrew and Sarah Ferguson.

Charles and Lady Diana had created a series of scandals that year when rumors surfaced that the two were not getting along, due to incompatibility and the twelve years age difference. She said, “He made me feel so inadequate in every possible way. Each time I came up for air, he pushed me down.”

Lady Diana charged Prince Charles with loving Camilla, a former girlfriend, more than herself. In light of Charles and Camilla’s long-term marriage after his and Diana’s 1996 divorce, that accusation may have been true.

Lady Diana said, “There were three of us in this marriage, so it was a bit crowded.”

On December 20, 1995, when the Queen had had enough of the tabloids and scandals, she wrote letters to her son and daughter-in-law, and advised them to divorce. It was finalized August 28, 1996, and a year later, on August 31, 1997, at 36, in a Paris tunnel, in a tragic car crash, Lady Diana died.

The nation wept.

Prince Anne divorced her first husband, Mark Phillips, in 1992; and in early 1992, after six years of marriage, Andrew and Sarah Ferguson legally separated. Their divorce was final four years later.

Further into that speech on November 24, 1992, the Queen said, “Criticism is good for people, but we are all part of the same fabric of our national society, and that scrutiny can be just as effective if it is made with a touch of gentleness, good humor, and understanding.”

A disgusting event occurred a decade before. At 7:15 a.m., on July 9, 1982, Michael Fagan, an Englishman with a checkered past, crawled over a wall at Buckingham Palace, climbed up a drainpipe, entered the Queen’s bedroom, and woke the Queen. Security arrived soon to escort Fagan out the door.

Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, passed away on April 9, 2021, at the age of 99, 62 days short of his 100th birthday.

During Elizabeth’s reign, 179 individuals served as her Commonwealth’s prime ministers, in places as far apart as Antigua and Barburda in the Caribbean, to Uganda in east Africa.

There were fifteen United Kingdom prime ministers, beginning with Winston Churchill in 1952, and ending with Liz Truss, the newest, who met the Queen at Balmoral Castle, in Scotland, on September 6, 2022, two days before the Queen’s passing.

Along the way, there was Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, Theresa May, and Boris Johnson.

The Queen knighted twenty seven Americans during her seventy-year rein, including: Bill and Melinda Gates, Angelina Jolie, Ralph Lauren, Steven Spielberg, Michael Bloomberg, George H. W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Rudy Giuliani, Alan Greenspan, and Billy Graham.

Three world famous Englishmen also received that designation: Elton John, Mick Jagger, and Paul McCartney. That is why the former Beatle, in all due respect, is called Sir Paul McCartney.

A trivia question, “Queen Elizabeth’s last name?” Windsor, perhaps named after the castle.