Ghosts & Scholars 50 - The Final Issue

  

The final issue of the long-running M.R. James journal Ghosts & Scholars, no 50, has recently been published. Edited by Rosemary Pardoe and Andy Sawyer, this is an extra large issue, at 60pp.

Ghosts & Scholars was founded in 1979 by Rosemary, who edited it for 33 issues between 1979 – 2001. It was replaced by her The Ghosts & Scholars M. R. James Newsletter, which was similar, but generally excluded fiction. This also ran for 33 issues from March 2002 to April 2018. Ghosts & Scholars then resumed from October 2018 (no 34), still edited by Rosemary Pardoe, and it then continued under her guidance but with guest editors or co-editors from no 38 onwards.

The farewell issue includes cover artwork by Jim Pitts and Daniel McGachey, stories by Katherine Haynes, Helen Grant, Daniel McGachey, C.J. Faraday and Josh Reynolds, a poetic tribute by Tina Rath, and non-fiction by Jim Bryant, Rick Kennett, Michael Fogus, John Howard and the editors, along with seven pages of reviews. This issue is limited to 250 copies.

All subscriber copies have been posted. Copies of this issue and of some back issues may be available from Andy Richards at Cold Tonnage Books.

‘“Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come To You, My Lad”’: An Edition of M. R. James’ Manuscript

  

Crumpled Linen Press, run by Mark Jones and Paul M. Chapman, is a new publisher devoted to ‘beautiful facsimile manuscript editions of great literary works, annotated by world-leading scholars’.

Their first project involves annotated editions of the ghost story manuscripts of M.R. James, starting with  ‘“Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come To You, My Lad”’.

The edition will include a reproduction of James’ original manuscript for the story, with his deletions, amendments and second thoughts; a scholarly introduction, and notes; newly commissioned illustrations; and supporting articles.

Contributors include Jim Bryant, Peter Bell, Thom Burgess, Brian Corrigan, Jon Dear, Helen Grant,  Darryl Jones, Robert Lloyd Parry, Roger Luckhurst, James Machin, Rosemary Pardoe and Mark Valentine.

It will be published as a dustjacketed hardback in a limited edition of 250 copies. A fundraising campaign is due to be launched in March. The Press invite you to join their mailing list to be notified of this and other news.

The Press hope to follow this with an edition of the manuscript of ‘The Mezzotint’, and are working with the relevant libraries and archives on further James stories too.

 

Whistle and I'll Come to You - Death And Vanilla

Swedish band Death And Vanilla have just released a 'livescore' for Jonathan Miller's television dramatisation of an M.R. James story, Whistle and I'll Come To You, as a limited edition white vinyl record and as a digital download. It is in effect an imagined new soundtrack to the classic 1968 BBC ghost story. 

The ambient, atmospheric music has a melancholy, wistful (and whistlefull) tone, and includes eerie naturalistic effects of the winds, sands and sea. The group's inspirations include "60s sci-fi soundtracks, the [BBC] Radiophonic Workshop" and retro-futurism, placing them in the Ghost Box and hauntology mode. Their interpretation certainly complements Miller's low-key, grainy photography, use of near- silence and murmurs, and subtle invocation of the sinister. 

(Mark Valentine)

Monologues for the Curious

On 21 July, 2025, the BBC Proms are presenting 'Monologues for the Curious', a new, 25 minute, contemporary classical work for tenor and orchestra by composer Tom Coult, based on fragments from M.R. James stories. It will be performed by singer Allan Clayton and the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra at the Royal Albert Hall, on a bill with Mahler's Seventh.

 

The composer is no stranger to the supernatural and fantastic. He has written 'Spirit of the Staircase', for 17 instruments (2016), 'Inventions (for Heath Robinson)', for piano  (2019), 'Two Nocturnes and A Maze', for horn, viola and piano (2022), 'Three Pieces That Disappear', for orchestra' (2023) and 'Black Shuck Lament', for tenor and strings (2025).

 

The last of these "uses extracts from contemporary accounts of 'black shuck', a demonic black dog that seems to have roamed East Anglia from around the 12th century, terrorising locals . . .".

 

Tom Coult's recent debut album, Pieces That Disappear, is available from NMC Recordings.

 

(Mark Valentine)

 

A Checklist of Haunted Library Booklets

Haunted Library, founded in 1979, is the imprint of Rosemary Pardoe for her journals Ghosts & Scholars and The Ghosts & Scholars M.R. James Newsletter, and for a series of booklets of Jamesian stories or essays. The checklist of the booklets given below has been compiled by Rosemary.

