M R James: Master of the Victorian Ghost Story
Jones Hogsed, guest contributor
Autumn, and by extension, “spooky season,” is here in full force. Every year around this time I pull out my leather-bound copy of Montagu Rhodes James’s ghost stories.
“I believe I am now acquainted with the extremity of terror and repulsion which a man can endure without losing his mind.” ~The Treasure of Abbot Thomas
One of the earliest, and certainly one of the greatest, pioneers of the horror genre, James’s short stories contain the nostalgia
of rural England. Even the most rational reader can delight in the melancholy of solitude in an uncertain world painted with James’s peculiar flavor of horror. As the shadows lengthen and the nights grow longer, it seems the perfect time to grab that pumpkin-spiced beverage and curl up with a classic ghost story from the master.
M.R. From a young age, M.R. James immersed himself in British folklore. He enjoyed reading about the lives and deaths of the saints (“the more atrocious the better.”) This would prove foundational for his later career as an antiquarian. He wrote books about monastery and cathedral architecture, as well as catalogs of English hagiography and apocalypse manuscripts. However, it's his ghost stories that people still talk about. These he began writing in his days as a student at Eton College in Cambridge.
Around Christmastime, he would gather a few close acquaintances together and read one of his macabre inventions. Oliffe Richmond, a member of the party, describes one such celebration.
“Monty disappeared into his bedroom. We sat and waited in the candlelight ... Monty emerged from his bedroom, manuscript in hand, at last, blew out all the candles but one by which he seated himself. He then began to read ...”
This quality of inviting his readers into a mysterious haunting would later become a hallmark of his fiction.
James fully immerses his audience in the settings of his stories. Indeed, the scenery in many ways can be just as formidable as the “unwanted guest” (in the case of Number 13, literally; a hotel lodger finds his room’s internal dimensions constantly shifting). These settings usually fall into one of three categories: a church, a hotel suite, or a country lane, which adds a cumulative sense of dread. Readers might never have been inside a genuine haunted house, but certainly most have slept in a hotel that didn’t feel quite right (or maybe the neighbors were oddly restless...).
Along with the physical surroundings, his persona as a rational and somewhat close-minded academic adds to the satisfying paradox: realism meets the unreal.
James further grounds his stories in a subject he was quite familiar with: medievalism and folklore from antiquity. We might find a foreboding portent of an incoming horror in a Latin inscription, or a verse from the Old Testament: references to future judgment and maybe even an archaic description of the malevolent entity. This pervasive air of academia adds an authenticity which allows readers to step into the world of a Victorian scholar.
Renowned for a narrative technique that has since fallen out of fashion, James masters the art of subtlety. While the modern horror genre is a distillation of jump-scares, superfluous gore, and chainsaw-wielding clowns, he used none of these conventions, instead hinting at a ghost in the vaguest of terms.
“There is evidently little, if anything, of first-rate interest to be seen—except, perhaps, one thing, which I would not care to see.” ~The Treasure of Abbot Thomas
“As we neared it, Henry Long felt, and I felt too, that there were what I can only call dim presences waiting for us...” ~A Warning to the Curious
“Yes, I certainly prefer the daylight population of the Playing Fields to that which comes out there after dark.” ~After Dark in the Playing Fields
As the forefather of such classic horror writers as H.P. Lovecraft and Clark Ashton Smith, M. R. James deserves a special place in this season’s festivities. His quiet habit of suggesting that there are more than human occupants in any room continues to delight and inspire. In his own words, “I feel it may not be quite prudent to brood over topics which may open the interior eye to the presence of more formidable visitants. Enough said.”
Author’s note: The MacMillan Library Collector’s Edition of M.R. James’s ghost stories is the most comprehensive. It contains every published story, along with three posthumous pieces. Every other collection is grossly abridged. --Jones Hogsed, 17
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