In A Dark Adapted Eye, Ruth Rendell (writing as Barbara Vine) has created a domestic thriller worthy of her earlier masterpiece, A Judgment in Stone. In A Dark Adapted Eye, Ruth Rendell (writing as Barbara Vine) has created a domestic thriller worthy of her earlier masterpiece, A Judgment in Stone. This time, however, the murder does not arise from a servant problem: the Longley sisters—Vera and Eden—though of genteel stock, with familial connections to wealthy families, could never afford servants themselves. And it is precisely these tenuous connections to wealth and privilege that are the problem here.
The primary narrator of the book is Faith Longley, the niece of Vera and Eden, who—a generation later—pieces together the scattered memories of her girlhood in order to explain the murder that blotted the family name. As she relates her tale, her eye becomes “dark-adapted”—a scientific term for an eye accustomed to viewing objects in a dim light—and begins to discern the various motivations and responsibilities that led up to the murder itself.
I loved the book, but it wasn’t always smooth sailing; it took me awhile to get on board. The complications of the Longley family genealogy—with its half-sisters, half-cousins, and half-aunts—was confusing, and—I’ll be candid—boring. Also, the proliferation of details underlining the various distinctions in social class occasionally seemed excessive. But I came to realize that the heart of the Longley mystery was rooted in family and social class, and it is precisely these details that allow the reader’s eye to become “dark adapted” too.
The book is extraordinary well-written and subtle. I may—if I am permitted to live long enough—read A Dark Adapted Eye again....more
There is a passage more than halfway through The Honorable Schoolboy which discusses the reading material that Jerry Westerby—the “schoolboy” of the t There is a passage more than halfway through The Honorable Schoolboy which discusses the reading material that Jerry Westerby—the “schoolboy” of the title, about to embark for Phnom Penh—has brought with him on the plane.
He read the Jours de France to put some French back into his mind, then remembered Candide and read that. He had brought the book-bag, and in the book-bag he had Conrad. In Phnom Penh he always read Conrad; it tickled him to remind himself he was sitting in the last of the two Conrad river ports.
I smiled when I read this, for I had been thinking of Conrad for the last hundred pages or so. Most of Le Carre makes me think of Conrad. A career in espionage is—in its way—as isolating and maddening for the spy as the sea is for the sailor, as a far-flung colonial outpost is for the civil servant. Each of these remote milieux calls forth the uniqueness—and the oddness—of the lone individual, who, deprived of society’s customary comforts and restraints, may be seduced into making rash, irretrievable choices. This is perhaps doubly true of the secret agent, whose tasks require a counterfeit identity, the maintenance of which demands some degree of self-deception. Such a double life intensifies loneliness and may well lead the agent to disaster.
Thus it is for Jerry Westerby, the “honourable schoolboy” of the title. In 1974,George Smiley, spymaster of “The Circus,” intent on rebuilding the agency’s reputation after the discovery of a highly placed mole, believes the exposure of the purposes of a recently detected “gold seam”—a laundering operation of money through Laos in which the Soviets have a hand—may be just what the Circus needs to restore credibility. So Smiley sends Westerby—under cover as a sportswriter—to track the “gold seam,” determine its route of travel, its beneficiary, and its purpose. Hong Kong, Vietnam, and Laos provide Westerby with the answers, but they also change him personally, profoundly, leading him toward his own Conradian tragedy.
This is a rich, unsettling novel. Like Conrad’s heroes, Le Carre’s Westerby faces ambiguous moral choices, but in a post-Vietnam world filled with machinations and deceptions—both between and within governments—Smiley’s and Westerby’s moral charts seem more convoluted, less navigable—if it be possible—than Marlow’s and Lord Jim’s....more
Some may dismiss Charlotte Mew as an eccentric minor poet. She was certainly eccentric in appearance. Four-foot-six, a female dandy habitually dressed Some may dismiss Charlotte Mew as an eccentric minor poet. She was certainly eccentric in appearance. Four-foot-six, a female dandy habitually dressed in a man’s black suit (with Regency cravat) and little black boots, she always carried—for defense and display—a large black umbrella. Her eyebrows appeared raised at all times above her large melancholy eyes, as if she were continually surprised by sadness. She was susceptible to passionate romantic attachments to women, none of whom returned her affections. She ate little, appearing to subsist largely on tea and cigarettes. When asked if she were indeed the poet Charlotte Mew, she would reply “I am afraid that I am.”
