The Oxford Book of Victorian Ghost Stories

The Oxford Book of VICTORIAN GHOST STORIES

Michael Cox and R. A. Gilbert are the editors of the highly successful Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories.

Michael Cox was formerly senior commissioning editor with the Oxford University Press. He is the author of M. R. James: An Informal Portrait and has edited two selections of M. R. James's ghost stories and an illustrated selection of the ghost stories of J. S. Le Fanu. He also edited The Oxford Book of Victorian Detective Stories and The Oxford Chronology of English Literature.

R. A. Gilbert is a well-known antiquarian bookseller and world authority on the historiography of esoteric thought in general and on the occult movements of the nineteenth century in particular. Publications include A. E. Waite: Magician of Many Parts and (as co-editor) Selected Letters of Arthur Machen.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Our thanks are due to the following individuals and institutions for advice and assistance received during the compilation of this anthology: Richard Dalby and Raphael Shaberman for their bibliographical help; Dr Glen Cavaliero and Deirdre Toomey; the staff of the Cambridge University Library and the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

CONTENTS

Introduction

The Old Nurse's Story (1852) Elizabeth Gaskell 1

An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street (1853) J.S.LEFANU 19

The Miniature (1853) J. Y. AKERMAN 37

The Last House in C-Street (1856) dinah mulock [MRS CRAIK] 44

To be Taken with a Grain of Salt (1865) charles dickens 55

TheBotathen Ghost (1867) R. S. HAWKER 65

The Truth, the Whole Truth, and Nothing but the Truth (1868) RHODA BROUGHTON 74

The Romance of Certain Old Clothes (1868) HENRY JAMES 83

Pichon & Sons, of the Croix Rousse (1868) ANON. 100

Reality or Delusion? (1868) MRS HENRY WOOD 115

Uncle Cornelius His Story (1869) GEORGE MACDONALD 130

The Shadow of a Shade (1869) TOM HOOD 150

At Chrighton Abbey (1871) MARY ELIZABETH BRADDON 163

No Living Voice (1872) THOMAS STREET MILLINGTON 190

Miss Jeromette and the Clergyman (1875) WILKIE COLLINS 198

The Story of 'Clifford House (1878) ANON. 218

Was it an Illusion? (1881) Amelia b. Edwards 239

The Open Door (1882) CHARLOTTE RIDDELL 256

The Captain of the 'Pole-star' (1883) ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE 283

The Body-Snatcher (1884) R. L. STEVENSON 303

The Story of the Rippling Train (1887) MARY LOUISA MOLESWORTH 319

At the End of the Passage (1890) RUDYARD KIPLING 328

'To Let'(1896) B. M. CROKER 346

John Charrington's Wedding(1891) E. NESBIT 360

The Haunted Organist of Hurly Burly (1891) ROSA MULHOLLAND 367

The Man of Science (1892) JEROME K.JEROME 379

Canon Alberic's Scrap-book (1895) M.R.JAMES 385

Ferry Bundler (1897) W.W.JACOBS 396

An Eddy on the Floor (1899) Bernard Capes 403

The Tomb of Sarah (1900) F. G. LORING 431

The Case of Vincent Pyrwhit (1901) BARRY PAIN 442

The Shadows on the Wall(1902) MARY E. WILKINS 445

Father Macclesfield's Tale (1907) R. H. BENSON 459

Thurnley Abbey (1908) PERCEVAL LANDON 466

The Kit-bag (1908) ALGERNON BLACKWOOD 480

Sources 490

Select Chronological Conspectus of Ghost Stories, 1840-1910 493

INTRODUCTION

For those who look back on it, the Victorian age seems to be invested with a peculiar quality of difference—heightened by its relative proximity in time—that is reflected in its ghosts. It was an age shaped, perhaps more than any other previous period, by the forces of transition. The predominantly feudal and agrarian past had disintegrated under the action of democracy and industrialism; and yet the final consequences of these truly revolutionary processes remained unclear. All that people knew was that a gulf was opening up with the past. As Thackeray noted in i860: 'Your railroad starts the new era, and we of a certain age belong to the new time and the old one.'1 With the shadow of change falling across virtually every area of life and thought, the receding past became a focus for anxiety, and in literature the ghost story offered a way of anchoring the past to an unsettled present by operating in a continuum of life and death. In the ghost story, obligations do not cease with death, and the past is never a closed book. What has been can be again, though often terribly transformed. For a progressive age (progressing to what?), the idea of a vindictive past held an especial potential for terror.

