Collected Ghost Stories (74 page)

To return from the faults of ghost stories to their excellence. Who, do I think, has best realized their possibilities? I have no hesitation in saying that it is Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu. In the volume called
In a Glass Darkly
are four stories of paramount excellence, ‘Green Tea,’ ‘The Familiar,’ ‘Mr Justice Harbottle,’ and ‘Carmilla.’ All of these conform to my requirements: the settings are quite different, but all
seen
by the writer; the approaches of the supernatural nicely graduated; the climax adequate. Le Fanu was a scholar and poet, and these tales show him as such. It is true that he died as long ago as 1873, but there is wonderfully little that is obsolete in his manner.

Of living writers I have some hesitation in speaking, but on any list that I was forced to compile the names of E. F. Benson, Blackwood, Burrage,
De la Mare
* and Wakefield would find a place.

But, although the subject has its fascinations, I see no use in being pontifical about it. These stories are meant to please and amuse us. If they do so, well; but, if not, let us relegate them to the top shelf and say no more about it.

Preface to
The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James
(1931)

In accordance with a fashion which has recently become common, I am issuing my four volumes of ghost stories under one cover, and appending to them some matter of the same kind.

I am told they have given pleasure of a certain sort to my readers: if so, my whole object in writing them has been attained, and there does not seem to be much reason for prefacing them by a disquisition upon how I
came to write them. Still, a preface is demanded by my publishers, and it may as well be devoted to answering questions which I have been asked.

First, whether the stories are based on my own experience? To this the answer is No: except in one case, specified in the text, where a dream furnished a suggestion. Or again, whether they are versions of other people’s experiences? No. Or suggested by books? This is more difficult to answer concisely. Other people have written of dreadful spiders—for instance, Erckmann-Chatrian in an admirable story called
L’Araignée Crabe
*—and of pictures which came alive: the State Trials give the language of Judge Jeffreys and the courts at the end of the seventeenth century: and so on. Places have been more prolific in suggestion: if anyone is curious about my local settings, let it be recorded that S. Bertrand de Comminges and Viborg are real places: that in
Oh, Whistle, and I’ll come to you
, I had Felixstowe in mind; in
A School Story
, Temple Grove, East Sheen; in
The Tractate Middoth
, Cambridge University Library; in
Martin’s Close
, Sampford Courtenay in Devon: that the cathedrals of Barchester and Southminster were blends of Canterbury, Salisbury, and Hereford: that Herefordshire was the imagined scene of
A View from a Hill
, and Seaburgh in
A Warning to the Curious
is Aldeburgh in Suffolk.

I am not conscious of other obligations to literature or local legend, written or oral, except in so far as I have tried to make my ghosts act in ways not inconsistent with the rules of folklore. As for the fragments of ostensible erudition which are scattered about my pages, hardly anything in them is not pure invention; there never was, naturally, any such book as that which I quote in the
Treasure of Abbot Thomas
.

Other questioners ask if I have any theories as to the writing of ghost stories. None that are worthy of the name or need to be repeated here: some thoughts on the subject are in a preface to
Ghosts and Marvels. [The World’s Classics
, Oxford, 1924.] There is no receipt for success in this form of fiction more than in any other. The public, as Dr. Johnson said, are the ultimate judges: if they are pleased, it is well; if not, it is no use to tell them why they ought to have been pleased.

Supplementary questions are: Do I believe in ghosts? To which I answer that I am prepared to consider evidence and accept it if it satisfies me. And lastly, Am I going to write any more ghost stories? To which I fear I must answer, Probably not.

Since we are nothing if not bibliographical nowadays, I add a paragraph or two setting forth the facts about the several collections and their contents.

‘Ghost Stories of an Antiquary’ was published (like the rest) by Messrs. Arnold in 1904. The first issue had four illustrations by the late James McBryde. In this volume
Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book
was
written in 1894 and printed soon after in the
National Review: Lost Hearts
appeared in the
Pall Mall Magazine
. Of the next five stories, most of which were read to friends at Christmas-time at King’s College, Cambridge, I only recollect that I wrote
Number 13
in 1899, while
The Treasure of Abbot Thomas
was composed in summer 1904.

The second volume, ‘More Ghost Stories,’ appeared in 1911. The first six of the seven tales it contains were Christmas productions, the very first (
A School Story
) having been made up for the benefit of the King’s College Choir School.
The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral
was printed in the
Contemporary Review: Mr. Humphreys and his Inheritance
was written to fill up the volume.

‘A Thin Ghost and Others’ was the third collection, containing five stories and published in 1919. In it,
An Episode of Cathedral History
and
The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance
were contributed to the
Cambridge Review
.