Her eccentricity, however, was a mask for sorrow. She was haunted by fears of hereditary madness, continually hampered by genteel poverty, and burdened—along with Anne, her sister and companion—with the care of her narcissistic mother. Charlotte’s poetry, though esteem by the few, was never widely acclaimed, and she left this world—after the death of her mother and sister—melancholy and alone.
But there is more to Charlotte than that. If she be a minor poet, it is only because her oevre is small; a dozen of her pieces are superb, and at least one (“The Farmer’s Bride”) is a masterpiece. She also counted among her friends and advocates more than a few prominent literary personalities of the age: Henry Harland and Ella D’Arcy of The Yellow Book, Harold and Alida Monro of The Poetry Bookshop, novelist and short story author May Sinclair, and Florence Hardy, together with her husband Thomas the great novelist too, who considered her “far and away the best living woman poet.” Biographer Penelope Fitzgerald brings these major figures in Mew’s world to life, as well as making clear her connections with others with whom she crossed paths (Aubrey Beardsley, Frederick Rolfe, Siegfried Sassoon, Lady Ottoline Morell, and Virginia Woolf, to name just a few).
Penelope Fitzgerald is a scrupulously accurate biographer, but—as she is also an accomplished novelist (The Bookshop, Offshore, The Blue Flower), she illuminates Charlotte Mew and Her Friends) with a fiction writer’s eye for detail and a subtly elegant style. Consider this description of Charlotte’s mother, on the occasion of her accepting the proposal of marriage from her architect father’s assistant, Fred Mew:
Anna Maria Marden Kendall may perhaps have been in love with her father’s tall, countrified assistant, or she may have felt that, at twenty-six, she oughtn’t to let this chance slip. What is certain is that she was a tiny, pretty, silly young woman who grew, in time, to be a very silly old one. But she had the great strength of silliness, smallness, and prettyiness in combination, in that it never occurred to her that she would not be protected and looked after, and she always was.
The biography concludes with a well-chosen selection of fifteen of Charlotte Mew’s best poems. They should convince any reader of taste and discernment that she deserves to be better remembered than by the dismissive label “minor poet.”...more
“A Vignette” is the last ghost story M.R. James wrote. It was published in the London Mercury (November 1936) five months after his death.
A “vignette “A Vignette” is the last ghost story M.R. James wrote. It was published in the London Mercury (November 1936) five months after his death.
A “vignette” is defined by the OED as “a short piece of writing or acting that clearly shows what a particular person, situation, etc. is like”, and it includes a secondary definition as well: “a small picture or drawing, especially on the first page of a book." The title, though it appears modest and casual, is singularly, ironically appropriate.
M.R. James “clearly shows” the reader what a particular “situation” is like—namely, the ghostly impressions of a young boy exploring a nearby bit of wood—but the boy’s impressions are themselves so vague, so evanescent, so devoid of tangible terrors, of modest manifestations—that the very clarity of his description creates an impression which is vague. Reading this brief piece, I was more than once reminded of that other great James of fiction—Henry James—and of the nebulous menace of his ghostly prose. As brief as it is, this “vignette” reminds me of those Henry James' classics, “The Turn of the Screw” or “The Jolly Corner.”
M.R. of course was also an expert at the subtly sinister, but here he outdoes himself, filling us with dread at the very moment he explains the scary atmosphere which is not there:
Some of the trees, Scotch firs and others, which form a backing and a surrounding, are of considerable size, but there is nothing that diffuses a mysterious gloom or imparts a sinister flavour — nothing of melancholy or funereal associations. The place is well clad, and there are secret nooks and retreats among the bushes, but there is neither offensive bleakness nor oppressive darkness. It is, indeed, a matter for some surprise when one thinks it over, that any cause for misgivings of a nervous sort have attached itself to so normal and cheerful a spot, the more so, since neither our childish mind when we lived there nor the more inquisitive years that came later ever nosed out any legend or reminiscence of old or recent unhappy things.
Yet to me they came, even to me, leading an exceptionally happy wholesome existence, and guarded — not strictly but as carefully as was any way necessary — from uncanny fancies and fear.
I don’t know about you, but we’ve barely begun and I’m scared already.
I have two final things to say about this story. First, tradition has it that the tale is based on a childhood experience of James’ own, involving a small wood near the village of Great Livermere in Sussex. It is called the Oldbroom Plantation, and it is rumored to be haunted.
