Explanatory Notes

Abbreviations used in the notes are as follows:

 

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

Cox1 Michael Cox, M. R. James: An Informal Portrait (1983)

Cox2 Casting the Runes, ed. Michael Cox (1987)

E&K Eton and King’s (1926)

GSA Ghost-Stories of an Antiquary (1904)

KJV Bible (King James Version)

MGSA More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1911)

MRJ M. R. James

OED Oxford English Dictionary

Pfaff Richard William Pfaff, Montague Rhodes James (1980)

PT A Pleasing Terror (2001)

WC A Warning to the Curious (1925)

INTRODUCTION

1 A photograph of Livermere Hall can be found in Norman Scarfe, “The Strangeness Present: M. R. James’s Suffolk,” Country Life No. 4655 (6 November 1986): 1416.

2 Cited in Pfaff, 28.

3 Cited in Cox1, 101.

4 Cited in Cox1, 125.

5 Peter Penzoldt, The Supernatural in Fiction (London: Peter Nevill, 1952), p. 191.

6 Julia Briggs, Night Visitors: The Rise and Fall of the English Ghost Story (London: Faber & Faber, 1977), p. 125.

7 Pfaff, 415.

8 Martin Hughes, “A Maze of Secrets in a Story by M. R. James,” Durham University Journal 85 (January 1993): 81.

9 Jack Sullivan, Elegant Nightmares: The English Ghost Story from Le Fanu to Blackwood (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1978), p. 75.

10 Cited in Pfaff, 109.

11 Shane Leslie, “Montague Rhodes James,” Quarterly Review 304 (January 1966): 45.

12 Stephen Gaselee, “Montague Rhodes James,” Proceedings of the British Academy 22 (1936): 429-30.

13 H. P. Lovecraft, “Supernatural Horror in Literature” (1927), in The Annotated Supernatural Horror in Literature, ed. S. T. Joshi (New York: Hippocampus Press, 2000), p. 69.

14 Austin Warren, “The Marvels of M. R. James, Antiquary,” in Connections (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1970), p. 98.

15 See S. G. Lubbock, A Memoir of Montague Rhodes James (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1939), p. 38.

CANON ALBERIC’S SCRAP-BOOK

Originally titled “A Curious Book,” first published as “The Scrap-book of Canon Alberic” in National Review (March 1895), and included in GSA and CGS, this story was the first of MRJ’s ghost stories to be written (sometime between the spring of 1892, when he first visited the town of St. Bertrand de Comminges, and October 1893, when he read the tale to the Chitchat Society) and the first to be published. It is a prototypical Jamesian ghost story in its depiction of an antiquarian who stumbles upon the supernatural in the course of his researches. It is also unusually autobiographical: its protagonist, Dennistoun, is clearly meant to be MRJ himself, as he bicycles through the French countryside with “two friends” (J. Armitage Robinson and Arthur Shipley) in search of cathedrals, takes photographs of them, and finds himself drawn to the cathedral’s manuscripts and other antiquities. MRJ has described some of the elements of these travels: “the sighting of the next cathedral tower above the poplars, and the subsequent deciphering and noting of all its sculpture and glass” (E&K 151-52). It is possible that the story was partly inspired by MRJ’s own discovery in 1890 of a biography of St. William of Norwich by Sir Thomas of Monmouth in a remote building in Suffolk (see Cox1, 103). Colin Pink (see Further Reading) suggests that the name of the protagonist is an allusion to a Scottish antiquarian, James Dennistoun (1803-1855), author of Memoirs of the Dukes of Urbino (1851) and other scholarly works. Dennistoun figures again in “The Mezzotint” (page 25).

FURTHER READING

John Crook, “The Weighty and the Trivial: M. R. James and St. Bertrand de Comminges,” Country Life No. 4549 (25 October 1984): 1248-49.

 

Colin Pink, “The Real Dennistoun,” Ghosts & Scholars No. 19 (1995): 32.

1 St. Bertrand de Comminges is a town in the province of Haute-Garonne in southwest France, about thirty miles southwest of Toulouse. It was the site of a Roman colony founded by Pompey (Cn. Pompeius) in 72 B.C.E. Bagnères-de-Luchon (or Luchon) is a town in the southernmost portion of Haute-Garonne near the Spanish border.

2 A cathedral at St. Bertrand was built around 1120 by Bishop Bertrand de l’Isle (later St. Bertrand). The cathedral was extensively altered in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. John Crook’s article (see Further Reading) contains a photograph of the cathedral.

3 The original meaning of verger was “An official who carries a rod or similar symbol of office before the dignitaries of a cathedral, church, or university”; it later came to mean “One whose duty it is to take care of the interior of a church, and to act as attendant” (OED). A sacristan is the sexton (“a church officer having the care of the fabric of a church and its contents, and the duties of ringing the bells and digging graves” [OED]) of a parish church.

4 Bishop Jean de Mauléon supervised the construction of the stalls of St. Bertrand; they were consecrated in 1535.

5 The Angelus (short for angelus-bell) is rung at morning, noon, and sunset in Catholic churches to commemorate the mystery of the Incarnation. Cf. J. F. Millet’s “The Angelus” (1857-59), one of the most celebrated and widely reproduced paintings of the nineteenth century.

6 “Lover of old books.”

7 A missal is a book containing the service of the Mass for the year. Shane Leslie wrote of MRJ: “Missals he could at first sight refer to their date and diocese and generally suggest their probable wanderings since their dislocation by Reformation and Revolution.” “Montague Rhodes James,” Quarterly Review 304 (January 1966): 46.

8 Christophe Plantin (1514-1589) was a French printer who settled in Antwerp in 1549. He became a leading European printer, his books being distinguished for their typography and engravings. He printed the Bible in Hebrew, Latin, and Dutch. He was a secret member of a heretical mystical sect, and along with many missals, breviaries, and other publications for the Roman Catholic church, he anonymously printed many books by the sect. He established a branch of his office in Paris in 1576.

9 Papias (60?-130) was the Bishop of Hierapolis in Asia Minor. The treatise to which MRJ refers is Logiōn Kyriakōn Exegēseis (“Expositions of the Oracles of the Lord”), which currently survives only in quotations by Irenaeus and Eusebius. The work appears to have contained early information on St. Mark and St. Matthew. MRJ has made an error in translating “oracles” (logiōn [genitive plural of logion]) as “words” (logōn [genitive plural of logos]).

10 Old Saint Paul’s (1841) is an historical novel by William Harrison Ainsworth (1805-1882). Its action takes place during the London plague and fire of 1665-66. Thomas Quatremain is a “minor canon” who claims, by astrological calculations, to have ascertained the existence of treasure under St. Paul’s Cathedral in London (ch. 8).

11 MRJ may be alluding not to a Biblical text but to the Testament of Solomon, a part of the Old Testament pseudepigrapha probably dating to the third century C.E. In this work, Solomon has discourses with a succession of demons, some of whom are compelled to work in the construction of the Temple. See MRJ’s article “The Testament of Solomon,” Guardian Church Newspaper (15 March 1899): 367; rpt. Ghosts & Scholars No. 28 (1999): 54-57.

12 Gehazi was the servant of Elisha the prophet who, in his greed, sought to gain gifts from a man, Naaman, whom Elisha had cured of leprosy without seeking any recompense from him: “But Gehazi . . . said, Behold, my master hath spared Naaman this Syrian, in not receiving at his hands that which he brought: but, as the Lord liveth, I will run after him, and take somewhat of him” (2 Kings 5:20).

13 “Two times I have seen it; a thousand times I have felt it.”

14 Psalm 91 contains the celebrated lines: “Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness” (91:5-6).

15 The Gallia Christiana, an encyclopedia of French bishops and abbots, was first compiled by Claude Robert in 1626 and revised in 1656. It was exhaustively revised by Dionysius Sammarthanus (Denis de Sainte-Marthe, 1650-1725) and later scholars (1715- 1874; 16 vols.). MRJ errs in interpreting the genitive case of the Latinized name Sammarthanus as the nominative case.

