Curious Warnings - The Great Ghost Stories Of M.R. James (99 page)

“The entry in question was ‘The Malice of Inanimate Objects’; there was a date—1933—and there were references to ‘Masquerade’ and ‘Eton.’ Investigation revealed the existence of an Etonian ephemeral magazine called
The Masquerade
, the first number of which appeared in June 1933. There were two copies extant in the college library. On pages 29 through
32 was a short ghost story, ‘The Malice of Inanimate Objects’ by M.R. James, who was then Provost of Eton.”

The story was finally reprinted in
Ghosts & Scholars
No.6 (1984) and received its first American publication the following year in the August edition of
Rod Serling’s The Twilight Zone Magazine
.

“It is, to be sure,” continued Cox, “far from being one of James’ best stories, and shows every indication of having been written hastily, perhaps in response to a request for a tale from the editors of
The Masquerade
. But it is nonetheless an interesting addition to the corpus of perhaps the greatest modern ghost writer.”

Ghosts & Scholars
was a small magazine that Rosemary Pardoe began publishing in 1979. Dedicated to M.R. James and stories in the Jamesian tradition, the irregular publication included nonfiction contributions from, amongst others, Mike Ashley, Hugh Lamb, Richard Dalby, A.F. Kidd, Christopher and Barbara Roden, and James himself.

In 1987, Dalby edited
Masters of Fantasy 3: M.R. James
for a series of booklets produced by The British Fantasy Society. It not only included a biographical essay and a checklist of first editions by the editor, but Rosemary and Darroll
Pardoe contributed a guide to hotels the author stayed at, and there were reprints of James’ “A School Story” and his
Evening News
article “Ghosts—Treat Them Gently!”—the first time that the latter had seen publication in fifty-six years!

That same year, Dalby and Rosemary Pardoe coedited the illustrated hardcover anthology
Ghosts and Scholars: Ghost Stories in the Tradition of M.R. James
. Along with an Introduction by Michael Cox, the book also included “Ghosts—Treat Them Gently!,” twenty-three short stories, plus two of the better entries in a Christmas ghost story competition selected and judged by James himself on behalf of
The Spectator
magazine (December 27, 1930).

However, perhaps Rosemary Pardoe’s most important contribution to the Jamesian canon was
The Fenstanton Witch and Others
, a fifty-three-page booklet of M.R. James material issued under her own Haunted Library imprint in 1999.

It contained revised versions of the titular short story draft (originally published in
Ghosts & Scholars
No.12 [1990]), “Marcillyle-Hayer” (
Ghosts & Scholars
No.22 [1996]), “John Humphreys” (
Ghosts & Scholars
No.16 [1993]) and “A Night in King’s College Chapel,”
which was possibly written as early as 1892 and received its first publication in
Ghosts & Scholars
No.7 (1985).

The booklet also featured the first publication of the incomplete story drafts “The Game of Bear,” “Speaker Lenthall’s Tomb” (in a severely truncated version) and “Merfield House,” along with a reprint of “The Malice of Inanimate Objects,” the revised transcript of the original notes for a lecture James gave on “The Novels and Stories of J. Sheridan Le Fanu” at the Royal Institution of Great Britain on March 16, 1923 (first published in
Ghosts & Scholars
No.7), a selection of letters written by the author to Sibyl Cropper and another, written in 1928, to Nicholas Llewelyn Davies (with notes by Jack Adrian).

After twenty-one years and thirty-three issues, Pardoe’s
Ghosts & Scholars
changed its name to
The Ghosts & Scholars M.R. James Newsletter
in 2002, ceased publishing fiction and started producing both electronic and paper editions, but soon dropped the electronic version. A twice-yearly hard-copy edition continues to be published today, and the magazine has recently started including fiction again.

Issue No.20 (October 2011) included a previously unpublished supernatural poem by James, contained in a letter written to his family from Cyprus in January 1888. It was titled “Living Night” for its appearance in the twice-yearly periodical.

In 1979, respected British anthologist Peter Haining compiled
M.R. James—Book of the Supernatural
, which brought together various obscure pieces by and about the author (including the stories originally unearthed by Richard Dalby and Hugh Lamb), along with contributions by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu and Erckmann-Chatrian. Sir John Betjeman supplied a brief Foreword, while Christopher Lee was represented by “A Tribute to M.R.J.” The book
was reprinted in America three years later under the title
M.R. James—The Book of Ghost Stories
.

The Ghost Story Press issued
Two Ghost Stories: A Centenary
in 1993, which included facsimile reproductions of the original manuscripts of “Canon Alberic’s Scrap-book” and “Lost Hearts.” Limited to 200 numbered copies, the book was edited by Barbara and Christopher Roden, with an Introduction by Michael Cox and an Afterword by Rosemary Pardoe.

Selected by Ramsey Campbell and published by The British Library in 2001,
Meddling with Ghosts: Stories in the Tradition of M.R. James
was a tribute anthology containing stories by the author’s precursors, contemporaries and successors, along with a useful Bibliography of “The James Gang” by Rosemary Pardoe.

By far the most impressive volume ever produced of the author’s work was
A Pleasing Terror: The Complete Supernatural Writings of M.R. James
, published by Canada’s Ash-Tree Press the same year. Edited once again by the Rodens, this hefty (more than 650 pages) compilation contained annotated versions of all James’ stories and fragments, plus various prefaces and articles. Steve Duffy contributed an Introduction, there was a memoir by S.G. Lubbock, along with a Select Bibliography and a checklist of James on film, radio and television. Boasting thirty-three illustrations and cover art by Paul Lowe, the book was limited to just 1,000 copies and sold for $75.00. It quickly went out of print, and copies nowadays command £300 upward.

In 2004, Rosemary Pardoe published
Occult Sciences
, which featured the first-ever publication of the text of a long talk given by James on February 5, 1881.
Tales from Lectoure
(2006), also from Pardoe, contained the first publication of an even longer talk given by the author on a strange series
of 19th-century folk and supernatural tales from south-west France, and included James’ translations of six of the stories.

Available as a print-on-demand volume from Hippocampus Press in 2007,
Warnings to the Curious: A Sheaf of Criticism on M.R. James
collected twenty-eight essays on the ghost story author, coedited by S.T. Joshi and Rosemary Pardoe.

In 2012—coincidentally the 150th anniversary of the author’s birth—Britain’s Royal Mail issued a commemorative M.R. James stamp as part of its “Britons of Distinction” set, which also featured architects Sir Basil Spence and Augustus Pugin, composer Frederick Delius, textile designer Mary (May) Morris, inventor Thomas Newcomen, opera singer Kathleen Ferrier, mathematician and code-breaker Alan Turing, social reformer Joan Mary Fry, and World War II secret agent Odette Sansom Hallowes.

The First Class stamp featured a photo of the “Cambridge academic and author of chilling ghost stories” from the collection of the National Portrait Gallery.

M.R. James’ antiquarian ghost stories—despite their somewhat archaic language and dry protagonists—are as popular today as when they were first published, more than eighty years ago.

When asked about his approach to writing this kind of fiction, the author self-deprecatorily replied: “There is no receipt for success in this form of fiction more than in any other. The public, as Dr. Johnson said, are the ultimate judges: if they are pleased, it is well; if not, it is no use to tell them why they ought to have been pleased.”

Given the enduring popularity of Dr. James’ ghostly tales, I think that we can safely assume that the public is still very pleased indeed.

Stephen Jones

London, England

September, 2011