by M. R. James
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).