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Acolyte, v. 3, issue 4, whole no. 12, Fall 1945
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Well, it is rather hard to say exactly what I do suppose." The construction of James's stories is usually admirably tight and well-knit with few if any loose ends left except those which he prefers to leave unexplained because of the mysterious nature of psychic phenomena. Probably the best constructed of his stories--those least vulnerable to the barbs of intensive literary criticism and analysis-- are "Count Magnus", "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas", "Casting the Runes", "The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral", with the latter perhaps carrying off top honors because of the skill with which various facts of the case are revealed from documentary evidence until at the very end of the whole basis of the hauntings (whose multifarious forms remind one of Bulwer-Lytton's classic "The Haunters and the Haunted") is revealed obliquely in the archaic poem dreamt by the woodcarver as he shaped the scriptions (often in Latin) to great effect at or near the end of his tales, like "Depositum Custodi" in "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas", "Quieta non movere" in "The Rose Garden", "Penetrans ad intersoia mortis" in "Mr. Humphries and His Inheritance", and the inscription of Canon Alberic two days before his death in 1701. Biblical quotations are similarly employed, such as Isaiah 34:14 in "An Episode of Cathedral History", which verse is also referred to by Dennistoun in "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book" when he speaks of "night-monsters". The less tightly constructed stories are, of course, not necessarily poorer or less effective stories--they are merely those in which James has not chosen to tell as much as he might about the origin or nature of his ghosts and demons. Sometimes, though, his reticence on this score seems to be a definite fault and indicates that he has not thought out the basis for the plot as much as he could have. In "Number 13", for example, he gives no translation of the mysterious document that inspires the haunting, and we never learn anything about Mag. Francken's demonological activities; in "The Rose Carden" the identity of the prisoner in the dreams is unexplained and apparently irrelevant to the hauntings; in "The Tractate Middoth", why does the ghost of Dr. Rant kill Eldred for finding the well?; "Mr. Humphries and His Inheritance" is all at loose ends (it was written "to fill up the volume" of More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, perhaps hastily and uninspiredly) with a disappointingly feeble climax (the ghost is seen merely in a vision)--it would have been much better to have put the events of the parable into real life as the climax; in "The Residence at Whitminster" the original appearance of the demons is never accounted for, and the kysterious effects of Lord Saul are not examined at the end, so we never learn the reason for the haunting of the room by the sawflies; "The Diary of Mr. Poynter" is a bit vague as to Sir Everard Charlette's connections with the Powers of Evil, as is "An Episode of Cathedral History" about the background of the vampire-ghost, and "The Uncommon Prayer-Book" about Lady Sadlier's unholy activities (these things do not necessarily have to be explained, however, in order for the stories to be enjoyed); it is a bit odd that the narrator in "The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance" should dream about the murder and its avenging when he had nothing to do with it; the lethal action of the bedclothes in "Two Doctors" is unexplained; and two deaths and the mysterious files in "An Evening's Entertainment" are left a mystery; and of course "A Vignette" was obviously written at the last minute with no story-idea behind it and with the ghost from The Rose Garden" thrown in at the last minute without the slightest pretence of an explanation for its existence. It does not seem quite proper to object to the truncated endings of "There Was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard" and "After Dark in the Playing Fields", for these were written in James' later years when -- 17 --
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Well, it is rather hard to say exactly what I do suppose." The construction of James's stories is usually admirably tight and well-knit with few if any loose ends left except those which he prefers to leave unexplained because of the mysterious nature of psychic phenomena. Probably the best constructed of his stories--those least vulnerable to the barbs of intensive literary criticism and analysis-- are "Count Magnus", "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas", "Casting the Runes", "The Stalls of Barchester Cathedral", with the latter perhaps carrying off top honors because of the skill with which various facts of the case are revealed from documentary evidence until at the very end of the whole basis of the hauntings (whose multifarious forms remind one of Bulwer-Lytton's classic "The Haunters and the Haunted") is revealed obliquely in the archaic poem dreamt by the woodcarver as he shaped the scriptions (often in Latin) to great effect at or near the end of his tales, like "Depositum Custodi" in "The Treasure of Abbot Thomas", "Quieta non movere" in "The Rose Garden", "Penetrans ad intersoia mortis" in "Mr. Humphries and His Inheritance", and the inscription of Canon Alberic two days before his death in 1701. Biblical quotations are similarly employed, such as Isaiah 34:14 in "An Episode of Cathedral History", which verse is also referred to by Dennistoun in "Canon Alberic's Scrap-Book" when he speaks of "night-monsters". The less tightly constructed stories are, of course, not necessarily poorer or less effective stories--they are merely those in which James has not chosen to tell as much as he might about the origin or nature of his ghosts and demons. Sometimes, though, his reticence on this score seems to be a definite fault and indicates that he has not thought out the basis for the plot as much as he could have. In "Number 13", for example, he gives no translation of the mysterious document that inspires the haunting, and we never learn anything about Mag. Francken's demonological activities; in "The Rose Carden" the identity of the prisoner in the dreams is unexplained and apparently irrelevant to the hauntings; in "The Tractate Middoth", why does the ghost of Dr. Rant kill Eldred for finding the well?; "Mr. Humphries and His Inheritance" is all at loose ends (it was written "to fill up the volume" of More Ghost Stories of an Antiquary, perhaps hastily and uninspiredly) with a disappointingly feeble climax (the ghost is seen merely in a vision)--it would have been much better to have put the events of the parable into real life as the climax; in "The Residence at Whitminster" the original appearance of the demons is never accounted for, and the kysterious effects of Lord Saul are not examined at the end, so we never learn the reason for the haunting of the room by the sawflies; "The Diary of Mr. Poynter" is a bit vague as to Sir Everard Charlette's connections with the Powers of Evil, as is "An Episode of Cathedral History" about the background of the vampire-ghost, and "The Uncommon Prayer-Book" about Lady Sadlier's unholy activities (these things do not necessarily have to be explained, however, in order for the stories to be enjoyed); it is a bit odd that the narrator in "The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance" should dream about the murder and its avenging when he had nothing to do with it; the lethal action of the bedclothes in "Two Doctors" is unexplained; and two deaths and the mysterious files in "An Evening's Entertainment" are left a mystery; and of course "A Vignette" was obviously written at the last minute with no story-idea behind it and with the ghost from The Rose Garden" thrown in at the last minute without the slightest pretence of an explanation for its existence. It does not seem quite proper to object to the truncated endings of "There Was a Man Dwelt by a Churchyard" and "After Dark in the Playing Fields", for these were written in James' later years when -- 17 --
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