Second, I think the secondary definition of vignette carries an irony with it too. A “vignette” may be defined as “a small picture or drawing, especially on the first page of a book.” M.R.’s vignette certainly draws us a picture, but it is a picture that takes its honorable place on the last page—not the first—of the master’s body of work.
This last M.R. James’ short story to be published during his life—printed in the Eton College magazine The Masquerade in 1933—is a step up from the oc This last M.R. James’ short story to be published during his life—printed in the Eton College magazine The Masquerade in 1933—is a step up from the occasional pieces and bagatelles that constitute his last works. The key to its success, I think, is to be found in the title of the story, for James’ here adopts a distinct modern tone, straight out of “The Age of Anxiety” or the early paranoid short stories of Philip K. Dick. He describes a world in which the most common everyday objects may be actively endeavoring to kill us, and the fate of one poor chap to whom this horrible thing occurs:
In the lives of all of us, short or long, there have been days, dreadful days, on which we have had to acknowledge with gloomy resignation that our world has turned against us. I do not mean the human world of our relations and friends: to enlarge on that is the province of nearly every modern novelist. In their books it is called ‘Life’ and an odd enough hash it is as they portray it. No, it is the world of things that do not speak or work or hold congresses and conferences. It includes such beings as the collar stud, the inkstand, the fire, the razor, and, as age increases, the extra step on the staircase which leads you either to expect or not to expect it. By these and such as these (for I have named but the merest fraction of them) the word is passed round, and the day of misery arranged.
First printed in London’s The Morning Chronicle on December 31, 1931, “The Experiment: a Christmas Eve Ghost Story” is the second last of Jame’s stori First printed in London’s The Morning Chronicle on December 31, 1931, “The Experiment: a Christmas Eve Ghost Story” is the second last of Jame’s stories to be published during his lifetime, and—although it is a pleasant diversion—it is not particularly memorable or important.
It tells of a widow, and her son by a previous marriage, who conduct a supernatural experiment following the recent unexpected death of her husband, an experiment that eventually brings about unfortunate consequences for the both of them. I’ll leave the story itself to you, of course, but I will reprint in its entirety the “recipe” for the experiment itself which James appends to his story.
Bishop Moore’s book of recipes is now in the University Library at Cambridge, marked Dd 11, 45, and on the leaf numbered 144 this is written:
“An experiment most ofte proved true, to find out tresure hidden in the ground, theft, manslaughter, or anie other thynge. Go to the grave of a ded man, and three tymes call hym by his nam at the hed of the grave, and say. Thou, N., N., N., I coniure the, I require the, and I charge the, by thi Christendome that thou takest leave of the Lord Raffael and Nares and then askest leave this night to come and tell me trewlie of the tresure that lyith hid in such a place. Then take of the earth of the grave at the dead bodyes hed and knitt it in a lynnen clothe and put itt under thi right eare and sleape theruppon: and wheresoever thou lyest or slepest, that night he will com and tell thee trewlie in waking or sleping.”
As a veteran attendee of poetry readings—and a baby boomer male, and a cynic to boot—I admit that if sat down in a coffee-house, and overheard phrases As a veteran attendee of poetry readings—and a baby boomer male, and a cynic to boot—I admit that if sat down in a coffee-house, and overheard phrases like “feminist dialogue” “radical re-imagining,” and “mythic history,” I might begin to look round apprehensively, plotting the best route for an exit.
In the case of Carol Ann Duffy’s The World’s Wife, however, the urge to flee would be premature. All the above phrases could properly be used to describe this volume of verse, but so could the phrases “playful,” “surprisingly rhymed,” “bawdy,” “clever,” and “funny.” And so could a lot of other interesting phrases, but there’s enough right there to keep me seated in the coffee house. Isn’t that enough to keep you sitting in the coffee house too?
The World’s Wife (2000) is a collection of dramatic monologue featuring either the wives of famous mythic and historical heroes or female versions of the heroes themselves: Queen Herod, Mrs. Faust, The Kray Sisters, Elvis’ Twin Sister, etc. You get the idea. And the results are often dark, hilarious, inventive, disturbing, and memorable.
Here are three poems taken from the book. They are not representative, and not necessarily the best. Many of Duffy’s monologues extend to three or four pages (without being boring, I hasten to add). I, however, decided to pick three of the poems that are shorter.
