BiblioAddict The First Step on the Road to Recovery

On haunted scrap-books, lost orphans (and hearts), and the changing mezzotint:

It was the internet that kept me away yesterday!  Really.  Around 3 pm, my internet decided it didn’t want to work and went kaput.  It was out for the rest of the night and decided to work again early this morning.  Clearly, my internet and I have a few relationship issues.  I’d planned to participate in Short Story Monday since I’ve read quite a few the last couple of days.  But, hey – Monday, Tuesday – what’s the difference?  So, Short Story, er… Tuesday, it is.

You’ll recall that last week I got myself a copy of M.R. James’ Count Magnus and Other Ghost Stories. I’ve pretty much been reading it nonstop.  It’s such a thin little edition that it’s easy to feel as if I’m just dipping in for a quick treat every time I open it up.  I dip into it when I’m riding the subway to and from work, and then just before I go to bed.  I find something kind of comforting about these stories despite their spooky subject matter.  Perhaps because they seem so quaint and intimate.  The narrator in these stories is always an informed gentleman who supposedly heard the story second-hand, often after the fact.  One can easily imagine the narrator telling these stories to an enthralled audience sitting in front of a lit fireplace.  Every time I read these stories, I see myself sitting within the circle of the firelight, while my host M.R. James speaks of things that writhe in the shadows.  To put it mildly, I love it.

In “Count Alberic’s Scrap-Book,” the first story in this collection, an amateur English archeologist goes to a small town in France to visit a old church.  The keeper of the church, an old, nervous man, is assigned to be the Englishman’s guide.  It doesn’t take long for the Englishman (“let us call him Dennistoun”) to conclude that there is something very wrong with the French church-guardian.

He was perpetually half glancing behind him; the muscles of his back and shoulders seemed to be hunched in continual nervous contraction, as if he were expecting every moment to find himself in the clutch of an enemy.

More than that, he seemed afraid of his own church, jumping at the deep shadows and mysterious sounds inherent (so Dennistoun thinks) to every old church.  It isn’t until later, when the church-guardian gifts him an ancient book that Dennistoun learns that the guardian’s fear is something much, much more than a nervous fancy.

“Count Alberic’s Scrap-Book” introduces a theme that threads very largely throughout James’ short stories: scholars – amateur or otherwise – who stick their noses where they shouldn’t and (sometimes) live to regret it.  It makes one wonder  what James really thought of scholars.  Did he think scholars didn’t respect and appreciate the unseen and unexplainable enough?  Is he saying, through his stories, that some things are better left unexplained and unexplored?  That intellect will only take you so far until it gets you in a whole heap of trouble?  Or, is the use of scholars simply a literary device?  After all, a doubting, skeptical scholar is a great way to show a reader how horrifying something is – if they can believe and be terrified by the unknown, so then could we.  Whatever the case may be, Dennistoun certainly learns his lesson.  I definitely liked this story.  It isn’t my favorite one of the bunch, but it certainly whets your appetite.  What more could you want of the story that introduces a collection?

“Lost Hearts” is definitely one of my favorites so far.  Probably because it turns the whole theme I mentioned above on its head.  There is, in fact, a scholar in “Lost Hearts” but he’s not as clueless as his counterparts in the other stories.  He’s also not really the main character.  That position belongs to an orphan boy, Stephen, who has just arrived to stay with his eccentric uncle on his large estate.  Soon after his arrival, the housekeeper informs Stephen that he isn’t the first orphan to stay with his uncle.  A few years ago, a young girl and boy had come to stay with the uncle at different times.  They both, however, disappeared in the night and were never seen or heard from again.  Could this be the same girl and boy Steven sees standing outside his window one night?  And are they trying to hurt him or are they attempting to warn him?  If so, warn him about what?  Like I said, this is definitely one of my favorites.  It’s a little more grisly than the other stories (I’m sure this says something bad about me), and I think the fact that the main character was a boy made the story seem more harrowing.  Apparently, I’m not the only one who likes this story since they made a movie out of it in the 70s.  I tried watching it, but the young boy’s acting was on the wrong side of terrible.  I’d stick with the story, if I were you.  It’s great.

“The Mezzotint” is the story of an old photo print that isn’t quite what it seems.  The print is a acquired by a museum curator who at first believes that the photo is worthless.  After all, there isn’t anything especially notable about it.  It’s just a photo of an old estate.  Hours later, the curator Mr. Williams, discovers that the print has changed slightly: a dark figure is standing on the print’s edge.  Hours after that the figure has progressed across the lawn and is clearly headed towards the estate.  What is the figure?  Why is he (or it) walking towards the house?  Is it after something in the house or something (or someone) else?  I thought the premise of this story was very creepy, but for some reason, it just didn’t do it for me by the end.  I think I was expecting a little something more because I liked the premise so much.  Still, I liked it on the whole. It just wasn’t one of my favorites.

I’ll stop here at three stories, but there’s definitely more to come!  One thing I love about this collection is that I’m sure these stories are just getting better and better.  I’m already making plans to get the second volume of this Penguin Classics edition, The Haunted Doll’s House and Other Ghost Stories. Maybe I’ll be able to save that one for next year’s R.I.P. V challenge but, again, I make no promises.

Happy reading, everyone.

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