What may seem more strange is that the handwriting was familiar to Mr Batchel, he could not at first say why. His memory, however, in such matters, was singularly good, and before breakfast was over he felt sure of having identified the writer.
His confidence was not misplaced. He went to the parish chest, whose contents he had thoroughly examined in past intervals of leisure, and took out the roll of parish constable’s accounts. In a few minutes he discovered the handwriting of which he was in search. It was unmistakably that of Salathiel Thrapston, constable from 1705–1710, who met his death in the latter year, whilst in the execution of his duty. The reader will scarcely need to be reminded of the text of the Gospel at the place of reference—
‘Thou shalt by no means come out thence till thou hast paid the uttermost farthing.’
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY
JAMES, Montague Rhodes (1862–1936). His greatly influential stories were first published together as an omnibus in 1931 entitled The Collected Ghost Stories of M. R. James, and this keystone work has been kept in print ever since, virtually without a break, by Edward Arnold, and recently (in paperback) Penguin. See also ‘Casting the Runes’ and Other Ghost Stories, selected and edited by Michael Cox (Oxford: The World’s Classics, 1987).
MRJ’s last two stories were reprinted for the first time in the 1970s: ‘A Vignette’ (1936) in The Sorceress in Stained Glass (1971; ed. Richard Dalby) and ‘The Experiment’ (1931) in The Thrill of Horror (1975; ed. Hugh Lamb). Both are included in Michael Cox’s annotated selection (see above).
Two other recently discovered pieces by M. R. James are: ‘The Malice of Inanimate Objects’ (reprinted in Ghosts and Scholars 6, 1984, with an introduction by Michael Cox), and ‘A Night in King’s College Chapel’ (reprinted in Ghosts and Scholars 7, 1985, with an introduction by Michael Halls).
The most accessible biography, which also contains a full bibliography of the ghost stories, is Michael Cox’s M. R. James: An Informal Portrait (Oxford, 1983; Oxford Paperbacks, 19864).
BENSON, Edward Frederic (1867–1940), a very prolific author (his ‘Mapp and Lucia’ novels are now more popular than ever) and long-time friend of MRJ, was a member of the Chitchat Society which heard the two original ‘ghost stories of an antiquary’ being read on 28 October 1893. Benson was the only other member of the Club at that meeting to achieve lasting fame, but very few of his own superb occult tales were distinctly Jamesian—one of the most reprinted is ‘Negotium Perambulans’. His four classic collections are The Room in the Tower (1912), Visible and Invisible (1923), Spook Stories (1928), and More Spook Stories (1934).
BOLITHO, Hector (1897–1974), was a New Zealand journalist who befriended the Prince of Wales in 1920, and in later years spent much of his time at Windsor producing many royal biographies. His meetings with MRJ at nearby Eton, recounted in his autobiography, may have encouraged him to pen a few Jamesian tales in the 1920s and 1930s. Among these are ‘The Crying Grate’ and ‘Cracky Miss Judith’.
BOSTON, (Mrs) Lucy Maria (b.1892) published her first book at the age of 62, and is best known for her series on Green Knowe, a strange haunted old house near Cambridge. She has only rarely produced Jamesian tales, two excellent examples being in anthologies edited by Kathleen Lines: ‘Curfew’ (in The House of the Nightmare and other Eerie Tales, 1967), and ‘Many Coloured Glass’ (in The Haunted and the Haunters. Tales of Ghosts, 1975). A monograph on Mrs Boston’s work, by Jasper Rose, was published in 1965.
BOSTON, Revd Noel (1910–66), a Norfolk vicar and local historian, wrote a few Jamesian stories in the early 1950s which were privately printed in booklet form (by G. Arthur Coleby of Dereham in 1954) under the title Yesterday Knocks. Most of his tales were reprinted 1960–2 in various issues of Supernatural Stories magazine under the pseudonyms ‘Noel Bartram’ and ‘Noel Bertram’.
BURRAGE, Alfred McLelland (1889–1956) wrote a vast amount of fiction and short stories from 1906 onwards, of which only a small selection appeared later in three fine collections: Some Ghost Stories (1927), with the Jamesian ‘Wrastlers’ End’ and ‘The Green Scarf’; Someone in the Room (by ‘Ex-Private X’, 1931); and Between the Minute and the Hour (1967). His greatest success was the novel War is War (1930), which gives the Tommy’s eye-view of the First World War.
CLARKE, Revd William Fairlie (1875–1950), the godson of MRJ’s father, wrote at least half a dozen ghost stories during the 1920s but never offered them for publication. Two of the best, ‘99 Bridge Street’ and ‘The Mystery of Chickerley Grange’, were published together by Rosemary Pardoe in the Haunted Library series (1982), and a third—‘Poor Nun of Burtisford’—appeared in Ghosts and Scholars 4.
CRISPIN, Edmund (1921–78), whose real name was Robert Bruce Montgomery, was an Oxford scholar, music teacher, and highly successful author of literary detective fiction. Always a great admirer of MRJ, some good Jamesian touches can be found in his first novel The Case of the Gilded Fly (1944: see Chapter 5, ‘Cave Ne Exeat’), and his short story collection Fen Country (1979).
DARE, Marcus Paul (1902–62), archaeologist and antiquarian, wrote one collection of uncanny tales, Unholy Relics, published in 1947 by Edward Arnold as part of the post-MRJ series which included Malden and Caldecott. Dare’s book was dedicated to Montague Summers. Notable among his tales are ‘The Demoniac Goat’ and ‘An Abbot’s Magic’. Shortly before his death, Dare gave an interesting talk on ‘Ghosts I Have Met’ for the BBC Home Service.
DE LA MARE, Walter (1873–1956), celebrated poet and writer of children’s books, is also noted for his memorable adult short stories. These were collected into several volumes, including The Connoisseur (1926), On the Edge (1930), Ghost Stories (Folio Society, 1956), and Eight Tales (Arkham House, 1971). Among his more Jamesian tales are ‘All Hallows’, ‘Crewe’, and ‘A:B:O’.
DICKINSON, William Croft (1897–1963), distinguished Scottish historian and archaeologist, died shortly before his collection Dark Encounters was published. This book was dubbed ‘Ghost Stories of a Scottish Antiquary’ by admirers. Some of the stories had appeared in an earlier collection, The Sweet Singers (1953), which was attractively illustrated by Joan Hassall.
GORDON, John (b.1929), has written a number of fantasy novels and short stories aimed at older children and mostly set in East Anglia. One of his short stories, ‘All the Children’ (in The Spitfire Grave, 1979), refers to a mysterious character named ‘James Rhodes Montague’; but the influence of MRJ is most evident in Gordon’s brilliant weird novel, House on the Brink (1970). A recent fine collection is Catch Your Death (1984).
HARVEY, William Fryer (1885–1937), was a master of the psychological horror story, the most famous being ‘The Beast with Five Fingers’ (1928) filmed in 1946. ‘The Dabblers’ and ‘The Ankardyne Pew’ have been much anthologized. Dr Harvey’s best tales were assembled into a collection by Maurice Richardson in 1946, and republished in an Aldine paperback in 1962.