The Novel of the White Powder quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which genre best describes "The Novel of the White Powder"?

   • Detective fiction
   • Correct answer: Supernatural horror
   • Sentimental domestic fiction
   • Historical romance

   Correct. The story builds dread step by step and ends with a body that has rotted into something inhuman, explained by ancient witchcraft: it is a classic of supernatural horror.

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2. 2

   Question 2. Who tells the story of what happened to Francis Leicester?

   • Francis's old college friend, Orford
   • The old chemist, Mr. Sayce
   • Correct answer: Francis's sister, Miss Leicester
   • The family doctor, Dr. Haberden

   The story opens "My name is Leicester" and calls Francis "my only brother." The maid later calls her Miss Helen. Haberden and Chambers speak only in the letters she reads aloud at the end.

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3. 3

   Question 3. What does Dr. Haberden blame for Francis's dizziness and bad dreams?

   • Correct answer: Too much reading and hasty meals
   • A liver complaint caught in India
   • Grief over his father's recent death
   • Late nights spent in loud restaurants

   Haberden says, "No doubt he reads too hard and eats hastily," causing some digestive trouble and "a little mischief in the nervous system." The liver complaint from India killed their father, not Francis, and the restaurants come only after the powder.

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4. 4

   Question 4. Why does Francis have his prescription made up at Sayce's shop?

   • Dr. Haberden always sends patients there
   • It was the only chemist open late at night
   • Sayce had been an old friend of their father
   • Correct answer: He liked the old chemist and trusted his drugs

   Helen says that "Francis liked the old chemist, and believed in the scrupulous purity of his drugs." Haberden does not send patients there at all: "I never send any one there; the old man is getting careless."

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5. 5

   Question 5. How does Francis change in the first weeks after he starts taking the powder?

   • He studies law even longer hours than before
   • He grows thin and pale and cannot sleep at all
   • Correct answer: He becomes cheerful, idle and pleasure-loving
   • He plans a quiet move away to the countryside

   Within days he becomes "a lover of pleasure, a careless and merry idler of western pavements," and he "grew fat before my eyes." He gives up his books and forgets the trip to Paris, having "found his paradise in London."

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6. 6

   Question 6. In the line "Such was the transmutation of my brother's character that in a few days he became a lover of pleasure", what does transmutation mean?

   • Correct answer: A complete change in form or nature
   • A slow return to an earlier state
   • A careful imitation of another person
   • A brief, passing change of mood

   A transmutation is a complete change from one form or nature into another (alchemists spoke of transmuting lead into gold). Francis does not just cheer up for an evening; the man who shut himself up with law books becomes a different person, and the word hints at the stranger change still to come.

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7. 7

   Question 7. What is the name of the college friend Francis meets on his first night out?

   • Sayce
   • Burbage
   • Chambers
   • Correct answer: Orford

   Francis says, "I met an old college friend, Orford, in the press of the pavement." Chambers is Haberden's scientist friend, Sayce is the chemist, and Burbage's is the wholesale firm that sold Sayce the salt.

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8. 8

   Question 8. When Helen sees the mark on Francis's hand, the same blood-red sunset fills the sky. What does the repeated sunset do?

   • It shows that the city's beauty calms all of Helen's fears
   • Correct answer: It ties the mark to his first night out and foreshadows evil
   • It marks the slow turn of the season from winter to spring
   • It proves the mark is only a trick of the evening light

   On his first night out Francis says the afterglow is "as if a great city were burning in flames" and "raining blood." When the sky burns again as Helen sees the mark, the image links his change of life to the evil now showing on his body. Haberden blames the sunset, but Helen knows "it was no illusion."

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9. 9

   Question 9. How does Dr. Haberden explain away Helen's story about the mark on Francis's hand?

   • Francis had cut his finger last night
   • Correct answer: She had been dazzled by the sunset
   • Francis had burned himself on a lamp
   • She mistook an old bruise from a fall

   Haberden tells her, "your eyes had been staring at that very curious sunset we had tonight. That is the only explanation." The cut finger is Francis's own excuse the next morning, when his hand is wrapped in a handkerchief.

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10. 10

    Question 10. What does Dr. Haberden discover when he examines the bottle at Sayce's shop?

    • The label had named a deadly poison
    • Sayce sold the powder to many patients
    • Correct answer: The powder is not the drug he prescribed
    • Sayce had misread the dose and tripled it

    Haberden says, "I see the label is right enough, but I tell you this is not the drug." Sayce explains that he had the uncommon salt "on the shelf for some years," and Haberden takes the bottle away to be analysed.

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11. 11

    Question 11. Where does Dr. Haberden plan to settle after he sells his practice?

    • Correct answer: California
    • Australia
    • Paris
    • Canada

    He tells Helen he will "buy a little land in California, and settle there for the remainder of my life." He never arrives: he dies at sea soon after the ship leaves England.

