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Acolyte, v. 3, issue 4, whole no. 12, Fall 1945
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bright, he went merrily on, and without any Difficulty reached the Heart of the Labyrinth and go the jewel and so set out on his way back rejoicing; but as the Night fell, wherein all the Beasts of the Forest do move, he begun to be sensible of some Creature keeping Pace with him and, as he thought, peering and looking upon him from the next Alley to that he was in; and that when he should stop, this Companion should stop also, which put him in some Disorder of his Spirits." versus the flowery insipidities of early nineteenth century female Romanticism in "The Residence at Whitminster": The town, small as it is, afford us some reflection, pale indeed, but veritable, of the sweets of polite intercourse: the adjacent country numbers amid the occupants of its scattered mansions some whose polish is annually refreshed by contact with metropolitan splendour, and others whose robust and homely geniality is, at times, and by way of contrast, not less cheering and acceptable." These and all the other accurate and convincing (though at first sight seemingly useless) historical bits, specimens, and references scattered throughout James' stories serve another function as well--that of convincing us (while reading the story) that the less plausible and more fantastic phenomena of ghosts and demons also are true to life. We are, without our conscious knowledge, given the impression that so learned and precise a scholar as the author of these historically well-founded stories could not be leading us astray in other matters we know little of. As one anonymous reviewer puts it, "With Dr. James the facts do the persuading. The facts are most artistically--not to say artfully--presented to produce this effect. He paves the way for passing off the false Rembrandt by first selling you a series of minor masters punctiliously authenticated." (10) The form and structure of James's tales, while necessarily varying in detail from one story to another, show certain common features just as well adapted, psychologically and artistically, to raising one's hackles as are the different aspects of his subject-matter. He does not first present his spectral disturbances and then take up the rest of the story with attempts on the part of his characters to unravel the mystery; quite the reverse. "Two ingredients," he says, "most valuable in the concocting of a ghost story are, to me, the atmosphere and the nicely managed crescendo. Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage. (11) As this dictum indicates, his stories usually proceed at a somewhat leisurely pace, unhurried and prosaic in their earlier passages, and moving with inevitable continuity to their frightening conclusions. In speaking of his own mentor, Le Fanu, he says, "I do not think it is merely the fact of my being past middle age that leads me to regard the leisureliness of his style as a merit, for I am by no means inappreciative of the more modern efforts in this branch of fiction. No, it has to be recognized, I am sure, that the ghost-story is in itself a slightly old-fashioned form; it needs some deliberateness in the telling we listen to it the more readily if the narrator poses as elderly, or throws back his experiences to 'some thirty years ago'." (7) This latter circumstance, incidentally, occurs very frequently in the Jamesian -- 15 --
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bright, he went merrily on, and without any Difficulty reached the Heart of the Labyrinth and go the jewel and so set out on his way back rejoicing; but as the Night fell, wherein all the Beasts of the Forest do move, he begun to be sensible of some Creature keeping Pace with him and, as he thought, peering and looking upon him from the next Alley to that he was in; and that when he should stop, this Companion should stop also, which put him in some Disorder of his Spirits." versus the flowery insipidities of early nineteenth century female Romanticism in "The Residence at Whitminster": The town, small as it is, afford us some reflection, pale indeed, but veritable, of the sweets of polite intercourse: the adjacent country numbers amid the occupants of its scattered mansions some whose polish is annually refreshed by contact with metropolitan splendour, and others whose robust and homely geniality is, at times, and by way of contrast, not less cheering and acceptable." These and all the other accurate and convincing (though at first sight seemingly useless) historical bits, specimens, and references scattered throughout James' stories serve another function as well--that of convincing us (while reading the story) that the less plausible and more fantastic phenomena of ghosts and demons also are true to life. We are, without our conscious knowledge, given the impression that so learned and precise a scholar as the author of these historically well-founded stories could not be leading us astray in other matters we know little of. As one anonymous reviewer puts it, "With Dr. James the facts do the persuading. The facts are most artistically--not to say artfully--presented to produce this effect. He paves the way for passing off the false Rembrandt by first selling you a series of minor masters punctiliously authenticated." (10) The form and structure of James's tales, while necessarily varying in detail from one story to another, show certain common features just as well adapted, psychologically and artistically, to raising one's hackles as are the different aspects of his subject-matter. He does not first present his spectral disturbances and then take up the rest of the story with attempts on the part of his characters to unravel the mystery; quite the reverse. "Two ingredients," he says, "most valuable in the concocting of a ghost story are, to me, the atmosphere and the nicely managed crescendo. Let us, then, be introduced to the actors in a placid way; let us see them going about their ordinary business, undisturbed by forebodings, pleased with their surroundings; and into this calm environment let the ominous thing put out its head, unobtrusively at first, and then more insistently, until it holds the stage. (11) As this dictum indicates, his stories usually proceed at a somewhat leisurely pace, unhurried and prosaic in their earlier passages, and moving with inevitable continuity to their frightening conclusions. In speaking of his own mentor, Le Fanu, he says, "I do not think it is merely the fact of my being past middle age that leads me to regard the leisureliness of his style as a merit, for I am by no means inappreciative of the more modern efforts in this branch of fiction. No, it has to be recognized, I am sure, that the ghost-story is in itself a slightly old-fashioned form; it needs some deliberateness in the telling we listen to it the more readily if the narrator poses as elderly, or throws back his experiences to 'some thirty years ago'." (7) This latter circumstance, incidentally, occurs very frequently in the Jamesian -- 15 --
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