1. Eye Hath Not Seen: Supernatural Anecdotes from the Reminiscences of Father D. O'Connor (David  G. Rowlands, 1980)

2. 99 Bridge Street (William Fairlie Clark, 1982)

3. Saints & Relics (David G. Rowlands, A.F. Kidd, Roger Johnson, Darroll Pardoe, 1983)

4. Hag's Tapestry (Jessica Amanda Salmonson, 1984)

5. Watch the Birdie (Ramsey Campbell, 1984)

6. A Graven Image and Other Essex Ghost Stories (David G. Rowlands, Roger Johnson, Mary Ann Allen, 1985)

7. When the Door is Shut and Other Ghost Stories by 'B' ([A.C. Benson], 1986)

8. An Empty House and Other Stories (Ron Weighell, 1986)

9. Angles of Coincidence: Rennes le Chateau and the Magdalen Mystery (Ron Weighell, 1987)

10. The Moon-Gazer and One Other ('DNJ', 1988)

11. Binscombe Tales (John Whitbourn, 1989)

12. Harmless Ghosts (Jessica Amanda Salmonson, 1990)

13. Rollover Night: More Binscombe Tales (John Whitbourn, 1990)

14. Absences: Charlie Goode's Ghosts (Steve Rasnic Tem, 1991)

15. The Reluctant Ghost-Hunter (Rick Kennett, 1991)

16. The James Gang: A Bibliography of Writers in the M.R. James Tradition ([Rosemary Pardoe], 1991)

17. Spirits of Another Sort: Ghostly Tales of Tompion College (Alan W. Lear, 1992)

18. Popes & Phantoms (John Whitbourn, 1992)

19. Supernatural Pursuits (William I.I. Read, 1993)

20. A Binscombe Tale for Christmas (John Whitbourn, 1994)

21. The Greater Arcana (Ron Weighell, 1994)

22. A Binscombe Tale for Summer (John Whitbourn, 1996)

23. Call of the Tentacle (William I.I. Read, 1997)

24. The Fenstanton Witch and Others: M.R. James in Ghosts & Scholars (1999)

25. Occult Sciences (M.R. James, 2004)

26. Tales from Lectoure (M.R. James, 2006)

27. A Bibliography of the Writings of M.R. James (Rosemary Pardoe, 2007)

28. Ex Libris: Lufford (Daniel McGachey, 2012)

29. Ting-a-Ling-a-Ling (Daniel McGachey, 2017)

30. The Bishop's Inventory (Jane Jakeman, 2019)

No’s 25-30 were issued as supplements to Ghosts & Scholars or The Ghosts & Scholars M.R. James Newsletter. In addition, Jacqueline Simpson's Where are the Bones? and Other Stories (2019) was a joint Haunted Library/Supernatural Tales production. There are also a few other booklets such as The Cropton Lane Farm Murders, and those issued alongside subsequent issues of Ghosts & Scholars under guest editors, which didn't have the Haunted Library imprint.

 

The Centenary of "Ghosts and Marvels" edited by V.H. Collins

Ghosts and Marvels: A Selection of Uncanny Tales from Daniel Defoe to Algernon Blackwood, published in December 1924, is a small pocket-sized book of some 506 pages plus some xvi pages of front-matter. It is one volume of "The World's Classics" series published by Oxford University Press (the imprint was begun in 1901 by Grant Richards, and purchased by Oxford University Press in 1906). While the stories included are top shelf, making for an excellent anthology in and of itself (see the contents pages reproduced below), that is only a small part of the reason for celebrating this book's centenary. The main reason is that the editor or publisher had the inspired idea to get M.R. James to write the nine-page introduction. James begins with a statement that he is not responsible for the stories included, which gives him the chance to criticize or praise freely.  James continues:

Often I have been asked to formulate my views about ghost stories and tales of the marvellous, the mysterious, the supernatural. Never have I been able to find out whether I had any views that could be formulated. The truth is, I suspect, that the genre  is too small and special to bear the imposition of far-reaching principles. Widen the question, and ask what governs the construction of short stories in general, and a great deal might be said, and has been said. There are, of course, instances of whole novels in which the supernatural governs the plot; but among them are few successes. The ghost story is, at its best, only a particular sort of short story, and is subject to the same broad rules as the whole mass of them. Those rules, I imagine, no writer ever consciously follows. In fact it is absurd to talk of them as rules; they are qualities which have been observed to accompany success.