MRS. SISYPHUS
That's him pushing the stone up the hill, the jerk. I call it a stone – it's nearer the size of a kirk. When he first started out, it just used to irk, but now it incenses me, and him, the absolute berk. I could do something vicious to him with a dirk.
Think of the perks he says. What use is a perk, I shriek. when you haven't the time to pop open a cork or go for so much as a walk in the park? He's a dork. Folk flock from miles around just to gawk. They think it's a quirk, a bit of a lark. A load of bollocks nearer the mark He might as well bark at the moon that feckin’ stone’s no sooner up than it's rolling back all the way down. And what does he say? Musn’t shirk—keen as a hawk lean as a shark Musn’t shirk!
But I lie alone in the dark, feeling like Noah’s wife did when he hammered away at the Ark; like Frau Johann Sebastian Bach Her voice reduced to a squawk, my smile to a twisted smirk; while, up on the deepening murk of the hill he is giving one hundred per cent and more to his work.
FRAU FREUD
Ladies, for argument’s sake, let us say that I’ve seen my fair share of ding-a-ling, member and jock, of todger and nudger and percy and cock, of tackle, of three-for-a-bob, of willy and winky; in fact, you could say, I’m as au fait with Hunt-the-Salami as Ms. M. Lewinsky - equally sick up to here with the beef bayonet, the pork sword, the saveloy, love-muscle, night-crawler, dong, the dick, prick, dipstick and wick, the rammer, the slammer, the rupert, the shlong. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve no axe to grind with the snake in the trousers, the wife’s best friend, the weapon, the python - I suppose what I mean is, ladies, dear ladies, the average penis - not pretty… the squint of its envious solitary eye … one’s feeling of pity …
MEDUSA
A suspicion, a doubt, a jealousy grew in my mind, which turned the hairs on my head to filthy snakes, as though my thoughts hissed and spat on my scalp.
My bride’s breath soured, stank in the grey bags of my lungs. I’m foul mouthed now, foul tongued, yellow fanged. There are bullet tears in my eyes. Are you terrified?
Be terrified. It’s you I love, perfect man, Greek God, my own; but I know you’ll go, betray me, stray from home. So better by far for me if you were stone.
I glanced at a buzzing bee, a dull grey pebble fell to the ground. I glanced at a singing bird, a handful of dusty gravel spattered down.
I looked at a ginger cat, a housebrick shattered a bowl of milk. I looked at a snuffling pig, a boulder rolled in a heap of shit.
I stared in the mirror. Love gone bad showed me a Gorgon. I stared at a dragon. Fire spewed from the mouth of a mountain.
And here you come with a shield for a heart and a sword for a tongue and your girls, your girls. Wasn’t I beautiful? Wasn’t I fragrant and young?
First published in a private edition of 157 copies by the Mill House Press in the Berkshire village of Stanford Dingley, “The Wailing Well”--considere First published in a private edition of 157 copies by the Mill House Press in the Berkshire village of Stanford Dingley, “The Wailing Well”--considered purely as an effective, entertaining ghost story—is not nearly so rare as its coveted first edition. It begins in a tedious, jocular fashion, comparing the very good boy scout Arthur Wilcox with the very bad boy scout Stanley Judkins. Soon, however, it settles down to business, and—although it far from being even a second-rate M.R. James story—it ends much better than it begins.
The premise is perhaps the most hackneyed of all that has ever been used by writers of cautionary tales for children: the bad child is told repeatedly not to do something, he does it (of course), and suffers a painful—often fatal—consequence as a result. In this case the thing forbidden is a particular place: a “sort of clump in the middle of a field,” said haunted by three women and a man, known as the “Wailing Well.”
One of the best parts of the story is the description of the ghosts given to the scouts by an old shepherd native to the area:
I've seen 'em, young gentleman!" said the shepherd, "seen 'em from near by on that bit of down: and my old dog, if he could speak, he'd tell you he've seen 'em, same time. About four o'clock of the day it was, much such a day as this. I see 'em, each one of 'em, come peerin' out of the bushes and stand up, and work their way slow by them tracks towards the trees in the middle where the well is."
"And what were they like? Do tell us!" said Algernon and Wilfred eagerly.
"Rags and bones, young gentlemen: all four of 'em: flutterin' rags and whity bones. It seemed to me as if I could hear 'em clackin' as they got along. Very slow they went, and lookin' from side to side."
