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Fantasy Fan, v. 1, issue 6, February 1934

Page 89

90     THE FANTASY FAN February, 1934

Trayer Book, which resembles "a great roll of old, shabby, white flannel," with a kind of face in the upper end, and which falls forward on a man's shoulder and hides this face in his neck like a ferret attacking a rabbitt. Then, in Mr. Humphreys and his Inh[[upside down "e"]]ritance (one of subtler and more inferential tales) there is the form "with a burnt human face" and "black arms", that emerges from an inexplicable hole in the paper plan of a garden maze "with the odious writhings of a wasp creeping ut of a rotten apple." In The Tractate Middoth one meets an apparition with thick cobwebs over its eyes- the lich or specter of a man who, obedient to his own rather eccentric instructions, had been buried sitting at a table in an underground room. And who, upon reading The Diary of Mr. Poynter, can fail to share Denton's revulsion when he reaches out, thinking that a dog is beside his chair, and touches a crawling figure covered with long, wavy, Absolom-lke tresses? Who, too, can shake off the horror of Denaistoun[[?]], In Canon Alberic's Scrap Book, when a demon's hand appears from beneath on the table, suggesting momentarily a pen wiper, a rat, and a large spider?
Reading and re-reading these tales, one notes a predilection for certain milieus and motifs. Backgrounds of scholastic or ecclesiastic life are frequent; and some of the best tales are laid in cathedral towns. In many of the supernatural entitles, there recurs insistently the character of extreme and repulsive hairiness. Often th apparition is connected with, or evoked by, some material object, such as the bronze whistle from the ruins of a Templars' preceptory in Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad; the old drawing of King Solomon and the night demon in Canon Alberic's Scrap Book; the silver Anglo-Saxon crown from an immemorial barrow in A Warning to the Curious; and the strange curtain-patern in The Diary of Mr. Poynter which had "a subtlety in its drawing."
In several stories there are hints of bygone Satanism and wizardry whose malign wraiths or conjured spirits linger obscurely in modern time; and in at least one tale, Casting the Runes, the warlock is a living figure. In other tales, the forgetful and vanishing phantasms of old crimes cry out their mindless pain, or peer for an instant from familiar pools and shrubberies. The personel of James' Pandemonium is far from monotonous: one finds a satyr dwelling in a cathedral tomb; a carven cat-like monster that comes to life when touched by a murderer's hand; a mouldy smelling sack-like object in an unlit well, which suddenly puts its arms around the neck of a treasure-seeker; a cloaked and hooded shape with a tentacle in lieu of arms; a lean, hideously taloned terror, with a jaw "shallow as that of a beast;" dolls that repeat crime and tragedy; creatures that are dog-like but not dogs: a saw-fly tall as a man, met in a dim room full of rustling insects: and even a weak, ancient thing, which, being wholly bodiless and insubstantibl, makes for itself a body out of crumpled bed linen.
The peculiar genius of M. R. James, and his greatest power, lies in the convincing evocation of weird, malignant and preternatural phenomena such as I have instanced. It is safe to say that few writers, dead or living, have equalled him in lhis formidable necromancy: and perhaps no one has excelled him.

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90 THE FANTASY FAN February, 1934 Trayer Book, which resembles "a great roll of old, shabby, white flannel," with a kind of face in the upper end, and which falls forward on a man's shoulder and hides this face in his neck like a ferret attacking a rabbitt. Then, in Mr. Humphreys and his Inh[[upside down "e"]]ritance (one of subtler and more inferential tales) there is the form "with a burnt human face" and "black arms", that emerges from an inexplicable hole in the paper plan of a garden maze "with the odious writhings of a wasp creeping ut of a rotten apple." In The Tractate Middoth one meets an apparition with thick cobwebs over its eyes- the lich or specter of a man who, obedient to his own rather eccentric instructions, had been buried sitting at a table in an underground room. And who, upon reading The Diary of Mr. Poynter, can fail to share Denton's revulsion when he reaches out, thinking that a dog is beside his chair, and touches a crawling figure covered with long, wavy, Absolom-lke tresses? Who, too, can shake off the horror of Denaistoun[[?]], In Canon Alberic's Scrap Book, when a demon's hand appears from beneath on the table, suggesting momentarily a pen wiper, a rat, and a large spider? Reading and re-reading these tales, one notes a predilection for certain milieus and motifs. Backgrounds of scholastic or ecclesiastic life are frequent; and some of the best tales are laid in cathedral towns. In many of the supernatural entitles, there recurs insistently the character of extreme and repulsive hairiness. Often th apparition is connected with, or evoked by, some material object, such as the bronze whistle from the ruins of a Templars' preceptory in Oh, Whistle and I'll Come to You, My Lad; the old drawing of King Solomon and the night demon in Canon Alberic's Scrap Book; the silver Anglo-Saxon crown from an immemorial barrow in A Warning to the Curious; and the strange curtain-patern in The Diary of Mr. Poynter which had "a subtlety in its drawing." In several stories there are hints of bygone Satanism and wizardry whose malign wraiths or conjured spirits linger obscurely in modern time; and in at least one tale, Casting the Runes, the warlock is a living figure. In other tales, the forgetful and vanishing phantasms of old crimes cry out their mindless pain, or peer for an instant from familiar pools and shrubberies. The personel of James' Pandemonium is far from monotonous: one finds a satyr dwelling in a cathedral tomb; a carven cat-like monster that comes to life when touched by a murderer's hand; a mouldy smelling sack-like object in an unlit well, which suddenly puts its arms around the neck of a treasure-seeker; a cloaked and hooded shape with a tentacle in lieu of arms; a lean, hideously taloned terror, with a jaw "shallow as that of a beast;" dolls that repeat crime and tragedy; creatures that are dog-like but not dogs: a saw-fly tall as a man, met in a dim room full of rustling insects: and even a weak, ancient thing, which, being wholly bodiless and insubstantibl, makes for itself a body out of crumpled bed linen. The peculiar genius of M. R. James, and his greatest power, lies in the convincing evocation of weird, malignant and preternatural phenomena such as I have instanced. It is safe to say that few writers, dead or living, have equalled him in lhis formidable necromancy: and perhaps no one has excelled him.