16 Ecclesiasticus (also called the Book of Sirach) is one of the books of the Apocryphal Old Testament and one of the so-called Wisdom writings, probably written in the later first century C.E. The citation is from 39:28. A more accurate translation is: “There are (winds) which are formed (for punishment), / (And in their fury) they remove moun(tains).” See The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament, ed. R. H. Charles (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913), 1.459.

17 Cf. Isaiah 34:14: “The wild beasts of the desert shall also meet with the wild beasts of the island, and the satyr shall cry to his fellow; the screech owl also shall rest there, and find for herself a place of rest.”

18 A soutane is “A long buttoned gown or frock, with sleeves, forming the ordinary outer garment of Roman Catholic ecclesiastics, and worn under the vestments in religious services; a cassock” (OED).

19 Fictitious, but probably based upon the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge, where MRJ long worked.

LOST HEARTS

“Lost Hearts” was written between July 1892 (when MRJ first visited Ireland and saw St. Michan’s Church [see n. 5]) and October 1893, when it was read to the Chitchat Society; it was published in Pall Mall Magazine (December 1895) and reprinted in GSA and CGS. MRJ was dissatisfied with the tale and only included it in GSA at the request of his publisher, who wished to make the book larger. It is the first of several stories to feature a Faustian protagonist who seeks unholy knowledge and will resort to the most evil means to obtain it. Jacqueline Simpson believes that the core idea of eating living hearts to gain immortality was derived from MRJ’s absorption of Danish folklore. See “‘The Rules of Folklore’ in the Ghost Stories of M. R. James,” Folklore 108 (1997): 12, 16-17.

FURTHER READING

Tina Rath, “‘Lost Hearts,’ ” Ghosts & Scholars No. 29 (1999): 43.

 

C. E. Ward, “A Haunting Presence,” in Formidable Visitants, ed. Roger Johnson (Chelmsford, UK: Pyewacket Press, 1999), pp. 27-30.

1 Aswarby is a village four miles south of Sleaford in Lincolnshire, in east-central England. There is an Aswarby Hall in the vicinity, but it is now in ruins.

2 The Eleusinian Mysteries were secret rites celebrated at Eleusis, in Greece, in praise of Demeter and Persephone from remote antiquity up to the suppression of the pagan cults by Christianity in the fourth century C.E. The Orphic poems are a corpus of hymns attributed to Orpheus, dating as far back as the fifth century B.C.E. and chiefly spelling out theogonies of the pagan gods, especially Dionysus. Mithras was an Indo-Iranian god whose worship was introduced into the Roman Empire (chiefly by soldiers) in the second and third centuries C.E. Several features of its worship were adopted by the early Christians. The Neoplatonists were a school of philosophers headed by Plotnius (third century C.E.) who led a revival of the study of the metaphysics of Plato and other pagan philosophers, emphasizing the unity of all substance.

3 The Gentleman’s Magazine was a celebrated quarterly journal of scholarship and opinion published in London from 1731 to 1907. The Critical Museum is fictitious.

4 This description of Abney suggests (see PT, 18) that he may have been based upon Thomas Taylor (1758-1835), friend of William Blake and Thomas Love Peacock. Taylor was a Neoplatonist and Neo-Pythagorean who translated the Orphic poems (The Mystical Initiations or Hymns of Orpheus, 1787) and wrote A Dissertation on the Eleusinian and Bacchic Mysteries (1790).

5 St. Michan’s Church on Church Street in Dublin was built in 1685-86 on the site of an earlier structure founded by the Danes in 1095. It is celebrated for the mummified bodies stored in its vaults. MRJ had visited the church in 1892, describing its vaults as “horrid” and a “nightmare” (Cox1, 107).

6 Censorinus (third century C.E.) was a Roman grammarian whose only extant work is De Die Natali (“On the Birthday”). There is a brief discussion of the vernal equinox at 21.13.

7 Apparently an allusion to one of the “Nurse’s Stories” in chapter 15 of Dickens’s An Uncommercial Traveller (1860), which tells of a rat that speaks.

8 Simon Magus is a sorcerer mentioned in the New Testament (Acts 8:9-24) as one who bewitched the people of Samaria and led them to think him divine. Early ecclesiastical writers asserted that he could fly through the air, make himself invisible, put on the appearance of another person, make furniture move, and perform other feats of magic. The Clementine Recognitions (third century C.E.) is one of several works ascribed to St. Clement, Bishop of Rome (fl. 96 C.E.); it survives only in a translation of the original Greek into Latin by Rufinus. In it, Simon Magus is referred to as a disciple of John the Baptist. In one section of the work (2.15), Simon states: “Once on a time, I, by my power, turning air into water, and water again into blood and solidifying it into flesh, formed a new human creature—a boy—and produced a much nobler work than God the Creator. For He created a man from the earth, but I from the air—a far more difficult matter; and again I unmade him and restored him to air, but not until I had placed his picture and image in my bedchamber, as a proof and memorial of my work.” To which the author of the Clementine Recognitions adds: “Then we understood that he spake concerning that boy whose soul, after he had been slain by violence, he made use of for those services which he required.” See Philip Mason Palmer and Robert Pattison More, The Sources of the Faust Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1936), p. 18.

9 Hermes Trismegistos (“thrice-great Hermes”) was the name given by the Greeks to the Egyptian god Thoth. Numerous mystical works in post-Christian times were attributed to him, and they were later used by medieval astrologers and alchemists. For a translation of the surviving fragments, see G. R. S. Mead, Thrice-Greatest Hermes (1906; 3 vols.). MRJ had read Hermes Trismegistos as early as 1878 (see Pfaff, 36).

10 “Cheap [i.e., worthless] bodies.”

THE MEZZOTINT

First published in GSA and reprinted in CGS, “The Mezzotint” is one of the most distinctive of MRJ’s tales. As Jack Sullivan (Elegant Nightmares [Athens: Ohio University Press, 1978], p. 83) notes, “There are two levels of supernatural storytelling here: the transformation of the picture [i.e., the mezzotint] and the scene it recreates, itself a supernatural tale.” A mezzotint is “A method of engraving copper or steel plates for printing, in which the surface of the plate is first roughened uniformly, the ‘nap’ thus produced being afterwards completely or partially scraped away in order to produce the lights and half-lights of the picture, while the untouched parts of the plate give the deepest shadows” (OED). The character Dennistoun first appeared in “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book” (p. 2). MRJ consciously reworked the story as “The Haunted Dolls’ House” (in WC and CGS).

1 See n. 15.

2 Fictitious, but probably an allusion to the Bodleian Library at Oxford.

3 University slang for “to keep one’s door shut” (see OED, def. 11a).

4 There is no such college at Cambridge.

5 In this sense, a skip is “A footman, lackey, or manservant” (OED).

6 Fictitious. “Phasmatological” is MRJ’s coinage, presumably meaning “the study of ghosts” (from the Greek phasma, ghost). Cox2 (305) conjectures that it is a parody of the Society for Psychical Research, founded in the United Kingdom in 1882; an American branch was founded in 1885.

7 Robert is referring to the Bible as illustrated by French artist Gustave Doré (1832-1883), first published in 1866. Many of the illustrations are noted for their horrific qualities.

8 Handbook for Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk, and Cambridgeshire (London: John Murray, 1870; frequently reprinted).

9 Anningley is fictitious.

10 In Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles (1891), Jack Durbeyfield is a carter who learns of his descent from distinguished forbears. Green’s inability to read the book reflects contemporary disapproval of its frank exhibition of seduction, betrayal, and other features deemed offensive.

11 For MRJ’s familiarity with the tradition that unconsecrated bodies must be buried on the north side of a church, see “Ghost Stories” (p. 247).