Then James continues with his views and personal impressions. It is a valuable introduction because it is one of the few essays by James on the type of literature in which he himself would achieve great acclaim, with his antiquarian ghost stories.

The editor V. H. Collins was Vere Henry Gratz Collins (1872-1966), who was born in Windsor of an Irish father and a Canadian-Jewish mother, and who studied at Balliol College, Oxford, receiving Third Class degrees in 1892 and 1894. After some years as a schoolmaster, he worked for many years at Oxford University Press in London. He edited singly, and with others, more than a few dozens books for Oxford University Press, including Poems of Home and Overseas (1921), co-edited with Charles Williams, the poet and novelist who was later a member of the Inklings. Collins does not seem to have been much interested in the weird fiction genre (it was his boss, Humphrey Milford, who instructed him to compile the anthology), but he knew whom to ask for advice and recommendations. Charles Williams is thanked by Collins in both Ghost and Marvels ("the compiler owes thanks to . . . Charles Williams, from whose wide reading and judgement he has benefited throughout the preparation of the book") and its sequel, More Ghosts and Marvels: A Selection of Uncanny Tales from Sir Walter Scott to Michael Arlen (1927, with an identically worded acknowledgement to Williams). 

In 1952, Collins published under the pseudonym Mark Tellar, A Young Man's Passage: An Intimate Autobiography of the Victorian Age (London: Home and Van Thal), which told (with identities disguised) candidly of his passionless first marriage (in 1897) and subsequent divorce, his numerous affairs with prostitutes and his sharing his personal sexual history with Havelock Ellis, the pioneer sexologist. The first chapter tells, sympathetically, the tragic story of Collins's father, Dr. William Maunsell Collins (1844-1926), whose increasing money problems led to charges of forgery in 1892, and in 1898, he was convicted of manslaughter in the death of a upper class married woman upon whom he had performed an illegal abortion, a crime he had been suspected of at least once previously. The TLS noted that "Mr. Tellar conceals little. . . . He rarely passes judgment on those who condemned him. His invented dialogue is seldom artificial. . . . And yet, on closing the book, the reader is left with wondering--without malice--what impelled him to write it" (6 June 1952).

A Victoria County History Ghost Story

The Victoria County History is a distinguished series of chronicles for the old shires of England, weighty volumes in venerable bindings. Professor Catherine Clark, the Director of the series, recently posted on their website a 'VCH Ghost Story', which begins: 'This curious and disconcerting letter was found recently in the archive of the Victoria County History of England (addressed to then-General Editor, William Page) and is published here for the first time.' 

There follows an excellent yarn in the Jamesian antiquarian tradition. Like an earlier notable Jamesian tale, 'The Face in the Fresco' by Arnold Smith (London Mercury 104, June 1928; and in The Second Mercury Story Book, 1931), the story involves a now incomplete medieval doom painting, to which are added in the VCH story enigmatic Latin inscriptions and a veritable slough of despond. The tale also has a poignant resonance for the date of its setting, 1914.

In an end-note, Professor Clarke explains: 'The piece above is a homage to both M.R. James and the early history of the VCH', marking the 125th anniversary of the VCH series and the 120th anniversary of M.R. James' Ghost Stories of An Antiquary. 

Readers are invited to celebrate these too: 'Are you inspired to write your own VCH ghost story? We’d love to see your stories, of any length, and to share them (with your permission). There might be a prize for the best . . . We invite you to email them to Catherine Clarke, VCH Director, or share on social media with #VCHGhostStory.'

(Mark Valentine)

Ghosts & Scholars 47

The latest issue of the M.R. James journal Ghosts & Scholars is now available. Issue 47 has been guest edited by Helen Kemp, with cover artwork by Loretta Nikolic.

This issue includes four new stories in the Jamesian tradition, ‘The Light of Darkness’ by David A. Sutton, ‘A Crooked Path’ by Josh Reynolds, ‘Professor Parkin’s Christmas Holiday’ by Tina Rath and ‘Whitaker on Daemons’ by George Frost.