"What were their faces like? Could you see?"
"They hadn't much to call faces," said the shepherd, "but I could seem to see as they had teeth."
"Lor'!" said Wilfred, "and what did they do when they got to the trees?"
"I can't tell you that, sir," said the shepherd. "I wasn't for stayin' in that place...”
The boys pondered for some moments on what they had heard: after which Wilfred said: "And why's it called Wailing Well?"
"If you was round here at dusk of a winter's evening, you wouldn't want to ask why," was all the shepherd said.
First published in College Days (June 28,1924), this little tale set in the celebrated “playing fields of Eton” (the school where James was provost, 1 First published in College Days (June 28,1924), this little tale set in the celebrated “playing fields of Eton” (the school where James was provost, 1918-1936), is a mere bagatelle, not to be taken seriously—not even as a ghost story. Still, it is by one of the masters of the ghostly tale, and—provided he does not expect too much—I think the reader will find it pleasing.
On an evening of marvels—Midsummer’s eve, to be precise—our narrator (unnamed) who is walking across the playing enters into colloquy with a cockney owl who complains of being harassed by fairies. The owl, at first merely angry, grows terrified when the bells toll the Witching Hour:
“Midnight?” cried the owl, evidently much startled, “and me too wet to fly a yard! Here, you pick me up and put me in the tree...Quick now! “ I obeyed. “Which tree do you want?” “Why, my tree, to be sure! Over there!”...The one what ’as like a door in it. Go faster! They’ll be coming in another minute.” “Who? What’s the matter?” I asked as I ran, clutching the wet creature, and much afraid of stumbling and coming over with it in the long grass. “You’ll see fast enough,” said this selfish bird. “You just let me git on the tree, I shall be all right.”
And I suppose it was, for it scrabbled very quickly up the trunk with its wings spread and disappeared in a hollow without a word of thanks.
But our narrator doesn’t “see”--at least not “fast enough.” Instead, he hides himself “one the darker side of the tree” and waits...
He never tells us exactly what he saw that night, but he ends with this general observation:
I find I do not like a crowd after dark — for example at the Fourth of June fireworks. You see — no, you do not, but I see — such curious faces: and the people to whom they belong flit about so oddly, often at your elbow when you least expect it, and looking close into your face, as it they were searching for someone — who may be thankful, I think, if they do not find him. “Where do they come from?” Why, some, I think, out of the Water, and some out of the ground. They look like that. But I am sure it is best to take no notice of them, and not to touch them.
First published in the periodical At Random (1929), “Rats” may well be the last of M.R. James scariest stories. It takes place—as many of his best sto First published in the periodical At Random (1929), “Rats” may well be the last of M.R. James scariest stories. It takes place—as many of his best stories do—in an inn near the coast (this time in Suffolk) where Thomson, currently at Cambridge, has retired for a little quiet reading. While out on his afternoon walk one day, he encounters “a square block of white stone fashioned somewhat like the base of a pillar, with a square hole in the upper surface.” That night, at the inn bar, he inquires of the locals what that thing might be:
‘A old-fashioned thing, that is,’ said the landlord (Mr Betts), ‘we was none of us alive when that was put there.’ ‘That’s right,’ said another. ‘It stands pretty high,’ said Mr Thomson, ‘I dare say a sea-mark was on it some time back.’ ‘Ah! yes,’ Mr Betts agreed, ‘I ’ave ’eard they could see it from the boats; but whatever there was, it’s fell to bits this long time.’ ‘Good job too,’ said a third, ‘‘twarn’t a lucky mark, by what the old men used to say; not lucky for the fishin’, I mean to say.’ ‘Why ever not?’ said Thomson. ‘Well, I never see it myself,’ was the answer, ‘but they ’ad some funny ideas, what I mean, peculiar, them old chaps, and I shouldn’t wonder but what they made away with it theirselves.’
One day, Thomson doesn’t go on an afternoon walk. He checks out the other rooms on his floor instead, and gets more than he bargained for in one of them:
Thomson close the door very quickly and yet quietly behind him and lean against the window-sill in the passage, actually quivering all over. It was this, that under the counterpane someone lay, and not only lay, but stirred. That it was some one and not some thing was certain, because the shape of a head was unmistakable on the bolster; and yet it was all covered, and no one lies with covered head but a dead person; and this was not dead, not truly dead, for it heaved and shivered. If he had seen these things in dusk or by the light of a flickering candle, Thomson could have comforted himself and talked of fancy. On this bright day that was impossible.
