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    A Thin Ghost and Others - A Collection of Ghostly Tales (Fantasy and Horror Classics)
    A Thin Ghost and Others - A Collection of Ghostly Tales (Fantasy and Horror Classics)
    A Thin Ghost and Others - A Collection of Ghostly Tales (Fantasy and Horror Classics)
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    A Thin Ghost and Others - A Collection of Ghostly Tales (Fantasy and Horror Classics)

    By M. R. James

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    About this ebook

    M. R. James was born in Kent, England in 1862. James came to writing fiction relatively late, not publishing his first collection of short stories - Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) - until the age of 42. Modern scholars now see James as having redefined the ghost story for the 20th century and he is seen as the founder of the 'antiquarian ghost story'. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions with a brand new introductory biography of the author.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRead Books Ltd.
    Release dateJan 18, 2016
    ISBN9781473379183
    A Thin Ghost and Others - A Collection of Ghostly Tales (Fantasy and Horror Classics)
    Author

    M. R. James

    Montague Rhodes James was born in 1862 at Goodnestone Parsonage, Kent, where his father was a curate, but the family moved soon afterwards to Great Livermere in Suffolk. James attended Eton College and later King's College Cambridge where he won many awards and scholarships. From 1894 to 1908 he was Director of the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge and from 1905 to 1918 was Provost of King's College. In 1913, he became Vice-Chancellor of the University for two years. In 1918 he was installed as Provost of Eton. A distinguished medievalist and scholar of international status, James published many works on biblical and historical antiquarian subjects. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1930. His ghost story writing began almost as a divertissement from his academic work and as a form of entertainment for his colleagues. His first collection, Ghost Stories of an Antiquary was published in 1904. He never married and died in 1936.

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      Book preview

      A Thin Ghost and Others - A Collection of Ghostly Tales (Fantasy and Horror Classics) - M. R. James

      A THIN GHOST

      AND OTHERS

      A COLLECTION OF GHOSTLY TALES

      -FANTASY AND HORROR CLASSICS-

      BY

      M. R. JAMES

      Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

      This book is copyright and may not be

      reproduced or copied in any way without

      the express permission of the publisher in writing

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

      PROVOST OF ETON COLLEGE

      Author of

      Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, More Ghost Stories, etc.

      Contents

      M. R. James

      THE RESIDENCE AT WHITMINSTER

      THE DIARY OF MR. POYNTER

      AN EPISODE OF CATHEDRAL HISTORY

      THE STORY OF A DISAPPEARANCE AND AN APPEARANCE

      TWO DOCTORS

      M. R. James

      Montague Rhodes James was born in Kent, England in 1862. An intellectually gifted child, he excelled academically at both Temple Grove School and Eton College before enrolling at King’s College, Cambridge. A highly respected scholar to this day, James’ areas of research interest were apocryphal Biblical literature and mediaeval illuminated manuscripts. He was, by turns, Fellow, Dean, and Tutor at King’s College, and in 1905 was installed as Provost. James was a highly sociable man, and he travelled widely throughout Europe.

      James came to writing fiction relatively late, not publishing his first collection of short stories – Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) – until the age of 42. Many of his tales were written as Christmas Eve entertainments and read aloud to friends. James described his introduction to ghosts in 1931: In my childhood I chanced to see a toy Punch and Judy set, with figures cut out in cardboard. One of these was The Ghost. It was a tall figure habited in white with an unnaturally long and narrow head, also surrounded with white, and a dismal visage. Upon this my conceptions of a ghost were based, and for years it permeated my dreams. James believed that must a good story must put the reader into the position of saying to himself: ‘If I’m not careful, something of this kind may happen to me!’ He eventually published five collections of his ghost stories, all of which were reprinted and adapted numerous times.

      Modern scholars now see James as having redefined the ghost story for the 20th century by abandoning many of the formal Gothic clichés of his predecessors and using more realistic contemporary settings. However, James’s tales tend to reflect his own antiquarian interests, and he is seen as the founder of the ‘antiquarian ghost story’. His first two collections – Ghost Stories of an Antiquary (1904) and More Ghost Stories (1911) – are generally regarded as his most important, containing as they do the well-known stories ‘Number 13’, ‘Count Magnus’, ‘Oh, Whistle and I’ll Come to You, My Lad’ and ‘Casting the Runes’.

      The onset of World War One marked the beginning of the end of James’ golden years in Cambridge. In 1918, he accepted the post of Provost of Eton College. He was awarded the Order of Merit in 1930, and died in 1936, aged 73.