In non-fiction, Katherine Haynes asks ‘Is George Martin bewitched and is he a murderer?’, in a new consideration of MRJ’s ‘Martin’s Close’, and Dr Richard Hoggett discusses ‘M.R. James and the Abbey of St.Edmund, Bury St. Edmunds’. Norman Darwen provides a note on M.R. James and the psychic researcher Harry Price, while in her regular column Rosemary Pardoe argues that MRJ’s stories are not characteristically Victorian and that they do have, like more modern stories, elements of doubt and ambiguity. There are also book and podcast reviews.

Update: this issue may still be available from Cold Tonnage Books. 

(All subscriber copies have been posted.)

 

Finding E.G. Swain and M.R. James in an Unexpected Place

In The Visitors’ Book: A Family Album (1978) by Christopher Simon Sykes, I found the following interesting passage about Mark Sykes (1879-1919), the "Grandpapa" of the writer Christopher Simon Sykes:

At Cambridge his tutor, the Rev. E. G. Swain of King's College, immediately recognized that, while Grandpapa had no interest whatsoever in the drudgery of preparing for exams and the like, here was a remarkable young man who was head and shoulders above most of the other undergraduates in his knowledge of the world and of the things that matter, and who was also excellent company. As such he introduced him to Dr Montagu James, the great writer of ghost stories and then Dean of King's, with whom Grandpapa struck up an instant friendship. Every evening was open house in the rooms of Monty James and in his autobiography he wrote of 'the delirious evenings in which it was perfectly useless to think you could get anything done the moment you saw Mark put a round, enquiring face (into which he would throw the expression of a stage yokel) round the edge of the door'. He would soon be sitting cross-legged on the sofa holding the company spellbound, perhaps with one of his many impersonations, such as a Yorkshire tenant or a Turkish official speaking French, or maybe with a re-enactment of some melodrama he had seen recently, in which he would take all the parts himself. His “amazing skill” as an actor greatly impressed Monty James. “Whatever it was,' he wrote, 'there was genius in it.”

A bit of further digging produced a long passage in Shane Leslie's Mark Sykes: His Life and Letters (1923), which I quote here.

He was coached by the Rev. E. G. Swain, of King’s, whose impression remains fresh in spite of the years which have elapsed. He writes:

“I soon discovered that he had no more than the mildest curiosity about the examination, but a great readiness to receive and discuss any information that could be brought within the four corners of the subject. He had his own notions concerning what he wanted to learn, and was not to be diverted from them. He had also his own views about the importance of his engagements with me in relation to other engagements that clashed with them. About once a week his man McEwen appeared in his place with a message to the effect that Mr. Sykes regretted that he ‘could not attend upon my instructions that day,’ the words being evidently those of McEwen. Sykes was in no way well taught. There were many matters usually learned at school of which he was altogether ignorant, probably because he had no desire to learn them; I mean things like accidence and syntax. It was a side of language he had been allowed to neglect, and I doubt whether he would ever have acquired any precision in the use of language. A pupil of this kind was obviously not one to be kept in hiding. Sykes was soon introduced into the social circle in King’s that formed round Dr. Montagu James, who was then Dean. He never failed to be unobtrusively amusing, and, since none of us had had experiences like his, he was always interesting. His experiences of travel, acute observation, retentive memory and great powers of mimicry supplied him with means of entertainment such as no one else possessed, and it was unusual for an evening to pass when we were together without Sykes having impersonated a Yorkshire tenant or labourer or soldier, or a dragoman or sheikh or Turkish official. The performance always contained something new, if one may give the name of performance to what he did so simply and unassumingly. It was never twice alike. He could have taken the ordinary degree easily enough if he had set himself to do it, but it never seemed to him worth doing. He seemed to be always looking round the University to see how it might best serve him, and to follow his own conclusions without considering the views of other people or whether his practice were usual or unusual. He seemed to me to do this with great sagacity, and I heard from him many criticisms of University studies and organization which would have been heard with attention in a Senate House discussion. He was full of acute observation and criticism of everything about him. I remember, for example, that I profited greatly by some observation of his in relation to the work of chaplains in the Boer War. He was surprisingly mature, and in this respect different from the ordinary undergraduate. He had a line of his own in everything. The power of close application to what did not immediately interest him, if he ever had it, was lost before he appeared at Cambridge. He had plenty of purpose, and his aims were serious and worthy. It would be hard to find another instance of a wealthy young man, completely his own master, who lived so simply or held so firmly to high principles. The pleasures purchasable with money had no place in his life, and he pursued his own good way, whether at home or abroad, entirely unmoved by the temptations incidental to his circumstances and leisure. I am inclined to think that Cambridge did a great deal for him. He became intimate with men of great learning and saw how work was done. He was always observant and appreciative, and I know none of these men whom he did not greatly interest or in whom his early death did not occasion unusually deep regret.”