Lucky for the reader, things get even worse. But I’ll leave the rest of it up to you....more
Although this brief ghost story--little more than a joke, really--was published in the Eton Snapdragon in December of 1924, it was perhaps deemed too Although this brief ghost story--little more than a joke, really--was published in the Eton Snapdragon in December of 1924, it was perhaps deemed too inconsequential for inclusion in M.R. James fourth volume of stories—A Warning to the Curious (1925)—and first saw hardcover publication in the The Collected Stories of 1931. Its title is derived from the tale almost told by the poor little doomed prince Mamilius in Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale:
Hermione: Come, sir, now I am for you again: pray you, sit by us, And tell 's a tale. . .
Mamilius: A sad tale's best for winter: I have one Of sprites and goblins.
Hermione: Let's have that, good sir . . . Come on, sit down: come on, and do your best To fright me with your sprites; you're powerful at it.
Mamilius: There was a man—
Hermione: Nay, come, sit down; then on.
Mamilius: —Dwelt by a churchyard: I will tell it softly; Yond crickets shall not hear it.
Indeed, it is a softly-told, sitting-down sort of tale that might be ignored even by crickets. But M.R. James is still the master of horror, and manages to disturb the reader with small things:
That night, as he lay in his bed upstairs, a moaning wind began to play about the house, and he could not go to sleep. . . Then he went to the window and looked out into the churchyard. . . .
Have you ever seen an old brass in a church with a figure of a person in a shroud? It is bunched together at the top of the head in a curious way. Something like that was sticking up out of the earth in a spot of the churchyard. . . .
Presently something made a very faint rattling at the casement. . . . He turned his eyes that way. Alas!
Between him and the moonlight was the black outline of the curious bunched head . . . Then there was a figure in the room. Dry earth rattled on the floor. . . .
First published in A Warning to the Curious (1925), and probably written soon before to extend the length the collection, M.R. James’ tries something First published in A Warning to the Curious (1925), and probably written soon before to extend the length the collection, M.R. James’ tries something unique—at least for him—in this particular story. He takes one of his kindly old Dickensian character types—in this case a “Grandmother,” mother to the “Squire,” and grandmother to Charles and Fanny—and, instead of employing her for intermittent comic relief (his customary practice), chooses her for his principle narrator instead. His stated objective: to demonstrate what it was like, in the good old days, when grandmothers spun ghostly folk tales by a winter fire.
Grandmother tells Charles and Fanny a story tale with a simple purpose—to explain to them why it is very important never to pick blackberries in a certain lane—but the story itself meanders a bit, sounding more like a bit of local memory than provincial folklore. It begins with a cottage—now torn down, but then near the blackberry lane—occupied by a Mr. Davis and a male friend. The companion was remembered as “a pale, ugly young fellow” who “hadn’t much to say for himself” and the village folk whispered of “one walk in particular that they’d take regularly once a month” where—it was rumored—the graves of Romans soldiers had more than once been unearthed. Mr. Davis and his companion, though, although familiar with the graves, were convinced they were much older than the Romans.
Davis and the man lived like this for three years, taking their regular walks. And then one morning early, a woodman discovered something strange:
[A]nd just where there were some few big oaks in a sort of clearing deep in the wood he saw at a distance a white thing that looked like a man through the mist, and he was in two minds about going on, but go on he did, and made out as he came near that it was a man, and more than that, it was Mr. Davis’s young man: dressed in a sort of white gown he was, and hanging by his neck to the limb of the biggest oak, quite, quite dead: and near his feet there lay on the ground a hatchet all in a gore of blood…. Well, what a terrible sight that was for anyone to come upon in that lonely place! This poor man was nearly out of his wits: he dropped everything he was carrying and ran as hard as ever he could straight down to the Parsonage, and woke them up and told what he’d seen. And old Mr. White, who was the parson then, sent him off to get two or three of the best men, the blacksmith and the churchwardens and what not, while he dressed himself, and all of them went up to this dreadful place with a horse to lay the poor body on and take it to the house. When they got there, everything was just as the woodman had said: but it was a terrible shock to them all to see how the corpse was dressed, specially to old Mr. White, for it seemed to him to be like a mockery of the church surplice that was on it, only, he told my father, not the same in the fashion of it. And when they came to take down the body from the oak tree they found there was a chain of some metal round the neck and a little ornament like a wheel hanging to it on the front, and it was very old looking, they said.