      A Thin Ghost and Others

      THE RESIDENCE AT WHITMINSTER

      Dr. Ashton—Thomas Ashton, Doctor of Divinity—sat in his study, habited in a dressing-gown, and with a silk cap on his shaven head—his wig being for the time taken off and placed on its block on a side table. He was a man of some fifty-five years, strongly made, of a sanguine complexion, an angry eye, and a long upper lip. Face and eye were lighted up at the moment when I picture him by the level ray of an afternoon sun that shone in upon him through a tall sash window, giving on the west. The room into which it shone was also tall, lined with book-cases, and, where the wall showed between them, panelled. On the table near the doctor’s elbow was a green cloth, and upon it what he would have called a silver standish—a tray with inkstands—quill pens, a calf-bound book or two, some papers, a churchwarden pipe and brass tobacco-box, a flask cased in plaited straw, and a liqueur glass. The year was 1730, the month December, the hour somewhat past three in the afternoon.

      I have described in these lines pretty much all that a superficial observer would have noted when he looked into the room. What met Dr. Ashton’s eye when he looked out of it, sitting in his leather arm-chair? Little more than the tops of the shrubs and fruit-trees of his garden could be seen from that point, but the red brick wall of it was visible in almost all the length of its western side. In the middle of that was a gate—a double gate of rather elaborate iron scroll-work, which allowed something of a view beyond. Through it he could see that the ground sloped away almost at once to a bottom, along which a stream must run, and rose steeply from it on the other side, up to a field that was park-like in character, and thickly studded with oaks, now, of course, leafless. They did not stand so thick together but that some glimpse of sky and horizon could be seen between their stems. The sky was now golden and the horizon, a horizon of distant woods, it seemed, was purple.

      But all that Dr. Ashton could find to say, after contemplating this prospect for many minutes, was: Abominable!

      A listener would have been aware, immediately upon this, of the sound of footsteps coming somewhat hurriedly in the direction of the study: by the resonance he could have told that they were traversing a much larger room. Dr. Ashton turned round in his chair as the door opened, and looked expectant. The incomer was a lady—a stout lady in the dress of the time: though I have made some attempt at indicating the doctor’s costume, I will not enterprise that of his wife—for it was Mrs. Ashton who now entered. She had an anxious, even a sorely distracted, look, and it was in a very disturbed voice that she almost whispered to Dr. Ashton, putting her head close to his, He’s in a very sad way, love, worse, I’m afraid. Tt—tt, is he really? and he leaned back and looked in her face. She nodded. Two solemn bells, high up, and not far away, rang out the half-hour at this moment. Mrs. Ashton started. Oh, do you think you can give order that the minster clock be stopped chiming to-night? ‘Tis just over his chamber, and will keep him from sleeping, and to sleep is the only chance for him, that’s certain. Why, to be sure, if there were need, real need, it could be done, but not upon any light occasion. This Frank, now, do you assure me that his recovery stands upon it? said Dr. Ashton: his voice was loud and rather hard. I do verily believe it, said his wife. Then, if it must be, bid Molly run across to Simpkins and say on my authority that he is to stop the clock chimes at sunset: and—yes—she is after that to say to my lord Saul that I wish to see him presently in this room. Mrs. Ashton hurried off.

      Before any other visitor enters, it will be well to explain the situation.

      Dr. Ashton was the holder, among other preferments, of a prebend in the rich collegiate church of Whitminster, one of the foundations which, though not a cathedral, survived dissolution and reformation, and retained its constitution and endowments for a hundred years after the time of which I write. The great church, the residences of the dean and the two prebendaries, the choir and its appurtenances, were all intact and in working order. A dean who flourished soon after 1500 had been a great builder, and had erected a spacious quadrangle of red brick adjoining the church for the residence of the officials. Some of these persons were no longer required: their offices had dwindled down to mere titles, borne by clergy or lawyers in the town and neighbourhood; and so the houses that had been meant to accommodate eight or ten people were now shared among three, the dean and the two prebendaries. Dr. Ashton’s included what had been the common parlour and the dining-hall of the whole body. It occupied a whole side of the court, and at one end had a private door into the minster. The other end, as we have seen, looked out over the country.

      So much for the house. As for the inmates, Dr. Ashton was a wealthy man and childless, and he had adopted, or rather undertaken to bring up, the orphan son of his wife’s sister. Frank Sydall was the lad’s name: he had been a good many months in the house. Then one day came a letter from an Irish peer, the Earl of Kildonan (who had known Dr. Ashton at college), putting it to the doctor whether he would consider taking into his family the Viscount Saul, the Earl’s heir, and acting in some sort as his tutor. Lord Kildonan was shortly to take up a post in the Lisbon Embassy, and the boy was unfit to make the voyage: not that he is sickly, the Earl wrote, "though you’ll find him whimsical, or of late I’ve thought[Pg 8] him so, and to

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