12 “The last hope of the family [or clan].”

13 James’s whimsical coinage would mean “Professor of Serpents.” The professor is a Sadducean because he, like the Sadducees (an ancient Jewish politico-religious sect), disbelieves in the supernatural. The specific reference, as Pfaff (152n) has noted, is to Matthew 3:7, in which John the Baptist refers to the Pharisees and Sadducees as a “generation of vipers.” See also the “Professor of Ontography” in “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad” (page 81 and n. 1).

14 A play on Oxbridge, a shorthand reference to the intellectual culture of Oxford and Cambridge, although here it refers to the non-university inhabitants of the cities who, as MRJ’s character suggests, are given to superstition.

15 An allusion to the Ashmolean Museum, the chief art museum at Oxford University and a rival of MRJ’s Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge.

THE ASH-TREE

First published in GSA and reprinted in CGS, this story is perhaps the most explicitly grisly of MRJ’s tales; it also most powerfully reflects his near-pathological fear of spiders (he may have originally titled it “The Spiders”; see Cox1, 137). The ash tree does have occult significance, but in British folklore it is generally positive: the Christmas log was of ash and was thought to bring prosperity to the family that burned it; tools made of ash were thought to allow the persons using them to do more and better work. Conversely, witches were believed to ride through the air on ash branches—a point of relevance in that witchcraft plays a critical role in the story.

FURTHER READING

Rosemary Pardoe, “‘A Wonderful Book’: George MacDonald and ‘The Ash-Tree,’ ” Ghosts & Scholars M. R. James Newsletter No. 3 (January 2003): 18-21.

1 Fictitious, but in PT, 39 it is suggested that MRJ was thinking of his early residence, Livermere Hall in Suffolk. The name may be an adaptation of Sandringham in Norfolk, the site of a large royal estate. Some of MRJ’s Eton schoolmates visited Prince Albert Victor there in 1883 (Cox1, 59).

2 The name Mothersole is found on headstones in the churchyard near Livermere Rectory, where MRJ grew up. See Norman Scarfe, “The Strangeness Present: M. R. James’s Suffolk,” Country Life No. 4655 (6 November 1986): 1418.

3 Fictitious, although in PT, 40 it is suggested that MRJ is alluding to Sir Matthew Hale (1609-1676), a member of Parliament and a judge who presided over the witchcraft trials of two witches at the assizes at Bury St. Edmunds in 1662; Hale appears to have given credence to the testimony against the witches, and they were convicted and executed. He was later made chief justice of the King’s bench (1671-76).

4 Bury St. Edmunds is the municipal borough of West Suffolk, hence the logical place to hold witch trials; numerous trials were actually held there in the seventeenth century.

5 Rodrigo Borgia (1431-1503), who became Pope Alexander VI in 1492. He was the father of Cesare and Lucrezia Borgia and secured his pontificate largely by bribery. His possession of a ring containing poison is a legend of long standing.

6 The sortes (lots) was the practice of predicting a person’s future by opening the Bible at a random passage. In this case, it was alleged that, during the winter of 1642-43, King Charles I, accompanied by Lucius Cary, second Viscount Falkland (1610- 1643), went to the Bodleian Library at Oxford and performed the sortes Vergilianae, in which a random passage in the works of Virgil was selected. Charles I reputedly chose the passage (Aeneid 4.619f.) in which Dido condemns Aeneas for betraying her: “let him not / His kingdom or the pleasant light enjoy, / But in the bare mid-plain, before his hour, / Fall and unburied lie” (trans. James Rhoades). Charles I was executed on 30 January 1649 by Parliament.

7 The Popish Plot was a purported plot by Jesuits in 1678 to assassinate King Charles II so that his Roman Catholic brother, the Duke of York (later King James II), could ascend to the throne. The plot was a fabrication of a fanatical Anglican clergyman, Titus Oates, and resulted in the execution of at least thirty-five innocent people, most of them Roman Catholics.

8 See “Lost Hearts,” n. 3.

9 See “The Mezzotint,” n. 11.

10 The Italian town of Tivoli was founded by the Romans as Tibur. A circular temple of the Sibyl, now in ruins, dates to at least the first century C.E.

11 There are more than one hundred places in Ireland named Kilmore. MRJ is probably referring to Kilmore in county Armagh in what is now Northern Ireland, the site of an important cathedral of the Church of Ireland. The Bishop of Kilmore in 1754 was Joseph Story (d. 1757).

12 There are two ancient writers named Polyaenus. Polyaenus of Lampsacus (d. 271? B.C.E.) was one of the early disciples of the philosopher Epicurus; his works survive only in fragments. MRJ is probably referring to Polyaenus, a Macedonian rhetorician of the second century C.E. who wrote Strategemata (manual of military strategy) in eight books. It was first edited in 1549 by Justus Vulteius. Other editions followed in 1690, 1756, 1809, and 1887 (Teubner text).

13 Job 2:21 (“but” for “and” in KJV).

NUMBER 13

“Number 13” was first published in GSA and reprinted in CGS. In the preface to CGS (ix) MRJ dates the story to 1899. That was the year of his first visit to Scandinavia, as MRJ, James McBryde, and Will Stone traveled through Denmark and southern Sweden. But MRJ did not visit Viborg, the setting of the tale, until 1900, so perhaps he was in error as to the date of composition. In this ingenious tale, the “ghost” is not that of a person, but of a room.

1 Viborg is a city in Viborg province in central Denmark. Its origins can be traced to before 800 C.E. It was declared a bishopric in 1060. The “new” cathedral is of the Roman style, and was built in 1864-76 over the remains of the original cathedral, which was begun c. 1130 and completed c. 1180; only the crypts of this older cathedral remain. Jutland (Juylland) is the name of the main peninsula of Denmark.

2 Hald is a small region southwest of Viborg and one of the most distinctive natural preserves in Denmark.

3 The exact Danish name is Erik Klipping. The murder took place in a barn in Finderup (a town west of Viborg), where the king and his men were resting for the night. It is true that Marsk Stig Andersen was, along with others, convicted for the murder, but to this day it is debated whether he was really involved or just a scapegoat for larger political figures of the time.

4 Both the Hotel Preisler and the Hotel Phoenix are (or were) actual hotels in Viborg. The latter was a fine, luxurious hotel catering to the respectable middle classes of the time.

5 A sognekirke is a parish church. A raadhuus is the city hall.

6 The rigsarkiv is the record office. MRJ probably refers to the Landsarkivet for Nørrejylland, built in 1891 and extensively expanded in 1962. Denmark converted to Lutheranism in 1536. Viborg played a central role in the religious debates of the period.

7 I.e., “the First Book of Moses [Genesis], chapter 22,” recounting Abraham’s offer to God to sacrifice his son, Isaac.

8 Jørgen Friis (1493?-1547) was only twenty-eight years old when he was appointed bishop in 1521.

9 A Troldmand (literally, “troll-man”) is a sorcerer, magician, or wizard.

10 There was in fact a Rasmus Nielsen (1809-1894) who was a Danish professor of philosophy, but it does not seem likely that MRJ is referring to him.

11 In this sense, a terrier is “A book in which the lands of a private person, or of a corporation civil or ecclesiastical, are described by their site, boundaries, acreage, etc.” (OED).

12 A chambermaid.

13 “. . . and I saw a woman sit upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names and blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. And the woman was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, and having a golden cup in her hand full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication” (Revelation 17:3-4). A tendentious Protestant interpretation of Scripture as referring to the Roman Catholic church.

14 Baekkelund is unidentified.

15 The village of Silkeborg began developing in the 1850s, but it was not until 1900 that it was officially deemed a town.

16 Emily St. Aubert is the heroine of Ann Radcliffe’s Gothic novel The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794). She is frequently given to breaking forth in verse at critical moments in the narrative. The specific reference is to the beginning of ch. 7: “and while she leaned on her window . . . her ideas arranged themselves in the following lines:” (there follows the poem entitled “The First Hour of Morning”).

