Read Collected Ghost Stories Online
Authors: M. R. James,Darryl Jones
Collected Ghost Stories (82 page)
268
G
REAT
C
HRISHALL
: the villages of Great Chishill and Chrishall, which share a common etymology, are a mile or so apart, one either side of the Cambridgeshire–Essex border.
B
——: ‘Bicester’ in the MS; a town north of Oxford.
269
W. R
.
: MS follows this with a deleted sentence: ‘P. S. Perhaps I ought not to joke about what may turn out a tragedy: but I can’t help thinking that Uncle H’s figure is not very well adapted to the vanishing trick.’
K
ING’S
H
EAD
, Dec. 23,’37
: MS reads ‘King’s Head, Bicester Dec. 23.’37’. There is still a King’s Head in Bicester.
Woodley
: a town in Berkshire, about 30 miles from Bicester.
270
bands
: ‘A pair of strips … hanging down in front, as part of clerical, legal or academic dress’ (
SOED
).
Bow Street
: the Bow Street Runners, the first organized, professional London police force, was established by Henry Fielding in 1749.
on the qui vive
: on the lookout (from a French sentinel’s call, ‘Long live who?’).
271
Boniface
: the landlord in George Farquhar’s play
The Beaux’ Stratagem
(1707).
Boz
: the pen name of Charles Dickens in his early years as a writer;
Sketches by Boz
was a collection of short pieces published to great success in 1836, the year before this story is set.
what the Scripture terms a hairy man
: Genesis 27: 11, from the story of Jacob and Esau: ‘And Jacob said to Rebekah his mother, Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man.’
273
bagman
: a commercial traveller. This may be another allusion to early Dickens: ‘The Story of the Bagman’s Uncle’ is a ghost story which comprises chapter 49 of
The Pickwick Papers
(1837). On 26 December, the narrator reads ‘the last number of
Pickwick
’.
Punch and Judy Show
: the specifics of the Punch and Judy show are important to this story. Punch and Judy is an English puppet show derived from the Italian
commedia dell’arte
, and featuring the violent, anarchic, stick-wielding Mr Punch (shortened from Punchinello), who bests a series of stock characters, traditionally including his wife Judy, a policeman, a crocodile, various foreigners, a baby, Toby the Dog (often, as here, a real dog, dressed in a ruff), Jack Ketch the Hangman, and even
the Devil himself. The first reference to Punchinello in England is by Samuel Pepys, whose diary records seeing a show on 9 May 1662.
273
W
——: MS reads ‘Brackley’, a town in Northamptonshire, a few miles up the road from Bicester.
274
I believe someone once tried to re-write Punch as a serious tragedy
: John Payne Collier (1789–1883),
The Tragical Comedy or Comical Tragedy of Punch and Judy
(1828). This was published as part of Collier’s critical study
Punch and Judy: A Short History with the Original Dialogue
, with illustrations by the Dickensian illustrator George Cruickshank.
the Vampyre in Fuseli’s foul sketch
: a reference to
The Nightmare
(1781) by Henry Fuseli (Johann Heinrich Füssli, 1741–1825), one of the iconic paintings of Romanticism, depicting a goblin or incubus squatting on the chest of a sleeping woman.
Shallabalah
: another Dickensian allusion, from
The Old Curiosity Shop
,
chapter 16
: ‘the foreign gentleman who not being familiar with the language is unable in the representation to express his ideas other than by the utterance of the word “Shallabalah” three distinct times’.
The organ wolved
: ‘Wolve: Of an organ: To give forth a hollow wailing sound like the howl of a wolf, from deficient wind-supply’ (
SOED
).
our friend Smith
: possibly a personal reference, to MRJ’s Old Etonian friend (and former member of the Chitchat Society), Henry Babington Smith.
Turncock … beadle
: a turncock is ‘A waterworks official who turns on the water from the mains to the supply-pipes’ (
SOED
). Not a stock Punch and Judy character, but MRJ perhaps meant to write ‘turnkey’ (jailer), a character who does feature in Punch and Judy. A beadle is a minor official of the court or church, charged with keeping order.
279
Mr. Ketch
: Jack Ketch (d. 1686), executioner in the reign of Charles II; afterwards a proverbial name for all executioners.
First published in
TG
; reprinted in
CGS
. MS not located.
281
Gray’s Inn
: Holborn, London; one of the four Inns of Court, the centres of London’s legal profession.
Islington
: a suburb of north London; certainly no longer ‘a countrified place’.
282
bedstaff
: ‘A stick used in some way about a bed, formerly handy as a weapon’ (
SOED
). The ‘matter of the bedstaff’, repeated on three occasions in the story, presumably refers to Dr Abell’s ‘power of communicating motion and energy into inanimate objects’, such as the poker on
p. 284
.
Battle Bridge
: Battle Bridge Field is west of Gray’s Inn Road, London.
distinguo
: ‘I differentiate’; a term used to draw distinctions in argument in medieval scholasticism. See Ignacio Angelleli, ‘The Techniques of Disputation in the History of Logic’,
Journal of Philosophy
, 67/20 (October 1970), 800–15.