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12. 12

    Question 12. According to Dr. Chambers, how did an ordinary medicine turn into something else?

    • A witch swapped it at the wholesale chemist's
    • Sayce mixed in a cheaper powder for profit
    • Francis treated it with acids in his study
    • Correct answer: Years on a shelf through heat and cold

    Chambers says the salt sat on Sayce's shelf "for twenty years, or perhaps longer," through "certain recurring variations of temperature," a process so delicate that modern apparatus could hardly copy it. No one tampered with it; time and chance did the work.

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13. 13

    Question 13. What does Dr. Chambers say the white powder really is?

    • Correct answer: The base of the witches' Vinum Sabbati
    • A slow poison of medieval assassins
    • A rare Eastern drug brought home from India
    • A strong anaesthetic used by army surgeons

    Chambers writes that "it is the powder from which the wine of the Sabbath, the Vinum Sabbati, was prepared," an evil drink from the secret rites of the true Witches' Sabbath. The powder only smells "like some strong anaesthetic."

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14. 14

    Question 14. In the line "neither liquid nor solid, but melting and changing before our eyes, and bubbling with unctuous oily bubbles", what does unctuous mean?

    • Hard and brittle, like glass
    • Thin and watery, like rain
    • Correct answer: Greasy and slick, like oil
    • Falsely kind and flattering

    Unctuous means greasy or oily, from the Latin for ointment. The word has a second sense, falsely smooth and flattering, used of people, but here it describes the thick, oily bubbles of the mass on the floor.

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15. 15

    Question 15. In Chambers's letter, what does the Sabbath wine do to the person who drinks it?

    • It gives him visions of heaven that madden him
    • Correct answer: It frees the evil inside him as a body of its own
    • It lets a demon from outside seize his body
    • It sends him into a sleep he never wakes from

    The wine splits "the human trinity" so that "the worm which never dies, that which lies sleeping within us all, was made tangible and an external thing." The tempting companion is "the man himself": the evil comes from inside, not from an outside demon.

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16. 16

    Question 16. What does Dr. Haberden's note at the end reveal about his hour in Francis's room?

    • Francis begged him to bring more of the powder
    • Francis attacked him and drove him from the room
    • Francis refused to speak and hid behind the blind
    • Correct answer: Francis showed him the hand and confessed all

    Haberden writes, "Your brother confessed all to me on that morning when I saw him in his room." He forced Francis to show the hand, and what he saw and heard made him "grow sick with loathing."

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17. 17

    Question 17. Why might Machen hold back the truth about the powder until the letters at the very end?

    • It proves Helen knew the danger from the very start
    • It makes the story a joke about fussy doctors
    • Correct answer: It keeps the cause hidden so the dread can build
    • It lets the doctor escape blame for the death in court

    Helen sees the mark, the eyes at the window and the black drops without knowing why, and so does the reader. Haberden even refuses to listen: "No, no; say no more about that other matter." Saving the explanation for Chambers's letter lets the dread build first.

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18. 18

    Question 18. Which of these happen in the story?

    • Francis tosses his meat to the dog when he thinks Helen is not watching.

      Happened

      At breakfast Francis "scarcely ate or drank at all, but tossed his meat to the dog when he thought my eyes were turned away."

    • Francis and Helen take their promised holiday in Paris together.

      Didn't happen

      Francis talks of Paris but soon "said no more of Paris, for he had clearly found his paradise in London." The trip never happens.

    • Helen sees two burning eyes at the window of her brother's study.

      Happened

      From the street she sees the blind drawn aside and "two eyes of burning flame glared at me."

    • Francis answers Helen's knocking in his usual clear, cheerful voice.

      Didn't happen

      She hears "a choking, gurgling sound" and a voice "broken and stifled," saying words she can scarcely understand.

    • The maid finds a black wet stain on her hand while doing Helen's room.

      Happened

      The maid says "something fell upon my hand, wet," and "the ceiling was black and dripping on me."

    • Dr. Chambers comes to the house and examines Francis for himself.

      Didn't happen

      Chambers never comes. He is out of town at first, and he answers only by the letter Haberden passes to Helen.

    • Dr. Haberden breaks down the door with a heavy tool Helen finds.

      Happened

      Helen finds "a heavy adze-like tool," and with it "the door suddenly burst open."

    • Sayce admits he swapped the powder for a cheaper one to save money.

      Didn't happen

      Sayce says, "I got it from Burbage's in the usual way," and Chambers believes him: the salt changed on its own over many years.

    • Dr. Haberden dies at sea soon after his ship leaves England.

      Happened

      The story ends: "Dr. Haberden had died at sea shortly after the ship left England."

    • Dr. Haberden stays in London to tell the police what he saw.

      Didn't happen

      Haberden sells his practice and sails away, planning to settle in California. No police appear in the story.

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