17 “Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord.” Psalm 150:6 (Vulgate).

18 The comment probably refers to the fact that Denmark had on numerous occasions been at war with Germany, so that Germans would be hated and feared by many Danes. In 1864 Denmark lost a major battle to the German army, and for a time Viborg itself was occupied by 4,500 Prussian soldiers.

19 [Hans] Sebald Beham (1500-1550) was a German engraver, etcher, painter, and designer of woodcuts. His illustrations chiefly focus on scenes from the Bible or classical antiquity.

20 Daniel Salthenius (1701-1750) was a professor of Hebrew at the Lutheran University of Königsberg in Prussia. In MRJ’s visit’s to Sweden in 1901, he had come upon “two contracts with the devil written (and signed in blood) in 1718 by Daniel Salthenius who was condemned to death for writing them” (letter to his parents, 18 August 1901; cited in Cox1, 110).

COUNT MAGNUS

The story was first published in GSA and reprinted in CGS. The Swedish topographical background was largely derived from MRJ’s visits to Sweden in 1899 and 1901. It was apparently written in 1901 or 1902. In a brilliant paper, Rosemary Pardoe (see Further Reading) has investigated MRJ’s use of the actual Swedish family whose name he used in the story. There was a Count Magnus de la Gardie (1622- 1686), a nobleman in the court of Queen Christina; but Count Magnus’s dwelling, Råbäck, is probably based upon Ulriksdal, an estate outside Stockholm, occupied by Ulrika Eleonora (1688-1741), sister of King Charles XII of Sweden and briefly Queen of Sweden (1719- 20). She is mentioned in the story. Magnus de la Gardie owned Ulriksdal for a time in the seventeenth century. The name of the narrator may be an allusion to Sir Nathaniel William Wraxall (1751- 1831), a British historian and member of Parliament, and author of Cursory Remarks Made in a Tour through Some of the Northern Parts of Europe, Particularly Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Petersburgh (1775). Richard Ward (see Further Reading) makes a sound case for the influence of the story upon H. P. Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927).

FURTHER READING

Rosemary Pardoe, “Who Was Count Magnus? Notes towards an Identification,” Ghosts & Scholars No. 33 (2001): 50-53.

 

Rosemary Pardoe and Jane Nicholls, “The Black Pilgrimage,” Ghosts & Scholars No. 26 (1998): 48-54. Rpt. in PT 601-8.

 

Richard Ward, “In Search of the Dread Ancestor: M. R. James’s ‘Count Magnus’ and Lovecraft’s The Case of Charles Dexter Ward,” Studies in Weird Fiction No. 36 (Spring 1997): 14-17.

1 Horace Marryat (1818-1887), A Residence in Jutland, the Danish Isles, and Copenhagen (London: John Murray, 1860; 2 vols.).

2 The Pantechnicon was an immense storage warehouse built in 1830 on Motcomb Street in southwest London. It was almost entirely destroyed by fire on 13 February 1874.

3 MRJ refers to Erik Jönsson, Count Dalhberg (1625-1703), Suecia antiqua et hodierna (1691-1715; 3 vols.), a collection of drawings by Dahlberg and others representing towns, palaces, and antiquities in Sweden. An engraving of the estate of Ulriksdal (see introductory note) is included in this volume.

4 I.e., Skåre, a city in Vormlands Lan province in southern Sweden, five miles northwest of Karlstad.

5 Most of these titles are either fictitious or unidentified. The Turba Philosophorum (“Assembly of Philosophers”) is an alchemical work in Latin, apparently derived from an Arabic work of c. 900. It exists in three different versions, one of them first published in Auriferae artis [volumina] (1572) and later in Guglielmo Grataroli’s Turba Philosophorum (1613). This version was translated into English by A. E. Waite in 1896.

6 Chorazin was a city in Galilee rebuked by Jesus because it refused to accept his message even though he had performed miracles there: “Woe unto thee, Chorazin! . . . for if the mighty works, which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes” (Matthew 11:21).

7 The allusion is to such passages as Ephesians 2:2: “Wherein in time past ye walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air” (i.e., Satan).

8 This was an actual belief found in a number of early medieval Christian writings. Rosemary Pardoe and Jane Nicholls (see Further Reading) identify the first such reference as occurring in the Revelation of the Pseudo-Methodius, an apocalyptic tract of the late seventh century C.E.

9 Belchamp St. Paul is a town in Essex, two miles southeast of Clare (Suffolk).

“OH, WHISTLE, AND I’LL COME TO YOU, MY LAD”

This story was first published in GSA and reprinted in CGS. It was apparently written in 1903; at any rate, it was read at a Christmas gathering at King’s College in that year (see PT, 95). The title derives from the first line of an untitled song (1793) by Robert Burns (“O, whistle, and I’ll come to ye, my lad” in Burns). It contains perhaps the most distinctive “ghost” in MRJ’s corpus, which may have derived from a dream. In the late and apparently autobiographical tale “A Vignette” (published posthumously in the London Mercury, November 1936), MRJ writes of a creature he has seen in a dream: “It was not monstrous, not pale, fleshless, spectral. Malevolent I thought and think it was; at any rate the eyes were large and open and fixed. It was pink and, I thought, hot, and just above the eyes the border of a white linen drapery hung down from the brows.” A somewhat similar entity is featured in “The Uncommon Prayer-Book” (in WC and CGS), which speaks of a roll of white flannel that “had a kind of a face in the upper end of it.

FURTHER READING

Jacqueline Simpson, “The Riddle of the Whistle,” Ghosts & Scholars No. 24 (1997): 54-55.

 

———, “The Whistle Again,” Ghosts & Scholars No. 30 (2000): 26-27.

1 MRJ’s coinage, presumably meaning “Professor of Reality” (onto-referring to existence in general or specific existing entities), or one who doubts the existence of spirits or of the supernatural. St. James’s College is fictitious.

2 Burnstow (fictitious) is identified by MRJ (CGS, viii) as stand-in for Felixstowe, Suffolk, where MRJ’s friend Felix Cobbold lived. MRJ visited there in 1893 and 1897-98 (Cox2, 313).

3 The Knights Templar were a military order founded in Palestine in 1119, during the Crusades, to protect pilgrims to holy sites in the region. A preceptory is an estate or manor supporting communities of the Knights Templar; there were twenty-three such preceptories in England.

4 I.e., the Long Vacation, or summer vacation.

5 In Dickens’s Dombey and Son (1846-48), Dr. Blimber is the proprietor of a school to which the young Paul Dombey is sent. Blimber, in ch. 12, never utters anything approaching the remark that MRJ’s character attributes to him, but he constantly expresses his disapproval at being interrupted while speaking during a dinner for the boys and the faculty.

6 As Cox2 (313) notes, Disney refers to the Disney professor of archaeology at Cambridge.

7 Literally, “of a wild nature,” the customary Latin expression for a wild beast.

8 Aldsey is fictitious.

9 A rather loose quotation from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (1678-84): “Then I saw in my Dream, that . . . poor Christian was hard put to it, for he had gone but a little way before he espied a foul Fiend coming over the field to meet him; his name is Apollyon” (Part 1). It is later said of Apollyon that “he was cloathed with scales like a Fish (and they were his pride) he had Wings like a Dragon, feet like a Bear, and out of his belly came Fire and Smoak, and his mouth was the mouth of a Lion.” MRJ reports that Ottiwell Charles Waterfield, the headmaster at Temple Grove when MRJ was there (1873-76), would read The Pilgrim’s Progress to the boys on Sunday (E&K, 10-11).

10 In Daniel 5:1-30, the prophet Daniel deciphers the words (“mene mene tekel upharsin”) that mysteriously appear on the wall of the palace of King Belshazzar of Babylon, correctly predicting Belshazzar’s death and the destruction of his kingdom.