In personal terms, ghosts were obvious, though still potent, images of the lost past—past sins, past promises, past attachments, past regrets—and could be used to confront, and exorcize, the demons of guilt and fear. For almost the whole of the Victorian period the ghost story is of a piece: traditional in its forms and intentions, but energetically inventive and infused with a relish of the supernatural that parallels the more general Victorian fascination with the trappings of death—the dark, extravagant splendour of the funeral, the baroque richness of the cemetery, the guilt-laden luxury of mourning. And then, at its most basic, the function of most Victorian ghost stories, like all similar fictions, was simply to produce what Michael Sadleir called 'the pleasurable shudder'—'a horror which we know does not—but none the less conceivably might—threaten ourselves'.2

Our aim in this anthology is to map out the development of the Victorian ghost story from c.1850. Although there are earlier examples of the form (notably the early stories of J. S. Le Fanu), it is in the 1850s that the distinct, anti-Gothic character of the Victorian ghost story begins to emerge. Where the Gothic tale of terror had been indulgently heroic and ostentatiously fictitious, the Victorian ghost story was typically domestic in tone and inclined to blur the boundaries between fact and fiction. Our first example, Elizabeth Gaskell's 'The Old Nurse's Story', which dates from 1852, exhibits essential Victorian qualities—not least in its homely detail and disciplined treatment of supernatural events—that are not often apparent in ghost stories of the 1830s and 1840s.

We have not felt obliged to terminate the collection strictly at 1901. An exchange in M. R. James's story 'A Neighbour's Landmark' (published in 1925) both emphasizes the 'otherness' of the Victorian period and justifies our somewhat elastic definition of 'Victorian':

'You begin in a deeply Victorian manner,' I said; 'is this to continue?'

'Remember, if you please,' said my friend, looking at me over his spectacles, 'that I am a Victorian by birth and education, and that the Victorian tree may not unreasonably be expected to bear Victorian fruit.'

'Victorian by birth and education', then, will be the basic qualification for inclusion; publication dates are consequently less important if it is clear that this broad condition can be met. All the authors represented here are self-evidently fruits of the Victorian tree.

As for what we understand by a ghost story, the five criteria followed for The Oxford Book of English Ghost Stories remain applicable on the whole to the principles of selection followed in the present volume:

Each story should reveal to the reader a spectacle of the returning dead, or their agents, and their actions; there must be a dramatic interaction between the living and the dead, more often than not with the intention of frightening or unsettling the reader; the story must exhibit clear literary quality... there must be a definable Englishness about the story ... and finally ... the story must be relatively short.

The last requirement has unfortunately eliminated several otherwise excellent stories (for instance, we have been unable to justify including anything by the prolix Margaret Oliphant). We have also tried to balance well-known landmarks of the genre with lesser-known examples and one or two genuine rarities.

Ghost stories were something at which the Victorians excelled. They were as typically part of the cultural and literary fabric of the age as imperial confidence or the novel of social realism. Much of the output was hack commercial fiction of the weakest sort; but the Victorians also scored an impressive number of successes and effectively defined the possibilities of the short ghost story, to the extent that all subsequent practitioners have been indebted to the Victorian achievement in some degree or other.