283
the satyr which Jerome tells us conversed with Antony
: St Jerome (
c
. 347–420), Church Father, translator of the Bible into Latin (the Vulgate). In his
Life of St Paul the Hermit
, Jerome records how St Antony discourses with a satyr and a centaur, whose language he finds himself miraculously able to speak. The satyr asks Antony for his blessing.
John Milton’s
: the quotation is from
Paradise Lost
, iv.677–8.
Royal Society
: the Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, learned scientific society, founded 1662.
Mysore
: city in Karnataka, southern India. According to Hindu legend, Mysore was once ruled by the demon Mahishasura.
286
a coronet and a bird
: presumably the heraldic symbols of the ‘noble family’ of Middlesex from whose mausoleum the bedsheets (or shroud) were stolen.
287
tickleminded
: this might simply mean sensitive or easily upset, though the
SOED
defines ‘tickle-brain’ as ‘potent liquor’, and so this might imply alcoholism.
Written for the library of Queen Mary’s Doll’s House in Windsor, designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens in 1920. Other tiny works in the library were by Arthur Conan Doyle, Hilaire Belloc, Thomas Hardy, and others. See Mary Stewart-Wilson and David Cripps,
Queen Mary’s Doll’s House
(London: Ebury Press, 1996). First published in the
Empire Review
(February 1923), reprinted in
WTC
and
CGS
. MS not located.
291
Strawberry Hill Gothic
: Horace Walpole (1717–97), author of
The Castle of Otranto
(1764), generally reckoned to be the first Gothic novel in English, acquired Strawberry Hill, near Richmond, west London, in 1748, and renovated it in spectacular neo-Gothic style. ‘Strawberry Hill Gothic’ became an influential architectural mode for the nineteenth-century Gothic revival in architecture.
ogival hoods … crockets … finials
: ogival hoods: ‘Having the form or outline of an ogive or pointed (“Gothic”) arch’ (
SOED
); crockets: ‘small ornaments, usually in the form of buds or curled leaves, placed on the the insides of pinnacles, canopies, etc., in Gothic architecture’ (
SOED
); a finial is ‘An ornament placed upon the apex of a roof, pediment, or gable, or upon each corner of a tower’ (
SOED
).
294
perron
: ‘A platform, ascended by steps, in front of a church, mansion, etc., and upon which the door or doors open’ (
SOED
).
294
posset
: a drink made of hot milk, alcohol, and spices, used as a cold remedy.
295
truckle-beds
: beds on castors or tracks, for storage underneath another bed when not in use.
297
physicks me
: ‘To physic’ means ‘To dose with … a purgative’, or ‘To treat with remedies’ (
SOED
); but here in its colloquial usage, meaning something like ‘to puzzle’ or ‘to confound’.
298
Canterbury and York Society’s
: society for the publication of episcopal and archepiscopal records, founded 1904.
Coxham
…
Ilbridge House
: both fictitious.
Vitruvius
: Marcus Vitruvius Pollo (first century
BCE
), Roman architect and engineer. His
De Architectura
was rediscovered in the Renaissance, and became the most important sourcebook for neoclassical architecture. Thus, Roger Merewether’s interest in Gothic runs totally counter to his training as a neoclassical architect, and can be said here to represent his unconscious, unofficial, or murderous self.
299
quoins and dressings
: quoins are the stoneworkings at the external angles of a building; dressings are ‘projecting mouldings on a surface’ (
SOED
). This new building is neither neo-Classical nor neo-Gothic, but ‘an Elizabethan erection of the [eighteen-] forties’.
First published in the
Atlantic Monthly
, 127/6 (June 1921), 756–65. Reprinted in
WTC
and
CGS
. Eton College Library MS 367.
300
Gaulsford
…
Leventhorp House … Longbridge … the valley of the Tent … Stanford St. Thomas and Stanford Magdalene
: these are fictitious places, though Cox II (
p. 331
) suggests that the story is set in the valley of the Teme, near the English–Welsh border in Herefordshire and Worcestershire. The Teme flows through both Stanford Bridge and Stanford-on-Teme. MS has ‘the Leventhorp house’;
Atlantic Monthly
has ‘the Leventhorp House’.
302
Gregory singin’
: Gregorian chanting, or plainsong. Associated with the Oxford Movement in the nineteenth century, and thus a sign of High Church Anglicanism.
da capo
: literally ‘from the top’, used in music to signify ‘repeat from the beginning’.
303
the plague-year
: 1665–6, when bubonic plague may have killed as many as 100,000 Londoners. Daniel Defoe published a fictionalized record,
The Journal of the Plague Year
, in 1722.
Cromwell, Ireton, Bradshaw, Peters
: all notable figures in the Parliamentary cause during the English Civil War (1641–51), all condemned for regicide. Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) was leader of the Parliamentary army and Lord Protector of England, 1653–8. Henry Ireton (1611–51),
Cromwell’s son-in-law, was a general in the Parliamentary army. John Bradshaw (1602–59) was the judge who presided over the trial of Charles I, and later Lord President of the Council of State of the English Republic. Hugh Peters (1598–1660) was a celebrated Cromwellite preacher.
Lady Sadleir
: Lady Anne Sadleir (1585–1671/2). Literary patron and major donor to the library of Trinity College Cambridge, which MRJ had catalogued from 1897.
Rural Life
: a disguised version of
Country Life
.
304
chancel
: the eastern part of a church, where the priest officiates.