11 There has been considerable scholarly debate as to the significance of these words or letters. Perhaps the best conjecture is that it is the Latin phrase Fur, flabis, flebis (“Thief, you will blow, you will weep”), suggesting that Parkins (a “thief” in obtaining the whistle) will blow upon it and come to regret the act.

12 An adaptation of Isaiah 63:1 (“Who is this that cometh from Edom?”), rendered in the Vulgate as Quis est iste qui venit de Edom?

13 “Believe one who has experienced it,” a common Latin utterance.

14 A bourdon is “The low undersong or accompaniment, which was sung while the leading voice sang a melody” (OED). The quotation has not been identified.

15 A cleek is “A large hook or crook for catching hold of and pulling something; or for hanging articles on, or from a rafter, or the like” (OED).

16 The Feast of St. Thomas the Apostle is, in the Anglican rite, on 21 December; in the Roman Catholic church, on 3 July.

THE TREASURE OF ABBOT THOMAS

This story, whose composition was dated by MRJ (CGS, ix) to the summer of 1904, was first published in GSA and reprinted in CGS. The German setting of the tale reflects MRJ’s work, in July 1904, on the stained glass in the chapel of Ashridge Park in Hertfordshire, the subject of a later pamphlet, Notes of Glass in Ashridge Chapel (1906), in which he writes: “All the glass seems to me to be cent. XVI . . . I imagine that all of it probably came from one Church, the Abbatial Church of Steinfeld in the Eifel district. This was founded as a Benedictine Abbey in 920 . . . after 177 years the Benedictines, grown lax, were turned out . . . in favour of the Premonstratensians” (cited in Cox2, 315). MRJ’s subsequent discussion indicates that he never actually visited Steinfeld Abbey. The cipher featured in the tale inevitably recalls Poe’s “The Gold-Bug” and perhaps reflects MRJ’s avid reading of detective stories.

FURTHER READING

Nicholas Connell, “A Haunting Vision: M. R. James and the Ashridge Stained Glass,” Hertfordshire’s Past 49 (Autumn 2000): 2-7.

1 The Eiffel (more properly, Eifel) is a region in northwest Germany. “Premonstratensian” refers to the Premonstratensian Canons or Norbertines, an order founded by St. Norbert (1080?-1134) at Prémontré, near Laon, France. The order followed the Rule of St. Augustine, which included abstension from meat among other austerities. It had become virtually extinct by the early nineteenth century. The title of the fictitious book Sertum Steinfeldense Norbertinum translates to “A Garland [Pertaining to] the Norbertine [Abbey at] Steinfeld.”

2 Auro locus est in quo conflatur (“There is . . . a place for gold where they fine [i.e., melt] it”). Job 28:1.

3 A conflation of two verses: Et habet in vestimento et in femore suo scriptum (“And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written”), Revelation 19:16; and Habens nomen scriptum quod nemo novit nisi ipse (“And he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself”), Revelation 19:12.

4 Zechariah 3:9.

5 Parsbury is fictitious.

6 I.e., Coblentz (Cologne), Germany.

7 A Turk’s head broom is a round long-handled broom or brush.

8 MRJ refers to the Polygraphia (1518) of the German historian and theologian Johannes Trithemius (1462-1516), one of the pioneering works of cryptography. Later editions (1606f.) use the title Steganographia.

9 Gustavus Selenus (pseudonym of August II, duke of Braunschweig-Lüneburg, 1579-1666), Cryptomenytices et Cryptographiae Libri IX (1624), which contains a paraphrase of Trithemius. MRJ has erroneously rendered the genitive on the title page (Gustavi Seleni).

10 Sir Francis Bacon’s De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum (1623), a Latin translation and expansion of his earlier treatise, The Advancement of Learning (1605), is a landmark in intellectual history but has nothing to do with cryptography.

11 “Let him who touches it beware.”

12 From Psalm 113:13 (Vulgate) = 115:5 (KJV).

13 There are several Eliezers in the Old Testament, but MRJ probably refers to Eliezer the Damascene, Abraham’s chief servant (Genesis 15:2-3). Rebekah was the daughter of Bethuen, Abraham’s nephew (Genesis 22:23), and wife of Isaac. Jacob was the son of Rebekah and Isaac and the twin brother of Esau (Genesis 25:26). In the district of Harran, Jacob lifted a stone covering the mouth of a well so that his cousin Rachel could give water to her sheep (Genesis 29:1-11). He later married her.

A SCHOOL STORY

“A School Story” was first published in MGSA. The tale was written for the King’s College Choir School. MRJ’s friend A. C. Benson records in his diary that he heard MRJ read the story on 28 December 1906 (see Cox2, 316-17). In the preface to CGS (viii) MRJ identifies the setting as Temple Grove, the preparatory school he attended in 1873-76.

FURTHER READING

Rosemary Pardoe, “‘I’ve Seen It’: ‘A School Story’ and the House in Berkeley Square,” Ghosts & Scholars No. 29 (1999): 41-43.

1 The Strand Magazine (London, 1891-1950), aside from achieving celebrity for publishing the Sherlock Holmes stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, published a substantial number of supernatural tales. See Strange Tales from the Strand, ed. Jack Adrian (Oxford University Press, 1991). Pearson’s Magazine (London, 1896-1939) published a lesser proportion of strange stories, but did reprint one of MRJ’s, “A View from a Hill” (February 1932).

2 The reference is to 50 Berkeley Square, a celebrated haunted house in London and the subject of several ghost stories, notably Rhoda Broughton’s “The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But the Truth” (Tales for Christmas Eve, 1873). See Rosemary Pardoe’s article cited in Further Reading.

3 Bad Latin for “I remember my book” (properly memino mei libri). As MRJ points out later in the story, memino takes the genitive.

4 Bad Latin for “we remember my father” (properly meminimus patris mei).

THE ROSE GARDEN

This story was first published in MGSA and reprinted in CGS. Jacqueline Simpson (see “Ghosts and Posts” in Further Reading) believes that the central supernatural phenomenon (a ghost affixed to a specific spot to render it harmless) was derived from Danish folklore collected in the later nineteenth century by folklorist Evald Tang Kristensen; one such legend states that “the way to lay a vicious ghost is to drive it away to some relatively isolated area such as uncultivated moors, and there conjure it down into the ground and pin it under a stake.” In a later article (“Something Nasty in the Summer-House”) Simpson reports that legendry from the eastern counties of England, in which a summer-house is built over a spot where a ghost is laid, may also have influenced MRJ’s story.

FURTHER READING

Jacqueline Simpson, “Ghosts and Posts,” Ghosts & Scholars No. 22 (1996): 46-47.

 

Jacqueline Simpson, “Something Nasty in the Summer-House,” Ghosts & Scholars No. 31 (2000): 48.

1 Westfield and Westfield Hall are fictitious. There is a Westfield in Sussex, four miles north of Hastings.

2 Maldon is a city in Essex, 9 miles east of Chelmsford. Its history goes back to before the Norman Conquest.

3 Roothing is apparently a reference to Rodings, near Chelmsford in Essex.

4 I.e., a mask worn by children to commemorate Guy Fawkes Day, a celebration of the foiling of the Gunpowder Plot of 1605.

5 MRJ is probably alluding to Sir William Scroggs (1623?-1683), lord chief justice of the King’s bench (1678-81). Scroggs was the presiding judge during the “Popish Plot” (see “The Ash-Tree,” n. 7), gaining notoriety for badgering and intimidating the witnesses. On 23 November 1680 the House of Commons drew up impeachment papers against him for summarily dismissing a grand jury before the end of the term. Scroggs pleaded not guilty on 24 March 1681, but his unpopularity impelled Charles II to remove him from the bench on 11 April. He retired to his manor, Weald Hall, in Essex, dying there on 25 October 1683.