Of six stories in ‘A Warning to the Curious,’ published in 1925, the first,
The Haunted Dolls’ House
, was written for the library of Her Majesty the Queen’s Dolls’ House, and subsequently appeared in the
Empire Review. The Uncommon Prayer-book
saw the light in the
Atlantic Monthly
, the title-story in the
London Mercury
, and another, I think
A Neighbour’s Landmark
, in an ephemeral called
The Eton Chronic
. Similar ephemerals were responsible for all but one of the appended pieces (not all of them strictly stories), whereof one,
Rats
, composed for
At Random
, was included by Lady Cynthia Asquith in a collection entitled
Shudders
. The exception,
Wailing Well
, was written for the Eton College troop of Boy Scouts, and read at their camp-fire at Worbarrow Bay in August, 1927. It was then printed by itself in a limited edition by Robert Gathorne Hardy and Kyrle Leng at the Mill House Press, Stanford Dingley.

Four or five of the stories have appeared in collections of such things in recent years, and a Norse version of four from my first volume, by Ragnhild Undset, was issued in 1919 under the title of
Aander og Trolddom
.
*

ABBREVIATIONS

Quotations from the Bible are from the King James Version, unless otherwise stated, and quotations from Shakespeare are from the Riverside edition.

Written between spring 1892, when MRJ first visited St Bertrand de Comminges, and October 1893, when it was read, with ‘Lost Hearts’, to the Chitchat Society at Cambridge. Originally entitled ‘A Curious Story’, though MRJ’s handwritten manuscript is untitled. Renamed ‘The Scrap-book of Canon Alberic’ for its first publication in
The National Review
, 25 (March 1895), 132–41. Modified to its current form for
GSA
, reprinted in
CGS
. Manuscript in KCL, MS MRJ:A/1.

3
S
T
. B
ERTRAND DE
C
OMMINGES
: a tiny habitation (population 237 in 1999) in the Haute-Garonne region of southern France, very near the Spanish border. Once a way-station for pilgrims on the route to Santiago de Compostela, St Bertrand is spectacularly situated, perched high in the foothills of the Pyrenees. The town is dominated by the enormous Romanesque cathedral of St Bertrand, dating from the twelfth
century, when Bertrand de l’Isle was ordained as the first bishop of the Comminges. Bertrand was canonized in 1309 by his successor as bishop of Comminges, Bertrand de Got, later Pope Clement V. MRJ first visited St Bertrand in 1892, along with Armitage Robinson and Arthur Shipley (Cox I, 106), and wrote an account of the cathedral, including a sketch which records the position of the stuffed crocodile, which he sent to his parents:

S. Bertrand de Comminges … is a tiny walled town on a steep hill. But the snow which was some inches deep prevented our walking round it. We could only examine the cathedral: it is a splendid church, without aisles and short. You see the whole length from the door. There is no proper nave. The stalls which are like those at Auch form a separate enclosure inside the church into which you can’t see. In the corner of the nave is a splendid organ case of XVI cent with nearly all the inside gone. A splendid 14th century cope of English work in the treasury with all sorts of scenes on it. Beautiful cloisters and altogether a sweet place. (
PT
, 15)

He revisited the Comminges in 1899 and again in 1901, as part of his annual bicycling holiday, in which he attempted to visit all the cathedrals of France (he saw all but four). Pfaff (
p. 114
) speculates that MRJ may have visited St Bertrand as early as 1887.

3
verger or sacristan: SOED
defines
verger
as ‘one whose duty it is to take care of the interior of a church, and to act as attendant’, and
sacristan
as ‘the sexton of a parish church’, that is, an attendant and a gravedigger.

4
Dennistoun
: originally ‘Anderson’ in both MS and
National Review
, though changed to Dennistoun for
GSA
. Dennistoun makes a cameo reappearance in ‘The Mezzotint’, while Mr Anderson is the protagonist of ‘Number 13’.

St. Bertrand’s ivory crozier … the dusty stuffed crocodile
: both still on display in the cathedral. The crozier is made from a narwhal tusk, and the crocodile is a souvenir brought back by a returning crusader.

the stalls, the enormous dilapidated organ, the choir-screen of Bishop John de Mauléon
: Jean de Mauléon, bishop of Comminges from 1523 to 1551, oversaw the construction of these, the most distinctive features of the cathedral’s interior. The stalls, sixty-seven in all, are magnificently carved, and culminate in a wonderfully intricate depiction of the Tree of Jesse. The organ is no longer dilapidated—it was completely restored to its spectacular Renaissance glory in 1974. The huge choir-screen completely bisects the cathedral’s nave and aisles.

How St. Bertrand delivered a man whom the Devil long sought to strangle
: this specific painting is fictional, though the tomb of St Bertrand is behind the altar, and it is adorned by a series of paintings depicting the saint’s miracles.

5
Angelus
: ‘A devotional exercise commemorating the Incarnation, in which the Angelic Salutation is thrice repeated, said by Roman Catholics, at morning, noon, and sunset, at the sound of a bell’ (
SOED
).

amateur des vieux livres
: ‘lover of old books’.