Ghost stories—particularly Victorian ghost stories—are inherently limited in form and dynamic potential. But their constraining qualities can often be a source of strength as well as a weakness. The difficulty of achieving the right balance of elements is one reason why complete success is often elusive. Montague Summers—scholar, occultist, and the compiler of two classic anthologies of ghost stories—pointed out that, 'setting aside the highest masterpieces of literature, there is nothing more difficult to achieve than a first-class ghost story'.3 Summers was a sturdy apologist for Victorianism, especially for the more arcane literary productions of the age, but he does not overstate the case. The successful ghost story, like the successful detective story, depends on using conventions creatively. The ghost story's basic dynamics are settled in the reader's expectations at the outset. We know that we are to be shown a climactic interaction between the living and the dead, and usually expect to be unsettled by the experience. The skill comes when an author is able to work closely within the limited conventions of the form whilst at the same time reassembling familiar components into something that can still engage and surprise. To some extent this requires a certain complicity between author and reader, whereby the latter becomes a willing accomplice in the whole design. But it also calls for fluent invention, well-developed dramatic instincts, and story-telling capability of a high order on the part of the author. One might add that the author's commitment to the fiction is also a fundamental requisite. While it is not necessary for an author to believe unconditionally in the supernatural for a ghost story to come off (H. G. Wells's 'The Red Room' shows that), it is essential that he or she engages fully in the pretence of believing.

The art of the literary ghost story was perfected in the middle decades of the nineteenth century through the medium of magazines. The repeal of the newspaper tax in 1855, the development of new technology, and the accelerating spread of literacy helped to create an unprecedented boom in periodical publishing. In 1859 the publisher George Smith conceived the idea of a low-priced monthly magazine that would combine the attractions of a general review with a wide range of quality fiction. Though Smith's Cornhill Magazine was anticipated by the launch of another shilling monthly along similar lines, Magazine in November 1859, he had a trump card in Thackeray, whose Love! the Widower and Roundabout Papers began in the first number (January 1860), together with the commencement of Trollope's Framley Parsonage. Thackeray, who was also the Cornhills editor until May 1862, was proud of the magazine's suitability for a family audience ('Our magazine is written not only for men and women, but for boys, girls, infants'),4 and initially the Cornhill was a considerable success; but by the end of the decade its circulation had fallen off dramatically in the face of competition from a succession of popular monthlies whose aim was to supply easily assimilated entertainment and information. They included Temple Bar in December 1860; the St James's Magazine in April 1861; London Society in February 1862; The Argosy in December 1865; Belgravia in November 1866; and Tins leys' Magazine in August 1867.

It was in magazines like these that the ghost story came to maturity. Fiction—short stories as well as serializations of full-length novels— was the prime reason for the popularity of these periodicals, reflecting the fact that they catered for a burgeoning middle-class readership that was educated but relatively unsophisticated in its literary tastes. As a prospectus for the launch of the weekly Cassell's Magazine in 1868 announced: 'Fiction of powerful interest will form the prominent feature of its pages.' There was, indeed, a sense that fiction now had an essential social function. This was the message of an article by Walter Besant entitled 'The Value of Fiction' in the November 1871 number of Belgravia: 'It is interesting to mark', wrote Besant, 'the sudden rush with which the old Puritanical dislike for novels has collapsed, at last, in the present generation.' He even saw an educative function in sensational fiction: 'Ladies who read Belgravia do not often penetrate into the slums of the East-end. Fagin and his tribe are as unknown to them as the Esquimaux. It is not, however, bad for ladies to know that such things exist.' Nor, perhaps, for ladies to be pleasantly frightened by a ghost story.

The high point of the periodical trade was the special Christmas Numbers, in which ghost stories came into their own. Richard Altick notes that 'The sales of some of these annual supplements were tremendous ... They were admirably fitted to the tastes of those whose pocketbooks were opened a little wider than usual under the mellowing influence of the Christmas season, and their presence in English homes had a powerful effect on the spread of reading interest.

A typical production was A Stable for Nightmares, the Christmas Number of Tinsleys' Magazine for 1868, which contained twelve anonymous stories (one of them, 'Pichon & Sons, of the Croix Rousse', is reprinted here), three poems, and six illustrations—all for a shilling.