6 Augustine Crompton is fictitious. Quieta non movere [sc. oportet] translates literally as “[One must] not move quiet things,” i.e., let sleeping dogs lie.

THE TRACTATE MIDDOTH

This story was first published in MGSA and reprinted in CGS. The tractate Middoth (more properly Middot [“measurements”]) is an actual work, part of the Mishnah, the oral teachings that comprise a significant feature of the Talmud, the Jewish body of religious and civil law. It consists of five books describing the layout and structure of the Second Temple (built in Jerusalem in the late sixth century B.C.E. after the destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E.; it itself was destroyed in 169-67 B.C.E.). There was a Hebrew and Latin edition of the Middot in 1630 (edited and translated by Constantinus, Emperor of Oppyck), and a Hebrew and German edition in 1913 (edited by Oskar Holtemann). The celebrated Jewish scholar Moses Maimonides (1135-1204), a rival of Nahmanides (see n. 2), wrote a commentary on it (published in Hebrew and Arabic in 1898).

1 Piccadilly weepers (or Dundreary weepers) were a type of long, flowing side-whiskers popular in the Victorian era. See page 149 below.

2 Moses Nahmanides (Moses ben Nahman, 1194-1270) was a Jewish biblical exegete and physician in Catalonia. He does not appear to have written any commentary on the tractate Middot.

3 Fictitious; see “‘Oh, Whistle, and I’ll Come to You, My Lad,” n. 2.

4 Both Bretfield and Bretfield Manor are fictitious.

CASTING THE RUNES

This tale, among the most famous of MRJ’s ghost stories, was first published in MGSA and reprinted in CGS. Ron Weighell (“Dark Devotions: M. R. James and the Magical Tradition,” Ghosts & Scholars No. 6 [1984]: 24-26) believes that the figure of Karswell is based upon the British occultist Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), nicknamed “The Great Beast” for his bizarre experiments in black magic. Cox2 (320-21) doubts the attribution because he does not believe Crowley was sufficiently well known in 1911; but Crowley had already been made the villain of W. Somerset Maugham’s novel The Magician (1908), so the identification is at least conceivable. “Casting the Runes” is one of the few MRJ tales in which the intended victim manages to fight back and turn the tables on his pursuer. In 1957 the story was adapted into the well-known horror film Night of the Demon (U.S. title Curse of the Demon), directed by Jacques Tourneur, with a screenplay by Charles Bennett and Hal E. Chester.

FURTHER READING

Peter Erlsbacher, “Riddling the Runes,” Baker Street Journal NS 49, No. 1 (March 1999): 52-57.

1 Fictitious.

2 St. John’s College, Cambridge.

3 Ashbrooke is fictitious. F.S.A. refers to Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. The society was founded in 1717, although its members had met informally since 1707. George II granted it a charter in 1751. Scottish and Irish Societies of Antiquaries also exist. MRJ was a member of the Society of Antiquaries.

4 The Golden Legend (Legenda Aurea or Lombardica Historia) is a work by Jacobus de Voragine (1230?-1298?), provincial governor of Lombardy and later archbishop of Genoa. A collection of the legendary lives of the major saints, it was one of the most popular works of the Middle Ages. It was first published c. 1474. William Caxton translated it into English and published it in 1483.

5 The Golden Bough: The Roots of Religion and Folklore (1890 [2 vols.]; expanded ed., 1907-15 [12 vols.]) is a landmark work on the anthropology of religion by Sir James George Frazer (1854-1941) and a significant influence on the intellectual history of its time. Frazer was a Cambridge man, a Fellow of Trinity College. MRJ’s scornful reference to it once again underscores his disdain for rationalistic accounts of religious belief.

6 Thomas Bewick (1753-1828) was a British engraver who illustrated a number of children’s books with his woodcuts, as well as the fables of Aesop and John Gay and the poems of Gold-smith and Somerville. He never illustrated the Ancient Mariner.

7 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798), ll. 448-51.

8 As Cox2 (322) notes, this is an actual hotel in Dover at which MRJ customarily stayed on his way to France.

9 Abbeville is a town in Somme province in northeastern France. The church of Saint-Vulfram was constructed in two periods, first in 1488-1539 and then in 1661-69. It was badly damaged during World War II. It was well known to MRJ from his frequent travels to France.

10 By “a set of Bewick” MRJ refers to The Works of Thomas Bewick (Newcastle: Thomas Bewick & Son, 1818-26; 5 vols.), a collection of his more notable woodcuts and engravings.

THE STALLS OF BARCHESTER CATHEDRAL

“The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral” first appeared in Contemporary Review (April 1910) and reprinted in MGSA and CGS. It was the only story in MGSA to have received a prior periodical appearance. It is set in the fictitious town of Barchester, a clear nod to Anthony Trollope’s series of novels, beginning with The Warden (1855) and Barchester Towers (1857) and continuing through The Last Chronicle of Barset (1867), which are set in the town of Barchester in the fictitious county of Barsetshire. The earlier novels feature Dr. Theophilus Grantley, archdeacon of the cathedral at Barchester. In the preface to CGS (viii) MRJ states that the cathedrals of Barchester and Southminster (in the story “An Episode of Cathedral History” [TG]) “were blends of Canterbury, Salisbury, and Hereford.”

FURTHER READING

Martin Hughes, “Murder of the Cathedral: A Story by M. R. James,” Durham University Journal 87, No. 1 (January 1995): 73-98.

1 Sowerbridge and Candley are fictitious. There is a Pickhill in Yorkshire, but this may be a coincidence.

2 A wrangler is “The name of each of the candidates who have been placed in the first class in the mathematical tripos at Cambridge University” (OED).

3 Ranxton-sub-Ashe is fictitious. Lichfield, fifteen miles northeast of Birmingham in Straffordshire, is celebrated as the birthplace of Samuel Johnson.

4 Martin Hughes (see Further Reading) believes this to be an allusion to William Pulteney, earl of Bath (1684-1764), a Whig politician who engaged in a largely unsuccessful rivalry with Sir Robert Walpole during the 1720s and 1730s; but there seems little connection between this Pulteney and MRJ’s fictitious archdeacon.

5 The Argonautica of C. Valerius Flaccus (first century C.E.) is a retelling of the story of the Argonauts, closely derived from the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius. There was no complete verse translation of it in English until 1999 (by David Slavitt). Thomas Noble translated the first book into verse in 1808. There is a prose translation by J. H. Mozley (Loeb Classical Library, 1934).

6 Presumably a poem about Cyrus the Great (d. 530 B.C.E.), king of Persia and the first ruler to unite all the territories in the Persian Empire. See Xenophon’s Cyropaedia.

7 MRJ refers to Bell’s Cathedral Series, a series of books on British cathedrals published by George Bell & Sons (London) from 1896 to 1932.

8 Sir George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878), British architect who built or restored many churches and cathedrals.

9 A triforium is “A gallery or arcade in the wall over the arches at the sides of the nave and choir, and sometimes of the transepts, in some large churches” (OED).

10 A reredos is “An ornamental facing or screen of stone or wood covering the wall at the back of an altar, frequently of ornate design, with niches, statues, and other decorations” (OED).

11 A baldacchino (or baldachin) is “A structure in the form of a canopy, either supported on columns, suspended from the roof, or projecting from the wall, placed above an altar, throne, or doorway” (OED).

12 Both Wringham and Barnswood are fictitious.

13 A visitation in this sense means “A visit by an ecclesiastical person (or body) to examine into the state of a diocese, parish, religious institution, etc.; spec. in English use, such a visit paid by a bishop or archdeacon” (OED).

14 A chancel is “The eastern part of a church, appropriated to the use of those who officiate in the performance of the services” (OED). MRJ uses the term to denote any separate chamber or alcove of a church.

