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Acolyte, v. 3, issue 4, whole no. 12, Fall 1945
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the Curious" leaves a footprint "that showed more bones than flesh";the scarecrow-like corpse in "Rats" has "bare bony feet" and moves stiffly and shiveringly with arms close to its sides and head lolling and wagging; and the three women and a man who inhabit the forbidden field in "Wailing Well" are simply "flutterin' rags and whity bones". One of them "showed a white skull with stains that might be wisps of hair", like the "white dome-like forehead and a few straggling hairs" beneath the black drapery of the poacher in "The Mezzotint"; and the bald head of the ghost of Dr. Rant in "The Tractate Middoth" looked dry and dusty "and the streaks of hair across it were much less like hair than cobwebs" (his deep-sunk eyes also were covered with thick cobwebs. In "The diary of Mr. Poynter" the theme of hairiness is the main point of the story, for the ghost of Sir Everard Charlett (who had been inordinately proud of his long think tresses and whose coffin had been found full of hair) is a shapeless mass of hair which the hero, on first touching it, mistakes for his dog; and the red-eyed vampire ghost that bursts from its church-tomb in "An Episode of Cathedral History" is similar--"'Black it was... and a mass of hair, and two legs, and the light caught on its eyes.'" In the middle of the night it roams through the village, giving voice to hideous hungry cries, like those of the two children in "Lost Hearts"; the ghost of Magister Nicholas Franken in "Number 13" likewise is extremely vocal, singing or wailing discordantly in a thin dry voice. Ann Clark, the feeble-minded toad-faced girl in "Martin's Close" who will not stay under water after her unwilling "lover" drowns her but comes out and follows him around, flapping her arms and squalling a song, is a particularly shuddery example of what may be called the horror of the weak and clinging (another classic specimen of which is Robert Hichens' "How Love Came to Professor Guildea"), and bears a distinct resemblence to Robert Louis Stevenson's "Thrawn Janet", who was inhabited by a devil after her death. The ghost of old Lady Sadlier in "The Uncommon Prayer-Book" is more eccentric in form, appearing like a large roll of shabby white flannel with a vague face at one end having two spidery eyes; it falls forward onto its victim's neck, and he dies instantly as if from a snake bite. In "Mr. Humphreys and His Inheritance" the hero sees in a vision a tiny, blackish-grey figure with a burnt face and waving arms clambering out of a hole, this being presumably the ghost of a mysterious ancestor whose body had been cremated. Other ghosts are invisible, like that of Lady Ivy in "A Neighbor's Landmark", which passes continually to and fro on the hill of Betton Wood, screaming piercingly into the ear of anyone passing by, and which is visible only once as "something all in tatters with the two arms held out in front of it coming on very fast"; the ghosts of the hanged men in "A View from a Hill", who drag off Mr. Baxter for having boiled their bones in his experiments, are invisible except apparently to him, and the ghost in "A Warning to the Curious" can only be seen vaguely at a distance or out of the corner of one's eye. In "The Rose Garden" and "A Vignette" the ghost appears simply as a pink, hot, staring face in the shrubbery, reminding one of the idea in "Stories I have Tried to Write" of a dead face looking out from the window curtains in a room, or of the anecdote in "A School Story" of a woman who, on closing her door, hears a thin voice from the bed curtains say "Now we're shut in for the night." Demonology is a favorite subject with James (and his characters-- many of the ghosts were demonologists while alive), and though there are only eight stories in which demons appear, the latter are frequently more memorable than the ghosts. In "Casting the Runes" and "The Residence at Whitminster" they are simply vague, hairy, doglike shapes, usually invisible, but in the remaining stories they take more anomo- -- 9 --
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the Curious" leaves a footprint "that showed more bones than flesh";the scarecrow-like corpse in "Rats" has "bare bony feet" and moves stiffly and shiveringly with arms close to its sides and head lolling and wagging; and the three women and a man who inhabit the forbidden field in "Wailing Well" are simply "flutterin' rags and whity bones". One of them "showed a white skull with stains that might be wisps of hair", like the "white dome-like forehead and a few straggling hairs" beneath the black drapery of the poacher in "The Mezzotint"; and the bald head of the ghost of Dr. Rant in "The Tractate Middoth" looked dry and dusty "and the streaks of hair across it were much less like hair than cobwebs" (his deep-sunk eyes also were covered with thick cobwebs. In "The diary of Mr. Poynter" the theme of hairiness is the main point of the story, for the ghost of Sir Everard Charlett (who had been inordinately proud of his long think tresses and whose coffin had been found full of hair) is a shapeless mass of hair which the hero, on first touching it, mistakes for his dog; and the red-eyed vampire ghost that bursts from its church-tomb in "An Episode of Cathedral History" is similar--"'Black it was... and a mass of hair, and two legs, and the light caught on its eyes.'" In the middle of the night it roams through the village, giving voice to hideous hungry cries, like those of the two children in "Lost Hearts"; the ghost of Magister Nicholas Franken in "Number 13" likewise is extremely vocal, singing or wailing discordantly in a thin dry voice. Ann Clark, the feeble-minded toad-faced girl in "Martin's Close" who will not stay under water after her unwilling "lover" drowns her but comes out and follows him around, flapping her arms and squalling a song, is a particularly shuddery example of what may be called the horror of the weak and clinging (another classic specimen of which is Robert Hichens' "How Love Came to Professor Guildea"), and bears a distinct resemblence to Robert Louis Stevenson's "Thrawn Janet", who was inhabited by a devil after her death. The ghost of old Lady Sadlier in "The Uncommon Prayer-Book" is more eccentric in form, appearing like a large roll of shabby white flannel with a vague face at one end having two spidery eyes; it falls forward onto its victim's neck, and he dies instantly as if from a snake bite. In "Mr. Humphreys and His Inheritance" the hero sees in a vision a tiny, blackish-grey figure with a burnt face and waving arms clambering out of a hole, this being presumably the ghost of a mysterious ancestor whose body had been cremated. Other ghosts are invisible, like that of Lady Ivy in "A Neighbor's Landmark", which passes continually to and fro on the hill of Betton Wood, screaming piercingly into the ear of anyone passing by, and which is visible only once as "something all in tatters with the two arms held out in front of it coming on very fast"; the ghosts of the hanged men in "A View from a Hill", who drag off Mr. Baxter for having boiled their bones in his experiments, are invisible except apparently to him, and the ghost in "A Warning to the Curious" can only be seen vaguely at a distance or out of the corner of one's eye. In "The Rose Garden" and "A Vignette" the ghost appears simply as a pink, hot, staring face in the shrubbery, reminding one of the idea in "Stories I have Tried to Write" of a dead face looking out from the window curtains in a room, or of the anecdote in "A School Story" of a woman who, on closing her door, hears a thin voice from the bed curtains say "Now we're shut in for the night." Demonology is a favorite subject with James (and his characters-- many of the ghosts were demonologists while alive), and though there are only eight stories in which demons appear, the latter are frequently more memorable than the ghosts. In "Casting the Runes" and "The Residence at Whitminster" they are simply vague, hairy, doglike shapes, usually invisible, but in the remaining stories they take more anomo- -- 9 --
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