Christmas, which had always had an association with the marvellous and the supernatural ('A sad tale's best for winter: I have one/Of sprites and goblins', says Mamillius in The Winters Tale), now became indelibly identified with the reading of ghost stories. The key figure here was Dickens. Though his own forays into short supernatural fiction were comparatively few, Dickens fostered the ghost story's seasonal association through the Christmas Numbers of the magazines he edited—in particular those of All the Year Round (launched in April 1859), which sold on average between 185,000 and 250,000 copies. Stories published by Dickens in All the Year Round included: 'How the Third Floor Knew the Potteries' (1863), 'The Phantom Coach' (1864), and 'The Engineer' (1866) by Amelia B. Edwards; 'Not to be Taken at Bed-time' by Rosa Mulholland, and Dickens's own companion piece 'To be Taken with a Grain of Salt' (both 1865); 'The Compensation House' by Charles Collins, and Dickens's 'The Signal-man' (both 1866); 'The Botathen Ghost' (1867) by R. S. Hawker; and several stories by J. S. Le Fanu, amongst them 'Green Tea' (1869), with its famous spectral monkey, 'The White Cat of Drumgunniol', and 'Madam Crowl's Ghost' (both 1870).

At the beginning of his story 'An Account of Some Strange Disturbances in Aungier Street' (1853), Le Fanu had evoked the picture of'a circle of intelligent and eager faces, lighted up by a good after-dinner fire on a winter's evening, with a cold wind rising and wailing outside, and all snug and cosy within'. But it was Dickens, more than anyone else, who established and exploited the Christmas market for supernatural fiction and embedded the images of 'Winter Stories—Ghost Stories ... round the Christmas fire'6 firmly in the national consciousness. By the 1890s the convention had become a national institution and provided Jerome K. Jerome (who none the less could still turn out an excellent conventionally told tale) with an easy target for a deflationary excursus in the introduction to Told After Supper (1891):

There must be something ghostly in the air of Christmas—something about the close, muggy atmosphere that draws up the ghosts, like the dampness of the summer rains brings out the frogs and snails.

And not only do the ghosts themselves always walk on Christmas Eve, but live people always sit and talk about them on Christmas Eve. Whenever five or six English-speaking people meet round a fire on Christmas Eve, they start telling each other ghost stories. Nothing satisfies us on Christmas Eve but to hear each other tell authentic anecdotes about spectres. It is a genial, festive season, and we love to muse upon graves, and dead bodies, and murders, and blood ... For ghost stories to be told on any other evening than the evening of the twenty-fourth of December would be impossible in English society as at present regulated.

A great many of those who provided this seasonal fare were women, both as writers and as editors of magazines. Mary Elizabeth Braddon, of Lady Audley's Secret fame, for example, wrote a number of fine ghost stories—'The Cold Embrace' (1860) and 'Eveline's Visitant' (1867) being her most famous—and from 1866 to 1893 edited Belgravia; Mrs Henry Wood, author of the best-selling East Lynne (1861), owned and edited The Argosy from 1865 to 1887 and wrote several ghost stories that appeared in her Johnny Ludlow series; and Mrs J. H. [Charlotte] Riddell edited the St James's Magazine for a time and produced some excellent ghost stories, the best of which were collected in 1882 as Weird Stories. The reasons why women took to the ghost story so successfully is one of the great unasked critical questions; but one might guess that it was due less to an inherent susceptibility to the supernatural (though doubtless some psycho-cultural thesis could be advanced to explain their achievements) than to the practical—often pressing—need of a certain type of educated woman to earn a living. The monthly magazines required an endless supply of fiction, short and long, and authorship was often the only means some middle-class women had to meet their financial needs. As ghost stories were consistently in demand it was natural that women, who provided so much fiction for the magazines, should provide these too. Charlotte Riddell is an often-quoted example of a not uncommon situation: the woman who had to write constantly to make up the financial deficiencies of her husband. Margaret Oliphant, who wrote long, emotionally charged 'Stories of the Seen and the Unseen', is another. Her diary entry for Christmas night 1887 testifies to the relentless drudgery that went with the regular provision of magazine copy: 'All the things I seem to want are material things. I want money. I want work, work that will pay, enough to keep this house going which there is no-one to provide for but me.'7 Amelia Edwards, Miss Braddon, Mrs Riddell, and Rhoda Broughton were the most prominent women ghost-story writers of the 1860s and 1870s, but there were many others. In the last two decades of the century the list includes Louisa Molesworth, Vernon Lee (pseudonym of Violet Paget), Rosa Mulholland, Bithia Mary Croker, Edith Nesbit, Louisa Baldwin (Rudyard Kipling's aunt), and Violet Hunt. In the twentieth century women have been equally productive.