15 “He who restrains,” an allusion to 2 Thessalonians 2:7 (“For the mystery of inquity doth already work: only he who now letteth [restrains] will let, until he be taken out of the way”), a controverted passage apparently referring to the emergence of the Antichrist. MRJ’s character uses the term in the sense of “He who gets in the way.”

16 I.e., Nunc dimittis servum tuum (“Now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace”), the opening words of the Canticle of Simeon (Luke 2:29-32), frequently sung by the choir after celebration of the eucharist in Anglican churches.

17 Sylvanus Urban was the house name applied to the successive editors of the Gentleman’s Magazine.

18 From Psalm 109:6 (“Set thou a wicked man over him” in KJV).

19 Three thinkers who became notorious either for explicit atheism or for anticlericalism. The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792- 1822) wrote the pamphlets the Necessity of Atheism (1811), A Refutation of Deism (1814; rpt. in Atheism: A Reader, ed. S. T. Joshi [Prometheus Books, 2000]), and other screeds against religion. George Gordon, Lord Byron (1788-1824) expressed pungent skepticism in such epic poems as Cain (1819) and The Vision of Judgment (1822). Voltaire (François Marie Arouet, 1694-1778) was probably a deist, but he was strongly opposed to organized religion (in reference to the Christian church he said, “Ecrasez l’infame!” [crush the infamy]) and vehemently criticized religious persecution.

MARTIN’S CLOSE

This story first appeared in MGSA and was reprinted in CGS. In the preface to CGS (viii) MRJ identifies the location of the story as Sampford Courtenay in Devonshire. MRJ had visited the village in 1893 in the course of examining some properties there belonging to King’s College (Cox1, 103-4). The central character in the story is George Jeffreys, first baron Jeffreys of Wem (1648-1689), a notorious figure in Stuart England. As recorder of London (1678-80) he exercised severity in the “Popish Plot” (see “The Ash-Tree,” n. 7). As lord chief justice (1683-85) he held the “bloody assize” after the suppression of Monmouth’s rebellion. He was later lord chancellor (1685-88), but fell into disgrace and died in the Tower of London. His conduct as a trial judge was imperishably etched by Macaulay in his History of England (1849-59). MRJ, of course, had also exhaustively read transcripts of the State Trials in which Jeffreys had presided, hence his flawless re-creation of the proceedings in the story. In his preface to The Lady Ivie’s Trial (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1929), MRJ recorded his interest in the State Trials: “It is not until 1648 that we begin to get really lively reports. From that date till the end of the century the volumes contain the cream of the collection . . . those of the Popish Plot, the reign of James II, and the years immediately following the Revolution are undoubtedly the richest; and, I should say, among them, the trials in which the figure of Jeffreys appears. Things are never dull when he is at the bar or on the bench” (cited in Cox1, 145). Jeffreys appears again in “A Neighbour’s Landmark” (in WC and CGS).

FURTHER READING

Cyndy Hendershot, “The Return of the Repressed in M. R. James’s ‘Martin’s Close,’ ” University of Mississippi Studies in English NS 11- 12 (1993-95): 134-37.

 

Muriel Smith, “A Source for ‘Martin’s Close’?” Ghosts & Scholars M. R. James Newsletter No. 2 (September 2002): 19-20.

1 Holy Innocents’ Day (December 28) commemorates the children of Bethlehem whom Herod the Great ordered to be put to death in a futile attempt to kill the infant Jesus (Matthew 2:16-18).

2 As indicated in PT (184), the New Inn in Sampford Courtenay is an actual structure, dating to the sixteenth or seventeenth century.

3 An unusually obvious error by MRJ: theologian and philosopher Joseph Glanvill (1636-1680) had been dead four years before the events described in the story. Later on in the narrative (page 213) MRJ alludes to Glanvill’s Saducismus Triumphatus (1681), a defense of belief in witchcraft.

4 The commission of oyer and terminer was issued to traveling justices to hear (oyer) and determine (terminer) whether criminal proceedings should be instituted against those accused of a crime. The Old Bailey sessions of jail delivery were at this time conducted at Newgate prison, founded in the reign of Henry I in the west gatehouse of the city of London.

5 The reign of King Charles II was, after the Restoration (1660), deemed to have begun upon the execution of Charles I in 1649. Hence, 15 May 1684 would occur in the thirty-sixth year of his reign.

6 Sir Robert Sawyer (1633-1692), attorney general (1681-89) who conducted the prosecution of Titus Oates in 1685, securing his conviction for perjury.

7 So printed because the word (coined in 1678) was thought to be a conflation of two words, cul (abbreviation for the French culpable, “guilty”) and prit or prist (= Old French prest, “ready”). If a defendant pleaded not guilty, the clerk of the court would say cul-prit (short for “Culpable: prest d’averrer nostre bille” [“Guilty: [and I am] ready to aver our indictment”]).

8 A natural, in this sense, means “One naturally deficient in intellect; a half-witted person” (OED).

9 A popular folk song dating to at least the seventeenth century.

10 Tyburn, near the modern Marble Arch, was the principal place of execution in London from 1388 to 1783, when executions were transferred to Newgate.

11 St. Augustine of Hippo (354-430), De Cura pro Mortuis Gerenda (“On Taking Care of the Dead”), a treatise, probably written in 421, on the proper rites to be performed in connection with the burial of the dead. The work was very popular in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

12 Prolific Scottish writer Andrew Lang (1844-1930) wrote numerous books on religion, mythology, and the occult. MRJ may be referring to such works as Myth, Ritual, and Religion (1887), Cock Lane and Common Sense (1894), The Book of Dreams and Ghosts (1897), and Magic and Religion (1901). Lang was one of the founders of the Society for Psychical Research (see “The Mezzotint,” n. 6).

13 North Tawton is a town in Devonshire, six miles northeast of Okehampton and less than two miles from Sampford Courtenay.

MR. HUMPHREYS AND HIS INHERITANCE

This story first appeared in MGSA and was reprinted in CGS. In the preface to CGS (ix) MRJ notes that the tale was “written to fill up the volume” (i.e., MGSA), which may account for its apparent prolixity. It is apparently a reworking of the fragment “John Humphreys” (PT, 429-39), although that work only tells of a man who inherits a mysterious property, and no maze is featured in it. In response to his friend Arthur Hort’s query as to the import of the tale, MRJ replied (3 January 1912): “As far as I can give it the explanation is this. That old Mr. Wilson who made the maze had remained in the globe with his ashes, quiescent as long as the gate was not opened. When they opened it and laid out the clue, and left the gate open, he woke up and came out. It was he who was mistaken on two successive nights for an Irish yew and a growth against the house wall, and on the last evening he made himself visible to his descendant creeping up as it were out of unknown depths and emerging at the appropriate spot—the centre of the plan of the maze” (cited in Cox2, 324).

FURTHER READING

Carl Jay Buchanan, “Notes on the Structure and Ubiquity of Mr. Humphreys’ Maze,” Ghosts & Scholars M. R. James Newsletter No. 1 (March 2002): 6-11.

 

Martin Hughes, “A Maze of Secrets in a Story by M. R. James,” Durham University Journal 85, No. 1 (January 1993): 81-93.

 

David Longhorn, “The Fall of the House of Wilson,” Ghosts & Scholars No. 15 (1993): 27-28.

 

Rosemary Pardoe and Jane Nicholls. “James Wilson’s Secret,” Ghosts & Scholars No. 24 (1997): 45-48. Rpt. in PT 596-600.

1 Wilsthorpe is a village in Lincolnshire, five miles northeast of Stamford.

2 There are several Bentleys in England, none of which are particularly close to Wilsthorpe.

3 Cf. Charles Churchill, The Prophecy of Famine (1763): “And Nature gave thee, open to distress, / A heart to pity, and a hand to bless” (ll. 177-78).

4 I.e., métier: a trade, profession, craft, or activity to which one is especially suited.

5 I.e., cynosure, “Something that attracts attention by its brilliancy or beauty; a centre of attraction, interest or admiration” (OED).