Things get even stranger after that. And Grandmother shares with Charles and Fanny an odd experience of her own, in the days before she married Grandfather. But I’ll just let the old Grandmother tell you the rest herself....more
Shortly before his death, M.R. James was asked if he believed in ghosts. “We know such things exist,” he said. “But we don’t know the rules.”
Whatever Shortly before his death, M.R. James was asked if he believed in ghosts. “We know such things exist,” he said. “But we don’t know the rules.”
Whatever those rules may be, they are certainly not ours. At least not in the tales of M.R. James. He who offends the spirits, although he may come to realize the gravity of his crime, experience heartfelt remorse, and do his best to make amends, may not necessarily be forgiven. So it is in the case of a man named Paxton.
The story unfolds in a “chinese box” structure of narrative within narrative, in which one narrator introduces us to another narrator who in turn meets Paxton who tells us most of his story himself. He relates how, during a holiday to East Anglia, he begins to suspect, from hints he has heard, that somewhere near the beach he may find one of the legendary three crowns of the region—each buried in a difference location to dispel foreign invasion. (Since James wrote this story in 1925, not long after the Great War, the thoughts of foreign invasion would not be far from his English readers’ minds.)
Of course Paxton locates the site, acquires the crown, and takes it back to his hotel. But what happens to him after that I’ll let you find out for yourself. Let’s just say the narrative concludes in a bleak but most satisfactory manner.
I’ll end with what Paxton has to say about the “always somebody—a man” who has haunted him ever since he began to dig up the crown:
”I had hours to get through before I could decently come back to the hotel. . . . Sometimes, you know, you see him, and sometimes you don’t, just as he pleases, I think: he’s there, but he has some power over your eyes. Well, I wasn’t off the spot very long before sunrise, and then I had to get to the junction for Seaburgh, and take a train back. And though it was daylight fairly soon, I don’t know if that made it much better. There were always hedges, or gorse-bushes, or park fences along the road — some sort of cover, I mean — and I was never easy for a second. And then when I began to meet people going to work, they always looked behind me very strangely: it might have been that they were surprised at seeing anyone so early; but I didn’t think it was only that, and I don’t now: they didn’t look exactly at me. And the porter at the train was like that too. And the guard held open the door after I’d got into the carriage — just as he would if there was somebody else coming, you know. Oh, you may be very sure it isn’t my fancy,’ he said with a dull sort of laugh. Then he went on: ‘And even if I do get it put back, he won’t forgive me . . . .
First appearing in The London Mercury (May 1925), and republished later the same year in A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories, “A View Fro First appearing in The London Mercury (May 1925), and republished later the same year in A Warning to the Curious and Other Ghost Stories, “A View From the Hill” remains—with each subsequent reading—one of my favorite M.R. James’ tales. It is not one of his most popular, and its premise—man discovers enchanted binoculars that can see into the past—is not particularly original. Yet there is something about the details James accumulates here—some of them evocative, some chilling, and some of them downright nasty—that have fixed this tale, those binoculars, and the vile man Baxter who made them, forever in my memory.
It begins, as many of James’ tales do, with a university professor--an antiquarian--who is visiting an old friend’s family estate. When Squire Richards suggest to his friend Fanshawe that the two of them should take in the view from the hill, Fanshawe asks his host if he may borrow a pair of binoculars. Richard says he has only one old pair, fashioned by a local amateur archeologist named Baxter, and that they are extraordinarily heavy, but Fanshawe may use them if he likes. Fanshawe accepts, and later, using Baxter’s glasses, he takes in the view from the hill:
After some minutes of silent contemplation, the Squire began to point out the leading features . . . . ‘Now,’ he said, ‘with the glasses you’ll be able to pick out Fulnaker Abbey. Take a line across that big green field, then over the wood beyond it, then over the farm on the knoll.’
'Yes, yes,’ said Fanshawe. ‘I’ve got it. What a fine tower!’
‘You must have got the wrong direction,’ said the Squire; ‘there’s not much of a tower about there that I remember, unless it’s Oldbourne Church that you’ve got hold of. And if you call that a fine tower, you’re easily pleased.’
