An Appreciation of M.R. James' Ghost Stories
Superstitions may seem to disappear under the influence of education; science, convention, and common-sense may combine to make the imagination outwardly less rampant, but they cannot altogether change the constitution of the human mind. There will always remain something, which no influence can eradicate, a something to which a well-told ghost-story appeals. Those who firmly believe and unhesitatingly declare that ghosts are all nonsense, and that there never was a ghost which could not be attributed to cats or rats or indigestion or some other such mundane cause, cannot in spite of themselves help being thrilled by, say, 'The Haunted and the Haunters.' However sceptical we may be, a vivid picture of the supernatural generates in us what Addison calls ‘a pleasing kind of horror.’ There is no doubt about it, we, most of us at least, like to feel 'our flesh creep,' and no one's imagination can be frozen so hard, as not to experience that sensation on reading 'Ghost Stories of an Antiquary.' For Dr. James has an extraordinary power of making fiction read like fact. His ghosts are much more real than the ghost seen by Dr. Johnson's friend, Mr. Cave the printer, which Johnson declared to be merely, ‘Why Sir, something of a shadowy being.’ Some of them are quite horribly substantial beings. And he never makes the mistake of explaining his ghosts by assigning natural causes to them. Each of course has some sort of moving cause, but it is vaguely supernatural. So when each story has been read to the end, the reader does not feel that he has been hoaxed and that consequently he has a just grievance against the writer.
It is very hard to say which is the best of the series. If a poll were taken, probably every one would get several votes, and if the voters were called upon to give their reasons, an excellent case could be made out for each. It is therefore with the certainty that many readers will differ from us, that we place ‘Oh, whistle, and I'll come to you, my lad,’ highest on the list. It is in a way the most mysterious, the very spirit of the wind, rising out of the unknown; and the scene is happily laid on the bleak East Coast. The ghosts of the other tales are for the most part spirits of vengeance or of crime, thrilling indeed and uncanny to a degree, but all slightly more near to human things, and, if we may say it without being thought to disparage them, not so striking in their originality of conception as that which we have named. If we were driven to class the rest in order of merit, we should probably place ‘The Ash-tree’ and “The Treasure of Abbot Thomas' equal second, but where all are so excellent, comparisons are more than usually unsatisfactory. Not the least attractive feature is the light humour which runs through the whole collection; the visit of the golfing don to 'Burnstow,' in order ‘to improve his game,’ and the ‘lurid demeanour' of Colonel Wilson are described with that simple accuracy which belongs only to a writer with much humour and knowledge of men. It is this ‘genial sympathy with the under side,' coupled with his vigorous imagination, that places Dr James' ghost stories in a class above those which Christmas time ordinarily provides.
Article posted in the Cambridge Review, December 8, 1904
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