6 Cooper is trying to pronounce the French expression hors d’oeuvre, apparently under the impression that its literal meaning would be “out of work,” but it does not have that meaning in French; instead, it means “out of alignment” or “extraneous.”

7 See “The Ash-Tree,” n. 10.

8 Susanna (1749) by German-British composer George Frideric Handel (1685-1759) is an oratorio about Susanna, a Jewish woman falsely accused of adultery but saved by Daniel. The story is found in the Old Testament Apocrypha (Additions to Daniel). The lines quoted come from Act III, Scene 1. A holm-tree is either a holly tree or the evergreen oak, whose dark foliage resembles that of the holly tree. Handel was one of MRJ’s favorite composers. In a sermon delivered at Eton he spoke of the “best things” in life: “The best things are represented by the Bible and Homer and Shakespeare and Handel and Dickens” (Pfaff, 352).

9 “My secret [is] for me and for the children of my house.” A paraphrase of Isaiah 24:16 (Vulgate): secretum meum mihi secretum mihi vae mihi (“I have my secret, I have my secret, woe is me”), translated curiously in KJV as “My leanness, my leanness, woe unto me!”

10 Unannealed in this sense is a variant of unaneled, “Not having received extreme unction” (OED).

11 “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism (1711), 3.66.

12 A fractured quotation from Shakespeare, Hamlet 3.1.66: “When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.”

13 The Religious Ceremonies and Customs of the Several Nations of the World (1731-39; 7 vols. in 6), a partial translation of Cérémonies et coûtumes religeuses de tous les peuples du monde (1728-43; 9 vols.), with illustrations chiefly drawn by French artist Bernard Picart (1663-1733).

14 The Harleian Miscellany (1744-46; 8 vols.), a collection of “scarce, curious, and entertaining pamphlets,” chiefly relating to English history, selected and edited by William Oldys from the library of Edward Harley, second Earl of Oxford (1689- 1741).

15 Tostatus Abulensis is Alphonsus Tostatus (Alfonso Tostado, 1414-1454), bishop of Avila and author of numerous works on theology and political science. His Opera Omnia in thirteen volumes appeared in 1569.

16 Juan de Pineda (1558-1637), Commentariorum in Iob. Libri Tredecim (1597-1601 [2 vols.]; Thirteen Books of Commentaries on Job). Pineda was a member of the Spanish Inquisition and the author of commentaries on several books of the Bible.

17 For the tale of Theseus—the Athenian hero who, with the help of Ariadne, ventured into the Labyrinth to kill the Minotaur, thereby freeing Attica from the bondage of King Minos of Crete—see Plutarch’s life of Theseus.

18 “The prince of darkness.” The phrase (a now customary epithet of Satan) does not occur in the Bible, although potestas tenebrarum does at Colossians 1:13: “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness . . .”

19 “The shadow of death.” The phrase occurs frequently in the Bible, most famously in Psalm 23:4: “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil . . .” This passage is specifically referred to in the fragment “John Humphreys” (PT, 437).

20 “The valley of the sons of Hinnom.” Hinnom is one of three valleys that cut through the region of Jerusalem. At a place called Topheth in this valley, the people worshipped Baal and offered their children as sacrifices to Moloch. This led to the concept of Gehenna (literally, “the valley of Hinnom”), a synonym for Hell, where condemned people are burned for eternity.

21 Chore is evidently a variant spelling of Korah, a Kohathite who rebelled against Moses and Aaron because they had failed to bring the Israelites to the promised land (Numbers 16:1f.). In Jude 11 he is linked with Cain as among those who rejected the authority of the Lord.

22 Absalom was the third son of David (1 Samuel 3:3) who attempted to wrest control away from his father and actually entered Jerusalem as king. But he was soon overthrown. As he fled the city, his head was caught in the boughs of an oak; he was captured and killed by Joab.

23 “Hostanes the magus.” Hostanes was a magus (magician) in the court of Xerxes I, king of Persia (486-465 B.C.E.). He is mentioned in a number of ancient sources (e.g., Pliny the Elder, Natural History 30.8). Minucius Felix (Octavius 26) reports Hostanes’ belief in “wandering and malevolent demons.”

24 Fictitious.

25 Cf. Proverbs 7:27 (Vulgate): viae inferi domus eius penetrantes interiora mortis. The context relates to the seductive wiles of a harlot: “Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers [lit., the inner places] of death” (KJV).

APPENDIX

“Ghost Stories” first appeared in the Eton Rambler No. 2 (18 May 1880): 10; No. 4 (21 June 1880): 25. It is probably the earliest extant essay by MRJ on the ghost story. The present text is derived from a reprint of the essay in the Ghosts & Scholars M. R. James Newsletter No. 3 (January 2003): 3-5. “A Night in King’s College Chapel” was first published in Ghosts & Scholars No. 7 (1985): 2-5 (edited by Michael Halls, then Modern Archivist of King’s College). It probably dates to 1892 and is the first avowedly supernatural tale by MRJ that survives. It is a pendant to an article MRJ had just published in the Cambridge Review of 26 May 1892 on the stained glass windows in King’s College Chapel. MRJ’s interest in the windows dates to his earliest years at King’s (1882f.). In 1890, as Dean, he had recommended the photographing of the windows in preparation for their thorough cleaning and repair, a task that occupied the years 1893-1906. MRJ also wrote a booket, Guide to the Windows of King’s College Chapel (1899), a work that long remained standard. MRJ’s story, surprisingly irreverent, reflects both his interest in and knowledge of the windows and his familiarity with the characters in the Bible. The window numbers given below are derived from the notes by Michael Halls.

1 “As quickly as possible.”

2 Reuben was the son of Jacob and Leah. His brothers wished to kill their stepbrother, Joseph, but the more scrupulous Reuben persuaded them to hide Joseph in a pit. During Reuben’s absence, the brothers sold Joseph to the Midianites, and Reuben was dismayed to find Joseph no longer in the pit (Genesis 37:19-29). Window 17.

3 God sent the Israelites manna (a food of uncertain nature) from heaven during their forty-year sojourn in the wilderness (Exodus 16:4). Window 9.

4 The Golden Calf was constructed by Aaron and the Israelites after the Exodus. When Moses came down from Mt. Sinai and found his people idolatrously worshipping it, he destroyed it (Exodus 31:18-32:35). Window 6.

5 Naomi was the wife of Elimelech, who died when he took his family to Moab (Ruth 1:1-3). Window 14.

6 The Old Testament makes no reference to Elimelech visiting Job.

7 Enoch, the eldest son of Cain, was “translated” (i.e., taken bodily before death) to heaven after living 365 years (Genesis 5:24). Window 25.

8 Electuary is “A medicinal conserve or paste, consisting of a powder or other ingredient mixed with honey, preserve, or syrup of some kind” (OED).

9 Galen (129?-200?) was a Greek physician and the most celebrated medical writer in antiquity. His recommendations on the purging of blood for various purposes were widely adopted in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance.

10 Theophilus was an unknown man to whom the Gospel of Luke (1:3) and the Acts of the Apostles (1:1) were dedicated.

11 The story of Tobias and his parents, Anna and Tobit, is found in the Apocryphal Book of Tobit, where his dog is also mentioned. “The Shunammite” refers to a young man in the town of Shunem, in the territory of Issachar, who was miraculously raised from the dead by the prophet Elisha (2 Kings 4:32-37). Window 8.

12 Windows 17 and 18.

13 Darius the Mede took over the government after the death of Belshazzar (Daniel 5:31). He appointed Daniel as one of the three presidents of his kingdom (Daniel 6:2). The Book of Habakkuk relates to the prophet of that name, about whom little is known.

14 The Book of Jonah has only four chapters.

15 James McBryde. See Introduction, page X.