‘Well, I do call it a fine tower,’ said Fanshawe, the glasses still at his eyes, ‘whether it’s Oldbourne or any other. And it must belong to a largish church; it looks to me like a central tower — four big pinnacles a the corners, and four smaller ones between. I must certainly go over there. How far is it?’
‘Oldbourne’s about nine miles, or less,’ said the Squire. ‘It’s a long time since I’ve been there, but I don’t remember thinking much of it. Now I’ll show you another thing. . . . A good deal more to the left — it oughtn’t to be difficult to find. Do you see a rather sudden knob of a hill with a thick wood on top of it? It’s in a dead line with that single tree on the top of the big ridge.’
‘I do,’ said Fanshawe, ‘and I believe I could tell you without much difficulty what it’s called.’
‘Could you now?’ said the Squire. ‘Say on.’
‘Why, Gallows Hill,’ was the answer.
‘How did you guess that?’
‘Well, if you don’t want it guessed, you shouldn’t put up a dummy gibbet and a man hanging on it.’
‘What’s that?’ said the Squire abruptly. ‘There’s nothing on that hill but wood.’
Gives one a bit of a chill, doesn’t it. But that’s just the beginning. Just wait . . . soon you’ll learn more about Baxter, his surprising—almost uncanny—archeological discoveries. And you’ll find out more about those binoculars too, what makes them so heavy....more
This story first appeared in The Eton Chronic (March 17, 1924), and was subsequently published in the collection A Warning to the Curious (1925). It i This story first appeared in The Eton Chronic (March 17, 1924), and was subsequently published in the collection A Warning to the Curious (1925). It is appears to nothing more than a slight entertainment, but the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that it has much to say to us about history and historical discovery: about the powerful, persistent effects of the first, and the tentative and fragmentary nature of the second.
Our story relates the experience—as is often the case of James—of a dedicated bibilophile, who is sorting out the items of two recently merged libraries at a rural estate called Betton Court. While perusing an old book, he reads the following words of an old song:
That which walks in Betton Wood Knows why it walks or why it cries.
Struck by this unlikely coincidence—reading about Betton Wood while staying at Betton Court—our narrator decides to seek out the origin of the passage.
The first thing he finds out is that there is no Betton Wood, but that there once was, and that the spirit of Betton Wood—about which little is known—still haunts the place where the wood used to be.
Our narrator walks to that place, and encounters—or rather hears—that spirit, and then proceeds, through oral testimony (an ancient servant) and written evidence (the notes of a former owner) discovers a few things about the haunting. The good news: he discovers the identity of the ghost, and the crime for which she is condemned to walk. The bad news; he cannot discover the one important fact that could free her from her endless curse. Moral: research can reveal much, but never everything, particularly when it comes to freeing us from the evils of the past.
I’ll end with the narrator’s encounter with what’s left of a ghost in the little of what’s left of a wood:
All at once I turned as if I had been stung. There thrilled into my right ear and pierced my head a note of incredible sharpness, like the shriek of a bat, only ten times intensified — the kind of thing that makes one wonder if something has not given way in one’s brain. I held my breath, and covered my ear, and shivered. Something in the circulation: another minute or two, I thought, and I return home. But I must fix the view a little more firmly in my mind. Only, when I turned to it again, the taste was gone out of it. The sun was down behind the hill, and the light was off the fields, and when the clock bell in the Church tower struck seven, I thought no longer of kind mellow evening hours of rest, and scents of flowers and woods on evening air; and of how someone on a farm a mile or two off would be saying ‘How clear Betton bell sounds tonight after the rain!’; but instead images came to me of dusty beams and creeping spiders and savage owls up in the tower, and forgotten graves and their ugly contents below, and of flying Time and all it had taken out of my life. And just then into my left ear — close as if lips had been put within an inch of my head, the frightful scream came thrilling again.
There was no mistake possible now. It was from outside. ‘With no language but a cry’ was the thought that flashed into my mind. Hideous it was beyond anything I had heard or have heard since, but I could read no emotion in it, and doubted if I could read any intelligence. All its effect was to take away every vestige, every possibility, of enjoyment, and make this no place to stay in one moment more. Of course there was nothing to be seen: but I was convinced that, if I waited, the thing would pass me again on its aimless, endless beat, and I could not bear the notion of a third repetition. I hurried back to the lane and down the hill.
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