King’s College preserved such an intellectual ascendancy among the other colleges that of the neighbouring St. Catherine’s it was only allowed that “a cat may look at a King,” and Jesus men were seldom called into King’s circles unless to improve the style of a racing crew. Mark was an exception, and, though a little contemptuous of the academic mind, showed a real friendship for Dr. Montagu James. To admire Dr. James was really a liberal education, for he was equally qualified to step upon the Attic Stage or into the Alexandrine Library or into a Renaissance Cardinalate. He was an entirely novel luminary on Mark’s horizon, and Mark, with his instinct for great men, never lost sight of him. He personified miraculous learning, the power of easy knowledge, and slightly Olympian companionship. Dr. James was almost uncanny in the rapidity and sureness of his scholarship. Already legend played like an aureole over his unpuzzled brow. As an Eton boy he had been noticed muttering gutturals of an unknown tongue while reading from what his masters mistook for a book upside down. This proved to be a Coptic Gospel, which Master James translated and sent to Queen Victoria without ceremony. Sir Henry Ponsonby returned the translation to the headmaster, who, being without imagination or Oriental knowledge himself, felt called upon to swish the learned writer for tese-majestt. Dr. James’s accuracy in literary detection had enabled him to pick out so many hidden quotations from the lost Gospel of St. Peter that he actually reconstructed the Gospel before it was rediscovered as a whole. His knowledge of mediaeval bookmarks had enabled him to catalogue several non-existent libraries which had been scattered since the Reformation. He could not only give the date and diocese of an illuminated missal placed in his hands, but he could often recognize the very handwriting. One of his best monographs, on the Lady Chapel in Ely Cathedral, he actually finished by writing on his knees in the train between Cambridge and Ely. A specimen of Dr. James’s learning may be given in a note to Mark (June 12, 1912) : “The fragment is from a very fine English Bible of cent, xii. It is the initial of the Book of Obadiah, and represents Obadiah — not really the prophet, but Ahab’s steward, who was always identified with the prophet in old times — feeding the prophets of the Lord by fifties in a cave. I believe it would be worth while to take it to the Lambeth Library and see whether it does not conform to MS. 3 there, which is a fine Bible of that date. In that book there is no pictured initial to Obadiah. Possibly yours may be a fragment of that very book. There are few Bibles of the kind about. The big Bible at Winchester Cathedral also seems to have no Obadiah picture.”

Dr. James seemed to work outside the usual bounds of time and space, and accordingly he had leisure to entertain those who were wise enough to invite themselves to his rooms. The frequentation of Dr. James’s famous suite on the great court at King’s was a semi-social educative process known among Old Etonians as “ keeping Montem.” On the impressionable Mark this process made a great impression. Here was a striking contrast to the official pedant, for Dr. James’s rooms were neither didactic nor dreary. Manuscripts and priceless texts often strewed the table amid pipes and siphons, but the humorous yarn and the thrilling ghost story filled the longer pauses. It was often all that Mark’s wit could do to keep up with the scintillating conversation; but he generally could say something, and if he could not add to the general knowledge he could let loose his powers of mimicry. Dr. James himself admitted of lighter moments and allowed himself to repeat with exquisite drollery statements attributable to other members of the college corporation. On many a winter’s evening, while Mark recited cross-legged on a sofa, twisting and pounding his face to suit each story as he told it, Dr. James could be seen making interminable tea, his thin features laughing noiselessly behind his spectacles — the reserved and rippling laugh of the unvintaged sea. Dr. James used to be most pleased .when Mark imitated the Turkish officials. If the man of the world was amazed by the man of the study, the man of the study was amused by the man of the world. “Monty” James made a most pleasing and direct counterbalance to Monte Carlo in Mark’s education.

In Dr. James’s rooms Mark even learnt something about Thackeray and Dickens, as well as being inspired to search for Greek inscriptions during his Eastern travels. In the Lent term of 1898 he visited the Hauran alone with his Arab servants and discovered an inscription not recorded in the Corpus. Though he had been unable to face the Greek test in the “Little Go,” he brought back a notebook full of various transcriptions which Dr. James was able to pronounce “astonishingly faithful and intelligent.” [pp. 51-56]